Long Ball Stories

R.A. Dickey is a consummate team player. He takes pride in his profession. Not just in the pitching, but in all the little things that make up a complete ball player. With his National League background he can handle a bat and run the bases, even as a pinch-runner. He fields his position superbly. On the mound he is tenacious and resilient as he battles the vagaries of maintaining mastery over a pitch that sometimes just will not be tamed.

Dickey marches along contributing 200-plus innings a year without injury issues, and he never complains, even though he seldom gets the run support that other members of the rotation regularly get. Even under the extreme provocation of Manager John Gibbons’ strange decision to remove him from Game Four of the 2015 ALDS when he had a 7-1 lead and was one out from qualifying for a playoff victory, his only response after the game was to say that the manager is in charge of the team, and his job is to do what the manager deems necessary to secure the win.

This is why it was so gratifying to see such a team effort expended tonight by the Blue Jays to support their senior starter on a night when he struggled mightily from the very first batter of the game, and could easily have gone down to defeat, even by means of a blowout. But the Jays’ hitters made sure that Dickey never trailed in the game, their defence came up big behind him and his successors on the hill, and the bullpen did a great job to hold the Rays in check for the rest of the game, yielding only a meaningless solo home run to Tampa Bay’s designated Toronto nemesis, Logan Forsythe by closer Roberto Osuna in the ninth inning to close the gap to 7-5.

Dickey’s mound opponent tonight was Jake Odorizzi, which posed a particular challenge for a lineup that has really struggled to score runs recently. Odorizzi, who came into the game a respectable 6-5 with a 3.70 ERA for a team that is twenty games below .500, had had a recent string of excellent starts, in fact going scoreless for 20.2 innings in his last three starts before Toronto. But just as Dickey’s struggles tonight came right off the bat, so to speak, with a 34-pitch first inning in which he somehow managed to keep the Rays off the score sheet, the Blue Jays’ ended the suspense about Odorizzi’s scoreless streak right away in the first inning as well.

Dickey’s first inning was a strange one, though not unfamiliar for the knuckleballer. He achieved the three outs via a foul popup to Edwin Encarnacion at first, and two strikeouts. There wasn’t a ball hit in anger the entire inning. Yet Dickey needed a strikeout to strand the bases loaded for the Rays, while the sense of impending doom hung over the field, though not necessarily over Dickey, who remains inflappable regardless.

Logan Forsythe, who always plays well against Toronto, led off the game with an infield hit back to Dickey. Kevin Kiermaier fouled out. Forsythe moved to second on a wild pitch. Evan Longoria walked. Brad Miller watched a called third strike. With the oddly-named Mikie Mahtook at the plate (note to prospective ballplayers’ parents: don’t call your kid “Mikie”. Please.), a Josh Thole passed ball moved the runners up. Sigh. Mahtook walked to load the bases. Left-fielder Nick Franklin fanned to put the inning to a merciful rest after 34 pitches.

The thing that I love about R.A. Dickey is his insouciance. No matter what happens, batter to batter, you have the impression that his response is always, “It’s ok, I’ve got this.” And most of the time he does.

The above-named Mr. M. Mahtook pretty well guaranteed the immediate end of Jake Odorizzi’s scoreless streak on the first play of the game for the Jays. Devon Travis hit a sharp liner to right. Mahtook charged to his left and launched himself into a hopeless dive when he should have kept to his feet and cut the ball off. No Kevin Pillar he, the ball went all the way to the wall, as Travis went mtored to third for a standup “triple”. This was Travis’ first major league triple, and it deserves a big asterisk. Jose Bautista immediately drove Mahtook to the wall to take his deep fly, and Travis jogged home. Just to make sure that the streak stayed broken, Edwin Encarnacion pounded a one-strike pitch over the wall in left centre for his 299^th career home run. Odorizzi, probably unsettled by the end of his brush with immortality, walked Michael Saunders and Troy Tulowitzki before Darrell Ceciliani obligingly went down swinging for the third out.

Both pitchers settled down and the game rolled on to the fourth inning, Dickey retiring six in a row, and Odorizzi giving up a harmless single in both the second and third.

In the top of the fourth the Rays broke off Dickey’s string and hit some ropes, combining three doubles to score two runs and tie it up. Dickey was looking at a pretty short night by this point, as he was up to 76 pitches after four innings.

But the Jays retook the lead in their half of the fourth after Odorizzi had ostensibly secured the third out with two runners on base. He didn’t help himself by hitting Josh Thole with one out, then Devon Travis got a base hit but Jose Bautista made the second out by popping out to the first baseman in foul territory. Odorizzi struck out Josh Donaldson, but the ball went right through catcher Bobbie Wilson’s wicket and all the way to the backstop. Donaldson reached first without a throw, and the bases were loaded for Edwin Encarnacion, who singled to left to score Thole and Travis and give us a 4-2 lead.

But this was not Dickey’s night for stretching it out, as the curse of the knuckleballer cost him his chance for a win. With one out and Logan Forsythe on first with a single, Dickey hit Evan Longoria with a pitch, then a passed ball by Josh Thole moved the runners up, and both would score on Brad Miller’s double to right. With the game tied 4-4, and Dickey at 89 pitches, Manager John Gibbons pulled the plug on the plucky senior, and brought in Joe Biagini, who got the two outs needed to end the inning on six pitches. So Dickey’s line was 4.1 innings, 4 runs, 6 hits, 3 walks, and 3 strikeouts.

Odorizzi breezed through the bottom of the fifth, and Biagini came back for the sixth, which he survived without allowing a run thanks to a spectacular effort by Travis and Donaldson to erase a baserunner at third. Steven Souza led off with a double to centre, and Tim Beckham did his job, hitting a ground ball to second to move Souza to third. Except Travis alertly scooped the hard one-hopper, looked to third, and fired it over. Donaldson, five feet off the bag, caught the throw right on Souza as he passed by, and held onto the ball for the out. This was both a physical turning point and a psychological one for both teams. For the Rays to have taken a lead the inning after tying the game would have been devastating for the Blue Jays. For the Rays it ended a promising rally, because with Beckham now on first, Biagini capitalized on the cut-down baserunner by getting Bobbie Wilson to bounce into a double play to end the inning.

In the bottom of the sixth, Odorizzi followed his starting counterpart to the showers. Except that pitchers never “go to the showers” any more, but stay in the dugout to support their team. This might not be the best thing physically for pitchers to do for themselves, but it does wonders for team morale. After striking out Josh Thole, Odorizzi was touched up by base hits by Travis and Bautista, and the Bautista’s single brought his night to an end, after 5.1 innings, 4 runs, 8 hits, 3 walks and 4 strikeouts, spread out over 107 pitches. Brad Boxberger came in to retire the Jays without scoring, which removed both starters from the possibility of securing a win on the night.

With the game essentially even as it moved to the seventh, there was little sense that the turning points of the game were imminent, and that all would be decided by the time the inning was over. For the Jays, it was an heroic stand by the veteran Joaquin Benoit, whose sub-rosa acquisition is looking more and more like one of the best player moves the Jays have made this year, right up there with the theft of Jason Grilli from the Braves. As he has a number of times already, Benoit started out in trouble, and then braced up to strand the runners, with a little bad baserunning assistance by Logan Forsythe, who had led off with a walk, and then moved to third on a double to right by Kevin Kiermaier. Benoit fanned the veteran Blue Jay nemesis Evan Longoria for the crucial first out, and then got cleanup hitter Brad Miller to loft a medium-deep fly ball to right, which should have scored Forsythe easily, except that he hesitated before going back to the bag, and had to hold up. Possibly he was wary of challenging the arm of Bautista that in reality is no longer in evidence. Reprieved, Benoit got Mahtook to fly out to centre to keep the score level.

Manager Kevin Cash called on lefty Xavier Cedeno, who had success against the Jays earlier in the year, to hold the fort. Ten pitches later, eight of them balls, he was gone, and Dylan Floro came in to face the two-on, nobody-out, situation. Floro walked Russell Martin to load the bases, but then started to work his way out of trouble. He struck out Melvin Upton. Then he got Justin Smoak to ground the ball back to him, a perfect opportunity to go for the home-to-first double play to get out of the inning. He got the force on Michael Saunders at the plate, but in making the out Saunders made the key play of the game by sliding legally, straight into the plate, and straight into making incidental contact with catcher Bobbie Wilson’s feet, throwing him off balance and keeping him from turning the double play. Devon Travis lined a hard single to centre to score Tulo with the eventual winning run, leaving the bases loaded for Jose Bautista, who doubled to the gap in left centre to plate two insurance runs.

The rest was denouement. In for the close after Grilli pitched the eighth, Roberto Osuna gave up an inconsequential home run to Logan Forsythe to close the gap, but it was also Tampa’s last gasp and the Jays were home with a 7-5 win, their fourth in a row and fifth in their last six.

So this was a night on which R.A. Dickey did not do the job, but he had plenty of help, both at the plate and in the field, to see his rocky start turned into a solid win for the home team. On to Tuesday, and Marco Estrada’s opportunity to see what it’s like to pitch with an extra day’s rest.

A troubling footnote to today’s activities is that we received the news that Kevin Pillar’s daring style of play has finally caused him to come a cropper: he tore a ligament in his left thumb while sliding into second head-first for a stolen base on Sunday. He has been placed on the fifteen-day disabled list, and Darren Ceciliani has been called up from Buffalo. The injury comes at a time when Pillar’s value to the bottom of the batting order has never been clearer, and it is to be hoped that he will come back soon, and regain his form soon. If he doesn’t, it sure won’t be for lack of effort.

The Blue Jays’ hitting woes continued today, and that’s why we lost, plain and simple. Let’s face it, they weren’t going to keep winning at a good pace with the offensive production they’ve gotten during this road trip. They’d managed to win four out of six, which is the pace they need to win everything, while scoring only 16 runs so far in Houston and Kansas City.

They’ve been saved by terrific pitching, both from the starters and from the bullpen. But pitching can only take you so far when you just score one run in a game, as they did in the first game of the Houston series, and as they did again today. Regardless of the outcome of today’s game, if the hitters didn’t break out today, they would have been best advised to take the money—a 4-3 record on the trip—and run.

So why does it stick in my craw so much that Manager John Gibbons risked turning a still-winnable game today into a sure loss by making a really bone-headed pitching decision? Well, for starters, because being down 3-1 after seven innings is a far cry from being down 7-1 after seven innings, and since you never know with the Jays’ hitters who might come up big, and when (witness the Travis homer off Kelvin Herrera Friday night in the ninth inning), it’s always a really good idea to keep it close right to the end.

Let’s take some time and see how we got to the point in the seventh inning when we lost all hope, courtesy of a grand slam home run by Kendrys Morales.

When you look at the pitching lines and the lost scoring opportunities by both teams in the early going, it’s pretty amazing, really, that the game got to the seventh only 3-1 for the Royals. Neither Marcus Stroman nor the volatile Yordano Ventura was particularly sharp today, as evidenced by the number of walks they issued, four by Ventura and two by Stroman, who didn’t walk anybody in his last outing. The high pitch counts for both were also a pretty good clue. When Stroman finished up after five innings, he had already logged 95 pitches, and when Funkmaster Moylan came in with two outs in the bottom of the seventh, Ventura had reached 106 pitches. Not one of which, I should add, was directed at the heads of any of the Jays’ hitters, so that was a good thing, I guess. Ventura’s behavioural therapy must be helping . . .

Marcus Stroman’s performance today continued to demonstrate the frustrating inconsistency that he has shown almost the entire season. Although this was far from his worst outing, in no circumstances would anyone call it masterful. When you look at his line, it wasn’t that bad, until you get to the pitch count, and realize that he was scuffling the whole five innings. He gave up three runs on seven hits with two walks and four strikeouts. In fact, only in the third inning did he retire the side in order. In the other four innings, he was either working around trouble, or not working around it, as the case may be. And some of the trouble he made for himself came from his own fielding miscues, two spectacular throwing errors from the usually sure-handed former NCAA infielder, neither of which entered into the scoring, but both making his life a whole lot more difficult on the mound.

In the first inning after starting off on the right foot by fanning Alcides Escobar, he gave up a double to the rookie Cheslor Cuthbert, but looked like he’d get out of it when he fanned Lorenzo Cain, who’s been striking out a lot in this series, on a foul tip. But then for no particularly good reason Stroman decided to try a pickoff at second, and bounced the ball past Tulo. He was lucky Cuthbert didn’t score on the play, and luckier still that Hosmer grounded out to end the inning.

In the second he gave up two runs through a bizarre series of events that somewhat resembled Sanchez’ Death by a Thousand Cuts fifth inning on Saturday night. He walked Kendrys Morales leading off, and then had Alex Gordon ground into a fielder’s choice, replacing the slow Morales on first with the speedy Gordon. Paulo Orlando singled to right, advancing Gordon to second. Catcher Drew Butera hit a blooper that dropped in front of centre fielder Melvin Upton, scoring Gordon and sending Orlando to third. I complain about the dink-hitting KC offence, but one thing I admire is their team speed. They manage to make a lot of things happen on the bases. As when the Raul Mondesi that’s not a “junior” and wreaked havoc on us yesterday followed with a bunt single back to Stroman that scored Orlando and sent Butera to third because Stroman let go with a wild, no-hoper throw to try to get Mondesi. Stroman was now two for two in the error department, with the second inning not yet over.

Mondesi proceeded to steal second—speed again—which set up the very strange double play that saved Stroman from even worse damage than the two runs that scored. So far Mondesi’s been all good, but on a grounder to first by Escobar he made a rookie running mistake that ended the inning. As Encarnacion recorded the out at first, Mondesi, presumably forgetting that Butera was ahead of him, broke hard for third. This forced Butera to abandon the base and head for the plate. Encarnacion looked at Mondesi making third, and fired to Josh Thole at the plate. Thole, who clearly ranks ahead of Butera in the catchers’ foot speed sweepstakes, ran him down to tag him out to end the inning on a bizarre double play.

After his clean third, Stroman chewed through another 22 pitches in the fourth, yielding a walk and a base hit before fanning Butera and getting Mondesi, finally, on a grounder to second.

Going into the fifth, Stroman was already at 77 pitches, but still in the game. By the end of the inning he had given up a leadoff homer to Escobar and a two-out single to Eric Hosmer, he had allowed the Royals’ lead to increase to 3-0, and checked out with 95 pitches.

Like Stroman, Ventura didn’t throw any lights out tonight, and frankly was lucky that the Jays left their bats behind in Toronto for the whole trip, or he wouldn’t have gotten the win. In only the fifth and sixth did he retire the side in order. In three of the first four innings he had two baserunners on, and only one runner in the third. When Royals’ Manager Ned Yost sent him out for the seventh, he managed to get two outs, but also put two more runners aboard before being pulled for Peter Moylan. Moylan let one of his inherited runners score, in fact showed Darwin Barney the way to the plate with a wild pitch, completing Ventura’s record with only one earned run allowed on five hits with four walks and four strikeouts for his 106 pitches.

If this one had played out from this point, a KC 3-1 win, I’d have thought, “Okay, we didn’t hit, they scratched out a couple and hit a homer, the two pitchers weren’t great but they kept their teams in the game. No big deal in the long run.”

But the thing is it didn’t end like that. John Gibbons brought Scott Feldman in to pick up Stroman in the sixth, and he did such a good job of retiring the side that he was given a second inning for his trouble. This one did not go so well. A bloop single to centre, a bunt single to third, a real single to right, loaded the bases with nobody out. Feldman fought back, and struck Lorenzo Cain on a foul tip, bringing the left-handed hitting Eric Hosmer to the plate. Of course Gibbie went to the pen for Brett Cecil, who came in and struck out Hosmer for the second out. This brought the switch-hitter Kendrys Morales to the plate.

Now this is what fries my frijoles. Normally, you don’t bother pulling your situational lefty when the batter’s a switch-hitter. And because Morales would be followed by another lefty, Alex Gordon, it made sense to leave Cecil in. Except. Except. Except that according to Morales’ splits, which are instantly obtainable by any fan with access to the internet, he hits a lot better right handed than left so it would have made eminent sense to bring in a righty to turn him around.

For the record, in 2016 Morales is hitting .284 against lefties, and .224 against righties. He has more homers and RBI’s against righties, but he’s had more than twice as many at bats against righties. Here’s what really stands out: against left-handed pitchers, Morales has only 28 strikeouts, while against righties he has 61. There was plenty of statistical evidence to support turning him around, but Gibbie didn’t do it, and Morales hit a grand slam off Cecil for a six-run lead over the Jays.

Former palooka starter Chris Young came in to retire six of seven for the Royals, giving up only a single in the ninth to finish off the dispirited Jays. Joe Biagini pitched a clean eighth for the Jays and that was the ball game.

Okay, Morales might have hit a grand slam off a righty, or knocked in a couple of insurance runs, but we’ll never know that. What we do know is that it was absolutely the wrong decision to let Cecil pitch to him. And that the Jays never had a chance to try to tie up a close ball game in the last couple of innings, because Morales, with John Gibbons’ help, put it out of reach.

FSo we come home 4-3 instead of maybe 5-2, and that’s not a bad thing, when you get right down to it, but annoying just the same. Gibbie, next time you decide to go with your gut instinct, just don’t. Read your numbers. Please.

It’s more than a little ironic that in Aaron Sanchez’ first start since his place in the rotation (for the time being, that is) was reconfirmed, he lost his first decision since back in April.

It’s more than a little painful that the Royals didn’t so much beat him as nibble him to death like a bunch of little knicker-clad piranhas. Sanchez wasn’t totally dominant this time, as he has been most of the summer, but he was pitching well enough to carry a slim lead through for the win until the Kauffman Stadium presentation of Death by a Thousand Cuts carried him away on a wave of . . . puff balls.

The Jays had to be feeling really good after Friday night’s exciting one-run win over the Royals, keyed by Devon Travis’ game-winning homer in the top of the night, and saved by Joaquin Benoit, his first since last April, in the absence of the overworked Roberto Osuna.

It was their fourth win in five games on the current road trip, and when they had looked ahead to this stretch on their schedule, they must have thought that four games in Houston and three in Kansas City in early August should have been labelled on the calendar, like the maps of yore, with the warning “Here be dragons”. And yet they were going for their fifth win in the sixth game of the trip, riding the crest of the best stretch of all-around, first inning through last inning quality, pitching that this writer can recall in recent times. Who would have thought that the Blue Jays of 2016 could go through a string of five games on the road scoring only 14 runs, a touch less than three–three!–a game and still win four out of five.

On top of everything else, the first start Friday night of the new six-man rotation had proven it to be a functional, if not esthetic, success, as Francisco Liriano contributed a performance similar to what we’ve come to expect from all of the Jays’ starters this year. And with Sanchez now taking the start he would have had Friday night, we would get our first preliminary report on the main question of the six-man scheme, would it benefit Aaron Sanchez?

On the other hand, the Royals were starting Danny Duffy, the left-hander who has provided grist for Toronto’s mill in the past, but this year seems to have sorted himself out and finally found his place in the disrupted Kansas City rotation. With his eventual six and two thirds innings of two-run ball tonight, he extended his record to a healthy eight and one, with an ERA of 2.97. If the Jays were hoping to maintain their string of good pitching, they would still need to pair it with more effective hitting to secure a second win in the series. For the most part they managed the first objective, given the fluky nature of the Royals’ run production, but they failed to provide more than token resistance against Duffy and his successors.

Sanchez started out on a roll equal to his recent run of starts. He faced three over the minimum in the first four innings. He gave up one walk and two singles, and threw only fifty pitches. Duffy, meanwhile, also shut down the Jays through four, though he had to work a little harder. He gave up one run, two hits, and a walk, and threw 64 pitches. Then in the top of the fifth, he gave up a double to Kevin Pillar leading off, then held the Jays until Devon Travis singled Pillar home with two outs. So that made it the Devon Travises 2, the Royals no score going to the bottom of the fifth, with Duffy having given up the two runs on four hits and a walk, while throwing 79 pitches.

What’s that you say? Where did the other run come from? And why is it Devon Travis two and the Royals no score? Oh, I guess I forgot to mention that Travis, leading off the game, hit a home run to left centre field to post the first Toronto run. That’s right. Three solo homers in two games. First inning yesterday, ninth inning yesterday for the win, first inning today. What a guy! But the other Jays’ hitters, not so much, in particular the meat of the order, who for all practical purposes have gone oh for Kansas City.

So Sanchez cruised into the bottom of the fifth with a two-nothing lead and not a worry in the world, except: what was that cloud of gnats doing buzzing into the stadium and settling in the sky right over his head? That he keeps slapping at, apparently to no avail? Oh, not to worry. This is not a post-Apocalyptic story of nasty teeny-tinies taking over the world. No, it was just the potent offence of the Kansas City Royals, finally rousing from slumber.

Alex Gordon opened the inning by hitting a line-drive single to right. The next four hitters all reached safely on base hits. None of them left the infield. Paulo Orlando hit a ground ball to Troy Tulowitzki at short and beat it out. With runners at first and second, enter Raul Adalberto Mondesi, son of former Blue Jay Raul Mondesi, and brother of former minor leaguer Raul Mondesi Jr., bringing to mind the country bumpkin brothers on the old Bob Newhart Show, who were always introduced with, “this is my brother Darrell, and this is my other brother Darrell”.

Now besides having a pretty serious major league pedigree, and coming from a family where there seems to be a certain lack of creativity over first names, this Raul Mondesi is a pretty electric young ballplayer.

So this Raul Mondesi comes up to bunt Gordon and Orlando over to put the tying runs in scoring position with one out. And bunts for a base hit. With the bases loaded, Alcides Escobar, that annoying little rat, hits a sharp grounder to the left of third baseman Josh Donaldson. It glances off Donaldson’s glove and deflects straight to Tulo at short, but of course there’s no throw to first, and Gordon comes in to score. Sanchez then looked good to get out of the inning still with the lead, as Cheslor Cuthbert softly lined out to Travis at second for the first out, and Lorenzo Cain bounced one to a drawn-in Donaldson, who came home for the force-out. Two out, bases loaded, we still lead, two to one, with chief gnat and troublemaker Eric Hosmer coming to the plate. Hosmer finally shows that somebody in the Royals’ lineup can reach the outfield by stroking a single to centre that scores Orlando and Mondesi. Kendrys Morales grounds out to Justin Smoak at first to end the inning on one pitch, but after six hits and 24 pitches, after only fifty in the first four innings, the torture is over and the Royals held a three-two lead after five innings, which Duffy maintained through the top of the sixth despite walking Edwin Encarnacion.

At 74 pitches and only damaged, essentially, by blips and bleeders, there was no reason not to send Sanchez out for the bottom of the sixth, and he quickly got two outs, but then weakened and yielded an insurance run to the Royals. With two outs, Paulo Orlando reached on a base hit, and stole second, whence he scored on a triple to right field, a hard rip into the corner, by the Mondesi who’s not the father, and not the junior. So as Sanchez finished six and turned it over to the bullpen, the Royals had a two-run lead to protect.

Duffy stayed out there for the top of the seventh, and gave up a single to leadoff hitter Kevin Pillar, awarded after a review of the call at first, before striking out Justin Smoak and Melvin Upton. At this point, Manager Ned Yost, not wanting the lefty Duffy to get blasted by Devon Travis, pulled his starter and brought in funky-delivery guy, Peter Moylan. The strategy worked, as Moylan fanned Travis to end the inning.

That’s where it stayed to the end. Danny Barnes made his second appearance for the Blue Jays, picking up Sanchez in the seventh and eighth. He had an interesting time of it, in that he gave up leadoff doubles in both innings, but did not allow either of them to score, showing an admirable level of cool which suggested that there may continue to be a place for him in the Toronto bullpen as the season progresses.

As for the Jays, they went pretty quietly this time. The funkmaster Moylan pitched around a walk to Edwin Encarnacion in the eighth inning, and Kelvin Herrera came in for the save in the ninth. This time there would be no heroics. Ground out, pop up, and a strikeout to end the game at 16 pitches, and Herrera had his fourth save, and the Jays’ record on the road trip slipped to four and two, which is pretty good considering they haven’t even been able to buy a base hit with runners in scoring position in Houston and Kansas City so far.

Marcus Stroman goes against the eccentric Yordano Ventura tomorrow, in the last game of the road trip. Here’s hoping that we turn things around and hit Ventura before he hits us, and that we head for home with no broken bones.

The last time the Blue Jays stood on the field at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, they were standing around bereft, forlornly watching the Royals celebrate their second straight American League pennant.

So it had to be with mixed feelings that the buoyant Jays, riding the crest of a mid-season wave of fine play that has brought them into a perpetual tie with the Baltimore Orioles in their division, ventured onto the field to warm up for tonight’s game against the Royals. There is no doubt whatsoever that the memories are painful, the wounds still tender, when the players think back on that night. This is what we feel just as their supporters. How much deeper it must be for them.

But this is 2016, isn’t it? Quite a few things have changed, haven’t they? For one thing a significant number of the current Blue Jays can only relate to the institutional memory of last October. Eleven players on the roster that arrived in Kansas City for this weekend series were not even on the team then, a surprisingly big turnover for a team in the middle of what they now annoyingly call the “window of opportunity”. For another thing, the Royals just aren’t the Royals any more. Between injuries and losses to free agency, three of tonight’s starters, a large turnover for a franchise that has been relatively stable in recent years, were not regulars last year, and the pitching staff has experienced a far more significant turnover. No more really needs be said about the difference between last year and this year than this: after tonight’s exciting four-three Blue Jays’ win, Toronto’s record for the season stands at 63-47, while Kansas City’s stands at 51-58.

I hope this isn’t us next year after we win the Series this year!

Tonight marked the Toronto debut of Francisco Liriano, the much heralded trade-deadline arrival Toronto acquired from Pittsburgh, along with a couple of good prospects, in exchange for Drew Hutchinson. Hopes were high that Liriano, who has been struggling with his control for much of the season to date, would experience a turnaround pitching for his new team, in particular to Russell Martin, with whom he had worked very well, in Pittsburgh.

The Royals started thirty-year-old veteran right-hander Dillon Gee. I confess that my response to seeing his name in the lineup (I’m sorry for this) was “Dillon Gee, who he?” Well there’s a simple reason I knew nothing about him. Until he signed as a free agent this year with the Royals, his entire career has been spent in the Mets organization, where he had a number of stretches during which he was a regular member of the rotation. If you want to have something to remember Dillon Gee for, it’s that he Wally Pipp’d to Noah Syndergaard last May when he went on the DL with a groin strain. He wasn’t getting that job back, and so opted for free agency at the end of the year and signed a minor league deal with the Royals last December. All you have to do is review the Royals’ DL list for pitchers, to see how Dillon Gee went from Triple A starter to Kansas City starter over the course of this season.

When you look at Gee’s record with the Royals this year, it’s a middling sort, quite suitable for a middling, or worse, team, three wins and five losses with an ERA of 4.66. And middling was how he pitched against the Jays tonight, though he didn’t waste any time giving up a one-run Toronto lead. On the fourth pitch of the game against new leadoff batter Devon Travis, Travis yanked one into the seats in left, much to the surprise, I think, of those assembled in the stadium, but not to the ranks of Jay watchers. Travis’ homer was followed by a flurry of baserunners whom the Jays couldn’t deliver, and so Gee walked off the mound behind only one-nothing. He would have to settle down a lot to carry on against the Jays, though, as he needed to retire Russell Martin on a fly to right to leave the bases loaded, after filling them up on a single to Jose Bautista, a walk to Josh Donaldson, and a hit-by-pitch of Troy Tulowitzki again, for god’s sake!

The early returns were pretty good on Liriano, as he gave up only an unearned run to tie the game in the bottom of the first when leadoff batter Alcides Escobar reached second on a rare throwing error by Darwin Barney, covering third tonight to give Josh Donaldson a break by DH-ing. Liriano made his only mistake of the inning to the rookie third baseman Cheslor Cuthbert, the next batter, who singled up the middle and sent Escobar around to third. The best possible outcome for a first and third with nobody out, of course, is a combination of strikeouts and popouts, barring an egregious TOOBLAN by the guy on third. (To refresh your memory, TOOBLAN is a term created by the more irreverent young analyticists to describe a baserunning mistake. It’s an acronym for “thrown out on the bases like a nincompoop”.

Liriano didn’t get that, but he got the next best thing, a classic 6-4-3 double play offered up by Lorenzo Cain which allowed Escobar to score and erased Cuthbert. Eric Hosmer grounded out to third, and Liriano escaped with only one unearned run, pitching in a tie game.

Gee settled down enough to get the side out in order in the second, and Liriano finished Kansas City off equally quickly, despite giving up a leadoff single to Salvador Perez. But in the third Gee made the mistake of walking Donaldson and Edwin Encarnacion after getting Bautista to line out to left. This brought Michael Saunders to the plate, and once again he showed his ability to go the other way by doubling to left, scoring Josh and sending Edwin to third. Tulo, thankfully unscathed after the first inning hit batsman, grounded out short to first . Edwin skillfully read the play and scored without a throw, giving the visitors a two-run lead on Gee, who hopefully learned the Kansas City pitchers’ playbook lesson number one: don’t walk Blue Jays!

In the fourth he got away with a leadoff walk that was immediately erased when Darwin Barney lined into an unassisted double play to Eric Hosmer at first. In the bottom of the fourth Liriano showed major signs of cracking, but still escaped the inning with the two-run lead intact. He was within a pitch of retiring the side in order when Kendrys Morales singled, on an 0-2 pitch, and then replicated the feat with Salvador Perez, before finally coaxing a foul fly to left out of Alex Gordon to end the inning.

By now completely settled, Gee breezed through the fifth and sixth, yielding only a leadoff single to Michael Saunders that went for nothing. Finishing his outing, Gee had retired nine of the last ten batters he faced, resulting in a line of six innings, 3 runs, 4 hits, 2 walks, and two strikeouts on 87 pitches, not a bad night’s work at all.

On the other hand, Liriano, who had started so strongly, wasn’t as lucky in the fifth as he had been in the fourth. He fell behind Paulo Orlando two and nothing leading off, and paid for it by giving up a homer to left, to cut the lead to one. He got the next two hitters, though going three and one on Raul Mondesi before inducing a comebacker for the first out. Then Alcides Escobar flew out to centre. But again, with two outs, he faltered and walked Cheslor Cuthbert on a three and one pitch, then gave up a triple to centre by Lorenzo Cain. Manager John Gibbons left Liriano in for the lefty matchup with Eric Hosmer, and it paid off, as he went down swinging.

At 72 pitches, there was no reason not to send Liriano back out for the sixth, and he survived his last inning with the tie intact, but followed a similar pattern, two outs, a walk, a hit, this time a stolen base thrown in, so that he had to retire Mondesi on a fly out to left with runners on second and third. But at 93 pitches and obviously flagging as each inning progressed, he was done for the night. He certainly pitched better than his recent outings for the Pirates, but he was also certainly not dominant, giving up two earned runs on seven hits with two walks and five strikeouts, and an alarming tendency to bunch baserunners and not finish off clean innings.

Following the pattern of the whole Houston series, the bullpens matched up pretty well for the seventh and eighth, and it looked like we could be headed for extra innings again. Scott Feldman and Brett Cecil retired the Royals in order, Cecil especially sharp, using only nine pitches to get two groundouts and a strikeout.

Funky-throwing Peter Moylan, who uses sort of a faux-sidearm that turns into an overhand motion (it sounds weird, you really have to see it), like Cecil only used 9 pitches and ended the seventh by fanning Jose Bautista. Joakim Soria survived a rocky eighth by fanning Russell Martin to strand singles by Josh Donaldson and Troy Tulowitzki.

With Kelvin Herrera, who’s taken over the Royals’ closer role from the injured Wad Davis, taking the top of the ninth, it looked good for the Royals to have a shot at a walk-off in the bottom. After Herrera struck out Melvin Upton on six pitches and got Darwin Barney to ground out to short on the first pitch, a walk-off shot looked even better, but Devon Travis rose to the occasion against a very tough relief pitcher and hit a near carbon copy of his first-inning shot into the left field seats to give the Jays a four-three lead. It was only the third homer given up by Herrera in 49.2 innings this year.

With Roberto Osuna off the list tonight to rest his arm, manager Gibbons called on the veteran Joakim Benoit for the save. Through no fault of his own, it was dicey indeed, but he finished it off in style, fanning Alcides Escobar to strand a Jarrod Dyson pinch-hit single at first. But in Dyson’s base hit, there lies a story.

After Alex Gordon flied out to left leading off, the speedy Paulo Orlando hit a routine grounder to Barney at third. Almost inconceivably, Barney threw the ball away again, as in the first inning, allowing Orlando to reach second. Already in scoring position with one out and the top of the order coming up, and a left-handed batter at the plate, Orlando bizarrely broke for third with the pitch. Russell Martin unloaded very quickly, but short-hopped the bag with his throw. Barney, though, made up for his throwing errors in spades with an outstanding catch and swipe-tag, scooping the ball to his left and swinging the glove around, and into Orlando’s feet as he reached for the bag. The Royals didn’t even appeal, a rarity in its own right these days. Then came the irony of Dyson, hitting for Raul Mondesi, hitting a soft line single to left that assuredly would have scored Orlando from second, with his blazing speed. But Orlando was on the bench pondering the mysteries of the world, yet another TOOBLAN chalked up for our guys. Are you listening, Jake Marisnick? Heartened by the turnaround in defensive support, Benoit proceeded to fan Alcides Escobar to secure his first save of the season, and his first save for the Blue Jays.

A very satisfying win it was for the Jays. Travis with his first and last inning heroics. Liriano paying the first dividend on the six-man rotation. The Jays’ bullpen once more keeping the game level. An alternative closer stepping up. The result, their fourth win in five starts, and their fourth close win in a row, a great contrast from their results earlier in the season. With the Orioles winning again tonight, the dead heat in the AL East continues, with the Red Sox lagging just off the pace. Tomorrow night it’s Aaron Sanchez on an extra day’s rest against left-handed Danny Duffy, who has finally become the starter the Royals have been waiting for.

After tonight’s efficient four to one win over the Astros in Houston, at the end of a day that was dominated by big news off the field, the answer to the question posed by my title is “Umm, yep.”

Jay Happ failed tonight, in only lasting six innings, to extend the Blue Jays’ starting rotation’s seven-inning start streak to six in a row. Oh, but he did go six innings, giving up one run on four hits while walking one and striking out six on only 89 pitches. And that was enough to hand a two to one lead over to a bullpen that was once again nearly perfect in suppressing the Astros’ hitters while the Jays added insurance runs in both the eighth and ninth innings.

By the time Manager John Gibbons was turning to the bullpen to try to perserve Happ’s eventual win, the Texas Rangers had already closed out their five-three victory in Baltimore, which meant that our bullpen was also trying to protect a share of first place in the American League East for Toronto.

But to the truly engaged, make that obsessed, Toronto fan, all of this, while very nice indeed, was small potatoes compared to the big news of the day: Ross Atkins flew to Houston earlier today ostensibly to discuss Aaron Sanchez’ impending move to the bullpen. Instead, after closed-door meetings, he made the stunning announcement that Francisco Liriano was not going to replace Aaron Sanchez in the rotation, but join him, in what would become a six-man rotation, an innovative solution to a very real problem.

With this announcement, Atkins and his boss Mark Shapiro have shown themselves to be flexible and creative, and with this one stunning decision may have erased any lingering doubts about their arrival here under less than favourable circumstances. It’s no secret that the plan to protect Sanchez’ arm by moving him to the bullpen for the stretch run was becoming more and more controversial. Sanchez himself didn’t help the matter, by putting up a string of Cy Young-worthy starts in a row, while showing absolutely no signs of tiring. The players on the team were speaking out more freely on the issue, most notably Russell Martin, who came down firmly on the side of keeping him in the rotation. It was becoming more and more awkward for Shapiro and Atkins to stick to their guns, yet from their perspective slowing Sanchez down was the right thing to do, and they were not particularly interested in being dictated to by the howls of the mob. This surprise compromise seems to met the needs of the moment pretty well.

It’s not necessarily the case that this rotation will last through the regular season, and in fact it may delay a more definitive decision on Sanchez for only a couple of weeks. In the meantime, one major positive for management in doing it this way is that at the moment they’re unsure of what they have in Francisco Liriano, who, based on this year’s performance, should be seen as a reclamation project. If they had taken Sanchez out of the rotation, and Liriano had tanked, they would have been left with a messy situation. Now, if Liriano tanks, and there’s no saying he will, they still have a five-man rotation, though without Drew Hutchinson standing at the ready in Buffalo. (Whoops. Let’s not forget that we spent some of our retirement nest egg it get Liriano.) The ex-pirate is scheduled to open the series in Kansas City tomorrow night. The jury is waiting to consider the evidence.

Meanwhile, for the baseball fan, as opposed to the Stratego player, there was a game to watch, and a game to savour, yet again, if your particular brand of fandom wears royal blue sweaters.

Jay Happ and Mike Fiers combined to present a tightly-pitched and efficient product for the first four innings last night. Fiers made a mistake in the first inning, and leadoff hitter Devon Travis turned it into a double. In the midst of all the strikeouts throughout this series, Jose Bautista and Josh Donaldson managed to make outs on batted balls for a change, allowing Travis to move to third on a deep fly to centre, and score on a Donaldson grounder to second. After the Travis double Fiers retired twelve Blue Jays in a row, to go into the fifth down only one-nothing. In the meantime, Happ allowed only one baserunner, Tyler White, who singled in the fourth.

In the fifth inning the two teams traded runs. Fiers got a little snaky in his half of the inning, throwing two wild pitches that eventually allowed Russell Martin, who led off with an infield single to short, to come around and score. In his return to the lineup after the chip fracture in his thumb, Troy Tulowitzki contributed a sharp single to left with one out hit so hard that Martin running from second had to be held at third, only to come in to score on Fiers’ second wild pitch.

Unfortunately, Happ gave that one back in his half of the inning, the gods not willing to let him have any sort of a cushion. A leadoff double to left by Evan Gaddis, and a two-out double to left by Tyler White produced the run, and we headed for the sixth still clinging to a one-run lead. Fiers gave up a leadoff bunt single to Devon Travis, got the double play ball from Bautista, then gave up a single to Donaldson. He finally ended the inning and his night by getting Edwin Encarnacion to pop out to first. Happ had an exciting ride in the sixth, was able to hold onto the lead, but laboured his way out of the game in the process.

After fanning George Springer twice, Happ walked him to lead off the sixth. Alex Bregman finally got his second hit in the major leagues, a single to left. Then Happ had to face the two best hitters Houston has this year. Jose Altuve put a big charge in one, but sent it to Death Valley, where it settled in Kevin Pillar’s glove, for the first out, while Springer advanced to third. Then came Carlos Correa, who grounded a one-two pitch out to Troy Tulowitzki, who combined with Devon Travis for a quick turnover to first and the double play.

Once again, and it still seems strange saying this, the Jays’ bullpen held the fort, Happ having finished six with another fine effort but not much left in the tank. Once again Manager John Gibbons chose to rely on the two old coots and the young upstart, and once again they kept the scoresheet clean. Joakim Benoit breezed through the seventh on 11 pitches, Jason Grilli gave up an infield hit to Jake Marisnick with one out, but then reaped the benefits of a second baserunning mistake in two nights by Marisnick, one that he paid for this time, by wandering too far off first and getting doubled off when Travis caught Springer’s little looper headed toward right. Roberto Osuna made up for a leadoff walk by striking out the side for the save.

The Astros weren’t so fortunate with their relievers this time. Oh, Pat Neshek made the three Jays he faced looked silly, like he always does, in the seventh. But Will Harris, who has been scrambling to find a role with Houston since he lost the closer’s job, didn’t fare so well in the eighth, when he got a lucky break to erase Justin Smoak’s ground rule double at third, but still fell victim to the pinprick torments of Pillar and Travis for a nice insurance run. With Smoak at second and nobody out, Pillar went right side and hit a grounder to Altuve, who brilliantly came up throwing and nipped Smoak at third. But Pillar wasn’t done, no sir. He stole second. He cunningly advanced to third on a short wild pitch, taking the bag with his hand in a beautiful sweep-around movement that took several minutes of analysis to determine had evaded the tage. Travis then delivered him with a two-out single past Altuve for a 3-1 lead.

James Hoyt came on to pitch the ninth, and, just like the night before, had a brilliant and easy time of it, striking out two Jays, and getting the last out when Troy Tulowitzki grounded out to third. Unfortunately, this time he did it after warming up by throwing a home run ball to Edwin Encarnacion, and Osuna had a three run lead to work with in the bottom of the ninth, and he did just that after the leadoff walk to Bregman.

So, a nice neat, clean game in which a lot of people did their little bits to contribute to the win, while the fans were looking elsewhere for excitement. They won’t have to wait too long to see how the new regime stacks up, because tomorrow Francisco Liriano makes his first start for the Jays in Kansas City. So we’re goin’ to Kansas City, and I hope our boys concentrate on the task at hand, and forget about the “crazy little women there”!

I love word play. Maybe sometimes too much, but even so. For example, the question stated in today’s title can be read in two completely different ways. First, as a rather biblical-sounding phrasing of the common thought that one has to consider carefully what one should sacrifice in order to succeed, or in the self-help world, where misreading are common enough, the introduction to a discussion of a prescription for success. Secondly, though, the question is a blunt conversational retort that hinges, obviously, on the name of a certain former Blue Jay pitcher now toiling for the Boston Red Sox.

As of tonight’s game we have yet another report to file on the plus side of the re-signing of Marco Estrada with the Blue Jays last November. This one says: seven innings, one run, four hits, no walks, 7 strikeouts, 98 pitches. This one says: stranded leadoff double in first, stranded single in the fourth, gave up a run on back-to-back doubles by two non-entities named Marwyn Gonzalez and Jose Altuve in the sixth. This one says: made an awful lot of hitters look really foolish trying to hit the best changeup in baseball. This one says at the bottom, in the comments section, “now first in AL in opponents’ average, first in AL in WHIP, now fourth in AL in ERA”.

Even though he only has seven wins, thanks to abysmal run support during his starts (witness tonight, for example), the wad of positive reports in the plus file is way thicker than the paltry few negative reports. Was thirteen mil a year for three years money well spent? In the immortal words of the incomprehensible Sarah Palin, “you betcha!”

Just to keep you up to date on the world of David Price, let’s do a quick update and look at his Tuesday night outing in Seattle. After Tuesday, his record stands at 9-7, with an ERA of 4.30 for 150.2 innings pitched. Is he a workhouse this year? Absolutely. Is he a premier starter in the AL this year? Hardly. Tuesday, in Seattle, he was pitching really, really well going into the eighth inning, a three-hit shutout, no walks, and five strikeouts on only 89 pitches. So John Farrell sent him out for the eighth inning, as who wouldn’t? But he goes homer, single, single, single. Two runs in, two runners on, he’s only thrown 9 pitches and he’s gone. His two runners left come around to score on a three-run homer by Robinson Cano, given up by newly-acquired lefty Fernando Abad, who takes the loss, and Price gets saddled with four earned runs and a no decision. I love your infectious enthusiasm, David, but I love Marco’s pitching better.

The Astros started Collin McHugh, whose record has been pretty ordinary (7-7, 4.75) and has had widely differing results in his last two outings. On July 23^rd, at home, he went six innings against the Angels for the win, giving up 2 runs, 6 hits, no walks, and striking out six. On the 29^th, he was clobbered in Detroit: 8 runs on 10 hits with one strikeout in only one and two thirds innings. So the question for tonight was: would the real Collin McHugh (whoever he is) please stand up?

Well, he was a pretty good Collin McHugh. Now, of his last three outings, the terrible one was in Detroit, and the other two at home. Is there really a problem with the lights for the hitters in Houston’s stadium, that the Astros have solved for themselves, but that visitors can’t manage?

The pretty good Collin McHugh just met the definition of a quality start, 3 runs allowed in six innings pitched. He gave up six hits, walked one, and struck out ten Blue Jays batters. BTW, when you add the four punchouts by the two relievers who followed him, another 14 strikeouts were totted up by the Jays tonight. Their total for three games, including five extra innings: 50. LED lighting, or just typical Blue Jays hitters’ funk?

Where McHugh ran into problems was with the long ball. If there were a stat for pitchers that stated the percentage of hits allowed by a pitcher that went yard, I think 50 per cent would be pretty awful, don’t you? He gave up three homers out of six hits, and only one of them, off the bat of Jose Bautista in the sixth, went the “easy” route, to left. Josh Donaldson hit two, both opposite field, one in the fourth and one in the sixth. Another curious statistic to mention is that every single run scored by the Jays in this series, only six, to be sure, but two more than the Astros have notched, has been via the solo home run. The thing is, in six innings McHugh only allowed four other baserunners, so there wasn’t all that much opportunity to hit one out with runners on. I should mention, too, in a final nod to the quality of his start tonight, that two of the runs allowed by McHugh, three of the six hits, and the only walk, came in his last inning of work

Until the back-to-backs by Jose and Josh in the sixth, we had been watching a scoreless game until the fourth, and then a one-nothing lead being nursed along by Estrada into the sixth. After McHugh’s departure, the Houston bullpen once again stifled the Jays, so it was all up to Joe Biagini and Roberto Osuna to protect the 3-1 Toronto lead.

A.J. Hinch reached into his hat and pulled up another virgin reliever to torment the Jays. James Hoyt, nearly thirty years old, became the second oldest pitcher in Astros history to make his big league debut. (The Houston statisticians seem to enjoy digging up these obscure records.) Hoyt didn’t miss the chance to impress in this first opportunity that he’d awaited so long. He struck out Kevin Pillar and Darwin Barney, but then was betrayed by his shortstop, Carlos Correa, who booted a very easy grounder allowing Devon Travis to reach. Poor Hoyt must have thought he was back in Double A. He then wavered a little, naturally, and walked Jose Bautista, before getting Josh Donaldson to ground out to Correa, who didn’t boot it this time.

Michael Feliz finished up the last two innings for the Astros, and once again handled the Jays with ease, allowing only Russell Martin to reach on a single in the eighth inning, and striking out three. Good thing McHugh threw those gopher balls when he was in there. Marco Estrada’s sentiments exactly, I’m sure.

With Estrada finished after seven, manager John Gibbons was still in a quandary over his bullpen, despite R.A. Dickey’s strong seven innings the night before. Roberto Osuna was ready for the ninth, but he had to bridge the eighth. Jason Grilli had closed the night before, and joined a number of others on the unavailable list unless there should be a fire. Gibbie might have gone for the really dramatic and used Danny Barnes again, but the kid probably didn’t get a wink of sleep last night. So he chose a route that was only slightly less daring, and brought in Joe Biagini in one of the highest leverage spots he has yet faced. Biagini did the job for him, but speaking of a flair for the dramatic, it was quite the inning.

Jake Marisnick, a perfect example of “hitting ninth for a reason”, slapped at the first pitch from Biagini, and sent it down the right field line past Encarnacion, and ended up with a double. Then came a disaster for Devon Travis, an error that would have killed the spirits of many a pitcher in a tight game. George Springer hit an easy grounder to Darwin Barney at short, who saw that Marisnick had wandered a too far off the bag at second. He alertly threw to Travis, who had Marisnick cold, except that he neglected to catch a perfectly catchable throw. Springer was safe on a fielders’ choice, Marisnick was safe on the error, and the hole opening up in front of Biagini was a lot deeper. Marwin Gonzalez did his bit to sink our spirits by executing a perfect sac bunt, and the tying runs were in scoring position for Jose Altuve. I repeat, Jose Altuve. Oh, lordy.

With maybe a little bit of guidance from above, Biagini’s first pitch found soft contact, and Altuve, who never saw a pitch he wouldn’t swing at, sent a soft, short liner to right that Jose Bautista, playing in, caught for the second out. Marisnick held his ground, wisely. Now all Biagini had to do was dispatch the dangerous and equally free-swinging young Houston shortstop, fresh from the All-Star game. Three strikes and the inning was over, Correa standing there, in the immortal words of Ernie Harwell, “like the house by the side of the road”, caught looking. Cue a big sigh of relief from John Gibbons.

Perhaps deflated by the lost opportunity, the Astros went out meekly in the ninth, swinging early in the counts against Osuna, and making harmless contact. Osuna only threw seven pitches for the save.

The last putout was made by Justin Smoak, who settled under a foul popup by Preston Tucker right near the wall behind first. But Devon Travis almost messed up the catch with an inexcusable gaffe, his third in two innings. Before the crucial missed catch from Barney in the eighth, he had spiked a throw to first on Encarnacion in the seventh, on a routine one-out ground ball to second, which went for an error. Now, as Smoak settled under the ball, claiming the first baseman’s priority with his big trapper, here came Travis racing in behind him from second, and not backing off as Smoak made the call. Just as the ball hit Smoak’s glove, Travis crashed into the wall and into Smoak from behind, knocking Smoak off balance. It’s a miracle that Smoak held onto the ball. The last thing you want to do is butcher the final out of the game on an easy popup when you’re protecting a three-one lead. I can’t help but think Travis’ batting woes in this series had gotten into his head to the point where he just wasn’t focussing in the field, because these were three really bad boners from a normally cool and collected young man.

Let me finish with this: I started out this piece by stating yet again how glad I am that we have Marco Estrada pitching for us and David Price pitching for Boston (at his price, at any rate) But what about the rest of this rotation? Tonight’s start by Estrada marked a full five-man turn of the rotation in which every pitcher went seven innings. With Jay Happ on the mound tomorrow night, we can have every hope of extending this streak to six. Would anyone care to do some digging and find out if any other team in baseball, or at least in the American League, since it’s obvious that it’s easier to pitch to eight good hitters in the NL than to nine good hitters in the AL, has had this kind of a run this year? I bet not.

Oh, not quite finished:  I did not miss the fact that Jose Bautista reached an important milestone last night, I just neglected to include it in my report.  Bautista’s home run in the third inning off Lance McCullers last night was his career 300th.  He is now the tenth active player to have reached that milestone.   Keep in mind that Edwin Encarnacion is sitting at 297, and should join Bautista at 300 anon. What a treat it has been to watch these two hit most of their career home runs for our favourite team! May we continue to watch at least one of them in 2017.  Thanks to the wonders of Word Press, I could have just updated last night’s story to include Bautista’s feat, but after spending a significant part of my life studying Soviet Russia under Lenin and Stalin, I am reluctant to do something that could leave me open to the charge of falsifying history!

In some ways the community of professional baseball pitchers resembles a confraternity of monks. Like monks, they preserve arcane knowledge about their craft and share it among their confreres. Like monks, they pass it on to younger adherents who are deemed worthy of receiving the knowledge, that is to say, they’ve made the pitching staff of a major league baseball team. Like monks, they lead a disciplined lifestyle centred around a daily routine that must be adhered to if they hope to achieve the double nirvana of an ERA below 3.00 and a WHIP below 1.1.

And like monks, the old masters and the young disciples both have their roles to play in contributing to the cause, in this case the cause of inscribing a “W” in the ledger of their team’s season.

Tonight, one of the oldest of the old masters, R.A. Dickey, was given the start for the Blue Jays in the second game of their four-game set with the Houston Astros at the Orange Juice Bowl, Texas branch. Presumably, we all know the details of Dickey’s years-long slog through the margins of professional baseball while he first came to grips with the fact that he had little future as a mediocre “normal” pitcher, realized that he had a knack for the knuckleball, and then spent five more years developing it to the point where he could (mostly) depend on it. All told, it took Dickey fourteen years of wandering in the wilderness between being drafted by the Tigers in 1996, and his breakout year as a quality starting pitcher with the Mets in 2010.

There is something mythic about Dickey’s story, which is why one of his starts lends itself to philosophical reflections on the nature of the game and its players, such as my opening comparison of pitchers to members of a monastic order. His personality also contributes to the story-making qualities he brings to the game. He is the wise and grizzled elder statesman, who’s seen it all, done it all, achieved the heights, and plumbed the depths. He is the most approachable of stars, who never makes an excuse and never lays blame. As much as I dislike the phrase, R.A. Dickey is the epitome of “it is what it is”.

Be that as it may, R.A. Dickey is holding down an important spot in the starting rotation of a team that has serious aspirations of post-season glory, and he is well-paid to do what he does, so as we all know here in Toronto, the citadel of the second-guesser, he is under intense scrutiny, not to mention intense pressure, every time he takes the mound.

And never more so than tonight, when Manager John Gibbons handed him the game ball and told him, in effect, “Here, this is yours. Hang on to it for as long as you can, and then a little longer. And, by the way, if you can keep us close, that would be good too.”

To be fair to Gibbie, the team, especially its pitching staff, was in dire straits, and Dickey would have known better than anyone how important it was for him to go deep and to pitch well. Not only had the team lost its last two games, thereby slipping back from Saturday night’s temporary occupation of first place, but the two games had put a tremendous strain on the Blue Jays’ pitching staff. Twelve innings on Sunday afternoon and fourteen more on Monday night had required the participation of nine different pitchers, three of whom pitched in both games. You will recall that last night Dickey had even dispatched himself to the bullpen in case he was needed, at the possible expense of tonight’s start. Had the two starters, Aaron Sanchez and Marcus Stroman, not thrown seven innings each, it would have been even worse. Even with reinforcements from Buffalo on hand for tonight’s game, the number of available arms was pitifully small.

So R.A. Dickey accepted his assignment, took the ball, and threw the hell out of it. Not like Aaron Sanchez, of course, but in his own inscrutable, unflappable, R.A. Dickey sort of way. On a night when Dickey was pitching against two young bucks for Houston, whose combined age of 45 is only four more than Dickey’s forty-one, he had to keep the Astros off the board, because the Blue Jays weren’t exactly chewing up the opposition. And for six innings he did, before finally giving up a two-out run-scoring single in the seventh inning, his last. Dickey’s line tonight was 7 innings, one earned run, six hits, no walks, and five strikeouts, on 107 pitches. Besides the fact that he didn’t walk anyone, the most notable stats for Dickey were zero wild pitches, zero passed balls, and zero home runs. Any time R.A. Dickey chalks up goose eggs in those three categories, you can bet you’re still in the ball game.

I said that this wasn’t a Sanchez-type performance, but it was more like Sanchez than it was like Dickey (leaving aside, of course, the 20 mph average difference in velocity between the two pitchers). After Jose Altuve pulled a dirty trick on him with two outs in the first by bunting away from the shift for a base hit (has he no shame, do that to an old guy like Dickey?), and Carlos Correa singled to right to send Altuve to third, Colby Rasmus ended the inning by grounding out to Edwin Encarnacion at first.

Apart from the seventh, that was the only time the Astros had two runners on base at the same time. Dickey stranded a single by Correa in the fourth, and Altuve in the sixth (do those two guys get all the hits for the Astros?), and that was it. In the seventh, though, he did give up one hard hit ball to Carlos Gomez, a double to left with one out. After striking out the rookie A.J. Reed, he gave up a single to Evan Gattis, his first hit in the series, which scored the Astros’ only run.

What I haven’t mentioned yet, is that Dickey departed with a 2-1 lead, as the knuckleballer had nursed a two-run lead from the fourth. The advantage for the Jays stemmed from the fine distinction between our hitters and theirs in directional hitting, that took advantage of the curious layout of the Astros’ home park. Lance McCullers, who started for Houston, gave up only two deep drives on the night. Unfortunately for him, both Jose Bautista in the third and Edwin Encarnacion in the fourth managed to get around quickly enough to pull hard drives to left, which cleared the very short left field wall. Houston only hit two balls with potential as well, but Gomez’ double in the seventh never had the elevation to go out, and Colby Rasmus’ very deep fly to centre in the fourth was unfortunately sent to the wrong part of the ball park, Houston’s place where home runs go to die.

Other than the two four-baggers off McCullers, the Astros’ young pitchers kept the Jays from threatening further damage the entire night. I don’t know who their guru is, but they seem to be learning their craft very well indeed. When McCullers had to leave the game with two outs in the fifth because of forearm tightness, he had only given up the two runs on seven hits, with one walk and five strikeouts. With his early departure, the Jays’ hitters must have been salivating at the prospect of facing Joe Musgrove, a Toronto draftee who found himself in the Houston organization as part of the package the Jays gave up to acquire Jay Happ, the first time around. It would be his major league debut, and after having been stifled for fourteen innings the night before, and needing to pad Dickey’s lead if they could, it looked like time to break out of the chains imposed by the Houston staff.

However, unbeknownst to them, they were about to be Devenskied again, for the second night in a row. Oh, Musgrove wasn’t perfect like Chris Devenski, and he didn’t strike out seven batters in a row like Devenski, but he did give up only one hit and one walk over four and a third innings, and though they were not consecutive, he struck out not seven, but eight Blue Jays’ hitters, not to mention retiring the first ten major league batters he faced. The eight strikeouts set a rather arcane record for the Houston franchise: it was the most strikeouts by a relief pitcher in his major league debut.

As we mentioned at the outset, Manager John Gibbons’ choices to follow Dickey were extremely limited. He took the risk of sending callup Danny Barnes out to fill the setup role in the bottom of the eighth in his major league debut. With the carnage wreaked on both bullpens by the fourteen innings played the night before, it just seemed like the kind of night when rookies would get a chance to shine. The 26-year-old Barnes was being asked to protect the precarious one-run lead while negotiating the top of the Houston order.

Barnes came through with flying colours. George Springer popped up to shortstop, Alex Bregman fanned for Barnes’ first major league strikeout, then Jose Altuve lined a sharp single to left. Welcome to the show, Danny! But Barnes ended the inning with his second strikeout, fanning the cleanup hitter, Carlos Correa. For Barnes it was mission accomplished, on seventeen pitches, twelve for strikes, and the Jays still clung to the lead.

After the Jays put their first two runners on base against Musgrove in the ninth, but failed to create a cushion for themselves, it was time for Jason Grilli to come in for the save, standing in for the over-worked Roberto Osuna. He finishes in a breeze: grounder to short, strikeout, grounder to short.

So we trade two-one wins with the Astros, but it’s nice to win this one with a whole-game closeout, especially when we’re not hitting and striking out a lot.

To go back to my beginning, it was one old master for the win, and another old master, the 39-year-old Grilli, for the save, with Danny Barnes in between making a great bridge between the two. Call it a rookie sandwich, Barnes the meat between two wrinkled, grizzled old veterans. I hope the masters invited the young disciple to break fast with them after the game: perhaps some rusks, a sip of coconut water, and enlightening discourse about the zen of the strike zone. The young adherent has made a good start. May he progress well under the guidance of the old masters.

Tonight we broke an eight-game losing streak. Estrada gets the ball tomorrow night: will he guarantee us the split? Will the Blue Jays strike out less than ten times? Will we score a run in some way other than a solo home run? If we win, does it matter how? Sorry, Grantland Rice, but this is pro ball, and it doesn’t. The One Great Scorer has taken a powder, and the bottom line is the only line.

Now that was a pitchers’ duel!

Tonight’s game (actually, last night’s when you’re writing after midnight) in Houston between the Astros and the Blue Jays went fourteen innings, and was absolutely dominated by the pitching. We had a pretty good matchup on Sunday afternoon between Chris Tillman and Aaron Sanchez, but this, this my friends, was the real deal.

Marcus Stroman threw his best game of the year. Doug Fister, who started for the Astros, nearly matched him pitch for pitch. It was a reincarnation of sorts for both pitchers.

Stroman’s well-documented struggle to get back to where he was at the end of 2015 was still not quite finished as he entered last night’s game. Even his last start against San Diego, when he went six and two thirds innings and gave up only seven hits and a walk while striking out seven, had been marred by a monstrous three-run homer by Padres’ rookie Alex Dickerson.

Fister, a guy of whom Rocky might have asked, “Didn’t he used to be somebody?”, has never quite regained the heights of achievement he enjoyed when he was with the Tigers, despite a decent record so far this year with the Astros. From mid-2011, when he joined Detroit from Seattle, he had a record of 32-20, with ERAs respectively for 20ll with Detroit of 1.79, for 2012 of 3.45, and for 2013 of 3.67. By last season, with Washington, he was down to 5-7 and 4.19, his starts and innings pitched down significantly from previous years due to some forearm problems that had him on the DL for about a month in the early part of the season

Right from the first inning you could tell that it would be the pitchers on centre stage today. Fister struck out one and retired the side on ten pitches. Stroman gave up a leadoff single to the talented George Springer, but struck out the rookie Alex Bregman and Jose Altuve, and got Carlos Correa on a grounder to second.

Similarly, Fister gave up a looping single to left by Michael Saunders to lead off the second, then firmly shut the door. Both pitchers had a “moment” in the third. Devon Travis hit a two-out double to left on a ball that Preston Tucker really should have caught. In the bottom of the inning, Tyler White led off with a sinking liner to centre that ended up, as so many do, in the outstretched webbing of the glove of a death-defying, diving Kevin Pillar. With two outs Stroman walked Springer, but left him there.

As the strikeouts kept mounting, this was the tally, through five: the Astros had two hits and a walk off Stroman, and he had already struck out nine. Fister had given up four hits but no walks to the Jays, and he had set down five via the strikeout. The Jays had two runners reach second; besides Travis’ double, Edwin Encarnacion had singled to lead off the fourth, and daringly took second after the catch on Michael Saunders’ deep fly to centre. Only one Astro reached second, and that was courtesy of Stroman himself. In the fifth, with two outs Tyler White hit a squibber off Stroman’s glove that deflected toward third. He pounced on it and tried to make a hopeless, rushed throw to first, which was way off line and went down into the right-field corner, letting White advance to second.

In the Jays’ sixth, which would prove to be Fister’s last, he walked Jose Bautista leading off, and then fanned Encarnacion, Saunders, and Martin to go out on a high note, to say the least. With a pitch count of 98, he would not come back for the seventh, having given up no runs on four hits, walked one, and struck out eight. As Stroman took the hill for the bottom of the sixth, with his pitch count at only 77, it looked like he had a good chance to outlast Fister by an inning. He did, but not before his one mistake in the game gave the Astros’ bullpen a chance to save a win for Fister.

He caught George Springer looking for the first out, and got the rookie Bregman to fly out to centre.

But you had to know that Jose Altuve was not going to continue eating out of his hand.

And Stroman knew it as well. He had caught Altuve looking in the first on a cutter, and in the fourth on a fastball. According to PitchTracker, Altuve did not see a Stroman curveball in the first two at bats. That had to be in the back of his mind. And Stroman and his catcher Russell Martin had to be leery of going back to the same pitches that had worked before, so they decided on a curveball too. Unfortunately for Stroman, Altuve won the guessing game and lined that curveball over the fence in left. The Astros were up one-nothing, and it was easy to imagine that it could end that way, despite the departure of both starters.

Stroman finished the sixth by throwing a ground-ball out to Carlos Correa, came back for the seventh, and struck out the side for the second time in the game. But for that one curveball, Stroman’s performance was Cy-high today: one run, 3 hits, one walk, 13 strikeouts, 111 pitches.

Naturally enough, the bullpen approach of the two managers differed from this point in the game, for the simple reason that the Astros were pitching on the lead and the Jays from behind. In the end, after 14 innings, the Houston bullpen had prevailed, but they needed a lightning bolt from above, a rookie named Chris Devenski, to pull it off.

Astros’ Manager A.J. Hinch went immediately to his situational lefty followed by his highest leverage arms, to try to close out the game through three innings. He brought in the lefty Tony Sipp to turn Justin Smoak around to lead off the seventh, and then replaced him with the quirky and imposing Pat Neshek to face the right-handers. That was all good. He brought in Ken Giles to pitch the eighth, less quirky but more imposing than Neshek, and he struck out the side in a wild and wooly sort of way, with a walk, a hit, and a couple of wild pitches just for fun.

Still all good, as it was time for Will Harris, the newly-designated Houston closer, to do his thing in the ninth, but, he didn’t. Russell Martin patiently waited out a three-two count leading off, fouled off a couple, and then poleaxed one that jumped out of the park to left mighty quick. Finally the Jays were on the board, with new life. Harris got the next two hitters, but when he walked Darwin Barney, Hinch had had enough. But what to do? He still had a chance to walk it off in the bottom of the ninth if he got the third out, but he’d used up all his big guys.

As luck would have it, Chris Devenski was hiding in a corner of the bullpen. Well, not really hiding, at least not as far as the Astros were concerned. This young man was drafted by the White Sox in 2011, and came to the Astros in 2012 as, you guessed it, a player to be named later. He worked his way up in the Houston organization, and made the Astros out of spring training. His record is really good so far: 2.21 ERA in 29 appearances with four starts, one save, 73.1 innings pitched, 64 strikeouts, and a WHIP OF .98. I think he would be deemed “major prospect capital” in any trade deadline talks, that is, he’d have to fetch a good return to be traded.

So A.J. Hinch needed someone who would get that last out in the ninth, and be able to come back for the tenth and beyond if Houston didn’t walk it off in the ninth, because all of the bullpen “names” had already been used. Well, Devenski was the answer to Hinch’s prayers. It took him two pitches to strand Barney at first after the walk by Harris to close out the Jays’ ninth. When the Astros couldn’t muster anything more than a two-out walk against Joaquin Benoit, it would be up to Devenski to carry the freight for as long as possible.

And boy, did he ever! Feast your eyes on this performance: he pitched four and one third innings. He did not allow a baserunner. He struck out seven Blue Jays, all in a row, coming within two of the MLB record. He retired the other batters he faced with three grounders, one fly ball, and two popups. What this did, of course, was it kept the Astros in the game while they gradually emptied out the Blue Jays’ bullpen, since the Jays didn’t choose to use Joe Biagini for more than two innings, and their new guy, Scott Feldman, who will be used as a starter if needed, has been doing a long relief role for Houston, and was in a Toronto uniform last night, but wasn’t really available because he had gone two full innings and thrown 38 pitches just the day before when the Tigers had blown out the Astros.

The Jays’ pen held on for as long as there were arms available, and with admirable success, though not as spectacularly as Devenski. Bo Schultz threw three straight ground ball outs in the eighth. Joaquin Benoit walked and stranded one in the ninth. Biagini pitched the tenth and eleventh, and gave up one hit but struck out two. Brett Cecil looked very sharp with one strikeout in the twelfth. Roberto Osuna, ironically, had a most adventurous thirteenth, giving up both a hit and a walk, but striking out two. So, in all, six innings, two hits, two walks, and five strikeouts from five pitchers. What more could you ask for?

How about a curfew after thirteen, since the Blue Jays were officially out of pitchers once Osuna was burned? Mind you, Devenski was finished at the end of thirteen as well, but Hinch still had arms left, and brought in Michael Feliz, a young right-hander with another very live arm. He set the Jays down in order, with two strikeouts.

So going into the bottom of the fourteenth, the game was basically lost to the Jays, as their pitching choices were Jason Grilli, who was supposed to be off the board because of his recent workload, Feldman, and R.A. Dickey, tomorrow’s starter, who had gone down to the bullpen “just in case”. Manager John Gibbons rolled the dice and came up with Feldman, who had to face Houston’s three, four, and five hitters, all formerly friendly faces, now offering nothing but menace.

In four pitches the game was over. Jose Altuve singled to left, and Carlos Correa, who had gone hitless in four at bats, doubled to right and Altuve scampered around to score easily from first base.

I started by saying this was a real pitchers’ duel. It turns out that it wasn’t Stroman versus Fister, but the Toronto staff against the Houston staff. There were 81 outs recorded in the game. Forty of them came via the strikeout, 22 for the Jays, and 18 for the Astros.

At least R.A. Dickey is still good to go for tomorrow.