Long Ball Stories

You’ll recall that for yesterday’s post I modified the title of the popular Lemony Snicket series of gruesomely sad tweens’ novels, A Series of Unfortunate Events, for my title. But this time I have to use it straight up. Unfortunate events indeed.

After Tuesday’s amazing leap-froggin’-Coghlan, pinch-doublin’-Stroman extra inning thriller, you could have been excused for having a bit of optimism for the first time this year.

Toronto was 3 and 2 with two games to go on their first tough road swing of the year, and the players must have felt like they had some momentum going for once.

I don’t know whether it was the seemingly spurious early cancellation of Wednesday night’s game, forcing the scheduling of a day-night doubleheader on Thursday, but the euphoria of Tuesday night’s win, while it might have carried the Jays for a while in the first game Thursday, gradually dissipated over the course of a very long day and night, and by its end the troubled crew of players who just couldn’t put it together were on their way home to Toronto having been swept in the doubleheader, with the promise of 3-2 turned into the reality of 3-4, and the deeper reality that there seems no end in sight to Toronto’s disappointing start for 2017.

It’s true there were no great omens to be found in the pitching matchups for Thursday. The Cards had staff bellwether Carlos Martinez going in the day game, and Adam Wainwright, admittedly no longer the Adam Wainwright of old but still an imposing puzzle on the mound, going in the night game. Meanwhile, it was fill-in day for the Jays, who, in the absence of Jay Happ and Aaron Sanchez, were forced to turn once more to the “Buffalo boys”, Matt Latos and Casey Lawrence.

Game one of the day was an object lesson in not making any bets based on the perceived merits of the starting pitchers. Latos, showing much better command than in his first start, despite walking four, went pitch-for-pitch with Martinez. This is not to say that there were any long strings of batters retired by either pitcher.

Both pitchers went six innings. Martinez gave up five hits and three walks, Latos gave up three hits and five walks. The only real differences between the two were that Latos never had a clean inning, while Martinez had two, and Martinez, as could have been expected, doubled Latos’ strikeout total, 8-4.

Er, except for the fact it was the Jays who nicked Marinez for three runs, while Latos kept the Cardinals off the board, so that when both starters finished up after six innings, Toronto turned a 3-0 lead over to the bullpen.

The Jays struck early when Russell Martin took Martinez out over the centre field fence leading off the second.

The 1-0 lead held until the top of the sixth, when Martinez’ command failed him, and he hurt his own cause with an ill-advised and errant pickoff attempt at second. But it came down to unlikely hero Ryan Goins grounding a two-out base hit up the middle to score two and extend the Jays’ lead to 3-0. The inning went down like this: Jose Bautista worked a walk on a 3-2 pitch. Justin Smoak popped up. Russell Martin walked on a 3-2 pitch. Chris Coghlan fanned. Then Martinez carelessly tossed to second, as if Bautista was a threat to steal, a move that caught his mates by surprise. It allowed Bautista and Martin to advance to second and third. On a 3-2 count to Devon Travis, Martinez sort of intentionally walked him to set up the two-out force-all-around, and bring the presumably weaker stick, Goins, to the plate.

But it’s best not to take Goins for granted these days, and he delivered Bautista and Martin with a clutch hit that stretched Toronto’s lead to 3-0.

With the callup Latos at 82 shutout pitches, Manager John Gibbons figured he’d gotten the best from his starter that he could, and decided that six innings was more than enough. Martinez had fussed his way to 97 pitches through six, so by the start of the seventh inning the game was in the hands of the bullpens of both teams.

The Card’s bullpen was the first to crack. Manager Mike Matheny went to Tyler Lyons, a left-hander who surrounded himself with trouble immediately, but pitched out of it relatively unscathed. Kevin Pillar led off with a single. Zeke Carrera walked. Lyons hit Bautista to load them up for Justin Smoak, who promptly delivered Pillar with a sacrifice fly, extending the lead to four. Carrera was also able to advance to third on the play. But the rising stopped with one run as Lyons steadied and struck out Russell Martin and Darwin Barney hitting for Coghlan, thus escaping a first-and-third with one out situation.

First out of the bullpen for Toronto was Joe Biagini, and the Cardinals finally got on the board against him. With one out, Jose Martinez singled to centre. Kolten Wong hit a grounder to Devon Travis’ glove side, and he wisely chose not to try for the double play, taking the out at first with Martinez taking second. This brought Randal Grichuk to the plate, and he came through with the two-out single that scored Martinez with St. Louis’ first run. But, like the Jays in the top of the inning, the Cardinals lost the chance to do more damage when Grichuk tried to advance to second on the play and was cut down by a well-executed cut-off play, Pillar to Smoak to Goins.

So, 4-1 to the eighth, and, as I like to do, time to count down the outs. Lyons came back out for the Cards in the top of the eighth and retired the side in order, though a couple of the outs were pretty loud. Joe Smith, who is gaining more confidence from Manager Gibbons by the appearance, was handed the ball for the eighth. Perhaps it was an omen that the low hard drive leadoff hitter Dexter Fowler hit to centre popped out of Kevin Pillar’s glove as he hit the ground, against all expectations, but there he was on second, to be delivered later in the inning by a Matt Carpenter single to right, so we went to the ninth still up 4-2.

So, 4-2, Osuna time; lookin’ pretty good, right? Well, yeah, until Yadi Molina hammered Osuna’s first pitch into left for a double, bringing the tying run to the plate with nobody out. But Osuna settled in, and soon enough Molina was still at second with two outs. He had to hold when Jose Martinez grounded out to short, and then Osuna fanned Kolten Wong. This brought Grichuk to the plate, who had victimized Biagini in the seventh for the Jays’ first run, but ended the inning with a bad baserunning mistake.

This time he victimized Osuna, and made no mistake about it. On one and one, Osuna left a 94 mph four-seamer out over the plate and Grichuk extended, getting all of it, and the Toronto lead nurtured so well the whole game was gone. It mattered little that Osuna ended the innng by fanning Dexter Fowler because the cat was out of the bag, and the chorus of concern over Osuna’s sagging fortunes started to grow louder.

It’s my sense that when you have a blown save in an away game it pretty much marks the end of the road, and that was the case in this one. The Jays went quickly and quietly in the tenth and eleventh, wasting a pinch-hit single by Kendrys Morales in the eleventh when Kevin Pillar hit into a double play.

On the other hand, the Cards knocked at the door in the tenth and Dominic Leone was lucky to escape with the game still tied, getting Jose Martinez on a fly to right after the Cards had loaded the bases with two broken-bat singles and an intentional pass to Molina.

Ryan Tepera came in to pitch the eleventh and was doomed from the start, as Kolten Wong led off by pulling an 0-1 fast ball right down the line that rattled around in the corner long enough for him to reach third. It would take a miracle to get out of this, but they were fresh out of miracles at the Hope Store on this day.

Following traditional strategy, the Jays put Grichuk and Fowler on, and pitched to Aledmay Diaz, who provided temporary relief by hitting a short fly to Zeke Carrera in left, with the Cards wisely holding Wong at third. This brought the left-handed Matt Carpenter to the plate, and the left-handed J.P. Howell, fresh off the disabled list, into the game.

Howell went to 3 and 2 on Carpenter. With the spectre of a second walkoff walk of the season looming, Carpenter threw a dinky curve that cut the heart of the plate. Carpenter timed it and parked it, unfortunately for the Cardinals wasting three extra runs they could have saved for the second game. Final score 8-4, now 6 wins and 15 losses and counting, and I don’t have the heart to count how many we should have won.

Lesson from today’s game one? Don’t blow a save in the other guy’s yard.

As soon as I saw the lineups for game two of today’s day-nighter I thought, okay, Gibbie’s resting important people, Casey Lawrence is pitching, and this game is gone already.

Though Toronto made it close at the end, I was right.

Look, I understand the basic principles of setting your lineup each game. Sure, double headers are hard, especially on catchers. So I was fine with Jarrod Saltalamacchia behind the plate. Fine, that is, with someone who’s leading the league in strikeouts and is zero for whatever in throwing out runners. Russell Martin wasn’t going to catch this game and that was that. But his bat was starting to get hot. Why not third base again? We got away with it Tuesday night; what’s to lose?

And why rest Bautista? In case you haven’t noticed, despite his hitting slump, he’s been as frisky as a young foal this spring, and surely would have been ready to answer the bell this time. Absent a stated reason for his sitting this one out, he should have been in there.

So we start with this black hole of strikeout prospects Salty and Steve Pearce hitting in the five-six holes, and you can just imagine the rallies going a-glimmering.

The thing is, Manager John Gibbons was really restricted in his pitching. I get that. He used six relievers in the first game, albeit some with a very light pitch count. And the Jays had a stretch of six games in six days coming up. Gibbie had to start Casey Lawrence and hope for innings, but he could have taken the approach of assuming the Cardinals were going to put up some numbers against Lawrence and try to stack his lineup in order to counter the Cards and turn it into a slugfest.

But—no Jose, no Martin.

Between the pitching issue and the lineup they put on the field, it was inevitable that the Jays would fall into a hole, and that’s exactly what happened. Sure, Lawrence could have been lights-out, but if he were ready to turn in a shutout, he wouldn’t be shuffling from Buffalo, would he?

On the other side of the hill, the Adam Wainwright of 2017 is not the Adam Wainwright of yore, but he’s still in the St. Louis rotation because he’s a veteran who knows how to pitch in the big leagues.

After the Jays wasted a single by Chris Coghlan in the first, the Cardinals went to work on Lawrence right away, and chalked up a big 3 in their half, though it was hardly Lawrence’s fault.

Dexter Fowler led off with a single. Shortstop Greg Garcia followed with a single to right, sending Fowler to third. Matt Carpenter, he of the walkoff grand salami in game one, hit a grounder to second that scored Fowler, but should have been a double play, except that Darwin Barney didn’t field it cleanly and had to take the out at first, Garcia advancing to second.

The Barney fumble was the first mistake Toronto made in the first. The second one can be attributed entirely to the coaching staff. With one out Garcia took off for third, and for once Saltalamacchia’s throw was good enough. But the ump called Garcia safe, and Gibbie waved off a review. The thing is, though, even the home replays had a perfect shot of Coghlan’s glove holding the ball, tagging Garcia on the helmet while his lead hand was still reaching for the bag.

So with Garcia on third when he should have been the second out, Piscotty lofted a sacrifice fly that scored Garcia. Okay, two outs, two runs in, let’s walk it off now. Um, nope. Randall Grichuk, the villain of game one, hit a teaser to third and reached with an infield single. Now there’s bad luck in the mix. With two outs, Grichuk could be off with the crack, and scored on Matt Adams’ double to left. If Grichuk doesn’t get on, Adams never comes to the plate. In the real world, though, Kolten Wong struck out to leave Adams at second, and a seriously hitting-challenged Blu Jay lineup was down 3-0 from the outset.

Like Chinese water torture, the Cardinals dripped, dripped away at Lawrence and the Jays. In the second, Dexter Fowler hit a solo homer with two outs. A big problem with Lawrence in this game was his inability to hold runners, which was coupled with Saltalamacchia’s inability to throw anyone out. In the third Piscotty walked, stole second, and scored on a single by Adams. In the fourth Lawrence let Wainwright get a leadoff base hit, and he came around to score on a broken-bat single, a walk to load the bases, and a fielder’s choice.

By the time it came to the top of the fifth, it was 6-0 St. Louis. Oh, and the Jays? It’s not like Wainwright was mowing them down, but they couldn’t come up with the base hit when they needed it. They loaded the bases in the second, just in time for Lawrence to come to the plate with one out. He hit a come-backer to the mound for the force at the plate, and Pillar flied out. In the third a one-out Zeke Carrera single was erased when Kendrys Morales hit into a double play. In the fourth they went down in order.

This brings us to the top of the fifth, with, remember, the Cards up 6-zip. Then the Jays came to life and made the game close before going back to sleep for the rest of the night. Darwin Barney led off with a double to left. Lawrence successfully bunted him to third. Kevin Pillar scored him with an infield hit. Chris Coghlan doubled to right, sending Pillar to third. Zeke Carrera struck out for the second out. That brought Kendrys Morales to the plate, and Morales brought the Jays within two with a two-out, three-run homer to right.

In the bottom of the fifth, Lawrence’s last, he finally managed to keep the Cards off the board, though he had to strand Matt Adams’ leadoff double in the process.

So at the end of five it was 6-4 Cardinals, and at the end of eight and a half, it was still 6-4, the Cards had swept the day/night double header, and taken the series. The Jays would head home with a 3-4 record on a tough road trip that could easily have been 5-2, with a little bit of luck, but there’s not a lot of luck raining down on Toronto these days.

The rest of the game? Oh, the Jays had exactly one base runner for the rest of the game. In the seventh, Devon Travis, the second last batter faced by Wainwright, singled to left. Kevin Pillar lined out to the left fielder, and Brett Cecil took over. Travis stole second and third almost at will off Cecil, but Cecil was focussed on fanning Jose Bautista, who hit for Coghlan, and popping up Carrera to the second baseman in foul territory. They had gone out in order in the sixth against Wainwright, again in the eighth against Kevin Siegrist, and the ninth against Trevor Rosenthal, who picked up the save.

As for the Jays’ bullpen, Aaron Loup managed to survive filling the bases with walks in the sixth, and then retired the side in the seventh. Danny Barnes had an adventurous ride in the eighth, but kept the Cardinals off the board, with the help of some timid base-running by the Cardinals, and an exciting tag play on the contact play at the plate. With Fowler parked at third instead of scoring on Matt Carpenter’s grounder to Morales at first, Piscotty hit a grounder to third and this time Fowler broke. But third baseman Jose Bautista (yes, that’s right; he stayed in to play third after hitting for Coghlan) made a great throw around the runner in time for Saltalamacchia to make the tag on Fowler.

You have to give Casey Lawrence credit for gritting out five innings, and saving a tired bullpen, as only Loup and Barnes had to be used and made unavailable for the first game with Tampa Bay back home tomorrow night.

Such are the small gifts you can take away from losing a doubleheader and falling to six and sixteen, heading into the last weekend in April. Can the train wreck be averted?

A note from yer humble scribe: this is a very long piece, but perfectly suited to the dramatic circumstances of the game it describes. If you’re the sort of person who starts worrying about the parking fee you’ll have to pay after two hours of an excellent production of Macbeth, perhaps you should search out the game story in one of the daily newspapers.

If you’re reading these game stories regularly, you probably don’t need much convincing that baseball is the most dramatic and damnably exciting of games.

This was the first meeting, an inter-league affair, between the shockingly bottom-feeding (at the moment) Toronto Blue Jays and a St. Louis Cardinals team that so far this year has underfilled expectations only slightly less than Toronto.

And yet it was a game for the ages, which had a little bit, no, a lot, of everything, with the added bonus that it resulted in a shiveringly close Toronto win.

We had: two catchers in the lineup. A supposedly fielding-challenged DH cavorting around first base like a kid. A runner leap-frogging over the catcher to score. A pinch hit by a pitcher as the key to victory. A Brett Cecil implosion that for once didn’t fill us with anguish. And such old reliable occurrences as Marco Estrada dealing his pinpoint magic to no avail. What the hell is going on here?

This game will be remembered long after the stats of most of the participants have been forgotten. It’s a good job that everything is preserved on video these days,

because nobody would believe the story without the evidence.

Toronto’s players had to be suffering from a great deal of frustration on the overnight flight to St. Louis from Los Angeles. They had gone into Monday night’s series final against the Angels having won two out of three in the series, and with a solid chance of taking their first series of the year, with Francisco Liriano facing off against Jesse Chavez.

But we know how that worked out, and it wasn’t pretty. Chavez pitched way above expectations, the Jays didn’t hit worth a damn, and all the distraction created by a very unorthodox umpiring presence seemed to fall disproportionately on the heads of the Blue Jays. Result: a disappointing split, and now a series in which they would face the Cardinals’ still very good top three starters with Estrada and then fill-ins Matt Latos and Casey Lawrence going against them.

From the opposing dugout, Marco Estrada must present a very puzzling picture. He has a retro, almost sissy-looking (if I may be so crude) windup, with the straight-up knee kick, and he throws so easily, with such an off-handed motion, he might as well be a batting practice pitcher, just serving them up to be hit at will. His delivery resembles no other pitcher’s more than that of ol’ knucksie, R.A. Dickey.

But the results show that he’s an entirely different story when viewed from the batter’s box. The fact is he has maintained the lowest opponents’ batting average in the American League since his arrival in Toronto from Milwaukee in 2015. Think about it: opposing hitters hit .203 off him in 2015, .203 again the next year, and .223 last year. This puts him well ahead of such luminaries as Justin Verlander and Cory Kluber.

His ability to locate, to throw strikes with three different pitches, to throw possibly the best changeup in the game, and especially his ability to spot a below-average fast ball, often to the consternation of the guy at the plate, add up to a real pitcher, man, and it’s a wonder to watch him work.

His opponent last night in St. Louis was Michael Wacha, one of the young lions who have made the St. Louis pennant runs of recent years possible. Though he’s not quite in the top tier of young power pitchers, his 6-6 frame and his ability to throw strikes in the mid-90s put him in a very different mold indeed from Estrada.

To summarize the different impression each pitcher leaves, if Wacha strikes out the first two batters, as he did in the first inning of this game, you think, “Man, he’s good! I wonder if we’ll ever get to him?” And when Estrada strikes out the side, as he did in the sixth inning, you think, “But how’d he do that?”

The first three innings tonight were pretty much tit for tat. Wacha had 3 strikeouts, Estrada had 4, Estrada threw 43 pitches, Wacha 34, Each gave up a ground rule double, Estrada to Dexter Fowler in the first and Wacha to Ryan Goins in the third. The only difference was that the double by Goins was the only hit given up by Wacha, while Estrada also gave up a single to Jedd Gyorko. Unfortunately for Estrada, the Gyorko single knocked Fowler in, so St. Louis was holding a 1-0 lead after three.

In the fourth, the Jays struck for two, assisted by the first of 4 errors made by the Cards’. Zeke Carrera led off with an infield single off the glove of first baseman Matt Adams. Jose Bautista followed with a hard single to right. Right fielder Piscotty, reputed to have a great arm, tried to gun down Carrera who was going first to third. Unfortunately for thc Cards, the throw was accurate enough to bounce off the sliding Carrera’s helmet and into the Cards’ dugout. Carrera scored and Bautista ended up all the way around to third. With the score tied, Kendrys Morales promptly untied it by hitting a grounder to the left of third baseman Gyorko. Bautista had taken a good read of Morales’ ball, and broke for the plate. Gyorko only briefly considered going to the plate, and retired Morales at first. Third baseman Russell Martin (that’s right, folks, you read it here!) hit an infield singled behind second. Darwin Barney singled to centre, and then Wacha walked Ryan Goins.

This being the National League, Estrada was due up. Of course it was too early in the game to pull an effective starter, so Estrada had to hit. He created a bit of a buzz by working Wacha for 6 pitches before taking a called third strike to end the inning. But the Jays’ two runs, and Estrada’s long at bat elevated Wacha’s pitch count from 34 after three innings to 67 after four.

In their half of the fourth, in what would become a pattern for this game, the Cards picked up a run to tie the game. Estrada had to face seven batters and his count would rise to 72 pitches. Back-to-back doubles at the beginning of the inning, a ground-rule job by Piscotty, who seemed everywhere, and a shot by Jedd Gyorko to right, left runners at second and third with nobody out, because Piscotty didn’t get a good read on Gyorko’s shot, and only advanced 90 feet. He scored when the next batter, Yadier Molina, delivered him with a single up the middle for the Cards’ second run. Gyorko stopped at third. Estrada issued his only walk of the night to Matt Adams, which was probably a good thing, because he then fanned Grichuk and got Kolten Wong to hit into an inning-ending double play, to minimize the damage and keep the game tied.

Both teams went down in order in the fifth, and both pitchers worked out of mild trouble in the sixth. With one out, Wacha walked Russell Martin, and promptly wild-pitched him to second. But he fanned Jarrod Saltalamacchia for the second out, and retired Darwin Barney on a groundout to shortstop.

In the bottom of the sixth the very impressive Piscotty doubled to right centre, and the Cards had the tying run in scoring position, but then Estrada turned on the fog machine and struck out the meat of the St. Louis order, Gyorko, Molina, and Adams, to protect the lead.

Then came the wild and crazy seventh, which only fails to match the craziness of the seventh inning of game five of the 2015 ALDS because the stakes weren’t as high.

First of all St. Louis Manager Mike Scioscia decided to go to the pen with Wacha at 101 pitches over six innings, with two earned runs, five hits, one walk, and six strikeouts. He brought in this year’s relief corps’ surprise hit, Matt Bowman, who hadn’t allowed an earned run in 11 appearances covering 9.2 innings. Scioscia also pulled a typical National League “double switch” by inserting rookie Jose Martinez in the lineup, replacing Matt Adams at first base, but batting in the pitcher’s spot, while the sixth slot that had been occupied by Adams would become the pitcher’s spot.

If you don’t get the reason for the “double switch”, it’s done when a new pitcher comes into the game, but the pitcher’s spot in the batting order is coming up soon. In this case, Adams had just made the last out in the sixth inning, so Scioscia inserted his new pitcher there, and so wouldn’t have to worry about the pitcher’s turn at the plate until the lineup turned completely over. Got all that?

This was a game in which playing by National League rules would have an immense impact on the outcome, and Martinez’ insertion in the lineup was the first “National League” type move that would yield a clear result.

Bowman started out well by striking out Ryan Goins, but then he issued only his second walk of the season, to Chris Coghlan, hitting for Estrada, whose day was done after six innings pitched. Having to pinch-hit for the starter put Coghlan in the game for the moment, and what a moment it would be!

The walk to Coghlan turned the lineup over and brought leadoff hitter Kevin Pillar to the plate. That’s the Super Kevin Pillar, whose eleven-game hit streak had just ended in L.A. the day before. On a 1-1 pitch, Pillar swung late at a fast ball up and out over the plate, and hit a mighty drive to right, which looked like it might go out. Right fielder Piscotty tracked it back to the wall and leaped, but the ball hit hard off the wall and rebounded sharply back toward the infield.

Coghlan, who had held up just before second in case the ball was caught, took off as soon as it hit the wall, and looked like he had a good chance of scoring from first on the hit. But Piscotty not only has a good arm out there, but he’s quick as a cat. He came down from his leap, chased the rapidly rolling ball down, and fired it toward the plate, no time for any cut-off man foolishness. The throw was pretty accurate, and one-hopped to Molina who had to go five or six feet up the line to corral it.

By this time Coghlan was only a few strides away, and barrelling toward Molina, who was reaching down to field the throw. Coghlan’s options were only two: illegally plow Molina, or try to swerve around him without going out of the base path. But Coghlan, in the fraction of a second he had to decide, came up with a new wildly crazy option: What about flying?

The plan had to be launched, so to speak, as soon as it was created. Molina’s was still bent over, securing the ball. Coghlan launched himself into the air, head first, and soared in an arc over Molinas’ still crouching body. He looked like a showoff diving into a swimming pool. Like a head-first high jumper, his entire body curled over Molina’s helmet and down his back, seemingly without even touching him, though his belly may have brushed the top of the catcher’s helmet. Molina never had a chance to raise the ball in his glove and make a tag on the missile flying overhead. As Coghlan headed for earth, the plate directly beneath him, you had the sickening feeling that he was going to pile drive into the plate and break his neck.

But somehow he had the instinct to tuck his chin and reach out to land first on his hands, so that the back of his head touched the plate, and his momentum caused the rest of his body to roll in a perfect somersault. He lept up and ran away from the plate, awarding himself with his own safe sign for everyone to see, while Molina vainly tried to reach him with a tag, in case he had somehow missed the plate.

It was a moment in baseball history, I suspect, like no other. One comment from someone who was there suffices, with child-like wonder, to sum up the entire event. When asked about it later, Marco Estrada said watching Coghlan’s leap was “like seeing a unicorn.” Who knew Marco could have such sweet imaginings? Actually, there was another good comment from Twitter that referenced his leap to something from the Cirque du Soleil.

The run gave the Jays the lead, and Zeke Carrera then benefited from an increasingly shaky defence to bring Pillar in from third with the second run of the inning. He hit a chopper toward short and Pillar, reading the ball, broke for the plate. But the third baseman, Jedd Gyorko, crossed in front of the shortstop to pick it up, lost the handle on it, and both Carrera and Pillar were safe, Pillar with the second run.. Unfortunately, he died there when Bautista struck out and Morales bounced out to the first baseman for the third out.

So to the bottom of the seventh, with the reliable Joe Biagini on in relief of Marco Estrada, who left, after 101 pitches in the unusual position of being in line for a win.

Not for long, though, because the Cards turned on Biagini in a history-making way of their own, tied the game up again, and took poor Marco off the record.

Not that it was dramatic as Coghlan’s flying run, but having a rookie hit the first dinger of his major league career to tie the game was certainly something for Cards’ fans to savour. Biagini started off by fanning Randal Grichuk, but he had a spot of bad luck when Kolten Wong’s grounder to the left side couldn’t be played in time to first.

Now, remember the Cards’ double switch? The pitcher’s spot was due up, but coming to the plate was young Jose Martinez, who had been inserted at first in the top of the seventh when Wacha was replaced by Matt Bowman on the mound.

Now, Jose Martinez has baseball DNA. He was born in Venezuela, like his dad, Carlos Martinez, who was a journeyman infielder who debuted with the White Sox, and also played with the Indians and the Angels. His career came to an end in 1995 because of the onset of a disease that has never been disclosed, but that took his life in 2006, when his son, the Jose Martinez who would hit against Joe Biagini in the seventh inning of this game, was 18 years old. The interesting coincidence about Carlos Martinez is that in 1485 plate appearances in the big leagues, he hit 25 home runs, but the first one he hit came on 27 May 1989 for the White Sox against our very own Blue Jays. Interestingly he hit it in the sixth inning off the late John Cerutti, who had a good career as a pitcher with the Jays and then became a respected broadcaster and commentator, but also died young, of a heart condition at the age of 44, two years before the death of Carlos Martinez.

Such are the interesting and amazing vagaries that emerge from the narration of just one extraordinary, game.

And in that game, in the bottom of the seventh, Jose Martinez came to the plate for the first time in the game, with Kolten Wong at first and one out. On a 2-1 count, Biagini left a cutter out over the late, a little below the waist. Martinez jumped on it like it was a piece of double chocolate cake, and drove it over the fence in right centre. On Jose Martinez’ first career home run, fittingly hit against Toronto, the Cards retied the game. A common celebration ritual for Latin players after they have done something significant is to look upwards, kiss their thumb, and reach for the sky. It’s not hard to imagine what Fernandez the son was thinking as he made the gesture while crossing the plate for his first dinger.

After the damage was done, Biagini settled down and struck out Dexter Fowler and got the shortstop Aledmys Diaz to fly out to left. So the game entered an eighth inning when both teams threatened but neither scored. With two outs the Jays got a single from Darwin Barney and an infield single by Ryan Goins, but reliever Kevin Siegrist got Justin Smoak, hitting for the pitcher, to fly out to right to strand the two runners.

Similarly in the bottom of the eighth, The Cards got a one-out infield single by Jedd Gyorko off Joe Smith, when Smith was slow getting to the bag on a hopper to Smoak, and then the reliable Yadier Molina lined a trademark single to left. But Greg Garcia, hitting for the pitcher Siegrist, hit one sharply back to Smith, who calmly turned to second and started a neat 1-6-3 double play to end the threat.

Then came the wild, and ultimately disappointing ninth inning, in which the Jays’ hopes were raised to delirious heights by a lucky bit of karma, and then dashed to earth when the Cardinals again tied the game, and snatched a neat win out of their hands, for the moment, anyway.

How fitting was it that Cards’ manager Mike Scioscia trotted out his prize free agent acquisition, Brett Cecil, to try to hold the game at four all. From the Jays’ perspective, it was a mixed bag. If he blew them away, how would that look for the club management who let him walk? But there would be something bittersweet about it if they roughed him up to win the game.

Well, he didn’t blow them away, and they hardly touched him up, but he was still instrumental in handing Toronto a 5-4 lead. He walked Kevin Pillar, and then became fixated on holding him close, figuring that the Jays would have him timed pretty well. In the process of striking out Steve Pearce, he threw over to first three times, and the third one was the charm, as it sailed wildly down the line, allowing Pillar to come around to third. After the Pearce strikeout, Scioscia ignored the matchup issue and let him pitch to Jose Bautista, who hammered a 2-0 hanging curve into left field for the base hit that brought Pillar home and gave the Jays the lead.

Scioscia yanked Cecil after the RBI and brought in the oddly-named Venezuelan right hander Miguel Socolovich, which turned Kendrys Morales around to his less productive left side, and on the second pitch from Socolovich Morales bounced into a double play to end the inning, with the Jays on top 5-4, and for once in this difficult spring it was Osuna time!

On the few occasions this year when Osuna has been put in as the tradional closer, he has shown mixed results. Doubts linger as to whether he’s fully recovered from the neck pain that put him on the disabled list at the beginning of the year. And the worst thing that can happen to a closer is to put the first hitter on.

But that’s exactly what he did. He threw five pitches to Randal Grichuk, every one of them low and away. He couldn’t get Grichuk to bite, except that he fouled off the second one, so on 3-1 he threw a curve in the same spot and Grichuk went down and got it and knocked it into right centre for a base hit.

The rest of the inning played out like your worst-case scenario. Kolten Wong bunted Grichuk to second, bringing up the young Martinez again. This time he hit one up the middle, but second baseman Devon Travis was stationed right and able to make the play to first to retire Martinez. Meanwhile, Grichuk moved up to third, now with two outs and Dexter Fowler coming to the plate. Osuna was able to keep Fowler from driving the ball to the outfield, but his loopy litttle flare into the hole between short and third just evaded Darwin Barney’s reach to catch it on the fly, and it was so weakly hit that by the time Ryan Goins reached it on the backhand, there was no chance of retiring Fowler, and Grichuk, of course scored to tie it up.

Osuna retired the Cardinal shortstop Diaz on a liner to Jose Bautista in right, but there it was, dinky and unfair as it may have been, but another blown save for Osuna, and the Jays now had to navigate extra-innings again.

Socolovich mowed Toronto down in order in the tenth inning on 8 pitches, giving him five outs on only ten pitches. Then a pumped-up Jason Grilli showed his passion by striking out the side in the bottom of the tenth, facing down the meat of the order, Stephen Piscotty, Jedd Gyorko, and Yadier Molina.

Maybe that picked the Jays up somehow, but a wonderful thing happened in the top of the eleventh. This game will not be remembered solely for Chris Coghlan’s somersault run.

Socolovich returned to the mound, and got Goins to fly out to centre. This brought the pitcher’s spot to the plate, and a problem for Manager John Gibbons, having to manage in a National League. By now Gibbie had exhausted his bench of position players as pinch hitters. We don’t know whether it was because he wore down the manager’s resistance with his whining, or Gibbie had it as plan B all along, but who should emerge from the dugout to hit for Grilli but the inimitable, effervescent, Marcus Stroman. We do recall of course that Stroman played a good bit of his college career at Duke in the infield before transitioning full time to pitching. But facing Miguel Socolovich, who had retired six in a row at Busch Stadium in St. Louis is hardly the Duke varsity baseball team.

But there he was, standing in against Socolovich. The first pitch was a fast ball up in the zone, probably the best that he saw, but he swung and missed. Then he swung over the next pitch, a nasty slider in the dirt. He finally made contact on the third pitch, which was out over the plate and he fouled it off. He showed a bit of patience then, taking an outside pitch for ball one. On the fifth pitch, Socolovich threw another slider, but this time left it up over the plate, and Stroman reached out and made good contact.

Like the Coghlan leap, you could play this out in slow motion all you want, and never get tired of it. Stroman pulled the ball and it sailed on a line over Jedd Gyorko and down into the left-field corner, an easy double for Stroman, who runs well.

Let’s say this now and get it out of the way: Stroman’s double was the first pinch hit by a pitcher in the history of the Toronto Blue Jays.

But he was just at second base with one out, and there was no guarantee that his heroic feat would mean anything to the game. Now it was up to his mates to finish it off. The resurgent Kevin Pillar failed to do the job, popping out to the second baseman. This brought Steve Pearce to the plate, and the stats guys would probably say that the probability that Stroman would score from second with two outs and Pearce at the plate was pretty well infinitesimal.

But then we had some dejá-vu all over again. Pearce hit a hard grounder into the hole, on shortstop Diaz’ backhand. With two outs Stroman was off on contact and had rounded third in time to see Diaz’ desparate throw to first tail away from, you guessed it, Jose Martinez, not a regular first baseman. The throw may have been catchable or not, we’ll never know, but Stroman was watching the play as the throw skipped past Martinez and escaped down the line into the corner. As soon as the ball got past Martinez, Stroman was able to score the lead run easily.

I shouldn’t have to remind you that both Stroman and Martinez were principals in this play only because it was being played in a National League park.

Pearce took second while Socolovich was pitching to Bautista, who put a jolt into it, but saw it hauled down deep in right by Piscotty to end the inning.

There was, of course, drama to be had in the bottom of the eleventh. Backup catcher Eric Fryer singled to right leading off against Ryan Tepera, in to try to close out the game. Randal Grichuk hit a grounder to third and they got the force on Fryer at second, but it was too late to turn two and Grichuk was now on first. Then it got dicey, as Tepera bounced one that Russell Martin couldn’t corral, and Grichuk moved up to second on the passed ball.

Tepera eased the tension a bit by fanning Kolten Wong, bringing, wouldn’t you know it, Jose Martinez to the plate. This time Martinez kept the ball in the park, but he put a scare into everybody by looping a soft liner to centre that Kevin Pillar managed to get to for the final out, making the catch sliding on his knees, as he so often does.

So ended this crazy, epic game, with a 6-5 Toronto victory in eleven innings. I don’t need to reiterate that this game had everything, and Toronto for once came out on top, by claiming more of the everything than the other guys.

Uncertainty looms, however, as the next two games will be started by Matt Latos and Casey Lawrence, the two pitchers filling in for the injured Jay Happ and Aaron Sanchez.

Let’s be clear right from the start: once again the Blue Jays lost because they didn’t hit and wasted base-runners. Once again they failed to take advantage of a good pitching performance, this time by starter Francisco Liriano.

So it’s not like poor Devon Travis cost them the game all by himself. Way back when, the popular daily comic strip Li’l Abner featured an unfortunate little character with the unpronouncable name of “Joe Btfsplk”, who always appeared with a little dark cloud over his head, which followed him everywhere because he was so unlucky. Last night was just one of those nights for the beleaguered Toronto second baseman, as he was at the centre of the three most crucial moments in the game, and not in a good way.

And it’s not like the inconsistent performance and bizarre behaviour of home plate umpire Toby Basner, abetted by a crew chief who refused to assert his authority over the game, cost the Jays the loss, but Basner sure as hell didn’t help things along.

To get back to Travis, his bad luck came in threes, in the proverbial manner. First, with the score tied at one in the fifth inning, the Angels had runners at second and third with one out and Yunel Escobar at the plate. As befitted the circumstances, the Jays had their infield in for a possible play at the plate, though the runner at third was the speedy Cameron Maybin. Escobar grounded one right at Travis at second, who picked it up quickly and unloaded to the plate with dispatch, but his throw was low, and Martin had to take it on the hop. This gave Maybin the chance to slide around Martin and brush the plate with the eventual winning run.

Second, in the seventh inning Travis was the victim of an inexplicable call by Basner behind the plate, a call that took the wind out of an incipient rally. Chris Coghlan had led off with a line single into right field. The Jays, looking for any extra edge to work out of the funk the team is in, put on the hit and run. Yusmeiro Petit, after a pretty fine three innings against Toronto in the first game of the series Friday night, was on the hill for the Angels. Given his impressive performance then, it’s not surprising that Toronto would be trying to scratch out a run off him.

So Coghlan broke for second on a 1-0 count. The pitch was out of the zone, but Travis swung through it to try to protect the runner. Luckily for Coghlan, or so we thought, catcher Martin Maldonado’s throw to second was high, and Coghlan was called safe at second with a stolen base. But wait! What? Plate umpire Basner was giving the “out” sign, but why? More precisely, for whom? Then it became semi-clear: Basner was calling Travis out for some reason, and sending Coghlan back to first.

As the replay showed, Travis, in the course of a normal swing, while still fully in the batter’s box, had nicked Maldonado on the left shoulder with his bat on his follow-through as the catcher was lunging forward to make his right-handed throw.

Without getting all rule-booky here, apparently Basner could have gone two ways on this: he chose “batter’s interference” with the catcher, which allowed him to call the batter out and return the runner. He could also have called “backswing interference”, which seems more to the point, since there was no evidence that the tap of Travis’ bat on Maldonado’s shoulder caused his high throw. In this case, Coghlan still would have gone back to first, but Travis would only have been assessed a strike.

Stand-in Manager DeMarlo Hale did manage to get crew chief Jerry Layne, stationed at second, involved in the discussion, and it looked like he was trying to smooth over the mess, but he wouldn’t go so far as to throw his younger colleague under the bus, though it’s clear that he could have done.

Another possibility, as former major league catcher Gregg Zaun noted after the game, is that he could have done nothing, which has apparently been the decision in most such cases of incidental contact between a bat and a throwing catcher over the years. But no, Basner called Travis out and returned Coghlan to first, instead of, best case scenario, Coghlan on second, nobody out, and Travis still alive at the plate. Naturally, I guess, the wind was out of Toronto’s sails, and Coghlan died at first when Ryan Goins popped out and Kevin Pillar made the third out on a short fly ball.

The third act of Travis’ not-so-good night came in the top of the ninth. With the Angels’ bullpen in disarray, and their most recent closer, Cam Bedrosian, just put on the disabled list, Manager Mike Scioscia tabbed well-traveled veteran starter Bud Norris, who was awarded his first major league save Saturday afternoon, to stand in as the closer.

Things started well for the Jays against Norris. Justin Smoak scorched a liner into right for a base hit, and was immediately pulled for the pinch runner Darwin Barney. Russell Martin, who had a single in his first at-bat, and produced Toronto’s only run with a long drive to centre in the top of the fourth, his bat seeming to be coming alive, drew a walk on a three-two pitch. This brought Chris Coghlan, who had gone one for three, to the plate. DeMarlo Hale put the bunt on, but Coghlan, who last played for the Cubs last year and with most of his experience in the National League, disappointed for the second game in a row and failed to get the bunt down. Rather, after two fouled attempts, he struck out on a marginal checked swing call by third base umpire Marvin Hudson.

This brought the star-crossed Travis to the plate. He worked the count to 2-1 against Norris, and then put a good swing on the next offering. Unfortunately, Danny Espinosa was stationed almost at the bag at second in the shift, and made a nice grab of the sharply-hit ball, and started an easy 4-6-3 double play to end the game, granting Travis the trifecta of plays that, his fault or no, contributed the most to Toronto’s frustrating loss.

Let’s leave Devon Travis to lick his wounds for the moment, and consider the other distracting story line of tonight’s game, and that’s the fella on the other end of the “batter’s interference” call, home plate umpire Toby Basner.

It wasn’t like the seventh-inning strangeness concerning Maldonado and Travis was the only time Basner imposed himself on the proceedings. First of all, both to my eye and to the supposedly objective presentation of PitchCast, Basner was wildly inconsistent both on, and off, the outside corner all night. The same pitch close to the outside corner was often a ball, and less often, but still at crucial moments, a strike. And maybe I’m just an old homer, but from what I saw the calls that Francisco Liriano wasn’t getting from Basner were more frequent than the calls on the same balls that Angels’ starter Jesse Chavez was getting against Jays’ hitters.

There’s a line in the old pop song from the sixties, “Standin’ on the Corner, Watchin’ all the Girls Go By” that goes “Ya can’t go to jail for what you’re thinkin’.” It seemed from the way Basner behaved in the top of the sixth that he does not find himself in agreement with that sentiment. With two out and Justin Smoak on first with a walk, Martin had worked the count to 3-2 on Chavez, when he took ball four, or so he thought. You can check GameDay right now and see that the computer had the pitch a full grid square off the plate, which works out to five inches and a bit.

Martin could not have failed to notice in his mind that when Basner punched him out on the pitch, he giving Chavez a call denied to Liriano the whole night. Here is what we saw before the broadcast went to commercial break: Martin, disgusted, slowly walked away from the plate, his head in a posture of disgust. It was hard to tell if he actually said anything, but as he walked away, Basner, mask off, glared at his retreating back as if he had just been mooned.

Here’s what we did not see, but were told happened: Basner followed Martin back to the dugout like a stalker. Martin never turned around. Near the dugout, Manager Gibbie said something to Basner. There was a report that he pointed at his wrist, as if at a watch. Perhaps he was saying that if the pace of play was so damned important, why was he wasting his time escorting Martin back to the dugout? And bingo, Gibbie was gone for the second night in a row, and for the second night in a row, only because incompetent umpiring had made his ejection a foregone conclusion.

Now, I said at the outset that neither Travis’ misadventures nor Basner’s incompetence cost the Jays the game, but I’ve spent a lot of time talking about both, right? Okay, guilty, but there’s a lot more drama in those topics than there is in the Jays having another cheap win eked out against them because they didn’t hit somebody they should have hit.

I mean, after Mike Scioscia had to use Jesse Chavez in relief in the thirteenth inning Friday night, to the delight of Jose Bautista who took him downtown for the game-winning hit, and even though Scioscia gave him an extra day’s rest, the Toronto hitters had to be looking forward to teeing off against their former team-mate.

But sometimes when anticipation meets reality, reality bites, and Chavez turned in a tidy little job against the Jays, going six innings, giving up one run, the Martin solo shot, on four hits, with four walks and seven strikeouts, on 101 pitches. Sure the walks and a propensity to fall behind in the count elevated his pitch total, but he still left with the lead and walked away with the win.

On the other hand, though he held the Angels in check, Liriano was just that little bit less fine than he’d been in his last couple of starts, as seen by the fact that it took him 97 pitches to navigate five and a third innings, walking an unwieldy four but fanning only two, unusual for him when he’s on. Whether Liriano started out a little off, or Basner threw him off with his lousy strike zone, is really a chicken-and-egg thing. Incidentally, with this outing Liriano’s ERA fell another half a run, from 5.11 to 4.58, which is looking pretty god for a guy who was at 135.00 after his first start of the season.

The relievers of both teams, Yusmeiro Petit, David Hernandez, and Norris for the Angels, and Dominic Leone, who came in and struck out Espinosa and Maldonado to strand the loaded bases he inherited from Liriano, Joe Smith, and Jason Grilli, were all effective, with the result that the score standing when the starters came out was the final score of the game.

The Angels didn’t exactly distinguish themselves in the way they scored each of their runs. After Martin’s homer in the fourth gave Toronto a brief lead, Mike Trout hit a feeble fly down the right field line that landed miles from Bautista, who was playing him to pull, of course, and kicked into foul territory. It was a double all the way, but then Bautista’s cleats hit the apparently rock-hard warning track and he skidded off his feet while going for the ball. Trout ended up on third with a very tainted triple.

With nobody out and Albert Pujols up, there was no way that Trout was not going to score the tying run, and Pujols ended the suspense right away by lining a single to left. After, the side went down in order.

Then, of course, there was the low-throw contact play in the fifth that gave the Angels the lead for good.

Notable for the Jays in the game were Ryan Goins, who continued to sparkle in the field while filling in for Troy Tulowitzki, and picked up a base hit besides, and on a sad note Kevin Pillar went oh for 3 with two strikeouts and a walk to bring his 11-game hit streak to an end.

‘Twould have been nice to take three out of four in L.A. but we didn’t, and the split just means we have to work a little harder to get on a roll, which should happen soon. It’s gotta happen soon.

Note from yer humble scribe: I have to face the fact that I won’t catch up with the current game in my reports any time soon unless I cut the cord and move forward. So from now on my first priority is yesterday’s game, and I’ll fill in the missing five, two home games against Boston, and the first three games of the Angels series, as time permits.

So here’s what I imagine happened before today’s game. All the Toronto pitchers got together for a meeting to air out their concerns and to try to find a way forward out of this terrible start.

While most of them realized that they couldn’t really be faulted as a group for the team’s 2-11 record, they did have to acknowledge that last night’s 8-7 loss to Boston fell squarely on their shoulders. After all, for once the hitters had pulled their weight, scoring seven runs on twelve hits, with three home runs, no less. But from starter Marcus Stroman on down, the pitchers hadn’t been able to hold the Bosox in check, and the long-awaited seven-run outburst just made the final score close.

After much discussion, the only possible conclusion I can imagine they reached was that if the team was ever going to win its third game, let alone start producing like the contenders they think they should be, the pitching would just have to kick-start the process by keeping Boston off the board. Completely.

And that’s exactly what they did. Francisco Liriano went five and a third shutout innings, gave up four hits and one walk with six strikeouts and 91 pitches. He gave up an excuse-me wrong-way single to Zander Bogaerts in the second, but then fanned Chris Young to strand Bogaerts. In the fourth he broke up Mookie Betts’ amazing streak of 128 at-bats without a strikeout, shocking all the participants so much that Troy Tulowitzki made a rare error on a grounder by Hanley Ramirez, extending Liriano’s inning so that he could fan Mitch Moreland with a nasty slider.

In the fifth inning he allowed two baserunners for the first time by walking Bogaerts and later giving up a base hit to Sandoval, before he got Sandy Leon to bounce into an easy double play, what with himself and Sandoval as the runners.

So through five innings he’d allowed only four baserunners, but in the sixth after retiring Dustin Pedroia on a groundout to third he gave up back-to-back singles to Andrew Benintedi and Betts. Perhaps antsy because of the team’s record, Manager Gibbons’s came out with the hook for Liriano, and brought in Joe Biagini, who took only two pitches to get Hanley Ramirez to ground into a double play.

Biagini pitched a clean seventh to go one and two thirds on only twelve pitches, and handed it over to Jason Grilli for a somewhat adventurous eighth in which he threw 20 pitches and gave up a single and a walk but kept the Sox off the board.

Likewise for Roberto Osuna who gave up a single to Mitch Moreland but left him there when he struck out Bogaerts and got Chris Young to ground into a force to end the game and finally secure his first save of the year.

So the pitchers delivered their shutout, but what were the chances that their mates would come up with a marker or two to take advantage of all the Boston goose eggs?

As it turns out, pretty good, with some significant help from a usually sure-handed Boston defence.

It wasn’t like they were going to blow the Sox away, with Rick Porcello going for Boston. His first inning might have given Toronto pause, as he induced four ground balls, one an infield hit by leadoff hitter Kevin Pillar, and the other three easy outs, on only seven pitches.

But in the second the Boston infield let Porcello down big time. Troy Tulowitzki, the first hitter for the Jays, hit a ground ball to Pablo Sandoval,a routine chance, but Sandoval threw it over Mitch Moreland’s head and Tulo was on. Russell Martin then hit a bouncer to first that might even have been turned into a double play, given the two runners involved. But Mitch Moreland, signed to be the Sox’ full-time, competent two-way first basemen, just missed it, and it trundled down the line far enough that Tulo got to third and Martin to second on the error.

Porcello fanned Justin Smoak for the second out, but Darwin Barney dug deep and refused to forgive Porcello offering him a 3-1 fast ball right down the middle. The ball bounced back up the middle and into centre field for a two-run single. Suddenly, Porcello was two runs down, through no fault of his own, both runs being unearned.

But the damage wasn’t done yet. After Devon Travis lined out to right, Pillar picked up his second hit, a single to left, bringing up Zeke Carrera with two outs and runners on first and second. When he worked the count to 3-2, Barney and Pillar were off with the pitch, and Carrera’s single to right scored Barney with a third unearned run, with Pillar coming around to third. Jose Bautista ended the uprising with a short fly to left for the third out.

So after two it was Toronto with three unearned runs and Boston with no runs of any kind.

And there the score stayed for the rest of the game. Porcello went seven full innings, and was in trouble only in his last inning, the trouble being the sole responsibility of Mr. Pillar, who, with one out, singled to centre, stole second, did not advance to third on Carrera’s fly ball to right, then stole the base anyway, only to die there when Bautista fanned to end the inning.

The line for Porcello, who obviously deserved better, was seven innings, 3 unearned runs, 6 hits, 1 walk, 5 strikeouts, and 110 pitches. Eduardo Rodriguez, freshly returned from the paternity leave that kept him from the start yesterday, was asked to finish up for Boston, and he retired the Jays in order in the bottom of the eighth with two strikeouts and a ground-ball out, on only pitches.

So that’s not a bad formula for a team to win ball games: hang a horse collar on the other team, and take advantage of the errors they might make.

Let’s try that one again.

April eighteenth. Patriots’ day. Yeah, I know, the Red Sox played their Monday morning game at home yesterday while the Boston Marathon was being run, but the actual date of Patriot’s Day, which memorializes the legendary ride of American spy Paul Revere to warn his fellow insurgents that the British regulars were on the march, is April eighteenth.

At least symbolically the Toronto Blue Jays were kind of up against it today, descendants of those self-same Brits, having to face off against America’s favourite team on such a portentous anniversary, especially after the embarrassing licking laid on them by the Baltimore Orioles just two short days ago.

And yet, there was some reason to be optimistic. The pitching matchup, for one thing. Marcus Stroman has been the most consistent Jays’ starter throughout the spring, and now has to take on more of the burden of a stopper with both Aaron Sanchez and Jay Happ on the shelf for the time being.

On the other hand, Eduardo Rodriguez was slated to start for Boston tonight, but some events take on more importance than a mere professional baseball game, and Rodriguez is away from the team at the moment on paternity leave, following the birth of his son. Brian Johnson, with all of one major league start, four and a third innings against Houston in July 2015, has been called up from the Sox’ Triple A affiliate in Pawtucket to take the start for Rodriguez.

On the other, other hand, if there’s one team that Marcus Stroman has struggled against in his short major league career, it’s the Red Sox. Last year, for example, he started three times against the Sox, and, though he only took one loss, he gave up 18 runs and lasted only sixteen and a third innings.

So what may have looked like a mismatch between the seasoned young Stroman and the callup Johnson on closer examination didn’t look like such a sure thing at all.

Stroman cashed in a quick first inning against the Sox, giving up a leadoff hit to Xander Bogaerts but getting much-hyped rookie Andrew Benintendi to ground into a double play, and seeing Mookie Betts ground meekly to second to end the inning on ten pitches in efficient Stro-show fashion.

From the onset it looked like Johnson might just be the tonic the offensively-challenged 2017 Jays were looking for, as they grabbed a quick two-run lead in their half of the first, with a little help from Pablo Sandoval.

Kevin Pillar led off with a hard bouncer down the line to the left-field corner for a leadoff double. The ball easily beat a slimmed-down, recovered, rejuvenated Sandoval at third. Unfortunately, as the replay showed, Sandoval’s year spent recovering from injuries and a mid-career decline did not seem to include any defensive upgrading. While he might not have gotten to the ball and made the play anyway, his first reaction was woefully late, which made the thunderous dive that followed look rather futile.

After Jose Bautista—who else–struck out, Kendrys Morales delivered Pillar with a single up the middle. Troy Tulowitzki followed with a short hopper to third that was generously scored an infield single after Sandoval charged it but lost the handle trying to take it out of his glove.

Along with Pillar, Justin Smoak, continues to be a bright spot among the ranks of the under-performing Jays’ hitters. Hitting from his preferred right side against the lefty Johnson, he stroked a double to the wall in left centre that scored Morales and delivered Tulo to third.

Hopes for a really boffo start for Toronto faded quickly, though. Russell Martin hit a grounder to short with the contact play on, but Bogaerts’ throw to the plate was in time for the out on Tulo. Martin, however, alertly chugged into second on the play. But he died at second, and Smoak at third, when Johnson fanned Steve Pearce to end the inning.

If I ate a pancake for every runner Bautista and Pearce have stranded in scoring position so far this April by striking out, I’d be really, really fat. (Sorry, but I’m on an extremely weird diet at the moment, and I think about food a lot. A whole lot.)

After Stroman worked around a single and a walk in the top of the second, the Jays squandered another glorious opportunity to blow the game wide open against Johnson. With one out he walked Devon Travis, and Pillar followed with his second double down the line past Sandoval, who dove again, but didn’t have much of a shot at it. Travis had to be held at third, so Mananger John Farrell elected to pass Bautista to load them up with one out, only to have Morales fan, and then Tulowitzky give us a jolt by smoking one to right, but right at Mookie Betts for the third out.

So after two innings we had two runs, but wasted runners at second and third with one out in both innings. This would come back to bite us, we said to ourselves.

In the third the Sox zeroed in on the Jays’ starter, who fanned two and got the third out on a popup, but in the meantime gave up four solid singles, to Bogaerts, his second, to Benintendi, Betts, and Mitch Moreland, which delivered three runs and the lead for Boston.

Justin Smoak, who seems to have an affinity for left-handed fill-in starters, hit one out to left on the first pitch of the Jays’ half of the inning, his second extra-base hit off Johnson, and the game was tied again.

Still fighting to hold on, Stroman survived two base hits in the fourth and the Jays wasted a leadoff walk in their half, so it remained 3-3 going to the fifth, when the Sox zeroed in on him and knocked him out of the game.

In short order with one out Betts singled, Hanley Ramirez doubled, and Moreland doubled to give Boston a 5-3 lead, and just like that Stroman was out of the game, having pitched four and two thirds innings, giving up six runs on 11 hits with one walk and four strikeouts on 94 pitches. Aaron Loup came in to turn Sandoval around to his weaker right side, but the Panda knocked in Moreland with a single anyway, and Dominic Leone had to come in to mop up by getting Christian Vazquez to ground out to short on his second pitch.

What could have been a Jays’ blowout was now a 6-3 Boston lead, and a little more gloom descended on our slumping home town boys, though it lifted a bit in the bottom of the fifth when Russell Martin finally put a major crack in the horsecollar he’s been wearing by hitting a solo shot to left to cut the lead to 6-4.

Fast forward through a quiet Boston sixth delivered by an efficient Leone, who seems to be taking on some of the role, with some of the ability, of Joe Biagini in 2016. And through a Toronto sixth when John Farrell perhaps wisely decided to cash in his chips on Brian Johnson and brought in Heath Hembree, who managed to keep the Jays off the board despite giving up a single to Darwin Barney and a two-out walk to Bautista.

The run of bad luck so far this season has been marked by so many times when, as Toronto scrambled for every run in constant catch-up mode, their opponent seems to find it easy to pick up an add-on run here and there that just makes the hill to climb a little higher.

Just so, when the sidearmer Joe Smith came in to start the seventh and was greeted by a monster shot to the second deck in left by Mookie Betts, which extended the Sox lead to 7-4 before Hembree once again stranded two runners in the bottom of the inning, making ten runners left on base for the Jays so far, six of them in scoring position.

In the eighth the Sox chugged a little farther ahead, picking up a run when Andrew Benintendi hit a ground-rule double with Sandoval on with a single and Marco Hernandez with a walk. This came off Ryan Tepera, who gave way to Danny Barnes who averted further damage by stranding the runners at second and third when Betts popped his second pitch up to the catcher.

Now it was 8-4 Boston, and of course little things mean a lot. Who knew that with the Sox cruising, Benintendi’s RBI would end up being the difference?

The best combined efforts of Kevin Pillar and Pablo Sandoval gave the Jays another chance in the bottom of the eighth, but nothing came of it, raising the LOB count to 11, with 7 in scoring position. Fernando Abad had come on to pitch for Boston, and wasn’t showing a lot. Devon Travis hit a hard grounder right at Marco Hernandez at second for the first out, and then Pillar ripped his third double down the line past Sandoval’s third futile dive. I don’t know whether it was more funny or pathetic to see Panda pound his glove into the ground with frustration as he lay there.

Jose Bautista hit one deep enough to right to move Pillar to third, and that was enough for Abad. Matt Barnes came in to ensure that that Kendrys Morales would hit from his less-preferred left side, and he pulled a grounder to first for the third out.

Danny Barnes (I won’t call this one a Barnes-burner!) kept the Sox off the board in the ninth, working around a walk to Chris Young, and it was Matt Barnes’ turn to finish it off for the Sox, and he almost did, but in a bad way.

The Jays’ ninth was a textbook case of the old peewee baseball coach’s plaintive cry, “It all starts with two!” Tulo grounded out. Smoak grounded out. Russell Martin walked and took second while being studiously ignored by the Sox infield. This brought Steve Pearce to the plate. If there’s any title for a frustrated hitter worse than Designated Rally Killer it would have to be Designated Game Ender, and based on the season so far Pearce would have to wear this sobriquet.

But, voila, Pearce knocked a single up the middle that scored Martin from second and closed the gap to 8-5. You could almost hear the wheels turning in Manager John Gibbons, head as he pondered a master move, inserting Zeke Carrera to pinch hit for Darwin Barney. And didn’t Carrera slash one down the left field line, and right over the fence for a two-run homer that cut the lead to 8-7?

But Devon Travis, filling in for Pearce as the DGE, lined softly to Bogaerts at short to end the game. Benintendi’s RBI thus stood up as the game-winner, making Ryan Tepera the loser, while ol’ Brian Johnson (remember him?), who left after five with a lead that was never relinquished, headed back to Pawtucket with his first major league victory under his belt, and congratulations to him for that accomplishment!

There was good news of a sort this morning before game time, and some definite bad news.

Not wanting to dance around someone else’s misfortune, the sort of good news for the Blue Jays, and the not so surprising news, is that Baltimore closer Zach Britton, sporting his 54 consecutive save streak, wouldn’t be available again today to face the Jays. Not only that, but he has been placed on the ten-day disabled list with “left forearm strain”.

Not that Britton has exactly blown away Toronto in his last three saves, but any run of Oriole games without Britton available to them is certainly good news for the rest of the division.

The bad news was equally unsurprising, but potentially much worse for the Toronto side. After being rocked by three home runs on Friday evening, there had been questions about Aaron Sanchez’ condition. An answer emerged this morning: Sanchez has been placed on the ten-day list as well in order to try to get a blister problem on his right middle finger under control.

The big consolation for Toronto as they’ve endured this terrible start to 2017 has been that for the most part the pitching, even the relief pitching, has been very solid, giving hope that should the hitting ever actually come around, it would not be out of the question that a good, long hot streak might develop.

But the Sanchez news came as a sharp reminder that depending on your pitching staff to stay perfectly healthy, as the Jays’ pitchers did for pretty well all of last year, only works as long as there are no negative reports coming from the trainers’ room. A pitching-rich team is only a couple of twinges away from disaster.

For four innings today Jay Happ and Dylan Bundy kept their opponents off the board, though it took a bit of wriggling on both their parts, and a fair number of pitches. Both teams got runners to third in the first inning, but neither scored. Happ created his own problem by rushing his throw for an error on Adam Jones’ one-out dribbler back to the mound. After fanning Mannie Machado, Mark Trumbo doubled to left, but Jones was held at third, to be stranded there when Happ got a weak fly ball from Chris Davis to end the threat.

Dylan Bundy did Happ one better by giving up a double to leadoff hitter Kevin Pillar, putting himself immediately in trouble. In a minor miracle, for the second day in a row, Zeke Carrera in the two-slot dropped down a bunt, moving Pillar to third, and getting a base hit out of it after the video review overturned the original out call on the field at first. So, runners on first and third with nobody out. And that’s where it stopped. Bundy fanned Jose Bautista on a 2-2 slider that dove low and away. Then Kendrys Morales pulled a ground ball into a 4-6-3 double play.

After the first the Jays wasted an infield single in the second and a walk in the fourth. The Orioles wasted two base runners, a single and an error, in the third, and an infield single in the fourth.

By the end of the fourth, Happ had thrown 59 pitches, and Bundy 63. Bend, but don’t break, and a scoreless tie going to the fateful fifth.

With Sanchez going on the DL, the last thing the Jays needed was another possible injury to a pitcher, but that’s just what they got in the Orioles’ fifth inning. Jay Hardy led off with a ground rule double to centre. Craig Gentry grounded out to Troy Tulowitzki at short, with Tulo making a nifty move to throw around the runner Hardy, who held the bag at second. This brought Adam Jones to the plate. The first pitch to him, a four-seamer well inside for ball one, was the last pitch Happ threw. He called out catcher Russell Martin. Russell Martin called out the trainer and the pitching coach, and Happ was done for the day with what would later be identified as tenderness in his left elbow.

Joe Biagini came in to replace Happ and gave up a single to Jones that scored Hardy. Jones got caught in a rundown with a sharp relay from Carrera in right to Morales to first to Tulo to Ryan Goins for the second out, and Mannie Machado popped out to Goins to end the inning. The Jays were now down by a run, but far worse they were down one valuable arm, with no idea of how bad it might be.

Bundy gunned down Russell Martin and Steve Pearce in the bottom of the fifth, gave up a base hit to Chris Coghlan and then survived a good at bat by Ryan Goins whose hard liner was right at Hardy.

Now the game, was squarely in the hands of the Jays’ bullpen, and it would be up to them to keep this one as tight as nearly every Baltimore-Toronto game in recent history has been.

But for the first and worst time this year, the Toronto ‘pen was decidely not up to the task. Manager John Gibbons brought Ryan Tepera in to start the sixth, and the wheels fell off immediately. Mark Trumbo singled to centre. Tepera wild-pitched him to second. Chris Davis walked. Wellington Castillo lined out to Goins at second for the first out. Rookie Trey Mancini, who already had a two-homer game against Boston, but only a couple of singles in eight at bats against the Jays, turned on a low inside fast ball from Tepera, got it all, and the Orioles were up 4-zip, but not done yet, hardly done yet.

Schoop singled to left and that was it for Tepera. On came Dominic Leone, who was greeted by a Jay Hardy run-scoring double. Leone then obligingly wild-pitched Hardy to third, a convenient perch from which to score on a Craig Gentry sacrifice fly to centre. Adam Jones finally struck out to end the agony, and a taut and fraught nail-biter was well on the way to being a laugher.

Bundy made short work of Toronto in the bottom of the sixth while working around a one-out single by Zeke Carrera.

I have to interject here that after Happ was removed from the game, I didn’t actually watch from the sixth inning on. I apologize, but it was Easter, and we had family for dinner, and it was all I could do to check in on the silent screen from time to time to monitor the action.

Which I did to my mounting horror. The first time that I checked in was as the Orioles were coming to bat in the top of the seventh. First I saw the score, which had suddenly transformed itself from 1-0 to 6-0. The second thing I saw was Troy Tulowitzki coming in to take an easy ground ball from Mannie Machado and somehow sort of bunting it away from him with the tip of his glove for a shocking and egregious error.

The next time I checked in was to discover that Leone had survived the Tulo error to keep the O’s off the board in the top of the seventh, and that the Jays had scratched out a run in their half of the inning. Relying on good old MLB GameDay, I discover that Tulo and Martin had led off with back to back base hits, with Tulo going to third on Martin’s hit. After Stefan Crichton, in relief of Bundy, fanned Steve Pearce, Chris Coghlan delivered Tulo with a sacrifice fly to centre. Jays’ fans hearts would have fluttered a bit when Ryan Goins doubled to left, Martin stopping at third, but then Crichton fanned Kevin Pillar to end the threat.

So Bundy had gone a tidy six innings, giving up no runs, walking one, and striking out six on 99 pitches.

When I was in university a long time ago, yer humble scribe digresses here, I spent an awful lot of time one year skipping classes to play euchre, that good old Canadian Legion hall classic. I couldn’t remember enough of the rules to play through a slow-motion hand now to save my life, but one thing I do remember is that when you play a loser card to get rid of it, it’s called “sloughing off”.

When Buck Showalter went to Stefan Chrichton to pick up Dylan Bundy, it was definitely a baseball version of sloughing off. Crichton, a 25-year-old right-hander, was drafted by the Orioles in the twenty-third round in 2013, precisely the 699^th player chosen that year. After pitching a full year in relief in Double A in 2016, he had two appearances in relief with Triple A Norfolk this spring before being called up to make his major league debut this Easter Sunday against Toronto.

Guess Showalter knew what he was doing. Crichton gave up the one run in the seventh and then sat down. By the time he returned to the mound for the bottom of the eighth, the Baltimore lead had ballooned to 11-1, and it hardly mattered who was serving them up for the Orioles, or what hand or foot, for that matter, he was using to do it.

Again reconstructing from an increasingly unstable GameDay (has anyone else noticed how bad it is this year?) which is so bad that the injury delay to remove Jay Happ somehow showed up again in the play-by-play for the eighth inning, John Gibbons called on recently-recalled lefty Matt Dermody to continue the mop-up operation for Toronto.

Poor Dermody must have forgotten his mop: Mancini led off with his second homer of the game. Jonathan Schoop singled to right. Jay Hardy fouled out to first baseman Kendrys Morales (yay!) Craig Gentry, if you can believe it, homered to left, for 9-1. Dermody walked Adam Jones. Mannie Machado homered to right for 11-1, and Gibbie finally ran up the white flag and rescued Dermody, sending in Aaron Loup to retire Mark Trumbo on a grounder to short for the second out, before Chris Davis singled to left and Castillo flew out to centre to finally bring mercy to the beleaguered home team.

It’s a measure of the wierdness of the day that the lefty-lefty specialist Loup came in and retired the slugging righty Trumbo, and then gave up a hit to the slugging lefty Davis.

Crichton got to face the cruel reality of what can happen to the ERA of a relief pitcher after one short appearance. After he got the first two outs in the bottom of the eighth, Justin Smoak ended up on third with a triple after Jones in centre and Trumbo in right apparently played volleyball with his deep drive. Something funny had to be going on for the lead-footed Smoak to score his second career triple in just 2604 at bats!

Anyway, Tulo delivered Smoak with a base hit, which brought Crichton’s maiden voyage to an end, with a line of 1.2 innings pitched, two runs on five hits with no walks and two strikeouts. Oh, the ERA? For his trouble, Crichton is now wearing an ERA for his major league career of 10.80. Tyler Wilson came on to get the third out as Pearce flew out to left, but only after he had walked Martin.

Loup stayed on in the ninth and came out unscathed while yielding the Orioles’ fifteenth hit, a two-out single by Jay Hardy, who was 3 for 5 on the day, not bad for a number nine hitter. In fact, however, it’s a measure of how potent Baltimore is that Hardy is hitting ninth.

Wilson gave way to Vidal Nuno to pitch the bottom of the ninth as Buck Showalter took the opportunity to air out another of his lesser-known bullpen arms. Not that it mattered, but the Jays picked up a couple more runs off him to make the final count a slightly less disreputable 11-4. With one out, Ryan Goins singled, and Kevin Pillar followed with his first home run of the year.

But the Pillar homer was the last gasp of a totally demoralized Jays’ team that fell to two and ten, and must have been looking forward to the day off Monday to lick their wounds before hosting the formidable Red Sox in a three-game series that starts Tuesday night.

When you start the season one and nine, any win will do, but this one was especially sweet.

It would have been great no matter how it happened. Whether it was a blowout, or a slop-fest, or one of those crazy sluggers’ games that end up 15-12, it would have been great.

But sweet? None of those would be called sweet by me. I would reserve sweetness for coming out on top in a classic, tight, well-played, well-pitched ball game that ends in the freeze-frame of sudden death.

I confess. Kendrys Morales’ winning blow in the bottom of the ninth came so quickly and unexpectedly that I missed it. I had run into the kitchen between innings to do something inane and unnecessary, and when I got back to the television, Morales was dancing around the bases with his happy teammates massed at the plate waiting to greet him.

Missing the actual moment might have put a damper on my elation, but after it was over it didn’t matter. The long-awaited second win of the season, the much anticipated harbinger of better days to come, had arrived, and that was all that mattered.

Does anyone else feel the same mixed emotions as me when waiting for Marco Estrada to take the mound? No matter how many times I feel the awe of watching him mesmerize fearsome sluggers deep into the game, the fact that he seems to do it with smoke and mirrors never changes the premonition I get before he throws his first pitch that this time that will be the day that the house of cards will fall and he’ll be exposed as the meek and unimposing imposter that we all secretly fear he is.

But it never happens, does it? Barring the rare day when the ball carries well and a couple of his fly balls go a bit too far—and when you look at the record you realize it doesn’t happen all that often—Marco Estrada always keeps his team in the game, and always induces head-shaking, embarrassing frustration on the part of the batters he’s just set down.

Estrada is also well nigh unto unflappable, as for example in the first inning of yesterday’s game. Having a bit of trouble locating, he went to 3-1 on leadoff batter Seth Smith, who went and got a low fast ball on the outer half and drove it over Kevin Pillar’s head in centre for a double. It looked like it was going to be another Pillar Special, but the ball just kept carrying. Leadoff batter on second is never a good thing, especially for the other team.

But Estrada fanned Adam Jones, walked Mannie Machado, retired Chris Davis on a fly ball to centre, and fanned Mark Trumbo. It took him 20 pitches to do it, but when the inning was over Smith was still at second, undelivered.

The Orioles who, luckily for the rest of the division, are a little thin on starting pitching, what with the injury to number one Chris Tillman, tabbed Alec Asher to start against Toronto. A 26-year-old right-hander with a limited career record of 2-8 and an ERA of 5.88 spread over two seasons of spot duty with the Phillies, Asher was making his first start for Baltimore.

Most teams are happy to be facing a fill-in starter, but not the Blue Jays, of course. Oh, no, not the Blue Jays. Recent history is rife with examples of the Toronto bats being stifled by a who-dat pitcher, and given their hitting struggles to date this year, why would this day be any different?

And it wasn’t. For six innings Asher went pitch-for-pitch with Estrada in a scoreless duel. Starting from the first inning, the few chances Toronto had, died a-glimmering. Kevin Pillar led off the first with a single, was sac-bunted to second by Zeke Carrera hitting second (yes, folks, that’s right. Manager John Gibbons put on a sacrifice bunt in the first inning, to be executed by an old-timey number two hitter, surely a sign of desperate times), advanced to third on an Asher wild pitch, but died there when Asher struck out Jose Bautista and got Kendrys Morales on a popup in foul territory to Machado, the two outs sandwiched around a walk to Troy Tulowitzki.

And so it went. Asher was even a bit more effective than Estrada, retiring the side in the second with two strikeouts, and in the third with a little fielding help and some luck. Both Ryan Goins and Pillar hit the ball hard, but right at somebody, and then Machado made a great diving grab to his right to rob Carrera of a hit down the line.

In the meantime, Estrada stranded a bunt single by Hyun Soo Kim in the second, and a single by Jones and another walk to Machado in the third.

The fourth went quickly, the O’s in order, Estrada aided by a sterling play by Ryan Goins at second, who went to his left and to his knees to corral an apparent single by Kim and throw him out at first. Asher gave up a leadoff single to Bautista, got another popup off the bat of Morales, and watched as his infield turned an around-the-horn double play on Tulowitzki’s hard grounder to third.

Ryan Flaherty was nicked by Estrada leading off the fifth, but died there, and was the only base runner either pitcher allowed in the fifth or sixth. Estrada benefited from a long Zeke Carrera run to get under an opposite field flare down the line by Smith, and Asher was picked up the redoubtable Machado who dove into foul territory to snag a shot by Kevin Pillar, and throw him out at first.

Estrada escaped a jam in the seventh to finish up his scoreless outing. With one out, Jonathan Schoop doubled over Carrera’s head in left centre. Estrada eased the pressure by fanning Ryan Flaherty, but then to make things interesting he wild-pitched Schoop to third and walked Smith, bringing the redoubtable Adam Jones to the plate, for one of those do-or-die moments. But Estrada’s last four pitches in a brilliant 109-pitch outing resulted in—what else—a 2-1 popup by Jones to Troy Tulowitzki at short. Besides the seven-inning shutout, Estrada had given up four hits and three walks while striking out eight.

As if to tantalize their valiant starter with thoughts of a win, Toronto finally took a 1-0 lead in their half of the seventh. Asher contributed to his own demise by hitting Jose Bautista on an 0-1 pitch. After Morales hit one on the screws right at Jones in centre, Tulo singled up the middle, and that was it for Asher, whose very respectable line read six and a third innings, one run (Bautista would eventually score), only three hits, one walk, and five strikeouts on 93 pitches.

Buck Showalter brought in lefty Donnie Hart to turn Justin Smoak around to the right side (has Showalter not been doing his homework?), and Hart got lucky as Smoak hit a bomb, but to dead centre where Jones hauled it in for the second out. Then Manager John Gibbons inserted the right-handed Darwin Barney for the left-handed Chris Coghlan, Showalter didn’t counter (“Barney? Give me a break,” he must have thought.) But Barney rewarded Gibbons’ confidence and gave Showalter a little slap upside the head by lining a single to centre that scored Bautista with the lead run. Hart caught Jarrod Saltalamacchia looking for the third out, but there it stood, that lonely figure one on the board, and Estrada could but sit back and hope for a “W”.

His chances looked pretty good through the eighth inning. Joe Biagini came in for the Jays and gave up a little squibber of an infield hit to third by Machado, which brought Chris Davis to the plate. Eschewing the lefty matchup, Gibbons stuck with Biagini, and was rewarded beyond all measure. Davis hit one hard on the ground between first and second that resulted in a 4-6-3 double playthat could have been choreographed by Diaghilev for the ballets Rouses. Goins gloved the ball, his momentum throwing him into a 360 pirouette to make a perfect throw to second, where Tulo, coming from the right field side of the bag (because of the shift, you see) took the throw, executed his own forced pirouette, and threw a strike to first to double up the thankfully ponderous Davis. After that display, Mark Trumbo’s ground out to Tulo to end the inning was barely an afterthought.

The Jays just missed a two-out chance to improve their lead in the bottom of the eighth when, with Zeke Carrera on first with a two-out, wrong-way bloop single to left, Showalter brought in right-hander Tyler Wilson to face the struggling Bautista. Bautista almost made up for two weeks of misery by hitting a juicy 3-1 fast ball right down the middle as far as he could and not leave the park, another easy play in deep centre for Jones.

For the first time this season, it was “Osuna for the save” time, and, but for some very bad luck, it would have ended here. What else can it be but luck when the other team scores a run on one infield hit, with no walks, wild pitches, or passed balls? Here’s how it went down: Wellington Castillo hit one sharply back to Osuna, and it deflected off his leg toward third, trickling so slowly toward Barney that it wasn’t possible to make a play even on the slow-of-foot Baltimore catcher. Showing far more initiative than he did with Zach Britton in the Wild Card game last year, Manager Showalter wisely ran the fleet Craig Gentry for Castillo. Mindful that it was Salty, and not Russell Martin behind the plate, Gentry immediately stole second, and then advanced daringly to third on a fly to deep left by Hyun Soo Kim. All that was left was for Schoop to loft a decent fly ball to centre for the sacrifice, and the deed was done. To the drooping spirits of the Blue Jays, not least to the sagging shoulders of Roberto Osuna, it mattered little that plate umpire Jim Reynolds rang up Ryan Flaherty for the third out.

So it was back to the drawing board for Toronto in the bottom of the ninth, and back to the well once more for Tyler Wilson, who, remember, had dodged a bullet in the eighth inning. This time Showalter evades the blame, because Zach Britton was not only not available because he had thrown a total of 39 pitches in the last two nights to eke out his fourth and fifth saves of the year, but also because, as we only learned this morning, there was a reason for his struggles against the Jays. He has been placed on the ten-day disabled list with a sore elbow. Not surprising, considering his lack of dominance so far this year.

So, Wilson to the mound, Kendrys Morales to the plate, and yer humble scribe, as mentioned, to the kitchen. (It wasn’t like that, of course. I had gone to the kitchen during the commercial break, and didn’t get back in time.) In my absence, poor Mr. Wilson tried a first-pitch “get-me-over” curve on Morales, but he hung it like the harvest moon, and by the time I got back to the TV, Morales was rounding first. He wasn’t walking the parrot, but he seemed to be singing something. If I had to guess, I’d guess it would have been, “Just one look, and I swung so hard, hard, hard . . .”

Of course the delirium, not only in the ball park but in the heart of yer humble scribe, was all out of proportion to the event, which merely meant that our boys were now two and nine, rather than one and ten, but still, you can hardly blame us, can you?

So, this afternoon, as the Easter Bunny pitter-patters off to wherever s/he stays when not hiding chocolate (who makes these things up, anyway?) Toronto and Baltimore go at it one more time, in a rematch between Jay Happ and Dylan Bundy, with the Jays’ first series split of the season at stake.

How low have our expectations fallen, my friends. Still, a split would be good, no?

152 years ago today, April 14, 1865, was also Good Friday. Abraham Lincoln defied the pieties of the day and attended the theatre in Washington that night. He was rewarded for his indiscretion by being assassinated in his box at the theatre.

Today, Good Friday 2017, the Toronto Blue Jays defied what little’s left of the pieties and played a professional baseball game before paying customers in Toronto. They were rewarded for their indiscretion by receiving another beating at the hands of the Baltimore Orioles, dropping their record for the young season to one win and nine losses.

While he wasn’t assassinated, Toronto starter Aaron Sanchez, last year’s American League ERA champ, was gravely wounded by three home runs off the bats of the visitors from Baltimore, and absorbed his first loss of the season after recording a no decision in a fine first start against Tampa Bay on April eighth. At no wins and one loss for the season, he is now half way to his loss total for all of 2016.

While Sanchez’ Good Friday outcome was considerably less serious (to say the least) than Lincoln’s, it remains to be seen whether his shaky performance on Friday was a one-off, or whether it is an indication of a more serious issue.

Things looked fine for Sanchez in the top of the first. Though leadoff batter Seth Smith hit the ball hard, he lined it right up the middle and right at Troy Tulowitzki, perfectly stationed behind second in the shift. Adam Jones hit a weak fly to left, and Mannie Machado went down swinging.

Ten pitches for Sanchez, and it was time for the Jays’ bats to start to work on left-hander Wade Miley who had the start for Baltimore. That drip-drip-drip you could hear while Miley was tossing his warmups was the sound of the Jays’ sluggers’ saliva hitting the dugout floor as they drooled over the chance to get at Miley, a junky left-handed journeyman who never blows anyone away.

Except that he did in this first inning. Fanned Kevin Pillar on junk. Fanned Steve Pearce on junk. Fanned Jose Bautista as catcher Caleb Joseph corralled his foul tip.

Uh-oh. Where have we seen this scenario before? Could we not have hoped that with the matchup of Sanchez versus Miley we might be the ones to set them back on their heels?

In the top of the second Sanchez made the mistake of falling behind 2-0 to cleanup hitter Chris Davis, who was leading off. He tried to throw a four-seamer for a gimme strike, but it was waist-high on the inside corner, and Davis hammered it into right field for a double. It looked like the young right-hander was going to work his way out of it when he fanned Mark Trumbo on another foul tip and Jonathan Schoop grounded out to short. But Davis read the play well and advanced to third on the groundout, where he was positioned to score when Sanchez threw a wild pitch to Hyun Soo Kim. One hit, one run.

How come the Jays haven’t been able to master this? How often do other teams score the run when their leadoff hitter doubles? How often don’t the Jays cahs in the leadoff double? Don’t answer. I don’t want to wallow in the sordid details.

Refreshingly, though, the Jays fought back right away in their half of the second, and took the lead, although the K bugaboo once again kept them from breaking the game open.

On a 2-1 pitch, leadoff hitter Kendrys Morales totally destroyed his bat, but still managed to muscle the ball into left field for a base hit. Troy Tulowitzki rifled the ball down the left-field line for a double, Morales stopping at third. Russell Martin hit the ball hard on a line, but right at shortstop J. Hardy for the first out. But Justin Smoak followed by pulling a hard grounder through the shift into left that scored Morales and moved Tulo to third.

The Jays then took the lead with help from a most unlikely source. Darwin Barney, inserted at third for Josh Donaldson, who, of course, was put on the disabled list after being taken out of Thursday’s game, hit an easy little dribbler to third that Mannie Machado charged and then shockingly fumbled while getting ready to make the throw. Barney was safe on first on the error but still credited with an RBI for plating Tulo, as with one out Tulo had broken on contact, and Machado clearly was conceding the run for the out he didn’t get.

Enter the dreaded K-man again. With Barney on first and one out, and the Orioles looking a little rocky, Miley stiffened and fanned Devon Travis and Pillar, the latter for the second time.

The inning ended on a downer, but the Jays had come back and taken the lead, and Sanchez was headed back to the mound, so it was all good, right?

And, by golly, it was, for a couple of innings, anyway. Sanchez retired the side in order in the third, and survived a couple of runners in the fourth, when Adam Jones reached on an errant Barney throw to first on an easy ground ball. He was erased when Machado, not showing any MVP chops yet this season, grounded into a double play. Sanchez perhaps wisely walked Davis on a full count, and then got out of the inning when Mark Trumbo grounded out to short on the first pitch he saw.

After the Jays went quietly in their half of the third, they even added a run in the fourth when, with two outs, Justin Smoak, who is quickly, I would hope, converting some of his detractors, belted one to left for his first homer of the season. Barney followed by hitting a grounder off Miley into centre for a base hit, but the inning died with another anticlimactic strikeout as Wiley fanned Travis. Again.

So cue the fifth, and we’re merrily rolling along, up 3-1 with Aaron Sanchez settled in and looking pretty good, if a little elevated in pitch count at 53.

Then the roof fell in on our young righty. Three smashes, and Baltimore had retaken the lead at 4-3. Sanchez threw Schoop a two-seamer right down Broadway on a 1-2 pitch, and Schoop got all of it, to dead centre. 3-2 Jays. He threw a 2-2 two-seamer right down Broadway to Kim, who doubled to right. He threw a much better pitch, a diving 1-1 curve ball, to J. Hardy, who went down and got it and parked it to left centre. 4-3 Orioles. However good the Orioles’ hitters are, there had to be a problem with Sanchez’ fine tuning.

Sanchez survived the fifth, despite having to strand a two-out bloop double by Adam Jones, but it was now up to Toronto to fight back. In the bottom of the fifth Pillar reached leading off when Miley nicked his foot with a pitch, but Pearce grounded into a quick double play on the first pitch he saw, and Jose Bautista popped out to Davis at first in foul territory.

Although Sanchez lasted two more batters after, Chris Davis essentially finished him off by belting a 1-0 fastball, left out over the plate, over the centre-field fence, to extend the O’s lead to 5-3. Once again Sanchez dominated Trumbo, who popped up to Travis at second, but when Schoop lined a single to left that was the end of the line for Sanchez. His day ended at five and a third innings, having given up five runs on seven hits, three of them round-trippers, with one walk and three strikeouts on 93 pitches. If not for the home runs, it would have been respectable, but . . .

Manager John Gibbons brought in Dominic Leone, who is rapidly becoming the bullpen’s mess-fixer. He could have been out of the inning in two pitches, as Kim hit an easy double-play ball to Tulowitzki, but Travis got tangled in his pivot, and never made a throw to first. Luckily for Travis, Leone got J. Hardy to fly out to left to end the inning.

Miley finished his outing with an easy sixth inning, sandwiching a fly ball to right by Tulo with strikeouts of Morales and Russell Martin. The Jays did a great job of helping Miley to a successful six innings pitched by fanning eight times against one of the least likely power pitchers in the league.

Leone went on to retire two in the seventh while walking Seth Smith and allowing a base hit to Adam Jones, and then lefty specialist Aaron Loup came on to freeze Chris Davis with a called third strike to end the inning.

The Jays repeated what’s become a frustratingly familiar pattern in their half of the seventh against reliever Darren O’Day as they went: out, base hit, out, base hit, out. This time it was Pillar and Ryan Goins hitting for Barney who collected the hits, but Justin Smoak struck out, Devon Travis struck out, and Steve Pearce popped out to end the inning and strand two. If they could just put the ball in play, these Jays who struck out 15 times in all tonight, some good things might start to happen.

Ryan Tepera managed a long and difficult delay in the top of the eighth, and was the beneficiary of a flashy Goins (who stayed in at third for Barney) to Travis to Smoak double play, to hold the Orioles off the board. In the midst of a leadoff walk to Mark Trumbo, home plate umpire Dale Scott took a direct hit on the mask of a Trumbo foul tip. Staggered and dazed, Scott fell to his knees and then was helped to the ground. There was no need to examine for a possible concussion: it was obvious. After being attended to, Scott was taken off with a neck brace on a back board on the EMS cart.

Attending to Scott and waiting for second-base umpire Brian Knight to suit up to go behind the plate took at least twenty minutes, during which time Tepera waited around on the mound, and then requested permission to go to the dugout.

When the game resumed, Tepera’s infield quickly erased Trumbo and Schoop, who hit a sharp hopper to Goins’ left at third. Goins scooped it, unloaded quickly to Travis, who made an excellent pivot, but unloaded a low throw to first. Not to worry, as Smoak was up to the task of digging out the throw to complete the DP. Kim’s fly ball out to left provided an anticlimactic ending to a strange inning.

Brad Brach came on for Baltimore to face the heart of the Toronto order, Bautista, Morales, and Tulowitzki in the bottom of the eighth. In keeping with the theme of the night, all three went down swinging futilely against the slants of Brach.

Jason Grilli gave up a solo homer to Seth Smith in the top of the ninth, the Orioles’ fourth homer of the game, to extend the Baltimore lead to 6-3. This should have been plenty for Zach Britton coming in to close out the game for the visitors.

But this isn’t 2016, and this isn’t the Zach Britton of 2016, so once again it was a bit of a roller coaster before he finished it off. For the fourth time this season Britton was in for the save against Toronto, and for the fourth time this season he pulled it off, but he edged even a little closer this time to being knocked out. This time he gave up a run on three hits, had to throw 21 pitches, and had to fan Steve Pearce to strand the tying runs on first and second to finish the game.

It was encouraging that the ninth-inning run was produced with the help of two of the Toronto hitters who have really been struggling. Russell Martin led off with a single to

left. Justin Smoak, who has been hitting, roped a shot to right, but right at Seth Smith for the first out. Jarrod Saltalamacchia, hitting for Ryan Goins, racked up the Jays’ fourteenth strikeut for the second out, but Devon Travis brought home Martin, who had taken second on defensive indifference, with a base hit. Kevin Pillar, Toronto’s most consistent hitter so far this season, singled Travis to second, setting up the Pearce K, the fifteeenth strikeout and final out of the game.

Don’t know whether Britton has a problem in general, or just a problem with Toronto so far this year, but he’s not dominating so far. Not at all.

A strange game, an exciting game, a troubling game, with the injury to Scott and the inability of Sanchez to keep the ball in the park, but, in the end, another loss. One and nine. How long, o favoured champions, will you abuse our patience?

The answer to my title question is pretty obvious, when you look at the scores. But an equally valid question would be, how many other games already played in Toronto’s 2017 April schedule are just like these two?

The answer? Five of the first seven, making the grand total after these last two, seven of the first nine. One loss to the Rays by a 7-2 score was desultory and foregone. But even the game in which Francisco Liriano had his first inning meltdown ended up only a two-run loss when the two teams went on to score 18 between them, and the Jays even briefly held the lead.

So, as we all know, if you added, say, two timely base hits to every single one of these games, including the last two, the Jays could be eight and one, rather than one and eight.

Now, how easy is it to finish these sentences?

One: Marcus Stroman pitched a complete game and gave up two runs on seven hits

but . . .

Two: After Francisco Liriano’s first start his ERA was 135.00, but after his second start it was 9.00 because in the second start he went six and two thirds innings and gave up two runs on five hits while fanning ten, but . . .

Answer: Pretty darn easy. Like almost every other game so far this season, what follows the “but” is that the Jays lineup struck out too many times, wasted the few scoring opportunities they had, and generally approached their plate appearances as if the opposing pitchers were Cy Young candidates.

If you were a betting man, you would have bet on a Blue Jays’ win Wednesday against the Brewers, if only because it was Marcus Stroman’s turn to take the hill. In the last two games that he pitched that really counted, Stroman took a no-hitter into the seventh inning of the championship game of the World Baseball Classic, leading the U.S. team to a somewhat surprising WBC championship, and earning for himself the tournament MVP trophy. Then, of course, he went six and a third innings, giving up one run on six hits, and benefitting from the Kendrys Morales grand slam, to pitch Toronto to its first, and, for god’s sake, only win so far this season.

And Stroman came through in spades Wednesday night, pitching nine innings, a complete game, and, as mentioned, yielding only two runs on seven hits against the Milwaukee Brewers in Toronto’s second home game of the season. But in the absence of barely any opportunity of scoring runs, Stroman’s sterling effort wasn’t enough. True, he didn’t pitch a shutout, worse luck his, but even if he had he would have left after nine innings locked in a scoreless tie.

Doubles by Domingo Santana and Keon Broxton in the second inning brought in the first run for Milwaukee, and the score remained 1-0 through five innings, before Johnathan Villar led off the sixth with a solo home run to centre field. Long-ago Jays’ prospect Eric Thames, who reinvented himself in the Korean Baseball League as a slugger before being signed by the Brewers this year, followed with a double to centre, but Stroman then induced three ground-ball outs to reassert his control of the game.

Other than the two innings in which he gave up runs, Stroman never had more than one baserunner an inning and scattered the other three hits. He extracted himself from his only other spot of trouble in the third when he picked Villar off second, after giving up a leadoff single to him, and having him advance on a passed ball by Russell Martin.

The Brewers started Chase Anderson, a journeyman right-hander in his fourth major league season, having played two years with the Diamondbacks before joining the Brewers last year. He’s developed into a decent mid-rotation guy, with a career record of 25-24 and an ERA of 4.15. Cy Young? Nah.

But you wouldn’t know it from the way the Blue Jays attacked, er, failed to attack, him. Anderson gave up three hits and walked two over seven innings. Only twice in the game, both against Anderson, did the Jays have somebody in scoring position, in the fourth and seventh innings.

In the fourth with one out Jose Bautista reached on a single to left, the Jays’ first hit, and then Anderson walked Josh Donaldson. Kendrys Morales ripped the ball, but right to second with Milwaukee in the shift, as the runners moved up. Milwaukee manager Craig Counsel ordered Troy Tulowitzki “walked”, i.e., waved to first without benefit of standing at the plate. This brought Russell Martin, hitless in his first 19 at bats for the year, to the plate. Martin, who would have no luck at all if not for bad luck, took a called third strike from plate umpire Jerry Layne on a 1-2 curve ball that was so far outside that the strike zone had to send it a letter to make contact with it.

Martin himself was the only other Toronto batter to reach second, when he doubled to right centre off Anderson with two outs in the seventh. Though he had finally broken his zero for 20 streak, he was stranded there when Steve Pearce, struggling almost as badly as Martin, flew out to centre.

Kevin Pillar reached on a single against Corey Knebel in the eighth, but was erased on a double play, and closer Naftali Feliz walked Donaldson in the ninth only to have Morales line one hard off Feliz that the pitcher was able to turn into a game-ending double play.

While the Jays search for their bats, maybe Stroman should be looking for another team?

As the Brewers left town, it was up to Toronto to try to regroup and start to reverse the terrible one and seven record they had posted so far in 2017. With Baltimore coming to town, it wouldn’t be easy.

Questions surrounded the Jays’ starter against Baltimore last night, Francisco Liriano. Before coming to the Jays last summer, Liriano had been bedevilled by control problems in Pittsburgh. But after arriving in Toronto, his command tightened up as if by magic once he was reunited with his old Pirates’ battery mate, Russell Martin.

But in Liriano’s first start of the year against Tampa Bay on April seventh, he shocked everyone by turning in the worst and shortest outing of his career, one third of an inning, in which he gave up five runs on three hits with four walks and a homer on his ledger. Noted by all was the fact that Manager John Gibbons had chosen this particular game to give backup catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia his first start of the season, replacing Russell Martin behind the dish. It’s hard to know if that was a factor in his performance, as his control was so bad that a double-sized strike zone wouldn’t have helped him, but still, who knows?

So last night would be his first appearance since that debacle, with, to be sure, Martin doing the catching. Would he struggle with his command? Would Martin have an effect? Was he indeed going to be the pitcher that Toronto expected to see in the rotation this year?

Well, all of that was clarified pretty quickly. In the top of the first, the left-hander fanned Craig Gentry. Then he fanned Adam Jones. Then he induced Manny Machado to pop up to shortstop. All three right-handed batters, by the way. And on 13 pitches, no less.

“Francisco’s back and there’s gonna be trouble” we sang.

Kevin Gausman took the hill for Baltimore in the bottom of the first, and easily retired

Zeke Carrera, Jose Bautista, and Josh Donaldson, on only eleven pitches.

And it was “game on” for yet another pitchers’ duel.

Through the fourth Liriano allowed only two baserunners. Jonathan Schoop doubled to left with one out in the third and died on the bases, and Machado walked with one out in the fourth and died there. After the two in the first, Liriano racked up five more strikeouts for seven through four innings, and threw a reasonable 53 pitches. It was fun to track and record Liriano’s evolving ERA as the scoreless innings mounted. Starting, as mentioned at the outset, at a mind-boggling 135.00 ERA, by the end of the fourth it was down to a relatively modest 10.38.

Meanwhile, except for having only one strikeout over four innings, Gausman basically matched Liriano, holding the Jays off the board with the same number of pitches, 53. He did need a little more help from his friends, though, not to mention a failure to execute by Toronto. In the second Troy Tulowitzki picked up the Jays’ first hit with a single to right, but then the Baltimore infield pulled off a nifty double play to erase Tulo and Russell Martin. Martin hit the ball up the middle on the ground, and J.J. Hardy ranged far to his left to glove it. He only had time to flip it with his glove to Schoop at second, who made a great pivot to get the out at first.

Then in the third, the Jays turned in what has become a trademark play for them over the course of the last season plus. Kevin Pillar led off with a double to right, and Darwin Barney, hitting behind him, failed to advance him to third by lining out to the left fielder. Pillar did advance smartly on a ground ball to short by Devon Travis, but on third now with two outs, he was stranded when Zeke Carrera grounded out to second.

Gausman escaped serious trouble in the fourth with the help of an unbelievably bad review call of a play at first base. With one out Donaldson hit a slow bouncer to Machado, and appeared to have beaten the throw, though he was called out. The replays showed him clearly reaching the front of the bag before the ball hit Chris Davis’ glove. But the review apparently determined that he hadn’t actually touched the bag with his toe, and the out stood. When Kendrys Morales walked, the lost baserunner took on added significance, but Gausman tied up Tulo on two strikes for his only strikeout in the first four innings, and it was enough to keep the Jays at bay.

When you’re not hitting and not scoring, it doesn’t take much of a rally to take the game out of your hands. Liriano got into his first spot of real trouble in the fifth, and it cost him two runs. In the middle of a game at the TV Dome, two runs down shouldn’t look like much, but to the 2017 Jays’ hitters it may as well have been Everest in front of them.

The O’s strung three hits together for a run to lead off the inning, but lost a runner at the plate which didn’t quite take the wind out of them. Wellington Castillo led off with a single, and moved to second on Trey Mancini’s single. Schoop’s double to centre scored Castillo, but a good relay from Pillar in centre to Tulowitzki to the plate nailed Mancini, with Schoop holding at second. Unfortunately, Jay Hardy immediately delivered him with a single to left for a second run. Hardy died at first, but the damage, slight but crucial for our boys, was done.

The game settled back into the rhythm of the pitchers’ duel again. Gausman stranded a Darwin Barney single in the bottom of the fifth, and Liriano returned to form in the top of the sixth, retiring the side in order and racking up Chris Davis for his eighth strikeout of the game.

The Jays scored their only run in the bottom of the sixth, which was also the last run of a game that would end up 2-1 Baltimore, but I think they would have traded the run for another shutout to avert what happened in the inning.

Remember how Donaldson, going all out, should have been safe on the grounder to Machado in the fourth? Well, with one out in the sixth, Jose Bautista doubled to left centre, and Donaldson immediately cashed him in with a booming opposite-field two-bagger to right. But after he rounded first, he pulled up lame, and crow-hopped safely into second before being removed from the game with yet another injury to his right calf.

Saltalamacchia was sent in to run for him and to take over as DH, but he died on third after Kendrys Morales was walked and a deep fly to centre by Tulo let him advance to third with two outs before Russell Martin was retired on an infield popup.

With the scoring over for the day, Liriano who was pulled with two outs in the sixth after walking Mancini on four pitches, Joe Biagini, and Joe Smith kept the Orioles off the board while amassing seven more strikeouts, the last two outs Liriano got in the sixth, two strikeouts out of four outs pitched by Biagini, and three by Smith to put the O’s down in order in the ninth. In all, including Liriano’s ten Ks, 15 Baltimore batters were retired on strikes in the game.

Sadly, the Jays could muster little against Darren O’Day in the seventh and Brad Brach in the eighth, before coming out to face their old familiar friend Zach Britton in the ninth.

We should mention that for the third time already in as many outings against Toronto this year, Britton managed to get the save, but also for the third time in a row he was hardly lights-out, and yet again had to get that last out with the game very much on the line. Tonight, after retiring Morales, Britton gave up a base hit to Tulo, walked Martin, then bounced one past the catcher Castillo to allow the tying and winning runs to move into position with only one out.

Kevin Pillar then bounced out to the shortstop Hardy. The Jays did not have the contact play on, so Tulo held third. It was endlessly discussed after the game whether in the midst of a slump you should take a chance and send the runner with the hit, but it’s immaterial, because they didn’t, and it became irrelevant when Steve Pearce flew out to centre to end the game. He threw 18 pitches, and was on the precipice again, but Britton still scored his third save of the year for Baltimore against Toronto.

It’s a baseball truism that good pitching beats good hitting, but it’s also true that if good pitching doesn’t get at least a little run support, then all those strikeouts and circles on the scoreboard don’t count for anything, and the last two Toronto games are absolute proof of that.

GAME SEVEN, APRIL ELEVENTH, 2017:

BREWERS 4, JAYS 3:

NO PLACE LIKE HOME? WELL . . .

Conventional wisdom around town had it that the Blue Jays were lucky that so much attention was directed elsewhere in Toronto’s sporting world that their 1-6 start on the road would go un-noticed as they slunk into town to get ready for tonight’s home opener.

With the Maple Leafs cementing their first playoff spot in years, and the return of Kyle Lowry sparking an end-of-season resurgence that greatly improved the Raptors’ playoff pairing, no one would be paying much attention, it was thought, to the fact that the Jays were off to their worst start in team history. (Who remembers now that the 1977 Toronto Blue Jays went five and two in their first seven games? Those were the days, my friends . . . )

But the hockey and basketball excitement didn’t stop over 49,000 blue-festooned baseball fans from thronging the TV Dome tonight to greet their beloved ball team. Of course, given the difficulty of acquiring tickets for major Jays’ games, most of those lucky enough to score tickets for the opener weren’t expecting such a cloud of worry to be hanging over the proceedings when game day actually arrived.

On the other hand, Toronto sports fans in general, and especially Blue Jays fans, have come to be great rationalizers over the years. The two losses in Baltimore? Close games, could have gone either way. Wasn’t the first one almost a mirror of the Wild Card Game last year? In fact, would anyone trade the 2016 wild card win for a two-game sweep in Baltimore in April of 2017? No way, man!

And then there’s playing in Tampa Bay against the Rays. We’ve had a worse record against them than against any other team in the division in recent years, and it’s way worse in the horrid Orange Juice Cave, undeniably the worst stadium in major league baseball. So, hell, losing three out of four there? That’s almost a moral victory, eh?

Rationalizing baseball fans can live with their rationalizations, as long as there’s some hope that a team’s temporary slump is just that, and that things will work themselves out, soon.

And when better to start working things out than the home opener? Our guys love to play at home before their wildly enthusiastic fans in the friendly confines of a Dome that seems to suck deep hits right out of the yard, where you never have to worry about playing in the rain and cold. Surely this little stumble of a batting slump will work itself out once we get that huge Canadian flag rolled up, and it’s game on.

Baseball’s back in Toronto! Yay! Or not.

Definitely not, because the Blue Jays brought their cold bats right back to Toronto with them, and put them in the deep freeze as soon as they arrived home Sunday night, so that they’d be ready to underperform once again in the home opener.

Optimism rose as Jay Happ, who pitched well in a close loss in Baltimore last week, took the mound for the top of the first. Then Johnathan Villar smacked one hard, but right at Kevin Pillar. Next came Keon Broxton, hitting under a hundred. (Who are these guys, anyway?) For a who-dat hitting pocket change, Broxton sure pounded that 1-1 fast ball right down the pipe from Happ, rocketing it over the wall in left before you could blink.

If that was the end of it, you could kind of take it, since Happ’s a fly-ball pitcher who gives up his share of dingers—praise god it was a solo job, and all that, dare I say it, rationalization. And it was good that the fearsome Ryan Braun followed with a grounder to short for the second out. But then Travis Shaw—remember him?–slugged one deep to straightaway centre. But not to worry that it was over Kevin Pillar’s head. He was on the case. He’d get it, just like always. But, he didn’t. It continued to carry, bounced off the wall past Pillar, and Shaw ended up on third.

Then Happ got right fielder Domingo Santana to hit a grounder that could have got him out of the inning, but didn’t, because it was up the middle to the backhand of Devon Travis, and Santana, who can run, beat it out while Shaw scored. Two-zip Brewers, and we haven’t swung a bat yet.

But we came out swinging in the first, and it looked like tonight might be different until the bogey man stuck his head out from behind the bat rack and breathed his foul stink on some of the sticks. Devon Travis led off with a hard grounder that should have been a base hit but for a fine play by the shortstop, Orlando Arcia. Then Wily (one-el Wily) Peralta walked Jose Bautista on a 3-2 pitch, and Kendrys Morales singled to centre, with Bautista going to third.

If you hadn’t noticed, while Bautista hasn’t set the world on fire with his bat since the first games of the World Baseball Classic, he has been playing with a friskiness and elan, particularly in the field, that would have been hard to imagine last year, amidst his injury woes. He’s clearly put his botched free agency of the winter behind him, and is dialled in on being the complete player we once knew.

Troy Tulowitzki boomed a double to centre. Bautista strolled home and Morales chugged around to third. With the Brewers’ lead cut to one and runners on second and third, things were suddenly looking up.

And then they weren’t. Peralta found his mojo and fanned Russell Martin. Then he fanned Justin Smoak, and the threat was over.

That first inning set the pattern for the game. In the third Broxton singled, stole second, moved to third on a right-side ground out by Ryan Braun, and scored on a fielder’s choice grounder to Travis at second, who tried to get the speedy Broxton at the plate, but had little chance. The run would have scored anyway, but it was a quesionable call by Travis since he missed the sure out in exchange for not choking off the run. Happ made it academic, though, by fanning Santana and Jesus Aguilar to end the inning. So, 3-1 Milwaukee.

In the bottom of the inning, Peralta walked Travis leading off, and after Bautista struck out, Morales hit one so hard off the fence in right that he had to settle for a single while Travis scampered to third. Tulo promptly delivered him with a sacrifice fly to centre before Russell Martin, starting to show some serious frustration, swung over a 2-2 fast ball that barely cleared his shoe tops. So, 3-2 Milwaukee.

Day late and a dollar short, and the story goes on.

In the fifth, Jay Happ recorded the first two outs, and then grooved one to Domingo Santana who parked it in the seats in right. When Jesus Aguilar followed with a double to right, it was time for Manager John Gibbons to pull the plug on Happ, with a disappointing line of 4.2 ip, 4 runs, 8 hits, no walks, and 8 strikeouts on 102 pitches. Though Milwaukee did hit some loud knocks off him, he deserved a little better fate, having given up two solo homers and two runs scored on balls that didn’t leave the infield. Dominic Leone, who may be 2017’s version of Ryan aka yo-yo Tepera, for shuffling off to Buffalo and back, came in to strand Aguilar at second by getting Hernan Perez on a fly ball to right. 4-2 Milwaukee.

In the bottom of the fifth, Morales and Tulo combined for another two-out run, as the latter doubled home the chugging DH all the way from first before Russell Martin once again snuffed out the rally by striking out. We had a moment of lightness for once as Zeke Carrera used a towel to help revive the puffing Morales in the dugout, but that didn’t change the fact the once again Toronto was unable to pick up the second run needed to bring the game back to square one.

So 4-3 Milwaukee it was after five, and 4-3 Milwaukee it ended.

And the Toronto Blue Jays settled yet another layer deeper into the frustrating funk that has been the 2017 season for them thus far.

Not to say that there wasn’t some interesting baseball played in the last four innings, though.

The Jays’ relief corps acquitted itself well indeed. Leone’s spot in the fifth was his moment in the light, making for a two-pitch appearance. Joe Smith breezed through the sixth with two strikeouts on 12 pitches, Joe Biagini stranded a walk in the seventh, Jason Grilli got rocked by the first three batters he faced, but recorded two outs on them before giving up a ground-rule double to right to Manny Pina, who was stranded there when Arcia grounded out to short.

For the fans in the stands it was almost worth the loss to see Roberto Osuna come on to finish off in the ninth, and he didn’t disappoint, even if he did give up a harmless two-out single to Ryan Braun. He showed little effect from the neck strain that had put him on the disabled list. His velocity was up, and he navigated the inning on 14 pitches with one strikeout.

Through this dreadful spell, not only have the Jays’ pitchers not contributed materially to the losses, but the defence has held up as well. Two particular plays stood out behind the Jays’ relievers tonight. In the seventh, Biagini fanned Broxton leading off, then walked Braun. Travis Shaw drove one hard in the hole on the left side. Ryan Goins, playing third for Josh Donaldson, ranged far to his left, made the stop, and finished with the turn and strong throw in time to get Shaw, with Braun advancing to second. Biagini then froze the imposing Santana on a 3-2 pitch to strand Braun at second.

In the eighth, Jason Grilli wasn’t missing too many bats. Jesus Aguilar led off stinging a sinking liner into right centre that Kevin Pillar charged, dove for, and caught as he stretched out on the turf in the usual Pillar style. Just another three-star or so catch for Super Kevin. Grilli’s adventures continued when Hernan Perez drove Bautista to the wall in right, after Grilli thought he had him struck out. Then came the Aguilar double, and finally Arcia submitted meekly to let Grilli off the hook.

As for the Jays, they never got another hit after Tulowitzki’s RBI double in the fifth, only reaching against Peralta and the three relievers who followed with two bases on balls and an error. Jacob Barnes, Corey Knebel, and Naftali Feliz all chipped in an effective inning each to protect Peralta’s win.

Dare I say it? “This is the way the [game] ends, . . . not with a bang but a whimper.”

Marcus Stroman is up next tomorrow. He’s the proud possessor of Toronto’s only win of the season to date. Dare we hope?