Long Ball Stories

On August 14^th, I wrote that if the Blue Jays didn’t make the playoffs this year,I’d eat my Jose Bautista shirt. Right after the end of tonight’s game, I started googling recipes for baked, boiled, broiled, sautéd, fried, fricaseed, and or juiced baseball jerseys. They all look pretty unappetizing, but a promise is a promise, right? At the moment, I’m leaning toward a nice camicia parmigiana, from Mama Siciliano’s web site. She has really great reviews.

Speaking of shirts, how tight should our collars be right now? Well, here’s the deal. Arriving in Boston for this final series of the year, Toronto is one game ahead of Baltimore. We hold the first wild card slot. Baltimore holds the second slot. The Tigers are one game behind Baltimore for the second slot, and therefore two games behind us. Going into this weekend, we need any combination of three wins and/or Detroit losses to guarantee a wild card slot. We also need to keep ahead of, or keep pace with, Baltimore in order to host the wild card game.

This doesn’t sound so bad, does it? But consider these facts, and see how you feel about our chances. We have been in the same position, with a “clinch number” against Detroit of three, since we beat the Orioles on Monday night. We have made no progress in that regard. In the two losses to Baltimore, in our own ball yard, we scored exactly two runs. In 13 and a third innings, our starting pitchers gave up only four runs, which beat two runs any day. We are playing in Boston’s home park, the quirkiest in major league baseball, a place where the home field advantage is incalculable. We are facing a team high on itself but still playing for home field advantage in their ALDS with Cleveland. We are facing a team preparing to say farewell (until the playoffs anyway; will it never end?) to its beloved slugger in a weekend-long outpouring of love. Tonight we faced the league’s leading candidate for the Cy Young award. Baltimore is playing in New York, facing a good team that has already been eliminated. Detroit is playing in Atlanta against the Braves, a team in hot contention with two others for worst record in the National League.

How tight should our collars be? Pretty damned tight, I’d say.

In four starts against us this year, Rick Porcello has won three and had one no-decision. He has not given up more than four earned runs in any of these starts. In his two previous starts he has picked up two wins, pitching 15 and a third innings, giving up five earned runs, walking 1, and striking out 16. Do I even have to mention that he’s 22-4 with an ERA of 3.11 going into tonight’s game, and should be the leading contender for the Cy Young Award?

Though he fanned two in the top of the first inning, you can’t say that Porcello started out to dominate Toronto. He gave up a single to left by Josh Donaldson, and walked Jose Bautista. Interestingly, he threw 24 pitches to five batters, not a great start if you’re looking for length.

Marco Estrada drew the start for Toronto. In his last couple of starts, roughly since it was announced that he’s been pitching for most of the year with a herniated disc in his back, he has pitched fourteen innings and given up one earned run. That’s one earned run. That’s an ERA of 0.64.

Estrada also faced five batters in the first inning. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out quite the same for him. He also struck out two, gave up a single and a walk, but he threw a wild pitch which advanced Brock Holt, who had walked, to second, so he was in scoring position when David Ortiz singled him home with the only run scored in the first four innings. Besides the wild pitch, there was one other difference in Estrada’s first inning. While Porcello threw a high 24 pitches, Estrada threw an astronomical 37, with disastrous consequences for his hopes of going deep into the game.

How do you end up throwing 37 pitches to five batters? Well, it’s pretty easy if they foul off 16 pitches, easily enough to have navigated an inning just with the fouled-off pitches. In the next two innings, for example, Estrada threw 13 and 14. When you think about it, batters basically foul off pitches that are strikes, or that are too close to take, especially with two strikes on them. So pitches that are fouled off, after strike two, are wasted efforts that could have produced outs. In effect, by the time Estrada went out for the second inning, he had already thrown an extra inning, or even more.

From the second through the fourth inning, neither pitcher ran up a string of consecutive outs. Porcello gave up three base hits, Estrada two and a walk. At the end of the fourth, the score remained 1-0 for Boston.

Despite his sparkling record, Porcello was the one to blink first as he suddenly fell behind 3-1 in the fifth inning. With Zeke Carrera batting leadoff and Devon Travis hitting ninth, not to mention Kevin Pillar batting eighth, a lot of good pot stirring has gone on lately when the lineup turns over. This time Travis led off with a double down the line in left that somehow missed the seats that jut out behind third (one of the quirks of Fenway I was referring to earlier). Recognizing that job one for the Jays was to get the game back to even, Zeke laid down a bunt that might even have been ordered by manager John Gibbons. It evaded the pitcher for a base hit while Travis went to third. Josh Donaldson tied it up with a sacrifice fly to right, leaving Carrera at first.

Then came the shocker, though after what Jose Bautista’s done in the last ten days or so maybe not so much. Whether intentional or not, Porcello strayed from the general game plan by throwing his first pitch, a two-seam fast ball, low in the zone but on the inside corner. Bautista’s eyes must been as big as saucers as he turned on it and parked it in the seats above the Green Monster in left. Not only had the Jays tied the game, they had a 3-1 lead to hand to Estrada as he came in to pitch the bottom of the fifth, which would turn out to be his last.

His last was a typical Estrada inning, at least when he’s not on a no-hit roll: give up a hit, then deal utter frustration with a runner in scoring position. Dustin Pedroia led off with a double to left. But Brock Holt and Mookie Betts popped up, and Big Papi gave everybody a jolt by driving Bautista to the wall with a hard liner that was impressive, but just a loud out.

Entrusted yet again with heavy responsibility by his manager, and much needed to step up in the absence of the injured Joaquin Benoit, Joe Biagini came in and was asked for two innings to bridge to Jason Grilli in the eighth, an assignment necessitated by Estrada’s early departure. One of the things Biagini has done really well this year is to extract his team from really dicey situations. Tonight was no different, but the pickle was his to begin with, so it was only right for him to have to solve it.

Hanley Ramirez grounded out to short to open the inning, but Xander Bogaerts lined one into the right field corner that rattled around down there long enough that he easily stretched it into a triple. With a runner on third and one out, Biagini was in familiar territory, and he set to work in earnest. He had to face the left-handed Jackie Bradley and the switch-hitting catcher Sandy Leon who would also be hitting left. First of all he dismissed Bradley as brusquely as a teacher dismissing an annoying kid from detention. First-pitch slider for a called strike low in the zone. Four-seam fast ball outside. Slider up in the zone, swing and miss. Nasty slider down and inside off the plate. Swing and miss for the strikeout. Then he had some real fun with Leon. Fast ball in the dirt. Slider in the dirt, off the plate inside, swing and miss. Another fast ball in the dirt. Slider just off the outside corner. Swing and miss. Finally, swing and miss on a low changeup way outside. Bogaerts didn’t have a chance of cashing his one-out triple.

If Biagini had been able to leave it there, it would have been fantastic. But the convergence of intangibles, such as Benoit’s pulled calf muscle and all those foul balls off Estrada in the first, conspired to force Biagini back out for the seventh, and it was a classic case of going to the well once too often.

Sharp-looking young outfielder Andrew Benintendi led off with a double to right. Dustin Pedroia—no, he didn’t immediately plate Benintendi with a base hit—he might as well have, as he showed the benefits of putting the ball in play, any play. Pedroia topped a dribbler just a few feet away from catcher Russell Martin. It would have had the effect of a sacrifice bunt, but turned out worse for the good guys. Martin fielded it and fired a strike—right to the rolled-up tarp behind first, under which it got stuck. Lost, actually. Benintendi scored and Pedroia ended up on second because of the ball going out of play. Now, maybe Pedroia ran inside the line (which is illegal—he’s supposed to use the 45-foot lane marked outside the foul line, to give the catcher a clear throw to first.) And maybe he didn’t. In any case, the umpiring crew, not interested in touching off a riot at Fenway, wouldn’t take another look at it.

Pedroia advanced to third with the tying run and nobody out on a Biagini wild pitch, and you just knew the doom scenario was about to unfold. Holt grounded out to a pulled-in Troy Tulowitzki at short, Pedroia not going on contact. Betts hit a one-strike down-and-in four seamer to centre for a hit that scored Pedroia and finished Biagini’s work for the night.

Gibbie brought in Brett Cecil to do the one thing he must do to earn his keep: dispose of David Ortiz, lefty on lefty. And he didn’t do it. Papi jerked an inside sinker that didn’t sink—call it a stinker, if you will—on a line into the short porch in right, and set off the “Goodbye Papi” hysteria in earnest, as he gave the Sox a lead for the first time in the game, a five-three lead that would stand up for the win.

A word about that short porch and David Ortiz. Everyone knows all about the Green Monster in left, but not that many are aware of the short porch extending out from the Pesky Pole. The foul pole in right is only 302 feet from the plate, and the wall extends at a very shallow angle for ten or fifteen feet before veering outward to a reasonable distance. Just so you know, the Pesky Pole is not called that because it is so annoying to opposing teams to see line drive outs turn into homers, but because of Johnny Pesky, a beloved Red Sox figure, an infielder who was with Boston for ten years, from 1942 to 1952, with three years out for military service. And yes, children, major-league ball players did have holes in their career records caused by their military service during the second world war. Look up Ted Williams’ career stats and think about what the totals would have been if he hadn’t missed three seasons serving as a Marine fighter pilot. In these days of privileged superstars, that sounds almost quaint, doesn’t it?

Anyway, the story goes that Pesky, a line-drive contact hitter, who only hit 17 home runs in his career, hit one of them in a game in 1948 that won it for legendary Sox lefty Mel Parnell by hooking it around the pole and just barely into the stands. Parnell, later a Sox broadcaster, began to call the foul pole “Pesky’s Pole”, and the name has stuck all these years.

If you’re looking for a reason why David Ortiz has lasted so long as basically a one-dimensional player for the Red Sox, you wouldn’t have to look much beyond the existence of the short porch at Fenway, issuing its siren call to Ortiz’ line drives.

The rest of the game was denouement. Ironically, after giving up the homer to Ortiz, Cecil finished off the inning by striking out both Ramirez, looking, and Bogaerts, swinging. Aaron Loup finished off for the Jays in the eighth by getting four ground balls. Three went for outs, the fourth was a checked-swing roller toward a shift-vacated third base by the left-handed hitting Benintendi that went for an infield single.

Down by only two runs, the Jays missed a good opportunity to tie it up in the bottom of the eighth. With one out, Kevin Pillar walked, and a Devon Travis double to left moved him to third. (What was it I just said about the bottom of the order stirring the pot?) But Koji Uehara, who has done well in the setup role for Boston since returning from the DL, summoned some reserve and retired Carrera on a popup, and Donaldson on a grounder to third.

That was their last best chance. Craig Kimbrell came in for the save and once again tried to give away the lead with his failure to throw strikes, but managed to keep his runners from scoring, and earned a shaky 33^rd save out of 35 opportunities. Encarnacion grounded out to third, but then Kimbrel walked Bautista. He got a little closer to the finish line by retiring Martin on a popup. But then he walked Tulo, with Bautista advancing to second on a wild pitch during the at-bat.

Though this game was decided by any number of critical moments, the final turn of the wheel fell to Kimbrell facing Dioner Navarro hitting for Justin Smoak (interesting, this, a switch-hitter hitting for a switch-hitter). Three pitches and it was over. Navarro took a knuckle curve up in the zone for strike one, fouled off a four-seamer at the bottom of the zone, and fanned on a four-seamer that was thigh-high and on the outside corner. The last-ditch “rally” that consisted of not swinging at bad pitches died, and so did the Blue Jays.

So, what’s lower than the nadir? If thursday night’s shutout loss was the nadir of the Jays’ September swoon, whatever do we call this? On its merits it was neither a bad effort nor even a bad loss. Ortiz has hit plenty of decisive home runs in his career, and who says he’s not free to hit one against us? And if the Sox can shorten the start of a guy they can’t hit by fouling off multiple pitches, more power to them.

But, but. This hurt, and the magnitude of the hurt can only be measured within the context of both Baltimore and Detroit winning tonight. We are now a game behind Baltimore, in the second wild card slot, and a half-game ahead of Detroit, which has a makeup game to play if needed. And we’re still in Boston, while Detroit’s in comfy Atlanta, and the Orioles continue to hold mastery over the Yankees.

We cannot now make the playoffs on our own. We have Happ tomorrow and Sanchez on Sunday to take our best shots at beating Boston, but we need an Atlanta win over the Tigers to finish them off.

We can only hope.

If the Blue Jays don’t brace up at Fenway this weekend, it will likely be the end of the line for Manager John Gibbons. I have been at times this season highly critical of Gibbie, and I’m not convinced that he ever was the right fit for this club, even the first time around, but he seems a decent guy in many respects, and I don’t wish him ill.

But if the season ends for Toronto Sunday, and if he is, as many have projected, shown the door, the epitaph on the tombstone of his Toronto managerial career should read, “I’m not worried about the hitting”–John Gibbons, some time in April, 2016. And some time in May. And some time in June. You get the picture.

Tonight, with the division title long since ceded to Boston, with Detroit and even Seattle nipping at the heels of both the Blue Jays and the Orioles for a wild card spot, the series rubber match with Baltimore at the TV Dome approached carrying the air of a Doomsday scenario for both teams, but more particularly for Toronto. For the Blue Jays finish up against the Red Sox, who still have money in the game, namely, the drive for home-field advantage against Cleveland, while the Orioles travel to New York to play the Yankees, who are playing out the string and running auditions of their rookies for next year.

Meanwhile, in a most annoying quirk of the schedulers, the hard-charging Tigers find themselves in nice warm Atlanta, playing the Braves, who may escape tying with Cincinnati and San Diego for the worst record in the National League, but only by virtue of playing (and losing) one fewer game.

In short, for the Blue Jays, finishing the season with three games in Boston, which may have looked like a delightful postscript to a great season when the schedule was released last year, now looks alarmingly like the dock for crossing the River Styx, and the traitorous Boston manager John Farrell, approaching in his rowboat in the guise of Charon, looks ready, nay, eager, to conduct us to the very portals of Hades.

But first there’s the matter of the TV Dome regular season ender with the Orioles, who find themselves in the same boat as the Blue Jays, only less so. I said all along that Boston, not Baltimore, was the real threat to the Blue Jays this season. While I may have been vindicated on the Boston bit, it could be about to hit me with a vengeance that Baltimore has defied my dismissal and hung in there till the end.

If Hyun Soo Kim hadn’t homered off Roberto Osuna last night in the ninth inning to give Baltimore a stunning come-from-behind win, we would be approaching this game in a different light. But Osuna threw the pitch, Kim jerked it, the Baltimore bullpen danced a jig, and here we are.

The pitching matchup should definitely favour Toronto, and in this 2016 season of topsy-turviness, that’s always a bad thing. Marcus Stroman has been getting stronger by the outing since mid-season, and Ubaldo Jiminez is, well, Ubaldo Jiminez. I never did quite get the “bringer of rain” thing, since it’s no virtue to hit the ball high, but if Josh Donaldson is the bringer of rain, then Ubaldo Jimenez is the flinger of popcorn. That’s a pretty bad joke, but the anticipation of facing Jimenez’ soft stuff is no joke indeed.

For a Jays’ lineup that has tied itself in knots lately trying to generate some runs, hitting against Jimenez today turned out to be the worst possible scenario they could have faced. He pitched six and two thirds innings, gave up no runs, on one hit, walked three, and struck out five. What’s more, he took 116 pitches and forever and a day to do it. At least that’s what it felt like while we were waiting for Toronto hitters to make hard contact, which never happened.

The Jays had Jiminez in trouble in the first inning—sort of—and couldn’t generate any runs, and that was basically it for them. Zeke Carrera cheered our hearts by lining a single to left on a 3-2 pitch leading off. (Devon Travis returned to the lineup today, but Gibbie likes the energy that Carrera brings to the top of the order. So do I. So Carrera started in left, and Saunders in right, the latter assignment one that I don’t see, any more than I see Michael Bourn in right. You’re supposed to have an arm in right.) We felt even better when Carrera stole second while Josh Donaldson was drawing a walk. On an 0-1 count Edwin Encarnacion flied out to Michael Bourn, he of the sketchy arm, in right, and Carrera advanced to third. Jose Bautista struck out on three pitches, and Russell Martin at least spent some time at the plate, working the count to 3 and 2 before grounding out to short.

And that was it, folks. Jiminez walked Travis in the third, Carrera bunted him to second, and there he stayed. He walked Edwin Encarnacion in the sixth with two outs, and Bautista made our hearts flutter by getting most of a first-pitch fast ball, but it died on the warning track for the third out. Even when Showalter took him out in the seventh, Jiminez had gotten the first two outs of the inning. Showalter pulled him for a lefty to match up with or take Michael Saunders out of the game. Gibbie countered with Melvin Upton, who, all together now, grounded out to short.

The utterly dispirited Jays mustered one hit in each inning of Brad Brach’s relief turn, but no more. They never threatened. Kevin Pillar led off the eighth with a single, but Travis was caught looking (fourth caught looking for the Jays in the game) and Carrera grounded into a double play. Donaldson was caught looking to lead off the ninth, number five, Edwin stirred the crowd a bit with a line double into the left field corner and advanced to third on a balk, but Bautista fanned and Russell Martin, all together now, grounded out to short to end the game.

Even though he gave up four earned runs, Marcus Stroman pitched well enough to win most games, that is most games in which the hitters remember to bring their bats to the ball park. He had to work his way out of mild trouble in the first, though there wasn’t much concern because most of the contact was soft. Devon Travis came in and made a nice pickup of Adam Jones’ slow roller for the first out. Hyun Soo Kim (Him!) hit an opposite-field single to left. Mannie Machado flied out to right. Mark Trumbo singled to centre, but Matt Wieters broke his bat hitting a soft looper to Travis at second.

Stroman breezed the second but yielded a run in the third. The Orioles were helped by an ill-advised dive in right centre by Michael Saunders that misfired and turned a Jay Hardy single into a double. Was the ball catchable? Maybe by Kevin Pillar. Was the ball blockable? Definitely. Hardy advanced to third on a Jones grounder to first. Our friend Kim conveniently walked, and Mannie Machado hit a deep sacrifice fly to centre that scored Hardy. Trumbo hit a grounder that deflected off Stroman to Travis for the third out.

To break it down and exonerate Stroman: if Hardy’s on first maybe they turn two on Jones’ grounder. Or maybe he advances with Jones out at first. Maybe he advances to third on Machado’s fly ball. But he dies there when Trumbo grounds out. Little things, but a one-run lead for Baltimore.

In the fourth the O’s picked up their second run off Stroman, and this absolutely could have been avoided. Matt Wieters led off the inning by grounding out to first. Remember that, it’s important. Chris Davis and Jonathan Schoop singled, Davis going to third on Schoop’s hit. Michael Bourn hit a hard ground ball right at Josh Donaldson, who picked it cleanly, a perfect double-play ball, because there was one out, remember? But Josh threw high—really high—to second. Schoop was out, but of course there was no relay to first. In the meantime Chris Davis scored on what ended up being a fielder’s choice. Stroman ended the inning by slipping a four-seam fastball up in the zone past J.J. Hardy, but the lead was now 2-0, a huge mountain to climb considering that Jimenez might as well have been throwing his puffballs with a howitzer for all the ability of the Jays’ hitters to make decent contact with them.

Now here’s a thing I want to mention about the scoring rules. They do not allow the scorekeeper to assume the completion of a double play, so because Donaldson made an out on the play there was no error assigned. Likewise, no matter how unfair it seems, with no error assigned the run has to be earned. Sucks.

Thanks to his low pitch count, Stroman stayed around long enough to pick up another couple of earned runs against him. Notice here the irony that with the Jays unable to buy a run whatever the currency, the Orioles on this day were just casually able to throw up a couple of extras, making it even harder for the Jays to come back.

In the seventh inning it looked like Stroman was going to be able to profit from a base-running gaffe by Michael Bourn, until Kim (Him!) messed things up with a two-out RBI single. Bourn had walked and stolen second, but couldn’t move up on a grounder by Hardy to short, then he failed to tag up when Jones hit a deep but catchable fly ball to centre field. But you can depend on good old Kim to mess up your manure wagon just as you’re ready to return to the barn. He pulled a base hit into right to extend the lead to 3-0.

In the eighth they chipped away at Stroman again, and finally pushed him from the game, still only having thrown 97 pitches. With the outfield almost on the warning track, the leadoff batter, Mark Trumbo dumped a soft single into left centre, and never stopped until he had hustled the hit into a double. Once again we saw a double hit with a shattered bat, but this one didn’t bang off the wall, like the hit by Texeira in the Yankee series on the weekend. Matt Wieters knocked Trumbo in with a single to centre, and also, finally, knocked the hard-done-by Stroman out of the game. Wieters had to stay rooted to first as Aaron Loup came in to fan Chris Davis, and then Ryan Tepera came in to blow away Schoop and Bourn.

If there’s one thing you can’t say about this game it’s that the pitching let the team down. Two of the four runs off Stroman were tainted, and Loup and Tepera were bang on to pick him up in their short appearances.

There’s nothing worse than being shut out in a crucial late-season game, except being shut out in a crucial late-inning game by a guy who couldn’t break a pane of glass with a discus. If we by some odd quirk end up facing Baltimore again, may it not be with Jiminez on the mound for them. Maybe our guys would figure him out next time. Probably not.

It’s off to Boston now for the all-David-Ortiz all the time festival, to face a team that’s won the division, is loose, hot, believes in its destiny, and still has home field advantage in their ALDS to settle. Sheesh, wake me when it’s over.

T.S. Eliot might have been a great poet, but he didn’t know beans about baseball. Tonight, after the brilliant promise of last night’s confident disposal of the Orioles, the Blue Jays had to learn the bitter lesson that sometimes the game ends not with a whimper, but a bang.

Though, truth be told, when Toronto had to face Zach Britton down a run in the bottom of the ninth, there was a fair amount of whimpering going on.

By now the September formula for the Blue Jays seems pretty well set in stone: get a great start from whomever, scratch out a couple of runs, blow multiple chances to score lots of runs, turn a slim lead over to the bullpen, and the bullpen closes it out. Or not. And, if not, don’t even think about mounting a comeback.

Francisco Liriano had every reason to be delirious to learn that at what must have been exactly 3:59 p.m. on the August first trade deadline, the Blue Jays had acquired him from the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates, so good these last few years, were going nowhere, while the Jays had been in contention for the American League East lead for almost the entire season. He would be reunited with Russell Martin, with whom he had his best year of his career in 2013. Most of all, he would have a chance to turn around what had become a dreadful season for him. When he came over, his won-loss record was 6-ll, his ERA was 5.46, his opponents’ batting average was .264, and his WHIP was 1.63 (the gold-standard WHIP is 1.00 or less).

Well, his joy upon arriving has been fulfilled in spades, with one small exception. Looking at the same numbers, with Toronto he has gone 2-2 with an ERA of 2.92, and opponents’ batting average of 2.22, and a WHIP of 1.46, but only 1.01 for five appearances in September. So what’s the exception? Despite pitching so well, he has only two wins in 8 quality starts. WHY CAN’T THE BLUE JAYS SCORE RUNS FOR HIM?

Okay, if you haven’t been paying attention very closely, this is a trick question, because lately the Jays aren’t scoring runs for any of their starting pitchers. Yet down the stretch (I wouldn’t call it a stretch run, that’s for sure!), in four September starts he has won one, lost one, and had two no decisions. Arguably, he has been their strongest starter in the last three weeks. Before tonight he had pitched 18.1 innings in three starts after a brief stint in the bullpen, and given up four earned runs. That’s four.

Tonight was the best yet for the veteran lefty. He scattered six hits over 6.1 innings of shutout ball, walking but one and striking out ten. He set the first nine down in order, allowed his first two hits in the fourth inning but struck out the side. He allowed the Orioles to load the bases in the sixth on a single by Jay Hardy, a walk to Jonathan Schoop, and a two-out infield single by Adam Jones to load ’em up, the only time an Oriole runner touched third on him his entire start, but struck out the side, including Chris Davis who took a wicked high curve ball for strike three to end the inning. He gave up two hits to the first three batters in the seventh, and that was when Gibbie pulled the plug on his brilliant night, at 104 pitches.

Brett Cecil had one of his best clutch appearances of the season to close out the seventh, fanning Nolan Reimold and getting Adam Jones to ground out to short, where Troy Tulowitzki made another ho-hum amazing play, gliding to his right, circling the ball, and launching a rocket to first while pivoting in the air. I challenge you to run to your right, leap into the air, and throw back across your body, without having any solid base, like the earth, to plant against. Go ahead, try it.

Chris Tillman, who has been Baltimore’s number one starter this year, going 16-6 with an ERA of 3.84 going into tonight’s game, has been struggling with some injury issues in the second half of the year, with one brief stint on the disabled list, and having more than one start pushed back because he was experiencing arm issues.

After the Jays chipped away with runs in the first and second, both on sacrifice flies, he settled down and pitched a respectable game, not really matching the performance of Liriano, but good enough all the same, and good enough to win with—what else?–a little support. He went five and two thirds innings, gave up 2 runs, one of them unearned, on six hits, while walking three and striking out two, on 92 pitches.

Tillman is more lunch-bucket gritty than lights-out dominant, but it was a good thing for the Jays that they nicked him early, because he was able to work his way out of multiple base-runners for the rest of his stint.

Tillman had only himself to blame for the first Jays’ run. It always strikes me as a bit strange when a pitcher’s record isn’t harmed by an unearned run that derives from his own fielding misadventures. Leading off the game again with Devon Travis still on the shelf, Zeke Carrera hit a weak dribbler between Tillman and Chris Davis at first, and found himself one out later at third ready to score on Edwin Encarnacion’s sacrifice fly. Tillman trotted over, picked up Carrera’s grounder, and, aware of Zeke flying down the line, shovelled it underhand to Davis at first with his momentum going toward the bag. Unfortunately for both pitcher and fielder, the throw hit Davis in the worst possible spot, right in his chest. Joking aside, Davis had his glove stretched out and down, and the throw was harder than either realized, and a little high, and it handcuffed him before he could react.

Carrera was safe on the Davis error (justice here? It was not a good throw.) Then Tillman tried to pick him off and threw the ball away, moving Zeke around to third.

Edwin cashed him with a deep shot to centre that hung up for Adam Jones, and Tillman had handed Toronto one of the most unearned runs ever for the lead.

The Jays’ second run was more honourably earned, if you will, but didn’t count for any more than the tainted first one. Ya takes what ya gets, eh? With one out Troy Tulowitzki ripped a double to left for the Jays’ first hit. Michael Saunders followed with an opposite-field base hit to left, through the massive hole in the shift. Coach Luis Rivera elected to play it safe and hold Tulo at third. Kevin Pillar, who seems to do his best work with his back to the wall, swatted a 1-2 pitch to Mark Trumbo in right for the sacrifice fly that scored Tulo with the Jays’ second run.

Then started the familiar squandering. In the third they wasted a double by Jose Bautista. Carrera led off with a single to centre, then had second base stolen when his somewhat late slide took him beyond the bag and he was tagged out. Josh Donaldson followed with a double to right that would have scored Carrera even from from first, but he was in the dugout, and just not available to do his thing.

In the fourth Tulo led off by smashing a low liner right at Schoop, at shortstop in the shift, but it blasted right through him for a base hit. He was erased when Saunders hit into a double play. In the fifth inning, Tillman was saved by Nolan Reimold’s great sliding catch of a low liner off Encarnacion’s bat for the third out, with Donaldson aboard after forcing Carrera at second.

In the sixth, Tillman’s last, he walked the first two hitters, Bautista and Martin, and then was rescued again by Reimold, who charged in to make a nice grab on Tulo’s testy short fly to left. Bautista, running on instinct, thought the ball was going to drop, and was easily trapped off second for the double play. Not wanting to tempt the fates any longer, manager Buck Showalter came out and got his starter. Lefty Donnie Hart came in to retire Tulo on a popup to Mannie Machado at third.

With Tillman gone after six and Liriano out for Cecil in the top of the seventh, Hart stayed in to face the Jays’ in the bottom of the seventh, and it was time to see if the Jays could cushion their lead, and/or their bullpen could contain the Orioles.

Well, the sad fact is that we didn’t score any more, and after sixteen innings of Jays’ pitchers keeping the ball in the yard against the biggest homer-hitting team in baseball, something was bound to give. Unfortunately, “something” turned out to be Jason Grilli and Roberto Osuna.

Hart stayed on to retire the side in the order for Baltimore in the seventh. Cecil matched up with Chris Davis in the top of the eighth, and fanned the increasingly frustrated slugger with a bowdacious 3-2 curve ball. Then it was Grilli time, but summer’s over, and the only meat that got cooked was the grillmaster himself. He started just fine, getting Mannie Machado to ground out to short on his first pitch. I must say that so far in this series, in contrast with the havoc he has wreaked upon us in the past, Machado has been looking decidedly mortal for a supposed MVP contender.

Then Mark Trumbo strode to the plate, ready to strike the first crack of doom in the Jays’ delicate glass palace. For all his league-leading 46 homers as he stepped to the plate tonight, Trumbo hadn’t hit one out against Toronto. I was starting to think his vaunted power was more urban legend than reality. But no. Wave bye-bye as the ball sails into the 200 level above the Toronto bullpen. Pedro Alvarez followed with a double to centre, but Matt Wieters flied out to Carrera in left, and the Orioles had crept a little closer, and finally gotten on the board.

The Orioles intimidating workhorse Mychal Givens came in to try to shut the Jays down in the eighth, and for once had no idea where his thunderbolts were going. Five batters later, this is where we stood, Donaldson on third hit by pitch, Russell Martin on second, hit by pitch, Tulo on first, with a five-pitch walk. Two outs. Melvin Upton at the plate. Counter-intuitively, Manager Buck Showalter brought in the lefty, Brian Duensing. Four pitches later, the Orioles were headed off the field, while Upton stood in shock at the plate. The aristocratic-looking plate umpire, Lance Barksdale, who dropped by the park to ump while he was waiting to be cast as the lead in yet another Noel Coward play, had apparently had second thoughts about some of what he had taken away from Givens, and decided to recompense the Orioles for their pain by ringing up Upton on a pitch that was laughably low and inside.

Here’s where you see there’s some truth in saying that won-loss records are meaningless. As we were saying yesterday, Kevin Gausman was clearly Baltimore’s second best starter all year, and threw really well right from the beginning of the year, and yet it took six decisions before he got a win, because of lack of run support. You already know from the title, and because the whole world already knows, that the Orioles hit another one out in the top of the ninth to take this one from Toronto. I’ll give the gory details in a moment, but I mention it here because Brian Deunsing, who got one out in the eighth for the Orioles, and benefited from an egregiously bad call to secure that strikeout, only threw four pitches. Yet, because he was still the “pitcher of record” in the top of the ninth, he received credit for the win. Don’t you just love it?

So with no breathing room for the relievers, Roberto Osuna was summoned to try to hold the precarious one-run margin in the top of the ninth. He started out well enough, freezing J.J. Hardy with a 2-2 fast ball for the first out. Then he gave up a single to Jonathan Schoop, who seems to be closing his eyes and hoping when he swings these days. This time the baseball gods were listening. Michael Bourn, who couldn’t crack the Blue Jays’ roster last spring, ran for Schoop. Due up was Nolan Reimold, who figured to be an easy mark for Osuna. First, though, Bourn swiped second. Reimold was called back, and the left-handed-hitting Hyun Soo Kim was sent up to hit for him.

Now Kim, the “rookie” from the Korean League, was hitting .303, with only 5 homers and 20 RBIs. Everybody in the world was worried about him dumping a single to left or rolling one up the middle to score Bourn. And I for one wasn’t surprised at all that he got the count to two and two and then did the famous oriental “bat flick” to foul off three great pitches in a row. Then Osuna threw one in the dirt to go three and two. Then he brought one up, just a little into the zone, but inside. Didn’t Kim go down and get it, and whack it to right, where it carried, and carried, and sailed into the ecstatic Baltimore bullpen for a two-run homer and a Baltimore lead.

Adam Jones followed with a second infield hit to third in the game, and Chris Davis ended the inning by pounding into another one of those shift-produced 4-5-3 double plays, with Donaldson doing the honours at the pivot.

To go back to Eliot, the Baltimore effort tonight ended, not with one bang, but with two, but the Jays’ night certainly came to an end with a whimper, because they had to face Cy Young candidate Zach Britton going for his 47^th save in 47 tries. Britton went through the Jays like a hot knife through butter, as all the Jays could offer were two punchouts and a weak ground ball.

This last home series of the year, which started so well last night, took on a shocking new turn with Baltimore’s last-minute win tonight, and not only the standings, but shirt collars everywhere, are a little tighter as we look to Saturday.

Okay, let’s start with the now undeniable fact that the Red Sox, who lead the Blue Jays by six games with six to play are pretty well home and cooled out for the division championship. They’re not going to lose six straight while we win six to create a playoff for the division, so we have to gear ourselves up for securing a wild card spot and (gulp) playing a good game to go on to an ALDS.

As of today, Toronto and Baltimore hold the wild card spots, with the Jays in front of the Orioles by one game. Lurking two games behind Baltimore’s second wild card position, three games behind us, are the Tigers and the Mariners. We are in a position in which we can materially affect our playoff chances by how this current series with the Orioles, which ends our last home stand of the regular season, plays out. We can’t do anything about Detroit or Seattle except keep an eye on the scoreboard.

The good news, with the division title out of reach and the sudden-death wild-card on the menu, is that if there is a tie between either the Tigers and us, or the Orioles and us, we have already won the season series against Detroit, and only need win one of these last three games with Baltimore to win that season series. This means that we would host the wild card game in case of a tie. (Of course, if there is no tie and we end up with the lower record of the two wild card teams, the play-in game will be on the road.) The bad news with the focus on the wild card game is two-fold. First, with it so close it is possible that a prolonged Blue Jays’ slump could see us miss the playoffs completely (I should bite my tongue). Second, if we do end up with a tie and playing the sudden-death game here, both the Orioles and the Tigers hit a lot of home runs, and the cozy confines of the TV Dome are friendly to sluggers of all stripes.

The arrangement of the Blue Jays’ rotation that resulted in Aaron Sanchez receiving the start tonight in the first game of the Orioles’ series has been perfectly manipulated. He gives us the strongest chance of starting out the series on the right foot, and in the process securing the season series win over Baltimore. He will be ready again on normal rest for the last game of the season in Boston, if we need to win that game to make the playoffs. If we don’t need him next Sunday in Boston, he’s ready for the wild card game with a little extra rest. Moreover, since the most likely (at this moment) wild card scenario would have Baltimore playing here on Tuesday the 4^th of October, and if it is Sanchez taking that start for Toronto, then tonight was an opportunity to lay down a challenge to the Orioles.

The O’s countered with Kevin Gausman, their best and most consistent starter behind their number one Chris Tillman. Gausman’s ERA going into tonight, 3.57, is far more indicative of his work than his won-loss record of 8-11, which was distorted by the fact that though he’s thrown well the entire season, he’d gotten very little run support early on, and been tagged with a series of losses he didn’t deserve. In fact, he’d gone 0-5 from his first start in late April until he finally defeated Tampa Bay on June 25^th for his first win, yet his May and June ERA had hovered just under the 4.20 mark.

But it was Sanchez and the Jays who came out of the blocks first in this one. Sanchez struck out the side in order in the first, and remember that this was Adam Jones, Chris Davis hitting second for some strange reason, and Mannie Machado. Then, two batters in, Gausman found himself in a two-zip hole, as he walked Zeke Carrera, leading off in the absence of the injured Devon Travis, and then gave up Josh Donaldson’s 37^th homer of the year, a decisive blast to left. Gausman settled down quickly, struck out Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista, and retired Russell Martin on a fly ball to left.

In the second inning the two starters reversed roles, in a sense. Sanchez fanned Mark Trumbo for his fourth straight strikeout, then walked Pedro Alvarez, fanned Jonathan Schoop, gave up a single to Matt Wieters that sent Alvarez to third, and then got Michael Bourn to fly out to centre to end the inning, taking 26 pitches to close out the Orioles. Gausman on the other hand retired Troy Tulowitzki on a comebacker and struck out Michael Saunders and Kevin Pillar, taking only ten pitches to finish the inning.

Both teams scored in the third, leaving the Jays ahead 3-1. Sanchez gave up a leadoff double to Jay Hardy, who eventually scored on a two-out single by Mark Trumbo, but before that Troy Tulowitzki saved him from significant further damage with one out when he dove instinctively to his right to snag a vicious liner by Mannie Machado that was headed for the gap in left centre. With one out in the bottom of the fourth, surprise sparkplug Zeke Carrera lined up a 3-1 fast ball (why was he swinging at a 3-1 pitch? Did he have the green light? Interesting.) and hit it out to the opposite field, restoring the Jays’ two-run lead.

While Sanchez continued to hold the Orioles in check, Toronto extended its lead in the fifth, employing a combination of well-executed small ball and a rare Mannie Machado error. Kevin Pillar led off with a single to centre off Gausman, and then Darwin Barney, playing second for Devon Travis, dropped down a perfect sacrifice bunt fielded by the pitcher. Carrera continued to contribute with another opposite-field hit, a single to left. Jays’ third-base coach Luis Rivera gambled on Michael Bourn’s poor arm to send Pillar home. The throw as expected was well off line, and Pillar scored easily while Carrera advanced to second. Gausman walked Josh setting up the double play, and got exactly what he was looking for, a hard smash right at Machado by Edwin Encarnacion, a perfect double play ball. But Machado fired the ball past second and into shallow right field, as Carrera came around to score his third run of the game, and give Toronto a 5-1 lead. Gausman got a second double-play ball from Jose Bautista, and this time his infield turned it to end the inning.

Sanchez came out for the sixth with a secure lead and did what was needed—keep the Orioles off the board and the lead intact. But he did have to lock it down with a couple of baserunners on board. Trumbo led off with a single, and stayed at first until Matt Wieters drew a walk with two outs. The Orioles effort ended with Michael Bourn flying out to Carrera in left. While Sanchez got the outs that he had to get in his six innings of work, this wasn’t his crispest performance, as the Orioles had base-runners in four of the six innings he worked. This, plus the fact that he struck out a season-high ten batters meant that he couldn’t continue past the sixth, with his pitch count at 103. In his six innings of work he gave up the one run and five hits, walked three, and struck out the ten.

Curiously, Gausman reached his sixth-inning end with the same number of pitches, 103. Minus the two dingers and a little short on the strikeouts, Gausman’s performance was about as effective as that of Sanchez. Of course, they really do keep score in this game, and to Gausman’s detriment there is no “minusing” of gopher balls. Sanchez kept the ball in the yard and Gausman didn’t, and that was the ball game, with neither team scoring in the last three innings, and how rare is that at this late point in the season, with bullpen arms pooping out all over the league?

With the Jays’ late-inning bullpen short-handed Joe Biagini blessed them with two innings of shutout ball, giving up only an infield single to Adam Jones in the seventh. The young right-hander benefited from a great play in each of the two innings he worked. Josh Donaldson saved an extra-base hit by Jones with a dive into foul territory to snag the hard grounder that was headed for the left field corner. Jones was safe at first, but it could easily have been a double. In the eighth with two outs Jonathan Schoop lined one towards the gap in right centre but Kevin Pillar raced over and in to make yet another of his patented flying dives to pick the ball off the turf.

In one of the funnier images of the season, Biagini was caught on camera waiting at the edge of the dugout steps to greet Pillar as he came in. Instead of one of the silly choreographed displays, or a vigourous high five, Biagini “leaned in” and gave Pillar one of the most awkward man-hugs you’ve ever seen, the kind where you hug the other guy’s shoulders and thump him on the back like an amiable bear, all the while keeping safe clear air between your lower bodies. We’ve all been there, haven’t we?

Roberto Osuna came in for the non-save—damn Gibbie’s lights, he did it again! Osuna immediately gave up singles to Wieters and Bourn—didja notice that, Gibbie? But he made a crisp play on a soft Jay Hardy comebacker to get a force at second, and then closed the game out by getting Adam Jones to hit into a double play started by Donaldson.

The tension of these late-season games was evident when Chris Davis was rung up by Biagini in the seventh. Incensed at the call by plate umpire Will Little on a fast ball that Davis thought was inside, Davis cut loose and was pitched from the game, as was Buck Showalter when he came out to join the tea party. This is the same Chris Davis who very impressively broke his bat over his knee after striking out here in Toronto(he does it a lot. Striking out, I mean. Not sure about the broken bats.)

Tommy Hunter worked around a single by Darwin Barney, who was erased by a double play, and a walk to Donaldson to hold the Jays at bay in their seventh, and Oliver Drake yielded Tulo’s second opposite-field double of the game in the eighth, but Tulo died at second when Melvin Upton flew out to right.

So after the blip of blowing the lead against the Yankees Monday night and missing the sweep, Sanchez, Donaldson, Carrera and the bullpen did a good job of turning things around. Most importantly, the Jays now lead the season series against Baltimore 10-7, and have secured home-field advantage for a wild-card game if they end up tied with Baltimore at the end of the season.

Just to create some distance from a strange and disturbing game, one that laid bare the dark underbelly of baseball culture, I’d like to start with a reflection on the creation of baseball expressions.

In the title of this post I’ve used an expression that, according to Mr. Google (Ms Google?) does not exist in the baseball lexicon. However, the term “pinged off” was used very widely in youth baseball in the Toronto area some twenty years ago to refer to a batter being hit with a pitched ball, as in “that guy just pinged me off, man!”

The question becomes, now that I have used this term in this post, will it eventually show up in Google searches? Have I created a recognized baseball expression by committing it to print on the web? This is somewhat akin to the old “if a tree falls in the forest” conundrum, isn’t it?

Now to the question at hand. Pinging off, and getting pinged off, were the central facts of tonight’s troubling 7-5 Yankees’ win over the Blue Jays, a win that prevented a Toronto sweep of New York, a win that stalled the Jays’ drive to wrap up a wild card berth, and a win that cost Toronto for an unspecified period of time the services of two valuable members of the team, Joaquin Benoit and Devon Travis.

We can blame this whole mess on Masahiro Tanaka’s wonky arm. Tanaka was pulled from his scheduled start in the series, which was good news for the Blue Jays. Not only did this affect the matchup in the first game of the series, when Tanaka was supposed to pitch, but it threw the Yankee rotation askew for the rest of the series as well.

The upshot of all this was that Luis Severino was given the start tonight against Jay Happ. And therein lay the source of all that transpired. Is history deterministic? Can we say without a doubt that if Tanaka had pitched Friday night than all this mess wouldn’t have happened? Of course not; it’s just a supposition, but it’s a good one that I think is confirmed by the course of events.

Luis Severino was expected to be a mainstay of the Yankees’ rotation this year, based on his fine performance over the latter part of 2015, when he went 5 and 3 with a 2.89 ERA, starting eleven times for New York in the midst, you will recall, of the Yankees’ ultimately unsuccessful pennant-contending run. But from the beginning of this season he just couldn’t recover what he’d done right, and pitched himself out of the rotation, and by mid-May back to Triple A, where he compiled a very impressive record over two months which earned him a trip back to the Bronx in late July.

But he came back to the bullpen, not the rotation. In 13 appearances before tonight, only two of them had been starts, the rest in relief, where he’s done very well indeed in the middle relief role that demoted starters so often assume. So when Manager Joe Girardi looked for someone from the bullpen to take the start in what Girardi referred to as a “bullpen day”, Severino was the obvious choice.

Jay Happ was Toronto’s starter tonight, and if you wanted a bigger contrast between starting pitchers in terms of their 2016 season experiences, you couldn’t find a gap more gaping than that between Severino and Jay Happ. First of all, Happ is a seasoned veteran in mid-career, whereas Severino, for want of a better expression, is a callow youth of 22. Then there’s the little matter of their comparative performances this year. Happ has been a model of consistency, a veteran rock in the middle of the Jays’ rotation, and all the better for being left-handed. His 20-4 record and ERA of 3.28 say it all. It was a pretty strong bet that if Toronto didn’t emerge the winner tonight, it wouldn’t be because the Yankees beat up on Jay Happ. And of course we didn’t win, and it was despite, not because of, Happ’s fine outing on the hill.

Severino pretty well scotched (hmm—is that an okay expression these days?) any notion of giving Girardi the four or five good innings that he really needed by coming out wild as a March hare in the first inning. The only thing he really did right was getting leadoff man Devon Travis to fly out to centre on a full count. Next he hit Josh Donaldson on the elbow pad. (Remember this.) Then he gave up a single to centre to Edwin Encarnacion, Josh taking third. Then he walked Jose Bautista to load the bases. Then he walked Russell Martin to hand the Jays the first run of the game. Finally, still with the bases loaded, he settled down enough to get Troy Tulowitzki to fly out and to catch Michael Saunders looking at a 97 mph four-seamer for strike three.

Happ for his part had to try to pitch over a massive error by Russell Martin in the top of the first. (I’m not sure about that word “massive”, given its use recently by Orange Feather Duster on His Head Guy.) After three disheartening losses, facing a good lefty, the left-handed leadoff hitter Brett Gardner tried to stir things up by laying down a good bunt that was Martin’s ball. Plainly put, it was already a base hit when Martin got to it, but he tried to throw Gardner out anyway, and sent the ball into the right field corner, and Gardner to third, instead. With the help of a base-running gaffe by Gardner, Happ almost avoided the run being scored, as Gardner froze on Jacoby Ellsbury’s ground ball to short that should have scored him, but then he shook himself loose and scored on the second grounder to short, by Gary Sanchez. Billie Butler hit a short fly to centre to end the inning.

So, the walked-in run by Severino having tied the game, Happ returned to the mound for the second, but with a distinct purpose in mind. You will recall that in the throes of their early-September slump, the Jays had held a players-only meeting to sort things out. Numerous reports have it that among the topics discussed at that meeting was the concern raised by some of the hitters that the opposing pitchers were getting away with pitching too tight, and that the Toronto pitchers needed to step up and do their bit.

Veteran that he is, Jay Happ wasn’t about to let down his team-mates, particularly their leader, Donaldson. Chase Headley had the bad luck of being the leadoff man in the inning. After missing with a pitch behind Headley in the dirt, Happ recalibrated his sights and tried again. This time he drilled Headley in the leg. Both benches cleared, with much shouting and hoo-ha-ing and scuffling around. Home plate umpire Todd Tichenor issued official warnings to both benches, and play proceeded.

I have to insert here that the issuing of warnings for throwing at hitters is a system badly in need of revision. What happens is that if the home plate umpire senses that a beanball war is about to break out, he issues warnings to both teams. The substance of the warning is that the next pitcher who in the judgment of the plate umpire has thrown deliberately at a batter will be ejected from the game, along with his manager. This doesn’t work, for two reasons. First, if a team goes into a game with intent, for example when the Texas Rangers decided that they would pay Jose Bautista back for the bat flip in a particular game with a particular pitcher, that pitcher in effect got one free shot at the hitter, because warnings won’t be issued until someone has been thrown at. So Yordano Ventura hit Bautista and received no punishment, but when the warning was given, the Jays could only retaliate at risk of ejection. If you look at tonight’s game, it’s a simple matter of keeping score: New York hit two Toronto batters; Toronto only had the “chance” to hit one. The second reason it doesn’t work is because umpires are inconsistent, even cowardly, at enforcing the warning once given.

So (to jump ahead to the bottom of the second for a moment) when Severino made Justin Smoak dance on the first pitch of the bottom of the second, everyone in the park knew that he had done it on purpose. Warnings having been issued, Severino should have been tossed immediately. But no, Tichenor held back, ensuring that, assuming the pitcher was as stupid as Severino appears to be, someone would be thrown at again. Not appreciating that he’d been let off the hook, Severino took better aim and hit Smoak in the thigh, was immediately ejected, and then all hell broke loose, exactly what the umps didn’t want.

The benches cleared again, this time with a lot more urgency and a lot more anger, and a general melee ensued, during which, the story has it, Smoak gained a measure of revenge by blacking Tyler Austin’s eye. When the dust had cleared not only was Severino gone, but so was Joe Girardi, his bench coach Rob Thomson, and his pitching coach Larry Rothschild. There is no truth to the rumour that the Yankees’ bat boy took over handling the team.

Definitely more seriously, as things settled down Jays’ sterling reliever Joaquin Benoit was seen being helped off the field with a very bad limp. We later learned that he had pulled a calf muscle, and wouldn’t be available to the team until deep in the playoffs, if they should survive that long. And we didn’t know it until his next plate appearance—he didn’t either, until he swung a bat in earnest, but Devon Travis also did something to his shoulder, and had to be pulled from the game. He is listed day to day, the x-rays, thankfully, showing nothing wrong.

As an odd footnote to the whole affair, it really does seem that Severino is more than a little clueless. When all was said and done and the fuss all over with, there he was, standing in front of the dugout, ready to go, for all the world as if he thought that he was actually going to go back out to the mound. But hopin’ sometimes ain’t enough, so I guess when he saw Jonathan Holder take the mound, it must finally have dawned on him that he really was out of the game.

There was, in fact, a ball game that had started and was waiting to be played. We’ve established so far that there was another stupid brawl precipitated by beanballs, that the umps as always mishandled the whole thing egregiously, that feelings and some body parts were hurt, that the Yankees were without their starter, who was no great shakes anyway, and that each team had scored a run. Let’s proceed from there.

For his part, Jay Happ, who had “wasted” two pitches in the second inning on Headley, retired the rest of the Yankees on four pitches, with Mark Texeira hitting into a double play to erase Headley, and Didi Gregorius hitting a weak fly ball to right. Holder matched Happ and cooly put things back in order for the Yankees, stranding Smoak at first and getting Pillar, Travis, and Donaldson on balls in the air on just five pitches. Though it should be said that the balls it by Pillar and Donaldson were deep drives, and Holder was lucky they stayed in the park.

Happ settled in to roll on from the third through seventh innings. He stranded a two-out infield hit followed by a walk in the third, a two-out infield hit in the fourth, and a leadoff single in the seventh. Three hits, two of which didn’t leave the infield, and one walk, on 85 pitches. Gibbie was quite willing to have him start the eighth, but in the meantime the Jays had taken a 3-1 lead on the pick-a-pitcher, any pitcher, Yankees hurlers, a lead Happ was still protecting going into the eighth.

After Holder’s quick second inning, he retired Edwin on a short fly to centre to lead off the third, but that was the last out he recorded. Bautista shot a single the other way against the shift. Russell Martin walked. Troy Tulowitzki doubled to centre to score Bautista, Martin stopping at third. A single, a walk, a double, and a run, and Holder was out, yielding to the hard-throwing left-hander James Pazos, who didn’t win his matchup with Michael Saunders. Saunders hit a single through the shift to right to score Martin and move Tulo to third. Pazos then got Justin Smoak to hit into a double play, but the Jays had the 3-1 lead they carried to the eighth inning.

The Yankees kept it close up to the eighth while cycling through Kirby Yates, Richard Bleier, and Adam Warren. The only runners the Jays mustered were two two-out walks issued by Yates in the fourth. By the time we got to the eighth, it was clear that Toronto was going to have to guard a slim lead right to the end.

As is typical, Happ started the eighth, and even got the first out, but then hit the wall and had to yield to the bullpen, meanwhile giving up an unearned run to make it a one-run ballgame. I said Happ got the first out, but it was loud. Starlin Castro, hitting for Ronald Torreyes, hit a rocket to right that looked like it had the legs, but Bautista went back to the wall for it. Brett Gardner hit a cheap double to left, dribbling an easy grounder down into the corner, while the third baseman played shortstop. (When I do it, it’s smart. When you do it, it’s cheap.) Jacoby Ellsbury hit a short single to centre. Gardner stopped at third, but then came on to score when Pillar fumbled the ball off the turf, which also allowed Ellsbury to reach second. This made the second run off Happ unearned. It also ended Happ’s excellent outing.

Joe Biagini came in to retire Gary Sanchez on a liner to right, with Ellsbury strangely staying at second, and then Brett Cecil came in to retire the pinch-hitter Brian McCann on a grounder to short.

And so we went to the ninth with a 3-2 lead, and it was time to circle the wagons. But the times are out of joint these days, and you already know from the title of this post that the Yankees won 7-5, so let’s look at how this came to be.

First of all, having blown the save but survived for the win yesterday, and gotten his 35^th save on Saturday, throwing 37 pitches between the two outings, Roberto Osuna was out of commission tonight, so Gibbie’s hope of surviving the eighth without using Jason Grilli worked, and he was available for the save opportunity.

Grilli retired Chase Headley for the first out, but it was an omen, as Edwin had to make a nice pick of a rocket down the line to beat Headley to the bag. This brought Mark Texeira to the plate for the final at bat in Toronto of his illustrious career. It didn’t take him long to put his own special mark on his farewell party. He clobbered Grillie’s first pitch, a 93-plus four-seam fast ball, over the Yankees’ bullpen and into the despondent right-field crowd. So long, Tex, glad to see you go.

If it had just stopped there, a tie in the ninth at home isn’t such a bad thing, even though the whole city felt badly for Happ losing his 21^st win, and for Grilli showing that even miracle workers can have a bad day at the office. But it didn’t end there.

Gregorius singled to left, and that brought the rookie Aaron Hicks to the plate. Hicks had been overmatched the whole series, showing that Gary Sanchez he isn’t. Hell, in this series even Gary Sanchez wasn’t Gary Sanchez. But shockingly he finally tied into one and deposited it in the right field seats for a 5-3 Yankee lead. When utility infielder Donovan Solano followed with a double to left Gibbie finally saw the light and rescued Grilli from further embarrassment.

Danny Barnes came in and walked Brett Gardner before giving up a single to Ellsbury that plated Solano with Grilli’s fourth run and sent Gardner to third. Kevin Pillar tried singlehandedly to keep the damage to a three-run deficit, but couldn’t quite pull it off. With Ellsbury running on the pitch, Gary Sanchez hit a sinking liner into right centre. Pillar came in hard, dove, and came up with the ball, one of his trademark great catches. Ellsbury was trapped well off first, and Pillar tried to double him up to end the inning, but Justin Smoak couldn’t squeeze the one-hopper from Pillar, Ellsbury was back safe, and the whole play became a simple sac fly as Gardner came in with the seventh run. Barnes struck out Brian McCann to stop the bleeding, and the dispirited Jays came in to face Dellin Betances. It wasn’t a save situation, but Joe Girardi wasn’t taking any chances.

Well, maybe he was, because once again the big New York closer couldn’t find the plate against Toronto, and things got very interesting again, very quickly, even without a whole lot of offensive input from the Jays’ hitters.

Betances started off by walking Smoak on four pitches. On an 0-1 count Pillar laid down a decent, but not great, bunt, trying for a base hit—nobody sacrifice bunts down four in the bottom of the ninth. Betances got to it, and fumbled it around, Pillar reaching on the error. Then he wild-pitched the two runners he put on base to second and third. Then he walked Darwin Barney, in for the sore-shouldered Travis, on a 3-1 pitch. That was enough of Betances for the Yankees. He pitched to three batters and put them all on. He threw three strikes, including the one Pillar bunted.

Tommy Layne came in to face Josh Donaldson with the bases loaded, nobody out, and a four-run lead. In some other world where the Blue Jays carry off their own small share of dramatic moments, Donaldson hits one out or clears the bases with a double. But in the 2016 world of the no-clutch Jays, Donaldson flied out to short right for the first out, with the tortoise-like Justin Smoak rightly held at third.

Layne walked Encarnacion, to cut the lead to three. Dalton Pompey was sent in to run for him, to deliver a third run on a double. Again, bases loaded, one out, but Carrera, who had run earlier for Bautista up, not Jose. Gibbie turned to Dioner Navarro to hit for Zeke. Call for the thunder and lightning. Nope. Just a weird blooper to right that Aaron Hicks almost catches despite being positioned somewhere in the middle of the Yankee bullpen. The runners have to hold up, and only Pillar scores. In fact, the Yankees almost force Pompey at second. Seven-five. Russell Martin up. Cue the thunder . . . oh, forget it. Darrell Ceciliani was sent in to run for Navarro. Martin hit a squibber back to Layne, who got the easy force at the plate for the second out. Tulo. Would there be drama? Only whether Brett Gardner would catch Tulo’s sliced pop foul to short left that almost reached the seats. He did, sliding on his glutes, nice catch, and the game, the terrible, awful, no good, very bad game, was over.

The Blue Jays were an inning away from an uplifting four-game sweep over the Yankees that would have given them great momentum for facing the Orioles in the last home series of the regular season. But the Texeira homer off Grilli in the ninth stilled the momentum and started Toronto down a dark and dreary road.

If we do in fact survive securing a wild card slot, and making it into a division series, I fear that the magic, which has not been there for the entire season, will remain missing in action, no matter the desparate longing of the multitudes of Torontonians.

Tomorrow night it’s Aaron Sanchez versus the Orioles. Will it be a great precursor to a wild card win, or the beginning of the end for the puzzling 2016 Blue Jays?

Let’s pretend we’re on a game show, one of those shows where the contestant gets to pick one of three doors and gets to have whatever is hidden behind the door chosen. We’re going to put surprises from tonight’s game behind each door, and you get to pick and see if you got your fave.

Behind one door is the Marco Estrada surprise. In the two starts he has made since it was revealed that he has been pitching for most of the season with a herniated disk in his back, this is what he has done: he’s had one win and one no decision. He’s pitched seven innings in both games. He’s given up a total of five hits in the fourteen innings. He’s given up one earned run in fourteen innings. He’s walked five and struck out fifteen in fourteen innings.

Behind another door is the Kevin Pillar/Zeke Carrera Bunt Extravaganza. For the second time in three games I get to write about the Blue Jays bunting. Is that fun, or what?

Behind another door is Edwin Encarnacion’s surprise walk-off hit, which did not leave the infield.

Now, it just occurred to me that my posts are not interactive (who knew?), and you can’t actually choose which surprise for me to write about. So I guess I have to choose for you, don’t I? And since all ball games are straightforward narratives, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, I choose to start with Marco Estrada because, well, he was the starter, right?

Last Monday in Seattle, Estrada set a Blue Jays’ record by striking out the first five batters of the game, and went on to fan one more, for six of the first nine he faced. Tonight he didn’t have his strikeout mojo going quite as well, but that worked out just fine because he was able to cut down on his pitch count. In the first inning he popped up Brett Gardner to shortstop. He popped up Jacoby Ellsbury to second. He fanned Gary Sanchez on a cutter up in the zone on a 1-2 pitch. It maybe be that the Jays are on to something with Sanchez and the high hard ones. (Well, with Estrada “hard” is always relative, isn’t it? Who else has a really effective 88 mile-an-hour fast ball?)

This game wasn’t the lights-out through the first five innings affair that the Seattle one was, though, and Estrada had quite a trial in the second inning. Once he passed that one he was “good to go”, and retired fourteen batters in a row, which took him all the way to the top of the seventh, when Didi Gregorius shocked everyone out of their wits by hitting a leadoff homer to tie the game at one.

Let’s go back to the second, though. In his first at bat, Gregorius, hitting cleanup tonight, popped out to Josh Donaldson, giving Estrada three popups in his first four batters. Then Mark Texeira, winding down his career with the Yankees, performed a feat that we may never see again. Estrada started Tex off with a cutter taken for a strike. Since the pitch worked, he tried it again, on the inner half, and absolutely sawed off Texeira, the handle still in his hand, the bat head off on its own adventure. But the ball—get this, now, it’s the truth—rocketed to right on a line over the head of Michael Saunders, and hit the wall for a double. Never before. Probably never again.

A little stunned, perhaps, Estrada walked Brian McCann on a 3-2 count, and gave up a soft flare of a base hit to left by Chase Headley to load the bases. Now that the Yankees had his attention, Estrada set to work. He fanned rookie right fielder Mason Williams on four pitches. Then on a 1-2 pitch he threw his famous changeup to Ronald Torreyes, who popped out to Donaldson at third. Estrada might not have had his strikeout mojo tonight, but he sure had his popup mojo. Torreyes was his fifth popup in the first two innings.

After the second, Estrada was masterful through six innings. Fourteen batters in a row, as I mentioned, and only 39 pitches to navigate the third through sixth. Unfortunately, he ran into trouble in the top of the seventh, trouble named Didi (I wonder how Derek Jeter feels about being replaced by a guy named Didi? Actually, the Yankees should dump Starlin Castro at second and find a second baseman named Dick, so their double-play combination would be Dick and Didi. And if you get that one, you really know your early sixties R and B!)

It seems like in these days of rigid pitch-count control, when the Trump Border Wall of the game is the end of the seventh inning—you shall not pass to the eighth—it’s a common phenomenon that a pitcher who’s had a good outing struggles in his last full inning. Another one is that if your starter does breeze the seventh, and the manager decides to extend him, it is written in stone that the leadoff hitter in the eighth will get a base hit, if not a home run. There’s something dangerous about being almost back to the barn.

So as Marco Estrada came out for the seventh with a pitch count of only seventy two, visions of a complete game festooned with sugar plums danced in our heads. But then, on an innocuous 1-1 pitch, Gregorius took it over the fence in right centre to tie the game. (We’ll get to the Jays’ run in a minute, just be patient. Marco Estrada is the story here, and we need to usher him out with some respect.)

Now, if Marco had just shut down the side after that, on another, say dozen pitches, Manager John Gibbons might have sent him out for the eighth, to try to get him a W.

But after he struck out Texeira on a 3-2 pitch, Brian McCann singled to right. Eric Young ran for Texeira and stole second while Chase Headley was striking out for the second out. Then Estrada walked Mason Williams on a 3-2 pitch, before finally fanning Ronald Torreyes to end the inning. No further damage, but the inning had cost Estrada 31 pitches, and dreams of a complete game died a-glimmering.

The Yankees started Michael Pineda, who pitched much better than his record of 6-11 and a 4.89 ERA coming into today’s game. Pineda has had a funny September. In four previous starts this month he has only gone four innings twice, four and two thirds once, and into the sixth, five and a third, only once. He’s given up 18 hits but only four earned runs in his 18 September innings. So why the short starts? The problem with Michael, the poor boy, is that he just works too hard. He struggles to find his spot. He pitches from behind. He fidgets and fusses while the pitch count climbs. 87 in four complete. 82 in four complete. Only 77 in four and two thirds—must have gotten a good night’s sleep before that one.

Tonight’s performance by Pineda was another pea from the same old pod. In five and two-thirds innings he gave up one run on three hits with three walks and two strikeouts, and threw 97 pitches. Watching the game was like interval training. We sprinted through Estrada’s innings, and then walked, stretching it out, through Pineda’s.

All that being said, Toronto didn’t do much damage to him. The Jays wasted a one-out double by Josh Donaldson in the first, followed an out later by a walk to Jose Bautista, and then only two more Jays’ hitters touched base before the sixth, Pineda’s last inning.

The way he’s been going the last few games, if you had to pick one guy who’d hit one out for the only run of a six-inning 1-0 pitcher’s duel, it would have to be Bautista. After Edwin Encarnacion led off the inning by grounding out to short, Pineda started Bautista out on a slider, low and away. Then he threw him three straight fast balls at 93 mph, the first one a high strike, the second low and away, and the third thigh-high, inner half of plate. Uh-oh. Bye bye. Bautista didn’t miss it, and for the fourth game in a row he had a crucial RBI, and the Jays a 1-0 lead, which held until the seventh when Gregorius matched Jose’s heroics.

By the seventh, though, Pineda was gone, his string of good innings broken in the sixth. The sixth started with a walk to Travis, but Donaldson hit into a double play that should have eased things for the Yankee starter. But Edwin blooped a single into right, moved around to third on first a wild pitch and then a passed ball. Pineda walked Bautista, and his start was over, at 97 pitches, as Manager Joe Girardi brought in Adam Warren, who got Russell Martin to ground out to end the inning.

After Gregorius tied it up in the top of the seventh, the Jays immediately set to work to try to untie it in their half of the inning with some textbook baseball that unfortunately didn’t pan out in the end. Troy Tulowitzki led off with a first-pitch single to centre. Michael Saunders, who had grounded out to third-baseman Chase Headley behind the bag at second in the shift, smartly took advantage of the same positioning to poke one through the open left side into left for another hit. Kevin Pillar followed with a nice sacrifice bunt that pulled the pitcher toward first, and the runners moved up. (Did I just write ‘sacrifice bunt” again??) But unfortunately the textbook couldn’t turn Carrera and Travis into contact hitters against Adam Warren. He fanned them both, and the inning was at an end.

In the top of the eighth Brett Gardner also attacked the shift against Joaquin Benoit, and bounced one past the non-existent third baseman, a ball that just kept rolling while Gardner steamed into second. But like the Jays’ efforts in the seventh, it went for naught as Benoit fanned Gary Sanchez and the ubiquitous Didi to keep the game at ones.

Comes the bottom of the eighth and a quick display of bold base-running by Donaldson that enabled the Jays to take the lead. Having no other choices, the other big guys being gone, Girardi brought in Dellin Betances to take yet another shot at shutting down the Jays. And yet again he didn’t do it. Josh Donaldson worked him for a walk on a three-two count to lead off. Then Betances’ leisurely delivery and focus on the batter Encarnacion handed Donaldson an easy if surprising stolen base. Edwin followed by grounding the ball to the left of Gregorius at short, and Josh, sensing the shortstop’s momentum going the other way, broke for third and didn’t draw a throw. He was on third with one out and who else but Mr. Clutch, Jose Bautista, at the plate. Bautista worked the count to three and two, then lined one cleanly up the middle to score Donaldson with the lead run.

Betances settled down to strike out Russell Martin and Tulo, but not before some messy defence by the Yankees created a further scoring opportunity that went for naught. Gibbie put Dalton Pompey in to run for Gibbons, and he promptly got picked off, breaking too early for second before the pitcher committed to the plate. Betances threw behind Pompey to Texeira, Pompey dashed straight on for second, and Texeira had a little trouble getting the ball out of his glove, and presto, change-o, Pompey’s pickoff had turned into a stolen base. But then the strikeouts ended it and we went to the ninth with Roberto Osuna coming in to protect the one-run lead and make a winner out of Benoit.

Osuna ended up with a blown save on the worst imaginable luck as the Yankees scored two runs to take the lead and threaten to ruin a nice, close Blue Jays’ win. Mark Texeira was down 0 and 2 leading off, laid off on a four-seamer that was low and inside, and then muscled off a high and inside four-seamer and singled to centre. Rob Refsnyder was sent in to run for Texiera, and Billie Butler hit a two-strike broken bat blooper to left for a single, Refsnyder stopping at second. Donovan Solano came in to run for Butler. Chase Headley hit a come-backer to Osuna, but there was no chance for a play at third, and the Yankees had runners at second and third with one out. Mason Williams then scored Refsnyder with yet another two-strike hit, this one opposite field, and the game was tied with Solano at third and still only one out. On two strikes, Torreyes hit a sacrifice fly to Pillar in centre, and the Yankees had the lead. Four contacts with two strikes. Two sawed-off base hits. Two cheap runs on good pitches. Gardner popped out to third, but the Yankees had the lead and it was gut-check time for the home team.

There has been a lot of discussion in recent weeks about the “lack of production” from the bottom of the Jays’ batting order—as if the top was producing all that much—but I wrote some time ago that there have been a number of times when the chemistry of gritty at bats and speed on the bases emanating from Kevin Pillar, Melvin Upton, Zeke Carrera, and, when he’s in there, Darwin Barney has led to good things, and the team’s rally in the bottom of the ninth to pull out the game was the best example thus far.

Free-swinging Melvin Upton led off and promptly whiffed on the first two fast balls from Betances, who was still in the game. After fouling one off, he patiently watched Betances miss with four in a row. Upton was on first, Betances out of the game, and Tyler Clippard in. Clippard went up 0 and 2 on Pillar as Pillar fouled off two bunt attempts (am I actually saying this? It’s not a figment?) Then Pillar took a ball, fouled off two more, the second with Upton going on the pitch, and finally rifled a grounder through the open right side of the infield, as Upton raced around to third.

This brought Zeke Carrera to the plate, fast runners on the corners and nobody out, and one of the most dramatic plays of the season was about to unfold. On the first pitch from Clippard, without warning, and without a sign, as we learned later from Gibbie in his post-game, Carrera pushed a bunt up the first-base line. Upton, who didn’t know it was coming, broke for the plate as soon as he saw the ball was down, making it a safety squeeze. Clippard was closest to the ball, and he unwisely tried to whack it toward catcher Gary Sanchez when it was already too late to make a play on Upton with the tying run. Unfortunately for the Yankee reliever, he hadn’t passed glove-whacking 101, and his foolhardy attempt sailed past Sanchez, allowing Pillar to reach third and Carrera second on the error.

Clippard then fanned Devon Travis on a 1-2 fast ball, the first and only out of the inning. With Donaldson due up and first base open, the intentional walk to Josh was a given, bringing Edwin Encarnacion to the plate with the bases loaded and one out. With Edwin, you had three possibilities: he’d drive in the run, one way or another; he’d strike out with a mighty wind; he’d hit into a double play. Big Eddie didn’t waste any time, smoking a grounder up the middle that the second baseman Torreyes made a valiant effort on, diving on the backhand to keep it in the infield, but there was no chance for an out anywhere, Pillar waltzed in from third, and the game was over.

The “little” guys set the table with zest and panache, and one of the big guys served up the main course, chef’s surprise, a really big walk-off win.

That makes three straight over the shell-shocked Yankees, Toronto’s September swoon seems to be over, and the Jays just keep on truckin’ not conceding a thing to anyone.

Say what you will about Jose Bautista, there is no denying that he has a finely-tuned flair for the dramatic.

Wednesday afternoon in Seattle, in the top of the ninth inning, with the Mariners clinging to a 1-0 lead after a scorching pitchers’ duel between Felix Hernandez and Aaron Sanchez, the distance around the bases for the Toronto Blue Jays might as well have been 720 feet instead of 360, for all the hope the team had of scoring the tying run.

The skinny young flame-thrower Edwin Diaz, who had assumed the closer’s role in Seattle in mid-season, and had already racked up 16 saves in 17 opportunities, stood on the mound bathed in bright, early-fall sunlight. Unfortunately, the circle of sunlight was not big enough to reach home plate. A line of deep shadow crossed the infield half-way between the mound and the plate. The batter would see the ball clearly out of the pitcher’s hand, but about half-way to the plate it would disappear. If the batter were very lucky, and had very acute eyesight, he might have picked up the flight of the ball a split-second after it had disappeared, and an instant before it was on him at the plate.

If the batter were neither blessed with hyper-vision nor Irish luck he’d never see the ball again. Edwin Encarnacion led off the inning for Toronto, and struck out swinging on a 3-2 count. On a 1-0 pitch Diaz had thrown a mid-80s slider and Edwin had swung over it and missed. He stepped out of the box, took his right hand off the bat, and raised it, palm up, to his shoulder level in a one-handed shrug. Everyone in the park knew that he was saying that he hadn’t seen the ball at all. He did manage to foul one off before striking out.

Next up, Bautista quickly fell behind one and two, but then, somehow, fouled off the next two pitches, the first one a 99 mph fast ball. Diaz threw ball two, and then threw a 98 mph two-seam fast ball, and Jose Bautista hit it out of the park down the left field line. Watching the flight of the ball to see that it stayed fair, he side-skipped down the base line until he was sure that it was out, and then broke into his home run trot. Another piece had been added to the puzzle of Jose Bautista, embellishing the image of the mythical bat-flipper of the Toronto Blue Jays. The stakes weren’t as high, not quite, but they were high enough, as anybody who has been following the Jays this year knows full well.

Last night in the seventh inning he was just an ordinary hero. With his team clinging to a slim 2-0 lead, and the pressure to win growing by the game, if not the inning, Francisco Liriano’s brilliant starting effort had come to an end and, as always, you never knew with the bullpen.

With Blue Jays on second and third and one out Manager Joe Girardi decided to walk Edwin Encarnation to load the bases and create a double-play situation. And, not incidentally, to pitch to Jose Bautista instead. Bautista hits into a lot of double plays, primarily because he always hits the ball hard, and if it’s right at an infielder, well, there’s not much you can do about it. Jose’s a smart ballplayer. He wouldn’t take it as an insult that the Yankees walked Edwin to pitch to him. But he would feel a little better about it after he ripped a ball past the third baseman and down into the left-field corner, driving in two runs, increasing the Jays’ lead to 4-0, and allowing a whole gang of Blue Jays’ fans across the country to relax and breathe. Just a little.

And today? Well, in case you didn’t see the game, we’ll just keep that our little secret for the time being, okay?

Looking over his last few starts, I think it’s safe to say that we can put the “where’s the Marcus Stroman we expected to see?” question away for good, at least for this year, because the answer now is “right here, doing his thing”. In the month of September, he has had four starts before today. On the face of it, since he went 0-4 in those four starts, you might wonder how he’s back to the Stroman we expected. But remember, wins and losses don’t mean anything, until they do, as in Jay Happ, Rick Porcello . . .

But in those four losses he pitched 23 innings, gave up 23 hits, 8 walks, and 8 earned runs, for a WHIP of 1.30. In other words, he’s pitched like a perfectly decent starting pitcher in the American League, and if you want an explanation for his won-loss record, it’s not hard to find, is it? You could win a World Series with a shortened Blue Jays’ rotation of starters who’ve lost more games than they’ve won in September. But you would need a few hits along the way.

C.C. Sabathia, like Felix Hernandez, is a very different pitcher from the one who spent the bulk of his career as a dominant number one starter. However, unlike Hernandez, who has continued to pitch effectively and coninued to be respected as the ace on his staff, Sabathia has fallen on leaner times. His career arc hit its low point last season when, on the day after the end of the regular season, he announced that he was going into rehab for alcohol abuse. The severity and urgency of the problem was highlighted by the fact that the Yankees were about to play the Houston Astros in the Wild Card game the very next day, and by his action Sabathia was withdrawing from the team’s playoff roster.

Through the winter and early spring Sabathia did a number of media interviews in which he discussed the success of his rehab, how it had been the only option left for him, and how he was returning to the Yankees with a new lease on life. In the best of all baseball worlds, this good news story would have ended with him having a great season and restoring his baseball reputation before the world.

Sadly, this hasn’t happened, as his year has been mediocre at best. He entered tonight’s game with a season record of 8-12, with an okay ERA of 4.19, and a run of September starts marked by fairly low innings pitched and very high pitch counts. Always a work horse, entering tonight’s likely second-last start of the season, he has only pitched a total of 165.1 innings, this from a pitcher who had reeled off six consecutive 200-plus seasons, including a high of 253 in 2008, before struggling with injuries in 2014 and the other problems last year.

All that having been said, Stroman pitched one of his best games of the year, throwing seven innings of shutout ball on just one hit and three walks, striking out five and ending at 97 pitches. Removed from a scoreless tie with a one-hitter going, it took all of Uncle Gibbie’s arm-around-his-shoulder consoling to explain to Stroman why he wasn’t going back out for the eighth inning.

Sabathia, meanwhile, went nearly pitch for pitch with Stroman, also finishing seven innings, no runs, four hits, three walks, two strikeouts, and 93 pitches. After quick three-up, three-down first innings—Stroman retiring Gardner and Ellsbury on six pitches, and Sabathia erasing a Donaldson single with a double-play ball from Edwin Encarnacion, it was game on.

Both pitchers benefited from double plays in the second inning. The Jays pulled off their second 3-5-3 double play in two nights, with Donaldson making the pivot very efficiently again. Sabathia survived a lead-off double by Jose Bautista, as he continued his solid hitting, and two walks, lucky that Tulo hit into the dp in between all this. CC also committed a cardinal error which could have come back to bite him big time. Frustrated with the strike zone while pitching to Russell Martin, he made an obvious gesture of frustration aimed at home plate umpire Dan Bellino.

Baseball tradition is very strict on this point. Players are allowed to say almost anything to a plate umpire about his strike zone, but they can’t use expressive body language, so that everyone in the park can see what’s going on. This is called “showing up” the umpire, and must not be done. For example, catchers are talking to the plate umpire all the time—where was that pitch—is that the limit of your zone on the outside—can you please appeal the checked swing—and so on. But woe betide the catcher who stands up and faces the umpire, or turns his head to look at him while he’s speaking. And the woe will come in the guise of a suddenly tighter strike zone for the catcher’s pitcher. It goes without saying that the pitcher can’t be gesturing to the ump from sixty feet away.

(Sixty feet, six inches, to be precise, and extensive preliminary research—at least ten minutes’ worth—has not been able to uncover a reason for a change to that specific distance, made in 1893, and measured from the front of the pitcher’s “plate”, which we now call the pitcher’s rubber, to the exact intersection of the first and third base foul lines. Since the pitching distance was lengthened considerably by this change, it’s likely that the rules committee of the day was stacked with .220 hitters.)

Stroman walked Brett Gardner to lead off the fourth, and he advanced to second on a passed ball, but died there, as the Toronto starter fanned Jacoby Ellsbury and then Gary Sanchez, Sanchez on a high hard one, as the smoking hot catcher seems to be cooling off with the fall air in Toronto, and retired Didi Gregorius on an easy fly to left. Gregorius, by the way, who has had a great season and is finally starting to fill Derek Jeter’s shoes, may be running out of gas, as he seems to be making a weak, late contact so far in this series.

Sabathia pitched over two hits again in the Jays’ fourth, one of them a landmark for Edwin Encarnacion. His single to centre was his 153^rd base hit of the year, a career mark for him; his record should be extended a fair ways further, since he has ten games to go in the season. As season hit totals go, this isn’t all that great shakes, but Edwin’s never been a .300 hitter, or even very close to it. The fact that this is his highest hit total for a season, though, is just another piece of the very solid portfolio Edwin is putting together for the market in the fall.

The fifth, sixth, and seventh innings passed quickly and quietly as the two starters showed what it means to be in command, both of their stuff and of the game situation. The bullpens, then, would tell the story.

Jason Grilli started the eighth for Toronto and quickly retired the first two batters, Aaron Hicks grounding out to Donaldson at third, and Brian McCann looking at a called third strike. Then the game got really tense, really quickly. No Yankee hitter had touched third base for seven and two thirds innings, but Ronald Torreyes changed that with a triple to the wall in right centre. Manager Joe Girardi inserted Billie Butler to hit for Tyler Austin, and Grilli earned another hold, and another chance to do his frenzied walk-off, by fanning Butler on a four-seamer at the end of a tough seven-pitch at bat.

Tyler Clippard came in to pitch the bottom of the eighth for the Yankees and it looked like we might be settling in for a long night. Both Kevin Pillar and Devon Travis grounded out to Torreyes at third. But then Josh Donaldson stepped up to the plate, and stepped up, period, prolonging the inning with a single to left. A Clippard wild pitch moved Josh to second, opening up first for Edwin to receive a five-pitch walk, as Clippard stayed away from him. This brought Jose Bautista to the plate.

You could just imagine Jose coming to the plate thinking “This shit is really getting old.” With the season he’s had, you can understand why opposing teams would prefer pitching to Jose rather than Edwin, but still, is is crunch time, and it is Jose. Result? Clippard’s 2-0 pitch landed in the left-field seats and the Jays had a sudden 3-zip lead. This time Bautista didn’t feed the haters, taking a normal trot around the bases.

Roberto Osuna came in for the save, and retired Donovan Solano, the Yankees’ second baseman, on a grounder to short, gave up a lame opposite-field single to Gardner, and then finished off the night with easy fly balls by Ellsbury and Sanchez. Osuna, who shows no signs of slowing down, recorded his 35^th save in 38 opportunities.

The Yankees had been shut out 2-0 by Tampa’s Blake Snell, Chase Whitley, and Alex Colome on Thursday night, so they have now been shut out in three straight games, as things have come to a pretty pass indeed for the fabled Bronx Bombers. In ten days, the Yankees have faded from lurking in the rear-view mirror to pulled off on the shoulder with their hood up and steam rising from the rad.

So home again to Toronto for the last ten games of the season, seven here, and the final big three games in Boston next weekend. It was a winning road trip, though we needed it to be more. The Red Sox, more aptly called the Red Tail Lights as they pull away in the distance, sit in first by five games. We hold the first Wild Card slot by one game over Detroit, who are charging hard, and a game and a half over Baltimore, who are fading fast after the Sox beat up on them at Camden this week.

We face the Yankees, whose playoff hopes became a lot fainter this week after being swept by the Red Sox and winning two of three from Tampa Bay. They come in to Toronto looking to turn around that recent two and four record. On the other hand, let us recall that the Yankees initiated the recent slide of the Blue Jays by sweeping their series at Yankee Stadium at the beginning of September.

But the Yankees arrived with their pitching somewhat in disarray after the announcement on Thursday that Masahiro Tanaka would miss his scheduled start in the series against the Jays. Meanwhile, now that it has been determined that Francisco Liriano will be slotted in to the fifth starter’s spot for Toronto, the Jays are looking at a set rotation right to the end of the season. It’s organized so that Aaron Sanchez will get a regularly-scheduled start against Baltimore Tuesday night, and then be available for a crucial game in Boston on the last weekend, or a start in a wild card game.

It’s one thing to have your pitchers all lined up, but it’s another thing to have them perform up to expectations. In that regard there doesn’t seem to be much reason for concern. If there was one part of Toronto’s game that did not fail to live up to its assignment during the west coast swing it was the pitching, starters and relievers both. With the ongoing hitting woes suffered by the Blue Jays, the pitching has been the team’s only salvation, and the reason that it’s even in the running for the playoffs.

While Manager Joe Girardi’s decision to start Brian Mitchell tonight in the series opener might have the air of a stopgap measure, it’s not exactly a bad move, given Mitchell’s last start against Toronto. Against the Jays in New York on September seventh Mitchell was just one in a string of starts against the Jays by pitchers just returning after major time on the DL, pitchers auditioning for spots in next year’s rotation, pitchers promoted from the bullpen for a spot start, most of whom utterly stymied the tepid bats of the Jays’ sluggers. He went five innings for the win, shutting out Toronto on four hits with two walks, on only 80 pitches. I would think by now that the Jays’ hitters have learned to stop salivating when they know they’re facing a pitcher not named Tanaka or Tillman or Porcello.

Francisco Liriano has been a revelation for the Jays since coming over right (that’s literally right at 4:00) at the trade deadline. He had been scuffling badly in Pittsburgh this year, and the hope on the part of Toronto’s management was that a change of scenery and a reunion with his favourite catcher Russell Martin might turn things around for the lefty, and what a bonus if they did, to have two solid left-handers in the team’s rotation. Though he’s suffered somewhat from lack of run support, and has had the odd patch where he’s laboured with an elevated pitch count, he’s been 2-2 with an ERA of 3.35 over 43 innings with 42 strikeouts since his arrival.

Tonight after surviving a rocky first inning was as good as Liriano has been in his short time with Toronto, utilizing a nasty slider and some well-set-up fast balls to keep the Yankees well in check. He retired the side in the second, fourth, and fifth innings, and gave up only a leadoff single to hot rookie Gary Sanchez in the sixth, before retiring the next three batters to close out six innings of 3-hit shutout ball, with two walks and six strikeouts over 100 pitches.

Liriano started the game well by getting Brett Gardner to ground out to second, and fanning Jacoby Ellsbury on a really nasty 1-2 slider. But then he suffered from the two-out yips, which seem to be becoming much more common these days, and not just for the Blue Jays’ pitchers. In fact, I’d like to see the analytics geeks make themselves useful and look into this. Is it indeed a relatively new phenomenon, this business of pitchers cruising through the first two outs and then running into difficulty? The follow-up question would be why this might be so, and it’s a question that could lead us into some interesting considerations about the mental and emotional makeup of the modern-day pitcher.

Well, anyway, after two quick outs on only 8 pitches, Liriano and Zeke Carrera in left were smoked by Sanchez, the rookie phenom who munched his way through the Toronto pitching staff the first time around like a Toronto squirrel feasting on telephone cable. The hot-hitting youngster roped one over Carrera’s head that bounced out for a ground-rule double. Liriano then walked both newly-arrived Billie Butler and Didi Gregorius, before dramatically fanning Chase Headley on a slider low in the zone, after he’d buried one on the 0-2 pitch. Heart-pumping stuff, but the big worry was those 28 pitches he needed to get out of the first.

Liriano retired the side on 18 pitches in the second inning, but had a spot of trouble in the third, thanks (or no thanks) to a surprising fielding error by shortstop Troy Tulowitzki on an easy grounder by Brett Gardner leading off the third. Tulo went down for the ball, started to come up with it, but then left it behind on the dirt. Probably in a state of shock at Tulo’s gaffe, Liriano gave up a single to centre to Ellsbury and a deep fly to centre by Sanchez that let Gardner take third with only one out. But Liriano quickly regained control, fanning Billie Butler and inducing a popup to second by Gregorius.

After surviving the third with a pitch count of 60, Liriano only allowed the single to Sanchez in the sixth, rolling through his last three innings by retiring nine out of ten batters on only 35 pitches.

We’ll never know if Brian Mitchell would have been able to replicate his earlier start against the Jays, because he was victimized by Butler, playing first for only the third time, who booted a one-out grounder by Josh Donaldson, allowing Donaldson to reach in the first inning. Edwin Encarnacion shot one to right against the shift for a single, with Josh moving up to second. When Mitchell struck out Jose Bautista for the second out, it looked like he had a shot at getting out of the inning unscathed.

But then he walked Russell Martin to load the bases, bringing Tulo to the plate. Visions of a bases-loaded, two-outs situation in the first inning going a-glimmer yet again, I anticipated another disappointing strikeout, especially after Tulo took a called strike on the first pitch from Mitchell. But, lo and behold, the intense shortstop hit the next pitch into left field for a two-out, two-run single, the Jays had broken on top, and we could marvel at how nice it is to get a base hit with the sacks drunk. I probably haven’t used that expression before, but it’s common parlance in baseball dugouts. If the bases are loaded they’re “drunk”, like the guy down at the end of the bar is loaded.

The Jays bid fair to put Mitchell out of the game and the game out of reach in the second, but their hopes were stymied when Jose Bautista grounded into an inning-ending double play, and they were only able to add one run to their lead. It was a promising start as second baseman Ronald Torreyes couldn’t make a play on Kevin Pillar’s testy grounder, and it went for an infield single. Zeke Carrera followed with a single to right, and once again the bottom of the order had set up the stand and mixed the lemonade for the big boys. Devon Travis, or in fact Manager John Gibbons pulling the strings, surprised everybody in the park by dropping down a perfect sacrifice bunt to move the runners up. Mitchell proceeded to walk Donaldson to load the bases, and Edwin Encarnacion to force in a run before Bautista rapped into the double play that ended the inning and kept Mitchell in the game, though his team now faced a three-run deficit.

After the first two innings, Mitchell settled in and looked like the Brian Mitchell of old. Can you even say “of old” of a guy in just his fourth major league start? He gave up a leadoff single to Russell Martin in the third, but then threw a double-play ball to Tulo. He gave up Kevin Pillar’s second hit to lead off the fourth, but he held the ball long enough to see Pillar break early for second, and Pillar was out in a rundown, another base-running gaffe for the Jays . . . He pitched a clean fifth, and stranded a two-out walk to Michael Saunders in the sixth. He finished with a quality start, six innings, three runs but only one earned, thanks to Butler’s error in the first, walked four, and struck out two while throwing a reasonable 93 pitches.

The reliable Joaquin Benoit pitched a good seventh, initiating another appearance of BenGriNa, and gave up a leadoff walk to Aaron Hicks, but then inducing the pinch-hitter Brian McCann, hitting for catcher Austin Romine, to bounce into the odd-sounding 3-5-3 double play. An odd-sounding play, but one that should become more common. With both Travis and Tulo on the right side of the bag in the strong shift for McCann, Donaldson, alone on the left side, was stationed roughly at the shortstop’s normal position, and obviously best positioned to take the throw from Encarnacion and make the pivot back to Edwin. While he didn’t emulate the grace of a less-muscled middle infielder, Josh handled the job with emphasis and aplomb: Now I cross the bag, and now I get out of the way, and now I plant and throw. You could almost see him counting off the steps in his head. Well done, but good job it was McCann running from the plate.

Not that he would necessarily have used them when he was down three-zip in the seventh, but Joe Girardi must have been muttering to himself about the loss of Andrew Miller and Aroldis Chapman as he contemplated his next mound move. It’s gotta be tough when management says to an intense and competitive manager, “Look, we’re going to shop two-thirds of our high-leverage back-end bullpen, but you just keep managing like you’re in a pennant race.”

Girardi’s finger pointed to Blake Parker, he of the twitchy come-to-set-position mannerisms. This was not a good choice, though what could Girardi do? At least Parker seems to have learned to bring his palsied fit to a full stop before coming to the plate with runners on base, which he had, instantly. Zeke Carrera led off with a cheeky bunt single to third, and, yes, this is the second appearance of the word “bunt” in this post—what wonders the world holds for those who have faith! Gibbie then started Zeke on a 3-2 count to Travis (more wonders!) and Travis singled to centre, Zeke taking third. Josh flew out to right, too shallow to score Carrera, but he drew a throw from Aaron Hicks anyway that skipped away from McCann, allowing Travis to take second.

Girardi sensibly chose to walk Edwin to load the bases, hoping for an inning-ending grounder, which Bautista frequently offers, but this time he didn’t oblige, and rattled one past Headley at third and into the corner, Carrera and Travis scoring and Edwin coming around to third on the double. Parker walked Martin, loading the bases again, but Tulo promptly unloaded them with his second bases-loaded single, for 4 RBIs on the night, and a now comfy 7-0 Blue Jay lead. That was enough for Girardi, who brought in lefty James Pazos to face Michael Saunders, who was lifted for Melvin Upton, who singled to centre to load the bases yet again, but Kevin Pillar bounced into the first-to-home force out and Pazos fanned Zeke Carrera to put an end to the Jays’ bases-drunk bacchanalia.

With the expanded lead, Jason Grilli and Roberto Osuna got to relax, and Brett Cecil, who has been quietly building a more respectable CV of late, and Danny Barnes finished up, each pitching a clean inning with one strikeout.

Instead of sticking with Pazos, who’d only thrown 12 pitches, Girardi brought in Ben Heller, which resulted in another couple of runs as the Jays for once were the team to pile on. Travis led off with a double to left, and Donaldson followed with his 36^th jack of the year. With that out of the way, Heller retired Edwin on a comebacker to the mound and fanned Martin and Ryan Goins hitting for Tulo to close things out. There was one sketchy moment when Heller smacked Jose Bautista with a high hard one, eliciting a classic Bautista scowl, but the guy’s a rookie, and we’re sure he didn’t mean it, right?

So it was a good start all the way around for this four-gamer with the Yankees. Three two-RBI base hits with the bases loaded, a Donaldson dinger, and shutout pitching from Francisco Liriano, Joaquin Benoit, Brett Cecil, and Danny Barnes. Who could ask for anything more? We can’t do anything about Boston, but we can win every game that’s left, and go from there.

Tomorrow afternoon it’s a 4:00 baseball network game, Marcus Stroman against C.C. Sabathia. Like King Felix, Sabathia is now relying on a variety of breaking balls rather than flame-throwing. Marcus Stroman has improved every outing lately. Should be a good one. Just call us Pitching Duels ‘R Us!

We certainly expected a pitcher’s duel this afternoon in the rubber match of Toronto’s series with the Mariners in Seattle. But who expected to see a game in which the Jays were brought back from the brink in the top of the ninth by a dramatic home run off the bat of Jose Bautista? And who expected to see a game that was decided in the bottom of the twelfth, with R.A. Dickey on the mound in relief, Ryan Goins playing first base, and Josh Donaldson being the key to victory, but not in a good way?

The pitching matchup was a classic indeed, but by the time Aaron Sanchez had finished after six innings and Felix Hernandez after seven, little had been resolved, and there was no clear winner emerging from the duel. Yes, Hernandez went out with a one-run lead, but with three innings to go for the Blue Jays to equalize, it was hardly secure.

“King” Felix Hernandez is, at the relatively young age of thirty, not the same dominant pitcher we have known in the past, at least not at this point in this season. By way of comparison, David Price is about six months older than Hernandez. While I may still question whether Price is able to provide the value the Red Sox were looking for, considering the price they paid for him, there is no question that Price is still well able to dominate, and still pitches with enough power to generate the same strikeout totals in the past. (In fact, one positive outcome of the sad fact that the Sox will probably take the division is that we will not have to face them in a wild card game. I would not want to go into a sudden-death game facing Price.)

Hernandez, on the other hand, is now relying almost exclusively on breaking balls. He’s not breaking 92 on his four-seamer fast ball. While his record for the year (16-11 and an ERA of 3.79) is representative of a typical number one starter, a look at his last seven games will show that while he is pitching with success, the King’s crown has slipped a little. He’s won four and lost two, but with an ERA of 4.25. Revealingly, he has averaged exactly six innings a game, and given up a hit an inning with a WHIP of 1.42. Most striking is that he has struck out 28 in these seven starts, an average of only four strikeouts per start. This is mediocre output that’s not worthy of the Felix Hernandez we have known.

It’s kind of sad, in fact, to see the yellow-clad denizens of the King’s Court, down in the left field corner, all wearing their King Felix t-shirts, holding their big yellow “K” cards to wave when he chalks up another strikeout. Pretty hard to get excited about waving your “K” card only four times a game. From the Mariners’ standpoint, it’s even sadder to note, as the camera pans around the stands, that the King’s Court is the only place in the ball park not dominated by waves of Blue Jay blue. The Vancouverites were out in full force again, ready to cheer their heroes on to a sweep.

As for Aaron Sanchez, this was a start that had been projected for him when the end-of-the-season “Save Aaron’s Arm” programme went into effect. It would be interesting to see whether the extra rest and the targeting of a particular opponent would turn out well for the young right-hander and the Jays’ brain trust, or whether the disruption to his routine might prove more of a detriment than a boon.

Through his first three innings, Hernandez held the Jays to a hit and a walk, with two strikeouts, but at the cost of 53 pitches for the three innings. Limited as they were, he faced his toughest moments in the fourth and fifth innings. In the fourth a lucky carom off Hernandez himself preserved his slim lead. Josh Donaldson led off with one of only two hard-hit balls that Toronto generated against Hernandez, hitting a double to right. Edwin Encarnacion followed with a ground smash up the middle that 99 times out of 100 would have gone through for a single, scoring Donaldson, but the ball caromed off Hernandez and right to second baseman Robinson Cano, who threw out Edwin while Josh moved to third. With one out, first Jose Bautista and then Russell Martin hit balls right at third baseman Kyle Seager, who was able to check Josh at third and throw Bautista out, then throw Martin out to end the inning.

In the fifith the threat was reduced to a moment, a moment waiting to see if Seth Smith in right field would run down a drive hit over his head by Kevin Pillar with Justin Smoak on first after a two-out walk. He did, and the inning was over. It was a great running catch, by a fielder who may have been positioned too shallow on Pillar, and hats off to Smith.

In the sixth and seventh innings, the only hitter to reach against Hernandez was Edwin, with a two-out walk in the sixth. In the seventh he gained strength and breezed to the finish line on nine pitches, getting two ground balls and a popup from the Jays’ four, five, and six hitters. The King finished with the line of seven innings, no runs, two hits, three walks, four strikeouts, on 112 pitches.

Aaron Sanchez’ first inning against the M’s showed him at his best, and, frankly, the most dominant he has looked since the rotation juggling began. (I’m not commenting one way or the other on the wisdom of the rotation change, just observing what should be clear to anyone who can see, that he’s not had as good command since the regime changed.) He popped up Norichika Aoki, who looked like the batboy facing Sanchez, and then fanned Seth Smith and Robinson Cano, taking 13 pitches to retire the side. It took him 16 pitches to get through the second, when he yielded his first hit, a two-out, weak, opposite-field looper to left by Adam Lind, before fanning Leonys Martin to end the inning.

The Mariners scored the only run that mattered until the ninth (duh! It was the only run, period, until the ninth!) off Sanchez in the third. It went as an earned run, but it hardly resulted from a solid Seattle attack on the big young right-hander.

The only hard-hit ball in the inning was an opposite-field double lined to right by the Mariners’ backup catcher, leading off the inning. Jesus Sucre (pronounced “Sucré) has been an occasional catcher for the Mariners since 2013, amassing only 231 at-bats in four years, and only 19 plate appearances this year.

I considered naming Sucre to my All-Time Great Baseball Names Team, obviously under the English version of his name, inverted in proper alphabetical form. You’ve got it, “Sweet Jesus”. However, I’m not sure if he’s an appropriate addition, given his marginal career, and the fact that we have to transform his name to make it work. I do have another spot in mind for him, however: Starting catcher on Bud Abbott’s famous silly-nickname team, the basis of the “Who’s on First” routine. I can just hear it:

Costello: What’s the name of the catcher?

Abbott: Sweet Jesus.

Costello: I just asked you a question. How come you’re swearing at me? What’s the name of the catcher?

Abbott: Sweet Jesus.

Costello: I ask you the name of the catcher and you tell me Sweet Jesus.

Abbott: That’s right.

Costello: Sweet Jesus, the catcher.

Abbott: That’s right. The catcher.

Costello: The name of the catcher is . . .

Abbott: Sweet Jesus.

Costello: What would your mother say if she heard you talking like that?

Anyway, with Sucre on second, Sanchez fanned Ketel Marte for the first out. This brought Nori Aoki, notorious slap hitter, to the plate. He blooped one out over second that fell just in front of a charging Kevin Pillar. Pillar, probably torn over trying to cut Sucre down at the plate, bobbled the ball, and not only missed the chance to throw out the catcher, but was charged with an error for a weak throw to the cutoff that allowed Aoki to reach second while Sucre scored.

This was the Mariners’ only run until they scored the winner in the twelfth, but Sanchez struggled to finish off the inning, and ended up expending a precious 32 pitches to do it. He’d thrown 29 over the first two, but came out of the third at 61, pretty well guaranteeing that he wouldn’t go seven. With Aoki on second, he walked

Smith to set up the double play, and then got the ground ball that he wanted from Cano, a sharply hit bouncer right at Donaldson. But Josh bobbled the ball, had to let the play at second go, and threw Cano out at first. Sanchez then walked Nelson Cruz (semi-intentionally?) to load the bases before retiring Kyle Seager on an easy grounder back to the pitcher.

Sanchez cruised through the fourth, fifth, and sixth innings, giving up only one hit, a base hit to that same Sweet Jesus, who went again to right field for a single in the fourth. Sanchez returned to his mastery in his last inning, retiring the side on two strikeouts and a comebacker to the mound. He departed with a line of six innings, one tainted if earned run, only four hits, three walks, and five strikeouts on 103 pitches.

With the two starters out of the game, the question of the night was “Whither the bullpens?” The answer to the question was “plugging the hole”, right where they were supposed to be. Seattle used five relievers over 5 innings. The Jays used nine over six innings. The Seattle relievers gave up one run. The Jays’ relievers did not give up an earned run, and only saw one scored against them. Unfortunately, Seattle went into this rondelay with a one-run lead, and the tainted run off the Jays’ ninth reliever decided the game.

Joaquin Benoit as usual came out for the seventh for Toronto and allowed one base-runner but held Seattle at bay. With one out, Sweet Jesus picked up his third hit, a blooper that dropped in front of Pillar in centre. Manager Scott Servais opted for a pinch-runner, Shawn O’Malley, taking Jesus out of the game, to the gratitude of Jays’ fans everywhere. Who knew Jesus could be such a tough out? However, O’Malley never advanced as Benoit struck out Ketel Marte, and Nori Aoki was retired on a grounder to short. Tulo’s throw pulled Justin Smoak off the bag but he made a nice leaping catch and sweep tag to get Aoki.

In the eighth the Jays were unable to take advantage of two walks, thanks to pinch-runner Dalton Pompey being thrown out trying to steal second. Brett Cecil started the bottom of the eighth to pitch to the two left-handed hitters first up for the Mariners. He “got” both, catching Ben Gamel looking, but hitting Robbie Cano. Steve Grilli came in to do his thing and fanned Cruz and Seager to take the Jays to the top of the ninth.

Does it seem to you that good things happen offensively for the Jays after Grilli ends the eighth with a punch-out? The emotional boost didn’t particularly help Edwin, who struck out to lead off the inning. Pitching for the M’s was Edwin Diaz, their lanky young closer who has done a good job, completing 16 of 17 save opportunities since taking over as closer. By this time, it was somewhere around 3:30 in the afternoon Pacific Time, and the shadows heading across the field left the mound in brilliant sunlight and the batter’s boxes in complete shade. In fact, when Edwin swung and missed at the first pitch from Diaz he shook his head and raised his hands, clearly indicating that he hadn’t seen the pitch he’d missed.

Which makes it all the more remarkable that, having worked the count to full against Diaz, and fouling off a couple, Bautista made good contact on a ball he could pull, and drove it down the line and into the seats to tie the game, inspiring an orgy of frenzy from the largely Blue Jays’ crowd still hanging on in the ball park. Jose skipped sideways down the line towards first before picking up his home run trot half way to the bag. Much has been made of this new version of “showboating”, but in reality Bautista was only trying to follow the flight of the ball as it resisted slicing foul. Batters have done this since time immemorial, or at least since Carleton Fisk.

Interestingly, Manager John Gibbons brought Joe Biagini in for the bottom of the ninth, rather than going to Roberto Osuna in a tie game. This would suggest that he had high hopes of taking the lead in the top of the tenth now that Seattle’s closer was out of the game, and that he wanted to save Osuna to close in the tenth. It also attested to Gibbie’s well-earned faith in Biagini, who has done everything asked of him this season. This time he didn’t quite save Osuna from pitching in the ninth, but he did get two outs, so that Osuna could still pitch in the tenth. Biagini got Adam Lind, the former Jay who had only one soft single to show for the series here, to ground out to Travis on the first pitch. Then he gave up a single and stolen base to Leonys Martin, whose ninth-inning heroics had rattled Osuna’s cage on Monday. Gibbie left Biagini in to fan Mike Zunino, and then brought Osuna to face Ketel Marte. Servais countered with Dae-Ho Lee. The Jays didn’t show much concern when Martin stole third, considering that he was the winning run, but Osuna fanned the overmatched Lee on three pitches to strand Martin and take it to extra innings.

Gibbie’s hope that Osuna would close out the game came close to fruition, but there were no cigars today. Toronto had much the better chances in the tenth and eleventh, but they weren’t able to push a run across, causing the ominous thunderclouds to gather. It seems like the deeper you go into extra innings on enemy ground, the closer you come to the lightning strike you’re dreading. My kingdom for a three-run homer in the top of the tenth!

Even though Dae-Ho Lee struck out to end the ninth, his insertion for Ketel Marte turned out to be a brilliant, if lucky, move for Seattle. With the starting shortstop out of the game, Servais inserted Mike Freeman in the lineup for the top of the tenth. Seattle got burned once again by playing their opposite-field outfielders too shallow, as Michael Saunders led off the inning by pounding a double over the head of Guillermo Heredia’s head in left, and was replaced on the bases by Melvin Upton. Ryan Goins, inserted at first base after Smoak was lifted for the runner in the eighth, laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt on the first pitch, and the lead run was at third with one out. This brought Kevin Pillar to the plate for the second pivotal at-bat in the game, prior to the walkoff for the Mariners in the twelfth. Unlike Bautista’s homer in the ninth, this one didn’t work to Toronto’s advantage.

There have been a couple of pieces lately decrying the lack of production from the bottom of the Jays’ order, pointing to the relatively weak contributions of Melvin Upton, Michael Saunders, Zeke Carrera, Darwin Barney/Ryan Goins, and Pillar. Although it’s hard to argue with this evaluation in general, I find it hard to lump Carrera and Pillar in with the rest. Carrera has proven again and again that stats and overt run production don’t tell the whole story, and that when you need someone to bring the intangibles to the fore, he’s the guy. And I don’t know what Kevin Pillar these guys are watching. He’s been stuck with the “wild swinger” label for a couple of years now, and though his on-base percentage is on the low side, he has regularly shown the ability to fight off pitches and change his approach in key situations, especially since his return from the DL.

And it was Kevin Pillar this afternoon who took one ball from reliever Evan Scribner, and then fouled off six pitches before getting the one he wanted and hitting a rope past the diving new shortstop Freeman, to drive in . . . er, no, Freeman made a spectacular, game-saving snag of Pillar’s shot, Upton was frozen at third, Devon Travis (top of the order; just sayin’) struck out, and the game was still tied.

Both teams tiptoed through baserunners and walks in the eleventh, Tom Wilhelmsen allowing two on in the top of the inning before Nick Vincent came in to retire the side. Danny Barnes retired Nelson Cruz, Aaron Loup walked two and got a popup,

Ryan Tepera wild-pitched the runners to second and third, walked Zunino to load the bases and then recorded the out at first as Freeman, who couldn’t do it on both sides of the ball, hit a ground ball to Edwin Encarnacion.

Vincent stayed on for the M’s in the twelfth. He got two quick outs, then gave up an opposite field single to Goins before retiring Pillar on a fly ball to right.

This brings us to the bottom of the twelfth and the end of the road. After using eight relievers, Gibbie rolled the dice and brought in R.A. Dickey, who has been available in the bullpen in favour of Francisco Liriano since the rotation was cut back to five starters. Before you start boo-hooing about Dickey, know that this loss was not his fault, though he got to wear it. Dickey had been given ample time to warm up, and even brought his catcher, Josh Thole, into the game.

Dickey quickly ran up an 0-2 count on Heredia leading off, then got him to bounce an easy one to third after the count ran to 1-2. Josh Donaldson came in, rushed the throw, and fired it out of play. Heredia was on second after an excruciating E5 throw. Ben Gamel fouled off a bunt attempt, laid off a knuckler in the dirt, and then dropped down an okay sac attempt just to the first-base side of the plate. Goins, whom Gibbie has only used a couple of teams in late innings at first, raced in, picked it, and made a perfect throw to third. Donaldson caught it and put the tag on Heredia, who would have been DOA, except that as Josh swiped the tag on him, the ball flew out of his glove and bounced away. Heredia was safe, Gamel was on, and we had missed our second clear shot at getting the first out. This brought Robbie Cano, who had done little damage to us so far in the series, to the plate, and it was too much to hope for that Dickey could stop him from driving in the winning run.

Cano put an ordinary swing on an ordinary 2-1 knuckler, and lofted a lazy fly ball slicing toward left, an easy catch for Upton, and just deep enough to score the speedy Heredia from third with the game-winner.

So what started as a bang-up pitchers’ duel ended up turning on a sac fly hit by a struggling superstar off a knuckleball-throwing starter after a guy playing his fourth infield position saw his perfect throw to third muffed by an MVP third baseman letting a base-runner who got on because of an error by that same MVP third baseman arrive safely at third with nobody out.

Josh Donaldson has won plenty of games for us since his arrival in Toronto. The law of averages says that sooner or later he would have to lose one for us, and he did today. Still, I can’t help wishing the game were still going on, in the way of the theoretical endless ball game. Still, the Jays come home with a 4-3 record on the road, having regained a good bit of their self-respect, and kept themselves firmly in the hunt for October, even if it’s a very scary October ahead.