Long Ball Stories

Last Tuesday, Marcus Stroman had his best outing in recent weeks against the Phillies, earning the win with 7 innings of work during which he gave up 6 hits and 2 earned runs. This performance allayed the fears of many Toronto fans concerning the trajectory of Stroman’s 2016 season. Today’s outing against the Orioles put the whole question of what’s going on with Marcus Stroman firmly back on the table. In retrospect, was the good outing against the Phils a harbinger of things to come, or just a blip on the horizon, compounded by how desperately badly the Phillies were playing at the time?

A little Blue Jays history might be instructive here. Though a case could certainly be made for Dave Stieb, Roy Halladay was arguably the best starting pitcher in Blue Jays’ history. His leadership of the staff, his start-to-start dominance, his consistency, and his numbers all attest to his status in the modest pantheon of Toronto baseball heroes. His arrival on the scene in 1998 had all the earmarks of Roy Hobbs, the “natural” of Bernard Malamud’s brilliant baseball masterpiece of the same name. In his second career start, against the Detroit Tigers on the last day of the 1998 season, Halladay lost a no-hitter with two outs in the ninth, but held on for a one-hit 2-1 Toronto win.

Halladay’s actual rookie season in 1999 confirmed the promise he had shown in that one brilliant performance the previous fall. He went 8 and seven in 18 starts with an ERA of 3.92, while racking up 149-plus innings, both as a reliever and a starter. But his career hit a wall the next year, as he posted the highest ERA in major league history for any pitcher who pitched more than 50 innings, at 10.64. By the spring of 2001, it was obvious that something drastic needed to be done. Not only was he relegated to the minors after spring training, but the fall was drastic, as he remained in Dunedin with the Class A team for the start of the season. Working under the direction of Toronto’s major league pitching coach Mel Queen, his mentors in the Jays’ system rebuilt his entire delivery and approach, and converted him from a power thrower to a complete pitcher. When he came back to the Jays in mid-season he was an entirely different pitcher, and his performance showed it. 2002 was his major breakout year, as he went 19 and 7, with an ERA of 2.93, in 239-plus innings (how times have changed in only 14 years!)

I am not suggesting here that Marcus Stroman needs a complete rebuild like Halladay. He arrived on the scene in late 2014 as a far more complete pitcher than Roy Halladay was in 1998. And his performance in September and October last year, after his unexpected early return from surgery, showed that he was the real deal. But he is struggling now. Today’s outing was the worst, three and two thirds innings, 7 runs, 10 hits, and 2 wild pitches. After Adam Jones’ leadoff bloop single to right in the first, every hit he gave up was solid contact, and the Orioles treated him like a batting-practice pitcher, not the putative ace of the Toronto staff, though that status had evaporated a number of outings ago.

It’s not as if he needed to be perfect today. The Jays put up six runs, four in the second on two homers, enough for decent pitching to secure a win. R.A. Dickey, for one, would be delighted with six runs of support; on Saturday he would have settled for just the four. The Orioles have a high-octane parade of hitters, especially in their own park, but they only scored two off Aaron Sanchez Friday night, plus one off the bullpen, and another two earned runs off Dickey Saturday, plus one off the bullpen. Six runs per game would lead the league at the moment, and should be enough to win most games. It would have swept this series for the Jays. And Stroman had his chance to stop the Orioles in the first, as he was a strike away from ending the inning with no runs scored and Jones on third. Nobody is asking Stroman to be superhuman, just ordinary. Having given up more base hits than any pitcher in the American League, his work qualifies as considerably less than ordinary.

I realize that it would be very difficult for the Jays to take the drastic action that I think may be needed, given the hype that has surrounded Stroman since his arrival on the scene, pumped even more by the miraculous story of his return to the rotation last fall. In the publicity-driven, media-absorbed, world that is major-league baseball today, it is almost unthinkable that Stroman, who was the centre of the team’s entire off-season marketing campaign, might be sent down to Buffalo for a period to sort himself out. It’s a real measure of the nature of baseball as a business that I would even write about this aspect of the problem. These days, sadly, what happens on the field is not the only issue.

But the present situation is not good for the team as a whole, and it must be particularly hard on him. For a team that’s trying to claw its way into the middle of a pennant race in the most competitive division in baseball, it seems either self-destructive or delusional on the part of Jays’ management to keep running him out there every fifth day just to get shelled. And for such a confident and upbeat young man as Marcus Stroman, the pressure to sort himself out under the glare of this unforgiving spotlight must be excruciating. Sending him to the bullpen is simply not an option. He needs to be kept stretched out, obviously, but also his chances for bullpen success wouldn’t be good, given how quickly opposing hitters have jumped on him. Giving up base hits to the first two batters you face is never good when you’re pitching out of the bullpen.

I would propose sending him to Buffalo, keeping him on his same schedule, and closely monitoring his progress. Let him sort out what he can away from the hype and the glare of the major-league atmosphere. It’s not like the Jays don’t have other options for filling what has now become the last slot in the rotation. By all accounts Drew Hutchinson is primed and ready to go, and has the tools to do the job. As well, both Jesse Chavez and Gavin Floyd provide good backup for the fifth spot, keeping in mind that they have been for the most part effective out of the pen, particularly in the longer assignments.

As for today’s game, you already have the main lines of the story. The Jays hit well enough to back up a decent pitching performance, while the Orioles piled on Stroman and put too much air between themselves and the Jays for any realistic hope of a comeback. And when the Jays’ relievers took a step back from their recent respectable performance, giving up four add-on runs, there was no hope of putting any lipstick on Stroman’s performance.

If I were to pick out one at-bat that sealed Stroman’s fate today, curiously, it would be a single pitch that was not hit hard by the Orioles. In fact, it wasn’t hit at all. After the Orioles had put up the three-spot in the bottom of the first, the Jays’ sluggers stormed back off the O’s top (only?) starter, Chris Tillman, to vault into the lead. With one out, Russell Martin spanked a double to left, and Troy Tulowitzki announced his return to the lineup by hitting a screamer out to left. Kevin Pillar followed by beating out a dribbler to third, bringing Devon Travis to the plate. In an epic nine-pitch plate appearance, Travis fouled off seven pitches trying to shoot one of his trademark base hits to left to move Pillar up. Finally giving up on that idea, he solved his problem by hitting one over the centre field fence, and suddenly the Jays had vaulted into a 4-3 lead.

We know what the guide book for successful baseball says here, right? Pitcher needs a shutdown inning to legitimize the claim to the lead. However, leadoff hitter Pedro Alvarez, after falling behind no balls and two strikes to Stroman, worked the count back to even before bouncing one through the right side of the infield for a base hit.

Jay Hardy then rocked one to the fence in left that stayed in the park for Michael Saunders. It was just the first out, but left us all shaken. Including Stroman, who bounced one to Ryan Flaherty that Martin couldn’t keep in front of him, allowing Alvarez to move into scoring position. For all his confidence, I suspect we need to recognize that Marcus Stroman is as vulnerable to stress as anyone else in the game, or out of it. Look at the progression here: leadoff single, smash to the wall, wild pitch, RBI single to number nine hitter hitting in the .220s. At the end of two, it was a new ball game, and Stroman had to be sitting on the bench thinking it was all on him.

After a quick third inning the Jays went quickly and quietly again in the top of the fourth as Tillman found his groove. But the Orioles returned relentlessly to the attack against Stroman in their half of the inning, Five of their first seven batters reached base, and a sixth—Hardy again—drove Pillar to the wall in centre for another loud out. Stroman contributed to his own demise with a second wild pitch at a crucial moment, and the Orioles had put up three runs on the board and driven Stroman from the game.

For the rest of the game the Jays tried, and failed, to play catch-up, and eventually ran into the wall of the back of the Orioles’ bullpen. After the Orioles’ rally in the fourth, Devon Travis raised our hopes with a leadoff double in the fifth, but Tillman managed to finish off his last inning by foiling the Jays’ hopes of moving Travis to third via small ball. In the bottom of the inning, it was the O’s who added on against Joe Biagini, and we went through to the seventh down 8-4.

In the seventh the pattern repeated itself, as the Jays crept back within two, only to see their opponents answer with three and put the game out of reach. Doubles by Tulowitzki and Travis, who carried the Jays at the plate between them today, scored one run, and then Travis scored from second when Jay Hardy gloriously booted a grounder by Justin Smoak into no-man’s land. But after Chad Girodo came in and failed at his assignment to retire the left-handed-hitting Chris Davis, Jesse Chavez came in to give up an RBI single to Matt Wieters and the two-run homer to Jonathan Schoop that drove the stake into the Jays’ heart once and for all.

Ever the optimist, I might close by mentioning once again that the Orioles’ starting pitching as it’s currently constituted won’t keep them in the race, and today’s performance by their supposed number one starter, Chris Tillman, did nothing to change my opinion on that score.

Off-day tomorrow, then two inter-league games with the Arizona D-Backs. We’ve got tickets for Wednesday afternoon. Hope we can score a couple of Ed-Wing tee shirts!

Okay, let’s just get all the cliches out of our system right at the start. Can’t win every game. It’s a long season. Sometimes you just run into a hot pitcher. We were due for a letdown. The Phillies had nothing to lose. They’re playing loosey-goosey, we’re in a hammer-and-tongs divisional fight.

All of the above apply to tonight’s desultory (for the Jays, anyway) 7-0 shutout by the Phillies. Let’s start with the letdown. If you could have wrung more tension out of a four-game series than the Jays and the Orioles did over the weekend, the area’s hospitals would have been swamped with cardiac cases. Saturday’s was the only game that didn’t go down to the last batter, last pitch, last instant. Thursday the bullpen couldn’t protect Marcus Stroman’s slim lead and the Orioles tied it in the seventh and won it in the ninth. Friday was the Encarnacion walkoff in ten innings. Saturday was the 11-6 “laugher”. Sunday Grilli had to strike out Schoop with the bases loaded in the ninth to preserve his own one-run lead.

Where’s a day off in the schedule when you need one? The Orioles got one. We didn’t. Unfair. That should be a rule. A mandatory day off after a series with Baltimore/Boston/Yankees/Royals/Texas . . . I know, where does it end? Not to stretch the point, which I already have, our guys were due for a letdown.

So yes, the Jays were flat tonight. After the first inning you could almost read it in the cards. R.A. Dickey stranded a two-out double by Andres Blanco in the top of the first. (I should warn you: the Phillies lineup is loaded with guys who should be called “Who Dat?” If it weren’t for Ryan Howard, they could all wear paper bags like the unknown student. It’s called rebuilding.) The escape by Dickey after the double was good. Kevin Pillar, hitting fifth (not good), struck out swinging in the bottom of the inning to strand two. Not so good. Little did we know that Michael Saunders reaching second in the first would be the height of excitement for us for the night.

The pitching matchup tonight looked good for the Jays, on first glance. Dickey has had really good outings for his last seven starts, with an ERA of 3.25 and averaging six-plus innings per start. The Phillies’ starter was young Jared Eickhoff, who came up with them last year and had 8 starts, with good numbers, 3-3 with a 2.65 ERA and also averaging over 6 innings a start. This year he’s apparently not had much support, going 3-7 before tonight but with an ERA of 3.68.

Pitching against a slightly depleted lineup, Eickhoff had a very good outing, going 6 innings, giving up no runs on 3 hits with 5 strikeouts. He walked four, but managed to scatter the walks and the hits so that he was never really in trouble after the first. The Jays’ lineup was depleted hitting-wise against him, which helped. Edwin Encarnacion was held out, nursing a minor hand injury suffered when he slid into third on Sunday. It was hard to have his bat stay in the rack all night, as hot as he’s been lately. Russell Martin has been heating up by the day as well, but with the Dickey start, of course Josh Thole was behind the late, and Martin on the bench. Thus we had the oddity of Pillar hitting in the five-hole, as I mentioned. He’s been really hot lately as well, but his hotness, when it’s hot, is of the shit-disturber type, not the clear-the-bases type. Putting him fifth in the order signals a bit of a short-handed night for the home team. They generally had a pretty quiet night, a credit to Eickhoff and the three relievers who followed, giving up nary a hit in the seventh through ninth innings.

Dickey certainly pitched well enough to win, yielding only five hits and a couple of walks, and making only a few mistakes. But of course Dickey’s mistakes tend to leave the park, namely Odubel Herrera in the third and Howard in the seventh. And when the knuckler walked Cody Asche (I warned you about the unknown players) after Howard’s homer, Manager John Gibbons came out with the hook. His sense seems to be that when Dickey’s stuff starts to go flat, it goes flat fast.

The relievers for the Jays did little to help their cause tonight, save for Drew Storen, who struck out the side in the eighth on ten pitches, a most encouraging sign. Biagini and Loup followed Dickey in the seventh, with not so great results. In his second shaky appearance in a row, Biagini let Dickey’s third run in, and allowed a double that would eventually score off Aaron Loup, who once again failed to get the left-handed hitter, Herrera, he had been sent in to face. In the ninth Guelph native Scott Diamond, whose contract was just purchased from Buffalo, made his Blue Jays’ debut, and it’s good we got that one out of the way when we were losing anyway, because it wasn’t a great debut for the lefty. In his inning he walked two and gave up two base hits, yielding three more runs to the Phillies while throwing 26 pitches. He walked off the mound with the dreaded 27.00 ERA for his only inning of work thus far in the majors this year.

It’s a day game tomorrow, 12:30 start, Marcus Stroman against 22-year-old Zach Eflin, who is making his major league debut. Could be a good chance for Stroman to work out the kinks. Could be a good chance for the Jays to feast on a raw rookie. Or, maybe not. The only thing that’s sure about major league baseball is that nothing is sure. Else, how do you explain Phillies 7, Blue Jays 0?

Call me a Pollyanna if you will, but I sense something building here. Today’s finale between the Blue Jays and the Orioles, this slugfest-turned-squeaker that gave the Jays the series win, contained so many of the elements of August through October of last year that it’s feeling like 2015 all over again.

A boffo start, laser-like extra-base hits raining around the park, unlikely heroes, shocking turnabouts, unbearable drama, frustration, hope, joy, they were all there today, and left us limp but elated at the end. And when all was said and done, here’s where we stand: on the dance floor for the first time all year, instead of hanging around outside the washroom slicking down our cowlicks with the other losers: five games over 500 at 35 and 30, two and a half games behind both Baltimore and Boston. (We closed the gap on the Orioles ourselves, and in another minor miracle the Twins took a walkoff win over Boston with a first-ever major-league homer in the tenth inning by a raw rookie). Another game ahead of the Yankees, who lost to the Tigers. Tied with the Mariners for the second wild card spot. And emerging from this crazy string of sixteen of our last nineteen games against the Orioles, Red Sox, and Yankees with a glittering record of twelve wins against only four losses.

It was a typical Aaron Sanchez first inning. He walked leadoff batter Adam Jones and saw him steal second, but also caught Manny Machado looking and fanned Chris Davis, throwing a few too many pitches, 22, but hey, no big deal, right?

When the Jays came in to take their licks, it was unclear whether they would be facing the Ubaldo Jimenez who gave them fits last year, or the Ubaldo Jimenez who’s stunk up the joint so far this year, to the tune, after today’s abbreviated showing, of a 3-7 won/loss record and an ERA of 6.89. It didn’t take them long to find out, as they batted through the order, smacked doubles all over the park, put up five big ones on the board, and, not surprisingly, waved goodbye to the backside of Jimenez, who only retired one batter.

It all went down like this: Carrera opposite-field double, Donaldson opposite-field ground rule double, Encarnacion hard bouncer to centre, Saunders strikeout (who let him play?), Martin line single to centre, Pillar double to left, Travis slash double down right-field line. You go, Ubaldo. Hello Vance Worley—Manager Buck Showalter thanking his lucky stars he had saved somebody for just such an occasion as this. Goins caught looking, Barney fans. The last two must have been sulking at missing their chance to hack at Jimenez. All in all, not a bad inning for the Orioles. Sure, they gave up five runs and six hits, but, hey, they struck out the side!

We didn’t much care that Sanchez came out in the second, got the first two hitters, and then gave up three straight hits and a run. He’d been sitting on the bench for a long time while the Jays hit in the first, and deserved to have cooled off a bit. Besides, we got that one right back in the second, on perhaps the funniest baserunning spectacle of the year. With two outs, Edwin Encarnacion, continuing an amazing streak of hot hitting in the series that started with his walk-off homer Friday night, hit a double to left. Then, in a move he’s probably been dreaming about all year, given the extreme shift opposing teams have been putting on for the left-handed Michael Saunders, he decided to take off for third with the pitch and see if he could beat erstwhile third baseman Ryan Flaherty, positioned almost behind second, to the bag. He didn’t, quite, mostly thanks to a belly-plant slide started too early, but it didn’t matter because catcher Matt Wieters, shocked out of his gourd, couldn’t hit the moving target posed by Flaherty racing for the bag. The ball glanced off his reaching glove for a Wieters error, and trickled into short left. Encarnacion, finally having secured the stolen base, looked around, saw the ball in no man’s land, got up, and headed for the plate. He would have been dead to rights, too, if left fielder Hyun Soo Kim had managed to handle the ball cleanly. However, after he picked the ball up, Kim decided he didn’t like how it felt in his hand, and dropped it to the turf to see if it would feel better the second time he picked it up. By then it was too late even to attempt a throw. So Encarnacion scored on a stolen base and a throwing error, but I think there should have been an error on Kim as well, because he had a definite shot at Encarnacion at the plate.

When Edwin finally took his seat on the bench, his sweet round face lit up in a happy smile, his teammates fanned him with towels to cool him off after his strenuous labours.

Sanchez settled nicely in the third, retiring the side in order, though his pitch count through three was a bit disturbing at 61. No matter, though, when Kevin Pillar led off the home half of the third with a booming third-deck shot to left that extended the Jays’ lead to 7-1. Time to break out the peanut butter and jam, folks, this one was toast. For a while.

The Orioles crept a little closer in the fourth, when, once again with two outs, Sanchez wavered and the designated hitter Pedro Alvarez hit a solo shot to centre, but still, it was 7-2 going to the fifth. But then the O’s climbed all over Sanchez, and they didn’t wait until two were out to do it, either. Adam Jones led off with a homer, then Machado doubled to right after Kim struck out, bringing Chris Davis to the plate, who hits in the TV Dome like its the batting cage in his garage, and he took one out to centre. Now it was 7-5, and still only one out.

After Mark Trumbo, the league home run leader who had a terrible series in Toronto, grounded out to short for the second out, Wieters hit one out the opposite way, to left, and the lead was down to one. Despite the rally, and despite the fact that Sanchez allowed two more baserunners before finishing off the inning, Manager John Gibbons just let him carry on. Perhaps it was for the best, as the damage was already done, Sanchez still appeared to have good stuff, he wasn’t going to go another inning, and as it turned out this would enable Gibbie to bring in Jesse Chavez with a clean slate to start the sixth.

But first there was the bottom of the fifth to get through, and this was notable for bringing the fine stint of Vance Worley to an end after four and a third innings that he ate for the team. His line was pretty impressive: 2 runs, 1 unearned, 4 hits, 1 walk, 5 strikeouts, and just 63 pitches. After Worley got the first two outs, Showalter decided to bring in the lefty Brian Duensing to pitch to the left-handed Ryan Goins. This looked like a pretty sharp move on Showalter’s part, as Gibbie had to let Goins hit, or lose his DH, since Josh Donaldson was the only infielder not already in the game. Not wanting to do that, and also not wanting to use Jose Bautista as a pinch-hitter yet, if ever, today, he let Goins hit, and the latter confounded Showalter by pounding one over Jones’ head in centre for another Jays’ double. The lefty thing did work out in the end, though, because Duensing issued a free pass to right-handed Darwin Barney, and pitched to the lefty Carrera, who grounded out to second to end the inning.

Jesse Chavez showed his appreciation for the fresh inning to work by striking out the side, which must have given new life to the Jays. Facing the hard-throwing and very effective Mychal Givens in their half of the sixth, Donaldson and Saunders patiently waited out bases on balls, Encarnacion grounding into a fielder’s choice to erase Donaldson in between, bringing today’s cleanup hitter, Russell Martin, to the plate. Martin, hints of whose revival at the plate are getting harder to ignore, took Givens out straightaway to centre to restore some breathing room for his mates, the score now 10-6 Jays.

My favourite switch-pitcher, Pat Venditte, then made his first appearance since his most recent recall from Buffalo. He breezed through the top of the seventh on nine pitches, striking out Wieters to end the inning after yet another application of the “Venditte rule”. Briefly put, the Venditte rule says that any switch pitcher (they’re all over the place these days, you know) must choose his pitching hand first, and allow a switch-hitter to pick his side of the plate last. Venditte chose left, Wieters chose right, and Venditte won the chess game by fanning Wieters to end the inning.

In the bottom of the inning Showalter used two more arms to skate around another Jays’ threat, T.J. McFarland getting two outs before yielding a single to Carrera, who bounced the ball into left through the huge hole created by the Orioles’ shift to the right. This guy does fun things, and I love to watch him. And he had one more trick up his sleeve for the bottom of the ninth. Then Brad Brach came in and walked Donaldson before Manny Machado saved his skin and further damage when he made a great stop on a hard smash by Encarnacion, and threw him out to end the inning.

So, six outs to go, a four-run lead, good enough on most days, but remember, these are the Orioles, who just don’t quit hacking away. Looking really sharp, Venditte fanned Alvarez and Jonathan Schoop, for five quick outs in a row. Then the number nine hitter, Ryan Flaherty, bounced one slowly to Venditte’s left, which he just missed snagging, and was too slow for Travis to make the play. So close to finishing clean, Venditte quickly took Adam Jones to 0-2, before Jones pounded one over the fence in centre, reducing the lead to 10-8. Venditte retired Kim on a grounder, but the noose was a little tighter around the Jays’ neck.

The Jays missed another glorious chance to add insurance when they wasted Saunders’ leadoff ground rule double to right in the bottom of the eighth. Brach, who remained in the game, was up to the challenge, striking out Martin, getting a fly ball out from Kevin Pillar, and fanning Travis to strand Saunders, who, it should be noted, had been a triple short of hitting for the cycle on Saturday, and picked up three more hits in four at-bats today. Who knew?

Jason Grilli appeared out of the bullpen for the save opportunity for the Jays. We could see it was coming, because only he, and not Roberto Osuna, had warmed up, but we only learned from Gibbie after the game that Osuna was feeling “a little sore”, and not available today. Well, I was fine with Grilli coming in, because he’d had only good outings since arriving, and still retained the ability to get the big strikeout when needed. And he did get the save, in the end. But, the Orioles, right?

Mind you, Grilli didn’t help himself with his inability to locate. After Machado led off with a bloop single to left, he walked Davis, fanned Trumbo, and walked Wieters to load them up with one out. This brought the free-swinging Alvarez to the plate, and Pat Tabler made sure to point out how many career grand slams Alvarez has. Frankly, I don’t recall the number—I didn’t want to know. The dread rose in my chest, and I’m sure I wasn’t alone, as Grilli went two balls and no strikes, before giving Alvarez something he could pull, which he did, right to the wall in right, where Zeke Carrera (remember I said he had one more trick to pull?) backed, backed, reached the wall, timed his jump, and made the catch. Machado scored on the sacrifice, Davis advanced to third, and that brought Jonathan Schoop to the plate, now with two outs. Cue the big strikeout: four-seamer, slider, four-seamer, three swings and misses, and the gritty Grilli was into his victory dance. That fella sure does get excited! Me, I just wanted to faint after all that.

So, the Orioles pounded the hell out of the ball, but they only got six runs off four home runs, the Jays’ pitching was just that little bit more effective (well a lot more effective in the case of Jimenez), the Orioles made an error that actually mattered, and the Jays had an extra gem or two in the field on their opponents. Add it all up, and it comes out the Jays, in a squeaker. If baseball were poker, you could say that 7 doubles beats 4 homers.

You will recall that in yesterday’s report I suggested that the Orioles’ rotation would eventually cause them to fall behind Toronto and Boston in the division. In this series, the Orioles’ starters logged 17.1 innings, and the Jays’ starters 23.1. The disparity would have been even greater if one or more of Stroman, Sanchez, or Estrada had gone the one inning deeper that has been characteristic of their starts so far this season. In fact, Sanchez is as likely to go eight as he is to go only five. The result, of course, is more recourse to the bullpen, more wear and tear on the relief corps, and the game-to-game domino effect of overusing the bullpen. In fact, the Jays should be okay against Philadelphia tonight bullpen-wise, while Baltimore is very fortunate that they have a night off to regroup before going into that snakepit, Fenway Park. Good luck there, fellers! I just hope neither team sweeps.

With 64 games in the book as of today’s stirring 11-6 Blue Jays’ victory over the Baltimore Orioles, there are still 98 games left on the schedule for the home town heroes. Borrowing a term from the TV news desk people, I believe we have enough results in now to make a projection about the outcome of the American League East divisional race in 2016, which looks once again to be the tightest division top to bottom in major league baseball.

I believe that the race this year will play out between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Boston Red Sox. Leaving aside the Tamp Bay Rays, who don’t look to be more than a good 500-level team, I don’t think that the recent surge by the Yankees is sustainable, partly because their starting rotation is suspect, but mainly because their aging lineup is not going to produce enough runs over the long haul to bring their awesome triple closer bullpen into effect. Boston will hang in to the end, conversely, on the obvious strength of their batting order coupled with good-enough pitching to stay in the hunt. The emergence of Stephen Wright, the continued effectiveness of Rick Porcello, and the expected consistency of David Price over the whole season, despite his less-than-stellar start, should keep the Sox in most games long enough for their bashers to give them the chance to win. And they have a significant trump card in Craig Kimbrell as their closer.

And what of Baltimore, the team that has held first place in the division for most of the season so far, and now sits in a dead heat with Boston at the top of the table? Any team that can run Adam Jones, Hyun Soo Kim or Joey Rickard, Manny Machado, Chris Davis, Mark Trumbo, and Jonathan Schoop out every day as their one through six has a lot going for it. But I think that so far their starting pitching has only just barely held them together, and that it’s not strong enough to keep them in the race the whole way without making a major acquisition from somewhere. Chris Tillman, whom we luckily miss in the current series, has been great, enjoying the best season of his career so far. Kevin Gausman’s deceptive won-loss record belies how well he has pitched, as we saw Friday night. Major off-season acquisition Yovani Gallardo has spent much of the spring on the disabled list. Ubaldo Jimenez, unlike Tillman, is suffering through his worst season at this point, though, knock wood, he’s always effective against the Jays, so we’ll see about tomorrow’s Jimenez-Aaron Sanchez matchup. And who else do they have to run out there regularly? We’ve seen a couple of journeymen named Tim Wilson and Mike Wright, who’d better get a whole lot better if the Orioles are to hang in there. So for the Orioles it’s Tillman, Gausman, and pray for rain, which doesn’t rhyme but you get the point.

And why do I put the Jays up there with Boston? Especially with the prolonged hitting woes they’ve experienced this year in comparison with last year? Because the recent record would suggest that even though they’re not bashing the cover off the ball like last year, they will produce enough runs to support what is pretty clearly the best rotation among the four contending teams. Even if you relegate Marcus Stroman to the status of number five starter based on his recent struggles, including a disappointing outing on Thursday night, his relative lack of success needs to be seen in context. For example, on Thursday when he went out in the sixth, he had given up four runs on eight hits, and left with a 5-4 lead. Above him you have Marco Estrada at the top of the rotation closely followed by Aaron Sanchez, with Jay Happ and R.A. Dickey providing consistent quality starts in most of their assignments. No arm problems evident, the second lowest ERA in the American League, the second most innings accumulated by a rotation, the third lowest opposing team batting average, all of these things mean something, and to me they mean that the Jays will be in it to the end, and as the season winds down the only question to be answered will be whether the Jays’ starters as a group will be able to keep the Boston lineup in check. I say yes.

Jay Happ’s outing today is a case in point. Though he’s slipped a bit recently in general estimation behind Estrada and Sanchez, he certainly pitched well enough to win today. Besides giving up the go-ahead homer to Manny Machado in the sixth inning, he had only one bad inning, the fourth, when the Orioles hit some ropes off him and erased an early Jays’ lead. After the Jays piled on reliever T.J. McFarland in the bottom of the sixth to counter Machado’s home run and take the lead for good, Happ returned for the seventh and retired the O’s on 8 pitches to keep his foot on their throats. With the help of his lineup breaking loose, Happ managed to turn a “meh!” into a W, ate up seven full innings, and left with his record at 7-3 and an ERA of 3.70, still good enough for twenty-first place in the American League. Just ahead, I might add of Rick Porcello and Justin Verlander. Not bad for a guy holding down a three/four slot in the rotation.

The game was tied through five today. The Orioles for their part erased a three-run Toronto lead in Happ’s rocky fourth inning, when Joey Rickard, the upstart rule five kid who’s been wearing the Jays out all season, Machado and Chris Davis went homer, double, homer to lead off the inning. They weren’t done at that, as Jonathan Schoop followed with a one-out double, but Happ managed to strand him at third, then breezed through the fifth with the help of a double-play from the bat of that same Rickard, which erased Adam Jones’ infield single.

Meanwhile, the Jays had built up the early 3-0 lead on some sound hitting without leaving the yard, but aided and abetted by the inability of Mike Wright to throw strikes. Though he only gave up six hits for the four runs eventually charged to him, he also walked five and hit a batter, ballooning to 103 pitches in five and a third innings before being pulled after a Kevin Pillar leadoff single in the sixth. In the first he gave up a two-out walk to Edwin Encarnacion and then was lucky that Michael Saunders’ deep fly to centre only drove Jones to the wall for the catch. In the second, he seemed to have worked his way out of his own jam by inducing Darwin Barney to hit into a double play after walking Justin Smoak and hitting Pillar. But with Smoak on third Ryan Goins hit one to the deepest part of the park that Jones tracked but could not squeeze. It went for a triple, scoring Smoak, and the Jays were on top.

Just a word here about Goins: Manager John Gibbons seems to be getting the most out of his three-headed keystone combo with Troy Tulowitzki still out of commission. Goins, Devon Travis, and Barney have all contributed when they’ve been in the lineup. Goins has had the least playing time, but his impact was significant just in the first two innings. Besides driving in the first run, he provided the pivot for a beautiful double play started by Barney in the first that got Happ off the field in short order. Barney went hard to his right to flag a shot from Machado on the backhand, made the awkward throw to the outfield side of the bag, where Goins caught it as he crossed the bag toward right field and fired a strike to first. Karen Kain couldn’t have done it any better.

In the third a Wright leadoff walk to Zeke Carrera opened the door for two more runs for the Jays. Josh Donaldson followed with a single to centre, passing the baton to Encarnacion, who doubled into the corner in left to score Carrera, with Donaldson stopping at third. Michael Saunders then delivered Donaldson with a sacrifice fly.

Happ carried the 3-3 tie into the sixth, but it didn’t last long, as Machado hit his dinger to left leading off to give the Orioles a lead that was thankfully short-lived. Chris Davis, obviously not concerning himself with conventional wisdom about hitting lefties, followed with a double to centre, but Happ escaped the inning without further damage.

In the bottom of the sixth Manager Buck Showalter called on left-hander T.J. McFarland to pick up Wright after the latter allowed Pillar’s leadoff single. But McFarland not only didn’t pick Wright up, but he shoved him down, stomped on him a few times, and left him spluttering in the mud. Which is exactly what the Jays did to McFarland. Barney moved Pillar to third with a single to right. Travis, hitting for Goins, hit a shot to the wall in left for the sacrifice fly that tied the game, and McFarland then loaded the bases by walking Russell Martin hitting for Josh Thole, and Carrera. Donaldson’s bases-loaded sac fly put the Jays in a lead that they never relinquished. Are you counting? Did you notice that this was their third sac fly of the game, with one more to come? Are we impressed?

All of which set the stage for a mammoth homer to left by Encarnacion that put the game out of reach for the Orioles, even though they did pick up a couple of runs in the eighth to make it a little closer. So Happ was able to finish his seventh inning in the comfort of an 8-4 lead. Before the Orioles picked up two more in the eighth off an uncharacteristically wild Joe Biagini, who did not retire any of the four batters he faced, though, the Jays had added a ninth run in the seventh. They utilized another combo of leadoff base hits by Pillar and Barney, who seem to specialize in this sort of thing, with a deep fly by Travis that moved Pillar to third, and the fourth sac fly by Martin.

After Gavin Floyd bailed Biagini out with minimal damage, the Jays came to the bottom of the eighth leading 9-6, which never really looks good enough when you’re talking the Orioles here. Showalter, who was running really short in the bullpen and trying to save somebody, anybody, for Sunday, went to the lefty Brian Duensing to match up with Saunders. Unfortunately, because there was no one else home for the Orioles, Duensing had to navigate through Donaldson and Encarnacion to get to Saunders. He managed Donaldson on a fly out to centre, but couldn’t get past Encarnacion, who hit his second homer of the game, this time a liner to right. Then Duensing threw a gopher ball to the lefty he was supposed to get, and Saunders added the eleventh run. Don’t these guys know that Saunders has more homers off lefties than righties?

Senior citizen Jason Grilli, obviously relishing the chance to pitch in meaningful games before big crowds, friskily struck out the side around a single by Adam Jones, and gleefully fist-pumped his old Pittsburgh teammate Martin after fanning Machado to close out the Jays’ win. This was a win that seemed to revive a lot of the feeling of last year’s pennant run. This could be the start of something big.

When I compared the Orioles’ pitching with the Jays’ at the beginning of this piece, I was only talking about starting pitching. But with three games of this weekend series in the books, it seems that the bullpens are becoming critical to the outcome, and going into game four it’s clear that Manager John Gibbons will have more, and fresher, arms available to him for tomorrow than Showalter. The much-maligned Jays’ pen has eaten more innings more effectively this weekend than we ever might have expected, and it’s starting to show.

As I was saying, it’s not like it’s do-or-die time for the whole season yet, but it sure feels like it. I guess it’s how the schedule has been overloaded so far with games against divisional rivals. Add to that the fact that we have had so many close games already this season, and we all know exactly what has to change to start winning more of those close games, that it all makes for pretty tense times, even though it’s only early June.

(In case you’re not counting, I just looked back over the whole season to date, and of the 63 games the Jays have played, 19 of them have been decided by one run, and the Jays have only won seven.)

So after the Jays lost to the Orioles in their eighteenth one-run game last night, when the O’s broke a 5-5 tie in the top of the ninth for the win, tonight’s game took on special significance for the home side. Fortunately for our prospects tonight, we had Marco Estrada going for us, which has pretty well guaranteed a solid starting turn for the Jays for most of the season. On the other hand, because of the fact that Troy Tulowitzki remains on the disabled list, and Jose Bautista was forced to take a night off to deal with muscle tightness in his thigh, the team’s offence, not very reliable at the best of times, was a bit more undermanned than usual.

Through the first four innings, this combination of positive and negative factors worked very much in favour of the Jays. Estrada had a great start, setting down nine in a row before issuing two walks in the fourth, then fanning American League home-run leader Mark Trumbo for his fifth strikeout in the four innings. Meanwhile, the Jays broke on top with a run in the first, ending the suspense early as to whether they would get any hits at all with runners in scoring position, though they would end up only 1 for 3 in that respect for the inning. Orioles’ starter Kevin Gausman, who has great stuff, contributed to his own difficulties to make the run unearned.

When he’s inserted into the leadoff spot for Bautista, Ezequiel Carrera brings a different dimension to the position. He dropped down a nice bunt toward third that Gausman double-clutched on, giving him an infield single. Then Carrera’s threat to run was enough to unsettle the pitcher, and he threw wildly to first trying to hold him close. The ball careened down the line, and Carrera raced around to third, whence Josh Donaldson promptly delivered him with a single to right. With the Jays obviously looking to shake things up a bit, Donaldson promptly stole second, but died there when Gausman, finding his stuff, impressively fanned Edwin Encarnacion and Michael Saunders to strand Donaldson in scoring position.

Unfortunately the Jays wasted two leadoff baserunners in the second, in a frustrating lapse back into station-to-station baseball and the hitting doldrums. Devon Travis came to the plate following a four-pitch walk to Russell Martin and a single to right by Kevin Pillar. With Travis hitting below .150 since his return to the lineup, it was obviously a bunt situation. But not to Manager John Gibbons. He had Travis swing away, he was out on the infield fly rule, and the momentum of the inning was broken. Darwin Barney then grounded one to the shortstop, which would have scored Martin from third except that the runners hadn’t moved up because Gibbie didn’t bunt. So it became a 6-4-3 double play to end the inning, and the score remained 1-0.

After a clean third for both pitchers, and after Estrada stranded the two walks in the fourth, Michael Saunders led off the Jays’ half of the fourth with a solo home run to double the Jays’ lead. That was all they got in the inning, but there was a little more small ball to be had. After the Saunders dinger, Gausman walked Justin Smoak, and with nobody out Russell Martin laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt, but then Kevin Pillar and Devon Travis flied out to limit the damage. Um, it’s great to see a successful sac bunt, but where was it in the second?

As the Orioles came to bat in the fifth, it was a familiar script so far: a little run support for Estrada, not much, but enough, because once again he’d held the opposing team hitless through four, the two walks in the fourth being the only two baserunners allowed so far. But this time we didn’t have to wait long to see the no-hitter broken up, as the worm began to turn on Estrada. He got Matt Wieters on a groundout to first to open the inning making it 13 out of 15 retired with no hits, but that was it. Jonathan Schoop turned on an 0-2 pitch and drilled it over the fence in left centre to cut the lead in half. The bottom of the order, Nelson Reimold and Ryan Flaherty, singled to left, and Reimold moved to third on a deep fly to centre by Adam Jones. But Estrada fanned Hyun Soo Kim to leave Reimold at third and preserve his slim lead.

He wasn’t so lucky in the sixth, though, when he coughed up the lead, and was only able to wiggle off the hook for the loss when the Jays for once came right back and tied it up. It was quick in the sixth: Chris Davis followed a leadoff walk to Manny Machado with a sudden and decisive first-pitch thunderbolt to right centre, and just like that the Orioles were in the lead. Estrada induced Mark Trumbo to pop out to Russell Martin, who made a great athletic catch in foul territory, but then walked Matt Wieters before again buckling down to fan the last two hitters he would face, Schoop and Reimold. At this point he had only given up four hits, but two of them left the park, and the fact that he had walked four and fanned eight meant that his pitch count, at 106, was too high to continue.

Just as it looked like the game was going to be turned over to the lock-down guys in the Baltimore bullpen, the Jays tied it up in the bottom of the sixth. Russell Martin, who is having more and more effective at-bats every game, singled to score Justin Smoak, who was on second with a double. Though Gausman would hang on for one more out in the seventh, the fact that the game was tied at the end of six meant that the two bullpens would battle it out on a more equal footing.

On this night, the Jays’ pen was fully up to the task. Jesse Chavez pitched the seventh and eighth, issuing only one walk, while getting five ground balls and a popup. Roberto Osuna pitched the ninth, and must have thought he was going to get a save, because he got a weak grounder and two strikeouts on 13 pitches. And Drew Storen pitched his best inning of the year in the tenth, breezing through the top of the Orioles’ order on six pitches.

In the meantime, the Orioles managed to keep the Jays off the board until the tenth, but it was a lot more scrambly on their end, as the Jays continued to miss opportunities to close out the game with runners in scoring position. In the seventh Mychal Givens came in to retire Donaldson and Encarnacion with Darwin Barney at second. In the eighth he got Devon Travis to ground out with Russell Martin on third. Only in the ninth did Brad Brach keep the home team off the bases.

When you add these last four outs with runners in scoring position to one in the first, two in the second, one in the fourth, and one in the sixth, you get nine failures to deliver runners in scoring position. If just one of those nine chances had been converted, the game wouldn’t have ended up in the hands of Storen and Encarnacion in the tenth.

Oh, yeah, Encarnacion. When he led off in the tenth, Brach, who had breezed in the ninth, had only given up one home run all year. But after he went full count on Mr. Parrot leading off the bottom of the tenth, he went to what has become the tried-and-true out pitch for Encarnacion, down and away. But this time Edwin stayed with it and hit it where it was pitched, driving it over the right field fence for the win.

So it was a happy ending for the good guys. Estrada, as always, pitched well enough to win, the bullpen backed him up heroically for four innings, and the offence, as always, didn’t give him the support he needed, until, crucially, they did, to tie the game as he was making his exit. And Edwin Encarnacion yet again provided the margin for victory in a very satisfying 10-inning win. The series, not “crucial”, but pretty important nonetheless, is tied at one, and we give the ball to Jay Happ Saturday afternoon, who will go up against Michael Wright. On paper it would appear that the Jays have the advantage.

I had a bad feeling about tonight’s game against the league-leading Orioles right from the first at bat. After having been cuffed around by seriously hard contact in three of his last four outings, those of us on the Blue Jays Watch have been wondering when the real Marcus Stroman would return to the rotation. Or, worse, some have been wondering if what we’ve seen lately is the real Marcus Stroman, and that bouncy, irrepressible little guy whose stuff just couldn’t be hit has been the impostor all along.

Adam Jones’ leadoff walk in the top of the first was no small hint that the jury is still out on the real Marcus Stroman. Jones bunted at the first pitch, which was down in the zone, and looked overmatched fouling off the second pitch for an 0-2 count. Then Stroman started trying to get Jones to commit on the outside half of the plate, but with such poor location that Jones didn’t bite, and four consecutive balls gave him his base.

Ever since Stroman returned from the disabled list last September, he has been thriving on a steady stream of ground-ball outs. He got one from Hyun Soo Kim, but it was a tricky ball to Justin Smoak’s right, there was no play at second, and Stroman had to hustle to beat Kim to the bag at first and take the throw. No double play, runner in scoring position. We were about to find out which Stroman was pitching tonight. Manny Machado turned on one and doubled into the left-field corner, scoring Jones. Stroman braced up enough to fan Chris Davis for the second out, but Mark Trumbo, who’s been on a power trip lately, in a good way, hit a shot to right, a double all the way. But Stroman lucked out to get out of the inning, because Machado forgot there were two outs and went back to tag, as it looked like Jose Bautista had a chance to catch Trumbo’s drive. Bautista’s throw was turned over by Darwin Barney on a fabulous catch-and-relay play, and the late-for-dinner Machado was out at the plate on a close tag play. The Orioles appealed the call, but the eyes in the sky upheld the out call, and Stroman escaped down only 1-0, but a troubling walk and two hard extra-base hits did not reassure.

In the bottom of the first, the Jays immediately set out to erase the slim lead, and to show that they were ready to produce some runs if they were on offer. If there is a weak link in the Orioles’ lineup it’s been their starting pitching. Tyler Wilson, with a season ERA of just under five, had been mediocre-minus in his last three starts, garnering two losses and a no decision while giving up 13 earned runs, in 15.4 innings. If anything, he was on shakier ground than Stroman right from the start. Jose Bautista led off with a double to left, and moved up on a wild pitch while Wilson was walking Josh Donaldson. Edwin Encarnacion scored Bautista with a deep sacrifice fly to centre on which Donaldson also alertly moved up. Michael Saunders followed with a double to right to score Donaldson, and with two outs after a Justin Smoak strikeout, Russell Martin, swinging on 3-0 pitch, lined one smartly up the middle to score Saunders.

Well okay, then, we got the run back, and two more for the lead, with sharp contact with ducks on the pond, even with two outs. Now for the cliché. It was crucial for Marcus Stroman to come out and show his appreciation for the support with a shutdown inning, and he got it, but the omens weren’t great. With one out, Pedro Alvarez singled to right, and then Jonathan Schoop hit a shot to centre, but right at Kevin Pillar. Ryan Flaherty then grounded out to short to end the inning.

Our boys picked up another run in their half of the second with some more crisp stick work. Devon Travis led off with a double to left, moved up to third on that rarest of rare Blue Jay offspring, the right-side ground-out with a runner on second, by the very competent Darwin Barney, and then scored on Bautista’s second hit, a full-count liner to right crafted to score the run. Good work from one of the big guys we need to see delivering.

With an add-on run in the second for a four-one lead, the good starting pitcher settles in and starts to eat up some innings to make it easier for his bullpen to close out the win. Well, yes, but not tonight, and not Stroman. Three batters and eleven pitches in, and the Orioles had the bases loaded and nobody out. Worse, singles by Jones and Machado were sandwiched around Stroman plunking Kim on the hip with a a 2-2-pitch. Machado’s hit to left was so hard that Jones had been held at third. Chris Davis then hit the ball solidly to right, scoring Jones on the sac fly, with Kim holding at second. Trumbo bounced a single through the left side to load them up again, and Matt Wieters scored Kim on a fielder’s choice. Stroman froze Alvarez for the third out, but the damage was done, on a mix of more sharply-hit balls and good situational hitting by the Orioles, and the Jays’ lead had been cut to one.

A word here about the missing Troy Tulowitzki: conventional wisdom has it that since Tulo has been struggling at the plate, the Jays aren’t losing a lot with Barney, Travis, and Goins sharing time around the keystone. But to my eye, both of the O’s hits to left field might have turned out differently with Tulo in the field. Don’t get me wrong, here. Darwin Barney can’t be faulted on either of them, but maybe the taller Tuller reaches the Jones liner that Barney just missed. And maybe Tulo makes one of his patented circle-to-the-right-pick-it-and-throw-off-balance plays to get Wieters. Again, not Barney’s fault, because Tulo is the only shortstop in the game today who makes that play routinely, but still, Tulo’s on the DL, Barney’s playing short. Jus’ sayin’.

Wilson had a better third, stranding a two-out walk. The fourth innings was good for the Jays on both ends. For just a few minutes Stroman was the Stroman of old, inducing three ground balls, two right back to him, on just eight pitches. Then in the bottom of the inning we came through with yet another two-out uprising, as Josh Donaldson tripled home Bautista, who had walked. After four, Stroman had a two-run lead to work with, but he didn’t get to enjoy the air at that heady altitude for long.

The fifth was quiet again for both sides. Stroman worked around a bloop single to left by Chris Davis, abandoning him at second after he had let him move up on a wild pitch, and the Jays went out in order against Wilson, who had recovered nicely from his rocky start. The only thing notable about the inning was that Stroman had taken 22 pitches to deal with his four hitters, leaving his count for the game at a rather high 86. He would be on a short leash in the sixth, and the bullpen would have to respond as well as it did yesterday afternoon in Detroit.

Yes, he was on a short lease, and no, the bullpen didn’t save the day. After getting Matt Wieters to ground out to third to lead off the sixth, Stroman looked on in dismay as the left-handed-hitting Pedro Alvarez reached across and stroked an outside pitch over the fence in left centre, to cut the lead back to one. That was it for Stroman, after a less-than-masterful five and a third innings. Joe Biagini came in to pick him up, and emerged from the inning with the fragile lead intact, despite giving up a double and a walk in the interim. In the bottom of the inning, Wilson was pulled with Kevin Pillar on first after a leadoff bunt single and two outs. Manager Buck Showalter called on Dylan Bundy, and the game was in the hands of both bullpens.

Briefly put, the Orioles’ bullpen held, and the Jays didn’t. Bundy stayed on right through the eighth, wobbling a bit after coming on in the sixth, pitching a clean seventh, and wobbling a bit again in the eighth, but pitching his way out of it. He ended up getting the win for the Orioles, and was well deserving of it. On the other hand, the Jays’s relievers failed to keep the lid on. Biagini was pulled with one out in the seventh to have Aaron Loup pitch against the left-handed Chris Davis, who belted one out the wrong way to left to tie the game. Exit Loup, one more lefty-lefty matchup having failed, and enter Gavin Floyd, who mopped up the seventh with no further damage.

Manager John Gibbons then turned the ball over for the eighth to Jason Grilli, who impressed with two strikeouts, though he also issued a walk. After Bundy managed to keep the tie in play through the eighth, Gibbie brought in Roberto Osuna to hold the fort until the Jays could win it in the bottom of the ninth. Of course, the Osuna who is not fired up so much when the save isn’t on the line was the one who arrived from the bullpen, and a leadoff double to Kim pretty well sealed the deal for the Orioles, who do so well at getting that guy in from second. We should be so skilled. Double, advance on a ground ball, score on a sacrifice fly. Sounds so simple, doesn’t it?

Zach Britton only took eight pitches to secure the save in the bottom of the ninth, the wind having gone out of the Jays’ sails long since.

Judging from last year’s exhilarating charge in August and September, it’s far from too late for the Jays to begin making a move on Baltimore and Boston, but it sure would be good to cut the lead as much as possible in these upcoming games with Baltimore. Let’s start with three out of four here this weekend. And who better to start that move than Marco Estrada?

As for Marcus Stroman, there’s no real reason for Gibbie to stop running him out there every fifth day. The way he’s going now, he’s probably significantly better than most other teams’ bottom-end rotation guys, but we expect, we need, so much more from him! Surely there’s someone in the organization who knows how to guide him back to the summit. Let’s get working on it, guys!

One time, when we picked up my then-three-year-old grand-daughter to take her for a visit, she had it fixed in her head for some reason that was only clear to her that she had an urgent need for her own box of bandages. She announced this as soon as she got in the car, and when we kind of chuckled at the strange request, she became very indignant. No matter what we said, trying not to laugh at her, she kept saying in a most distressed tone, “But, but, I really, really, really, got to get some bandages!”

As I anticipated this afternoon’s concluding game of the series in Detroit, I found her insistent refrain running through my mind, with a few slight alterations, “But, but, we really, really, really got to win this ballgame!” After winning 12 of 16 before arriving in Detroit, and taking five series in a row, the consecutive losses to the Tigers, especially considering the manner in which they played out, had been a complete shock. First the 11-zip blowout that undressed Jay Happ in public, right out there on the mound, and then the careless waste of Aaron Sanchez’ gem in a loss that will still hurt long after the season ends. If possible, the last 48 hours have been the hardest stretch that true Blue fans have had to endure in this entire, entirely strange, season.

In times like this it’s good to be able to turn to a veteran, someone totally unflappable, to pull the fellas together and say, “We can do this.” And who on this team is more of a veteran, and more unflappable, than old Mr. Knucksie, R.A. Dickey. (I like that word, “unflappable”. It’s one of that strange class of words that exist only in the negation, and not in the declaration. What would “flappable” even mean?) He was indeed a reassuring sight out there warming up in the bullpen before the game, especially in respect of the fact that he has pitched exceptionally well in his last two outings, both against the slugging, slashing Red Sox, when he completed 12 innings, giving up only five hits and three earned runs. But it wouldn’t be easy. The Tigers have been on a roll, they had to be up after the wins the last two nights, and they had the intimidating Jordan Zimmerman going for them. Since arriving in Detroit this year from the Nationals, his won-loss record and his ERA, even after giving up seven earned runs in only four and two thirds innings and taking the loss today, stands at 8-3 and 3.30.

Of course pitching is only one side of the equation, isn’t it—a team can waste some awfully well-pitched ball games if they can’t put the ball in play at least a few times per game with runners in scoring position. So not only would Dickey have to pitch more effectively than Zimmerman, he would have to receive at least a modicum of run support to pull out this much-needed win.

Things looked pretty good for him even before he took the mound. With two outs and Josh Donaldson on first base with a single, Justin Smoak finally broke the Jays’ futility streak by hitting a home run to right off Zimmerman. Technically, of course, Smoak’s blast still didn’t break his team’s 0 for Detroit string of no hits with runners in scoring position, since Donaldson was on first when Smoak came to bat, and not in scoring positon. They would finally break the streak in the third, and we’ll get to that in a minute. In the meantime, we had the lead, and a certain sense of relief.

There’s always a bit of trepidation about holding a small lead over a good-hitting team when Dickey is pitching, though. The biggest chink in the armour of baseball’s best knuckleball pitcher is his tendency to give up home runs. It’s natural that if he is having trouble locating his butterflies early, he will have to lay one in there from time to time because he really needs a strike. There is an obvious risk to that, often early in the game, before he has found the grip and rhythm he needs for his out pitch to be effective. And so it was today. With Mike Aviles on first with a single, Dickey grooved one to cleanup hitter Nick Castellanos, and just like that the game was tied. Thus marked the beginning of a particularly scuffly, but also particularly gritty, performance by Dickey, which set the pattern for the Jays’ pitching staff to keep the Tigers off the board for the rest of the night.

In his second inning of work, Dickey had to rely on his own athleticism to stifle a potential rally. With one out, Andrew Romine singled to right, and hustled around to third on a single to centre by Jose Iglesias, a perfectly-executed hit-and-run. But Iglesias got careless, forgetting that Dickey is merciless with careless runners at first, and got himself picked off. Dickey then walked Ian Kinsler, perhaps wisely, on a three and two pitch, and then got Aviles to fly out to centre, to dodge the bullet.

Dickey cruised through the third and fourth, erasing a Castellanos single in the third with a double-play ball, and enticing three easy fly ball outs in the fourth. He held the Orioles from further damage in the fifth despite allowing two-out singles to Aviles and Miguel Cabrera, getting out of the inning when Castellanos, who always seemed to be at the plate, grounded out to Donaldson at third.

But Dickey’s long innings in the second and the fifth elevated his pitch count, and when he got himself into more trouble with one out in the sixth, he departed, leaving a leadoff J.D. Martinez single at third with one out, as Martinez had advanced to second on a wild pitch, and to third on a move-em-up right-side ground ball by Justin Upton for the first out. Manager John Gibbons called on Jesse Chavez to close the door, and in one of the more stirring moments for the bullpen this season, Chavez struck out two to strand Martinez.

Chavez came back out for the seventh, fanned his third straight, issued a one-out walk, and induced a double play to complete a very good one and two thirds innings of relief pitching. Drew Storen pitched over a walk and a hit batsman to blank the Orioles in the eighth, and Aaron Loup got two outs and Gavin Floyd one in a three-up, three-down ninth.

So the pitching side worked out great today. Dickey skated through crowds of baserunners to hold the Tigers to two runs, and the parade of relievers that followed all effectively stifled the Tigers for the first time in the series.

By the time Dickey departed in the sixth, he was the proud possessor of a 7-2 Blue Jays’ lead, thanks to two more outbursts featuring uncharacteristic run production that eventually finished Zimmeerman off after four and two thirds innings of work. In the third, Zimmerman made the mistake of walking number nine hitter Josh Thole to lead off the inning. Jose Bautista promptly moved him to third with a double, and both runners rode home on Josh Donaldson’s homer to left centre, which was the blow that actually broke the Jays’ streak of abandoning runners in scoring position. They had a chance for more when Smoak followed Donaldson with a double and moved to third on a Kevin Pillar single, but Zimmerman escaped further damage, benefitting from a weird double play. Ezequiel Carrera hit a grounder to first, and Miguel Cabrera went to second to start the double play, getting the force on Pillar. But Smoak somehow committed to trying to score as the play was being made at second, and was thrown out by Jose Iglesias.

Then in the fifth Kevin Pillar got yet another hit with a runner in scoring position, a miracle of riches, when his triple scored Josh Donaldson, who had tripled, and Edwin Encarnacion, who had walked. This extended the Jays’, and Dickey’s, lead to five, concluded the scoring for both sides, ended Zimmerman’s outing, and turned the game over to the Jays’ bullpen, the results of which risky move I have already described above.

Timely hitting by Donaldson, who ended up a double short of the cycle, hopes for which died in the on-deck circle in the ninth, and Pillar, combined with a solid pitching performance, gave the Jays the boost they needed to bring back one win out of three from Detroit to the friendly surroundings of the TV Dome. Maybe this win will be a start toward shortening the division lead the Orioles have been enjoying for most of the season. They face the Orange Birds in a four-game series at home starting tomorrow evening, Marcus Stroman against Tyler Wilson.

Two days ago, after Roberto Osuna’s shaky rescue of Marco Estrada against the Red Sox, I suggested that God must wear a Blue Jays’ hat. Last night, I questioned that assumption, noting that a lovely rainbow spread over the Detroit skyline just as the Tigers were putting the finishing touches to laying a beating on the Jays. Following tonight’s heartbreaking extra-inning loss to Detroit, the definitive result is in: not only does God not favour the Jays, but he/she (it? they?) has/have (sorry for all the inclusivity here, but needs must) definitely laid a hex on the Blue Jays’ hitters.

Aaron Sanchez pitched his heart out tonight. If the witness of your own eyes isn’t proof to this, just look at the numbers: 8 innings plus two batters. 2 runs, one allowed by Osuna after his departure, 3 hits, 1 walk, 12 strikeouts, 98 pitches, one fly ball out (and kudos to Michaels Saunders for his shoetop grab of a blooper off the bat of Andrew Romine), and utter dominance of the middle of the Tigers’ order. Nine of his twelve strikeouts were distributed among the two to seven hitters of their lineup, including two punchouts and a freeze of American League batting leader Victor Martinez, the first time he has struck out three times this year.

Kevin Pillar did his best to support Sanchez. Besides returning to his impeccable mastery of the vast reaches of centre field in Bank Park, after last night’s problems, he broke up Matt Boyd’s no-hit bid with a first-pitch home run to left to lead off the fifth inning and give the Jays the lead. Then in the seventh he led off with a two-strike single that bounced through the left side of the infield, took third on a Darwin Barney flare to right that he read perfectly, and scored the second run as Jose Bautista grounded into a fielder’s choice.

So, Sanchez threw a gem and Pillar provided the runs. Should have been a win, right? Well, no. Before we consider the gloomy implications of why we didn’t seal the deal for Sanchez, let’s briefly review the details of how it happened. Hope you have a strong stomach, because it’s not pretty.

Sanchez took the mound for the bottom of the ninth sitting on the two-run lead, working on a one-hit, one-walk, twelve-strikeout masterpiece, the only performance by a Jays’ starter this year to compare with the best of Marco Estrada, as in last Sunday against Boston. Now, sending him out there was a no-brainer for Manager John Gibbons, as he had only thrown 92 pitches, and the complete-game shutout would have been an enormous boost to Sanchez’ developing career, and an affirmation of the excellent work done all year by our rotation. The thought lingers that Roberto Osuna is so much better when he starts an inning, but it doesn’t linger long.

Then Jose Iglesias led off with a single to right, for the second hit off Sanchez. (The first had been a leadoff double by Justin Upton in the third that Sanchez had easily stranded.) Now the equation is a little different for Gibbons, or so it seems to me. Sanchez’ first goal for the ninth, finishing the one-hitter, was gone. Giving up his second hit of the game to a banjo hitter like Iglesias must have been really upsetting to Sanchez, who now had to face the veteran Ian Kinsler. What should the next goal have been, Sanchez getting his complete game, or the Jays securing the win, especially after last night’s blowout? Consider also Osuna’s position. Is it better for him to come in with a two-run lead and a runner on first, or a one-run lead and a runner on second? We’ll never know how it might have turned out on this night, but we do know how it did turn out: Gibbie left him in, and Kinsler smoked a ball to right centre for the double that scored Iglesias, and Sanchez was now well and truly done, having thrown only six pitches in his aborted ninth inning.

Enter Osuna, and we have to keep reminding ourselves here that as cool and skilled as he is, he’s still only twenty-one, and faced a tough situation, nobody out and the tying run on second. The hill ahead of Osuna got markedly steeper when the first batter he faced, Andrew Romine, pushed an effective sacrifice bunt up the third base line to move Kinsler over with one out and the Tigers’ intimidating sequence of Melky Cabrera, the Martinez boys, Nick Castellanos, and Upton coming up. Cabrera cut the suspense short with a double to right to score Kinsler and tie the game. Victor Martinez was walked intentionally to set up the double play, J.D. Martinez fanned, and Castellanos sent the game to the tenth by grounding into a fielder’s choice.

The Jays, as so often this year, went down meekly on just 13 pitches from Justin Wilson in the top of the tenth. This brought on Joe Biagini, and the end was as swift as it was cruel for the young right-hander. In eleven pitches in all, Upton singled to centre, Jarrod Saltalamacchia walked on a great three-two pitch from Biagini that home plate umpire David Rackley just plain missed, Iglesias laid down a sacrifice attempt toward third that Biagini fielded smartly and fired to third, Upton beating the throw, and the self-same Ian Kinsler walked it off with a single to left on an 0-1 pitch, saddling Biagini with the loss without his recording an out. This was no doubt the nadir of Biagini’s so-far successful year with the Jays.

If the how of the Jays’ loss tonight is sad, the why is even sadder, and far more depressing to boot. Sanchez’ fine performance, Pillar’s timely hitting, and solid defence all went for nought, thanks to the anemic performance of the Jays at the plate. 11 runners left on base, 0 for 9 with runners in scoring position, only five hits but unable to take advantage of 9 walks issued by the Detroit pitchers. There is no way that they ever should have been in the position of losing the game for Sanchez in extra innings. There is no point in looking at the relievers, no point in questioning Gibbie about taking Sanchez out at the right time. This game should have been a laugher, and the hitters should be embarrassed that it ended up in the loss column.

Let’s just take a look at the chances missed by the Jays. In the first inning Justin Smoak was caught looking to strand two walks. Admittedly, the call on the 2-2 pitch was atrocious. In the third, fourth, and fifth innings they failed to take advantage of walks, as Tigers starter Matt Boyd walked five in five and a third innings. After Pillar’s leadoff homer in the fifth, Boyd walked Jose Bautista with one out, Josh Donaldson moved him up on a right side ground out, and Edwin Encarnacion fanned to strand Bautista at second.

Things started to get messier in the sixth, as a promising inning fizzled because of sketchy baserunning. Russell Martin led off with a sharp single to left, and with one out Michael Saunders singled to left-centre. Martin read the hit perfectly and made it to third with the play right in front of him. That ended Boyd’s night, and the Tigers brought in the right-handed Shane Greene to face Devon Travis. With Travis at the plate, Saunders broke for second and catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia pump-faked to second. Martin, who should have known better, broke from third and was easy pickings, caught stealing, catcher to third. With two outs and Saunders in scoring position, Travis struck out to end the inning.

In the seventh, after Pillar scored from third on Bautista’s fielder’s choice to make it 2-0, Greene walked Donaldson, which put runners on first and second where they had good vantage points to watch Edwin Encarnacion and Martin strike out. In the eighth they wasted a one-out walk to Saunders when Travis hit into a double play.

The top of the ninth was the height, or rather the depth, of Jays’ futility. Bobby Parnell, who had come in to get the Travis double play in the eighth, presented them with a golden opportunity to pad Sanchez’ lead before he would come out to try to close out the shutout. Maddeningly, they failed again. He walked Kevin Pillar leading off. With Pillar running on the pitch, Darwin Barney hit a comebacker to the pitcher. Parnell, not realizing that Pillar had broken for second, whirled to throw to second for the force, saw it was too late to get Pillar, tried to squeeze the ball, and spiked it into the ground. Barney was safe at first on the fielder’s choice with no out recorded. Continuing his largesse, Parnell bounced one past the catcher for a wild pitch, and the runners moved up, second and third, nobody out, and the top of the order coming up.

In a sad but rather familiar denouement, Bautista fanned, they walked Donaldson intentionally to set up the double play, but didn’t need it as Encarnacion fanned again, and Martin ended the inning with a foul fly to right. So the lead remained 2-0 heading to the bottom of the ninth, and you know the rest of the story.

Now I will grant you that accumulating baserunners by walks is not a really impressive way to show your offensive prowess, but the essence of a championship team is to be able to take advantage of the opportunities afforded them by their opponents. Tonight, the Jays scored 100% at failing to take advantage of opportunities. Given that this same team lost the American League Championship Series last fall to a team that has a genius for cashing in on opportunities, this does not look good for the home side.

Having played a winning hand into a losing one, our boys have consigned themselves to their first series loss after five straight series wins. Now it’s all up to R.A. Dickey to avoid the sweep tomorrow afternoon. His mound opponent will be Jordan Zimmerman. It’s not an easy prospect for a face-saving win in the Motor City.

The biggest issue to be examined about tonight’s dreadful shellacking of the Blue Jays by the Tigers won’t really be resolved until tomorrow night’s second game of the series at Bank Park in Detroit. That, obviously, is the question of how they will rebound after what happened tonight. The biggest measure of any team or athlete in any sport is how they respond to adversity. It’s relatively easy to break on top, stay on top, and coast home already cooling out, but most games or competitions don’t offer that kind of luxury to the aspiring champion. Even the Golden State Warriors had to scramble from behind to eliminate Oklahoma City and reach the threshold of their second straight NBA championship this spring.

Let’s delay the sorry story of what went on in the game tonight to consider for a while the venue, and the city. As readers will know if they have glanced at my bio, I am a native Detroiter who cut my baseball teeth on the dreadful bottom-dwelling Tiger teams of the nineteen fifties. My earliest memories of the Tigers start with listening to the sonorous voice of Van Patrick doing play-by-play on the radio. And for those of you who aren’t aware of it, yes, there was a well-known radio voice doing the Tigers before Ernie Harwell arrived on the scene.

When I was old enough, a special treat of the summer, two or three times each year, was to go to the ball game with my father. My father took us to games not so much as a father/kids bonding experience, a concept foreign to us back then, but as an excuse to go himself. I was the last of a large family, and probably got to see more games with him, if only because by the time I was old enough to go the older kids were mostly out of the house, and it was cheaper to take just me than a whole horde of kids ten years earlier. So, we went more often.

Visits to Briggs Stadium (more on the name in a minute) were marked by three special experiences. The first was stepping into the opening for your section and seeing the brilliant green field laid out below. The second was the tangy smell of cigar-cum-peanuts-cum-hot dogs with mustard that existed only there, and was reinforced by the smell of my father’s fresh cigar, a special treat he reserved just for ball games. Finally, there was the awe that I felt gazing out into right field, and thinking, “That’s Al Kaline standing there. It really is.”

Now, Briggs Stadium. You may have noticed that when I remember to do it, I refuse to use the corporately-sponsored names of today’s stadia. Thus the TV Dome in Toronto, and as above the Bank Dome in Detroit. (Must go back to stories from Tampa and change stadium name to Juice Field, and familiar references from “the Trop” to “the Juice”.) The now sadly departed Tiger Stadium was Briggs Stadium from 1935 until 1961 when new owner John Fetzer renamed it after the team. Briggs Stadium took its name from long-time owner Walter Briggs, and ironically, at least for me, the name was an early example of corporate stadium-naming. Walter Briggs made his millions from—wait for it—toilets. His Briggs Beautyware company was one of the largest manufacturers of porcelain bathroom fixtures in the American midwest. I guess the name of the stadium doesn’t bother me because it’s actually a person’s name, and does not reference the related product for more overt advertising purposes. It’s a good thing that the current practice didn’t exist back then, or we might have been watching the Tigers play in the Toilet Bowl . . .

I had wanted to write also about the current park’s location in the city, the vistas it presents, and its relation to the current state of Detroit, but I see now that I’ve spent too long on the old days, and if I carry on with my original plan, I might never get to tonight’s game, and that wouldn’t be a bad thing, would it? But then those of my readers who really need the nitty-gritty of the game would be disappointed, wouldn’t they? So I think I’ll leave further ruminations on the team, the stadium, and the city for a supplementary article. Watch for its appearance in the Articles and Ephemera section.

I’ll just segue back to the game by means of one further observation about the setting for tonight’s action. It had rained earlier in the day in Detroit, a real, lowering thunder-banger from the looks of it. By game time, the sun was out, but the big dark clouds were still there, casting that eerie-but-beautiful yellow glow over the field. The final touch, and a nod here to the designers of the new park for leaving the view of the city open beyond the centre-field fence, was that lovely light illuminating what’s left of the stunning Art Deco Detroit skyline. The final, final touch was the rainbow that appeared over the skyline as the Tigers put the game out of reach. Maybe God isn’t a Blue Jays fan after all.

On the face of it, the pitching matchup looked more like a mismatch. Jay Happ has been a rock in the Jays’ rotation, with the exception of the one early exit, while the Tigers were sending out Michael Fulmer, a young prospect they leveraged away from the Mets last year at the trading deadline for Yoenis Cespedes. If it pans out for them, the young pitching stock that the Tigers got in return for Cespedes and David Price last July could be the heart of their rotation for years, though I worry about how injury-prone Daniel Norris seems to be. A look at Fulmer’s stats disabused me of the notion of a mismatch pretty quickly, though. He came into the game with an ERA under three and a 5-1 record in eight starts, and had flirted with a no-hitter into the late innings in his most recent appearance.

Fulmer lived up to his record thus far. He went six innings, giving up two infield hits, walking three, and striking out five. He wasn’t pulled after six for his pitch count, which was only 88 at that point, but for future considerations. Tiger Manager Brad Ausmus saw no point to letting him go further after the Tigers had padded their lead to 9-0 in the bottom of the sixth. Better to save a few pitches for later in the summer. Fulmer has heat, good stuff, and poise. The two hits he gave up were both infield singles by Darwin Barney, Now, not that Barney’s hits weren’t legit, but there’s not a lot of mobility in the Tigers’ infield, and I can certainly see that as a problem in a game when they’re not roasting the opposing pitcher on a spit.

In fact, the only ball that was a threat to Fulmer in the least was the shot that Edwin Encarnacion hit to the warning track in right with two on and two out in the third, when the game was still in reach, sort of, at 4-0. Fulmer escaped that one with his shutout intact when right fielder J.D. Martinez finally untracked his clumsy self and made a lucky stab to corral the ball for the out. A word about names here: I shorten names where possible in my game notes, and had to come up with a way to distinguish between Victor Martinez and J.D. Martinez. I settled on following the ARod example, and designated them as VMart and JMart . It’s a good thing the Tigers don’t have a Kevin Martinez . . .

So, Fulmer handled the Jays lineup fairly easily, and the relievers who followed mowed down our dispirited birds equally easily. The only gasp for the Jays was their last, a two-out triple to right in the ninth by Michael Saunders, followed by a four-pitch walk to Justin Smoak. However, the chance of a glorious two-out, eleven-run Jays’ rally went a-glimmering when Josh Thole, inserted into the game to give the increasingly frustrated Russell Martin a much-needed break (more on this in a moment), grounded out to second to end the sorry affair.

I earlier mentioned Jay Happ’s one problematic start so far this season. Well, make that two. For a second time in three games one of the Jays’ premier starters took his team out of the game early, though this time Happ did hang on to work five helpful innings before departing with a 6-0 deficit. The story of this game was writ early on, and both teams could have mailed it in after the third inning. For his part, Fulmer walked the leadoff batters in both the first and second, but escaped unpunished for his sins. In the second, Michael Saunders moved up on a deep fly and a right-side grounder, and so died at third. It’s quite a night for the Jays’ batsmen when their biggest achievement is Saunders dying at third. Twice.

For his part, Happ looked okay in the first, working around a one-out walk to Cameron Maybin, on only eleven pitches. Then came the fateful second, whose events might have been inspired by Macbeth’s three witches lurking around in the thunderheads above. With one out, Nick Castellanos hit a liner straight at Kevin Pillar in centre. For once, ever, it seems, Pillar broke wrong, taking a couple of steps in before realizing the strength of the carry and the strength of the wind blowing out. He frantically backtracked, but the ball was over his head and all the way to the wall, and by the time he’d retrieved it, Castellanos had a triple. Happ then issued his second walk of the night, to Justin Upton, which shouldn’t have been such a bad thing, with the slow-moving catcher coming to the plate. But Upton spiked that plan by promptly and easily stealing second, to take the double play off the table. No problem, though, because James McCann, the catcher, was hitting a buck 76. Which didn’t stop him from golfing a low, inside slider on a 1-2 pitch into the left-field seats. No, it didn’t stop him at all.

Now, there’s lots of commentary floating around about how Pillar’s misplaying of the line drive was the start of all the problems for Happ and the Jays, and there’s probably something to the notion that Happ finishes the inning off okay if Pillar makes that second out. But let’s have some perspective, folks. First of all, that ball was stung, and that’s on Happ. Secondly, if the inning does play out the same, which no one can know, then the Castellanos run gives the Tigers one less in an 11-0 win.

Be that as it may, the weirdness only got weirder before the inning was out. Happ got shortstop Jose Iglesias on a liner to centre that Pillar did catch, turning the lineup over to leadoff hitter Ian Kinsler with two outs. Kinsler prolonged the inning with a single to left. Then Happ, worried about his stunting around first base, solved the problem by balking him to second. Then Russell Martin missed a pitch that careened away from him, sending him to third, whence Happ obligingly wild-pitched him home by spiking one in the dirt. The Tigers extended the inning when Maybin singled to left, but it mercifully ended when Miguel Cabrera flied out to centre, Pillar carefully squeezing the third out.

Now, if you were Happ, or one of his team behind him in the field, wouldn’t you just pack it in after a farce like that? They might as well have, because, if possible, it was all downhill from there. After the Jays’ one shot at glory from Encarnacion died at the track in the third inning, Happ gave up a two-run shot to Justin Upton in the home half, and if you were able to eavesdrop in the dugouts after Upton’s homer you would have heard a lot of ball players making dinner plans for after the game. This one was in the books.

What’s left to say about it? Gavin Floyd had a terrible inning, wild as a march hare. I mentioned Russell Martin’s frustration earlier. Bad enough that he was all over the place in the third with Happ on the mound, but Floyd’s sixth was just as bad, including two wild pitches and a walk. Floyd kept missing so far outside that Martin took to snapping his glove out at the ball, when he could actually reach it, as his annoyance boiled over. After Floyd’s performance added three to the Tigers’ lead, Manager John Gibbons decided to call off the (sleeping) dogs, and put in some subs for the Tigers’ seventh, first and foremost Josh Thole behind the plate, getting Martin out of the line of fire just in time.

More effective out of the Jays’ pen was newcomer Jason Grilli. Though he gave up a double to James McCann, now Mr. buck 91, and an infield single to poor Jose Iglesias, who had been left out of the hit parade up till now, he struck out the side with some impressive pitches to strand the two runners he’d allowed. Drew Storen then did his bad cop routine in the eighth, allowing the last two Detroit runs of the night.

My summary of my game notes was the shortest one all year: “Ew-w-w-”, I wrote. (Is that how you spell it?) Now let’s look to Aaron Sanchez to help us brace up tomorrow night. He’ll be going against former Jay prospect Matt Boyd. The last time Boyd started for us last year, he didn’t get out of the first inning. We can only hope.