Let’s all cast our minds back to Opening Day, April third. We’ve gathered with a bunch of our friends and other like-minded fans at our favourite sports bar to watch the Blue Jays open the season in Tampa against the Rays.
Suddenly, a wild-eyed, disheveled, agitated stranger dressed from head to toe in rumpled Jays’ gear rushes up to our table to announce that he has wonderful news from the future. We all look sideways at each other and decide to indulge this fellow. He may well be crazy, but at least his heart’s in the right place. “So, give,” I say to him, “What’s your big news from the future?”
The words rush out of him as he breathlessly informs us that he has just watched game 161 of Toronto’s 2016 schedule, and that the Jays pulled out an incredible ninth-inning victory at Fenway over the American League East champion Boston Red Sox. The thing about this great game, he hastened to add, was that it pretty well assured our favourite team of earning a wild card spot in the playoffs.
Well, this would be funny enough, Boston already having clinched the division, the Jays trying to squeeze into the wild card game, but what he says next is absolutely hysterical: the heroes of this implausible future game were Jay Happ, pitching for his twenty-first win, Kevin Pillar, who drove in three runs, and Ezequiel Carrera, who drove in the winning run in the top of the ninth off Boston closer Craig Kimbrel.
That would have been quite enough for us. This fellow was obviously dotty. But we are gentle folk; one of us calls 911 to report a person having a mental health crisis, and we hope that whoever comes for him will be kind, because he is clearly delusional.
Let’s face it, folks, you couldn’t make this stuff up.
Here we are, game 161 is in the books, we fought off a Red Sox rally and scored the winning run without benefit of a base hit after Roberto Osuna balked in the tying run to come ever so closer to our only hope for post-season success, one of the two American League wild card berths. Jay Happ didn’t get his twenty-first win, but he further cemented his position as, at the very least, one of two number one starters in the Blue Jays’ rotation, and a legitimate candidate for the Cy Young award. This is an outcome that not even the most wildly optimistic Blue Jays’ fanatics would have projected when Happ signed last November. And, yes, Kevin Pillar and Zeke Carrera produced all the runs in this spine-tingler of a game.
You will not have forgotten, of course, that at the conclusion of last night’s play we had the sense that we were teetering on the edge of the precipice, and a three-hundred pound gorilla with massive elbows was heading our way to give us a nudge. It was hard to credit, with two games to play, one of them against David Price, and with the Tigers ready to romp through Atlanta twice more, following the well-worn path of General William Tecumseh Sherman, that it would be possible to achieve our clinch number of three.
And yet, the clinch number is now one; before we scored the winning run tonight we knew that Atlanta had held off the Tigers for a 5-3 victory. Our win over Boston had given us the second of the three components we needed. A night that started in a downpour ended, maybe not with a rainbow, but with a magnificent ray of hope: if we managed somehow to squeeze out a win over Price, we were in. Even if we lost to Price on Sunday, the Tigers would have two games, if needed, in which to lose one and be eliminated.
The pitching matchup for tonight’s game is the matchup that shows exactly why the Jays have an advantage over every other team in the AL East in terms of starting pitching. Although their records don’t reflect it, we all know that the Estrada-Porcello match was a sawoff, and in fact Estrada had the best of Porcello, as the game wasn’t decided until they were both gone, and Estrada left with the lead and a better pitching line, albeit an inning shorter than Porcello’s. And tomorrow, the prestige and hype of David Price notwithstanding, if Aaron Sanchez is at his best, the advantage lies with the Jays. That leaves tonight, and tonight is the proof of the superiority of the Jays’ starters, because there is no comparison between Jay Happ and Eduardo Rodriguez, the left-handed sophomore starting for the Sox.
Rodriguez had a pretty good rookie season with Boston in 2015, throwing 121 innings and going 10-6 with an ERA of 3.85 with, remember, a last-place team. This year, he
has had some injury issues, dealing with a knee problem that delayed the beginning of his season, and then he missed some time in August with a hamstring strain on the other leg. His numbers over the whole season show a drop from last year; he came into this game at 3-7 and 4.68. To be fair, though, like a number of other bottom of the rotation pitchers the Jays have faced this year, he has been consistently better in his recent starts, including eight innings of one-hit shutout ball against Oakland on September fourth.
When I mentioned that the game had started in a downpour, I was not writing symbolically. It really was pouring steadily at game time, and continued for at least the next five or six innings until it finally diminished.
Dizzy Dean, the superb Hall of Fame pitcher of the St. Louis Cardinals, circa 1930s, was not only a great pitcher, but a great wit, if in a folksy, play-dumb kind of way. His fame as a garrulous country tale spinner blossomed when he became a radio play-by-play man for the Cardinals after the end of his baseball career. One of my favourite Dean stories stems from his broadcasting during the second world war. At that time, weather reports were not allowed on American radio broadcasts, for fear that knowledge of weather conditions might be useful to an enemy planning a surprise attack. This ban covered all mention of the weather on all broadcasting.
One night, while covering a game being played in a steady drizzle, Dean just couldn’t help himself. “I ain’t supposed to say what the weather is like”, he announced, “but that ain’t sweat what is runnin’ down the pitcher’s face.”
When Rodriguez took the mound to face the Jays in the top of the first, I guarantee you that it wasn’t sweat what was runnin’ down his face. It wasn’t coming down as hard in the top of the first as it would later, and Rodriguez was able to retire the side in order on 14 pitches with a strikeout of Josh Donaldson, though he went 2-0 on two of the three batters, and 1-0 on Donaldson.
It was only a matter of time before a wet ball would become an issue, and it affected Jay Happ first, as the rain started coming harder. Happ simply has not had control issues this year, but he couldn’t find the plate in the rain and it cost him a two-run deficit on only one hit. After Dustin Pedroia grounded out to second on the first pitch of the game, Happ walked Xander Bogaerts and David Ortiz. Mookie Betts grounded softly to Travis at second. With no chance for a double play, Travis tagged Ortiz in the base path for the fielder’s choice, Bogaerts taking third. Then, pivotally, Happ issued his third walk, to Hanley Ramirez, loading the bases for Chris Young with two outs. Young stroked a single to centre scoring Bogaerts and Betts and the Sox had a two-run lead after one.
Then it was Rodriguez’ turn to try to find the plate with much worse conditions than he had faced in the first inning. It was hard to tell whether it was worse for him in the second than it had been for Happ, but he found it even harder to throw strikes, falling behind the first three hitters he faced and walking them all. Then he struck out Melvin Upton on a 1-2 pitch for the first out, bringing Kevin Pillar to the plate. Pillar went after the first pitch and hit it into centre for a two-run single and the game was tied. Jackie Bradley tried to throw out Troy Tulowitzki at third and his throw was off, allowing Pillar to take second. Unfortunately, Zeke Carrera and Devon Travis both fanned, blowing a great opportunity to take the lead on the Sox.
Despite the miserable conditions, both pitchers managed to keep the score at twos from the bottom of the second inning through the fifth. Happ gave up three hits and a walk over the four innings. Of some note in a game that would be close right to the end, one of the hits Happ gave up was a one-out single to David Ortiz in the fifth inning. Either playing for the winning run early, or just out of a desire not to wreck a rally by having Ortiz gum up the works on the bases, Manager John Farrell decided to run for Ortiz, and inserted Travis Shaw at first base. Unfortunately for Farrell, Happ stranded Shaw at first, and now Ortiz would not come to the plate again in this close game. While not particularly wanting to throw cold water on the warm feelings emanating from the Boston crowd toward their beloved slugger, I would point out here that it’s a mixed bag as to whether you really want a DH who might very well hit a home run for you, but is otherwise seen as a detriment to the team’s prospects.
Rodriguez was even more in control than Happ through five, walking only one and giving up two infield hits, and nothing more. But he had continued to pitch deep into counts, and after five stood at 102 pitches. When he walked Russell Martin leading off the sixth, that was it for Farrell, and he went to his bullpen for the hard-throwing Matt Barnes. It took Barnes just long enough to settle in for the Jays to take the lead. Troy Tulowitzki made the first out, but it was loud, a hard liner hit right at Jackie Bradley in centre. A walk to Michael Saunders moved Martin to second, and for the second time tonight Kevin Pillar came to the plate with a runner in scoring position and delivered the lead run with a single to centre that scored Martin and sent Saunders to third. Then Barnes was able to induce a double-play grounder by Zeke Carrera to end the inning.
Jay Happ sailed through the bottom of the sixth on eight pitches, but that raised his total pitch count to 97 for the game, so he was pretty close to the finish line as well. The interesting thing about Happ’s pitch count is that early on, in the rain, he threw a ton of pitches, but then he settled down to work very efficiently. After two innings he had thrown 52 pitches, but in the four innings from three through six he only threw 45.
Happ started the seventh by getting Christian Vazquez to ground out, but then he walked Dustin Pedroia, who was the last batter he faced. In the absence of Joaquin Benoit, Manager Gibbons now had to dig deeper, and sooner, than he had planned, so he called on Jason Grilli to come in in advance of his normal eighth inning stint. Grilli got a scare when the first batter he faced, Xander Bogaerts, drove Michael Saunders back to the wall in left where he then had to make a perfectly-timed leaping catch. Reprieved, Grilli fanned Travis Shaw, hitting in the DH spot he inherited from the departure of David Ortiz, triggering Grilli’s trademark walkoff rant.
Meanwhile, after Barnes the Red Sox went to demoted starter Joe Kelly, he of the great arm and live stuff, who had never really found his metier in the Boston rotation, but seems much more suited to coming out of the pen and just throwing hard. Farrell got a good two innings’ work out of him tonight, as he set down the six men he faced, striking out four of them, on 24 pitches for the two innings.
Gibbie was in the position of having to try to squeeze three shut-down innings out of only two back-end relievers, so he sent Grilli back out for the eighth, with not great results the second time around, though the veteran righty was met with incredible bad luck right off the bat, so to speak. With the Jays in the shift for the right-handed Mookie Betts, including Edwin well off first, Betts took a high ball one. Grilli sent the second one in high as well, but at the top of the zone. Betts started to swing, thought better of it, and checked. But while his bat was out over the plate, the ball nicked it, and rolled fair, rolled, rolled, right down the first-base line, right past the bag, and right down towards the right-field corner, where Zeke Carrera finally caught up with it, but it went as an easy double for Betts. Grilli then issued maybe a semi-intentional pass to Hanley Ramirez to set up the double play, and it was time for Roberto Osuna to take over, splitting the three-inning duty with Grilli.
Osuna got the best possible result out of Brock Holt who on a 2-1 count grounded into a 4-6-3 double play, with Betts moving on to third. Then came the most bizarre moment, perhaps, of Osuna’s season, and certainly the most bizarre moment of this ball game. Peering in for the sign, for some reason Osuna lifted his rear leg fom the rubber. Home plate umpire Quinn Wolcott immediately called a balk, which brought Betts in with the tying run, to the consternation of Osuna, his entire team, and the throngs of Jays fans watching on. Osuna quickly recovered and disposed of Jackie Bradley on a grounder to first on a 3-2 pitch, with Osuna covering.
On to the ninth we went, once again tied as the tension mounted, at least for Toronto fans, because the Jays still had skin in this game. As for Boston, Cleveland had already defeated Kansas City, securing the home-field advantage over the Sox, so Boston was now playing for dignity, and maybe to establish their hold over the Blue Jays, in case they should meet later in the playoffs.
The Blue Jays had to face Sox closer Craig “Batman” Kimbrel in the ninth, with the bottom of the order due up, Kimbrel in to hold the tie so that the Sox could walk it off in the bottom of the ninth. In his most recent appearances against Toronto, Kimbrel has had some control trouble. This time, it was Michael Saunders taking a leadoff walk on a 3-2 count. Dalton Pompey came in to run for him. Kevin Pillar, with three RBIs already under his belt, laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt to move Pompey to second. Then Kimbrel made his second mistake of the inning, wild-pitching Pompey to third. With the lead runner at third and one out, Zeke Carrera worked the count to full and then inside-outed a lazy fly ball to medium-deep left, where Brock Holt settled under it, ready to throw to the plate. The throw was off line, and Pompey crossed easily with the lead run.
That Roberto Osuna should have balked in the tying run beggars the imagination. That the Jays should have retaken the lead in the ninth without a hit, on a walk, a sacrifice bunt, a wild pitch, and a sacrifice fly, strains credulity even more, but there it is, and it was now in Osuna’s hands to protect the precious gift run.
For only the second time this year, Osuna would pitch two full innings, if he wrapped this one up. You have to go all the way back to May 19th in Minnesota to find the first time he went two. Tonight the extra work in the eighth didn’t seem to bother him, as he retired the Sox in order in the bottom of the ninth to secure not a save, but a win, thanks to his blown save in the eighth. He took fifteen pitches on top of the eleven he threw in the eighth to get a fly out to left by Aaron Hill, a grounder to second on which Devon Travis made a nice diving stop by Marco Hernandez, and another grounder to second by Dustin Pedroia. You haven’t really stopped the Red Sox cold unless you’ve retired the sparkplug Pedroia some time in the last inning.
So thanks to Jay Happ getting a good handle on the ball (literally), Kevin Pillar hanging in at the plate to drive in three, and Zeke Carrera willing a pitch into left to score Dalton Pompey, and despite Roberto Osuna balking in the tying run in the bottom of the eighth, the Jays now face game 162 of this very long, frustrating, but always interesting season on the very cusp of qualifying for major league baseball’s version of Russian roullette, the league wild card game.
Like I said at the outset, if someone had projected in the spring that this is where we would be, and told us how we would have gotten to this point, we never would have believed it. You can’t make this stuff up.