Long Ball Stories

Although we don’t have the comparative “metrics” from past seasons or previous eras, so we can’t actually make comparisons, my general impression is that today’s hitters in baseball, being generally bigger and stronger, generate more bat speed and power. It seems undeniable that balls are going farther and faster off the bat than ever before. Just in terms of anecdotal evidence, and this is something that could be researched, I’m quite convinced that there are far more straightaway long balls that go for homers to centre field than I can ever remember from years of watching baseball. Shots that used to elicit oohs and aahs from the crowd are now seen as commonplace events.

Is it not likely, then, that pitchers are at greater risk of being injured by a line drive than at any time in the past? Is Major League Baseball tracking the numbers of pitchers getting hit by batted balls over a season? The last five seasons? The last ten? The severity of the injuries? The time lost to the DL? If they’re not, they should.

Baseball traditionalists are doing a lot of whining about the current spate of new rules and how they are changing, even ruining, the nature of the game. But how anyone can criticize initiatives to improve the safety of players I don’t get. During the recent festivities we saw endless loops of Pete Rose plowing Ray Fosse at the All-Star game in 1970. Last fall we saw endless loops of Chase Utley’s assault on a defenceless Ruben Tejada in the National League Division Series. Although the new rules certainly need tweaking, and some sense of what’s appropriate within the traditions of the game and what’s not needs to be developed, only a Don Cherry would suggest that it’s okay to put catchers and middle infielders at risk of deliberate serious injury by reverting to “anything goes”. As for Pete Rose, it’s the same Pete Rose who thinks he’s done enough time for betting on the team he was managing, and the same Pete Rose who contemptuously compared Ichiro Suzuki’s Japanese professional baseball hit total to “high school records”. Pete Rose, meet Don Cherry.

Similarly, maybe it’s time to start thinking seriously about the safety of pitchers. If the tall foreheads in New York don’t see this as an issue yet, it’s time for pressure to be put on them at least to start collecting data. There is more to be said on the subject of pitcher safety, and I am working on a post on the topic to be published soon in the Articles section.

Today’s game between the Oakland A’s and the Blue Jays at Oakland-Alameda Coliseum (finally, a stadium with a stadium name), a game that the pennant-hungry Jays needed in the worst way, was significantly impacted by pitcher injuries from batted balls. In the case of the Blue Jays’ Jay Happ, it brought a great pitching performance to a premature end, cost the Jays the lead in a game they had to win, and posed the possibility that Happ might have been put out of commission for some time to come. In the case of the A’s, a ball off the bat of Josh Donaldson that hit Andrew Triggs on his landing foot in the first inning caused his mound appearance to be cut short, and could have turned the game into a sorry farce from the perspective of the Oakland team.

First of all, we have to explain why Andrew Triggs was even on the mound in the first inning, when it was Rich Hill’s start for Oakland. Hill had originally been slated to pitch against the Jays on Friday night, but his start had been put back to Sunday because he needed a little more time to heal a blister on his pitching hand that had cropped up before the All-Star game. Let’s not pause to tsk-tsk over the fact that “dainty” pitchers can’t pitch with blisters or torn fingernails. It’s simple, people: if you can’t grip the ball properly, you can’t throw your pitches. Ironically, in what was billed as Hill’s likely last start for Oakland before going on the auction block, and with a whole row of scouts in attendance to check out the goods, it only took Hill five pitches to leadoff hitter Devon Travis to realize that the blister problem was not resolved and he couldn’t continue. While Travis waited to resolve the issue of his three-two count, the A’s manager, trainer, and pitching coach huddled at the mound, before decidng that Hill had to come out. As soon as Hill came out, the scouts all packed up their radar guns and sat back to enjoy a ball game for once.

Triggs, a 27-year-old rookie with 16 appearances, one start, and 29.1 innings of major league experience under his belt, was summoned from the pen to take over. Now, you have to understand that when a starting pitcher falters or is hurt this early in a game, it’s not like the manager has a backup starter or the next day’s starter all ready to go. Normally, the rotation is sacrosanct: you don’t even think of going there. In a given bullpen, there might be two guys who are designated as middle or long relief, and when there’s an unexpected call for a “long man”, it won’t necessarily come at a time when your long man is rested and ready to go. So it’s likely Manager Bob Melvin didn’t have many choices besides Triggs.

The first two balls hit off him were shots, a liner by Travis right at the left fielder. The second, off the bat of Josh Donaldson, was a low, wicked liner right up the middle, and Triggs wasn’t as lucky this time. The ball hit him in the left foot and caromed toward third for an infield hit. Cue the return of manager and trainers. As a righty, it was Triggs’ landing foot that was hit, and that’s far more problematic than if the push-off foot is hit, because the pitcher is thinking about the landing all through the delivery. Much discussion, several practice pitches, and a determination that Triggs would continue. He limped through the inning, rather valiantly, I thought, and limited the Jays to an unearned run when Edwin Encarnacion followed Donaldson with a third straight rope, to left, a single that Khris Davis swiped at and missed, for an error that gave Edwin second and allowed Donaldson to score. A hit batsman to Russell Martin, a Michael Saunders strikeout, and a Troy Tulowitzki soft flare to right brought the inning to a close with no further damage, except to Triggs’ foot.

But that was it for Triggs, and in the top of the second Melvin had to bring in his third pitcher of the day, a 23-year-old left-handed rookie, Sean Manaea. This one was a keeper, or just better at dodging bullets. He pitched five effective innings for the A’s, giving up two runs, three hits, no walks, and four strikeouts on 69 pitches. Too bad Melvin had to shuffle the deck twice to find a starting pitcher.

The only runs yielded by Manaea came in the fourth inning. Russell Martin led off with a double on a ground ball into the left-field corner that took a lot of catcher hustle to stretch into two bases. Michael Saunders followed with an effective at-bat which ended with the right-side ground-out to first that the Jays needed to advance Martin to third. Saunders’ good effort went for naught, but in a good way, when Tulowitzki turned on one of the few mistakes Manaea made and deposited it in the left-field seats for a three-nothing Jays’ lead.

As well as Manaea was throwing, the Tulo homer and the three-run lead were deeply appreciated by Jay Happ, who was cruising through another gem. He set the first nine A’s down in order, with three strikeouts. Jed Lowrie led off the fourth with the first base hit off Happ, but then he struck out Marcus Semien and Josh Reddick, before old Blue Jay Danny Valencia, the A’s DH today, lined a single into centre. Happ helped his own cause immensely, with two on and two out, by pouncing on a little squibber toward third from Khris Davis, whirling and throwing him out at first by a whisker.

After the Tulo homer in the bottom of the inning, things looked great for a Happ-y cruise, especially since he had only thrown 52 pitches in the first four innings. Complete game thoughts, anyone? Then, with one out in the fifth, after Billie Butler popped out to Tulo at short, it happened to Happ. Jake Smolinski lined one up the middle, and it hit Happ’s left forearm and bounced away for an infield single. This time it was Manager John Gibbons, pitching coach Pete Walker, and trainer George Poulis convening on the mound to assess the damage. Once again, some freezing, an examination, and a few practice throws, and he was ready to go. Ryon Healy hit into a force play erasing Smolinski, and Matt McBride flew out to centre to end the inning.

But it was obvious that Happ was hurting. Closeups in the dugout showed that the stitches on the ball had broken his skin, and that he was swelling noticeably. The trainer put a tensor sleeve on him, but of course he had to take it off to go back out to pitch. He wasn’t the same pitcher in the sixth inning. After retiring Lowrie on a fly ball to right, the A’s finally broke the shutout as Marcus Semien, who had been shut down very effectively to this point in the series, took one out to centre. It was cruel fate that the last out that Happ recorded came on another hard shot back at him, that luckily glanced mostly off his glove rather than his gluteus, and that he was able to pick up and make the play at first. Danny Valencia followed with an opposite-field single to right, the dangerous Khris Davis took a walk, and Manager Gibbons was out to retrieve his prized lefty before any further damage could happen.

Jesse Chavez came in, and for the first time in quite a number of appearances, failed to get the job done. Bob Melvin pinch-hit the left-handed Yonder Alonso for the right-handed Billy Butler, and he proceeded to pound one into the gap in left centre, allowing both inherited runners to score on the double, and leaving Happ to contemplate the no-decision he hadn’t anticipated before Smolinski labelled him with a baseball. Chavez finally got the third out in the sixth, but not before plunking Smolinski (take that, you brute!) and giving up an infield hit to Ryon Healy. (By the way, I’ve been spelling Healy’s first name “Ryan”, because I never bothered to check his spelling. Why would I? Aren’t all Ryans “Ryan”?)

(It should be noted here that besides Josh Donaldson, the other Jay to have made his way to Toronto from Oakland is Jesse Chavez. According to a sign picked out in the stands by the TV cameras, there is actually a Jesse Chavez fan club in Oakland. Who knew?)

Thus the effect of Sunday’s field day on pitchers: end of six, score tied, new pitchers in the game for both teams, and the Jays’ salvaging the third game of the series in serious jeopardy.

After Manaea’s fine work, Mark Rzepczynski (let’s just call him “Shep”) got a couple of outs in the seventh, and left a couple of base hits on for Liam Hendriks to bail him out. Hendriks went on to pitch an effective eighth before turning it over to John Axford for the decisive top of the ninth. Former Jay Shep to former Jay Hendriks to Axford, who’s never pitched for the Blue Jays, but is Canadian. Is there a theme here?

Following Chavez’ rocky sixth, Brett Cecil gave up a leadoff single in the seventh, struck out Semien, and then got the lefty he was sent in to get, as Josh Reddick grounded into a double play. Jason Grilli pitched his most effective frame yet for the Jays, striking out the two most dangerous Oakland hitters, Valencia and Davis, and getting Alonso on a fly ball to Carrera in right, on just 14 pitches. Good job that Grilli ended up with the win after an inning like that. And we should mention that despite losing two out of three, the Jays’ bullpen was close to perfect for the entire series.

At the close of my piece on Saturday’s game, I speculated as to whether Bob Melvin would be able to use his bullpen troika of Axford, Ryan Dull, and Ryan Madson three games in a row. Today, without a lead to protect, he chose to send Axford out to hold the Jays in the ninth, and it was probably a bridge too far for the big Simcoe, Ontario, right-hander. He did get Kevin Pillar to ground out to short leading off, but then Justin Smoak pulled a seriously old pro trick on him, taking an outside pitch and poking it up the third base line, completely vacant because of the extreme shift deployed against him when he hits from the left side. Gibbie immediately replaced Smoak with Andy Burns at first, with Junior Lake coming up. Lake then singled to centre, one of the oddest base hits you’ll ever see. With one strike on him, Lake swung on an inside pitch that sawed him off, and should have been a weak right-side grounder. But—and you can see this clearly on the replay—the ball skidded along the bat toward the barrel, made contact again with the barrel, and with enough force to be muscled up the middle into centre field, Burns stopping at second.

This brought Donaldson to the plate, Donaldson, the Oakland favourite son, who had been relatively quiet at the plate so far in the series. Lucky for us that he saved one big blow for just the right moment. He turned on a 2-1 pitch from Axford and sent it screaming down the line and into the left-field corner for a double. Andy Burns scored the lead run. Junior Lake, running from first, scored the insurance run. Khris Davis, who had been burning us at the plate throughout the series, showed himself to be just as dangerous in the field as at the plate. Dangerous to the Oaklands, that is. Do you remember that Donaldson scored our first run in the first off Triggs when he scored from first on Encarnacion’s single that was waved at and missed by the A’s left fielder? That would be Davis. And whose arm did Jays’ third-base coach Luis Rivera know he could challenge by sending Lake to the plate on Donaldson’s hit? That would be Davis. In fact, he missed the cut-off man, and there wasn’t even a play at the plate. The Khris giveth, and the Khris taketh away.

Though Axford intentionally walked Encarnacion, and unintentionally walked Martin, loading the bases and forcing Melvin to come fetch him out of the game, Michael Saunders fanned against the lefty Patrick Schuster on a 3-2 pitch to end the inning, to avert the possibility of more add-on runs. But the Jays had the lead, 5-3, and Roberto Osuna coming in to clean up, which he did, with a popup, a strikeout, and a fly to left, for his nineteenth save in twenty-one opportunities, on 13 pitches.

In three games in Oakland, the A’s scored 16 runs, and the Blue Jays scored 16 runs, but the A’s won two games out of three. Sure, this is a disappointing result, but it’s a damn sight better than losing three in a row. A sweep of the two games in Arizona, and we can still come home three and two on the road trip. (Remember, a .600 winning percentage clinches the division .) Aaron Sanchez gets the call Tuesday night. Who better to give us a push in the right direction?

Question: Why don’t Toronto baseball fans go to Canada’s Wonderland?

Answer: Why would we pay to ride roller coasters when we can have the same experience for free following the Blue Jays?

Yes, it’s a long season, and yes, you have to keep everything in perspective, and look to the next game to sort everything out. But, dammit, it’s hard sometimes. Here we went into the All-Star break on a great high, convinced that it was only a matter of time before the true leaders of the American League East would emerge from the throes of modest success to take charge of the likes of Baltimore and Boston.

And then Marcus Stroman, who’d pitched so well recently, and R.A. Dickey, who’d pitched so well for so long, each gave up three homers to the Oakland A’s, in the park where home runs go to die, and we lose two consecutive one-run games. In the meantime, both Baltimore and Boston, conveniently paired against the patsies of the American League East, Tampa Bay and New York, start with two straight wins, doubling Baltimore’s lead against the Jays and putting two full games, yet again, between us and the Red Sox.

This afternoon it was Oakland rookie Ryan Healy, playing in only his second major league game, and still looking for his first hit after wearing the collar Friday night, who put the dagger into the Jays’ hearts. (“Wearing the collar”: a shortened form of “wearing the horse collar”, an old baseball expression meaning to go hitless in a game. The horse collar looks like an “0”, as in “0 for whatever”.)

Typically for R.A. Dickey, he breezed through the first inning on nine pitches, despite giving up a wasted single to Yonder Alonso hitting second, and then got in trouble in the second. Sometimes, also typically, he gets in trouble in the first and then breezes in the second, but today it was the former case.

For the last month or so, though, Dickey has largely been able to avoid the big inning, or the big blow. As a knuckle baller, Dickey knows, and we’ve all come to expect, that he’s vulnerable to the home run. A knuckler that doesn’t do anything is just too fat not to land in the seats. It’s been the case for Dickey this year, and a blessing for the team, that he has given up very few homers with men on base. The Toronto edition of Baseball Prospectus headlined its story on today’s game “Dickey Done in by Davis’ Dual Dingers”. Cute, but inaccurate. Both of the homers given up by Dickey to Khris Davis were solo shots. If he hadn’t given up the three-run shot to Healy in the second, we win, 4-2, Dickey’s record climbs to 8-9, his ERA continues to sink towards 3.50, and a whole lot of Toronto fans sleep better tonight.

After the quick first, Dickey was in the soup immediately in the second. Davis led off by crushing one to centre. Stephen Vogt singled to right. Dickey walked Marcus Semien, which seems to be kind of hard to do. Then, after getting a fly ball to centre from Jake Smolinski, he faced Healy, the third baseman who was hitting ninth today, as he did yesterday, when he went hitless in his major league debut. I chuckled to myself as to what was coming next. The raw rookie facing the knucksie for the first time. Would it be an awkward strikeout, or a topped grounder back to Dickey, who would easily turn two to end the inning? Of course it was neither, as Healy stroked one into the left-field stands, for his first major league hit, his first major league homer, his first major league RBIs, and a 4-2 Oakland lead. We’ll get to the Jays’ runs in a minute.

A’s staff immediately raced to the fan who caught the ball in the stands and quickly negotiated a buyout so that Healy could have his souvenir ball back. I wonder just how much a team would be willing to pay to ransom a coveted souvenir ball? Wicked and greedy thoughts come to mind.

A word here about Coco Crisp, Danny Valencia, and the harshness of baseball as a sport/business. When the A’s reconvened after the break, apparently Manager Bob Melvin and his brain trust pulled Valencia and Crisp aside, and basically told them this: we’re going nowhere fast; your offensive talents are definitely outweighed by your defensive liabilities. We need to give some of our young up and comers a chance to show what they can do, so don’t expect a lot of playing time over the rest of the season. Great news for the rookies Healy and Smolinski, but kind of a tough way to come back to work for Valencia and Crisp.

For Valencia, sadly, this is the second time in two years that he’s been the odd man out. You will recall that he hit several crucial home runs for the Jays last season before he was squeezed out and placed on waivers. A competent corner infielder, there was no room for him on the 2015 Jays, with Josh Donaldson installed at third, and Edwin Encarnacion, Justin Smoak, and Chris Colabello all circulating between first base and designated hitter. They tried to square peg him into the round hole of left field, but when Ben Revere was acquired from the Phillies, the competition for someone to establish himself in left came to an end.

To get back to the game, as much as I don’t want to, the Healy homer hurt even worse than one would think, as it helped erase a two-run lead posted by the Jays in the top of the second when Josh Thole, for the second game in a row while catching Dickey, was the unlikely hitter who delivered the two runs. Troy Tulowitzki was on second with a leadoff double, and after Sonny Gray retired both Kevin Pillar and Justin Smoak while Tulo had to stay at second, he walked Darwin Barney, the classic two-out mistake. In this situation it didn’t look too damaging, since it brought Thole to the plate. Thole, however, surprised everyone by pulling a liner down the right-field line, which slowed and rolled as soon as it hit the turf. With Oakland playing Thole straight up, the right fielder, Josh Reddick, had a long run for the ball. Barney, running on the hit, scored easily after Tulo, and the Jays had a transitory two-run lead.

Josh Donaldson then reached on a throwing error by shortstop Marcus Semien, but Thole was caught off third and tagged out in a rundown. There was lots of fuss from the talking heads about Thole killing the rally with his baserunning error, especially since Encarnacion led off the third with a home run (Ooh, we missed a three-run homer!) But you can never assume Encarnacion would have had the same at bat, seen the same pitches, if he had come up with runners on the corners in the second. Let’s cut Thole some slack, in fact lots of slack, here. There were two outs, he finished his route to third, maybe he was being aggressive in case there was a bad throw, but wasn’t aggressive enough. Whatever. The fact is it was a terrible, sloppy error from Semien, and never should have happened. Donaldson, not Thole, should have been the third out.

So, though I’ve given it to you in reverse order, at the end of two we had A’s 4, Jays 2, and basically that’s how it stayed. The Healy homer stood up for the A’s, Gray limited the damage the Jays could do with a number of chances after giving up the solo shot to Encarnacion to lead off the third, and the Jays remained on the short end of the score for the rest of the day. Dickey being Dickey, he settled down after the Healy shot, and retired 13 in a row, through to the top of the sixth inning, the last two outs in the string coming on a double-play ball by Danny Valencia, after a walk to Josh Reddick. Again, typically, his string was bracketed by the Healy homer in the second and Khris Davis’ second solo homer in the sixth, which completed Dickey’s record at six innings, five runs, 5 hits, 3 walks, 4 strikeouts, and 86 pitches. Did he deserve the loss today? Not particularly. Did he deserve the win? Not really. Live by the knuckler, die by the knuckler. Some days you die, some days you don’t.

Sonny Gray got the start for the A’s, and as we all know the sharks from the contending teams have been circling around the A’s trying to sniff out what price would be placed on Gray’s head to move him to a contending team. Looking at his record going into this game, 3-8, with a 5.16 ERA, I’m not sure why the price shouldn’t be a bat boy and a case of energy bars for the clubhouse. The talk is that the A’s are looking for a lot in return, and I hope they get it, a fool and his money and all that . . . Gray didn’t let the game get away from him today, but he didn’t exactly blow the lights out, either. In six innings he gave up three runs and six hits while walking four and striking out two. Agonizingly, he took 102 pitches to do this, only 61 of them strikes. There wasn’t a corner he didn’t try to nibble, missing way more than he hit. And given that the third Jay out in the second came on the Thole rundown, he was that close to never making it to the third. I guess if the energy bars were good enough to tempt the A’s management, Sonny Gray might be a good second spot starter, right behind Drew Hutchison in the rotation, but that’s about it. Now that I think about it, I hope the Orioles acquire him. That could only help the Jays.

Both bullpens were solid again today after the starters left. Drew Storen had a rocky start in the seventh, and Aaron Loup had to bail him out, which he did. Manager John Gibbons gave the ball to Roberto Osuna for the eighth, because he needed the work, and he gave up a walk and struck out one on 17 pitches. Gray was followed by Ryan Dull, John Axford, and Ryan Madson for the A’s. Dull and Axford were perfect, but Madson gave up a leadoff homer to Justin Smoak in the top of the ninth to shorten the lead to one, before retiring the side in order for his nineteenth save of the season.

I kind of wonder whether the A’s manager Bob Melvin will be able to go to the same three guys again tomorrow afternoon in the closing game of the series, when all three of them pitched in Friday night’s game as well as today’s game. Well, with any luck, our left-hander, Jay Happ, will be more effective than their left-hander, Rich Hill (who’s also wearing a “for sale” sign on his back), and the stamina of the A’s closers won’t even be an issue.

Let’s get this out of the way right from the beginning. I don’t want to make this story about Marcus Stroman again. I really don’t. I’d rather write a thousand-plus words about the Oakland A’s bizarre mascot Stomper, an ugly elephant with a pot belly, than start another column with the trials and tribulations of the pitching career of everybody’s favourite Energizer Blue Jay. (I’ll fill you in on Stomper a bit later.)

As we headed into the break, I felt really good about the Jays’ rotation. Happ was Happ-ing, Dickey was Dickey-ing (sorry, R.A., that sounds faintly naughty, doesn’t it?), Stroman was back in form, the silly talk of sending Aaron Sanchez to the bullpen seemed to be dying down, and the only glitch on the horizon was the back issue Marco Estrada was dealing with. And surely, for someone who is not trying to throw his whole arm at the batter all the time, a little R and R would do his back just fine.

So with the break over we reconvened in Oakland to play three games against the 38-51 A’s, fully intending to run down and right over Baltimore and Boston to take the division lead by Sunday night, and what could be better than starting with the newly-restored Marcus Stroman, whose last two starts had almost made us forget about how badly he was getting beaten up as recently as a couple of weeks ago?

And then the fickle baseball gods intervened. Playing on the West Coast, we knew that the Red Sox had won and the Orioles were almost home free, which gave a little added piquancy to the game in Oakland. Whatever strings the gods had plucked to make Stroman lose his location, and unplucked to give it back, were just waiting to be plucked again tonight, and the gods obliged. With his location, Stroman is dominant. Without his location, he is eminently hittable.

But in the top of the first, the Jays’ hitters didn’t know that the Stro-mojo hadn’t made the trip to the coast. All they knew was that they were facing a young right-hander with some pretty good stuff, a really pokey old-timey windup, and a pretty bad record for 2016, at one and four with an ERA of 4.54. This could be good for our guys, and it eventually was, but they went pretty meekly in the first, as Daniel Mengden struck out Zeke Carrera and Edwin Encarnacion, and induced a soft fly to left from Josh Donaldson to sit back down after 13 pitches.

But no matter, right? After Marcus sets them down in order—three ground-ball-outs will do nicely, thank you very much—we’ll take another crack at this Mengden guy, and see what he’s made of. And then Stroman came out and proceeded to throw . . . balls, lots of balls. Leading off for the A’s was Coco Crisp, co-captain of the American League Best Ball-Player Names All-Star team. He hit a 2-0 pitch hard on a line right at Carrera for the first out. Jed Lowrie singled to right on a 1-1 pitch. Josh Reddick walked on four straight balls. Khris Davis singled to centre on a 1-0 pitch to score Lowrie, with Reddick going to third. Stephen Vogt grounded out second to first, scoring Reddick, on a full count. Marcus Semien flied out to centre on a 2-2 pitch to end the inning. The thing is, the first pitch to every hitter was a ball. Every strike he threw was followed by a ball if it wasn’t put into play. And both base hits and the line-out by Crisp were hit hard. It wasn’t really the two runs that worried you–after all, Mengden, who’s he?–it was the way they were scored that rang a pretty ominous bell, not to mention the 24 pitches he threw.

The A’s gave one back to us right away in the second, an unearned run courtesy of catcher Stephen Vogt, who picked up Michael Saunders’ leadoff nubber and threw it in the dirt to first, where Yonder Alonso couldn’t distinguish the skipping ball from Saunders’ racing feet, and failed to scoop it, the error going to Vogt. Saunders ended up at second on the error, moved to third on a ground-out, and scored on a ground-out. Justin Smoak hit a single with two outs, but died at first. Mengden threw 24 pitches in the second, and it looked like just a matter of time for the Jays, if only Stroman settled down.

And he did, in the second inning, anyway. An Alsono single to right was immediately erased by a quick 4-3 double play ball struck by Jake Smolinski, and then Stroman fanned third baseman Ryan Healy in his first major-league at bat. I didn’t notice if Healy asked for the ball. Probably not. Thirteen pitches, and back to the plate against this Mengden guy for the top of the third.

By the time Russell Martin flied out to right to end the third for the Jays, the young Oakland pitcher had thrown 30 pitches, taking his total to 66 pitches for three innings, and the Blue Jays had taken the lead. Mengden helped them out, a lot. After Devon Travis led off with a single and was forced by Carrera, Mengden walked Donaldson and Encarnacion to load the bases. He then unloaded a wild pitch that scored Carrera and moved the other two runners to second and third. Michael Saunders then hit a foul fly to left on which Donaldson smartly tagged up and scored for the lead run.

Happy to have been gifted with the lead, Stroman got the first two A’s hitters in the third, but then grooved one to Josh Reddick who hit it over the centre-field fence to tie the game. This was disconcerting, especially the loss of concentration, but the Jays came out in the top of the fourth, put up a four-spot with a string of well-placed hits, and drove Mengden from the mound, only one out into his fourth inning of work. It was quick and efficient work by the Jays’ hitters. A leadoff single by Troy Tulowitzki, a walk to Justin Smoak, a wild pitch that moved them up, run-scoring singles by Pillar and Travis, an RBI ground-out by Carrera for the first out, and an RBI single by Donaldson marked the end of Mengden’s toils. The familiar figure of Liam Hendricks came in from the A’s bullpen to get Encarnacion to ground into a double play to end the inning.

We might have hoped that with a seven-three lead going into the bottom of the fourth Stroman would relax, throw strikes, and start to cruise. But our hopes were not to be. The A’s shortened the lead by one after two were out in the fourth on a two-out single by Smolinski that scored Vogt, who had led off the inning with a base hit. The Oakland run was kind of under the radar, as simmering Oakland anger over the strike zone of home plate umpire Mark Wegner finally came to a boil, leading to the ejection of Yonder Alonso over a called third strike, and A’s manager Bob Melvin, who did his duty and joined Alonso in the clubhouse. They might not have been so angry had Wegner not rung up the previous hitter, Marcus Semien, on a checked-swing third strike, inviting rather public criticism from Semien on his way back to the dugout.

Hendricks carried on for the A’s in the fifth, and allowed the first two hitters to reach on a walk and a single, before retiring the side. The Jays would later come to regret those wasted runners that began to add up through the middle of the game.

It wasn’t long for the regret to rise, either. Stroman, who despite the Reddick home run and the singleton by the A’s in the fourth, had seemed to be settling, at least to the extent of looking like he might be able to hold the lead through the fifth and sixth, anyway, before maxing out on his pitch count. But after getting the first two outs, disaster struck, swift and sure. Reddick singled to right. Khris Davis hit one over the centre-field wall. Vogt back-to-backed with Davis, also to centre. If only that fence were twenty feet deeper, we would still have held the lead! The score was tied, Stroman was done after four and two thirds innings, his ERA back over 5 to 5.15, and Jesse Chavez had to come on to catch Semien looking to end the troubles.

I guess it’s only natural that sometimes your guys are up for scrapping back and retaking the lead, and sometimes they’re not. For the Jays, tonight was definitely a “not up for it” night. Despite being issued four walks by Oakland relievers, including leadoff walks in the sixth, seventh, and eighth, the Jays never got another hit off the Oakland bullpen after Russell Martin’s single off Hendricks in the fifth, the only hit the bullpen yielded.

The Jays’ relievers were equally effective, except for Brett Cecil in the seventh, who gave up the winning run. Now, it would be easy to go into a gloomy funk over the fact that the winning Oakland run scored in the eighth when the home team’s appeal of a tag play at the plate was supported by the replay team in New York. It’s not the first time that a game has clearly hinged on a review decision made in New York, and it won’t be the last.

If we wanted to lay blame, more would be apportioned to Cecil than to the umpire crew in New York, but before we go any further with that line, let’s just remember that this was Marcus Stroman’s game to win, and he didn’t seal the deal. But Cecil, who got the first two outs (again, with the two-out rallies!), committed the cardinal sin of walking the one guy he had to get, the left-handed-hitting Reddick. Reddick moved up on a single to left by Davis, and raced for the plate on a single to centre by Vogt. Kevin Pillar, throwing caution to the wind, went for broke on his throw to the plate, which was dead on, Marting swipe-tagging Reddick and the ump calling him out. Game still tied! Not.

After the appeal the run stood up, Ryan Madson got three ground balls in the ninth on eight pitches for his eighteenth save, the Jays lost a game they should have won, and failed to keep pace with the victorious Orioles and Red Sox. Tomorrow afternoon it’s R.A. Dickey against Sonny Gray, the subject of major speculation as the trade deadline approaches. The Jays sent out a scout before the break to check him out, but I don’t think they can afford him. I also don’t think they need him.

In closing, I promised to shed some light on Stomper, the A’s mascot. It seems like way back in 1902, when legendary curmudgeon John J. McGraw was managing the New York Giants, he dissed Connie Mack’s Philadelphia A’s as being the “White Elephants”, because Mack had spent a lot of money to field the team and wasn’t going to get much return for it, or so McGraw predicted. The elegant and gentlemanly “Mr. Mack”, who not only owned the A’s but managed them in his street clothes, a business suit with a four-in-hand tie and a high collar shirt, defiantly took on the term and declared the White Elephant to be the mascot of the A’s. Ever since, there has been a circus elephant on a ball incorporated into the logo of the Athletics’ uniform, a logo which has followed them from Philadelphia to Kansas City to Oakland. So that is why the A’s have a guy in an elephant suit for a mascot. Why he is grey and pot-bellied in a most un-elephant-like way, I do not know.

It turns out that “TBA” is, with apologies to Dennis Lee, the Secret Tiger Name of Anibal Sanchez. By the way, does anyone read Lizzie’s Lion to their three- or four-year-olds any more? It’s a violent, bloody story of just retribution, probably far too gruesome and gory for today’s gentle parenting style. It’s delightful. I highly recommend it.

Any Tiger team that has to pull the name of the Ghost of Anibal Sanchez Past out of a hat to find a starting pitcher is in deep doo-doo indeed. In fact, any team that has to follow Justin Verlander in their rotation with, no insult intended, the likes of journeyman Mike Pelfrey, young prospect Matt Boyd, and the Anibal Sanchez of 2016, is generally in deep trouble. To be fair, of course, Jordan Zimmerman is currently on the DL, and we are fortunate to have missed being stonewalled again by Michael Fulmer.

Following that introduction, you might think that Dickey’s gift from the gods referred to in today’s headline is a reference to the fact that he was pitching against the Tigers’ Sanchez. But no, that would be a bit mean-spirited, even for me. On the most obvious level, Dickey’s gift in general is the ability to throw that crazy knuckleball effectively, because when he can do it, he’s just a helluva pitcher. Today, for example, when he went seven innings, giving up one run, and five hits, while walking two and striking out five, with some of the strikeouts coming at crucial moments.

More specifically, today he was gifted for the second start in a row with run support, after spending the entire spring sitting on the bench muttering to himself “my kingdom for a base knock!” Last Tuesday he went seven against Kansas City while his team-mates put up eight big ones for him. Today, he went seven while they scored six for him. That’s 14 runs in his last two starts. Too bad he can’t bank some of them for the seven lean starts that are sure to be in his future.

His greatest gift of all today came from his perpetual battery mate and Chief Accumulator of Bruises Taken for the Team, Josh Thole. Normally, nobody asks for more of Josh Thole than that he stop most of Dickey’s crazy pitches, and that he stay healthy enough to keep Russell Martin safely on the bench when Dickey starts. On the offensive side, we feel that he’s done more than enough if he just manages to get a sac bunt down when it’s needed. So what could Dickey possibly say to his catcher today after he not only gave up the body in the usual manner, but went two for three on the day, and even drove in the first two runs of the game with a solid two-out single to centre in the second inning? How about, “Did I ever say you were my hero?” Uh, no, even R.A. Dickey, sensitive soul that he is, wouldn’t stoop that low.

So here we had a perfect formula for that one-game pre-All-Star-break winning streak I was hoping for: a sunny Sunday afternoon, a huge crowd, R.A. mesmerizing his opponents, the Jays’ hitters efficiently dispatching Anibel Sanchez, and Josh Thole becoming the sung (surely this is the opposite of “unsung”) hero of the game.

Dickey had smooth sailing for most of the way today. In typical Dickey fashion, one of his toughest innings was the first, as he gave up back-to-back one-out singles to Cameron Maybin and Miguel Cabrera. Victor Martinez then bounced one up the middle that deflected off Dickey and headed toward Devon Travis at second. Too late for the double play, or even the force, Travis had to go to first to get Martinez. With the dangerous Nick Castellanos up and runners at second and third, we faced a tense moment even before getting any licks off Sanchez, but Dickey took care of that by fanning Castellanos to end the inning.

Dickey gave up his only run in the fifth, when James McCann’s bounce-out to second scored Mike Aviles, who had tripled to lead off the inning. After getting the second out, Dickey gave up a second triple to Ian Kinsler, and walked Maybin, just so he could try his luck with Cabrera with two outs and runners on the corners. Cabrera obliged him by looping an easy little flare to right for the third out. By the time he got to his roughest inning, it should be pointed out, Dickey was sitting on a 5-0 lead, so a bit of a letdown might have been expected. McCann was the only other runner to reach after the fifth, with a one-out walk in the seventh, and Dickey wrapped up his day having thrown a tidy 91 pitches.

In the eighth Jesse Chavez and Cecil, brought in to face Victor Martinez with two outs, were clean on only ten pitches. Bo Schultz came in again to wrap things up. It seems like he’s become Manager John Gibbons go-to guy to keep the lid on in non save situations, and he managed it again today, though with a bit of fuss involved before tying it down. With one out he gave up a single to Justin Upton, and walked Mike Aviles, and then saw them move up while he handled a come-backer to him by McCann. But with runners on second and third and two out, Jose Iglesias grounded out to second and the game was in the bag.

As for Sanchez, we can’t say that the Jays rode him out of town on a rail, but he did give up 5 runs on 8 hits in four innings, and wasn’t going to come back for the fifth with 92 pitches in the books, down 5-0 at the end of four. The funny thing is, in sympathy with Sanchez, and with the Tiger fans watching him, these four innings must have provoked the same kind of agony that we experienced over the course of so much of the early part of the season with the Jays’ offence. That is, that we were always holding our breath to see if they might come through with a hit with runners in scoring position and two outs.

After he retired the Jays in order in the first, for three innings in a row Anibal Sanchez got into trouble trying to get the third out. As Ernie Harwell used to say, “and all this happened after two were out!” In the second, he did start out in the hole, giving up hits to Troy Tulowitzki and Kevin Pillar. But then he fanned Devon Travis, but walked Justin Smoak to load the bases. When he struck out Darwin Barney, he must have felt pretty close to the finish line, with only the weak-hitting Thole to dispose of. But as we already mentioned, Thole turned the tables on him, and the Jays had a 2-0 lead for Dickey to work with. It was small consolation to Sanchez that he fanned Zeke Carrera to strand the other two runners, and complete striking out the side.

In the third he gave up a leadoff single to Josh Donaldson, who was immediately erased when Michael Saunders, hitting third today, grounded into a double play. Two outs and nobody on. But then he gave up a hard smash off the wall in left to Tulo, hit so hard that he was held to a single, and a single to Pillar, before getting Travis to pop out to second.

The fourth inning had to be the worst for poor Sanchez though. He caught Smoak looking. Barney grounded out to second for the second out, bringing up—guess–who Josh Thole. And Sanchez walked the dangerous Thole. (I’m not trying to be disrespectful to Thole, here. I’m just trying to see things from Sanchez’ perspective.)

Carrera singled to left, bringing up Donaldson, and of course nemesis tapped Anibal on the shoulder and intoned sepulchrally, “Remember me?” Donaldson crushed one to left for three more runs. Sanchez fanned Saunders just to make it easier on his manager, and was finished for the day.

The way Dickey was pitching, the five runs were more than enough for the win. They added an extra in the eighth off left-hander Kyle Ryan, who loaded the bases on singles by Barney and that guy Thole, a move-em-up ground-out by Carrera, followed by an intentional pass to Donaldson. Stung by the insult, Michael Saunders cashed in Barney with a single to left. Ausmus then called on former Jay Mark Lowe, who’s been struggling since he signed the big contract with the Tigers, and Lowe responded by retiring Tulo and Pillar to leave the bases loaded.

We should mention that today’s game saw the debut for the Tigers of a rookie right-hander from Regina, Dustin Molleken, who was first out of the pen to replace Sanchez in the fifth. Though he struggled a bit, he kept the Jays off the board for two and two thirds innings, giving up 3 hits, two walks, and striking out three, on 44 pitches. There have been worse debuts. He’s big and strong, and that’s always a good start.

The Blue Jays head into the All-Star break feeling pretty good about themselves. Five of them are off to San Diego for the game itself, Donaldson, Encarnacion, Saunders, Marco Estrada, and Aaron Sanchez. The rest scatter for a few days of well-earned R and R, everyone to reconvene Friday evening for the first of three in Oakland. We’re tied for second with Boston in the division, tied with Boston for the two wild-card slots, and only two games behind the Orioles, who, rumour has it, are already shopping for some desperately-needed starting pitchers. Yer humble scribe says they better open up the vaults and buy a bunch while they’re at it, or they’re going to be looking up at the Toronto and Boston behinds pretty soon.

In the midst of the turmoil in the front office of the Blue Jays last off-season, there was a story circulating that one of the first things that Mark Schapiro did after he arrived in Toronto was to castigate Alex Anthopoulos for stripping the cupboard bare of pitching prospects to fuel the team’s 2015 pennant run.

The most prominent deal Anthopoulos completed last July was the acquisition of David Price. Though it’s often necessary to wait a couple of years to evaluate which team gained the most from a prospects-for-proven-star deal, I think it’s possible at this point to state that the Price deal was a good one for the Jays. Price is what he is and does what he does. It’s undeniable that he took over leadership of the staff when he arrived, and inconceivable that the team would have gone as far as it did without him. Even though the Price side of the trade ledger ended effectively on the day that the Royals eliminated the Jays in the ALCS, the three months that he was a Blue Jay certainly seem worth what the Jays gave up to the Tigers, even in the long term.

Since one of the prospects sent to Detroit for Price has pitched twice against the Jays this season, both times contributing substantially to Detroit wins, it seems like a good idea to look at the Detroit side of the ledger regarding the Price trade. Daniel Norris, who actually started the 2015 season in the Jays’ rotation, was arguably the centrepiece of the trade from the Tigers’ perspective. Even from the Toronto side, there was sadness at seeing him go, not only because of his potential, but also because he is such an unusual personality in comparison with his professional baseball contemporaries. Sadly, Norris has struggled with both injury and health issues, even a bout with thyroid cancer, and is at present far from achieving the potential he has always offered.

Since he’s the main topic for discussion concerning tonight’s 3-2 streak-ending Tiger win over the Jays, let’s leave Matt Boyd to the side for a moment. Meanwhile, a Cracker Jack toy and a crumpled ticket stub (note: explain ticket stub to younger readers) from an old Jays’ win at home to the first person to name the third pitching prospect the Tigers received for David Price. No, sorry to all, but the answer is Jairo Labourt. If Daniel Norris is a work in progress, Labourt is just the idea of a work that might be in progress eventually. Currently pitching in high A ball, mainly starting, his record comprises a high ERA, relatively low total innings pitched, more than a strikeout an inning, but also almost a walk an inning. Oh, and a WHIP of 1.68.

On the other hand, Matt Boyd is on the Tigers’ staff, and has received the occasional start, though again his numbers aren’t greatly impressive to date, 0-2 with an ERA of 5.77 and a WHIP of 1.43. But two of his starts have been against the Blue Jays, both times matched up against Aaron Sanchez. In both of them, the Tigers won 3-2. In neither of them, including last night, has he stayed around for the win, but in both of them he has pitched at least five innings, departing down 1-0 to the Jays on June seventh, and up 2-1 over the Jays tonight. While he’s not quite ready to surpass Justin Verlander or Jordan Zimmerman in the pecking order of the Tigers’ starting staff, his results against the Jays this year bode well for his future success with the Tigers.

Boyd had to show some grit immediately in the bottom of the first to work his way out of a jam that was exacerbated by a defensive lapse. After Zeke Carrera led off by grounding out to second, he walked Josh Donaldson. Edwin Encarnacion followed with a line single to centre. But Tiger centre fielder Cameron Maybin charged too hard on the hop and misplayed it far enough away for an error that allowed Donaldson and Encarnacion to move up. But Boyd then caught Russell Martin looking on a great 3-2 curve ball, and induced Troy Tulowitzki to hit a short fly to centre.

But after Kevin Pillar led off the second with a single, Boyd settled down and retired eleven of the next twelve batters. Junior Lake interrupted a string of eight in a row with an infield single to third leading off the fifth, and advanced to second as Nick Catellanos’ errant throw got away from Miguel Cabrera. Lake almost died at second. Boyd struck out Devon Travis and got Darwin Barney on a foul fly to right. But Carrera tripled home Lake with two outs for the Jays’ first run. Manager Brad Ausmus let Boyd stay in to finish his inning, which he did, walking Donaldson but getting Encarnacion to foul out to Cabrera at first, stranding the last two runners. If a little short, Boyd’s line was workmanlike: 5 innings, 1 run, 4 hits, 2 walks, and 6 strikeouts. At 86 pitches, he probably could have started the sixth, but Ausmus decided not to take a chance.

Meanwhile, Boyd’s old minor league team-mate Aaron Sanchez was almost as effective, but also was finished after five, his pitch count having ballooned alarmingly early. He struck out the side in the first inning and retired the Tigers in order in the third and fifth, but gave up single runs in the second and fourth, which accounted for the lead that stood when he and Boyd were taken out. The second was a particularly messy affair in which both Sanchez himself and right fielder Junior Lake contributed to his problems, and Carrera, on the other hand, bailed him out with a brilliant throw to the plate.

The first three batters reached against Sanchez in the second, on a walk to Victor Martinez, a single to left by Castellano, and a bloop single to right by Justin Upton that might have been catchable if Lake had read it better off the bat. Because the ball hung up, Martinez had to stop at third, and the bases were loaded for Steven Moya. Moya hit a hard liner right at Carrera in left. As Martinez, no speed demon, tagged at third, Carrera positioned himself to launch a perfect strike that Russell Martin caught on the fly right in front of the plate, just off the ground, right before Martinez slid into it. It couldn’t have been placed more perfectly if Carrera had been standing over Martin and dropped the ball into his glove, like a clothespin into a milk bottle. This was clear-cut, no thought of appeal to New York here, and Sanchez was almost out of the inning. Except.

Except that a passed ball by Martin moved Castellanos and Upton up to second and third. And except that Sanchez walked Saltalamacchia, a .203 hitter, on a three-two pitch. And except that he then plunked Andrew Romine, a .222 hitter on a one-two pitch to force Castellanos in. “Ouch”, said Romine. I agree. Tigers, 1-0 after two.

The run in the fourth off Sanchez was a bit more straightforward. With one out Justin Upton doubled. After Sanchez fanned Steven Moya for the second out, Jarrod Saltalamacchia (we old scribes just call him “Salty”, okay?) cashed Upton with a base hit. Sanchez managed to avert more trouble when the lumbering Salty came all the way around to third on a single by Andrew Romine, followed immediately by a Romine theft of second. But with two more ducks on the pond, Ian Kinsler grounded out to third to end the inning. The two-run deficit Sanchez took into the fifth didn’t seem to be nearly as big a concern as the fact that he threw 27 pitches in the fourth, and his count was already at 86 by the end of the inning. A fairly major load was looming for the Jays’ bullpen, not to mention the Tigers’.

As mentioned earlier, the Blue Jays finally got on the board in the bottom of the fifth, but couldn’t produce the second run they needed to get Sanchez off the hook for the loss. Credit to Boyd for getting the best of Encarnacion with a couple of runners on base. A good way to bring his night’s work to a close!

If you like tight, well-pitched ball games, this one was a treat. Unless you were hoping for the Jays to pull it out again like Thursday night. After the starters took their seats, both bullpens held, Biagini (two innings), Grilli, and Storen for Toronto, one Wilson, Rondon, the other Wilson, and closer Francisco Rodriguez, K-Rod, for the Tigers. Rondon gave up the tying run on a Devon Travis solo homer in the seventh, and Grilli gave up the game-winning run on a Victor Martinez solo homer in the eighth.

Ironically, Rondon had stayed on to wrap up the seventh after giving up the dinger to Travis, so he was the pitcher of record when Martinez hit his shot in the eighth. That’s how you get a blown save and a win in the same game. Grilli took the loss for the Jays. K-Rod’s save put him at 24 out of 26 in save opportunities for the season. So here’s a puzzle for you out there: how does a team that’s four games over .500 give its closer 26 save opportunities, whereas a team that’s ten over .500 only gives its closer 20 opportunities. I’m sure there’s an answer to this out there somewhere.

The Jays’ streak is now officially over at seven straight, and tomorrow gives them an opportunity to go into the All-Star break with a shiny new one-game winning streak. As of today’s post-game, it’s Dickey versus TBA tomorrow. TBA. That’s an odd name; wonder where he’s from?

Let’s end with Jairo Labourt. I have an image in my mind of two old guys sitting on benches outside a seniors’ residence thirty years in the future. One of them is a creaky, shades-wearing little old curmudgeon of a Bob McKown. The other is one of his regular callers, let’s say “Bob from Burlington”, perhaps. They are discussing the fact that the Baseball Hall of Fame has just announced the name of its newest electee, Jairo Lebourt. And Bob from Burlington is shouting into Rob McKown’s ear, “Yeah, well we gave that guy away fer nuttin’!”

Baseball is a funny game. Oh, sorry, that line’s already taken, isn’t it? For the younger set out there, it’s the title of Joe Garagiola’s humourous, review of some of the funnier moments in his baseball career—to hear him tell it, they must have been jolly old times in the National League when he was playing. Published in 1960, just as the former veteran major league catcher was beginning to build a career in the baseball broadcast booth, the book helped established his on-mike persona as an easy-going, folksy guy just as happy telling a funny story as he was analyzing the play in front of him. Fans who have been with the Blue Jays since the beginning might recognize the style as similar to that of Early Wynn, the Hall of Fame pitcher who was Tom Cheek’s first radio partner on the Jays’ broadcasts. And, also for the younger set out there, I did not make up that name, all right?

I can recall listening to Garagiola and wishing that he would stop meandering and get to the point, any point. But when you think about it, it’s rather ironic that a lot of listeners found him pretty lame, and got impatient listening to him, yet we hadn’t even heard Harold Reynolds yet. How little we knew.

I’m thinking about the funny—peculiar—nature of baseball as I reflect on tonight’s competent 6-0 whitewashing of the Tigers by three very effective Jays’ pitchers, abetted by some timely hitting and, as so often the case, a very large statement from our Big Teddy, Edwin Encarnacion. Peculiar, because how many times this year have we sat chewing our guts out, waiting for that one big thing to happen that we desperately needed to help us pull out a win, and that mostly didn’t happen? And yet, tonight, though it was rajor-thin for six and a half innings, there was never the sense that this one might get away.

Jay Happ threw a lot of pitches in his five and two thirds innings tonight, but he was never really in much trouble, because he only walked one, and scattered the six hits he yielded to the extent that the Tigers only had two baserunners in an inning twice while he was on the mound. In the third he gave up a double to Jose Iglesias and a single to Miguel Cabrera, but Cabrera’s two-out hit came after Iglesias had blundered into a tag at third on a ground ball back to Happ by Cameron Maybin. In the sixth he gave up another hit to Cabrera leading off, got the next two batters, and was then lifted, at 109 pitches, after issuing his only walk to Maybin. Adding to his high pitch count but in a good way were nine strikeouts. Jesse Chavez came in and completed Happ’s line. He left the bases loaded, after yielding a base hit to the first batter he faced, James McCann, by getting Mike Aviles to ground into a force-out at second.

The Tigers countered Happ by giving the starting assignment to journeyman right-hander Mike Pelfrey, who came to them after several undistinguished years with the Twins. Prior to that, from 2008 to 2011 he had been a regular member of the New York Mets rotation, where he posted a .500 record with an average ERA of around 4.30, while throwing between 193 and 204 innings. I know I keep saying this, but it’s quite amazing how many teams in the Major League Baseball rely on very ordinary starting pitchers with very ordinary stats to carry so much of their rotational load. It almost seems as though the biggest qualification for a place in a rotation is the ability to accumulate innings on the mound, even if they’re not all, or even mostly, quality innings.

Though not possessing the ability to blow hitters away like Happ, Pelfrey’s performance tonight was quite comparable He also gave up 6 hits, but walked three, and threw 103 pitches in six full innings. He departed down 1-0 to the Jays, on a run that scored in the fifth as Josh Donaldson hit into a 5-4-3 double play, scoring Darwin Barney from third. Barney led off with a double to left, and was held at third on Zeke Carrera’s single to centre. With nobody out and runners on first and third, Pelfrey got the ground ball he needed, but it did put the Jays in the lead.

As in last night’s game, both starters kept their teams close and both departed leaving one of them with a one-run lead. For the second night in a row the game would be decided by the bullpens.

For a bullpen that has been maligned and distrusted in general for most of the season, save for the excellence of the closer, it has to be said that more recent outings would suggest that the relief corps is coming around and finding the ability to keep the offence within striking distance. Last night Brett Cecil got himself into trouble but minimized the damage in the seventh, and Jason Grilli and Roberto Osuna kept the Tigers off the board while the Jays mounted the winning rally. Tonight, Jesse Chavez stayed on for the seventh after bailing out his starter in the sixth, and retired the side in order. Bo Schultz then went six up, six down to finish off the game. So, all told, the Jays’ relievers set down ten Tigers in a row to close out the game after Chavez allowed the two-out single to the first batter he faced.

Also for the second night in a row it would be the Detroit bullpen that would crack. Though the run already allowed by Pelfrey proved the winner, hanging the loss on him, the failure of the Tigers to hold the Jays close had to contribute to the obvious brio with which both Chavez and Schultz took the mound.

Like the night before, Manager Brad Ausmus brought in the left-handed Kyle Ryan to turn Justin Smoak around. Like the night before, it didn’t work, as Smoak singled to centre leading off. Like the night before, Ausmus left the southpaw in to face the two right-handed hitters following Smoak, with an eye toward the left-handed-hitting Carrera, down there in the hole. Like the night before, damage was done before he got to Carrera, and then he walked the guy he was supposed to get, after yielding a run-scoring double to Kevin Pillar and getting Darwin Barney on a liner to first. Of course Ausmus pulled Ryan after the walk to Zeke, and the call went out to Bobby Parnell, who got the second out when Josh Donaldson hit an infield fly, but then gave up the clincher for the Jays, a three-run homer to Edwin Encarnacion. Parnell escaped further damage, though he did give up base hits to the Canadian Corps, Michael Saunders and Russell Martin, before retiring the side.

It had to feel pretty good, then, to Bo Schultz as he came in to start the eighth, now with a five-run lead to protect, rather than a one-run lead. As I reported above, Schultz was good for it, and the team shutout was preserved.

Just for good measure the home boys added a nice small-ball run from their bottom guys, who seem to work so well together, in the bottom of the eighth against their old teammate Mark Lowe, who has not exactly found the Elysian Fields in Detroit. After Lowe fanned Justin Smoak to lead off the inning, Kevin Pillar singled to left, and then he and Darwin Barney pulled off a textbook hit-and-run, sending Pillar to third, ready to score when Zeke Carrera followed with a sac fly. Nicely done!

Now up by six, Schultz sailed through the ninth and the game was in the bag.

So, how do you feel when every critical turning point in the game falls in your favour, especially when it results in a seventh straight win? Pretty darned good.

Tomorrow night it’s Aaron Sanchez for the Jays going against former Jay prospect Matt Boyd, one of the puzzle pieces given up to Detroit for David Price last year. Anyone up for eight straight?

Okay, so the Royals have left town, their purple robes trailing sadly in the mud behind them, yet they still seem to offer a starting point for our deliberations on tonight’s exciting, old-timey-baseball type Blue Jays’ five-four comeback win over the visiting Detroit Tigers. This was a game which turned on the Jays’ ability to perform in the clutch more like the 2015 Royals than the 2016 first-half Blue Jays.

It’s the last series before the All-Star break, and what a great way to end the first “half” of the season (actually, we passed that marker seven games ago) it would be to take three out of four, or even sweep, the Tigers. We would go into the break in possession of a wild-card spot in the standings, we would finish with the wind in our sails and the momentum all on our side, and we could look to the rest of a July that should see three important pieces of our pennant-winning puzzle fall back into place, with the return of Jose Bautista, Marco Estrada, and Ryan Goins from the disabled list.

But tonights’s matchup with the Tigers offered us its own challenges going in. It was the first time that Estrada’s spot in the rotation would come up since he was put on the DL. Pitching for the Tigers would be their veteran (how time marches on, as my father used to say, way too often) ace Justin Verlander, who has always pitched well in Toronto, and in fact threw the last no-hitter recorded at the TV Dome. Finally, they were facing a team looking for a fight, a team that had just lost two out of three to the Indians, and in the process extended a season-long winless streak for themselves against the Indians to eleven games, before finally breaking out and belting them twelve to two last night before leaving for Toronto.

Filling in for Estrada tonight was Drew Hutchison, called up to the big team on the second of July, first to shore up the bullpen, and second to prepare for the possibility of having to make a start like this. Hutchison finds himself in an odd position this year, one that he can’t be particularly happy about, but which gives the Blue Jays the luxury of having a proven major-league starter just waiting in the wings ninety minutes away in Buffalo, keeping his arm loose and ready to answer the call when needed, fresh, unstressed, and ready to go. With him available, they can afford to be careful with a starter who might need to skip a turn, and he also gives them the luxury of thinking about the much-discussed move of Aaron Sanchez to the bullpen for the latter part of the season.

Hutchison’s history, for those of you who don’t know it, is that he joined the rotation early in the 2012 season, before his 22^nd birthday, and pitched effectively for eleven starts before coming down with arm trouble. His stay on the DL was extended until it was decided in August of that year that he needed Tommy John surgery, which would not only end his rookie season, but take him out of consideration for all of 2013 while he rehabbed. The operation and recovery were a success, and he spent 2014 in the Jays’ rotation. His numbers were a mixed bag, 11-14 with an ERA of 4.48, but he threw 184.2 innings, struck out a batter an inning, and averaged almost six innings a start. Between his 2014 record and his performance in spring training in 2015 he showed enough promise that the Jays named him as their starting pitcher for 2015, their youngest in franchise history to that point.

Then last year was just a really weird one for Hutchison. Even his basic numbers baffle: 13 wins, 5 losses, but an ERA of 5.57. Even more weirdly, he was Cy Young at home, going 11-2 with an ERA of 2.91, and Sigh, Hutch, on the road, 2-3 and 9.83. Kind of hard to plan your rotation so that one of your regular starters only pitches at home! The upshot of this strange record is that he was optioned to Buffalo in August, remained there for the rest of the year, and languished as the forgotten man at the end of the season, never really even being considered for the playoff roster, his place effectively taken by the surprise early return to active duty of Marcus Stroman.

This year, after participating in the rigged spring training “competition” for a spot in the rotation, which eventually went to Aaron Sanchez, as we all knew it would, he was again optioned to Buffalo and told to keep his powder dry. He’s pitched very well there, clearly out of his league, and stands at the ready. Tonight would be his second spot start of the season, and give him another chance to force Jays’ management to think hard about his place in the organization.

On the surface, then, to the uninitiated, tonight’s pitching matchup would look like a monumental mismatch, pitting the spot starter against the great Verlander. But as we know, Hutchison is not a stereotypical spot starter—throw him out there and hope he gives us five—and this year’s Justin Verlander is not the imposing Justin Verlander of yore. Going into tonight’s game, his record was 8-6, and his ERA 4.11. On the other hand, his innings total ranked among the best in the league, and he was still striking out slightly better than one batter per inning.

All of the foregoing discussion is to lead up to the fact that it was basically a saw-off tonight between the two starters, with Hutchison’s line even looking slightly better than Verlander’s. Hutch went six innings, gave up six hits and three runs, walked one and struck out seven while throwing 90 pitches. Verlander gave up one run less, but laboured more, going five and two thirds, also giving up six hits, the two runs, while walking four and striking out five over 103 pitches. After Hutchison finished his night’s work with a clean sixth inning, Verlander got into trouble in the bottom of the sixth, and was only able to leave with his lead intact, to be preserved by Shane Greene who got the last out, due to some significant luck bestowed on him by the baseball gods, and a magnificently-executed fielding play he made himself to snuff out the tying run at the plate. The drama of this inning deserves its own narrative.

With one out, Kevin Pillar singled to centre. His partner in stirring up trouble at the bottom of the order, Darwin Barney, hit a shot to right centre that split the outfielders, and looked good to one-hop the wall. The always-sharp Pillar, reading the ball perfectly off the bat, got a great jump from first, and scored easily. But the one-hop was a little too hoppy, and hopped right over the hoppin’ wall for a ground rule double. Pillar, who was already jogging back to the dugout with the tying run in his hip pocket, had to go back to third. Significant luck? You better believe it!

Still only one out, Zeke Carrera dragged a bunt with him up the first-base line that 99 times out of a hundred scores Pillar from third on the safety squeeze. Who are these guys wearing Blue Jays’ blue? But this was the hundredth time, and it was Verlander’s time, to get on the ball, which was actually a good bunt, so quickly that he thought he saw a chance at the plate. He threw it to the perfect spot, McCann maybe applied the tag in time on Pillar despite a brilliant slide, the ump called “out”, the Jays challenged, the New York poobahs mulled the angles and examined the entrails, called “out”, and Pillar was finally, definitively, out at the plate, preserving the Tigers’ lead. The bang-bang plate at the plate, the archetype of bang-bang plays at the plate, ended Verlander’s day, and he was ushered to a seat of honour on the Tigers’ bench, as Shane Greene came in to finish the inning, two outs now, Barney at third, and Carrera at first. Verlander might have been through pitching, but he wasn’t through sweating, as Greene added his own little dramatic twist to the proceedings by hitting Josh Donaldson with his one-two pitch to load the bases before fanning Edwin Encarnacion to deflate our hopes, but just for the time being.

Just for the record, we should mention that the Jays had jumped out in front of Verlander with two outs in the first. He had walked Donaldson after retiring Carrera, who led off, on a grounder to second. Donaldson had advanced to second on Encarnacion’s soft grounder to third that Nick Castellanos realized was too slow to get the force, and threw on to first. With two outs, Michael Saunders scored Donaldson with a single to centre, and then Russell Martin doubled to left to score Saunders, off with the crack of the bat with two outs. Two runs on two hits with a runner in scoring position with two outs. Two sweet!

Detroit got one run back immediately in the top of the second, when Hutchison made one of those ouchie mistakes that drive managers wild (or, in Gibbie’s case, wilder). After breezing through the first on nine pitches, and dispatching Victor Martinez and Nick Castellanos on eight more in the second, and after being gifted with the lead, he grooved a two-strike pitch to Justin Upton, and Upton promptly halved the Toronto lead. The Tigers then took the lead in the fourth, one run coming in on a second gopher ball thrown by the Jays’ sixth man, this time to Castellanos. Upton followed with a double, and scored the lead run on catcher James McCann’s two-out single. The damage was already done, the Tigers in the lead, so it mattered little that McCann challenged Zeke Carrera’s arm on the single and got himself thrown out at second to end the inning. Or maybe it mattered a lot, since the Jays eventually won by just one run.

So, jumping around a bit here, that’s how we arrive at the seventh, the game in the hands of the bullpens, and the Tigers up three-two. Brett Cecil was first out of the gate for Manager Gibbons, and got into trouble right quick. He gave up a leadoff double to that guy McCann again, and Jose Iglesias followed with a single, but McCann was held at third. Cecil got the next three outs, but the first two came on a double-play ball off the bat of Ian Kinsler, on which McCann scored the dreaded “plus-one” run. So it’s four to two Detroit heading for the top of the seventh.

Now, if this were the Torontos of April and May 2016, they would have thrown in the towel at the immensity of the task ahead of them, and conceded the nine outs to lose the game. But if it were the Kansas City Royals of last year, they’d head for the dugout licking their chops, thinking, “we’ve got ’em right where we want ’em!” Now, in early July of 2016, what model would our heroes emulate?

The first three hitters to face Greene, who stayed in the game, answered that question, and the lead was cut to one. Saunders hit a ground-rule double to right leading off, and Troy Tulowitzki singled him home after a Russell Martin ground-out. That brought Greene’s short night to an end, and Tiger Manager Brad Ausmus brought in the left-handed Justin Wilson to turn around the switch-hitter Justin Smoak. Just in time, you might say, because Wilson fanned Smoak for the second out, with the generous help of an egregiously bad checked-swing strike-three call from first base umpire Joe West. He gave up a two-out single to Kevin Pillar, but then got Darwin Barney to ground out to second to preserve the slim Tiger lead.

The grizzled veteran Jay reliever Jason Grilli came on to pitch the eighth, and stranded a two-out walk to Nick Castellanos by fanning Justin Upton to end the inning. The excitable Grilli bounced off the mound with his now familiar excited fist-pump, which might have been a harbinger of good things to come for his team-mates.

Showing an interesting difference in approach to managing his relievers from that of John Gibbons, Brad Ausmus once again sent back out the pitcher who had finished off the previous inning. And once again, it didn’t work very well. Carrera singled to centre to lead off against Wilson, and Donaldson followed with an opposite-field single that brought Carrera around to third. After he fanned Edwin Encarnacion, it looked like he might survive the inning when he got Michael Saunders to bounce to first, and Carrera, not really executing the contact play very well, was out on a close play at the plate. Wilson walking Russell Martin to load the bases was what finally convinced Ausmus to replace his lefty Wilson with his righty Wilson, Alex, to pitch to Troy Tulowitzki.

Sorry, Brad, that didn’t work out too well, either. Tulo, channeling his secret inner Kansas City-ness (oh how it pains me to say this!), shot a grounder through the right side, with two outs, mind you, to score Donaldson and Saunders with the tying and lead runs, and the Jays had scored one in the seventh and two in the eighth to overtake a two-run lead, without hitting a home run. This is a refreshingly new and happy outcome for our boys, I must say.

Wilson (Alex) got Justin (Smoak) to fly out to left to end the inning, but the horse was already out of the barn, and the Tigers’ lead was gone. Roberto Osuna came in for the save and shut them down in order in the ninth, characteristically saving his one strikeout of the inning for the third out, to earn his eighteenth save in twenty opportunities.

A game that offered the promise of an interesting starting pitching matchup ended up being a game of bullpen effectiveness versus situational hitting effectiveness. On both sides of the baseball, the Blue Jays came out on top, so naturally they rung up the win.

Tomorrow night Toronto goes for its seventh win in a row, and Jay Happ will get the start against journeyman Mike Pelfrey for the Tigers.

He’s ba-a-a-a-ck!

Marcus Stroman strode to the mound tonight, reached into his back pocket, and pulled out his Stro-mojo, demonstrating to the whole baseball world that he still had it, and it was as potent as ever.

All talk of skipping a turn in the rotation, being sent to the bullpen, going down to Buffalo to regroup, faded into a barely-remembered background murmuring, as Stroman fronted the Jays to an exciting and precise 4-2 victory over the reigning World Series champs the Kansas City Royals.

This was vintage Stroman, if a twenty-five-year-old with only parts of three major league seasons under his belt, comprising a grand total of 42 career starts, can claim anything vintage about himself. He went eight innings, giving up two earned runs, and three hits while walking one and striking out six. He only threw 85 pitches, and induced 14 ground balls that produced 15 outs. The only balls hit to the outfield were the three hits he gave up, a triple to Alcides Escobar that produced the Royals’ first run, cashing a Brett Eibner walk in the sixth, an Eric Hosmer leadoff single in the seventh that was immediately erased with a double play by the Blue Jays, and a one-out homer to left by Eibner that temporarily tied the game in the eighth.

Luckily for Stroman, Manager John Gibbons chose to let him finish the inning. No reason not to, unless the next hitter got on base, but you know Gibby and his nervous trigger finger. Having wrapped up the eighth inning himself, he was still on the record for the win when the Jays suddenly reclaimed the lead with two outs in the bottom of the inning, and then reaped the benefit of Roberto Osuna’s seventeenth save in nineteen opportunities.

Oh, and did you notice that all the offence the Royals could muster against Stroman came in the sixth, seventh, and eighth innings? Well, that’s just because he was letter-perfect in the first five, mowing down fifteen Royals in a row to enter the sixth with a two-nothing lead.

The Royals countered Stroman on the mound with Ian Kennedy, the free agent from the San Diego Padres they had signed in the off-season, and whom they expected to fill an important spot in their starting rotation. As I mentioned the other day, when reviewing the changes made by the Royals in preparation for 2016, Kennedy may have filled a spot in the rotation, contributing 17 starts and throwing 99.2 innings counting today’s work, but he’s hardly filled it with distinction, coming out of the game with a

6-7 won-loss record, and an ERA of 3.97. It’s not like the Royals shouldn’t have known what they were getting either, since Kennedy’s combined 2014-2015 won-loss record with an admittedly weaker team was 22-28, with a decent ERA of 3.63 in 2014 but a mediocre 4.28 in 2015.

To give him his due, Kennedy was far better than his record shows today, giving up only two runs on four hits with one walk while striking out ten, while throwing 101 pitches. He departed without the chance of a win, down 2-1 at the time, the only difference between his and Stroman’s performances to being a fifth-inning solo home run by newly annointed All-Star Michael Saunders, winner of the American League Final Man vote, that put the Jays into a lead that would hold until Eibner’s blast off Stroman in the eighth tied it up.

Following the formula set by the Royals last year of staying close, then rallying late for the win, and relying on the bullpen for the save, the Jays struck with sudden swiftness in the bottom of the eighth. Facing Kelvin Herrera, the strongest arm remaining in the Royals’ bullpen, in the absence of Wade Davis, it looked like the home team was destined for ninth-inning drama, or extra innings, after Herrera started the inning by freezing Zeke Carrera (could this be the germ of a poem?) with an incredible curve ball, and fanning Josh Donaldson.

But Edwin Encarnacion ripped a two-out double to left, then raced (yes, Edwin raced) for the plate to score on a single to centre by All-Star Clutch Hitter Michael Saunders. The glaring hole left in centre by the absent Lorenzo Cain was never more evident than by the fact that Edwin actually scored standing up, as the throw to the plate from Jarrod Dyson sliced twenty feet up the third-base line. Even worse, it allowed Saunders to take second, whence he was perfectly positioned to score easily when Russell Martin, going the other way in the crunch yet again, hit a double to right. Two strikeouts, three quick hits, two quick runs, and Herrera was in line for the loss, and Marcus Stroman for the win, to reward him for his fine effort. It hardly mattered that Herrera fanned Troy Tulowitzki to finish striking out the side and strand Martin at second.

Roberto Osuna gave up a two-out single to Eric Hosmer, but recorded the save on fourteen pitches, with one strikeout. It’s kind of interesting that, for all of his power and awesome stuff, Osuna doesn’t usually generate more than one whiff per inning. He seems to be working in the same style as Stroman and Aaron Sanchez, limiting the pitch count by pitching to soft (mostly) contact.

How satisfying is it to sweep the Royals the first time we see them after the devastating loss in last year’s ALCS. And finishing it off with a 2015 Royals-style sudden late rally in the third game just put the ricotta into the canolli.

A key factor in this sweep of the Royals, obviously, is the primacy of the Blue Jays’ starting pitching. Here’s an interesting and revealing simple statistic to reflect on. Of the 27 innings the Jays’ pitchers had to work, Sanchez threw eight, Dickey threw seven, and Stroman threw eight, for a total of 23 innings by the starting pitchers. By contrast, the Royals’ starters went six, two and a third, and six, for a total of fourteen and a third innings. This means, obviously, that of the 24 innings Kansas City pitchers had to cover—because they lost all three games in regulation to the home team—their bullpen had to cover nine and two thirds innings, while the Jays’ relievers had to cover four innings. Also by comparison/contrast, Baltimore’s starters for the same three-game period threw 16 innings, while Boston’s starters were more competitive with the Jays, throwing 20 innings. Just to be fair to our guys, it should be noted that the trio of Boston starters bore the names Price, Porcello, and Wright, and if you subbed in any other Boston starter for one of these three, the total would start to decline, whereas you have a good chance of getting a similar performance out of any three of the five Jays’ starters. If this trend continues, as it has for most of the first half of the season, it can’t help but have a profound effect on the race for the divisional title down the stretch.

Now 48 and 39, the Jays host the Tigers at the TV Dome tomorrow night in a four-game series that will bring us to the All-Star break. Drew Hutchison gets the spot start in the first game in place of Marco Estrada. Some spot: the Tigers have Justin Verlander taking the hill against Hutchison.

[A brief note from yer humble scribe: if you are a regular reader, you will have noticed that my game reports have fallen behind “real time”. I apologize for this, but I have had to tend to the needs of my wife, who had major surgery at the end of June. I have adapted to the new conditions and am now able to carry on with up-to-the-day reports as her recovery progresses. That’s why the gods gave us the All-Star break, so we can catch up on our reporting! I will finish covering the Tigers series in Toronto during the break, and be ready to go for the beginning of the post-break series in Seattle, trust me.]