Long Ball Stories

It’s strange how your mind works sometimes. Shortly after the Blue Jays won the series clincher over the Orioles tonight, I saw a headline on a game recap that referred to Aaron Sanchez as a “single-A pitcher”, a humourous reference to his recent “demotion” to Dunedin for R and R, which ended with tonight’s start against the Orioles in Baltimore.

I started turning that idea around in my head, until it suddenly transformed itself into “the pitcher from Single-A”, and then I realized what was happening. The phrase is a slight emendation of the title of a baseball novel published in 1950, The Catcher from Double A, by Duane Decker, one of a series of thirteen young adult baseball novels he wrote about the fictional major league team, the “Blue Sox”.

When I was a kid growing up in the middle of Detroit in the 1950s, one of the high points of my childhood was the acquisition of a library card, which came about the same time I was allowed to walk the mile or so to the nearest public library branch. I was eight years old. Of course, any parent today who let an eight-year-old boy walk a mile to the library in what was already well on the way to becoming “inner city Detroit”, would be arrested and charged with child neglect, if not abuse. Funny that what made me happiest in childhood would not be permitted today.

The Montclair branch of the Detroit Public Library was a classic old neighbourhood library building, paneled and shelved in heavily varnished hardwood, the whole interior permeated by the intoxicating smell of books, glue, old paper, leather, and maybe a whiff of the librarian’s cologne hanging in the air. In the children’s section of the library (this was well before the days of “young adult” readers; “children” meant anyone not an adult), the sports section was one bank of four shelves. By the time I was ten, I had read every single book on those shelves, even including one about an American teenager who aspires to ride in the Tour de France.

Among the first titles that I raced through were all of the early Blue Sox novels, each of which featured the arrival in the big leagues and the coming to maturity of a young player who had to overcome various problems to become a real professional and a good team-mate on a contending team. There was a novel with a main character for each position on the field, so the author in building the series was also building his fictional championship team. It was a wonderful series, replete with vivid, continuing characters, and I can remember how empty I felt when the lineup card was filled and I had read all the stories.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that reading that phrase about the class-A pitcher made me think with great nostalgia about the Blue Sox, and about their catcher from Double-A, Pete Gibbs. One last note: as I looked over the titles in the series before I started writing this, I was struck by how white and Anglo-Saxon the Blue Sox were. There was one black player who made the team, in a book published not long after Jackie Robinson’s debut, but no Hispanics, no Orientals, no Black players from the overseas territories of the Netherlands. (Didi Gregorius, Zander Bogaerts, Jonathan Schoop). Just . . . white guys. What a different world that was, when you think about the diversity in the Blue Jays dugout, which is reflected to a considerable extent in the faces that appear in the stands at the TV Dome every game. Baseball is far the better for it, and so is the world, but I did love my Blue Sox.

So, all eyes were on Aaron Sanchez as he made his first start since his enforced “time out” in Dunedin, designed to relieve him of some innings of workload, yet having him available for the crucial games in the stretch run against divisional opponents.

But we were in Baltimore, so Orioles’ starter Yovani Gallardo had to navigate the intimidating top of the Jays’ batting order before Sanchez would take the mound. Gallardo, who was signed by the Orioles off the free agent market in February, after raising at least some speculation that he might be signing with Toronto, is a ten-year veteran with a career record including this year of 106-82 and an ERA of 3.78. He toiled mostly in the National League, seven years with the Brewers, before being traded to the Rangers for 2015, where he became an important cog in their playoff run.

However, Gallardo has struggled with injuries this season in Baltimore, and to the consternation of the Baltimore fans, his numbers don’t reflect the interest he garnered on the market last winter, sitting at 4-6 and 5.69. Tonight, also to the consternation of the Baltimore fans, but to the delight of the Blue Jays fans already in their seats at Camden Yards, and the disappointment of their fellows who hadn’t reached theirs yet, Jose Bautista deposited Gallardo’s first pitch of the game into the left-field seats.

Gallardo settled enough after that to dispatch Josh Donaldson and Edwin Encarnacion on infield grounders, but then he walked Michael Saunders, bringing Russell Martin to the plate as the cleanup hitter. When Martin goes to right field with power you know he’s swinging the bat well, and he swung the bat well on a 3-2 pitch from Gallardo, and delivered it to the inhabitants of the first row of seats in right centre. The Jays and Sanchez were up 3-0 before he even took the hill.

Before we talk about Sanchez, let’s look ahead to the second and third, when the Jays had Gallardo on the ropes but let him off, giving him the opportunity to rebound from his start and turn in one of his better performances of the year through the middle innings, and kept his team in contention in a close game. In the second, Dioner Navarro, marking his first appearance after returning to the Blue Jays, tonight as DH, hitting left against Gallardo, singled sharply to right to lead off the second, but was ultimately erased when Devon Travis hit into a double play started by third baseman Manny Machado. As an aside on Navarro, much of the focus on his acquisition has been about his positive effect on team chemistry, and about pairing him with certain pitchers, but we should also appreciate the fact that he is a switch hitter, and provides some badly-needed port-side presence to the lineup. Now that we enter September after tonight’s game, presumably there’ll be a third catcher on the bench, so it’s not a concern that the team has its only two catchers in the batting order.

In the third, though, Gallardo was lucky to get out with his skin, and with the lead still only 3-0 as Toronto missed a real opportunity to blow him away and the game open. Jose Bautista led off with his second hit of the night, a single to left. Then Josh Donaldson went the other way to single to right. Both runners moved up on a wild pitch that skipped away from Matt Wieters’ attempted block. Edwin Encarnacion was caught looking in a tough at-bat both for him and the pitcher, when he fouled off one four-seamer on three and two, before taking the next one for a strike that he didn’t think was there. This brought up Michael Saunders with one out and first base open. Even though it was only the third inning, mindful of the clutch homer that Saunders had hit last night off Ubaldo Jimenez, Manager Buck Showalter decided to put Saunders on to load the bases for Russell Martin. This was quite the risk, considering he was passing one dangerous guy in the clutch for another, who had already hit a two-run homer in the first. This time it worked, though. Martin hit the ball hard, but right at Manny Machado guarding the bag, where he would step on third for the force and easily double up Martin.

Incredibly, after the rocky start, Saunders was the last batter to reach base, as Gallardo retired the side in the fourth, fifth, and sixth, meaning that he got eleven outs on the last ten batters he faced. With a line of six innings, three runs, five hits, two walks, and three strikeouts on 102 pitches Gallardo departed with a quality start, but down 3-1, with little chance of gaining the win. Though the Orioles had scored their first and only run, which was unearned, in the bottom of the fifth, Aaron Sanchez shut them down in order in the sixth, and departed the game himself, in line for the win, and with the unlucky Gallardo in line for the loss.

So Aaron Sanchez only gave up one unearned run on five hits in six innings with three walks and two strikeouts over 112 pitches. It was a quality start for sure, and he ended up getting the win to go to 13 and 3, but can we say that the extra rest really helped? There are, of course, two ways of looking at that question. In the short term, did missing a turn and going and following what in effect was a rehab schedule, apparently, for ten days, help him to stay strong and sharp, or did it throw him off? In the long term, we won’t know the answer to the routine they’ve created for him until we know if he’s able to pitch in his last scheduled start of the season, hopefully game four or five of the World Series. Even beyond that, we might not know whether it was the right thing to do until we see if he gets through an ordinary marquee starter’s workload in 2017 without having any arm problems. Then, of course, maybe he would never have developed arm problems regardless of the innings. This ain’t science, folks.

My very strong impression gained both from observing his demeanour on the mound and watching the progress of his at-bats, is that this was not one of his best performances despite the numbers, and that his command, both of his pitches and of his routine, was less than what we’ve come to expect of him this year. Even within his pitching line, the three strikeouts over six innings, notably lower than his season average of 7.4 strikeouts per nine innings pitched, an average which includes tonight’s three punchouts, is telling.

Then look at his base-runners. He retired the side in order only in the second. In the first he got the first two outs then gave up a single and a walk. In the third he got the first two outs and allowed a single. In the fourth he walked the leadoff batter, Chris Davis, then was lucky to see Devon Travis make a circus catch going away from the infield on a nasty blooper by Mark Trumbo for the first out, before retiring the side. In the sixth, he gave up a one-out base hit to Matt Wieters, and with his pitch count already over 100, was teetering on the edge of being yanked, but was able to retire his last two batters to finish off the inning.

The fifth inning? Oh, that was a special case, and though the damage was minimized, it was not a pretty sight, for either Sanchez or the normally rock-solid third baseman Josh Donaldson. Once again, Sanchez breezed through the first two hitters, Jay Hardy grounding out to short, and Nelson Reimold lining out to Kevin Pillar in centre. Then Hyun Soo Kim singled to right and Jonathan Schoop singled to left, with Kim blazing around to third, bringing the dangerous Manny Machado to the plate. Sanchez made the pitch he needed to Machado, who hit an easy bouncer to Donaldson at third. Donaldson came in, and perhaps thinking of Machado’s speed just plain missed the catch, as the ball deflected off his glove while Kim scored on the play. Chris Davis walked on four pitches before Mark Trumbo flied out to right to finally end the inning.

The run hurt, of course, because Sanchez had protected a 3-0 lead since the first inning. But what hurt more was the extension of the inning, which clearly cost Sanchez any chance of going seven innings. He went into the inning with a reasonable 63 pitches for four innings, but took 25 to get out of it, bringing him to 88 for the game.

As of the seventh inning, both starters were done, then. Gallardo had acquitted himself considerably better than expected, and Aaron Sanchez in comparison seemed to struggle a bit. Yet it was Sanchez who left with the lead, having given up only an unearned run, while Gallardo was on the hook for the loss, thanks to the two pitches in the first that left the ball yard.

You would think that with the Jays in the lead, they wouldn’t have to worry about the premier arms in the Baltimore bullpen. Yet perhaps because Buck Showalter is sensing the season getting away from him he may have felt that it was necessary to pull out all the stops to try to win the series. So he used his regular seventh and eighth inning hold pitchers, Mychal Givens and all-star setup man Brad Brach. A great idea, but it didn’t quite work out for the Orioles. Each coughed up a run to the Jays, giving them some insurance. It’s a good thing for Showalter that he has an off night tomorrow night, because he’d burned his two-best hold pitchers in a losing cause.

Givens didn’t look to be in much trouble in his inning. Troy Tulowitzki led off by striking out. Then Dioner Navarro lifted a soft, loopy single to right that should have scared no one, especially since Givens followed by fanning Kevin Pillar. But then with two outs Devon Travis rifled one into the left field corner, and in one of the most improbable scenes of the season to date, with the two outs already posted, Dioner Navarro steamed around the bases and scored all the way from first on the double. Much hilarity ensued in the dugout as Navarro feigned trying to catch his breath while his mates fanned him with towels.

Next came Brad Brach for the Orioles, and Toronto hasn’t had much success against him. He looked pretty good tonight as well, until he got to two outs, when he served up a juicy one to Michael Saunders, who pulled it over the fence in right for a very welcome insurance run, and you can’t have too many of those, especially in Baltimore. Before Saunders came to the plate, Brach had to pitch over a soft looping “single” to short centre off the bat of Josh Donaldson. I don’t know who’s training or influencing the score keeper in Baltimore, but where I come from, this was totally an error by Jonathan Schoop, who moved out under the ball languidly, didn’t quite get all the way under it when he had plenty of time to be camped, and let it clank off his glove. I’m sure Josh appreciates the base hit. I hope Schoop appreciates not having an error charged against him. Anyway, Brach enticed Edwin Encarnacion into hitting a double-play ball to cut down Josh, and would have been home free, except for Saunders.

After Stroman’s departure, Manager John Gibbons used Joaquin Benoit in the seventh, who gave up a leadoff walk before shutting the Orioles down. Then in the eighth, with lefty Chris Davis followed by righty Mark Trumbo followed by lefty Pedro Alvarez, Gibbie elected to have Brett Cecil start the inning, hoping he’d get the two lefties out and not let Trumbo do any damage in between. Well, Cecil tried, he really did, but didn’t quite finish the whole job. Davis flied out to the warning track in left on the first pitch, but then Trumbo hit a single to right, and Cecil wasn’t going to pitch to Alvarez anyway at that point, so Gibbie yanked him for Scott Feldman. Feldman came in and did his job well. In nine pitches he caught Steve Pearce, hitting for Alvarez, looking at a called third strike, and then got Matt Wieters to hit a weak little bouncer up the line that he fielded and made the tag on Wieters himself.

After the elegant-sounding yet sharp-throwing Oliver Drake retired the Jays in order on eight pitches in the top of the ninth, Manager Gibbons decided yet again, to my continuing annoyance, to bring Roberto Osuna in to mop up with a four-run lead. Feldman could easily have taken the ninth, and is capable of multiple innings, so why not leave him out there? Oh, because Osuna had warmed up. Yup, gotta get him in there. This was almost a double disaster for the Blue Jays. As usual Osuna wasn’t very sharp when there was no save on the line. With two outs and Nelson Reimold on first with a single, Osuna served up a gopher ball to Schoop, making the game closer and more tense than it should have been. Worse, and it could have been infinitely worse, Osuna dodged the injury bullet when Jay Hardy, the leadoff hitter for the Orioles in the ninth, rifled one back through the box that caromed hard off Osuna’s left wrist just above the glove. The ball went right to Travis who got the out at first, but the main concern, of course, was Osuna. After consultation with the trainers, Osuna decided to carry on, and he did finish out the inning despite the tater to Schoop. Really, folks, it’s time for Gibbie to just leave Osuna taking it easy in the bullpen, and only bring him in to do the job he’s been give, saving close games.

So the Jays started on top, were never headed, received a decent if not overwhelming pitching performance from Aaron Sanchez in his return from voluntary exile, and would have chilled out comfortably, except for the perennial ninth-inning drama. Boston mashed Tampa Bay at Fenway, so the Jays stayed two ahead of the Sox and moved up to four games over the Orioles as all three teams looked forward to a Thursday off.

Friday night it will be Marcus Stroman against Alex Cobb, in his first start since 2014 after Tommy John surgery. Should be a good matchup, despite the venue, the odious Orange Juicer Dome in Tampa.

Well, that didn’t turn out very well!

It looked like we should have had everything going for us tonight in Baltimore. First, there was momentum. We had won four straight, including the first game of this series, while Baltimore had lost four of their last six, including two big blowouts by the Yankees on the weekend in New York. Then, there were the starting pitchers, Jay Happ, who has been strong all season, going against Ubaldo Jimenez, who has barely been able to keep his spot in the Orioles’ rotation this year, and whose lunch the Jays ate big time earlier in the season. And then there was Josh Donaldson, who’d hit four homers in his last two games, and could be going on a tear that could carry the team on his back.

Even once the game got going and we realized that the pitching assumptions weren’t panning out, it still looked okay, because we had the formula, right? So, if Happ wasn’t at his best, as long as he held the Orioles fairly close we could strike back when a relatively sharp Jimenez started to tire, as long as it didn’t get too close to Brach/Britton time, which shows up on the baseball clock at about exactly the same as Grilli/Osuna time. And when Michael Saunders struck against Jimenez in the seventh to tie it up, didn’t we have our own dynamic duo all rested up after they layed out Monday night?

So, what could go wrong? Well, here’s what could go wrong. After the Saunders homer tied it up in the top of the seventh, the Happ/Joe Biagini combo shut the O’s down in the bottom of the inning, nullifying a Steve Pearce hit-batsman by Biagini. Brad Brach stranded a two-out single to centre by Donaldson in the top of the eighth, and this brought us to the home half, and Jason Grilli’s turn to do what he’s been doing, pitch his fifteenth runless inning in a row. Like Benoit the night before, he had to face the meat of the Baltimore order. Like Benoit the night before, he made short work of them, Mark Trumbo popping out in foul ground to Devon Travis, and Chris Davis fanning. But then, like he’s done before, Grilli lost a little concentration and walked Jonathan Schoop on a three-one count, bringing Matt Wieters to the plate. This was one batter more than Grilli needed to face. On his very first pitch, a fast ball on the inner half of the plate, Wieters got all of it, and deposited it among the delirious strollers on the terrace above the scoreboard in right.

The last thing you want to do is let the Orioles get a couple runs up on you in the bottom of the eighth, because you’ve only got three outs to get them back, and you have to go through Zach Britton to do it. So far this year, not a single team has done so; Britton has 39 saves in 39 save opportunities. Just in case you think this year is a one-off for Britton, his record for 2014-present is 112 saves out of 120 save opportunities. Many commentators are suggesting that Britton should be in the Cy Young conversation this year, and I think that’s a legitimate position. If he were to get it, it should be as much for his recent body of work as for what he’s done just this year.

Tonight it was no different for the Jays against Britton in the ninth inning. Oh, Darwin Barney hitting for Michael Saunders muscled a bloop single into centre, and even took second while the Baltimore infielders ignored him, but Britton did what he does, got three ground ball outs for that 39^th consecutive save in 2016, and the Jays now had to look at Wednesday’s game for their first series win of the season at Camden Yards.

As much as I’ve already doomed Baltimore to drop out of the race, and as much as it might seem from their recent play that it is already happening, that doesn’t mean that it’s ever easy to go into Baltimore and win a game, let alone a series. After two games, the current series has shown nothing to dispel that fact of life. Anyone, like yer humble scribe, who expected last night’s efficient win, a good pitching performance by starter and bullpen combined with timely hitting, to set a pattern for the next two games is living in a fool’s paradise. (I know mine is a fool’s paradise, but it’s my own, and I like it here!)

So, Baltimore’s resorting to Ubaldo Jiminez tonight was a sign of hopeless desperation, was it? Well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. His first two innings suggested that he was teetering on the brink, and one hard-hit ball at the right time would push him over like a house of cards. He survived walking two of the first three hitters he faced in the first by getting Russell Martin to hit into a double play. In the second, after Troy Tulowitzki made the first out by lining hard to centre fielder Nolan Reimold, playing in the absence of injured perennial Blue Jay tormenter Adam Jones, Michael Saunders hit a double to right. Saunders owns Jimenez so completely that he makes him don a collar so he can take his pet pitcher for a walk when Jimenez is in town. Melvin Upton grounded out to third for the second out, but the plucky Kevin Pillar looped a single into centre to score Saunders with the game’s first run.

But the dismantling of Ubaldo Jimenez was not going to happen tonight. After Pillar’s RBI hit, Jimenez retired thirteen batters in a row, with only Pillar breaking the string with his second hit, a single to left with one out in the fifth, before being erased on a double-play ball to Devon Travis. Only in his last inning did a fading Jimenez get into trouble for the second time in the game, and it resulted in a tie game. Russell Martin led off the inning with a solid single to left. After Tulo flew out to centre, Michael Saunders came to the plate to face his favourite pitcher. Three-time Manager of the Year Buck Showalter, who resembles the Knight of the Gloomy Countenance, quixotically elected to allow his starter to pitch to Saunders when he could have gone to the bullpen for anyone who would have a better chance against Saunders. Of course Saunders took him out with a powerful shot to right, and the game was tied at three.

Though he let him get one more out, that was it for Jimenez. Showalter brought in Brad Brach to get the third out, which he did by fanning Pillar. Even Plucky Players like Pillar have to make an out some time. Though they didn’t know it, that was also it for the Jays’ offence. Brach stayed in for the eighth and gave up a meaningless two-out base hit to Donaldson, and then as noted Britton finished it off, giving up another meaningless two-out base hit to Barney in the ninth.

So though Jimenez didn’t get the win, it was largely through his efforts that the score was tied going into the bottom of the eighth, setting the stage for Wieter’s game-winning heroics.

Meanwhile, Jay Happ survived another scuffly sort of start, holding the Orioles to three runs in six and a third innings of work. The measure of Happ’s struggles tonight, minimal as they may have been, was that he walked two while striking out only three, and took 102 pitches to navigate through 19 outs. Though he allowed base runners in every inning but the sixth, plus retiring the only batter he faced in the seventh, the Orioles only got to him in their half of the fifth, when they finally cancelled the one-run lead created by Donaldson’s homer in the second, a lead that Happ had nursed ever since.

But in the fifth, after Reimold fouled out to Edwin Encarnacion to lead off, Steve Pearce, who owns Happ in much the same way that Saunders owns Jiminez, hit a shot over the fence in left to tie the game. Maybe Pearce and Saunders should get together when the O’s are in town and take their pet pitchers for a walk together! Following a walk to Pedro Alvarez, the second one Happ issued tonight, he had to face Mannie Machado, who had been relatively quiet in the series thus far. But beware a sleeping Machado, who woke up just long enough to hit a boomer into the Oriole’s bullpen in left for the 100^th home run of his career, and a three-one Baltimore lead, which would hold until Saunders tied it in the seventh with his own two-run blast.

A gopher ball off Grilli in the eighth, Britton’s dominance in the ninth, and the series is tied at one apiece. Sanchez goes against Yovani Gallardo in the tie-breaker tomorrow night.

I never said they’d win them all, did I?

A note about today’s headline: The old journalistic principle is that “dog bites man” is not a story, but “man bites dog” is a story. I’ve been playing around with Jason Grilli’s name and his veteran status since he arrived, with such silliness as trying to decide if he’s the “grizzled Grilli” or the “grilled Grizzly”. So, it’s not a story if Jason Grilli barbecues a hot dog. But if the hot dog barbecues Grilli? That’s a story. And “Wiener Wieters”? A justifiable play on Matt Wieters’ name: any Baltimore player is just a wiener to Blue Jays’ fans, but especially one who beats them with a late-inning tater. So shoot me. I can take the pun-ishment.

As the cameras panned around the beautiful Baltimore home grounds at Camden Yards, the only thing more striking than the amount of Blue Jays’ paraphernalia visible was the proliferation of equally royal blue empty seats in the ball park.

I wrote about a month ago that I believed the division race would end up being between the Blue Jays and the Red Sox, because the Orioles, who at that point had led the division for most of the season, did not have enough quality starting pitching to remain in the race. Since then, of course, things have gotten worse. Chris Tillman is on the disabled list. The only starter they picked up at the trade deadline was Wade Miley, not exactly a blue-chip acquisition. (In fact, going into his start against us tonight, Miley’s record since joining Baltimore is one and two, with an ERA of 8.18.) And at the start of tonight’s action, the Jays were two games ahead of Boston and three ahead of the Orioles.

Tonight’s attendance, 15,532, in a game between rivals and divisional contenders, would be embarrassing in Toronto, especially since at least twenty per cent of the crowd had to be Toronto fans. So is the poor support being shown for the Orioles at home a direct result of my prescience? Have the O’s fans packed it in because I told them their team was toast? Okay, no, no one in Baltimore is reading me; they’re just savvy baseball fans who know what’s what. They aren’t interested in turning out to see their team lose to Toronto.

Which is exactly what happened tonight, a cool, calm execution of the same game plan the team employed throughout the sweep of the Minnesota Twins in Toronto this weekend: Pitch well enough to keep the opposition in sight until you get the measure of their starter, and then score enough to get the lead and turn it over to a bullpen that’s suddenly way better than all the dopey phone-in fans seem to think it is.

Marco Estrada had the start tonight, and was suddenly, brilliantly, his old self again, after a number of tentative starts dating back to the struggles with his back that had affected him since mid-season. Those of us who thought it was an absolute lock that Dioner Navarro would catch Estrada tonight were more than a little surprised when the lineup came out to see that Russell Martin would get the start behind the plate, and not Navarro. It didn’t matter to Estrada, apparently; he was probably just so happy to see his old partner in crime that it picked up his game no matter who was catching him.

This was vintage Estrada tonight, if a guy with his career arc can be said to have had a “vintage”. He’s 33 years old, and this is his second year of being seriously in the spotlight with the Jays as one of the pitchers with the best combined stats in all of baseball over the last two years. Yet his stardom is of an “adult-onset” nature: in only his final three of five years in Milwaukee did he have a regular place in the Brewers’ rotation, and even then he only went 19 and 17, and only threw as many as 150 innings once, in 2014, his last year in Milwaukee.

But there’s no need to repeat what has happened to his status in the upper echelons of starters in the majors in his two years with the Blue Jays. Which is why there was no end to the concern felt by Toronto’s fans over the quality of his last several starts. In his last seven starts his ERA was 4.50, while he pitched only 40 innings, less than six per game. There’s no point in mentioning his won/loss record in this stretch, since he has continued a long-standing pattern of not getting many decisions because the offence just doesn’t produce runs for him.

Tonight, though, we saw the Marco Estrada that we had come to rely on before his recent fall-off. Overall, his line was seven innings plus one batter, one run, four hits, one walk, and four strikeouts over exactly 100 pitches.

Through the seven innings, the only time he really faltered was when Jay Hardy led off the third with a solo home run to left. He otherwise allowed base-runners in the first, when he stranded a single by Hyun Soo Kim, in the fifth, when he hit Matt Wieters with a pitch leading off, and then gave up a two-out single to Nolan Reimold, before fanning Jonathan Schoop to end the inning, and in the seventh, when he walked Mark Trumbo leading off, but then saw him erase himself when he went a couple of steps in the wrong direction while Justin Smoak was making a nice grab of a line drive by Matt Wieters and stepping on first for the double play.

For all his poor numbers since reporting to the Orioles, Wade Miley pitched well enough for them tonight. Other than the fact that he left with a two-run deficit in place, his numbers were similar to Estrada’s, seven innings, five hits, two walks, but nine strikeouts (of course; these were the Blue Jays hitting against him). His pitch count was higher at 112, but in his last inning he retired the side with just five pitches, so he was hardly labouring.

The essential differences between Estrada’s start and Miley’s were two. After Hardy had given the Orioles the lead with his homer in the third, Josh Donaldson, still basking in the memory of all those hats, hit one out, to right centre again, to tie it up. But after the home run Wiley walked Edwin Encarnacion and gave up a single to Russell Martin with one out, opening the way for Troy Tulowitzki to drive in Edwin with a single to left. In a smart base-running play, Martin, rounding second, saw that a good throw from left-fielder Kim might cut off Edwin at the plate, so he steamed past second to trigger the cut-off of Kim’s throw. This allowed Edwin to score unchallenged while he was being tracked down on the base path and tagged out. Superficially a TOOBLAN (Thrown Out On the Bases Like A Nincompoop), but in reality good baseball. Trade a run for an out? Sure thing.

The second glitch for Miley came when Jose Bautisa hammered one out of the park to lead off the sixth and increase the Jays’ lead to three-one. He wobbled a bit the rest of the inning, walking Encarnacion but fanning Martin, giving up another single to Tulo, but catching Melvin Upton looking for the third out. The fourth and sixth were Miley’s toughest innings, as he racked up 26 pitches in each, but then there was the easy seventh, and Miley could pack it in with a good outing under his belt.

Getting back to Estrada, besides his improved numbers, the other thing that was notable about his performance tonight was that it was once again a joy to see him throw beautiful pitches. In the face of some early evidence that the Orioles were sitting on his excellent changeup, since the first three batters all hit the ball fairly hard, Martin, to whom Estrada gives total control over pitch selection and location, started calling more curve balls and fast balls, both to great effect, so that he could re-introduce the changeup later on. Much has been made of the influence of Mark Buehrle on the Jays’ pitchers over the last couple of years, and it’s unquestionable that Estrada’s mastery of location and spin reflect the tutelage of the departed staff mentor.

With Miley finished after seven, O’s Manager Buck Showalter brought in Mychal Givens to face the Jays in the eighth. After retiring Bautista on a groundout and walking Donaldson, he got Edwin to fly out to left, and fanned Martin to keep the game close for Baltimore.

At 98 pitches after seven innings, you’d think that Jays’ Manager John Gibbons would want to shake hands with Estrada and let a reliever start the eighth, usually the preferred option for most relievers. But, no, Gibbie has his idiosyncracies, and one of them is to send a starter back out there for one more kick at the can, presumably on a hitter-by-hitter basis. I was surprised, but not really, to see Estrada back out there for the eighth. I wasn’t surprised that he only threw two more pitches, the second of which Jay Hardy whacked into right for a base hit. I also wasn’t surprised to see Gibbie pop out of the dugout to fetch Estrada and bring Joe Biagini into the game. There are only two reasons I can think of for doing this. The first is that he wanted the matchup with the first hitter, but then Hardy’s the guy who took Estrada out in the third. The second would be to give his starter an ovation from the crowd, but this was Baltimore, so . . .

Biagini did the job he would have done anyway, fanning Reimold, inducing a little bloop popout to second by Schoop, and retiring Kim on a grounder to short. Three outs, 14 pitches. Not bad for a Rule 5 guy who finds himself right in the middle of a pennant race, much to his surprise and delight.

Showalter opted to bring in the newly-arrived (signed yesterday) Tommie Hunter to pitch to the Jays in the ninth. Hunter’s name has been entwined with some interesting ones since his ML debut with Texas in 2009. In 2011 he was traded to the Orioles along with—get this—Chris Davis, for Koji Uehara. At the trade deadline last year he went to the Cubs for one Junior Lake. He became a free agent last winter and signed with Cleveland, who released him on August 25^th, making him available for the O’s to pick up yesterday.

The first two years Hunter was with Baltimore, he was used mostly as a starter, but with middling success, and then he spent two years plus in their bullpen with really good numbers, a lot of innings and ERAs under three in both 2013 and 2014. In fact, I’m hard put to think why they would have traded him to the Cubs for Junior Lake last year.

Anyway, he’d just arrived in Baltimore, was inserted right into the ninth inning tonight against the Jays, and while he may have been glad to be back in Baltimore, I don’t think he enjoyed facing the Jays, because for once they were the team picking up insurance runs at his expense.

Troy Tulowitzki’s hard grounder into the hole between short and third tested Jay Hardy, but he made a fine backhanded plant and throw for the first out. Then Hunter walked Melvin Upton on a three-two pitch, bringing Kevin Pillar to the plate. Of all the Jays’ holdovers from last year, Pillar is the one who seems to have retained the most of the “stirring the pot” spirit. He singled sharply to left, bringing up Justin Smoak, batting left-handed against Hunter. On a one-two pitch, Smoak shortened up (for once) and just laid the ball out into right field where it dropped in front of Mark Trumbo, scoring Upton and sending Pillar around to third. Then Devon Travis executed the “less than two outs, runner on third” drill perfectly, rolling a lazy grounder out to second that could have scored Albert Pujols, let alone Kevin Pillar. It didn’t matter that Hunter fanned Jose Bautista for the third out; the Jays were heading to the bottom of the ninth with a 5-1 lead.

As it turns out, it was immaterial that Gibbie had burned Roberto Osuna yesterday against the Twins in a non-save situation, since today’s game was now non-save as well, with the add-on runs in the ninth for the Jays. That hardly mattered to happy senior Joaquin Benoit, who was delighted to close out the game for the Jays. In an appearance that summoned all those stupid tag lines about “partying like it’s 1995” or whenever, Benoit pitched like it was 2013 in Detroit. All he had to do was get through Machado, Davis and Trumbo. So he fanned Machado on a one-two pitch. He fanned Chris Davis on a full count, and persisted through nine pitches to Trumbo to get him to line out to Upton to end the game. I hope he kept the game ball from that one, because it was a thing of beauty, and who says old guys can’t pitch?

At the beginning of this piece, I referred to tonight’s game as the “cool, calm execution of a game plan”. You be the judge of that.

The Orioles are now four games back of the Jays, and Boston trounced Tampa Bay 9-4, so the lead over the Sox remains at two. Tomorrow night it’s Jay Happ against Ubaldo Jimenez. Looks good for our side, no?

It may have been the same old song today, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t want to sing along, does it?

Once again a Jays’ starter pitching a nice steady game is bedeviled by one big inning by the Twins. Once again the Jays’ hitters are stymied by an opponents’ starter who comes into the game with neither great credentials nor great expectations. Once again the Jays spring to life when the Twins’ starter leaves the game and roar back into the lead, and once again, in contrast to Minnesota’s bullpen, our relief pitchers do their job effectively and with panache.

We’ve even seen the on-field celebration of a three-homer day before, as a rain of baseball hats fell on the field in tribute to Josh Donaldson’s third home run of the day, showing once again that Toronto’s fans, being Canadian, do things a little differently. Yes, just like for Edwin Encarnacion at about the same time last year, today was hat trick day at the old hockey rink, er, ball park!

R.A. Dickey had the start, and through the first four innings it was a good one. He gave up an unearned run in the third, allowed only two hits, and one walk, while striking out two on only 49 pitches. The run in the third resulted from a rash decision by Josh Donaldson that led to an error. With one out, Eddie Rosario had singled to right, only the Twins’ second hit. That turned the lineup over for Brian Dozier, who hit a slow bouncer to third. Rosario is pretty fast, and the ball was too slow to even think about a double play, but Donaldson tried for it anyway, and made a bad throw that Devon Travis couldn’t handle. Donaldson had plenty of time to get Dozier at first, but went for the gamble and paid for it. With two on and one out, it was not a good time for Dickey to issue his first walk of the game to Joe Mauer, loading the bases. Max Kepler then hit a ball that deflected off Dickey to Travis at second, that would have been the third out at first if Donaldson had gotten Dozier previously. But Travis had to go to second for the force, no chance to turn it back to first for the double play, and Rosario came in to score.

The unearned run tied the game at one. The Jays had picked up one off Kyle Gibson in the first when Robbie Grossman encroached on Danny Santana’s call for Jose Bautista’s leadoff deep fly to left centre. The two collided, the ball fell free, and Bautista ended up on second with a double. Eerily, a second botched outfield play Inin two games that led directly to a run. He advanced to third on a deep fly to centre by Donaldson, and scored on a medium sacrifice fly to centre by Edwin Encarnacion. Unfortunately, Santana’s shoulder was injured on the play, and Rosario took over in centre in the second inning.

After the Twins had tied it, Donaldson answered in the third with a solo homer, making up for his costly error and giving the Jays a two to one lead. Dickey had a clean top of the fourth, and the score remained 2-1 after four, after Kevin Pillar, who had singled with one out and reached second when left fielder Robbie Grossman misplayed the ball, another outfield error, was stranded by Twins’ starter Kyle Gibson.

Then came the top of the fifth, and a frustrating inning for Dickey that was, typically for him, a momentary descent into the abyss of not having the faintest idea where his butterfly was going. The first out was an omen, perhaps. Leading off, Kurt Suzuki lofted a little fly over Devon Travis’ head. He went back for it, settled under for the basket catch, and had the ball clank off his glove. Incredibly, he intercepted it with his bare hand below the knee, and volleyed it into his waiting glove. When an easy out turns into a slapstick show, you don’t know what’s coming next.

Eddie Rosario, taking advantage of his surprise insertion into the lineup, then collected his second hit. Dickey wild-pitched him to second, walked Dozier and then Mauer to load the bases. The first run scored when Max Kepler collected his second RBI of the game by making an out, grounding out to Dickey, who had to go a long way for the ball, allowing Rosario to score and the other runners to move up, whence Dozier scored and Mauer stopped at third on Trevor Plouffe’s single to left. Dickey and Thole then completed the knuckleballer’s full house of a walk, a wild pitch, and a passed ball in the same inning. This one bounced away from Thole, and Plouffe advanced to second, once again removing the force. Miguel Sano then looped a soft liner into left to score both runners, and the Twins had a 5-2 lead. Two hits, one of them soft, two walks, a wild pitch, and a passed ball led to four runs. It’s ever thus for Mr. Dickey.

I’ve only mentioned Kyle Gibson, the Twins’ starter, once. He’s a 28-year-old big, rangy right-hander who’s been slotted into the Minnesota rotation since mid 2013. His record, while not great, is what you’d expect from a mid-rotation starter on a team that hasn’t had much success in recent years. Career-wise, he’s 31 and 35, with an ERA of 4.58. As we’ve seen so often lately, though, the Jays approached him as if his first name were Cy (or Corey, or Clayton, or Cole, or any of those suburban modern analogues for Cyrus) rather than Kyle.

Though he gave up a hit in every inning through the first five, only the gift double by Bautista in the first and the Donaldson homer in the third impacted the scoreboard, and at two runs and five hits over five, he had thrown just fine enough to keep the Jays in the game until his mates had broken out against Dickey in the top of the fifth.

However, whether it’s pitcher’s fatigue, batters’ comfort levels, or the cumulative effects of close observation and keen discussion by a group of very cerebral hitters, it seems like starters lately have reached a point mid-way in the game where they’ve started to skate on thin ice. If you had a great bullpen and a really good instinct, you could pull your starter at just the right time and really put a spanner in the Jays’ works. ‘Course, if I had a great bullpen and a really good instinct, I too could manage in the bigs.

So after Dickey retired the side in the top of the sixth, stranding a Robbie Grossman leadoff single, it was time for the birds to take flight, as Jerry Howarth says, and after four batters in the sixth, Gibson had given up two more runs while retiring one, and was done for the night, though still in possession of a one-run lead. In quick succession Troy Tulowitzki led off with a shot over the centre field fence, and Kevin Pillar rifled one into left for two bases. Melvin Upton made Gibson’s last out by grounding out to shortstop, with Pillar reading the play well and advancing to third. Devon Travis wasted no time taking one to right centre for a single to score Donaldson, and that was the game for Gibson. Manager Paul Molitor decided to chance bringing Pat Light into the game again, and this time he came through, getting Josh Thole to bounce a perfect double-play ball back to him.

Going to the seventh, it was now five-four Twins, and according to recent history the home team had the Minnesotas right where they wanted them.

At 96 pitches Dickey’s day was done, and it ended up being a quality start after all, as only three of the five Minnesota runs were earned. Unfortunately for him, his departure came a bit early to benefit from the seventh-inning blitz that was coming, so no win for him today. No doubt in the Zen-influenced world of R.A. Dickey, he would find it very easy to rationalize not getting a W. Actually, as a pro he could rest easy knowing he had turned in a professional job and the scoring rules of baseball are what they are, and of no real concern to him.

Unable or unwilling to take my advice (didn’t they already swap Aaron Loup back to Buffalo for Bo Schultz?), Manager John Gibbons called on Brett Cecil once again to do the lefty thing against Joe Mauer and Max Kepler to lead off the Twins’ seventh. This time Cecil batted .500. Mauer singled off him, but he struck out Kepler. Then it was Scott Feldman’s turn to hold the fort, and Dickey really must talk to Feldman and find out what his secret is: Feldman threw four pitches to Trevor Plouffe. The latter grounded into an around-the-horn double play, and the seventh was in the books. But Scott Feldman was the pitcher of record, and guess who would scoop the win after the Jays’ rally in the bottom of the seventh?

Pat Light’s good fortune didn’t carry over to the seventh inning. Maybe Josh Thole hadn’t realized whom he was up against when he hit into the double play to end the sixth, but the top of the order sure did. Jose Bautista led off with a single to left, and Josh Donaldson followed with a blast to left centre for his second homer of the day, which propelled the Jays into a 6-5 lead that they never relinquished. Light moved on quickly to retire Encarnacion and Russell Martin, but gave up a base hit to Tulo. That was it for Light (no, I won’t say anything about “lights out”). Like Feldman, Light’s brief appearance was enough to be tagged for the loss.

Manager Paul Molitor brought in a wild and wooly rookie, J.T. Chargois, who by name and birthplace (Sulphur, Louisiana) must be a Cajun. With Molitor reduced to searching under the bullpen bench for someone who hadn’t been burned yet in the series, it was inevitable that he would get to Chargois eventually. The rookie has a live arm, and throws mostly a two-seamer in the mid-nineties. Occasionally he gets it into the strike zone, and sometimes misses bats with it, but not enough. Tulo moved up to second on a wild pitch while Chargois was walking Kevin Pillar, and that brought Melvin Upton to the plate. Like yesterday, Upton sealed the deal for the Jays, driving in two insurance runs by driving one to the wall in right centre that precisely split Rosario and Kepler. Tulo scored. With two outs Pillar got a good jump from first and cruised home behind Tulo for a second insurance run. Chargois cranked up a one-two two-seamer to 97 to catch Devon Travis looking, to give him a bit of solace after his rocky outing.

After seven, the game was basically in the bag for the Jays, but the dramatics weren’t over yet. With the Jays in the lead but still in range for a save, Jason Grilli came in for the second day in a row to shut the Twins down and keep the enthusiasm level up, just in case. First he froze Miguel Sano with a beautiful curve ball. Then he fanned Jorge Polanco. Not a great fan of perfection, Grilli always throws in a little twist. This time it was a two-out walk to Robbie Grossman on a three-two count, but no problem because Kurt Suzuki bounced one back to Grilli for the easy third out.

Molitor brought in Alex Wimmers, who struck out two Friday night in his major league debut, to pitch the eighth. He continued to pitch well, retiring Thole and Bautista, which brought Donaldson to the plate with two homers already in the books. On a two-one changeup, Donaldson, who had never hit three home runs in a major-league game before, lined it up and hit it over the centre-field fence. It took a while to get started, but cue the hat barrage, for the second time in Jays’ history. Once again grounds crew had to go around and collect hats, eventually amassing two gigantic garbage bags’ full, which were duly delivered to Donaldson’s locker after the game. Donaldson also came out of the dugout for a curtain call, apparently for the first time in his career. More striking to me than the rain of hats (why not, for the “bringer of rain”?) was the relaxed, boyish smile on Donaldson’s face as he acknowledged the tribute from the crowd. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen such an unguarded, tension-free expression from the normally tightly-wound all-star.

And by the way, if this is how Donaldson atones for a fielding error, may he make one in every game!

There only remains to submit yet another critical note on Gibbie’s whimsical handling of relief pitchers. He had had Roberto Osuna warming up as soon as the seventh-inning Donaldson homer gave us the lead. His philosophy is if you get them hot, you might as well use them, but with the ninth run it was no longer a save situation. And Osuna had gotten the save yesterday, needing 16 pitches to finish it off. If he were to be used today, and if he threw a fair number of pitches, he wouldn’t be available for the first game in Baltimore Monday night. But, ya gotta use ’em, right?

Osuna came in with the pressure off, and as usual in such cases was less than his best self. It wasn’t like there was ever any danger of it getting out of hand, but by the time the inning was over, he had thrown 21 pitches, given up three hits and a run, and taken himself off the list of bullpen probables for Monday night in Baltimore. Way to go, Gibbie!

Meanwhile, the Royals mounted a huge comeback at Fenway tonight, and now we’re two games clear of Boston, and three ahead of Baltimore.

Among the positives that I saw in yesterday’s smashing 15-8 Toronto romp over the Minnesota Twins was that the ravaging of the Minnesota bullpen in the first of a three-game set would likely have consequences for the Twins down the line. Today’s stirring and improbable come-from-behind Blue Jay win can be traced directly to the fact that the game turned completely when Ervin Santana, after a terrific start, ran out of gas in the sixth inning, and the bullpen was helpless to protect his fine effort.

But on a day when the Jays were weakened by a series of incomprehensible lineup decisions made by Manager John Gibbons, it was not just the inability of the visitors’ bullpen to bar the door that led to victory, but also some very real individual efforts on the part of the Jays who were in the lineup. The titanic battles to stay alive at the plate waged by Edwin Encarnacion and Josh Donaldson, each followed by a run-producing hit, are obvious candidates for plays of the game. But beyond them it was the grit of Kevin Pillar, who refused to concede defeat, the hustle of Melvin Upton, who maximized the gift handed to him by Twins’ rookie Max Kepler, and the fierce enthusiasm of that aging warrior of the mound Jason Grilli to rally his mates to victory, that all played their part in one of the most dramatic, if not artistic, games of the season.

There. I’ve written two whole paragraphs about today’s game without mentioning Marcus Stroman’s name, or using the by-now clichéd meme of “which Marcus is it today?” Yes, he gave up five runs on nine hits, three of them doubles, but he fought and fought, and finally got his groove for the last two of his six innings, and hands up, all of you who thought Marcus wouldn’t even finish five today. Almost everybody. I thought so. Most of the six singles he gave up were ground balls snaking through the infield; with luck he could have been cruising along with little damage done. So let’s not fret about Marcus today. He did his job, even if the Twins’ hitters didn’t make it easy for him.

During the broadcast last night, Buck Martinez cited San Francisco Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy’s statement that if somebody hits a home run for him, he will always put him in the next day’s lineup. Well, none of that superstitious crap for our resident over-thinker Manager John Gibbons. Last night Josh Donaldson, Justin Smoak, Russell Martin, and Darwin Barney all hit homers for the Jays, but only Donaldson was in the lineup today. Oh, there were reasons for sitting the others. Sure there were. Martin would be catching a day game after a night game. Bautista needed to DH because playing right field last night was just so draining. And we had to make room for the heroic return of Devon Travis, so scratch Barney. And Smoak? Well, no big deal, he wouldn’t have two games like that again, now would he?

So, what to do? Here’s what: Martin’s been on a tear. He gets Sunday off because Dickey’s pitching. Start him behind the dish today and give him three at bats, which might be enough to turn a game around, and rest him for the last few innings. As long as he had the go-ahead from the trainer and the Big Guy himself, give Bautista another start in right. It seems to me that he runs as much risk of hurting himself again by running the bases as he does fielding. This opens up the DH/first base option for Edwin and Smoakie. Finally, and I know I’m as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, but rest Travis’ knuckle for another day and see if Barney stays hot. If nothing else, he’s not likely to make a crucial error in a tight situation, a statement we cannot make with as much of a degree of certainty about Travis.

So, Thole caught today—got two hits, to his credit—Bautista was the DH, Travis played, and Smoak sat. This is not playing a hot hand, and the Jays responded with very little offensive pizzaz against Ervin Santana. Lucky for Gibbie that the heroics of the above-mentioned notables pulled his frying pan out of the fire!

There’s a curious connection between Ervin Santana and the Blue Jays that emerged when the Jays were negotiating with him as a free agent during spring training in 2014. I’m not sure why it didn’t happen, but the Jays were actually pretty close to signing him. They had an agreement in principle but it never got done. One of the drivers on the Jays’ side to get it done was that the veteran players on the team, led, no doubt, by Jose Bautista and R.A. Dickey, got together and agreed to offer to restructure their own agreements with the team in order to free up money to put on the table for Santana. Essentially, what they would have done was extend the period of deferred payments written into the contracts, so that the team would have more money in the till each year, but the contract payouts would continue for longer. It didn’t happen in the end, but it’s a story that speaks both to the drive of certain Blue Jay players to create winning conditions here, and it also speaks to the respect that Ervin Santana had among his peers as a quality starter.

Santana’s performance for the Twins today serves as proof that he still deserves respect as a quality starter. Through five innings, the Jays were only able to touch him up for one run in the fourth; they had two hits, he walked two, struck out four, and faced 18 batters, three over the minimum. The run in the fourth came on the heels of his second walk, to Edwin Encarnacion with one out. After Troy Tulowitzki flew out to right for the second out, Michael Saunders came through with a double into the right field corner. Edwin, getting a very good jump with two outs, scored from first.

In the meantime, Santana’s mates had built up a five-run lead on Marcus Stroman. They picked up one in the first strictly on the legs of leadoff man Brian Dozier, who singled to right, stole second, alertly took third when Joe Mauer flied out to left field, and scored on a wild pitch by Stroman, who was less than pleased with his own contribution to the proceedings.

Stroman’s little walk down in the tunnel seemed to have helped him settle down for a while. He retired the side in the second, and escaped from a jam in the third created by two straight base hits to lead off by getting a double play ball. Then in the fourth the ground balls that he prides himself on inducing betrayed him totally. He didn’t help himself very much when he walked the leadoff hitter, Trevor Plouffe.

Then we had a demonstration of the truth of the coaching philosophy of the most successful T-Ball coach in Ontario baseball history. For those of you who think that “success” in T-Ball is a contradiction in terms, involving as it does little kids, you haven’t seen it played at the highest level. If there’s one thing competitive-level t-ballers can do, it’s catch balls hit in the air. With five outfielders, a kid who can hit deep fly balls will almost always see them disappear into someone’s glove for an out. The goal is to keep the ball on the ground to make things happen. To the dean of T-Ball coaches, a bullet liner that was caught was just another out, and therefore a mistake. I can still hear his monotonous sing-song from the other side of the field as he encouraged his hitters: “On the ground, go round and round!”

And that’s what the Twins did. One walk. Four base hits, all on the ground. Two of them doubles, one inside the bag at third, the other at first. It was like watching a horrible endless loop of precisely-placed balls bouncing by or between fielders. By the end of the inning, the Twins had a five-nothing lead, and if Stroman was mad after wild-pitching home a run in the first, he must have been livid after the fourth. But to his credit, after giving up a ground-rule double to Max Kepler to lead off the fifth, he retired six hitters in a row, and could have gone another inning if it weren’t for his pitch count, which had reached 100 by the end of the sixth.

By the time he left, the Jays had climbed back into it, via the run in the bottom of the fourth, and two on an Edwin Encarnacion home run. At the end of six, the score was five-three, and Stroman must have had some hope that his team would come all the way back and get him off the hook for the loss.

The Blue Jays did just that, and how they did it is quite a story in itself. But first the Twins just had to set the bar a little higher. Bo Schultz was the first man in after Stroman’s day was finished, having just arrived on the Buffalo shuttle, and he had a good start, getting the tough Brian Dozier to ground out to second, and catching Joe Mauer on a called third strike. With two outs, he walked Max Kepler to bring up Plouffe, the Twins’ cleanup hitter. If walking the leadoff hitter is the cardinal sin for a pitcher, walking someone on a three-two count with two outs and nobody on is a very serious venial sin. (Not raised Catholic? Okay: an unconfessed “mortal sin” condemns you to hell fire. Cardinal sins are the worst of these. An unconfessed “venial sin” will cost you a couple years or so in the lesser smoldering embers of Purgatory before the stain is fried out of you and you can proceed to the Pearly Gates.) Or, like penitent monks secretly flaying their backs with leather thongs, you can opt for immediate punishment for venial sin by serving up a gopher ball to the next guy, Trevor Plouffe, which restored the Twins’ four-run lead. Schultz got Eddie Rosario to ground out to first to end the inning, but the damage was done.

Santana should have been feeling pretty good about himself as he came out for the seventh, pitch count at just 89, and a re-established four-run lead to work with. But Kevin Pillar was the leadoff batter, and he wasn’t interested in how Santana might have been feeling. Pillar plays baseball like the human equivalent of the stubborn goat butting the dam in the song “High Hopes”. He doesn’t have enough sense to know when over’s over. A lot of emphasis, naturally, is put on RBIs and game-winning hits, but there should be some kind of statistic for rally-starting. Come on, analytics guys, get to work!

Four runs down, facing a good pitcher cruising, Pillar led off with an opposite-field base hit to right. Melvin Upton followed by grounding into a force-out at second. The only base-runner you’d rather have on the bases than Pillar is Upton, so this was good. Santana walked Devon Travis on a three-two count. Josh Thole, was has been having useful at-bats in his last few games, grounded out to first also on a full count for the second out, moving the runners up. Frustrated and nearing the end, Santana threw four straight balls to Jose Bautista to load the bases.

That was it for Santana. Manager Paul Molitor came out and got him, and brought in Ryan Pressly. After the first two games of the series, you had to know that going to the bullpen to replace the starter is the riskiest move the Twins can make. Ryan Pressly got the call, and Santana foolishly hung around on the bench to watch his lead get shaved to a single run. I know you can’t go too far with a tiring starter, but like the Jays earlier this year, I would contend that Molitor would have been better off taking his chances with Santana with the bases loaded and one out, since salvation was only one double-play ball away, and Santana had already thrown two today. No outs? Yes, yank him. One out? Not so sure . . .

What is sure is that Ryan Pressly, like pretty well everyone who came out of the Twins’ pullpen last night, wasn’t the answer. Josh Donaldson singled to right centre to score Upton and Travis, with a drive that normally he would have tried to stretch into a double, but with two outs he chose not to chance it. Bautista meanwhile ended up at third. With one stroke Donaldson had negated Plouffe’s insurance homer. With the next stroke, Edwin Encarnacion singled sharply through the left side to score Bautista and cut the lead to one. Troy Tulowitzki followed with one more line drive, but right at second baseman Brian Dozier for the third out.

With the Twins’ lead down to one, Manager Gibbons turned to the close-game scenario, and brought in Jason Grilli to pitch “his” eighth inning. Number one task on the agenda for Grilli would be to avoid getting Plouffed, to keep the lead at one. So it was ominous when Miguel Sano softly lined one into centre for a base hit, and I should mention that we haven’t seen Sano hit the ball hard yet in this series. But it turns out that Grilli was just fooling, the old tease, and he quickly got down to work. Eduardo Escobar fanned on a full count. Juan Centeno hit an easy fly to centre on an 0-2 pitch. Danny Santana fanned on a two-two pitch. Anyone who thinks veteran professional athletes aren’t emotional should have seen the excited frenzy displayed by Grilli as he stormed off the mound for the dugout. And anyone who thinks that a team can’t be picked up by one player’s fire and determination did not see the team’s reception of Grilli in the dugout. You could read the belief in pulling this one out on every face.

Having few options at this point, Molitor sent Pressly out again, this time to meet his own fate. A faint hope must have been felt on the Twins’ side when he induced Michael Saunders to pop out to short leading off. Little did they know that they were only two hitters away from disaster. With one out, Kevin Pillar was back at the plate, and what did we say about rally-starting? On a two-one pitch Pillar ripped one past the third baseman Plouffe and it bounded into the corner as Pillar reached second standing up, representing the tying run. That brought up Melvin Upton, and on the fourth pitch from Pressly he hit a blooper into left field that tied the game, and raced all the way around to score the lead run as Twins’ right fielder rookie Max Kepler rashly dove for the ball, had it bounce over his head, and frantically chased it back towards the wall, finally sliding toward it and kicking it away from centre fielder Eddie Rosario who was about to pick it up and throw it in when Kepler’s foot got there first. It went as a triple, because you can’t give an error for misjudgment, but an error was given to Kepler for allowing him to score, though they hadn’t much chance of getting him at the plate anyway.

Thus the saga of struggling through a losing season with a team of prospects and rookies. It ain’t easy, but somebody’s gotta do it. And if our boys are the beneficiaries, who’s to complain? It’s not that our guys didn’t deserve it, either. Grilli’s punchout eighth and numerous truly gritty at bats can’t be blamed on the opposition. Nor can the situation you put yourself in when you’ve worn out the other side’s bullpen.

Not having anyone better to put in at the moment, Molitor left Pressly in the game for one more hitter, but Josh Thole finished him off with a booming ground rule double to left. Taylor Rodgers came in to get Jose Bautista to line out to left to get the elusive third out.

The exciting late-inning heroics that turned the game around also put another save on the table for Roberto Osuna, who hadn’t pitched in a week, an occupational hazard with closers, who may not pitch for days because their team is mired in a losing streak, or conversely has been winning big. In Osuna’s case, he hadn’t pitched in a week because his team had either won big or lost big, not a nail-biter in a week of games. While such a break might make a reliever feel a bit rusty, Osuna didn’t seem affected at all, as he fanned Dozier, retired Mauer on a liner to second, and fanned Kepler for his 29^th save in 32 chances this year. His record of most saves by a pitcher under the age of 22 just keeps growing.

For his very prodigious contribution, Jason Grilli became the pitcher of record when the Jays batted in the eighth, and scooped up the win as a result.

A contending team in Major League Baseball needs an abundance of talent, it needs to be brimming with confidence, and it needs not a little bit of luck. Today the Blue Jays combined generous portions of all three ingredients to keep ahead of the pack in the American League East.

R.A. Dickey goes to the hill tomorrow in search of the sweep and a 4-2 record on this abbreviated home stand, before departing for the important three-game series with Baltimore in Camden Yards that starts Monday night. Dionner Navarro will be added to the roster Monday, probably at the expense, temporarily, of Josh Thole. Does anyone doubt that he will be behind the plate Monday night to catch Marco Estrada?

In the wake of the disturbing series loss to the Angels this week, I wrote yesterday that I was afraid that one terrible abyss that could open up for the Blue Jays on their erstwhile path to the playoffs would be occasional, or worse, more frequent breakdowns of their starting pitching while their hitters remain in the doldrums. The corollary to that scenario is that if the bats do wake up, then we can cut the starters a little slack, because they’ve been so good for so long this season.

Tonight’s raucous series opener with the woeful Minnesota Twins provided a powerful example of the antidote needed to overcome pitching problems. It didn’t matter that Francisco Liriano struggled with his control all night and turned in his least accomplished performance since joining the team, because someone lit a fire under the seats of the Jays’ bashers and from all corners, and up and down the lineup, they came to life with a vengeance. On a night like this, Liriano’s messy five innings and some sloppy innings contributed by the bullpen didn’t matter a whit, because the runs came by the dozen, with a few extra thrown in for good measure.

The Jays’ lineup was cobbled together at the last minute because of unforeseen complications which necessitated some unexpected changes, yet it was the lineup that broke out in a big way against admittedly mediocre Minnesota pitching. First of all, Devon Travis was held out of the lineup yet again because of his knuckle problem, with Darwin Barney continuing to do a good job in his absence. Second, the outfield corps was stripped bare for the night as Michael Saunders was kept out for a second game in a row to treat a sore left hamstring, and Kevin Pillar was a late scratch when he developed “flu-like symptoms”.

Though it had not been expected for some time, the circumstances pressed Jose Bautista into two-way service, and he got the start in right, with Zeke Carrera moved to left and Melvin Upton in centre. The loss of Bautista from the DH spot opened up room for Justin Smoak, and Manager John Gibbons chose to give Edwin Encarncacion a rest after a long stretch of two-way play, so Smoak was stationed at first, but buried down at eighth in the batting order, and Edwin became the DH for the night.

The surprising return of Smoak to the starting lineup was a tonic both for his own season-long batting funk and for the Jays’ overall offence. Not only did his second-inning three-run homer overcome an early Twins’ lead, it was the first and loudest of a whole series of declarations that the Toronto bashing machine had revived, at least for this one night. And Smoak did not rest on his laurels. He also hit two singles that each drove in a run, ending up three for five with five RBIs.

We’ve couched this whole description so far in terms of a great hitting parade overcoming a less than impressive pitching performance by the starter. But to be fair to Francisco Liriano, the Twins didn’t do too much damage to him, arguably not nearly as much as he did to himself. He gave up four runs in five innings, one unearned because he fumbled a bouncer toward first by Eddie Rosario that extended the inning by one batter and converted Trevor Plouffe’s deep drive to right from a third out into an RBI sacrifice fly. The other three runs scored on the only two hits he gave up in five innings, a solo homer to Plouffe in the first, and a Kurt Suzuki double to right in the fourth that plated two base-runners who had walked. That identifies the source of Liriano’s problem tonight: four bases on balls, three of which ended up scoring. If there was sin in Liriano’s performance, it was the sin of putting runners on base early in the inning without making them hit their way on.

To his credit, Liriano fanned Trevor Plouffe and Miguel Sano in the fifth in his shutdown final inning that qualified him for his first victory as a Jay, despite the fact that when he left with a 6-4 lead a Jays’ victory was far from assured.

The Twins started left-handed spot starter Pat Dean, who had put together a decent performance against the Jays in Minneapolis back in May. He did again tonight, though it only lasted an inning. After walking Jose Bautista leading off, he retired the side in order, and it looked for the moment like Trevor Plouffe’s two-out solo homer in the top of the first might actually play a significant role in the game. But after Liriano made short work of the Twins in the second on ten pitches, Dean’s mastery of the Blue Jays’ batting order came to a swift and unmerciful end. Troy Tulowitzki and Melvin Upton led off with back-to-back singles to left. For some reason, down 1-0 and facing a pitcher he wasn’t sure of, Manager John Gibbons eschewed the sacrifice bunt with Darwin Barney at the plate, the one guy with good enough bat control in the lineup that you can expect he will actually get it down properly.

I was not a happy camper when Barney fouled out to the third baseman instead of bunting, bringing up Smoak, and visions of a long and elegant swing and miss on strike three, which has become standard fare from Justin Smoak this year. And I don’t even want to mention that in the midst of a batting slump that has lasted the entire season, the Jays’ front office saw fit to give Smoaky a two-year contract extension. I like Justin Smoak in a lot of ways, and I’m the last person to be cranky about someone succeeding in life, but you had to look at his contract extension with a bit of a wry eye, didn’t you? Anyway, Justin, all is forgiven, and enjoy your big bucks on your new contract. After pounding a three-run homer to left off Dean, erasing the early lead and putting his team in the driver’s seat, he can do whatever he wants.

The Jays weren’t finished with Dean in the second. After Zeke Carrera made the second out, Bautista walked, and Josh Donaldson worked a one-two count to full, and homered to right centre to give Liriano a five-run lead to work with.

But it wasn’t as if the Twins were out of it already, or as if Liriano was home free. They got one back in the top of the third without a base hit, benefiting from two walks and Liriano’s error on a ground ball to get Kurt Suzuki to third with one out, whence he scored on Trevor Plouffe’s sacrifice fly. Reassuringly, the Jays struck back in their half of the inning and restored the four-run difference. Upton, Darwin Barney, and Smoak strung together two-out singles to score Upton, with Smoak getting his fourth RBI of the night.

Despite their record, though, these Twins are a feisty bunch, and they weren’t ready to lie down and play dead. And it didn’t help that Liriano walked two of the first three batters he faced in the fourth. This brought Kurt Suzuki to the plate, and he once again brought the Twins within range by hitting a double to centre to score two.

At six runs, eight hits, and 72 pitches in three innings, the kindly Minnesota manager Paul Molitor decided Dean had taken enough punishment. And speaking of punishment, if they weren’t playing us, I’d be first in line cheering for the Twins to brace up and start winning games, because I really feel badly that Molitor, one of the classiest guys ever to play the game, has to suffer through a season like this. He’s also a guy who will never hear a boo in Toronto; we Jays’ fans have long memories, and will never forget his contributions to our World Series wins.

Molitor called on Andrew Albers to try to stop the bleeding. Albers is a guy who also holds a special place in the hearts of Canadian ball fans. A native of North Battleford Saskatchewan, Albers had a cup of coffee with the Jays last year, but that’s not what he’s known for. A baseball vagabond, he has played all over the world, but most notably as a mainstay of Ernie Whitt’s pitching staff on the Canadian National Team. It was in this latter role that he was an important cog in the National team’s stirring gold-medal win over the United States in last summer’s Pan Am Games.

Albers threw a very decent fourth and fifth innings, retiring six in a row from the top of the order. Unfortunately, after the Twins cobbled together another run in the top of the sixth against Joe Biagini to make it a one-run game, Molitor sent Albers back out for the Jays’ sixth, an inning too far for the Canadian lefty. Leading off, Darwin Barney lined an 0-1 pitch over the fence in left to give the team a little breathing room.

This would only come into focus later, but it also gave Barney two stops toward a shot at hitting for the cycle, as he would double next time up, and had a shot at the triple in his last at bat, but didn’t pull it off. I have to say a few words about Darwin Barney. I can’t imagine the change wrought in his life by a phone call from Alex Anthopoulos to his home last September. After a good run as the Chicago Cubs’ second baseman from 2011 to 2013, he gradually lost playing time until he ended up last year in the Dodgers’ farm system, which explains why he was at home, the Triple A season over, when Anthopoulos called to tell him that the Jays had acquired him for a minor leaguer, and that he had to report to Toronto ASAP, since the Jays in the midst of their pennant run were very thin in the infield with Troy Tulowitzki on the disabled list and Devon Travis out for the year.

Barney served usefully to the end of the regular season, and then went home to watch his teammates’ playoff run on TV, no doubt a little wistfully. (Acquired after September first, he wasn’t eligible for the post-season roster.) After the season ended, the Jays granted his free agency in October, and then re-signed him six weeks later, presumably for depth insurance. What insurance he has provided! The various short- and medium-term infield injuries experienced by Toronto this year have kept him very busy. He’s filled in well defensively, at all three infield positions, left field, and even, famously, manfully, taking the loss on the mound in the Jays’ epic 19-inning Canada Day tussle with the Cleveland Indians. It seems that wherever you put him, whatever you ask him to do, he performs with class and panache, a thorough professional in every respect.

He’s also hit well, sometimes with power, like today. When he makes solid contact he makes things happen. He doesn’t produce very many roll-over grounders. His offence is far above average for a typical utility infielder, which I would suggest is an accurate description of how he is used by the Jays’ manager, but greatly under-rates his value to the team. He could play every day and not diminish the team’s winning capability. Are you listening, Gibby?

I like that some of the Toronto fans, who are quick to embrace effort and work ethic, have adopted Barney as their own. I saw my first Darwin Barney fan sign this week, a sure indication of acceptance, especially in a crowd that takes great pride in the quality and wit of its signs. (Remember that classic seen during the 1992 World Series against the Atlanta Braves, whose fans annoyingly, maddeningly, mind-numblingly continue after all these years to drone the racist and disrespectful tomahawk chop. It was beautiful in its simplicity: a drawing of a tomahawk, red line through it, with the legend: “No Cross-Border Chopping!”) The Barney sign was a doozy. Divided in half, one half for his first name, one half for his last, the “Darwin” side had a very respectable sketch portrait of Charles Darwin, and the legend, “Darwin, the mind of a genius”. The Barney side depicted that awful, boring children’s show favourite, the purple dinosaur Barney, and it said, “Barney, the strength of a dinosaur”. Gotta love it!

Back to the game, where Albers retired Smoak on a deep fly to left after Barney’s shot, and then saw Zeke Carrera reach on a throwing error by Twins’ shortstop Jorge Polanco. Molitor decided it was time for a change, and neither he nor Albers could know how lucky Albers was to get while the gettin’ was good. Pat Light didn’t come in carrying a gas can, he drove to the mound in a fuel truck. By the time he was done, the Jays had loaded the bases behind Carrera on two walks just so Russell Martin could unload them with a ringing double to left centre. Running out of options, Molitor left Light in long enough after the double to wild-pitch Martin to third and walk Tulo. Mike Tonkin then came in to secure the third out, with the Jays now firmly in command at 10-5.

After Joaquin Benoit pitched around a leadoff single to Robbie Grossman, Tonkin returned to the mound to face his own music. Barney, leading off the second inning in a row, greeted him with the double to left centre, and scored on Smoak’s third hit, completing his own three-hit collection. The Jays played take-a-turn for a while against Tonkin and Ryan O’Rourke, who brought the inning to a climax by allowing a two-run homer by Russell Martin, joining Smoak in the homer plus five RBIs club, to round out the scoring for Toronto at fifteen runs, with their second consecutive five-run inning. Other RBIs in the inning were claimed by Donaldson and Encarnacion, besides Smoak.

No doubt tired from all that swinging and base-running, the Jays went down tamely in the eighth to right-hander Alex Wimmers, who made a nice major league debut with a clean inning and strikeouts of Smoak and Carrera.

Manager Gibbons let Aaron Loup air it out in the eighth and ninth, and the pesky Twins put him through the ringer for three runs, two in the eighth and one in the ninth, earning perhaps a measure of respectability by bringing the final score up to

15-8, but Loup’s main job, of course, was to stay out there and keep the rest of the bullpen arms in the bullpen, and he did the job.

A plenitude of good things happened tonight. The batting slump lifted, for one night, anyway. Justin Smoak resoundingly broke out of his slump. Francisco Liriano won his first decision on less than his best stuff. Russell Martin continued his hot and productive hitting. Darwin Barney continued to contribute. Paul Molitor had to use way too many bullpen arms. Finally, Kansas City doubled up the Sox at Fenway, and the Yankees clobbered Baltimore in New York. We end the night a game up on Boston and two up on Baltimore.

Off the field, right at game time the Jays’ front office released strange but delightful news: the team had reacquired Dioner Navarro from Chicago in excange for a minor league pitcher. Isn’t it strange how things work out? Navarro didn’t want to re-sign with us last year because he wanted more playing time, but now I’m sure he’s thrilled to come back to a contender and a team he considers his home. Marco Estrada will be happy, the entire clubhouse will be happy, and the boys will be able to brush up on their rusty soccer skills now. I have no idea how this will work out, especially in regard to Josh Thole and R.A. Dickey, but Thole will be available to catch Dickey’s start on Monday. No doubt there’ll be a large and enthusiastic receiving line to greet Navarro when he arrives in the clubhouse at Camden Yards Monday afternoon.

It’s easy enough to pinpoint the exact moment when Toronto’s hopes of winning tonight’s rubber match of the current three-game series with the Los Angeles Angels went down the drain.

Going into the top of the sixth inning, Jay Happ had been masterful in pursuit of his eighteenth win against only three losses. He had shut out the Angels over five innings, with two hits, both in the first inning, no walks, and six strikeouts while throwing only 61 pitches. Starting with the C.J. Cron double play ball in the top of the first, after he had given up singles to—who else?—Mike Trout and Albert Pujols, Happ had retired thirteen batters in a row.

But everyone has the odd rocky inning, and the sixth started out that way for Happ, with the eight-nine-one hitters coming up. Kaleb Cowart unleashed on an outside first-pitch fast ball and rifled it the opposite way down the right field line, where it one-hopped into the seats for a double. Happ must have been rattled, because he walked Gregorio Petit, the second baseman hitting ninth, on a three-one pitch. This turned the lineup over to left-handed hitting Kole Calhoun, the leadoff hitter, and brought us to the crucial moment in the game. Calhoun lashed a hard grounder on a three-two pitch right back at Happ. The replays from behind the plate were excruciating to watch. Happ’s landing foot hitting the ground, toes pointing toward third. The ball smacking off the outside of his left foot and careening sharply across the third base line. Meanwhile, and this is the excruciating part, at least for those of us not named Jay Happ, who weren’t actually “feeling his pain” as they say, you can clearly see that the ball was heading directly for Troy Tulowitzki, who was standing exactly one step away from second base. Had the ball not hit Happ’s foot (and is there a game in which Happ, a big, strong-looking guy, is not made to feel like the target in an arcade game at least once?) it was a dead easy shortstop unassisted to first double play, and we would have been looking at two outs, Cowart on third, and still in possession of a 2-0 lead.

But the ball never got to Tulo. Happ received attention from the trainer, and decided he was okay to go. Pain-wise, that may have been the case, but command-wise, no. How nice to be cruising along and suddenly have to face Mike Trout with the bases loaded and nobody out. Trout singled through the left side, which seems to be the Angels’ preferred method of attack, knocking in two and tying the game. With Pujols up and runners on first and second, there came the secondary dagger that signed Happ’s fate. Pujols, you see, can’t run. At all. They use an egg timer to clock his home to first, and a sun dial to time his first to third. The best hope now was a double play ball, a hope that lasted one pitch. Happ spiked an outside fast ball on that first one, Russell Martin tried to backhand it, it clanked away from him and the runners moved up. No more double play ball. After going to one and two, Pujols opportunistically grounded a single up the middle to score Calhoun, Trout stopping at third, and Manager John Gibbons emerging from the dugout to stop the bleeding. Happ’s quest for win number 18, that had started so well, was done.

Joe Biagini came in to face C.J. Cron, who grounded into a 4-6-3 double play that scored Trout with the Angels’ fourth run. Andrelton Simmons lined out to Zeke Carrera in right to end the inning.

Ashes and dust. That’s all that was left of a game that had augured to be positive in every way, from the fact that it was Happ’s turn on the mound, to the fact that his opponent was the former superstar now mediocre nibbler Jered Weaver, to the fact that this game marked the eagerly-awaited return of Jose Bautista to the lineup, inserted at the leadoff spot and serving, as he apparently will for a while, as the designated hitter. This does not bode well, by the way, for Justin Smoak, who won’t see much time at first base as long as Edwin Encarnacion has to play in the field to accommodate Bautista at DH.

After the Jays’ infield turned the double play to end the Angels’ threat in the top of the first, Bautista strode to the plate as the throngs in the TV Dome, closed tonight because of, well, rain, roared their welcomes and waved their signs. Bautista being Bautista, you just knew that he would either strike out or hit one out, and he fulfilled the prediction . . . by striking out with a mighty cut at a puny 84 mph four-seam fast ball from Weaver. Are you kidding me? That’s an R.A. Dickey fast ball, and Weaver doesn’t even throw a knuckle ball to compensate. Josh Donaldson followed with a grounder to the shortstop on an 81.5 mph changeup, and I’m not sure how Pitch Tracker can tell the difference between Weaver’s four-seamer and his change.

But then Weaver cranked it up a notch to 84 .9 for the fast ball, which got it into Edwin’s preferred batting-practice range, and he spanked one to left that one-hopped the wall for a double. The very hot Russell Martin drew a base on balls to bring Troy Tulowitzki to the plate. But this time Weaver went to the curve ball, so slow you expected it to stop and back up into his hand again, on a two-two pitch, and Tulo flailed at it for the third out.

Now I want to depart from the strict chronology of the details of this game to lay before you a very dark thought that occurred to me as I was trying to come to grips with the outcome of tonight’s game. We’ve been so happy with our starting pitching this year, “best in the American League”, and all that. We’ve been especially happy that the quality of the starters has helped to compensate for the obvious fall-off in offensive effectiveness that the Blu Jays have displayed the entire year. With the pitching so good, who needs ten runs a game?

The clinker in our thinking was that we never considered that the pitching might falter, even just for a little while, one turn of the rotation, a few starts, two guys getting arm weary at the same time. We never really thought, “where will we be then?” But now we’ve had three sub-par, that is to say not up to their very high standards, starts, two for Marco Estrada and one for Jay Happ. And what have we seen as a result? Sluggish, dismal failure. The starting pitchers coughed up leads, and the hitters, for whatever reason, did very little to capitalize on their few chances to break out and come from behind. Losing eight to two and six to three to the basement team in the AL West serves as a dire warning that we had better patch up and resolve our hitting problems, because there may be more times ahead when the pitching alone can’t carry us. The Jays were supposedly built on power and defence, with adequate pitching. They have succeeded up to now on excellent pitching and defence, with barely adequate hitting. They are, in short, teetering on the brink of disaster if they don’t start bashing the ball.

Let’s consider now their performance against tonight’s Angel starter, Jered Weaver. At the creaky age of 33, Weaver’s best days are definitely behind him, which might give pause to those who think, for example, that players like Mike Trout and Bryce Harper, and pitchers like Noah Syndergaard and Jacob de Grom who have burned very bright very early will continue to burn brightly for the fifteen or so years that we expect of the very greatest players. Weaver, who as recently as 2014 put up numbers like 18-9, 3.59, 213.1 innings, 169 strikeouts and only 65 walks, this year is 9-11 and 5.31, through 144 innings, with 73 strikeouts and 40 walks. How he is pitching tells an even more complete story. According to the pie chart they love to put up on the broadcast, he is throwing equal numbers of five different pitches, fast ball, changeup, cutter, slider, curve ball. And as I mentioned, if you put his fast ball stitch to stitch to R.A. Dickey’s, it’s a dead heat.

After escaping the first inning by bamboozling Tulo to strand a couple of runners, Weaver walked the tightrope again in the second, though to be fair he had a little fielding help, or lack of same, from his second baseman, Petit. After Kevin Pillar grounded out leading off, Melvin Upton, who’s starting to make serious contact, and would go three for four tonight with two doubles, ripped one into the left field corner for his first double. Zeke Carrera did his job to move Upton to third by hitting a right side grounder, but Petit just plain booted it, and Carrera was safe, a bonus. Weaver then threw four straight balls to Darwin Barney, still playing second for Travis because of the latter’s injured knuckle, but hitting ninth tonight because of Bautista’s return. This turned the lineup over to Bautista, and with the bases loaded and only one out the buzz grew again in the stadium. This time Bautista hit the second pitch, hard, but right at Kole Calhoun in medium-deep right for a sacrifice fly scoring Upton for the Jays’ first run. Donaldson also hit the ball hard on a 2-0 pitch, but again, lined it right at Mike Trout in centre.

So, two innings, one run, two doubles, two walks, and four left on base. Was this the start of something big, or same-old same-old? Well, Weaver retired nine straight from there on, bringing Donaldson back to the plate with two out and nobody on in the fifth and the run of putouts came to an end when he pounded one into the airline company bar in centre, making a girl in a green blouse very excited. I think she almost caught it. Happ had a two-run lead, which looked pretty good going to the sixth, but you know how that turned out.

Weaver, on the other hand, got a couple of outs in the Jays’ sixth before getting into trouble of his own and having to give it up. That was the difference between Happ’s sixth and Weaver’s: the Angels’ hurler got two outs before he ran into trouble, leaving reliever Jose Valdez in a pretty tight spot, but with only one out to get. Once again it was the Jays’ bottom of the order that got things going. With two outs Pillar stroked a single to left that was followed by Upton’s single to centre, advancing Pillar to third. Upton then stole second. Regardless of how the game ended up, this duo of Pillar and Upton towards the end of the lineup looks promising, with their combination of the ability to hit to all fields, and speed. With first base open, Zeke Carrera worked a walk in a great at-bat. Immediately down 0-2, he worked his way to a 2-2 count and then fouled off three pitches before taking balls three and four. This brought Mike Scioscia out of the Angels’ dugout, Barney to the plate, and Valdez into the game. Mr. “he’s toast” Jered Weaver had gone five and two thirds innings, given up two runs, only one earned, five hits, three walks, and struck out four on 98 pitches. Scufflin’, but good scufflin’.

On a one-one count, Barney hit the ball hard on the ground, right up the middle, but of course the shift was on, and it was right at the second baseman Petit to end the inning and the last real threat for the Jays. When the Angels immediately pushed across two runs on Biagini in the top of the seventh, the first runs he’s given up in an Ice Age or two, the frost was on the pumpkin, the wind went out of the Jays’ sails, and I can’t think of any more clichés to say it was over for the home team, despite scoring another run in the ninth on doubles by Upton and Bautista, giving Jose a one for four, an extra base hit, and two RBIs in his first game back.

Finally, like everyone else in Canada, let’s talk of Brett Cecil, though there’s not much to say that hasn’t been said, except that John Gibbons needs to divest himself of the notion that Cecil can be an important part of this bullpen without something major changing. As I said, the final blow to the Jays in this game came in the seventh, when Joe Biagini got in trouble, but left the game with some hope of keeping the score at 4-2. His only real fault in the inning was giving up a leadoff single to Jett Bandy. Nick Buss came up and did what we’ve all been looking for all season: bunted away from the shift toward third. Josh Donaldson didn’t have a chance on it. Kaleb Cowart tried to bunt them over, but Biagini popped him up, catching it himself. Then he got Gregorio Petit on a short foul fly to right. This brought up the left-handed Kole Calhoun, and of course brought Gibbie out to match him up with Brett Cecil.

Thanks to Gregg Zaun for this next info, and yes, I know Gregg’s never seen a move by Gibbie that he couldn’t criticize, but it turns out that Calhoun actually hits better off lefties than righties! So of course it would have been, might have been, fine to leave Biagini in there. No need to worry about Biagini after 21 pitches if he’s fresh; he’s strong as a horse, and a career-long starter in the minors, to boot. But, Gibbie’s Gibbie, Cecil’s Cecil, and Calhoun walked on a three-one pitch to load the bases for—wait for it—Mike Trout, not to mention Joaquin Benoit. Trout drove another line drive to the left of a diving Donaldson, and the Angels had two add-ons. Now, here’s my advice to Gibbie: forget the lefty/lefty unless it’s David Ortiz, and don’t send Aaron Loup back down. Wait for the next blow-out, one way or another, and put Cecil in at the beginning of an inning and let him pitch his heart out. Do it again. If he doesn’t come around after that, it’s time to go shopping.

The woeful Twins are in this weekend, Liriano gets his Friday night start against them, and the Jays can still go four of six on the bottom-feeders, but they need a sweep to do it. One game at a time.

I started yesterday’s report on Toronto’s lovely and relaxing 8-2 win over the Angels (ah, how we long for the good old days!) with a silly riff on all of the demons that the Blue Jays needed to exorcize when they got back home for these six games with two basement-dwelling teams. The gist of it was that the mission had been accomplished, demons exorcized, and the angels of goodness had prevailed over the demons, even if the Angels of Anaheim had not.

Well, guess what? They’re ba-a-a-a-ck! Well, some of them, anyway. Okay, one of them: the home team didn’t hit for stink against Los Angeles right-hander Will Shoemaker, in fact hardly hit at all, until after Shoemaker was long gone, and so was the game.

Marco Estrada was the centre of post-game conversation after another less than Marco-ish performance. Estrada, in fact, hasn’t really pitched well since “recovering” from his back strain suffered before the All-Star break. All of the conversation tonight centred around the team’s temporary six-man starting rotation, the extra rest and change in routine that it creates, and whether Estrada in particular was being affected negatively by the new system. Tonight, for example, he had a total of three days of extra rest, since the team has had two off days since his last start. Manager John Gibbons, showing signs of late-season playoff-race stress, probably not for the last time this year, had little patience for questions about Estrada and the rotation.

I won’t spend any more time on it either, because I would like to raise two other possibilities, the first being that Estrada’s back is still bothering him enough to affect his usually uncanny pin-point control. And, by the way, is it just me or did home plate umpire Chad Whitson establish a strike zone little bigger than a postage stamp for both teams? Until someone tells us otherwise, we have to assume that Estrada’s back is all right, but the question lingers as long as there is only silence on the subject emanating from the clubhouse.

The other possibility is that other than being a bit wilder than usual (see comment about strike zone above), maybe Marco Estrada got beat tonight by a combination of bad luck for him and good luck for the hitters. The more I think back on the first couple of innings, the more frustrated I am about how the Angels built their lead.

In the first, Kole Calhoun lofted a lazy high ball to right that Michael Saunders settled under, and then started to scramble back for, as he realized how much more the ball was carrying than he had judged. Luckily he finally got under it near the wall. This was not necessarily an omen of anything. Estrada throws a lot of fly balls. As long as they stay in the park . . . Next off the tee at Glen Abbey were the twosome of Mike Trout and Albert Pujols. Mike Trout stepped up to the tee, er, plate, swung at a ball down around his ankles, and golfed it out of the park. Pujols, impressed with the success of Trout’s stroke, borrowed Trout’s three-iron, and duplicated the shot. Seriously, no self-respecting hitter should ever have swung at either of those pitches. If I were Estrada, I would probably have packed it in right then. I mean, what’s the point? Estrada then sandwiched strikeouts of C.J. Cron and Nick Buss around a two-out single by Andrelton Simmons.

By the way, Pujols’ homer was career number 584 for him, as he passed Mark McGwire to move into tenth place on the all-time career home run list. If you pass a hitter with a big fat asterisk next to his name, do you get an asterisk too? How about a gold star, because you passed him without doping?

Come the second inning, and Angels’ backup catcher Jett Bandy led off. (No, Bandy’s not a candidate for my Great Baseball Names All-Star Team; his name isn’t great, just weird.) He took a defensive swing at an inside pitch, hit the ball well down from the sweet spot so that it made a sound like whacking an over-ripe watermelon, and lifted it over the infield to left for a bloop single. Bandy then advnanced to second on a grounder to Darwin Barney by Kaleb Cowart on which Barney had zero chance to get the lead runner. Estrada then walked Cliff Pennington, which is a good thing and a bad thing. Good, because it set up the double play. Bad, because you don’t want to walk the number nine hitter. Ever. Kole Calhoun hit a double down the right field line, the only ball hit with authority in the whole mess of an inning. Bandy scored and Pennington stopped at third. The Jays decided to walk Trout to pitch to Pujols, a decent idea, since Pujols is brutally slow out of the batter’s box, and an obvious candidate for a double play. But Pujols got most of one and hit a fairly deep sacrifice fly to centre that scored Pennington and moved Calhoun to third. Fair enough, and better than a grand slam. Now it’s four-nothing. Unfortunately, C.J. Cron lofted another bloop single to right to score Calhoun and the Angels had a five-run jump start before the Jays had even hit twice.

Two golf shots in the first. Three runs on a decent double, a legit sac fly, and two sorry little bloopers, and Estrada was basically done, at 52 pitches over two innings, and all there was for him to do was carry on manfully and eat some innings to save the bullpen, which he did with dignity and grace, which is more than I can say I would have been able to do in the circumstances.

Oh yeah, he did give up a sixth run in the fourth inning. Get this: with one out Calhoun walked. Trout bounced one to third that kicked into foul territory as it crossed the bag. Donaldson got to it with a good stab, but his throw with momentum carrying him away from first base had no chance to get the speedy Trout. That was okay, though, because Pujols lofted an easy fly ball to left for the second out. Um, no. Melvin Upton lost it in the lights and it fell in front of him for another bloop single to load the bases, bringing up the cleanup hitter C.J. Cron. Cron knocked in the sixth run against Estrada with a mighty grounder into a force out. Sheesh. 6-0, but Estrada gamely went out and retired the side in the fifth to save another inning for the bullpen. Estrada’s line for the night was five innings, six runs, four real hits, two three-irons, 3 bloopers, and an infield hit (the partridge in the pear tree didn’t make it in from Fresno on time for the game), three walks, four strikeouts, and 94 pitches.

The other side of the coin in any loss is the offence; even if the Angels did squeeze out six runs against Estrada in five innings, there are still games when both teams score a ton of runs, and you can win even if your starter gets rocked. As I said in my introduction, this was not one of those games, as the Hitting Slump Demon managed to escape from its hidey-hole and bedevil the Jays’ hitters once again. Matt Shoemaker pitched very well, don’t get me wrong, you have to have pitched well when you come out of the game with a line of six innings, no runs, three hits, one walk, three strikeouts, and 99 pitches.

But Shoemaker’s stock-in-trade is a split-finger fast ball that sinks like it’s wearing cement booties. The Jays’ hitters just couldn’t pick up the spin and lay off it. He only struck out three, to be sure, but generated just enough ground balls, seven, to get him out of a couple of minimal threats. He only allowed base-runners in three of his six innings, a two-out double to Michael Saunders in the second, a two-out single to Edwin Encarnacion in the sixth, and he let the two leadoff hitters on in the fourth before snuffing out the only encouraging sign of a rising against him. Josh Donaldson singled to right and Edwin walked, followed by the most exciting moment of the night for the Jays, when Russell Martin hit one hard to right, that looked off the bat like it might go. But it stayed in the park for Kole Calhoun, and the only result was Donaldson moving up to third on the catch. But Troy Tulowitzki failed to cash the runner-on-third-one-out situation, going down swinging. Saunders flew out to centre, and that was it.

After Estrada went out, Scott Feldman came in for an inning and a third, after throwing fourteen pitches in the ninth the night before, Aaron Loup followed him with an inning and two thirds, and Brett Cecil finished off the ninth, striking out two but giving up a single to Calhoun.

Jose Valdez, J.C. Ramirez, and Deolis Guerra succeeded Shoemaker on the mound for the Angels, pitching an inning each.

Feldman and Loup each gave up a run, as did Ramirez and Guerra, so the bullpens pitched to a standoff, leaving the game tied, if we could just disregard the Angels’ first six runs off Estrada.

From the Jays’ standpoint, one good thing that came out of the game is that by using Feldman again and Loup, the bullpen mainstays, BenGriNa and Joe Biagini, remain fresh for tomorrow night, and Cecil, having thrown only 12 pitches, would be available for spot duty, though not, please god, against any solidly-built right-handed hitters.

A soaring Jay Happ faces off against a faltering Jared Weaver in tomorrow night’s rubber match. If Happ can’t lead us to a series win against the Angels, we may be in deeper trouble for the moment than I would like to think.

A special thank you goes out to Boston reliever Heath Hembree, who with two outs in the eleventh inning tonight not only dropped the ball at first base to allow Kevin Kiermaier an infield hit, but also threw the ball in the dirt to the plate, allowing Luke Maile to score the winning run for Tampa Bay over the Red Sox. It’s good to know that other contending teams suffer from the whims of capricious fate as well.

Baltimore barely survived a furious Washington rally from a 10-3 deficit to hold off the Nats 10-8, so the Sox and the Jays are still tied, with Baltimore only one game behind.

The Blue Jays had lots of little demons to exorcise as they took the field tonight for the opener of a three-game set with the struggling Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, to give the Halos their rightful but altogether too wordy moniker.

First there was the Hitting Slump Demon, a nasty big hulk with an insidious little buddy sitting on his shoulder, the Too Many Strikeouts Demon. Then there was the mischievous Let’s Play Tricks on Dickey Demon, who puts it into the heads of the Jays batters to take whiffle bats to the plate when R.A. is on the mound. And then there’s the Can’t Win a Close One Demon, who chants endless loops of “Just wait, you’re gonna lose!” every time we take a one-run lead into the later innings of a game. And don’t forget the big, fat, lazy Complacency Demon, who quietly goes from locker to locker before the game whispering “Relax, these guys can’t beat the Little Sisters of the Poor” every time we start a series with a bottom feeder.

I don’t know why everybody disses the Little Sisters of the Poor. I seem to remember that the middle of their batting order was packed with some pretty tough sluggers. Which is a joke somewhat akin to one of my favourite Early Wynn stories. For those of you who don’t remember it, or weren’t even around then, the folksy Hall of Fame pitcher was Tom Cheek’s original broadcast partner for the Blue Jays, and surely qualifies as the top starter on my Great Baseball Names All-Star team. Wynn, who was very old school when it came to how the game was to be played, was once asked if it was true that he would knock his mother down with a pitch if she dug in too close to the plate against him. Wynn’s solemn answer was, “Mother was a hell of a hitter.”

Now, where was I? Oh yes, exorcising the demons. Seriously, the Jays had to be feeling pretty anxious, not to say snake-bit, after a six-game road trip during which arguably they should have gone 6 and 0, losing a 1-0 shutout to the Yankees, and coughing up two one-run losses to Cleveland when the Tribe overcame one-run deficits in their last at-bats. And it was indeed worrisome that Dickey was on the mound, and that the opposition was provided by the stumbling Angels, who had already lost eleven straight road games.

It’s not that I don’t have any confidence in R.A. Dickey’s starts for the Blue Jays. After watching him toil valiantly game after game to keep his team close, I just don’t have a lot of confidence in the ability of the Jays’ hitters to provide him with much in the way of run support. The aura of confidence emanating from the team when Dickey starts seems pretty wispy and unsubstantial, ready to be blown away at the first solo homer given up by the knuckle baller.

And after the playoff atmosphere in Cleveland, where every inning was charged with electricity, it had to be hard to get up for the Angels, despite the fact that a team that’s struggling and in a season-long funk has to jump up and bite somebody once in a while, and why not tonight?

Why not tonight, indeed. I’ll tell you why not: Dickey made one mistake all night, a gopher ball to career minor leaguer Nick Buss, who hit his first MLB dinger off him—imagine telling that one to your grandkids—and his successors on the mound, Joe Biagini and Scott Feldman, kept everything well in hand after he departed. Also why not is that though the Angels started a lefty, which has meant trouble for the Jays lately, that lefty was Tyler Skaggs, and though he managed to dodge a pretty big bullet in the first inning, he just couldn’t throw enough strikes to keep the Jays off the bases.

And finally why not is that Manager John Gibbons took a swipe at conventional thinking last night and put both of his catchers—his only catchers—in the lineup at the same time. Unwilling to have Russell Martin try to catch Dickey, in place of Dickey’s personal backstop Josh Thole, but unwilling to interrupt the incredible hot streak Martin has been on at the plate recently, he inserted Martin in the batting order at DH. Gibbons not only got away with the risk, but it paid off big time, as the stocky Montrealer went three for three, knocked in two runs, and had a walk, reaching base four times in the game.

As to why it was a risk for Gibbie to have both catchers in the starting lineup, it’s because if you have to insert your DH in the game defensively, you lose your DH and your pitchers have to hit. And since catchers are far more vulnerable to injury, the likelihood that Martin might have to suit up in the game to replace Thole was high enough to be a risk. But Thole stayed healthy, caught well, even plated a run with a sacrifice fly, and Martin led the offence, so risk averted, good call by the manager.

Two other lineup changes made by the manager for tonight’s game helped the Jays’ cause, and also contributed to the sense that with their return to the friendly confines of the TV Dome, the Blue Jays looked to have had a minor makeover of the team that had been struggling on the road. The news came out that Devon Travis had received a cortisone shot in the third knuckle of his right hand to help with a “minor” injury—could this maybe have been the source of his defensive struggles lately?–and so Darwin Barney was inserted as both leadoff batter and second baseman in Travis’ absence. And, to the delight of his legions of fans, Kevin Pillar returned to the lineup exactly on schedule, recovery process be damned, to resume giving more than his all to the Toronto cause. Both contributed to the Toronto run production that supported Dickey tonight.

Dickey retired the Angels in order in the top of the first, though it took him 12 pitches alone to get Mike Trout on a deep fly to centre. Barney celebrated his leadoff assignment by taking two called strikes, and then lacing the ball to left centre, where it short-hopped the wall, and he cruised into second. For all his lack of size, Barney has a compact swing and seems to hit the ball really hard when he makes contact. Both the first-inning double and the single he hit in the sixth were hard shots, no-doubters, that both jumped out of the infield. Josh Donaldson grounded out second to first to move Barney to third, and after Skaggs walked Edwin Encarnacion, Russell Martin delivered once again, a ground single through the right side to score Barney. Skaggs evaded further damage as Troy Tulowitzki popped out on the infield fly rule, and Melvin Upton fanned to end the inning.

No doubt surprised by the early run, Dickey came out for the second and promptly paid it back, with interest, in the only rocky inning he had tonight. The Angels worked over Tulo first before whacking Dickey. C.J. Cron led off by hitting a grounder to short that forced Tulo to rush his throw, and it tailed off into the dirt to his right. Encarnacion stayed on the bag and stretched for it as long as he could, before coming off the bag towards the plate to scoop the short hop, and then swiping behind him to tag Cron who was trying to dance past. An outstanding example of how a first baseman can pick up his fielder with his scooping ability. Then Andrelton Simmons hit one to Tulo’s left that took a bad skip at the last minute and bounced off the heel of his glove, Simmons is fast, and Tulo had to pick it cleanly the first time to get him out, so he reached with an infield single.

This brought up Nick Buss, a 29-year-old farmhand who started in the Dodgers organization and had a cup of coffee in the big leagues with them in 2013. Since then he’d bounced around a couple of farm systems until the Angels brought him up from Triple A on August thirteenth of this year. Before tonight, he’d had only 19 at bats with the Dodgers, and thirty this year with the Angels. But against Dickey, after taking a knuckler for a ball, and fanning on one, he’d seen enough, and smacked the next one into the right field seats for a 2-1 LA lead. Not content with that for a night’s work, Buss would later extend the Angels’ life with one out in the ninth by bunting his way on against Scott Feldman, and then stealing second base, to boot.

Dickey gave up two more hits in the inning, to third baseman Kaleb Cowart and old Blue Jay buddy Cliff Pennington, before getting out of the inning. But, early as it was in the game, this would be Los Angeles’ last shot at any kind of a threat. Once the Jays retook the lead, they, and Dickey and Biagini and Feldman, were never headed.

Skaggs managed to protect the lead for one inning, retiring the bottom of the order, but after Dickey walked Trout and erased him with a Pujols double play ball in the top of the third, Skaggs came out in the bottom of the inning utterly unable to find the plate, and allowed the Jays to retake the lead without doing very much at all. Boosting his pitch count from 38 to 72 in one go, he walked Barney and Donaldson, gave up a bloop single to short left centre by Encarnacion to load the bases, and walked Martin to force in Barney with the tying run. He managed to get Tulo to ground into a double play, with Donaldson coming in for the second run of the inning and the lead. Skaggs got Melvin Upton to ground out to end the inning, but it was too late for the Angels.

The bloop by Encarnacion that loaded the bases maybe should have been caught. Buss, perhaps still thinking about his first MLB homer, came in late and dove but could only trap it, while Mike Trout, who looked like he could have taken charge, held back as if he were thinking, “give the kid a chance to be a hero”. I only mention this because in the late innings I felt that Trout badly mistracked Martin’s ball that went for a double, and I’m wondering why an MVP candidate is looking diffident and awkward in the field.

In the fourth, after Dickey once again stranded a single, Kevin Pillar, who was greeted on his return to the lineup like a conquering emperor by his legions of adoring, Superman-sign waving fans, led off the Jays’ fourth with a bullet down third that went for a double, and then made his way around to score in approved Kansas City small-ball fashion, moving to third on a Michael Saunders groundout, and scoring on a deep sacrifice fly off the bat of Thole. Skaggs wasn’t finished yet, but he was slowly expiring by way of the Death of a Thousand Cuts. Jays, 4-2 after four.

From this point until he was pulled by manager Gibbons with two out in the seventh after walking Cliff Pennington, Dickey allowed only a harmless single by Andrelton Simmons in the sixth. After the Pennington walk, Gibbie decided that Dickey was done, and called on Joe Biagini to face leadoff hitter Kole Calhoun, who was quickly retired on a comebacker to the mound. Although I’m never sorry to see Biagini in the game, I have to confess that Gibbie’s penchant for yanking a starter because of one base-runner when he has a decent lead annoys me no end. Besides that it delays the game, it just seems like such an insult that somebody like R.A. Dickey can’t be expected to pitch over a two-out walk just because it’s the seventh inning, despite having by now a 6-2 lead,on top of which he had only thrown 94 pitches, on an extra day’s rest.

Biagini continued in the eighth, and gave up a leadoff single to Mike Trout, but that was just a trick by Biagini, to let the superstar get on and then steal second, just so the crafty young righty could pick him off. This is not the first pickoff at second for Biagini, who seems to have the knack for outwaiting the base-runner and getting him to break for third prematurely.

Scott Feldman came on for the ninth, with the Jays’ lead now five, finally managed to retire Simmons, and then gave up the bunt single and stolen base to Nick Buss. Buss got to third, but died there as Carlos Perez grounded out to short to end the game. A definite plus for the Blue Jays was having enough of a lead to be able to keep BenGriNa in their seats for an extra night’s rest. A rested three-headed closer is an effective three-headed closer.

As for the Jay’s hitters, they finally convinced LA manager Mike Scioscia to yank Tyler Skaggs in the fifth. Like Gibbie, Scioscia, also a former catcher, seems particularly intolerant of the base on balls. Whatever limit of walks Skaggs had approached in his last inning was one short of the limit of his manager’s patience. As soon as he walked Josh Donaldson leading off, he was finished.

Right hander Mike Morin came in to pitch to Edwin, and rather ironically walked him, although the Angels did close the books on Skaggs by throwing out a steal attempt by Donaldson. Starting with Edwin, then, it was a clean slate for Morin. In short order we’d added two runs to our lead. Martin singled Edwin to second, then Tulo scored him and moved Martin to third on a double to left. In what must be a franchise record, Upton launched a sacrifice fly to left to score Martin, marking the second successful sac fly in the game for the Blue Jays.

A.J. Achter mopped up for the Halos, yielding four hits and a walk over three innings, but only one run on a solo homer to right by Michael Saunders, who ended a bit of a power drought by finally hitting his twenty-first, which was almost as long coming as his twentieth had been. It was off Achter that Martin hit the double to centre in the eighth that I thought Trout misplayed. He broke back to his left, and ended up having the ball go over his left shoulder, that is, he should have broken to his right. Does he play centre like this all the time?

By the way, Achter’s name reminds me that there’s another pitcher who should be added to the staff of the Great Baseball Names All-Star Team: Bob Duliba, who had a modest career from 1959 to 1967, ending up with the (then) Kansas City A’s. It’s not his name but his nickname that qualifies, and you need to know some German colloquialisms to get this one, but Duliba was given the nickname “Ach”. That’s right, “Ach Duliba”. Guess you had to be there.

So our boys chased all those little demons back into their hidey-holes, at least for one night, and it’s a good thing, because the O’s and the Sox both won tonight as well, so the status, as they say, is quo. May the demons not venture out tomorrow night, lest they be smited by the magical slants of Marco Estrada. Actually, I hope they do try to come out. I just love a good smiting.

Sunday, July third, when the Blue Jays played the Indians on Troy Tulowitzki Bobblehead Day, the heads that bobbled the most in the stadium were the heads of the Cleveland pitching staff, as they bobbled up and down and from side to side watching the home team spray hits all over the ball park en route to a 17-1 shellacking of the Indians.

With today’s tough and testy late-inning 3-2 loss to the Indians at Regressive Park in Cleveland the season series between the two teams concluded. Leaving aside that 17-1 outlier of July third, the Indians outscored the Blue Jays by a margin of exactly one run—24 to 23—to take four of the other six games in the series.

Projecting today’s standings to season’s end, which is a mug’s game that I just shouldn’t play, but there you are, the Texas Rangers would finish with the best record in the American League. Cleveland in winning the Central Division would finish number two overall, and the other three playoff teams would come from the AL East, Toronto number three overall, and Boston and Baltimore the wild card teams. The seedings for the playoffs would have the Rangers matched up against the winner of the wild card play-in game, the thought of which gives me the willies, and number two—Cleveland—hosting number three, Toronto.

If it turns out that way, the Ontario Ministry of Health better start working right now on opening up extra cardiac beds in Ontario hospitals during the playoffs, for all the fans who’ll succumb during the games. My heart is in perfect shape, apparently and knock on wood, and even I’m worried about whether I could stand a playoff series between two teams so evenly matched and which bring such intensity to every game.

Friday night we had the Osuna smackdown decided on an outfield Keystone Kops routine by the Jays, yesterday we had the one-run teeter-totter for five innings, and today we had the Jose Ramirez redux show, a game that was decided not so much by Ramirez’ bat or Brett Cecil’s pitch location, but by such questions as who called time out, when is a balk a balk, what the hell is a balk and how did this guy get to the show without knowing the answer to that question anyway, and who put the damn stone in the base path near the shortstop position?

And the outcome of the game causes us to ponder yet one more question of cosmic importance, at least in the universe of Blue Jay fandom: Exactly what the hell does Toronto manager John Gibbons think will happen if Marcus Stroman is allowed to throw that magical pitch number 101? Does he think Stroman will collapse in a puddle of water inside his uniform if he throws that fateful pitch? Sorry, Gibbie, you’ve got your Oz characters mixed up: that was the Wicked Witch of the West, not the Strawman (the Stroman) who fizzled away to droplets.

Speaking of Stroman, today’s pitching matchup between Stroman and the Indians’ ace Corey Kluber was supposed to be a barn-burner of a pitching duel, and it was, for the most part, as witnessed by the low score. But the Stroman we saw yesterday, resembling the Marcus Stroman of last September far more than the Marcus Stroman of six weeks ago, was the better pitcher in every respect. He went deeper into the game, he gave up a run less, he only walked one to Kluber’s four, and he even struck out nine to Kluber’s eight.

The only time Stroman was in any trouble at all was in the sixth, when the top three hitters in Manager Terry Francona’s batting order led off the inning with three consecutive base hits to score Cleveland’s first run, and even then he slammed the door on them, allowing Jason Kipnis to reach third on a Jose Ramirez double play before striking out Lonnie Chisenhall to end the modest uprising. Whatever slight trouble he had before the sixth was resolved by his effectiveness in throwing ground ball outs, which led to two earlier double plays. The only time he had two runners on base at the same time was when Cleveland scored the run in the sixth, and the only time a runner reached second on him was in the fourth, when his breaking balls were biting so hard that he threw one past Russell Martin while striking out Ramirez to allow him to reach first, and then wild-pitched him to second. He then struck out Abraham Amonte to end an inning in which he struck out the side and induced a ground-out to first.

After effortlessly dispatching the first six hitters he faced, three of them on strikeouts, Kluber stumbled in the third and fell behind 2-0, thereafter having to pitch from behind until he left the game in the seventh. Melvin Upton led off the inning by breaking the string of putouts with his third home run since joining the Jays, a shot to left that suddenly stirred the blue-shirted multitudes who had invaded Cleveland. After popping up Zeke Carrera to second, he walked Ryan Goins on a 3-1 count.

Toronto fans are always asking why Gibbie doesn’t try such small-ball standbys as the hit-and-run more often, but here’s what can happen when you do. Goins is a fast and savvy base-runner—witness his great play on Saturday to score from second on an infield hit—but Devon Travis is not the best candidate to pull it off, producing a lot of swings and misses as he does. Kluber, maybe adjusting to the play, threw one high and outside. Travis whiffed on it, it was an easy pitch to handle, and Goins was DOA at second. This cost us a third run. Free to swing away, Travis went the other way as he does so well and smacked a double down the line in right. Josh Donaldson followed with another piece of smart, opposite field hitting, a full-count single to right that scored Travis, and would have scored Goins, too, except . . .

The 2-0 lead held up until the Indians got on the board in the sixth, as we’ve seen. Then in the top of the seventh Kluber hit the wall, oddly enough again after two were out—there seems to be an awful lot of that going around these days. After getting Upton to ground out to second, he thwarted a pretty good attempt by Zeke Carrera to bunt his way on, Carlos Santana making a nice play to come in for the pickup and turn around and get the throw to Michael Martinez covering in time for the out.

But then Goins worked a walk on a three-two pitch after Kluber had started out with two called strikes. This was not the beginning of the end but the end of the end for Kluber, to mangle Winston Churchill. Travis singled up the middle, and Josh Donaldson walked on four straight balls. This brought Edwin Encarnacion to the plate, and manager Francona to the mound with the hook for Kluber, who finished with 6.2 innings, two runs, six hits, four walks, eight strikeouts, and 113 pitches.

Into the game came Mike Clevinger, a 25-year-old rookie with Jacob de Grom-like flowing locks down to his shoulders. The reference to de Grom might be appropriate in regard to his talent, as well. While he first came up to the Indians in mid-May, he hasn’t had a lot of appearances, and his record is typical of what you might expect from a little-used, up-and-down rookie. But oh, those minor league numbers: in 2015, with Double A Akron, he was only 9-8 as a starter, with an ERA of 2.73, but had 145 strikeouts and only 40 walks in 158 innings. In 2016, shuttling back and forth between the Triple A Columbus Clippers and the Indians, he is 11-1 in Columbus with an ERA of 3.00, 97 strikeouts and 35 walks in 93 innings. So remember his name.

What Mike Clevinger did not learn in Columbus, or in Akron, or in the majors for that matter, is how not to balk, or even what a balk is, which contributed greatly to the confusion that ensued.

Okay, time out here for a simplified look at the most misunderstood rule in baseball. In essence, with runners on base, the pitcher has to come to a complete stop in his delivery for an appreciable moment, commonly referred to as the “stretch” position, before delivering the ball to the plate. It’s more easily understood if you keep in mind that its purpose is to keep the pitcher from having an unfair advantage over baserunners by creating a moment after which the pitcher when he moves again must throw to the plate. If there were no balk rule, pitchers could fake beginning their motion, enticing the runner to break for the next base on the assumption that he is making a pitch to the plate, and then stop their delivery to the plate and throw ahead of or behind the runner for a pickoff or caught stealing.

Confusion over the balk rule is compounded by the fact that its application is governed by different criteria for left-handed versus right-handed pitchers. The best known depiction of a balk is that a left handed pitcher, once he breaks his hands from the stretch, may only throw to first base if he steps directly toward first with his right leg. If his leg is pointed anywhere other than directly at first base he must throw to the plate. When the runner sees that right leg “break the plane” of 90 degrees to first, he is free to take off for second.

For right-handed pitchers, the movements that could constitute a balk are often so obscure that even the players don’t know why they have been called. In general, the only guideline for base-runners with right-handed pitchers is that they can run as soon as the pitcher separates his hands to begin his pitch, which is (supposedly) the only motion that can end the appreciable pause without a balk being called. But then sometimes allowances are made (I’m convinced) for a pitcher’s individual ideosyncracies, or style.

Dear readers, I am (was) a provincially certified baseball coach, qualified to coach in provincial championships. The above is the sum total of all I know about the balk rule, and I cannot recall a time when a balk was called that I actually knew why. On the other hand, whenever an opposing pitcher did something strange on the mound, we were always quick to call for a balk. Most of the time we had no idea what we were talking about, and just wanted to rattle the pitcher. So there you are; Mike Clevinger, you are not alone.

Back to the game. Edwin at the plate, two outs, bases loaded. Clevinger has a weird rocking motion that you notice instantly when he’s pitching from the stretch position. As his hands settle to his chest, he rocks forward onto his left foot, and back, forward, and back. Now this is all right, so long as he stops the foolishness for one second before breaking his hands to throw the pitch. It wasn’t clear to the viewer that he was doing it right. It wasn’t clear to Edwin that he was doing it right. Suddenly, Edwin and Roberto Perez were in a rather animated conversation, while Edwin was out of the batter’s box. We later learned that Edwin was asking Perez why the pitcher was moving like that, and if what he was doing was legal. Perez apparently told Edwin to tend to his knitting and leave his pitcher to him to handle. All, no doubt, in very elegant Spanish.

Then, while Edwin settled back into the batter’s box, two things happened almost simultaneously. Home plate umpire Ramon de Jesus, also Hispanic, and the first MLB umpire from the Dominican Republic, stepped out from behind the plate with his hand raised in the traditional signal for calling time. But Clevinger had already started his delivery, and only an instant after de Jesus called time, third base umpire Gred Gibson called a balk on Clevinger, advancing the runners and sending Ryan Goins home.

Much confusion ensued, after which it was sorted out that de Jesus had called time before Gibson had called the balk, and so de Jesus ruled that the runners had to return to their bases. This led to visits to the umpires by both managers, a visit to the mound by the Cleveland pitching coach, and a visit to the mound by one of the umpires. Finally, everyone settled down and play resumed, only to have Clevinger strike out Edwin on a called third strike, over bitter remonstrations from Edwin that the pitch was a ball. The consequence of the overturned balk call, obviously, was that it erased an insurance run for the Blue Jays, and the teams went to the bottom of the eighth with the Indians still trailing by only one run.

The confusion over these events lingers, however, because there are three important questions that have yet to be answered. First, why did de Jesus call time? The pitcher was into his motion, Edwin was adamant after the game that he hadn’t asked for time, and there’s no evidence on the video to suggest that Perez asked for time. Unless he sees a stray ball on the field, or a streaker, there is no reason for an umpire to unilaterally call time. The second question is related to the fact that an umpire visited Clevinger on the mound and appeared to be explaining the balk rule and how it had been applied. In what parallel universe is it included in the umpire’s job description to give instructions to players so that they can avoid running afoul of the law? Thirdly, there is no discernible difference in Clevinger’s motion on the “balk” pitch and the ones that preceded it. Why wasn’t a balk called then, if his movement was considered a balk on the pitch that precipitated the confusion?

Yikes! What a mess!

For us, it’s on to the bottom of the eighth, where we don’t want to linger to long over the fact that Gibbie had to act like a manager and let Stroman throw to one hitter, whom he retired, to get to exactly 100 pitches, and then pull him in favour of Brett Cecil to pitch to the left-handed Jason Kipnis, whom he retired on a fly ball to right. And we don’t want to linger over the fact that Francisco Lindor hit a manageable ground ball to short that Goins seemed to have lined up, until it took a great high hop and glanced off his glove, to that of Devon Travis, by which time Lindor was safely across the bag with an infield hit. I mean, who put a pebble there, and how come the ground ball hopped right on it? And we definitely won’t linger over the fact that Jose Ramirez, the villain of Friday night’s piece, lined the first pitch from Cecil over the left field fence for a two-run homer, the lead, and eventually the game, as the Indians jumped into a 3-2 lead.

But we will linger over this: why did Gibby take Stroman out after Stroman had gotten Carlos Santana to hit an easy bouncer to third for the first out? He looked fine. Oh, the lefty-lefty matchup with Kipnis, right? Well, yeah, except that both Lindor and Ramirez are switch-hitters, so the lefty has no real advantage over them. So why not pull Cecil for, say, Scott Feldman or Ryan Tepera? Better still, to this point in the game the threesome of Kipnis, Lindor, and Ramirez had gone exactly two for nine against Stroman, the singles by Kipnis and Lindor in the sixth when Stroman had faltered. Marcus Stroman had more invested in the outcome of the game than anyone else on the field. Why not let him be a man and a major league pitcher and finish up the inning? I’m not saying start the ninth, here, but let a reliever start the last inning, rather than come in to a crisis the inning before. Roll your dice with whoever might be up to it. But don’t take Stroman, who was still effective, out for a reliever whose capability on this given day is untested.

It’s almost an afterthought that Cecil struck out Lonnie Chisenhall to end the inning, and that Cody Allen was making the Jays eat out of his hand like little pet parakeets in the top of the ninth for the save, until he started tiptoeing on the precipice by walking Josh Donaldson and Edwin with two out (who can blame him?) before getting Russell Martin to line out, hard, to Chisenhall in right to end the game and secure his save number 24.

The bottom line is there’s nothing to choose between the Jays and the Indians, as long as you keep the bat out of Ramirez’ hands; a playoff series between these two teams will be a barn-burner; and we’d all better keep our low-dose heart-attack-preventing aspirin close at hand.

On the whole, the Jays go 3-3 on the road trip, which ain’t bad, but could have been better. Too bad the Orioles and the Red Sox lost today too; opportunity lost. Hate that.