Long Ball Stories

Beyond the surface significance of winning one after losing a tough one, of his mates bailing out an Aaron Sanchez hard done by, and banishing the bottom-of-the-ninth heroics of the Cleveland Indians, the story of today’s nerve-tingling 6-5 Blue Jays’ win over the Indians, is largely a tale of a redemptive moment for Roberto Osuna, on the one hand, and of my growing concern over Devon Travis and the rare but sometimes fatal baseball malady of “the yips”.

First, to Osuna: it all looked far too eerily familiar. The young, earnest, vulnerable figure of Roberto Osuna standing with his back to the plate performing the final act of his preparation for taking the mound, a devout and child-like pose in prayer to his god to put thunder in his strong right arm and throw ashes in the face of his enemies. I expect that Osuna’s prayers get routed to the Old Testament god of punishment and retribution. I’m just not sure if the New Testament Jesus is all that interested in whether Roberto Osuna smites his tormentors again.

Blaring figures on the scoreboard showed the situation Osuna had come into. Once again his team had asked him to protect a one-run lead. Once again the team was away from the friendly surroundings of Toronto’s home grounds, facing the bottom of the ninth, with victory only a called third strike away, but more to the point, defeat only a swing of the bat away.

Ominously waiting to take their place at centre stage for the Indians were two familiar figures, Jose Ramirez and Tyler Naquin, two of the first three hitters that Osuna would face in his quest for save number 28 out of 31. The same Jose Ramirez and Tyler Naquin who had rained their own brand of thunder down on Osuna the night before, Ramirez homering to tie the game, and Naquin, improbably, racing around the bases while the Jays’ fielders frantically tried to corral the ball and prevent him from scoring the winning run. Even more ominously, they would bracket Lonnie Chisenhall in the batting order. The Lonnie Chisenhall who had ended for Aaron Sanchez’ quest for his thirteenth win with his fourth-inning three-run homer.

This time, Roberto Osuna dug a little deeper, went to his mightiest weapons, perhaps even supplicated better to his god, but he did the job. Quickly ahead of Ramirez with a one-two count, Osuna tried three times to put him away, twice with the four- seamer and once with the cutter. Then he went to the slider and Ramirez hit a lazy fly ball to left, under which Zeke Carrera camped for the catch. There must have been a special note next to Chisenhall’s name, because Osuna threw him five straight four seamers. He cut and missed on the first, took the second for a ball, fouled off the next two, and then fanned on the fifth. Two out, and only Naquin, the magical, the anointed, Tyler Naquin, to go. Naquin took two balls to jump ahead in the count, swung and missed for strike one, fouled one off, and meekly, miraculously, bounced out to Darwin Barney at third. Once again, five four-seamers in a row served to do the job. Osuna paused to give thanks for his magical arm and his amazing good fortune, and went to meet his catcher, the ghosts of Friday night vanishing in the mist.

As I read over what I wrote yesterday about the unfortunate role that Devon Travis’ fielding played in the Jays’ loss to the Indians Friday night, there does seem to be an air of the prophetic about it. For the second day in a row an egregious, unforced error by the young second baseman at an important juncture in the game brought into focus again my concerns about what is happening to him in the field.

Last night it was Francisco Liriano’s task to weather the effects of a Travis error, or rather a second Travis error. He survived the first one unscored on, but not the second, in a game that was decided by one run.

Tonight it was Aaron Sanchez who was victimized. Pitching with the lead since the Jays’ second inning, he was working with a comfortable 5-0 margin. He had faced the minimum nine batters over the first three innings while striking out four. The only glitch came in the third when, ironically, the usually flawless Ryan Goins booted an easy ground ball off the bat of Abraham Almonte. Sanchez and Goins exchanged the appropriate gestures of brotherly team-mates, Goins clearly indicating his apologies, and Sanchez responding that he’d pick up his team-mate, which he did two pitches later. Chris Gimenez hit a grounder right at Goins near the bag that he easily converted into a 6-3 double play to redeem himself and end the inning.

In the top of the fourth Sanchez lost his concentration and walked the leadoff hitter Carlos Santana on a three-two pitch. Then it happened. Jason Kipnis hit a hard grounder right at Devon Travis, who picked it cleanly, turned to second and snapped a throw that whizzed right by Goins for a throwing error. Not only was the double play missed, but Sanchez had his first two base-runners on with nobody out.

That opened the floodgates. Francisco Lindor hit a single to centre for the Indians’ first hit off Sanchez. Santana running from second stumbled after rounding the bag, and had to be held. Mike Napoli hit a deep sacrifice fly to centre that scored Santana and moved Kipnis up to second. Ramirez singled to centre for the Indians’ second hit and second run, scoring Kipnis. and moving Lindor to second. On a full count, Lonnie Chisenhall, who has burned the Jays before, hit a three-run homer to right, and Cleveland had five runs on just three hits. After striking out Naquin, Sanchez gave up a single to Almonte before Chris Gimenez lined out hard to Goins at short. In the first three innings Sanchez had thrown just 37 pitches, in the fourth he threw forty, the Indians tied the game, and you knew that this was it for Aaron Sanchez today. There would be no thirteenth win today, and the bullpen was facing five innings of work to keep the game in reach.

By the rules of scoring, you are not allowed to assume the completion of a double play if there is an error on the front end of the play. Therefore, only Santana’s run was unearned: if the throw had been accurate, he would have been out, and not on base to score on Napoli’s sac fly, which, by the way, would have been the third out of the inning if the double play had been made. Lindor’s single before Napoli’s fly ball would have been an inconsequential two-out base hit with nobody on. So in the books it’s four earned runs, but in the ledger of common sense, none of those runs were Sanchez’ fault.

There’s no question that Travis’ error on the double play ball changed the complexion of both the inning and the game. I’m not sure how much of a sample size you need before determining that someone is suffering from the yips, but it doesn’t strike me as impossible that he could be developing them.

The phenomenon of “the yips” looms large in golf, where it refers to someone who has totally lost the ability to sink even the easiest of putts. (Is it still the yips if you never could sink easy putts? Just askin’.) Less well known is its application in baseball, where it refers specifically to the psychological condition that makes a player unable to make even the shortest throw, in fact especially the shortest throw, accurately.

There are a number of interesting, even startling cases of the yips in the chronicles of the modern era of major league baseball. They can bedevil anyone, but the most notorious cases involve pitchers and catchers, for obvious reasons, and second basemen, which seems odd, until you reflect on the fact that the second baseman has the “easiest” range of throws to make—the easier the throw, the more horrifying if you mess it up. The more you mess it up, the harder it is to do it right.

Steve Blass was an all-star pitcher with the Pirates in the late sixties/early seventies, who actually gave his name to the syndrome, as it is known by some as “the Steve Blass disease”. His career was ruined once and for all by a complete lack of control once it took on its full force. Another more recent pitcher, Rick Ankiel of the Cardinals, was forced to abandon his mound career, but he went to the minors and recreated himself as an outfielder and made it back to the majors that way. Ironically, he was feared defensively for his strong arm.

There is a history of switching to the outfield, which is interesting because it seems the longer throws which require less pinpoint accuracy are often not affected by the problem. Two all-star second baseman, Chuck Knoblauch of the Twins, and Steve Sax of the Dodgers, both finished out their careers as outfielders. In their cases it didn’t hurt that they were both good hitters, with Knoblauch in particular occasionally contesting the American League batting title, finishing at .333 in 1995, runnerup to Edgar Martinez of the Mariners.

There are at least two cases of catchers being affected by the yips as well. Mackey Sasser, who caught for the Mets, oddly lost his ability to throw after being involved in a severe collision at the plate with Jim Presley of the Braves. Sasser was absolutely unable to throw the ball accurately back to the pitcher unless he tapped his glove on the ground four times before making the throw, introducing an element of obsessive-compulsive disorder into the problem. When Brett Butler, who must rank right up there with Pete Rose on the nice guy scale, was with the Giants, he famously stole third base once while Sasser was going through his ritual.

Geovany Soto, who is playing currently with the Angels, has developed a bizarre and complex combination of style and ritual to compensate for being affected by what players now refer to as “the thing”. As he receives a pitch, he falls forward onto his knees, and then throws the ball back to the pitcher (or even to a base on an attempted steal) with only arm action; the follow-through makes him look like he has thrown off the wrong foot. Back in the days when gender sensitivity had not crossed the horizon of the baseball world, his throwing style would have been described as “throwing like a girl”. Yet Soto has resurrected his career, signing a minor league contract with the White Sox for 2015 and playing his way onto the major league roster, where he played well enough to make a deal with the Angels as a free agent for this year. He’s currently hitting .269 for them, and has caught almost 190 innings, but his caught stealing record isn’t great: he’s only thrown out 6 of 31 attempted steals.

Only time will tell if this “thing” is temporary with Travis, or if he’s really afflicted. In the meantime, looking just at last night’s and tonight’s adventures in the field, it’s getting to the point where I’m thinking “hey, we’re in a pennant race here”.

Luckily for Travis, Sanchez, and the entire Blue Jays cohort, Edwin Encarnacion immediately set things to rights in the top of the fifth. Leading off, he hit an 0-1 pitch from Indians’ starter Josh Tomlin about as hard as you can hit a ball, and just like that the Jays had a six-five lead. With nobody out in the top of the fifth, it was beyond credence that the final score would be 6-5, but that’s how it worked out.

Now, how did it get there? After being nicked for singles by Travis and Encarnacion in the first, Tomlin, who had pitched well against the Jays previously, was marked up for two runs by the Jays in the second, which were delivered by Travis, who collected two RBIs on a little dribbler to third that went for an infield hit.

Here’s how that little sleight-of-hand went down: with two outs, Darwin Barney blooped one into centre for a single. With the outfield pulled in because Manager Terry Francona’s staff presumably checks all the stats but doesn’t watch much video, Ryan Goins pounded a double over Lonnie Chisenhall’s head in right. Chisenhall played the ball back in really quickly, and Barney had to stop at third. Travis then hit a tricky little hopper to third on which Barney, running with two outs, scored easily. But when Goins, rounding third, saw third baseman Jose Ramirez miss picking the ball up with his bare hand, he judged that it would go far enough behind Ramirez that no one could get to it in time, and he just steamed on to the plate and gave Travis a second RBI on an infield hit, a brilliant piece of base-running.

The Jays piled on Tomlin more decisively in the third when Russell Martin hit a one-out solo homer to centre. Troy Tulowitzki followed with a double to right centre, but was caught in a rundown when Michael Saunders hit a grounder to second. It’s clear from the way Tulo’s running the bases that his calf issue isn’t really resolved yet. With Saunders on first on the fielder’s choice, Melvin Upton unleashed his second homer as a Jay, a blast to right centre that upped the Toronto lead to 5-0.

By the time the dust cleared from the Indian uprising in the fourth and Edwin’s homer in the fifth, both starters were gone, and the rest of the game became a competition between the two bullpens to see which could post the most zeros on the scoreboard. In their turn Dan Otero, Brian Shaw, Zach McAllister and Jeff Manship shut out the Jays the rest of the way, allowing five hits and no walks while striking out four.

Joe Biagini, the valuable rule 5 property who has certainly earned his keep, pitched the fifth and sixth for the Jays, giving up only a two-out double to Chisenhall in the sixth, to earn credit for the win. For those of you who have always wondered about the awarding of a win, a starting pitcher has to complete five innings and leave with his team in the lead to qualify for a win. That would include, for example, the starter for a home team that would finish his outing with the top of the fifth in a losing cause, but then see his team rally to retake the lead in the bottom of the fifth. If the game is in the hands of the bullpen, whoever is the “pitcher of record” when the winning run is scored receives the win.

So Biagini was the fortunate recipient of the “W” because after the Jays took the lead on Edwin’s homer, Manager John Gibbons called on him to take over when Sanchez was pulled after four and not eligible for the win. Fortunate, sure, but good, too, as he has been all year. With the win tonight, his record stands at 4-2 with an ERA of 1.97 for 50.1 innings pitched, with 45 strikeouts and 13 walks to his credit. Who does not think that he will be an essential part of the Blue Jays’ rotation by 2018, after some seasoning in the minors as a starter next year? (But how you gonna keep him down on the farm . . .)

After Biagini, the new relief pitching combine of BenGriNa, Benoit, Grilli, and as mentioned Osuna achieving redemption and his 28^th save, faced the minimum nine Cleveland batters in the last three innings, though Grilli had to induce a double play in the eighth to erase a one-out single by Francisco Lindor.

So the Jays survived the Travis miscue, even if Sanchez did not, with a very significant contribution of near-perfect pitching from the bullpen and one mighty swing from everyone’s favourite teddy bear. Praise be to the god(dess) to whom Roberto Osuna gives his allegiance. Hers must be powerful medicine indeed.

Tomorrow we try for the next series win in our streak, but we’ll have to beat Corey Kluber to do it. Marcus Stroman gets the call. May he be backed by solid defence.

Before you pledge your love to the goddess Baseball, know that she is a cruel mistress.

Though she may fill your bed more often than not with the fragrant aroma of rose petals, occasionally what rises from the conjugal bed as you approach in the dark is the stench of death and despair, for this time she has coldly abandoned you for another.

Just such a nasty trick did she play on the Blue Jays and their legions of adoring fans last night in Cleveland, in the opener of a three-game series with the Indians.

Francisco Liriano, who in this new starting rotation cooked up by the Jays’ poobahs seems to have become the go-to Friday night series-starter, pitched his heart out over six innings. He was followed by the greying but dynamite relief duo of Joaquin Benoit and Jason Grilli who protected his one-run lead and turned it over to closer Roberto Osuna for the save.

This seemed a perfect prescription for a win in a tight, well-pitched duel between Liriano and Cleveland starter Trevor Bauer. But then Osuna tried to sneak a one-out, two-strike changeup past Indians’ third baseman Jose Ramirez, and didn’t get away with it. As was inevitable, Osuna’s streak of converted saves dating back to early June was broken, and who could complain about that, really? The Jays were still in the game, and would just have to reach down a little deeper to pull it out.

Then unmitigated disaster struck, as a whole flock of pigeons came home to roost, and the Indians danced on the field. But let’s put off the description of the grisly end for a while. I’m not ready to wallow yet.

Trevor Bauer had already earned due respect from the Blue Jays for his memorable performance in the nineteen-inning Canada Day game in the TV Dome in Toronto. Plucked from his scheduled start the next day by Manager Terry Francona to do what he could to give the Indians a chance to win the marathon, he had thrown five peerless innings of shutout relief, giving up only two hits and earning the win. That Francona’s decision to plunder his rotation to win the game had repercussions down the line in that four-game series did not reflect negatively in the least on Bauer’s great achievement that day.

It was encouraging, then, that the Jays struck early against him tonight. It was so sudden that many among the Canadian throng who had flocked to Cleveland for the series were still milling around the gates trying to get in when Russell Martin, continuing his hot hitting from New York, blasted them into a two-run lead. Devon Travis grounded out to third to open the game. Michael Saunders walked, one of only two walks Bauer issued tonight. Edwin Encarnacion popped out. Then Martin settled into the batter’s box, but not for long. He turned on the first pitch he saw, a four-seamer, and crushed it. You knew it was gone from the moment of contact, and so did he, as he admired it on the way to first. Trevor Bauer would not shut the Blue Jays out this time.

When quintessential leadoff man Rajai Davis singled to left on a ground ball between third and short, it looked like the Indians would put themselves right back in it. But Jason Kipnis hit another grounder to the left side, but right at Ryan Goins, who started a smooth double play. Francisco Lindor followed with a ground single through the same spot Davis had hit, but died at first as Mike Napoli flied out to centre.

Wait a minute, what’s that? Ryan Goins started the double play? Oh, that’s right, I forgot to mention that tonight’s Blue Jays’ lineup was actually five players short of the original starting nine, as the injury bug seems to have taken on a momentum of its own. Josh Donaldson sat tonight because his jammed thumb was not ready to go. Troy Tulowitzki sat tonight because of what is being described as a “light” calf muscle strain. So the left side of the infield was patrolled by Goins at short and Darwin Barney at third, Goins having been recalled from Buffalo once the Tulo injury became known. To make room for him, Darrell Ceciliani was optioned back to the Bisons, leaving the Jays short-handed in the outfield until Keven Pillar, and after him, Jose Bautista return. Tonight’s outfield had Zeke Carrera in left, Melvin Upton in centre, and Michael Saunders in right. So, we had two replacements and Saunders out of position in the outfield, plus the left side of the infield subbed in, though with little drop-off in defence, at least in the infield. The Jays have been remarkably effective at playing over injuries so far, but tonight they may have reached the limits of their good fortune, as we shall see.

Despite the messy starts, both pitchers settled in after the first, and went pitch to pitch through the top of the sixth. Liriano retired ten in a row from the last out of the first until he opened the fifth by walking Carlos Santana. Then things got a little dicey for him, thanks to Devon Travis. Jose Ramirez hit a hard one-hopper into the hole at short; Goins went down for it, to his right, and made a nice pick. He unloaded the ball to Travis quickly, but there was no hope for a double play. Travis didn’t get the memo though, and tried to force it to first, throwing wide of Edwin Encarnacion and into the Indians’ dugout. Santana was out, but Ramirez was on second, not first, with only one out, not two.

Brandon Guyer, who leads the league in hit-by-pitch, then let a Liriano bouncer hit his front leg, which he never even twitched to get out of the way. There used to be a rule about that . . . That set up the double play again, but Liriano went a different route, fanning Abraham Almonte and getting Roberto Perez to ground into yet another 6-4 forceout to end the “threat”, which, it should be noted, did not include a base hit.

Bauer had a great run, pitching through the eighth inning on 110 pitches. He stranded a single by Ryan Goins in the third, a walk to Melvin Upton and a single to Zeke Carrera in the fourth, the only inning in which he allowed two baserunners except the first. He stranded singles by Martin in the sixth and Saunders in the eighth. Moreover, in a sad and familiar story, he struck out a career high thirteen Blue Jays, while walking only two.

Jeff Manship came in to pitch the ninth for Bauer, and breezed on a popup and two strikeouts, throwing eleven pitches. Once again the Jays were shut down by an outstanding pitching performance, once again it was Trevor Bauer who did the deed, and were it not for Martin’s blast in the first, the Jays would never have been in the game.

After Liriano survived that fifth inning, the defence let him down again in the sixth. This time the Indians took advantage of it to score an unearned run and halve the Jays’ lead.

With one out, Jason Kipnis singled to centre, just the third hit off Liriano. Then he threw a short one that got away from Martin behind the plate. Kipnis, a good base-runner, hesitated, and then took off for second. Martin pounced on the ball and fired a strike to second base, a ball that arrived right on the bag and just before Kipnis’ feet arrived. A clean pick by Travis of a perfect throw, and Kipnis was out. But Travis missed the catch, the replay showing that it just glanced off his wrist. As the ball bounded away, Kipnis hopped up and took third; Travis was charged with an error. Instead of two outs and nobody on, there now was one out and a runner at third. Liriano almost stranded Kipnis there to survive the error. Almost. He struck out Francisco Lindor on a 3-2 pitch, but Mike Napoli lined a 2-2 pitch into left field to drive in Kipnis with the Indians’ first run of the game. Liriano walked Carlos Santana, but fanned Jose Ramirez to finish off his start with a 2-1lead to hand over to the bullpen.

There’s an elephant in the room here that needs to be outed, and no one seems willing to do it. For all of Devon Travis’ undoubted offensive value, what won him the starting job at second base last year, and what guaranteed that he would return to it this year when he finished his recovery from shoulder surgery, was his surprisingly good defence, surprising in the sense that he had always been labelled as a plus offensively but a minus defensively. Cracks are starting to show in the fielding facade, though. He has made a number of crucial errors recently, and they have unspooled in spectacular fashion: the ball rolling out of his throwing hand on at least two occasions, more than one rushed throw to first, and, tonight, terrible judgement in trying to turn an impossible double play, and then completely missing a game-changing catch-and-tag at second.

Now that Goins is back up with the big club, and as soon as Tulo and Donaldson are both sound enough to return to the field, should Devon Travis get a time-out, so that he can refocus on his fielding? His offence is not going to help us much if he boots away more runs than he produces.

After Liriano finished the sixth, with the one-run lead it was time for the old/old/young combo that has worked so well for the Jays in recent weeks. Joaquin Benoit took the seventh as usual, and breezed, striking out the pinch-hitter Tyler Naquin, in for Brandon Guyer, inducing a ground ball to second from Abraham Almonte, and striking out Roberto Perez, on only twelve pitches. Jason Grilli pitched the eighth, and for once didn’t strike anyone out. Instead, he scattered three fly balls while working around

a walk to Jason Kipnis, on 21 pitches.

Roberto Osuna came on for the save, and started out well by getting Carlos Santana to pop out to catcher Russell Martin. This brought 23-year-old Jose Ramirez to the plate. Ramirez has taken over third base from the released Juan Uribe and made it his own, and brought an average above .310 to the plate to face Osuna. He also brought a record of eight homers and 53 RBIs with him. Osuna and Martin started him off with two mid-nineties four-seamers, but on 0-2, they tried to finish him off with a changeup which ended up not in Martin’s mitt, but in the right-field stands, Ramirez’ ninth home run and 54^th . . . well, you get the idea. The game was tied, and Osuna had his third blown save of the year.

The trouble with being in a tight game on the road is that it can end in an instant, sometimes a shocking instant. Having blown the save, Osuna and his defence needed to bear down and get the offence back to the plate for the tenth inning. It didn’t happen, and how it didn’t happen was both shocking and ugly.

Let’s reset the defence before considering what happened on Tyler Naquin’s game-winning at-bat. With Kevin Pillar and Jose Bautista still on the DL, the only original starting outfielder on the field was Michael Saunders, who has played left field for the entire season. He was in right. Melvin Upton, an experienced natural centre fielder, a most fortunate acquisition for the Jays considering Pillar’s subsequent loss, was in centre. Zeke Carrera, who had played so well in right during Bautista’s first stint on the DL, was in left. Simple question: why was Saunders in right and Carrera in left, instead of the opposite? I’m wondering when we will hear from Manager John Gibbons on that one.

Though I find it hard to imagine celebrating a walk-off sacrifice fly (would they mob a guy who knocked in the winning run with a grounder to the shortstop?) , that’s what the Indians did last night when Tyler Naquin plated Abraham Almonte from third to score the winning run in a 5-4 Cleveland win over the White Sox. So now he strode to the plate again, raising the question: is Tyler Naquin the magic charm, fated to be the hero once again? Or are the odds just too great that he would end the game two nights in a row, especially since there was nobody on base?

Once again Osuna jumped ahead of the hitter, getting foul balls on two four-seamers before throwing a third one for a ball. Once again, he changed his approach, and threw a slider. Another foul. A second slider, and the game was over, but not without some help from our reorganized (disorganized?) outfield. Naquin hit one high and deep to right. It looked like it would carry. Michael Saunders went back to the wall and tried to time the jump, but he missed it, and the ball banged off the fence and ran hard into short right centre, and ran, and ran, until finally Melvin Upton heaved into sight, picked up the ball, whirled around to throw, and slipped, his feet losing their grip in the turf. He had to throw short to Travis standing by, and by the time the ball was in to Russell Martin, Naquin, who had smelled the win at least from second base, was across the plate and the game was over.

My take? The ball was catchable. Zeke Carrera, who should have been in right, has made that catch several times this year. Saunders has as well, but not in right field, and not as often. Can we be sure that Carrera would have caught it? Of course not. But we do know that Saunders did not. Then, leaving aside his final slip, alarmingly reminiscent of the play on which Bautista was injured, why wasn’t Upton tracking the ball to back up Saunders? When the ball came off the wall, he was absolutely nowhere in sight. Did he think the ball was out and the game over anyway? Can you even make a call like that, if you’re a major-league outfielder? I leave the Jays themselves to answer these questions, but what I do know is that the play did not look good at all, and it was a shame that it decided the game.

In the last weeks we’ve had a great record in close games, thanks to the solid work of the trio of Benoit, Grilli, and Osuna. We had every reason to hope that it would work out again. It didn’t, and it hurt. The Orioles lost big to the Astros, the Red Sox beat the Tigers, and we’re still in the lead, a half game ahead of Boston and a game and a half ahead of Baltimore.

But, please, never again. We expected rose petals, and smelt carrion. Never again.

Once again, we go into game two of a series needing to win two to win the series. It’s in the capable hands of Aaron Sanchez tomorrow evening. And, we hope, in the gloves of a properly-deployed outfield and a re-focussed Devon Travis at second.

The first rule of writing about baseball is that nothing is ever foreordained.

The second rule of writing about baseball is that the first rule is not always right.

For someone who believes in omens and portents it was obvious that the Blue Jays, and not the Yankees, would come out this afternoon and administer a calm and efficient dispatch of their opponents, which is what happened as Toronto, behind an in-control Jay Happ, took an early lead on the Yankees, who never really threatened to challenge the Jays’ eventual win.

There was, first and foremost, the question of momentum. After the 1-0 shutout by Chad Green et al., on Monday night, the Yankees had come out Tuesday night and scored five more unanswered runs off the Jays, taking an apparent stranglehold on a series win, before the predicted downpour scattered the players to their respective clubhouses. After the rain they added one more, for a 7-0 score in the previous sixteen and a half innings, before the Jays suddenly shifted gears, or rather found a gear that actually engaged, and stormed back to score twelve straight runs for a stunning 12-6 comeback win. If momentum means anything, the prophets would say, it had to mean something now.

But there were sound practical reasons to foresee a Jays’ win today as well. In the expanded starting rotation now in effect, it was Jay Happ’s turn to take the ball today. Nothing has been a better predictor of Jays’ success than having Happ on the hill. Going into today’s start, Happ had won 16 of 19 decisions, and more significantly his win total equalled exactly 23.5 % of the Jays’ wins on the year. Yes, I know that win totals for starting pitchers don’t mean all that much. But when one starter gets the win in such a high percentage of a team’s victories, it’s not exactly rocket science to figure out that there must be some sort of a connection beyond simple correlation.

Another reason to think that the Jays would have the advantage today was that their bullpen was relatively fresh and unused compared to the Yankees’. In the topsy-turvy Tuesday night win, Toronto had used only long man Scott Feldman, setup man Jason Grilli, and mop-up guy Ryan Tepera out of the pen. Meanwhile, in a futile effort to stop the Blue Jays’ post-downpour onslaught, Manager Joe Girardi had used six different pitchers. He would not have much choice when he went to the bullpen today, as opposed to the situation Manager John Gibbons found himself in, looking down at a relatively well-rested relief corps.

Finally, today was one last game in Yankee Stadium III for Russell Martin, who’s been on a tear recently, and has virtually carried the team on his broad back. He particularly likes hitting in this ball park, which he called home for two years when he hit a total of 39 home runs for the Yankees.

So it’s one thing to go all mystical-like and say “Oh, we’re gonna win today, I feel it in my bones”, but another thing altogether to say “I like our chances today because of A, and B, and C.” In any case, the Jays emerged into the sunshine of mid-day in the Bronx, broke in front, and were never really headed by the Bombers, as they scored their sixth consecutive series win and retained their slim lead in the American League East.

Despite his won-loss record (“but they don’t really mean anything—blah, blah, blah!), C.C. Sabathia has returned to the status of his best seasons as a big workhorse. He won’t throw a shutout any time soon, or ever, but he will eat up some innings, limit the damage by the other team, and strike out a fair share of hitters. Of course, with the Blue Jays make that more than a fair share. Though he went into today’s game with a 7-9 record, he also had a 4.20 ERA, which is certainly good enough to be over .500 in wins.

So against a guy who’s capable of sticking around for a while, and amassing a lot of strikeouts, it was good that the Jays got on him early, scoring three in the second, and banishing the spectre of getting stoned again in the Bronx. (Sorry, no doper jokes today; I only indulge in bad humour once per topic.) With a little help from his buddy Didi at shortstop Sabathia had breezed through the first, retiring Devon Travis on a short fly to left that Gregorius made a great running catch on with his back to the plate, then fanning Josh Donaldson and Edwin Encarnaction.

Jay Happ has had much better success than some of his rotation partners in starting off with a clean slate, and today was no exception. He got Brett Gardiner and Starlin Castro out on easy fly balls to left field, and in between struck out Chase Headley. Happy to be still looking at a scoreless game in the second, the Jays’ ramped up the pressure on Sabathia. After Russell Martin struck out, Troy Tulowitzki, continuing his smart, all-fields hitting, singled to right. Sabathia then issued his only walk of the night to Melvin Upton—interesting how a starter can only walk one, but it comes at just the wrong time—to put runners at first and second for Zeke Carrera, who was in right field today. The Jays hadn’t been getting much production from the bottom of the order recently, especially with Kevin Pillar on the sick list, so it was good to see Zeke and Darwin Barney make an appearance today and contribute.

Nobody read the book on Carrera, so the Yankees were playing him pretty close in the outfield. After a couple of mediocre—did he mean it?–bunt attempts, Zeke was ready to swing away, and Brett Gardner wasn’t ready for him. Carrera pounded the ball over Gardner’s head to the wall in left, scoring Tulo and sending Upton to third. Darwin Barney ripped the ball past Headley inside the bag at third into the corner, and both Upton and Carrera scored. Darrell Ceciliani and Travis struck out to up Sabathia’s strikeout total to four, but the only number that really counted was a big fat 3 next to Toronto’s name on the scoreboard.

Jay Happ may be having a great year, but that doesn’t mean that he won’t let down after being handed a lead to work with. Gary Sanchez, the rookie catcher who’s never seen a fast ball he wouldn’t swing at, blasted the first pitch of the inning from Happ over the fence in centre to cut the Jays’ lead to two. To his credit, that was sufficient to get Happ’s attention and bring him back to the business at hand, as he struck out the side to dispose of the Yankees’ 5/6/7 hitters.

Both pitchers stranded singles in the third inning, and in the top of the fourth Sabathia benefitted from a fine play by Starlin Castro to get a force on Melvin Upton at second after he had led off with a single. Zeke Carrera hit a ground ball into the hole between first and second. Castro went to his left, picked it, and instead of taking the easy out at first, going with his momentum, he twisted back around and threw off balance to second to nip Upton, who does not run with concrete booties on his feet. Buoyed up by this, Sabathia managed to strand Carrera at first. In the bottom of the fourth the Yankees edged a little closer on the second solo homer given up by Happ.

One of the great traditions in baseball is that a player who’s made a good play in the field always leads off the next inning. I always thought that it was because the fielder is cranked up and hyper alert thinking about his at-bat, and this makes him focus better on the ball. Or not. One theory is as good as another, but the cliché does seem true, doesn’t it? So Castro leads off against Happ and turns on a two-one pitch, his first homer against the Jays this season. After he deposited the ball over the fence in left, Happ walked Gary Sanchez (as who wouldn’t?) on a 3-1 pitch, but then he struck out Aaron Judge, and teased a double-play grounder out of Gregorius.

The Jays’ lefty got some breathing room again in the top of the fifth, as his mates took advantage of some shoddy fielding by Yankee third Baseman Chase Headley to pick up run number four, and then celebrated with Melvin Upton as he really padded the lead with his first homer as a Blue Jay, a big opposite-field three-run job with two outs.

Devon Travis led off with an infield single to short. Josh Donaldson then hit a grounder to Headley at third that wasn’t hard to handle, but wasn’t really a double-play ball. He went for the force at second, and the plain truth is that Travis really hustled down the line, and Headley didn’t hustle his throw, so both hands were safe.

Headley must have had that play rattling around in his mind, because Edwin Encarnacion hit an easy double play ball to him that he totally botched, opening up the inning for the Jays to storm ahead. He picked up the ball close to the bag, stepped on third, and threw to first, to get the not-so-fast Encarnacion. But he really air-mailed it and it went out into no-man’s land down the right field foul line. Result: instead of two outs and Donaldson on second, Travis was out at third for one out, but Josh came around to third and Edwin was safe at first. Russell Martin, who’s going after RBIs these days like a blood hound after a possum, ran the count to 3-1 and then bounced the cripple into right to score Josh and send Edwin to third.

For once in this series Troy Tulowitzki didn’t do his part in the Russell-Troy show, and struck out on a foul tip for the second out. This brought Melvin Upton to the plate, and admit it, all you Blue Jays’ fans out there, your hearts sunk a little bit, anticipating another big whoosh from Upton striking out, though he has been comin along of late. Then he came around a lot, went to right centre with an 0-1 pitch, cleared the wall and cleared the bases for a 7-2 Toronto lead. Welcome, finally, to Toronto, former B.J. now bona fide Blue Jay. Upton’s record for 2016 is now 16 home runs in San Diego, where it’s really hard to hit homers, and one with Toronto in the AL East, where all the ball parks look like sandboxes compared to San Diego. Behind by five now, it was anti-climactic that Sabathia struck out Zeke Carrera to end the inning.

This time Happ didn’t need a reminder to tend to his knitting, dispatching the bottom third of the Yankees’ order. He struck out Tyler Austin and Austin Romine (is there a trend here? Could we put together an All-Austin team? Would they play in . . . Austin, Texas?) Then Aaron—not Austin—Hicks grounded out to Barney at third to end the inning.

In the modern game it’s pretty unusual to see a starting pitcher stay in the game past the fifth inning when he’s down 7-2. But Sabathia came out for the top of the sixth, and why not? Consider that he had given up three runs in a single burst in the second, and then cruised to the fifth, when he gave up a run that stemmed from an error, even though it was earned, and three more on a single blow. Consider also that he had thrown only 82 pitches through five, and Girardi didn’t have much left by way of alternatives. So Sabathia came back for one more inning, gave up a leadoff single to Darwin Barney, then struck out the next two hitters, and ended the inning by getting a force on Barney at second. He finished the six innings with 7 runs, 9 hits, 1 walk, and twelve strikeouts, on 98 pitches. Like I said, a workhorse.

Kirby Yates and a couple of the retreads from Tuesday night’s craziness, Tommy Layne and Anthony Swarzak, wrapped things up for the Yankees, and managed to keep the Jays off the board for the last three innings, while their mates at the plate managed to creep a little closer, but not enough.

Like Girardi, John Gibbons kept his fingers off the hook for Jay Happ for longer than he usually manages to do. He didn’t pull Happ in the sixth after Chase Headley, trying to make up for his fielding gaffes, hit one out to left, and was followed by base hits by Castro and, eventually, Aaron Judge. Happ rewarded his manager’s confidence by working a very quick 7-pitch seventh, getting him to only 87 pitches over seven innings, so Gibbie ran him out again in the eighth, which turned out to be a pitch too far.

Happ’s starting the eighth inning resulted in a disjointed handoff to the bullpen which in turn resulted in Roberto Osuna’s early arrival on the mound, as he was asked to retire one batter in the eighth before locking down the save quickly in the ninth. Happ was pulled with one out after Chase Headley had reached on an infield hit to short, on a ball that Troy Tulowitzki came up with, but couldn’t make a play on. Joaquin Benoit was brought in but couldn’t quell the mini-rising, eventually giving up a hit that scored Headley and added a fourth run to Happ’s ledger. Enter Osuna in the eighth, to work the relatively rare four-out save.

Jay Happ’s record went to 17 and three tonight, a ratio that speaks for itself. His ERA climbed back up over 3 to 3.05, yet despite the runs he gave up, there never seemed any doubt that he, not to mention the Jays, would end up with the win.

We go on to Cleveland for the weekend after an off-day tomorrow. In a curious twist, next up in the Jays’ starting rotation is Francisco Liriano, a left-hander acquired from the Pirates, who follows of course the left-hander Jay Happ who also came to us from the Pirates via the free agency route. I hope that Liriano can live up to Happ’s level of achievement in his post-Pittsburgh career.

A palpable gloom had settled over Blue Jays Land when the heavens burst in New York tonight. Since arriving in the Bronx for this series with the made-over Yankees, the teams had played sixteen and a half innings. The Yankees had scored six runs in total. The Blue Jays had scored none. What’s more, they’d barely even threatened. In two innings Monday night they had two runners on. Tonight they had two runners on in the fourth inning. That’s it.

The hitting woes the Jays have experienced on a regular basis this year have been akin to the typical behaviour of someone suffering from bipolar disorder. Periods of optimism and hope would build. Oh, they scored nine tonight—the slump’s finally over. Oh, yeah, they’re not hitting all that well yet, but look at the pitching—who needs a ton of runs? Hey, who cares if they strike out a lot—it’s just another out; they won, didn’t they? Then the black dog of depression, as Winston Churchill famously termed it, would rise up, the strikeouts would get even more profuse, the run production would dry up completely, and gloom would return once again to the land.

The very worst moment of this latest, most pervasive, batting slump came as the players were heading for cover in the dugout and the tarp was being rolled out onto the field. Buck Martinez cruelly reminded us that, as the Yankees were leading and the Jays had batted in the top of the fifth, the game was official: if the rain didn’t stop so the game could resume, it would go into the books as a four and a half inning 5-0 Yankee shutout. Not only would we not win a sixth straight series, we would go into the third game of the series on Wednesday still looking for our first run in the Bronx.

Even when he’s throwing the ball well, as he was last night, Michael Pineda has always struck me as being rather vulnerable when he’s on the mound. He fusses. He nibbles. He labours. His pitch count rises. He might go five and two thirds, but hardly ever seven. In short, I’m heartily glad that he pitches for the Yankees, and not for the Blue Jays.

Nevertheless, for five innings tonight he was more than good enough to keep the Jays off the board. Though he gave up four base hits there never seemed to be much of a threat of the Jays cashing in on any of them. Only in the fourth did Toronto get two base hits in the same inning, singles by Edwin Encarnacion and Troy Tulowitzki, the latter coming after two were out, which only moved Edwin to second. The inning popped like a defective balloon when Russell Martin, whose playoff instincts had started to wake him up like a firehouse dog leaping to his feet when the alarm goes off, jumped at the first pitch he saw from Pineda and grounded weakly into a fielder’s choice at second. As the sky darkened in the top of the fifth and the Blue Jays’ faithful fervently prayed for rain, now! Pineda dispatched the visitors on just five pitches, erasing an infield hit by Melvin Upton with a quick double play turned on Upton and Zeke Carrera.

In the meantime, Marco Estrada pitched well enough for the Jays through the first four innings. Oh, it’s true that he yielded solo homers to Didi Gregorius in the first (shockingly, right after Estrada had fanned the first two Yankee batters of the game),

and to rookie catcher Gary Sanchez in the second, also with two outs. These things are par for the course for Estrada, and as long as he limits the damage to two runs, it’s not an insurmountable problem for the Jays’ hitters to fix. Sometimes.

But after Pineda had stifled any thoughts of a rally in the top of the fourth, things got way worse for Estrada, and for his team. As the skies darkened and the air got heavier in the bottom of the fourth, Estrada once again failed to nail down the clean inning. With two outs, second baseman Starlin Castro singled to right, followed by another single to right by designated hitter Brian McCann. This brought Sanchez back to the plate. The very Sanchez who had hit the third home run of his short major league career in his 44^th at bat off Estrada in the second inning. This time Estrada didn’t give up “just a solo homer”, but a three-run blast that upped the Yankees lead to 5-0.

After Pineda had qualified himself and his team for the win in the fifth, and the rains started to pour down in sheets, he and the Yankees would have wanted either of two optimal outcomes from this rain delay. First, of course, that it ended the game, in an easy New York win. Or, secondly, they could hope for a delay short enough to allow Pineda to return to the mound. This scenario didn’t look very likely as the rain slanted across the field, and by the time play resumed forty-two minutes later, both starting pitchers had been removed from the game.

Manager John Gibbons must have felt some trepidation handing the ball over to Scott Feldman for the bottom of the fifth. The right-hander acquired from Houston at the trade deadline was the obvious choice for the role, since both of the Jays’ projected long men out of the bullpen, Gavin Floyd and Jesse Chavez, have departed the scene. Yet the veteran Feldman has had some rough outings since joining the team, and there’s been some concern as to whether or not he would regain the form he had shown in the past.

Though he did give up a run in the fifth on yet another two-out uprising, a Chase Headley double followed by a Didi Gregorius single, he went on to do what a middle man is expected to do: stop the bleeding. In the next two innings he gave up only an infield single to Sanchez, who showed he can go short as well as long, while striking out five Yankee batters.

Meanwhile, though we don’t know exactly what went on in the Jays’ clubhouse during the rain delay, and the players claim that it was nothing special, a miraculous transformation had taken place in the Blue Jays’ bats: they suddenly seemed full of hits, big hits, long hits, hits that touched green where before they touched leather.

As we watched the revival of our team’s fortunes over the next four innings, it would not have been inappropriate to recall the words of explorer Howard Carter, as he first trained his flashlight on the contents of King Tut’s tomb in 1922: “I see wonderful things!”

When the Yankees divested themselves of Aroldis Chapman and Anthony Miller while they had significant bargaining value, they realized of course that this would have a short-term effect on the bullpen. While Chapman, Miller, and Dellin Betances, who remains with the team, were not normally utilized before the seventh inning, their presence meant that if a Yankee starter had to give it up a bit early, say, after five innings, they would normally only need one effective appearance to get to the big guys. Now, the whole stretch from starter to closer can be an adventure. Manager Joe Girardi chose Anthony Swarzak to take over for Pineda after the rain delay, and it did not turn out well for the Bombers.

Anthony Swarzak is a 30-year-old right-hander who’s been around a bit, and may be typical of the kinds of pitchers the Yankees will be looking to in order to find some fresh, live arms for their depleted bullpen. It was telling, for example, that they scooped up the lefty Tommy Layne as soon as he was released by the Red Sox. Swarzak was drafted by the Twins, spent about six years with them, and experienced some periods of success at the major league level with them. But the Twins released him in the off-season of 2014, and he signed a minor-league contract with the Indians but was released in June of 2015 . He spent the rest of last season in the Korean League, and the Yankees signed him to a minor-league contract in January of this year. He was called up from Scranton/Wilkes-Barre in early June, and had been used sparingly, but would be expected to see more duty now that the makeover of the Yankee bullpen is under way.

Though Swarzak was unable to maintain Pineda’s dominance over the Jays, and was the first unfortunate to come into the line of fire of the restive Jays’ hitters, he didn’t really deserve his fate. Sure, Devon Travis led off with a double to left. But after that it could have gone better for Swarzak. Josh Donaldson hit a slow roller to third that Chase Headley should have eaten, but he got all heroic on it and heaved the ball miles wide of Mark Texeira at first. Travis scored on the errant throw, and Josh ended up on second. But then Warzak buckled down and caught Edwin Encarnacion looking, then fanned Michael Saunders, who is now racking up Ks at an alarming rate. He was almost home free, with only Troy Tulowitzki to get for the third out. Yeah, well. Tulo swung at an outside pitch and lofted what looked like an ordinary fly ball to right, until it carried, and carried, and cleared the fence for two more runs. The lead still three runs, with two outs and nobody on, Girardi elected to stay with Swarzak to finish off the inning. But Russell Martin finished him off with his second back-to-back following Tulo in three games. You know that Martin is swinging well when he reaches his special place, the centre-field fence. No puny down-the-line jobs for our Russell!

Girardi called in the afore-mentioned Tommy Layne to match up with left-handed-hitting Darryl Ceciliani, and the latter flied out to centre, leaving the Jays two runs behind, and the Yankee fans curiously restless.

After Scott Feldman’s middle inning of keep-it-close work, Girardi turned to Tyler Clippard for the seventh inning, and he set the Jays down in order. I guess it’s a measure of the uncertain nature of the Yankee bullpen that the answer to the question of why he didn’t come in with Clippard right after Pineda, is that Clippard’s for later, and Girardi woudn’t ask him to go two innings when he might need him again tomorrow.

After Feldman finished up his stint in the bottom of the seventh, having turned in three innings of work that were certainly deserving of a win if a win should be on offer,

the Jays returned to the plate to face Adam Warren, who was effective last night in relief of Green, and who is expected to take on a late-inning role with the Yankees now. Although that might require a rethink based on his performance tonight. After five batters, the Jays were in the lead, Warren had given up two home runs, and retired just one batter. Credit must be given to Josh Donaldson for starting things off by working Warren for a 12 pitch walk that must have discombobulated the Yankee reliever, because Encarnacion flayed his second pitch, hitting it out to left in about a milli-second, his 34^th this season and the 302^nd of his career, to tie the game. Warren got his only out as Saunders popped out to second before Tulo and Martin teamed up again to put the Jays into an unlikely 8-6 lead from which they were never headed. Tulo singled to left, and Martin, eyeing the short porch, hit another one out to finish off Warren and, effectively, the Yankees on the night.

With two of the next three Jays’ hitters left-handed, Girardi called on the lefty Chasen Shreve who came in carrying a great big can of gasoline instead of a fire hose. And with one out and nobody on, he had only himself to blame. He hit the left-handed Ceciliani. He walked the right-handed Melvin Upton. He gave up a single to the left-handed Zeke Carrera to load the bases. All his, mind you. He gave up a one-run single to Devon Travis, bases still loaded. 9-6. He walked Josh Donaldson to force in Upton, leaving the sacks loaded for Edwin. 10-6. That was it for Shreve. There’s nothing sadder for a pitcher in the box score than to have the line “Shreve pitched to 5 batters in the eight”, which means he didn’t get an out. I feel sorry enough for him that I won’t make a joke about Chasen/chastened as I had planned.

Blake Parker, a 31-year-old right-hander whom the Yankees acquired from Seattle this year, came in to pitch still with only the one out and surrounded by Shreve’s mess. He only gave up one hit while retiring the Jays, but he still allowed two more of Shreve’s runners to score, Zeke Carrera on a ball hit to second by Encarnation for a fielder’s choice, and then Travis who scored on Michael Saunders’ double to right that completed the scoring for the day. We went to the bottom of the eighth with a 12-6 lead, and a magical eight runs in the eighth. Good thing it’s not like golf, where an eight is never good (the dreaded snowman!)

Jason Grilli had already been up throwing when the Jays came to bat in the eighth with only a two-run lead, so Gibbons decided it was best to use him since he was already hot, and might not be able to warm up again for tomorrow’s day game. The grizzled Grilli (or is it the grilled Grizzly? I can never remember . . .) added another impressive inning to his record, fanning two and retiring the Yankees on eleven pitches.

There wasn’t a whole lot of appetite for more drama as the game ended quietly in the ninth. Parker showed that he could manage well without inheriting the bases loaded, stranding a two-out Upton single and striking out two. Ryan Tepera, now that he’s had a chance to unpack his overnight bag from Buffalo for once, is becoming quite proficient at the mop-up for the Jays, retiring the side in order and fanning Aaron Judge for a few extra style points to end the game.

At the end of a season, you can always look back and pick out a few games that had special significance to the course of the season, and a few games that were just amazing in one way or another. Tonight’s comeback win after the rain delay is one that we’ll remember for both reasons. As the teams left the field and the tarp came out, it looked for all intents and purposes like Toronto’s streak of series wins, the cornerstone of their good record and position in the standings, was about to end, and in a most feeble sort of way. The comeback win opened back up the possibility of taking this series against the Yankees, which would be a sixth series win in a row. Of course, we’ll also remember it for its Jeckyl-and-Hyde, before-and-after, schizophrenic scenario, one that we may not see the like of again for years.

We’re off to Cleveland after a nice day off, ready to extend the series streak and keep our hold on the division. Wild-card spot, begone!

The Toronto Blue Jays travelled to New York last night to get stoned in the Bronx.

I can hear the stupid responses already.

–Don’t we have better shit right here in Tranna?

–Did they go to the Automat when they got the munchies? That must have been a trip all right!

–Won’t they fail their drug tests and get suspended?

Errg, that’s enough. I wish it was a laughing matter. Speaking as I was of consistently winning more series than they lose, the Jays made it a lot harder on themselves to win the current series against the Yankees that opened tonight at Yankee Stadium III by getting totally stifled by a bunch of Yankee pitchers you never heard of in a 1-0 win for the Yankees. Okay, you’ve heard of Dylan Betances, but he was the only New York hurler who didn’t stonewall the Jays’ hitters. If Yankee manager Joe Girardi had brought him in an inning earlier, maybe we’d have won tonight.

Meanwhile, the division race tightened a bit as Baltimore didn’t play and Boston won in Cleveland. This left the Orioles and the Blue Jays tied for first with Boston one game behind.

The Yankees spot-started a young fellow named Chad Green tonight, and he fulfilled his assignment in spades. The right-handed Green was drafted out of high school by Toronto in 2010 (can we pick ’em, or what?) but didn’t sign, opting for the University of Louisville instead. The Tigers drafted him in 2013, and traded him to the Yankees in December 2015 with Luis Cessa for Justin Wilson. The Yankees called him up and he made his major-league debut for them in mid-May.

I don’t know about the Blue Jays’ hitters, but I know that this is one observer who has to learn not to salivate when he sees an unknown with a minimal/mediocre record posted as the opposing starter. As in Chad Green (quick—look him up!), who went in to tonight’s start with a won-loss record of 1-2 and an ERA of 4.94.

So what happened when the Jays faced Green for six innings, recent acquisition Tyler Clippard, and Yankee reclamation project Adam Warren for one inning each? Well, lessee. Green faced two batters over the minimum, Troy Tulowitzki with a one-out single in the fifth, and Darren Ceciliani who doubled immediately following Tulo, but hit it too hard for Tulo to score from first. His line for the six innings was no runs, the two hits, no walks, and (ho-hum) eleven strikeouts. Clippart put the side out in order in the seventh with one strikeout. Warren did the same in the eighth, and we’ll leave Dylan Betances’ ninth inning off to the side for the moment.

With pitching like that, it was no wonder that the one run the Yankees scored off starter R.A. Dickey who went five, Joe Biagini, Brett Cecil, and Ryan Tepera looked like the last unclimbed mountain in the Himalayas from the vantage point of the Blue Jays’ dugout. This was a night when Dickey scuffled and sweated, as did both Biagini and Tepera, with only Cecil pitching with mastery against the Yanks. And yet only once, in the fatal fourth when rookie Aaron Judge drove home the only run of the game with his first extra-base hit that was not a home run, did the Jays’ pitchers actually concede a run. It was a gritty, exciting pitching performance in the midst of a pennant race that should have been rewarded with something other than a loss, but for the Yankees’ dominant mound presence.

Right from the beginning you knew it was going to be one of those nights for Dickey, one of those excruciating nights where you can see he’s struggling, and you know that the Sword of Damocles is dangling by a thread, and you don’t know how long it will hold. Jacoby Ellsbury led off with a double to the gap in right centre, and Chase Headley followed with a base on balls. The bleeding stopped there, but not until Dickey had thrown 25 pitches. In the second he walked Brian McCann and gave up a ground single to centre by impressive young catcher Gary Sanchez before settling in and retiring the next three hitters.

The knuckle-baller retired the side in order in the third, making for six straight outs, the only patch of calm in an otherwise rocky sea. The fourth inning was when he lifted his finger from the dike for a minute and let in the only run that mattered—the only run at all for that matter—in the game. He did retire Starlin Castro on a come-backer to start the inning for his seventh out in a row, but then he walked Brian McCann and Gary Sanchez, to bring the imposing rookie Aaron Judge, who had homered in his first two major-league games for the Yankees, to the plate. Having been fanned the first time he faced Dickey, he didn’t wait to be tied up by the unpredictable knuckler. He jumped on the first pitch he saw and drove it into the gap in right centre. McCann scored easily, but Melvin Upton caught the short hop off the wall on the fly and quickly fired it in to the cutoff man, holding Sanchez at third as Judge cruised into second with the first double of his career. With two runners still in scoring position and only one out, Dickey bore down, fanned Aaron Hicks and caught Jacoby Ellsbury looking to end the threat.

Finally pitching with the lead, Chad Green let down a little in the top of the fifth, and allowed his only base-runners. After Michael Saunders went down swinging, Tulo came to the plate, went to a 2-2 count, fouled off three pitches, and then steered a liner into left for the Jays’ first hit, and first runner, of the game. On a 1-1 pitch, Darrell Ceciliani doubled to left, sending Tulo to third. But, like Dickey, Green ended the threat by striking out Smoak and Upton. Unlike Dickey, though, that extra baserunner wasn’t there when he gave up the double, the shutout was preserved, and the visitors wouldn’t threaten again until the ninth inning.

In the bottom of the fifth, Dickey’s last, he danced around trouble one more time, just for the fun of it, before departing the scene. Chase Headley led off with a double, but Dickey then retired Didi Gregorius on a fly to centre, Mark Texeira on a soft liner to Tulo at short, and Starlin Castro on a grounder to short.

As I mentioned above, Joe Biagini kept the Yankees off the board in a roller coaster ride of a sixth in which he survived a bases-loaded, one-out jam, Cecil went clean in the seventh, and Ryan Tepera mimicked Biagini’s escape act in the eighth, once again denying the Yankees after they had loaded the bases with one out. The key moment in Biagini’s escape act was Jacoby Ellsbury’s sharp bouncer back to the pitcher with one out and the bases loaded. Biagini didn’t pick it cleanly, and had to pounce on it and make a strong throw to catcher Russell Martin to just nip Brian McCann for the forceout.

It was a night for Jays’ relievers to help themselves with strong fielding plays. In the eighth, with two on and nobody out, Aaron Hicks tried to bunt the runners up by dropping one down toward third. The play called for Tepera to take the ball and Josh Donaldson to stay home for a possible throw. But Tepera had to come a long way for the ball, and make a really quick decision and perfect throw to force Sanchez at third for the first out. The pressure eased somewhat when Tepera fanned Ellsbury, but ratcheted up again with a walk to Headley, before he induced Gregorius to line out (hard) to Ceciliani in left.

When the Yankees dismantled their triple-closer team at the trade deadline, they kept Dellin Betances, who became their closer by default. Tonight things worked out to their advantage, despite the depletion of their back-end ranks. Clippard and Warren had successfully bridged from the starter Green to the ninth, and here was Betances, ready to go for his fifth save against a team he has faced often. It’s elemental, the closer’s job, especially when the lead is only one run: get three outs before they score a run. Sometimes it’s a breeze, and sometimes not. Today it wasn’t a breeze, but Betances got the save.

Now, it’s not like Betances was all over the place, but the fact is he was a bit lucky. He ended up being only six inches or so away from a blown save. He started with the closer’s cardinal sin, walking the leadoff batter, in this case an even worse mistake, since it was the low-average Josh Thole that he walked. In his likely last appearance with the Jays, considering Zeke Carrera’s return to the active roster tomorrow, Junior Lake was sent in to run for Thole. After Devon Travis hit a foul popup to first, Josh Donaldson hit a ground single to centre, moving Lake to third with the tying run. Now, if we’re going to invoke the game-of -inches cliché about Edwin Encarnacion’s game-ending double play, we have to invoke it on Donaldson’s base hit as well. The ball he hit was a hard grounder that just skipped by the late reaction of Didi Gregorius at short. A few inches one way or the other, and the Yankees have an easy double play to end the game. But, it was a single to centre. When Edwin comes up with one out and runners on the corners, he hits one just as hard and just as tricky to third, but Headley manages to pick it and start an easy around-the-horn double play. As I said, inches from tying the game and keeping the inning alive for the Jays.

But something in the stars said that the Jays were not going to score against the Yankees on this night. And something in the stars was telling the truth. Tomorrow night it’s Marco Estrada against Michael Pineda, and we now have to win two straight to win the series. One at a time though, if you please. And let’s pull a few balls with base hits in them out of the ball bag tomorrow night, also if you please!

If the Blue Jays don’t make the playoffs this year, I’ll eat my Jose Bautista shirt.

However, just making the playoffs isn’t the goal. The goal is winning the division. Securing one of the two wild card spots in the playoffs can be a hollow victory, leaving nothing but ashes in the mouth. There is no doubt in my mind that baseball is the worst of all team sports for having to stake your all on a single game. Just throw out the form chart. Teams playing in a sudden-death wild card game are one hot pitcher away from seeing their season hopes go down the drain.

Based on their game-to-game experience, especially in the last two months, it’s easy to see why the Blue Jays are not the best candidates to win a sudden-death game. Even in the course of playing consistently good, winning baseball since the first of July, we can point to a number of games in which the Jays have fallen to a solid pitching performance, usually involving lots of strikeouts.

On the plus side, based on that same record since the first of July, if the Jays continue to play at their present pace, there should be no concerns about winning the AL East crown and avoiding the wild card game. Thus the extra benefit that accompanies a satisfying win like today’s solid nine-two victory over the Astros: the win gave the Jays another series win.

Since the first of July, the Jays have played twelve series and have won nine of them. They haven’t been swept in any of the three series losses, and their only sweep was the mini two-game series in Phoenix against the Diamondbacks. This steady if not spectacular trend has resulted in a record of 24 wins and 13 losses, a winning percentage of .649, high enough if maintained to make it very difficult for either Boston or Baltimore to squeeze past us in the division, especially since that means that our remaining series with those two teams would have been saw-offs, at worst. Maintaining that pace for the remaining 44 games would give us 96 wins, a formidable total in a very competitive horse race, and the key to maintaining that pace is to continue to win series at the same rate, giving us ten or eleven series wins in the fourteen series that remain.

The point, if I may repeat myself one last time, phrasing it a little differently, is that if you avoid extended losing streaks, you don’t need extended winning streaks to maintain an already good record, such as 67-51 after today’s game, and you can assure yourself of a division win, and maybe even a challenge for the home field playoff advantage, an extra perk that the Jays famously conceded to the Royals at the end of the regular season last year, which no doubt played a role in our loss to Kansas City in the ALCS.

The Blue Jays have the one ingredient essential to maintaining their pace to the end of the season, and if you don’t get that I’m talking about the starting rotation, then you haven’t been paying attention. When you have four starters who offer a well-better-than-even chance of securing a win, assuming effective support by the offence, it’s hard to imagine even a short losing streak, beyond a two-gamer, which can happen to anyone, even the Chicago Cubs.

And so it went today. Marcus Stroman pitched well enough to win. The bullpen didn’t allow a run over two and two thirds innings, and, encouraged by the solid pitching, the hitters kept us even in a tight game until the middle innings when they began to solve Astros’ starter Mike Fiers in the course of their third time through the batting order to pull away for a comfortable win.

Stroman put the Astros down in order in the top of the first, a major achievement against this team, with its very potent top end and a marked propensity for scoring runs early. But it was the Jays who broke on top in their half of the inning, as a two-out single by Troy Tulowtzki scored Devon Travis, who had led off the game with a double to left on the first pitch of the game.

In the Astros’ second, the only rocky inning suffered by Stroman, he had only himself to blame for the tying run coming across the plate. He started off in trouble, giving up a single to the fine-stroking shortstop Carlos Correa. Then he hit Marwin Gonzalez on the forearm with a pitch. Gonzalez stayed in the game to run the bases, but did not return to the field in the bottom of the second. He was replaced by the rookie Tyler White at first, a serious loss to the Houston offence.

Stroman looked to be pitching out of his own jam, getting A.J. Reed and Jason Castro to fly out to left. But then he came a-cropper with the speedy rookie Teoscar Hernandez at the plate. Hernandez hit an innocent little hopper between Stroman and Josh Donaldson. Stroman was on it quickly, but tried a Tulo-style leaping turn-and-throw, except that he threw the ball down the right field line. This lapse in judgement allowed Correa to come around and score from first, and put Gonzalez on third and Hernandez on second. It was clear that because of where the ball was hit and Hernandez’ speed, Stroman only had two reasonable choices: to plant properly and throw accurately and maybe get the hitter for the third out, or, more likely, to eat the ball, loading the bases with two outs and keeping Correa on third. In either case, Tony Kemp’s fly ball to left would have ended the threat without a run being scored.

But, like a struggling teenager trying to find his way, Stroman made a bad choice, and paid for it by giving the Astros an unearned run to tie the game.

Each pitcher stranded base-runners in the third, Stroman pitching over a fielding error by Donaldson at third and a two-out single by Correa. Fiers stranded Edwin Encarnacion at first. Edwin had reached on a scary hit batsman which hit his hand, one of those incidents that so often leads to broken bones. In this case, after being checked out, Edwin stayed in the game, and showed later that whatever the pitch did to his hand, it didn’t hinder his ability to mash the ball.

Stroman breezed in the top of the fourth, but Fiers was immediately in trouble, giving up an infield hit to Tulo, who was in the middle of every Jay rising today, and then walking Russell Martin to put runners on first and second with nobody out. Fiers bore down on the bottom of the Jays’ order, fanning Justin Smoak and catching Melvin Upton looking, but once again our side came through with a run-scoring single with two outs, this time from an unlikely source, ninth hitter Darryl Ceciliani, and the Jays were back on top two to one.

Showing a killer instinct that we haven’t seen very much from him this year, Stroman mowed the Astros down again in the fifth, catching both Tony Kemp and Alex Bregman looking at called third strikes. He left the mound on a string of seven consecutive outs,

hoping that sooner or later his mates would give him a bit of breathing space. And they did, amazingly pounding out three runs again after two were out. That must be some sort of record for the 2016 Jays, five runs batted in in five innings, all with two outs. Josh Donaldson grounded to third to lead off. Edwin Encarnacion doubled to left centre, but really had to hustle to beat a quick recovery by the rookie Hernandez in centre. Michael Saunders popped out to Alex Bregman in foul territory for the second out. That brought Tulo to the plate again, and this was really his night to stir the pot. He lined a three-one pitch over the wall in left centre, and the Jays had a 4-1 lead.

Manager A.J. Hinch let Fiers go one more batter, and that was a mistake. Russell Martin, continuing to rise to the occasion in August, went back-to-back with Tulo to right centre, the score was 5-1, and Fiers was done. Tony Sipp came on to get Justin Smoak to line out to Springer on the second pitch for the third out. Considering that three of the runs and two of the hits he gave up were to the last two batters he faced, Fiers line wasn’t all that bad, four and two thirds innings, five runs, seven hits, two walks, seven strikeouts, and 91 pitches. Until Tulo and Martin turned on him, in fact, his outing was every bit the equal of Stroman’s. Maybe they should consider an 85-pitch limit for him.

Helped by Donaldson’s great pick of a ground ball by Altuve leading off, Stroman continued to roll in the sixth, as he struck out A.J. Reed and Tyler White to end the inning, stranding another Carlos Correa base hit in the process. Tony Sipp and Jandel Gustave combined to keep the Jays off the board in their half of the sixth, as Sipp gave up a leadoff single to Melvin Upton, and then promptly picked him off. Ceciliani retired himself on a comebacker to the mound, and Grandel came in to get Devon Travis to fly out to right.

Stroman hit the wall in the seventh, and was unable to reach the new gold standard for starting pitchers, going a full seven. Isn’t it something that the complete game has virtually disappeared in a matter of only twenty years or so? With all the top pitchers in franchise history out today for the pitchers’ do of the fortieth anniversary of the Jays, I heard one nugget that I had to track down: Dave Stieb, who started 412 games in his major league career, completed 103 of them. Incredibly, in 1982, he completed 19 of his 38 starts.

Jason Castro jumped on the second pitch of the inning from Stroman and blasted it over the fence in centre. Perhaps because Joaquin Benoit wasn’t quite ready, Manager John Gibbons let his starter go one more hitter, and Teosca Hernandez flew out to right. So the line for Marcus Stroman was six and a third innings, one earned run (and his own error leading to the second, unearned run), five hits, no walks, eight strikeouts, and 94 pitches.

Benoit came on to offer an Oscar-worthy performance of skating on thin ice without falling through. It was fun, but scary. Tony Kemp singled to centre on the first pitch. George Springer singled to left on the first pitch. Time to summon Russell Martin for a little more of his pennant-race magic. On his first pitch, Alex Bregman lofted a foul ball that was clearly destined to land in the Astros’ dugout. Except that Martin raced over, vaulted his torso over the bar on top of the protective fence in front of the dugout, and stretched his glove to snag the ball. Somehow, as he finished the play, his body rolled over, and he ended up with his back sprawled across the bar. He looked like Dick Fosbury, the inventor of the back-leading high jump technique that came to be known as the Fosbury Flop. But he held on to the ball for the out. Three pitches, two base hits, and a spectacular out. Benoit decided to take his time with the redoubtable Jose Altuve and throw two strikes before Altuve absolutely crushed a line drive right at Josh Donaldson for the third out. Just another day at the office for the veteran Benoit.

Luke Gregerson pitched a solid seventh for the Astros, except that he would like a do-over on the eighth pitch he threw to Edwin Encarnacion that somehow found its way out of the park for number 301 for Edwin, and a 6-2 Blue Jays’ lead.

After the Benoit thrill ride, the Astros never saw another base runner. Jason Grilli retired the side in order in the eighth, saving his strikeout for the third out, so that we could enjoy his famous signature fist pump. When the Jays extended their lead in the bottom of the eighth, the game was beyond the job description of closer Roberto Osuna, and Brett Cecil looked good shutting Houston down in the ninth on nine pitches, with a ground out and two strike outs.

There were three things to note about the Jays’ three-run rally in the bottom of the eighth that extended their lead to 9-2. First, it meant that the Jays could use a mop-up man to finish off the game, rather than one of their high-leverage, late-inning pitchers. Not that Brett Cecil is a throwaway these days, but he needed the work so he got the call. The second thing was that they got to Houston’s closer Michael Feliz for the first time, after he had dominated them in earlier meetings. The third thing was that they scratched away for the runs, which is not their usual style. Melvin Upton drove in a run with an ordinary ground ball single to left. Josh Donaldson worked a bases-loaded walk, and Edwin Encarnacion delivered Upton with that rarest of rare BJ birds, a sacrifice fly.

A good win all the way around. We stay in front of the pack by a hair; as long as we lead the way, we can’t lose the division. Tomorrow it’s off to New York and the new look Yankees. No A-Rod. No Chapman. No Miller. No Beltran. Who are these guys?

For a team to entertain serious hopes of making the playoffs, let alone going deep once they get there, it is essential that every loss be followed by a win, that no loss marks the beginning of a streak, no matter how short.

That’s why it was reassuring that Aaron Sanchez would get the ball today for the start in the second game of the Jays’ three-game series against the very competitive Houston Astros. While some might advocate for Jay Happ as the one-game choice, I don’t think there’s much disagreement over who would get the start in a must-win situation, such as, God forbid, a wild card play-in game. Surely this very point had to be a factor in the decision to keep Sanchez stretched out as a starter by going to the six-man rotation.

And the fact that Sanchez was taxed today with the job of leading the rebound from Friday night’s loss is why it was so deflating that after four batters had come to the plate for Houston in the top of the first, he found himself down 2-0, with Carlos Correa in scoring position and only one out. Once again, as it has happened so often lately, the Jays were faced with the twin tasks of limiting the damage and overcoming a deficit.

If you look over the play-by-play of today’s game, it’s clear that though Sanchez was able to rise to the occasion, save for those first four hitters, he was almost constantly pitching from the stretch, and was frequently within one base hit of allowing the Astros to add to their lead. Only in the fourth and seventh innings did he retire the side in order, and you may add the sixth to that, since he got Evan Gattis to ground into a double play after a one-out single by Marwin Gonzalez.

In the first he struck out Evan Gattis with Correa on third. In the second he struck out George Springer with A.J. Reed, who had doubled to lead off the inning, on third. In the third he walked two in a row, Jose Altuve and Correa, but stranded Correa at first when he got Marwin Gonzalez to ground out. Altuve had already been erased on a caught stealing, thanks to a perfect Russell Martin throw into the glove of Troy Tulowitzki at Altuve’s feet sliding into the bag. In the fifth he stranded a one-out walk to George Springer, but survived a scare when the next batter, third baseman Alex Bregman, drove Michael Saunders to the wall in right to corral his deep fly. And in the sixth, as I mentioned, he neutralized Gonzalez’ one-out base hit with the Gattis double play ball which followed.

So, despite a pitching line (seven innings, two runs, five hits, three walks and six strikeouts on 95 pitches) that is clearly a more-than-quality start, it wasn’t a walk in the park for Sanchez by any means. But he did leave the game in the capable hands of Jason Grilli and Roberto Osuna, eligible for his twelfth win of the season, thanks to the heroics of Russell Martin.

One of the biggest plusses that Russell Martin brought with him from the Pittsburgh Pirates was a history of playing on teams that made the playoffs. The fact that he was Canadian and a proven all-star with strong skills both at and behind the plate contributed to the desire of the Jays’ front-office to see him in Blue Jay blue; but surely the clincher for trying to acquire him was that Russell Martin is indisputably a winning ballplayer. Before arriving in Toronto, he made the playoffs seven times in nine years, with the Dodgers, the Yankees, and the Pirates. And last year he proved his worth to the Jays by backstopping them to the ALCS, making it his eighth playoff appearance in a ten-year career, a phenomenal run for a player who has played on four different teams during the period.

One thing Martin has not done as well this year as in the past is throwing out baserunners. Just the last three years will be enough to show the difference. In 2014 in Pittsburgh he allowed 59 stolen bases (and I do realize that catchers don’t “allow” stolen bases all by themselves—it’s a manner of speaking), and threw out 37 attempted steals. In 2015 with Toronto he allowed 40 and threw out 32. In 2016 he has allowed 44 and thrown out eight so far. But that eighth caught stealing was a biggie. In the third inning with one out Sanchez walked Jose Altuve, who besides hitting over .360 for the entire season had stolen 26 bases and been thrown out only five times prior to today. Sanchez also walked the next batter, cleanup hitter Carlos Correa, which would have been a prescription for disaster for Sanchez, except that while Correa was at the plate Altuve tried to steal second, and Martin, who had to make a perfect throw to second to get him, made a perfect throw, and Altuve slid right into the tag. The Astros didn’t bother to request a replay review.

The thing about throwing out a runner like Altuve is that it makes him just a little hesitant to try to steal again, and any edge you can gain on a player as talented as he is, is worth the effort. And when your pitcher is having a spell of wildness, cutting down a baserunner can’t hurt.

But Martin’s major contribution to today’s outcome came in the sixth inning. Josh Donaldson had hit a solo homer off Astro’s starter Collin McHugh in the first inning, to cut the Astro’s two-run lead in half, and there it remained until the sixth. For the second start in a row the Jays’ hitters found it hard to solve McHugh. They had a chance in the second when Martin walked and Justin Smoak poked a single the wrong way into left centre field with only one out, but McHugh struck out Melvin Upton and Darrell Ceciliani to end the threat. From the third through the fifth he only allowed a walk to Edwin Encarnacion, retiring nine hitters out of ten he faced.

If Russell Martin was the author of McHugh’s demise in the sixth, Michael Saunders was the catalyst. After Josh Donaldson grounded out to third, Encarnacion singled to centre for his second hit of the game. With Saunders at the plate, the Astros put on the extreme pull shift that teams insist on using against him, despite his obvious power to the opposite field (the Astros supposedly use more analytics than any team in baseball; why don’t they read their printouts?) Faced with the opportunity of changing the course of the game, and perhaps not seeing another chance ahead, Saunders bunted toward third, into the deserted side of the infield. If nothing else, this forced the hand of Houston manager A.J. Hinch, who pulled the plug on McHugh, and brought in the young right-hander James Hoyt to pitch to Troy Tulowitzki. Tulo grounded out to short, but the runners were able to move up. This brought Martin to the plate.

Like his caught-stealing numbers, Martin’s power numbers are off this year, though his batting average, after a slow start, has almost reached last year’s level. In 2015, he hit 23 home runs over the entire season. This year, through game 116 of 162, he had hit only eight. But it’s mid-August, the pennant race is heating up, and not only are the Blue Jays in the middle of it, but they are actually looking back—though not very far—at the rest of the division.

So perhaps it was just time for the Montreal native’s competitive instincts to come to the fore as he strode to the plate to face Hoyt. Ironically, if he’d had his way, things would have turned out very differently for him, and possibly for his team. Hoyt quickly went to a 3-0 count, and then came a pitch that Martin clearly thought was ball four; he showed some irritation when it was called a strike. Then he fouled one off to go full count. When he swung at the next pitch, he knew almost at once he had hit it out; after about three steps down the line, he started sidestepping while he watched it soar out of the park to centre, banging off the facing of the 200 level.

One swing of the bat, three runs, and Martin’s pitching partner went from fighting to hold down the Astros and hoping for support, to going back out for one more inning to defend a two-run lead and secure his twelfth win. Heartened by his catcher’s support, Aaron Sanchez breezed through a clean seventh inning, and turned the game over to the bullpen.

And the pen had to be sharp, because Martin’s blast was the last hurrah for the Jays’ hitters. Hoyt got the third out in the sixth, and Jandel Gustave came in to pitch the seventh and eighth inning. He allowed a single to Melvin Upton, the first batter he faced, and then retired six in a row, striking out two.

The comforting teddy-bear presence of Jason Grilli graced the mound again in the eighth for the Jays. Continuing to inhale the fountain-of-youth elixir emanating from a pennant race, the now well-established setup man fanned Springer. Then he fanned Alex Bregman. Then Michael Saunders made a mistake in judgement that could have hurt badly, but Grilli bailed him out. The irrepressible Jose Altuve lashed a liner to right that Saunders dove for, trying to make the catch, and missed. It went all the way to the wall, and Altuve went all the way to third. Carlos Correa, who had doubled in the Astros’ two runs in the first, came to the plate representing the tying run. Correa ran the count to three and two, fouled one off, and then fanned on a 94-mph fastball that Grilli through right by him. Another exuberant fist pump from Grilli, and another whoosh of relief from the faithful.

Roberto Osuna came on for the save, not having pitched for five days. He added his own brand of excitement to Grilli’s, finishing off the game for us with the thrill of relief. He fanned Marwin Gonzalez, and then watched curiously as Gonzalez, angry about a called strike earlier in the at-bat, got himself tossed from the game. No matter, he wasn’t needed any more tonight anyway. The imposing Evan Gattis then drove Junior Lake, subbing defensively for Saunders in right, thankfully, to the wall for the second out. Then A.J. Reed hit an equally long bomb to left. Darrell Ceciliani tracked it back to the wall, timed his jump, got his glove on it, but it didn’t stick, and fell in for a double. Again, the two-out extra-base hit! No matter. Rookie Teoscar Hernandez, meet sophomore Roberto Osuna. Hernandez popped up to Devon Travis at second, and the game was over. Welcome to the pennant race, Teoscar; maybe next time . . .

Aaron Sanchez showed his mettle when his dominance wasn’t complete. The old (relatively speaking) war horse answered the call at the plate, and a very satisfying win was in the books. When you lose one, you gotta win the next one.

On the night when Edwin Encarnacion hit career home run number 300, 229 of which have come as a member of the Toronto Blue Jays, he had to share the spotlight with a young pitcher named Joe Musgrove, whose association with the Blue Jays was much briefer than that of Encarnacion. I have no doubt that Edwin would have postponed the celebration over his milestone homer, which came in the ninth inning of a 5-3 loss to the Houston Astros, if he could have traded it for a win tonight to keep his team ahead of the Baltimore Orioles in the American League East standings.

After all, Edwin would have hit the career mark of 300 sooner, rather than later, but tonight’s game was lost for good, and the team won’t get another shot at it.

Before tonight, Blue Jays’ fans had two reasons to be familiar with the name Joe Musgrove. For those who follow every twist and turn in the development of Blue Jay prospects, Musgrove was originally a first-round draft pick of Toronto in 2011. Between the short season of 2011 and the beginning of 2012, he made only eleven mound appearances at the rookie level in the Jays’ system, before being traded to Houston in 2012 in a multi-player deal most notable for making one left-handed starter named J.A. Happ a Blue Jay for the first time. Since then he has toiled and advanced in the Houston system until being called up to the big league team on August first of this year. And that brings us to the second reason Jays’ fans have to be familiar with the name and talent of Joe Musgrove. The day after he was called up to the Astros, on August second, he made his debut against the team that drafted him.

You will recall that Musgrove entered that game in the fifth inning when Lance McCullers, the Astros’ young starter, developed arm problems after holding the Jays mostly in check, leaving with a 2-0 deficit because R.A. Dickey was throwing a gem at his mates. Musgrove finished out that game, pitching four and two thirds innings in his major league debut, allowing only one hit and one walk while striking out eight Jays. It was certainly not his fault that Dickey, rookie Danny Barnes, also making his major league debut, and Jason Grilli, only allowed one run against them. By the time Musgrove’s night was done, it was clear that the more irrational Jays’ faithful had a new cause célèbre, for a variation on the very helpful Syndergaard-for-Dickey tirade we’ve come to know and love.

After his impressive debut against the Jays, it was obvious that the Astros would find a place in their rotation for Musgrove. He made his first start on August seventh against Texas, and went seven innings for a no decision, giving up one run on five hits while striking out six against the tough Rangers’ lineup. There was no question that he’d be a tough nut for Toronto’s hitters to crack.

Francisco Liriano made his second start for the Jays since arriving from Pittsburgh in the last-minute trade deadline deal that sent Drew Hutchinson to the Pirates. Liriano is under really close scrutiny by both management and fans for a number of reasons. First, his arrival at least partly triggered the decision to go to a six-man rotation. If he doesn’t work out, they’ll have to revisit the Aaron Sanchez question immediately. Second, he was traded for a known quantity, Hutchinson, who had been patiently (we imagine) waiting in Buffalo for a call to Toronto if needed. Hutch is young, has a live arm, and has shown no reason for us to think that his strange record last year would be typical of his career. In essence, it seems, the trade for Liriano was desirable from the Jays’ standpoint because Liriano is left-handed, and because he brings considerable playoff experience to Toronto with him. In terms of the team’s hopes for him, the thought was that his struggles with control this year in Pittsburgh that had resulted n a less than stellar record might be resolved by a change of scenery and by being reunited with his former Pirate battery mate Russell Martin.

In his first start last Friday night in Kansas City, Liriano didn’t disappoint, really. There was little evidence of the control problems carrying over from Pittsburgh. He delivered a quality start and did not get the decision in the Jays’ eventual 4-3 win. He showed the ability to eat a significant number of innings while keeping his team within range of the opposition. What he did not show is the lights-out ability to dominate that is a key characteristic of the rest of the rotation. He will not, frankly, likely be the winning pitcher in any 1-0 games.

Neither pitcher exactly sailed through the first two innings. Liriano delivered the only three-up three-down inning in the Houston first. Then, after erasing a rare Josh Donaldson fielding error with a double-play ball, he stranded Evan Gattis at second after Gattis hit a two-out double. Musgrove, meanwhile, pitched over his own two-out double, to Edwin Encarnacion in the first, and stranded a walk in the second.

If anything, Liriano had the better of it at the start, not walking anyone and throwing only 20 pitches compared to Musgrove’s 36.

But in the top of the third Liriano let up and walked the first batter, the impressive rookie outfielder Teoscar Hernandez, on a 3-1 pitch. After getting catcher Jason Castro to fly out to centre field, he walked George Springer on a 3-2 pitch. Both walks came after Liriano had fallen behind the hitter, which suggested a lapse in concentration. The rookie third baseman Alex Bregman, who has been hitting much better since we saw him in Houston the week before, singled sharply to centre, loading the bases as Hernandez was held at third. Josh Donaldson did his best to ward off the disaster Liriano had set up for himself, by making a leaping, back-handed stab of a liner that Jose Altuve stung toward the left-field corner. But now that Bregman is starting to hit, it’s pretty hard to go through the top of the Houston order without experiencing some damage. Shortstop Carlos Correa delivered a two-out hit that scored the first two Houston runs before Marwin Gonzalez lined out sharply to centre to end the inning.

The Blue Jays got one of the runs back in their half of the third, showing to their relief that it was indeed possible to hit and score runs off the solid Musgrove. But after two straight hits to start the inning he snuffed out a potentially very big inning for the Jays while giving up only one run. Darrell Ceciliani, getting the start in left with Michael Saunders in right, led off the inning with a booming double off the wall in right centre field. Devon Travis followed with a hard-hit ground ball through the right side that forced Ceciliani to stop at third. Ceciliani scored when Donaldson grounded into a 6-4-3 double play, and with the rally already snuffed, Musgrove retired Encarnacion on a grounder to third.

Liriano again allowed the first Houston batter to reach base in the top of the fourth when Evan Gattis hit a double to left centre, but Liriano left him there as he struck out the next batter, rookie first baseman Tyler White, and then retired the next two on an easy fly ball and a ground-out to third by Castro. Things looked better for him when Michael Saunders hit a solo (what else?) homer to centre to tie the game, leading off in the fifth, but with two outs Justin Smoak tried to stretch a single into a double in a test of George Springer’s arm, and Springer’s arm passed the test easily, thank you very much.

Somehow Liriano wasn’t able to enjoy a fresh start, as the first three Houston batters in the fifth, the top of the order, natch, went single (Springer), double (Bregman), with Springer stopping at third, and Altuve (double) delivering both for a 4-2 lead for the Astros that ended up being all that Joe Musgrove needed. Obviously better able to capitalize on new life than Liriano, Musgrove finished out his start with three innings of facing one batter over the minimum, a leadoff double by Donaldson in the fifth that went for naught, and striking out five of nine. His line for seven innings was another impressive one: two runs on six hits, one walk and seven strikeouts on 94 pitches. Judging from his first three major league appearances, Joe Musgrove should have a long and productive career as a starting pitcher in major league baseball.

Liriano got to within one out of six innings in a respectable losing cause before running out of gas. After Evan Gattis grounded out to shortstop to lead off the sixth, Tyler White struck out on a foul tip, and it looked like the Jays might go to the bottom of the sixth with a chance to erase the deficit for Liriano, or even put him in position for the win. But with the two outs already recorded, Liriano removed himself from the possibility of benefitting from a comeback by the Jays. Teoscar Hernandez, who arrived just in time for tonight’s game, got his first hit as a big leaguer, and it was a good one, a solid dinger to left to increase the Houston lead to 5-2. Manager John Gibbons was still willing to stick with Liriano, but not after he hit Jason Castro with a pitch. So, five and two thirds innings, five runs on eight hits with two walks and four strikeouts on 95 pitches. A seriously middling start, and not good enough to help the Jays to a win against a tough pitcher like Musgrove was tonight.

Ryan Tepera was brought in to pick up Liriano, and after walking Springer, he got Bregman to ground out to third to end the sixth inning. He then whizzed through Houston’s three-four-five hitters on 14 pitches in the seventh, but was ambushed by two infield hits in the eighth, while catching pinch hitter Tony Kemp’s popped-up sac bunt attempt himself in between the two hits. Gibbie turned to Brett Cecil after the second hit, and Tepera departed having done a pretty good job over one and two thirds innings, for a guy who’s major contribution to the team so far this year has been driving the shuttle bus back and forth between Toronto and Buffalo.

Cecil came in and struck out Castro, walked Springer to load the bases, and got Bregman to fly out to right to keep the deficit at three.

Meanwhile, with Musgrove deservedly cooling out in the Houston dugout, Manager A.J. Hinch brought in Pat Neshek to hold the lead for Musgrove. Now this is just not fair. Who could hit against a guy with a delivery like that, and great stuff to boot? Of course, the Jays went three up, three down against him on 19 pitches. At least Devon Travis made decent contact when he lined out to right for the second out. Since the Astros seem to be having trouble sorting out their closer spot—witness Will Harris serving up Edwin’s 300^th in the bottom of the ninth before finishing it off—I don’t understand why they don’t just make Neshek their closer. Isn’t the point of a closer to be unhittable?

Scott Feldman finished off for the Jays, and had another rough outing, though he escaped without being scored on. He got the first two outs before the Houston gnats came out to play. If the Oakland A’s play “small ball”, based on this series, maybe the Astros play “weenie” ball, as in teenie-weenie, not hot dog, you dummies! With two outs and a three-run lead, slugger Marwin Gonzalez bunted his way on against the shift, for pete’s sake, and slugger Evan Gattis snaked one up the middle that Tulo got to but couldn’t make the throw on time at first. Feldman than walked Tony Kemp to load the bases before getting the rookie Hernandez to ground into a forceout at second.

By the way, four of the Astros’ twelve hits came via the infield route in the eighth and ninth. Seems like when they get a lead, instead of delivering the coup de grâce, they prefer to dish out the coup de nibble. They can get almost annoying as those damned Kansas City Royals!

As I said, Will Harris came on for the save for Houston, and gave the huge crowd their biggest jolt of the night by serving up Edwin Encarnacion’s long-awaited home run number 300. This closed the gap to 5-3, and almost made up for losing the game. Almost. But well done, Ed-wing! No one deserves the accolades more than you.

Now we have to win two straight to secure the series. Tomorrow afternoon we’ve got the right guy out there for it, Aaron Sanchez, and well-rested, to boot. Sock it to ’em, Sanchie!

It’s a good thing that the dome was open tonight, because it helped dissipate the stench of Tuesday night’s clunker of a loss to the Tampa Bay Rays. So when Jay Happ raised his mighty left arm to smite the pesky Rays, and Troy Tulowitzki brandished his mighty sword to strike them a fatal blow, the rest of the Jays rose from their graves like a bunch of knicker-clad zombies to breathe in the fresh, clean air of victory.

Now, that was a bit much, wasn’t it? All the same, we can’t overstate the relief that floods us all when a good game follows a bad one, to reassure us that the looming portals to Hades aren’t really beckoning us forward to our doom.

Okay, that’s really enough of that. Let’s put the mythology text back on the shelf and talk baseball. Perhaps it was only appropriate that two of the quietest, least prepossessing members of the Blue Jays were the ones to step up and lead by example to ensure that the Jays would remain in first place in the division into the weekend, and not wear the weight of yesterday’s sloppy loss too heavily.

Not that it was easy, at least at the start. Jay Happ, going for his sixteenth win against three losses, started out looking as if, like R.A. Dickey and Marco Estrada before him, he were going to be pecked to death by the pesky Rays. Logan Forsythe continued his hot series against the Blue Jays, leading off by stroking a single to left. Kevin Kiermaier followed by dropping a great bunt down the third base line for a hit. There ought to be a law against speedy guys like Kiermaier bunting against the shift. Or at least public shaming.

Then came the play that took us into déjà vu all over again territory. Evan Longoria smacked a hard one-hopper right at Devon Travis, a perfect, pluperfect, double-play ball. But Travis, who’s suffered a few defensive lapses in the last few games, bobbled the ball, and had to pick it up again, with no choice but to go to first to get Longoria as the runners moved up. So it was up to Happ to help himself, with an assist from yet another subtle base-running mistake by Forsythe. (If you combined Forsythe’s base-running gaffes and Travis’ defensive miscues in this series, you’d have one frustrating second baseman.) With the contact play on, Forsythe didn’t make that slight pause to be sure the ball was past the mound before breaking for the plate. Brad Miller hit a little bouncer back to Happ, Forsythe broke too early, Happ’s throw to Russell Martin, who applied the tag in plenty of time, was perfect, and the pressure was eased immensely, now that there were two outs and third base was vacated. Blessed with this reprieve, Happ didn’t make a mistake as he caught Mikie Mahtook looking for the third out, and happily evacuated the mound unblemished.

There was more nail-biting about whither the Blue Jays to come in the bottom of the first, that only came to an end for the Jays when Troy Tulowitzki hit a laser shot of a line drive out of the park to left with two on and two out to give the Jays a 3-0 lead.

Very young-looking 23-year-old left-hander Blake Snell, who bears a more than passing resemblance to Aaron Sanchez, got the start for Tampa Bay. Snell has pitched well since being dropped into the Rays’ rotation, with an ERA of 2.95, and an average of over five innings per start. He might have continued his good stretch, but we’ll never know, because tonight’s start was derailed very quickly by an unfortunate outfield error, and he never really settled down after that.

Devon Travis, who on the other hand has contributed significantly offensively during this series, led off the game for the Blue Jays with a single to left. Josh Donaldson followed by slicing a lazy foul fly down the right field line. Steven Souza, playing right, admittedly had a long run for the ball, with the outfielders swung around to the left as they always are for Donaldson, but he got under it in plenty of time. Then the ball just plain clanked off his glove in foul territory and fell harmlessly to the turf, giving Donaldson new life at the plate. With the killer instinct of a good hitter, Josh hit the ball to Souza again, this time for a base hit. But Snell caught Edwin Encarnacion looking, and got Russell Martin to fly out to centre field, and it looked like another promising Jays’ inning was going to go a-glimmer. When Tulo jumped on a two-one pitch and hammered it over the fence into the bullpen in left, the Jays had finally cashed some base-runners after a string of seventeen consecutive solo homers from the Jays’ sluggers.

If Souza had caught the foul fly, Martin’s fly ball to centre would have ended the inning before Tulo came to the plate, so all three runs were unearned. Too bad for Snell, but it sure was nice to see a big “3” in the first inning on the scoreboard. Such are the vagaries . . .

Perhaps surprised by the largesse of the Jays’ hitters, Happ wasn’t quite ready to settle in to his rhythm yet. He walked Souza to lead off the second, and then after fanning Tim Beckham he gave up a single to Richie Shaffer, the designated hitter. Enough was enough, though, and he quickly fanned Luke Maile, and got Forsythe to fly out to Michael Saunders in right to end the threat.

That’s right, that was Saunders in right tonight. Before game time today the Jays got the bad news that Jose Bautista had suffered a left knee strain in that awkward fall in last night’s game, and had been placed on the fifteen-day DL. Outfield bodies are becoming a worry for the Jays, with Zeke Carrera not back yet, Kevin Pillar out with his damaged thumb, and now Bautista. Unless the team can find reinforcements elsewhere, for the time being it looks like Melvin Upton in centre, Saunders in left (which was patrolled by Darwin Barney tonight) and Junior Lake and Darren Ceciliani sharing the duties in right.

Maybe Happ needed a bit more reassurance before he settled down to business. The Jays came out in their half of the second to score two more runs, with considerable help from young Mr. Snell, who didn’t survive the inning. With one out Darwin Barney doubled to right. Travis followed with his patented lean-the-other-way stroke to hit a single to right to score Barney. Then the wheels really fell off, as Snell walked three straight to force in the Jays’ fifth run, and take himself out of the game. Manager Kevin Cash brought in Dylan Floro to face Melvin Upton, who popped out to second to leave the bases loaded.

Happ went out for the third and gave up a single to Kevin Kiermaier, reminding us yet again what a difficult bunch the top of the Rays’ order is. But then he settled in, got Longoria to hit into a double play, and struck out Brad Miller. The double play started a string of eight retired in a row for Happ before he walked Forsythe with two out in the fifth, and then struck out Kiermaier to end the inning, and retired the side in the sixth, to finish with a line of six innings, no runs, four hits, two walks, 7 strikeouts, and 98 pitches, dropping his ERA to 2.96. This gives the Blue Jays three starting pitchers, Happ, Estrada, and Sanchez, with ERAs under three, the best record in the American League.

Floro did a good job plugging the gap for Snell, going two and a third and giving up just one hit while fanning four. After Floro’s stint, Danny Farqhhar came in and pitched around a Melvin Upton single and stolen base in the fifth, and got the first two outs in the sixth before developing a spell of wildness, walking Encarnacion and winging Russell Martin with a pitch; his last batter, Tulo, brought Cash out of the dugout again by singling Encarnacion home.

Ryan Garton came on to get Upton to fly out to right to leave two runners aboard. He came back out for the seventh and kept the Jays batters at bay, except for Justin Smoak, whose homer to right (solo, of course), closed out the Toronto scoring at 7-0.

Cash gave an inning of work in the eighth to one of his back-end relievers, Kevin Jepsen, and he retired the side in order briskly with two srikeouts and a popup to the catcher.

The Jays pen made sure that Happ’s shutout stayed intact. Joe Biagini gave up a ground-rule double to Richie Shaffer with two outs in the seventh, but struck out catcher Luke Maile to end the inning. Jason Grilli took ten pitches to dispatch the Rays in the eighth, and Ryan Tepera, just off the QEW from Buffalo again, took twelve pitches to retire the side in the ninth to close out Jay Happ’s comfortable and competent sixteenth win.

Not too high, not too low, always win after you lose, and keep a solid lefty ready to go at all times, and you can’t go wrong. If the A’s beat the O’s in the Blood Type Series in Oakland tonight, we’re in first alone. Yay!

Even the best of teams is allowed one stinker of an outing a month. The Jays’ stinker for August came tonight, and it’s only the ninth, so they’ll have to be on top of their game for the remaining eighteen starts in August.

So far this month Toronto has won five games by a total of nine runs, and lost two games by a total of three runs, so they’ve maintained a pennant-winning pace over seven games, all of which were very close. Now, some clever fella out their with a calculator is going to point out that prior to tonight’s game the Jays had actually played eight, not seven, games in August. As an old guy I worked with years ago in a factory used to say when I had backed him into a corner in an argument, that’s true enough, but . . ., which he followed with a lame and irrelevant response. Yes, they’ve played eight games, not seven, but I’m not counting the 7-1 loss to the Royals on Sunday in this analysis, because it was an outlier, a game whose score was irrelevant and not reflective of the play. The Jays lost 7-1 to the Royals on Sunday plainly and simply because Manager John Gibbons failed to follow baseball tradition in letting Brett Cecil pitch to Kendrys Morales in the seventh inning. The score should never have been 7-1. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

But tonight’s 9-2 loss was another story indeed, a real downer and a definite stinker of a game, in which the Rays did everything right and the Jays did everything wrong. The only recourse for the players and those of us among their fans who try to keep some perspective on things, is to record the sordid details for posterity, put them behind us, and find solace in the immortal words of Scarlett O’Hara, “tomorrow is another day”.

On record, the pitching matchup looked overwhelmingly favourable for the Blue Jays. Marco Estrada, the big game master, who carves up opposing lineups into little strips with the pitching equivalent of a tiny filleting knife, was going against left-hander Drew Smyly, who has had a rough year in general (3-11, with a 5.14 ERA), and had a history of rocky outings in particular against the Jays.

But, just like hitting, good pitchers sometimes struggle, and pitchers who are generally struggling will sometimes come up with a sterling effort. And so it went tonight.

It’s in the nature of the way he plies his trade, just as it is with R.A. Dickey, that Marco Estrada will sometimes be susceptible to the long ball. It usually comes with nobody on, and that’s all you can hope for. So Logan Forsythe’s leadoff homer in the first inning should have been no big deal, but it kind of came with the crack of doom. Dickey couldn’t get this guy out last night, and now he goes deep on Estrada? In the first inning? After Forsythe, Estrada retired the side on a popup, a ground ball, and a strikeout, but he did give up a ground ball single to Evan Longoria, who died on first, and he did throw 20 pitches, the precursor of a five-inning outing .

When a team faces a pitcher they’ve dominated in the past, it’s always a good idea to step on his throat early, to let him know that nothing’s changed. Hell, it’s always good to step on the throat of the other team’s starter early in any case. But with a pitcher you’ve roughed up before, if he gets the idea that this time could be different, you’re running the risk of letting him gain some momentum.

The Blue Jays had two of the first three batters aboard in the bottom of the first, but let Drew Smyly off the hook. This was not good. After Devon Travis flied out, Jose Bautista doubled to centre, and Josh Donaldson walked. But Smyly struck out Edwin Encarnacion, and teased a fly ball to right out of Russell Martin to protect the Rays’ one-run lead.

Smyly certainly did gain some momentum. After the first-inning walk to Donaldson, he retired eleven Jays’ hitters in a row, taking him into the fifth inning, by which time the Rays had added two more runs to the Forsythe homer off a clearly labouring Estrada.

While there’s no question that Estrada was not sharp tonight, to my mind there’s also no question that his strike zone was squeezed early and often by home plate umpire David Rackley. For a pitcher like Estrada, who relies on deception and pin-point control, not getting the strikes he throws is devastating, because as soon as he starts working to the heart of the plate, he doesn’t have enough to overpower hitters.

He did look like himself in the second inning, retiring the side with two called third strikes on twelve pitches, but found himself deep in the soup in the third, with the help of a strange error charged against Jose Bautista, and ended up throwing another 28 pitches to keep the Rays off the board. Catcher Luke Maile led off with a single to centre, and after Forsythe hit a short fly to Melvin Upton for the first out, Kevin Kiermaier hit a dribbler through the right side, Maile stopping at second. But Bautista came in, picked up the ball, started into his throw, and somehow caught his spikes in the turf, going down awkwardly as he tried to flip the ball to Devon Travis. But the ball shot by Travis, and by the time he retrieved it Maile had cranked up again and gone on to third. Estrada then walked Evan Longoria to load the bases, before striking out Brad Miller and getting Mahtook to pop out to Travis at second. All of this took him to 58 pitches in only three innings.

Another 28 pitches for Estrada in the fourth and another uncharacteristic error by the Jays led to the Rays’ second run. Leadoff hitter Corey Dickerson walked. Estrada retired the next two hitters, and then walked Maile. I should mention that this Luke Maile who was on base all night came into the game hitting .159. Logan Forsythe hit a grounder up the middle that Travis made a nice play to get to on his backhand, setting up an easy force on the plodding Maile at second. But the ball rolled out of his hand as he transferred it for the throw, and bounced out into no man’s land, allowing Dickerson to score from second on the play. Kiermaier flew out to right to end the inning, and the Rays were up 2-0 on Estrada, now up to 86 pitches. I should mention that Smyly’s pitch count stood at 48 after the same four innings.

Estrada’s last inning was more of the same, two baserunners on and two outs when Steven Souza hit a bloop single to centre to plate Brad Miller with Tampa’s third run. More hilarity, if you’re a Rays’ fan, ensued. With Mahtook holding at third, Souza wandered too far off first, and Russell Martin had him dead to rights with a quick throw. Smoak, seeing Mahtook venturing toward the plate, threw behind him to Donaldson, but Mahtook beat the tag at third while Souza finally made it to second. Then Estrada walked Tim Beckham to load the bases before Maile fanned to end the inning. All of this took another 27 pitches, and at 113 pitches for five innings, Estrada was done like dinner.

In the bottom of the fifth Smyly finally wavered, and the Jays started to claw their way back to respectability. The Jays struck quickly, so quickly that you wondered what they’d been waiting for. The sad part was that they got within one of the Rays, and had the possibility of much more, but the threat ended with Jose Bautista grounding into a double play. Troy Tulowitzki led off with a single to left. Michael Saunders singled to right. Smyly walked Justin Smoak to load the bases. Melvin Upton cashed his first Blue Jay RBI with a sacrifice fly for the first out, moving Saunders to third while Smoak stayed at first. Devon Travis scored Saunders with a single to right, and then the Bautista double play ended it.

If the Jays were looking to continue their charge against Smyly after the fifth inning, the Rays’ top of the sixth served to deflate their hopes, as they came back and scored two against rookie Danny Barnes to restore the three-run lead. After two effective outings, Barnes started well in his third, striking out the tough Forsythe, but by the time he got Corey Dickinson to ground into a double play to end the inning, the Rays had combined a walk to Kiermaier, a double by Longoria, a walk to Brad Miller, and a single by Mahtook to notch the two runs.

The outcome was firmly carved in stone by the Blue Jays’ failure to score in the bottom of the sixth despite loading the bases with nobody out. After singles by Donaldson and Encarnacion and a walk to Russell Martin, Rays’ manager Kevin Cash stayed with Smyly, and his confidence paid off in spades: Tulo popped out to first on the infield fly rule, Saunders struck out swinging, and Smoak popped out to the catcher in foul territory. That big sucking sound you heard in Toronto about that time of the night was the collective, pained exhalation of hundreds of thousands of Jays fans, as many of them, but not yer humble scribe of course, turned to the coverage of the Olympics, or David Suzuki, or something.

If there was any hope left in the Jays’ hearts, Scott Feldman came in and thoroughly drained it away by giving up four runs on six hits. Consequently, when Erasmo Ramirez came in to pick up Smyly, there wasn’t much left to pick up. He breezed through the seventh, eighth, and ninth, retiring nine batters in a row to earn the relatively rare save under the rubric of pitching three or more innings in relief and finishing a winning game. After his terrible seventh, it hardly mattered that Feldman had a terrific eighth, striking out two and getting a ground ball to short to retire the side in order. Brett Cecil mopped up well in the ninth , with a strikeout, a ground ball out and a fly ball out, on only ten pitches.

Tomorrow night Jay Happ will try to nail down the series win against the young rookie Brett Snell, who’s had a good start to his career as a starting pitcher for Tampa Bay.

Nothing to do but go home, get a good night’s sleep, and forget all about it. Tomorrow night’s game, as always, starts with the teams even, regardless of how much the Rays won by tonight. Not only is there no crying in baseball, there’s no carryover either. Well, that’s a good thing.