Long Ball Stories

The way that Toronto roughed up Tampa’s starter Jake Odorizzi in the first inning this afternoon, it looked the the Blue Jays were on a mission to split the Tampa series, and come home looking at least a little more respectable than they did after the two-game sweep in Baltimore.

Devon Travis led off with a loud out, a liner right at first baseman Logan Morrison. Josh Donaldson followed with another shot to right. This one wouldn’t be caught by anyone, except maybe Cliff from Clearwater in row C, and the Jays had a quick 1-0 lead. After this rude greeting, Odorizzi walked Jose Bautista on a 3-1 pitch. Not one of the four balls was even remotely close to the plate.

This brought Kendrys Morales to the plate. Odorizzi went 3-2 on him. Again, none of the balls were close. Then he threw a splitter low and on the outside of the plate to the burly switch-hitter. Morales still managed to muscle it into the gap in right centre for a double, with Bautista stopping at third. Troy Tulowitzki didn’t wait to see what Odorizzi was throwing. He jumped on a first-pitch cutter that was thigh-high and on the outside corner, and drove it hard on the ground to rookie shortstop Daniel Robertson, who made the play and threw Tulo out at first while Bautista came in to score. Russell Martin fought back from an 0-2 count to 2-2 before striking out on a low outside cutter to end the inning.

You had to feel good about Toronto’s chances of bracing up and leaving Tampa with the split after five hard hit balls out of six batters in the top of the first. When Marco Estrada pitched over a Kevin Kiermaier infield single in the bottom of the first to preserve the 2-0 lead, you had to feel even better.

And you would have been foolish to be so optimistic after one inning.

First of all, Odorizzi settled nicely and retired the side in the second and third innings, with nary a hard-hit ball. He had two strikeouts, and took 31 pitchers to navigate the six outs, whereas he had thrown 25 in the first inning alone.

In the meantime, the home team generated some heat in its at-bats. In the second inning, the long-simmering feud between Troy Tulowitzki and Steven Souza reared its ugly head again. Souza walked to lead off the inning, and then Logan Morrison hit one smartly to Justin Smoak right at the bag. Smoak elected to take the out at first, removing the force and turning the play at second into a tag play for Tulowitzki.

Tulo completed the double play, and there was no question of a review, but the Jays’ veteran apparently took exception to the fact that Souza had started his slide pretty late, and came into the bag under a big head of steam. Souza jawed back at Tulo, the umpire was right there trying to cool things, and both dugouts emptied, but in a rather desultory fashion. Truth be told, it was so pro forma that if the two teams had been a fire brigade, the house would have been a heap of ashes by the time they got there.

For his part, Souza seemed to have been explaining to Tulo that he didn’t know the tag play was in order because he had no way of knowing that Smoak had taken the out at first. Not sure how that ‘splains anything, since a hard, late slide is a faux pas whether it’s a tag play or a force play . . .

In any case, after the double play, and the one-act farce, Estrada gave up a single to rookie shortstop Daniel Robertson, who looks pretty good with a bat in his hands, and Maxell Smith bounced one back to Estrada for the easy third out.

The next inning, the third, the Rays put up some heat of a more traditional kind, and erased once and for all the Jays’ lead. After catcher Sweet Jesus/Jesus Sucre (did I add him to the roster of my All-Time Best Baseball Names Team yet?) lofted a short fly to Zeke Carrera in left, Corey Dickinson applied a slice swing reminiscent of Wally Moon of Moon Shot fame (you could look it up), and hit—of course—a slice to left that sliced its way right over the ridiculously inviting short wall that angles from the left-field foul pole to the straight portion of the fence. That made it 2-1 Jays, and no big deal, because Estrada is okay with giving up a solo dinger from time to time, as long as his mates give him a few runs to play with.

But then Estrada’s luck really went south. Kevin Kiermaier bounced one sharply to first that caromed off the bag and went bouncing around in foul territory down the line. By the time Jose Bautista got the ball back into the infield, Kier the Deer was of course on third with a triple.

After Estrada got a called third strike on Evan Longoria, he made his first actual mistake of the inning, which was to walk Brad Miller. Then he made his second, and worst, mistake, going up and in on a 1-2 changeup that Steven Souza happily plunked over the real, but not very deep,left-field fence, giving the Rays a 4-1 lead.

A lead that was never challenged. For all intents and purposes, the game was over.

Hard to imagine after only three innings, but here’s what transpired:

In the top of the fourth, Morales was nicked on the shirt by a Jake Odorizzi pitch. He was immediately erased when Tulowitzki grounded into a double play.

In the top of the ninth, with two out, Bautista doubled to right on a flare that fell far from human hands. Kendrys Morales then lined out sharply to Robertson at short for the final out.

That’s it. Two baserunners. Both wasted.

Oh, and Josh Donaldson pulled up a little lame after grounding out to Evan Longoria for the second out of the sixth inning. It was “a different area”, they said after the game, of the same right calf that bothered him in spring training. Ryan Goins finished up for him at third.

Incidentally, with Travis already being given a one-game rest in the first week of the season, and now Donaldson day-to-day, how smart was it for Jays’ management to release Melvin Upton and keep both Darwin Barney and Ryan Goins? Especially since either is perfectly capable of filling in in left field.

Odorizzi went six innings, and after giving up the two runs, the two hits, and the one walk in the first inning, faced the minimum fifteen batters through the sixth, since the shirt-flicked Morales was erased on a double play. He also struck out four, and threw 101 pitches.

Jumbo Diaz gave the Rays two quick innings of six-up six-down on 32 pitches, and Tommy Hunter mopped up in the ninth, with the two-out bloop double by Bautista the only blemish on his record.

Meanwhile, in the fourth inning, Marco Estrada gave up another solo home run, to Sweet Jesus, before worming his way out of trouble in his last inning, the fifth. While not a quality start, his five innings, five runs on seven hits, two walks and five strikeouts on 99 pitches wouldn’t have looked nearly as bad if three of the seven hits hadn’t left the yard, one of them the lucky slice of Corey Dickerson.

Ryan Tepera gave the Jays a quick, clean sixth on twelve pitches, and then Aaron Loup came on in the seventh to try to get past Sucre, then focus on the two left-handed hitters, Dickerson and Kiermaier. He got Sucre but walked Dickerson before striking out Kiermaier, who so bitterly protested the called third strike that he was dispatched to an early shower by home plate umpire Mike Muchinski.

Manager Gibbons wouldn’t let Loup face the dangerous righty Evan Longoria, so he brought rookie Casey Lawrence in for his second appearance in the bigs, and

the move paid off as Lawrence froze Longoria with a wicked 1-2 slider to the low outside corner. Longoria chose to keep his thoughts to himself and stay in the game.

If the Jays had any hope of climbing back from the three-run deficit late in the game, they were erased when Lawrence walked Souza and Logan Morrison back-to-back to lead off the bottom of the eighth, especially since Robertson beat out a squibber to third to load the bases with nobody out. This brought the pesky Smith to the plate, and he hit a grounder to Devon Travis, who came to the plate for the force on Miller for one out, but there was no chance of doubling Smith at first. This gave Sucre the opportunity to thrust the knife a little deeper on the Jays. His single to left scored two, making it a 7-2 lead.

The inning nearly ended when Smith rounded second and wandered too far off as Ryan Goins was cutting the throw from the outfield, but bizarrely Smith got back to second safely. Goins correctly flipped the ball to Tulowitzki, in the baseline at third, and the latter started to herd Smith back to second. However, Devon Travis, covering second, somehow got too close to Smith, and ended up backpedalling awkwardly toward the bag, almost shoulder-to-shoulder with Smith, like a wierd pas de deux. Tulo had to eat the ball as there was never a moment when Travis was in position safely to make a catch-and-tag. Back to spring drills maybe?

The rundown gaffe didn’t hurt, however, as Dickerson grounded out to Tulo to end the inning.

Down by five, Bautista’s bloop double was a last gasp far too shallow to invigorate the moribund Jays, and the road trip came to a sad end with Toronto’s fifth loss in six games.

Home again, home again for the opener, and never was home cookin’ and home grounds more badly needed by a limping and demoralized would-be contender than these 2017 Toronto Blue Jays.

When your team’s lost three of its first four games of the season, it’s hard to go all aesthetic anticipating the cold, hard brilliance of a great pitching duel.

Baseball is a spectacle, a dance, a military tattoo. For most of the season, for its most perceptive fans, it’s a game for which the process, not the product, is its essence.

And yet it is impossible to absorb and appreciate the process without taking sides. Once you’ve taken sides you can no longer be indifferent to the product.

Winning counts, dammit. It tastes good. When your team is winning, everything is awash in a glow of celestial light. The most mundane play is a thing of beauty. The squibbiest of hits is a cause for joy. When you’re winning, you can sit back and smell the roses, and after each win the phrase “what a beautiful game” never loses its savour.

But losing hurts, dammit. It leaves the taste of ashes in your mouth. When you’re losing, every pitch is fraught. Every swing is fraught. Every play might contain the seeds of destruction. A good play brings no joy, for it only serves to ward off the inevitable, crucial failure just around the corner, the failure that will lead to another loss.

So for yer humble scribe, there was no joy, only tension and fear, in looking forward to this evening’s matchup between two of the premier pitchers in the American League, Chris Archer and Aaron Sanchez.

Both pitchers have something to prove in this first week of the 2017 season.

Archer, 28, four years older than Sanchez, with nearly four full seasons under his belt, had entered 2016 with high expectations, following a 2015 record that wasn’t marked so much by his 12-13 record, or even his very decent ERA of 3.23, but by the fact that he had amassed 252 strikeouts in 212 innings. In 2015 Chris Archer had declared himself to be a power pitcher extraordinaire.

But Archer had a tough, really tough, 2016. It wasn’t so much his record, which bottomed out at 9-19 (not a big deal on a team that went 68-94) with an ERA of 4.02, or even a fall-off in his power numbers, pitching 201.1 innings and amassing 233 strikeouts. What was really frustrating was that he had to work hard in the second half of the year just to get to those levels. The first half of his season was littered with short starts and periods of uncharacteristic lack of command.

So Chris Archer is a man on a mission in 2017. He had a solid first start against the Yankees on Opening Day, and was looking to build on that tonight.

The task for Aaron Sanchez for 2017 is a very different one. There’s no need to say much about the season-long discussion of limits to Sanchez’ work load last year. Suffice to say that we all know now that as long as he was dominant they would find a way to keep him in the rotation. Which they did, and which worked out brilliantly. He was strong to the end, and finished at 15-2 and won the American League ERA title at 3.00. It’s a feat in itself for an AL East starter to have the lowest ERA in the league, let alone coming from a guy the health of whose arm was a constant topic of discussion.

Now, in 2017, the limits are off, and Toronto’s management is going to treat Aaron Sanchez as the big boy that he is. The question he faces is how he will respond over the course of the full season. He’ll be expected to log ten to twenty more innings, and will certainly be a big-game pitcher for the Jays. (Though the conundrum still is, how do you pick your big-game guy out of Sanchez, Jay Happ, Marco Estrada, and especially the resurgent Marcus Stroman?)

So, two guys on a mission, with the added fillip that Toronto, now one and three for the season, gets a little more desperate for a breakout win with each passing loss. How did they do?

Well, toe to toe, they were fabulous. Archer went seven and two thirds innings, gave up two runs on five hits, walked three and struck out eight on 114 pitches, which I thought was a bit much for his second start of the season, but that was Manager Kevin Cash’s call, and I suppose after getting a lot of innings out of his bullpen the previous two games, Cash needed to stretch Archer as much as he could. In any case, Archer’s a grown-up, and perfectly capable of letting the manager know when he’s done.

Manager John Gibbons shook hands with his starter at the end of seven, Sanchez having given up one run on four hits with three walks and six strikeouts on 101 pitches.

The only blemish on Sanchez’ record came in the fifth, when Tampa scratched out a run on two base hits and a walk, with Corey Dickerson producing the RBI with a one-out single. The only other inning he allowed more than one base runner was in the fourth, when with two outs he walked Brad Miller and gave up a single to Steven Souza before striking out Logan Morrison with a wicked curve ball down and in that Morrison fouled into catcher Russell Martin’s glove.

As for Archer, he went Sanchez a couple better in the first six innings, retiring twelve in a row before yielding a leadoff base hit to Kendrys Morales in the fifth, but limited to the minimum number of batters when Steve Pearce hit into an inning-ending double play. In the sixth, he gave up a two-out single to Kevin Pillar which came to nothing.

So Archer came to the seventh with a one-run lead, and no reason to feel threatened. But then Josh Donaldson and Jose Bautista worked him for leadoff walks. Archer induced a double-play ball to second from Morales that moved Donaldson to third, but Troy Tulowitzki came through with a ground-ball single to left to score Donaldson and tie the game.

As mentioned, Cash sent Archer out for the eighth, and it turned out to be an inning to far for his ace. He walked Russell Martin and gave up a single to Justin Smoak, Martin smartly going to third on the hit. Archer looked to be working out of it, as Kevin Pillar fouled out to the catcher and Devon Travis took a four-seamer right down Broadway on an 0-2 pitch. But once again a veteran came through with the two-out run-producer for the Jays, as Josh Donaldson scored Martin with a hard ground-ball single up the middle.

That was it for Archer, who departed on the short end of a 2-1 Jays’ lead. Tommy Hunter came in and struck out Jose Bautista on three pitches to end the inning.

Once again the game was in the hands of the bullpens, and it was all on Toronto to hold the slim lead.

In the absence of Roberto Osuna John Gibbons’ flexibility to manage his bullpen is hampered, and it’s just such a situation as this where it most comes into play. He called on Joe Biagini to start the eighth, and the two situations in which Biagini excelled last year were coming in mid-inning to put out a fire, and starting an inning no later than the seventh.

Maybe this was a factor, and maybe it was that the Rays were up for it, but after getting Kevin Kiermaier on a come-backer for the first out, Biagini gave up a single to Evan Longoria, walked Brad Miller, and gave up the run-producing single to the awesome Steven Souza. That was it for the Rays as Biagini went on to retire the side, but the damage was done and at the end of eight it was tied at 2.

From this point there was again a feeling of sad inevitability if your hopes were tied to Toronto’s fortunes. It’s now almost traditional to use your closer at home in a tie game in the ninth. Essentially you’re rolling the dice on a shut-down followed by a walkoff win. Kevin Cash accordingly brought Alex Colome in to face the Jays in the top of the ninth, and he was just as effective as the night before, dispatching Morales, Tulo, and Pearce on 13 pitches.

Playing the road team manager, John Gibbons held back his putative closer, Jason Grilli, and sent Biagini out for a second inning. One thing we did learn about Biagini last year is that he’s certainly up to two-inning stints, and this time he managed to keep the Rays at bay, though not without drama, having to retire Kevin Kiermaier on a grounder to second to end the inning with the wondrously speedy Maxell Smith just ninety feet away at third.

Biagini had walked Smith, retired Tim Beckham when the latter popped up a lame bunt attempt, given up a stolen base to Smith, and wild-pitched him to third while striking out Corey Dickinson, setting up the game-saving Kiermaier groundout.

Xavier Cedeno came on for the Rays in the tenth, and didn’t hel his team’s cause, walking Russell Martin leading off, followed by a successful sacrifice bunt by Zeke Carrera. That was it for Cedeno, and Cash made his best call of the game, bringing Erasmo Ramirez to hold the fort until the Rays could walk it off. Brad Miller at second ably assisted Ramirez in keeping the game even, though, because he ranged far to his right and skidded on his knees to corral a sure ground-ball single by Kevin Pillar, and still managed to throw the quick Pillar out while Martin moved up to third. Devon Travis flied out to centre to end the threat.

Now it was Jason Grilli’s turn for Toronto, and he did the job, with attendant drama galore, as usual. With one out Brad Miller topped a bleeder into no-man’s land between the pitcher and first base for an infield hit. Bad Man Souza singled to centre, Miller stopping at second. Logan Morrison bounced into a 3-6 fielder’s choice, advancing Miller to third with two out. Rickie Weeks hit for catcher Derek Norris, and Grilli went upstairs with heat to fan him to end the threat. Cue the fist pump, but of course it wasn’t over.

Ramirez continued his mastery over the Jays in the top of the eleventh, using only nine pitches to retire the heart of the Toronto order. Donaldson grounded out to the second baseman in the shift, and Bautista and Morales both struck out.

In the bottom of the eleventh, John Gibbons showed himself either admirably supportive of all of his bullpen, or foolhardy in the extreme, by turning things over to Casey Lawrence, just swapped in to the big league roster while Dominic Leone was sent back for a short rest with Buffalo. Lawrence couldn’t have had his feet closer to the fire for his major league debut than to come in to a 2-2 tie in the bottom of the eleventh in Tampa, home of the Blue Jay eaters. (I guess that makes sense: surely devil rays would be capable of gobbling up blue jays. Whether they’d want to is another story, of course.)

It only took one batter to determine that Lawrence’s debut would not be a good-news story. Mallex Smith, he of the flashing feet, pulled one into right field that went for an easy double. With Smith on second and nobody out, you needed the faint hope clause just to imagine that the Rays wouldn’t finish things off right then.

Kevin Cash asked Beckham to bunt again and this time, mirabile dictu!, he delivered, pushing Smith to third with one out. Now conventional wisdom was applied, but with the latest, silliest twist: Gibbie elected to load the bases by walking Dickerson and Kiermaier, so they took their bases without ever stepping into the batter’s box, as per the new rule eliminating the need to throw four balls for an intentional pass. Imagine the seconds we saved here! Even with a force at every base, things looked bleak with Evan Longoria at the plate but the 29-year-old Lawrence was up to the occasion, and blew Longoria away, bringing Brad Miller to the plate.

Was it too much to ask for Casey to do it again? Um, yep. Miller wouldn’t commit on a high inside sinker that didn’t, and took his base while Mallex Smith strolled home with the winning run.

I don’t mind walkoff celebrations, as long as they don’t result in a stupid injury, but I think it was a bit much that they mobbed Miller and dumped water over his head just because he had the common sense not to swing at a pitch that wasn’t even close. A little restraint, please, fellas, okay?

Another disappointing day at the ball yard, I mean ball cave, so disappointing that the dual pitching gems were largely forgotten in the aftermath. That’s a shame, and a disservice to Aaron Sanchez and Chris Archer, neither of whom figured in the decision, of course.

One more game in Tampa, and a chance to split this series and come home two and four, which at the moment sounds a lot better than one and five.

We can only hope.

After that bracing first win last night, things looked so-o-o good tonight, five batters into the top of the first.

Tampa’s starter was Matt Andriese, a 27-year-old righty in his third year with the Rays. If there’s a weak spot in the Rays’ rotation, it’s Andriese, who is 11-13 and 4.38 in his major league career. He started out okay tonight, with a little help from the first two Jays’ hitters. Devon Travis swung at ball four to fly out on a 3-1 pitch, and Josh Donaldson fanned on a cutter in the zone that was a little down and away, but not much.

Then things got better quick. With two outs, Jose Bautista ripped a line single into right. Kendrys Morales, hitting from the left side against Andriese, hit a blast to left that hit fair inside the line and then bounced over the low wall in the corner for a ground rule double, Bautista having to stop at third. Troy Tulowitzki, mimicked Morales from the right side and shot a liner into the right field corner, scoring Bautista and Morales. In the exhiliration of such a lightning strike, it hardly mattered that Zeke Carrera grounded out to first to end the inning.

Based on his Florida appearances, and his start against the Pirates in Montreal, if anyone looked ready to dominate right from the opening bell in the Jays’ rotation it was Francisco Liriano. He had looked really confident, especially in his ability to induce hopeless swings against his wicked low slider.

Liriano was paired with catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia tonight, Manager John Gibbons choosing game four of the season to give Russell Martin a rest and get Salty some game action and plate appearances. While pros are pros and all that, and Salty is hardly a raw rookie, it was a curious decision on Gibbons’ part. There is a palpable chemistry between Liriano and Martin, supposedly stemming from their time together with the Pirates, which, the story had it, contributed much to the rejuvenation of Liriano’s career when he was reunited with Martin in Toronto last year in mid-season.

So, to go back to the first inning tonight, Liriano pitching to Saltalamacchia. Steven Souza leads off and is gifted by Liriano with a five-pitch walk. Souza fouls off the only strike Liriano throws, and none of the four balls he serves up could have made it to the strike zone with a bus pass. Kevin Kiermaier steps in, lefty on lefty against Liriano. He takes a mildly questionable called third strike low and inside on a 2-2 pitch. Oh, that’s better. Always good to keep Kiermaier off the bases.

Little did we know that the Kiermaier strikeout was the only out that Francisco Liriano would record, in what goes into the records as the shortest, and no worst start of his career.

With Kiermaier on first, Evan Longoria stepped in. He had to skip away from Liriano’s first pitch, inside and in the dirt. Then a changeup dipped under Longoria’s bat for strike one. Then, whether out of the need to throw something, anything, in the zone to get ahead in the count, or because it was just a bad pitch, the 1-1 was a four-seamer, above the waist, inner half of the plate. Longoria did not waste it. He was all over it, and it was destined for the left-field seats from the crack of the bat.

Just like that, the fine stick work from Toronto in the top of the inning was neutralized, and we were back to square one. Bad enough in its own right, but there was more to come.

Rickie Weeks walked on a 3-1 pitch. The strike was the cripple that Weeks was taking all the way. The four balls look like a shotgun pattern on Pitchcast, outside and in the dirt.

Derek Norris walked on a 3-2 pitch. Two of the balls were up and just off the corners. Liriano wanted those, but he was in no position to get a break from plate umpire Mike Winters. Ball four sent Norris skipping out of the box to save his feet.

With Brad Miller coming to the plate, a visit from pitching coach Pete Walker resulted only (not directly, I know!) in a wild pitch, moving the runners up before Miller doubled to left, opposite field, to give the Rays a 4-2 lead. There was still only the one out.

Tim Beckham walked on four pitches, probably semi-intentional to set up the double play, but the way Liriano was going, who knew? Rookie DH Daniel Robertson lifted a soft liner into left for a single, with Miller stopping at third to load the bases.

That was it for Francisco Liriano on this night. With little choice in the matter, Manager John Gibbons pulled the plug, saving his veteran and highly-prized southpaw from further damage, to his ERA or his dignity.

In from the pen came Dominic Leone, the right-hander who had been yanked off the plane to Buffalo (well, not literally), and kept with the big team when Roberto Osuna had been put on the 10-day disabled list. Not that anybody wanted things to turn out this way, but this was a good opportunity for Leone to show his stuff.

He did a good job, too. Peter Bourjos grounded out to short with the run scoring, and the runners moving up, and Steven Souza flied out to right to end the inning. So the Rays ended up with an additional run but Leone had needed just five pitches to work his way out of the starter’s mess.

This could have been one of those games where a team just rolls over and plays dead, shell-shocked both by the loss of a first-inning lead and by the utter inability of one of their best starters to throw strikes. And for the next couple of innings that’s what it looked like. Andriese settled in and dispatched the side in order in the second and third.

Worse, the Rays added a marker in the second when Leone, after a one-out walk to Evan Longoria, gave up one of those infamous catwalk doubles to Rickie Weeks, which left runners at second and third, so that catcher Derek Norris was able to plate Longoria with his sacrifice fly to right. If you ever want to give your head a spin, look up the ground rules for Tampa Bay related to balls hitting the various catwalks of the Orange Juice Dome, and how they’re scored. It’s kinda like a pinball machine in there.

But in the top of the fourth things started to turn. Tulowitzki, who had already doubled down the right-field line, went to right field again leading off, and this time parked it for a solo homer, cutting the Rays’ lead to 6-3. Toronto had a shot at more, when Zeke Carrera singled with one out, and Kevin Pillar followed with a two-out single, but the threat ended when Devon Travis was retired on a hard grounder to second.

After the horrendous first, and trailing by three, what the Jays needed most was some serious holding on the part of their bullpen. The first up, Leone went two and two thirds, and gave up a run, a hit, and a walk, while striking out three on a total of 44 pitches.

Next up was Ryan Tepera, who just might not have to ride the Toronto-Buffalo express this year. He gave Toronto more of what it needed with two almost-clean innings, enough time for the Jays’ offence to get back in the game and even take the lead.

Tepera retired the side on nine pitches with a strikeout in the fourth, and in the fifth gave up a leadoff single to Rickie Weeks, and struck out Derek Norris before Brad Miller grounded into a 3-6 double play, with Justin Smoak taking the out at first and then throwing to Tulowitzki for the tag at second.

So Tepera got his team into the sixth without further damage by Tampa’s offence. In the meantime, Andriese’s day had come to an end, and the Blue Jays managed to claw back a little closer, thanks to the generosity of Tampa’s relievers, who seemed determined to return the favour Liriano had done for them.

Andriese started the fifth but didn’t record an out. Josh Donaldson led off with a double to left centre, and advanced to third on a wild pitch. Jose Bautista lifted a medium-deep fly ball to right, easily enough to score Donaldson from third, even if Steven Souza hadn’t dropped the ball, leaving Bautista safe at first on the error, and the Tampa lead cut to two. Mercifully, Manager Kevin Cash decided to pull the plug on Andriese, giving up on the hope that he could squeeze out the five innings needed for the win. Andriese’s line was five runs (Bautista would eventually score), 4 earned, on seven hits, with one walk and four strikeouts over 85 pitches.

Brought in to face Kendrys Morales was the aptly-monikered Jumbo Diaz, more dignifiedly christened Jose Rafael, who comes by his nickname honestly, checking in at six foot-four and 278 pounds. Diaz came to Tampa Bay from Cincinnati late in the season last year, after limited service with the Reds over the two previous seasons, and won a spot in the Rays’ pen this spring.

Diaz looked fair to keep the lead at two, as he got Morales on a fly ball to right, and caught Tulo looking, though he did uncork a wild pitch that allowed Bautista to move up to second, whence Justin Smoak delivered him by spanking a two-out double to right. Smoak would then advance to third on a passed ball, before Zeke Carrera ended the inning by flying out to left. Tampa’s lead was now one, and the collars were getting tight.

By the way, all the Smoak-haters out there might just take a breath and check out his stats so far this year. At the moment he’s at .278, five for eighteen, with 2 doubles, the one RBI, one walk, and five strikeouts. Let’s see if he continues to prosper with increased playing time.

The sixth inning was crazy times for both teams. It saw the Jays jump, er, walk, into their second lead of the game, and then the Rays jump, er walk, back into the lead, never to relinquish it. Not that either team was through scoring.

Jumbo Diaz yielded to rookie Austin Pruitt. Pruitt soon found himself surrounded with Jays with only one out, giving up a single to Saltalamacchia and walking Devon Travis and Josh Donaldson. He then struck out Jose Bautista for the second out, and he was finished. Kevin Cash called on the lefty Xavier Cedeno, apparently to turn Kendrys Morales around. Didn’t much matter, because Cedeno couldn’t find the plate, and walked both Morales and Tulo, to put the Jays in the lead. He escaped further damage when Justin Smoak stung a line drive right at Tim Beckham at short for the third out.

John Gibbons sent Tepera out to start a third inning, but yanked him right away, after Beckham led off with a base hit. He might have regretted the quick hook, though, as J. P. Howell came in and allowed the four batters he faced to reach on two hits and two walks, departing after letting Tepera’s runner, and one of his own, score.

Joe Smith did a good job of mopping up the mess, coming in with the bases loaded and still nobody out, and striking out the side. Unfortunately, mixed in with the strikeouts was a bloop single by Logan Morrison that brought in Tampa’s ninth run.

That sixth inning decided the game. The Jays cut the lead back to one when Josh Donaldson led off the eighth with his first homer of the year off former Jays’ prospect Danny Farquhar, and the Rays restored it to two in the bottom of the eighth with a run basically manufactured by Kevin Kiermaier’s speed off Aaron Loup, in his second inning of work.

Kevin Cash brought in his closer Alex Colome to get Tulo for the last out of the eighth, and went on to set the Jays down in order in the ninth for his third save in five Rays’ games.

It was nice to see the Jays show some spirit and mount a comeback, though they certainly had some help from Tampa’s pitchers. But this was just a hot mess of a game, one in which even though they regained the lead for a brief moment, they never recovered from being set back on their heels in the first inning by Francisco Liriano’s failure to throw strikes.

It doesn’t get any easier for the Jays, as Chris Archer gets the nod tomorrow for the Rays, but at least it should be a good matchup, with Aaron Sanchez making his first start of the season for the boys from the north.

We try not to panic here, and we try to keep it philosophical, but there’s something foreboding in the fact that the Jays have lost two games in which they haven’t hit, won a third one on only five hits, and tonight, when they finally broke into double digits in the hit column, their pitching let them down for the first time this season.

There, that feels better.

Not great, mind you, but definitely better.

All it took was a great effort from a little guy with big attitude and a bigger heart, and a prodigious blast from an intimidating newbie for the Toronto Blue Jays to break the jinx and ice their first win of the year.

And it all came to pass in the Orange Juice Dome of Tampa Bay, the unlikeliest of venues to host a Blue Jay breakout.

Mind you, this game hardly marked a real breakout for the Toronto bats. Tonight they had only five hits, their lowest total in the three games to date. But it sure was good to see five hits produce five runs, enough on average to have swept the first three games, given the strength of the Jays’ starting pitchers.

Like the night before in Baltimore, it was clear from the outset that the starting pitchers would have much to do with tonight’s outcome.

Lefty Blake Snell, the youngest member of the Rays’ rotation at 24, had the start for Tampa Bay. He did a good job for the Rays when he went into the rotation last year, going 6-8 with an ERA of 3.54. He was a little wild, with 51 walks in 89 innings pitched, but made up for that with 98 strikeouts. More to the point, I recall that he had at least one very good outing against Toronto late in the season, when our boys were struggling mightily at the plate. September third in Tampa, to be exact, when he gave up one run on two hits over six inning in a 7-5 Tampa win. Having suffered through too many of those poor performances against young/unknown/marginal starters, I found his long but very young face and lanky frame instantly recognizable when he took the mound.

Snell started the game by fanning Steve Pierce, then Kevin Kiermaier ran about five miles to get under a short outfield fly by Josh Donaldson. Jose Bautista worked Snell for a walk, but died on first when Kendrys Morales unleashed another one of his woulda-been-homers-at-home to Kiermaier in deep centre.

Then Marcus Stroman, the newly-minted MVP of the World Baseball Classic, took the mound for the Jays. Ever since the WBC, there has been even more bounce to Stroman, as if that were possible, but the energy hasn’t been at the expense of focus that is definitely much sharper than in the past.

All he did in the first was make the top of the Tampa Bay order look silly by fanning Corey Dickerson, Kiermaier, and Evan Longoria on 18 pitches. The only concern: it takes a lot of pitches to strike everybody out.

In the second, Snell stepped it up a notch, and carved through the Jays on just twelve pitches, popping up Troy Tulowitzki on a short fly to right, fanning Russell Martin, and freezing Justin Smoak.

In the home half, Stroman struck out Brad Miller to run his string to four, and then faltered for a minute. Steven Souza, who has worn out Jays’ pitching about as much as Kevin Kiermaier and the departed-but-not-lamented Logan Forsyth, went with the pitch, a low two-seamer on the outer portion, and grounded a single sharply through the gap opened by the shift into right field. Undaunted, Stroman called on his well-honed ability to coax ground balls, and got the left-handed Logan Morrison to roll one right to the bag at second, where Tulowitzki, in the shift, picked it up, stepped on the base, and finished an easy double play. Besides Stroman’s pitching and Kendrys Morales’ blast, coming up in just a moment, double plays were a major story for the Jays tonight. This was the first of four for Toronto’s infield, three turned behind Stroman.

Ever since the first radio broadcast of a major league game (Pirates-Phillies from Pittsburgh, August 5, 1921 on KDKA Pittsburgh, just to refresh your memory), commentators have taken it as their duty to work the sentence “Oh, those bases on balls!” into every broadcast. So, if Blake Snell’s main problem last year was too many walks, it would appear that he still has work to do in that regard. Tonight he walked five, and three came back to score on him.

So only two things separated the work of Snell and Marcus Stroman tonight: Snell’s walks and Stroman’s infield support. The only moment that made a difference in the game came in the third, when Snell issued two of his five walks. Kevin Pillar led off by hitting a hard liner right at Kiermaier in centre. Darwin Barney, inserted at second tonight to give him some at bats and to break up Devon Travis’ workload, ripped a liner to left for a single. Pearce fanned for the second out, but Donaldson and Bautista worked Snell for walks to load the bases for Kendrys Morales, who despite his deep fly ball outs had been hitless to this point for Toronto.

No longer! Morales took a called strike on a four-seamer on the outside corner, and then Snell made the mistake of throwing the same pitch waist-high on the inner half. Morales buried it in the walkway above the first twenty rows of outfield seats in left-centre, apparently some 444 feet away from the plate. The Jays had only two hits so far, but now they had four runs to show for it, and with Stroman on the mound things suddenly looked much, much better for our side.

Snell settled in, facing the minimum over the next three innings, aided by Steve Pearce bouncing into a double play after Darwin Barney worked Snell for a leadoff walk in the fifth. After his adventurous third inning, he only needed 46 pitches to navigate four through six.

Stroman actually allowed more runners in the four innings three through six, two walks that were followed by the second double play behind him in the fourth, and a Corey Dickerson single erased by the third DP in the sixth. But it was the Rays’ fifth inning that provided the biggest adventure for the diminutive righty. Steven Souza led off with a ringing double ripped into left centre. Logan Morrison moved him on to third with a ground-out to second. Then the Rays made a mistake that hurt twice over. Tim Beckham topped one back to the mound, and Souza unaccountably broke for the plate, either because of a misread of the ball, or an excess of recklessness. The athletic Stroman fired the ball high to catcher Saltalamacchia’s glove side, Salty caught it, and came down with one leg landing in Souza’s path. Souza slid into Salty’s pads, was called out on a fine tag, and shaken up by the play. Luckily, he was able to remain in the game, but unluckily for the Rays their appeal of the play, whether for a missed tag or an illegal block of the plate, was over-ruled, and the out stood.

Mallex Smith then grounded out to Tulo to end the inning and strand Beckham at first. Going Snell one better, despite his adventures, Stroman only expended 48 pitches in navigating the third through sixth innings.

As should be expected in early-season games, the seventh inning marked the end of the road for both starters.

For whatever reason, Rays’ Manager Kevin Cash gave Snell quite a bit of rope in his last inning, waiting until the Jays scored another run and got two outs before giving the lefty Snell a break from having to face Donaldson a fourth time, and bringing in the righty Tommy Hunter for the matchup that ended the inning.

Snell walked Russell Martin to lead off the inning, and gave up a base hit to Justin Smoak, with Martin alertly going to third. After Kevin Pillar hit a short fly to right, on which Martin had to be held at third, Darwin Barney brought him home with a push bunt up the first base line. Barney reached when first baseman Morrison bobbled the ball for an error, which also allowed Martin to score. Snell then got the second out when Steve Pearce flew out deep to right, with Smoak going to third. Finally, it was time for Manager Cash to bail out his young lefty, and Hunter came in to freeze Donaldson on a pitch both Josh and Pitchcast thought was outside.

So Blake Snell’s day was done, with a line of six and two thirds innings, 4 earned runs, only three hits, the damaging five walks and five strikeouts on 97 pitches. Perhaps he’ll sleep tonight, once he stops playing the pitch to Morales over and over in his mind.

Rather untypically, John Gibbons took his cue from Manager Cash and let Stroman work through a spot of trouble of his own in the bottom of the seventh before pulling the plug. It was an interesting call, because Gibbie’s usually very quick with the hook when his starter reaches the seventh. He may have wanted Stroman to stretch out a bit more, as he went into the inning at only 76 pitches. Again, he might have been worried about a bullpen bereft of its normal closer, and eager to get as much mileage out of the known quantity as he could.

So Stroman gave up singles to Evan Longoria, and Brad Miller, induced a fly-ball out to right from the dangerous Souza, and gave up an RBI single to Logan Morrison for the Rays’ first run of the game. That was it for Stroman, who went six and a third, gave up one run on six hits—three of them in the seventh—walked two, struck out five, and threw 89 pitches. Gibbons called on Joe Biagini to pick Stroman up, with one out and Rays on first and second. Biagini had to throw exactly one pitch. Tim Beckham bounced it to Donaldson, who was playing the line, and the latter stepped on the bag and fired to first to double up the quick Beckham, marking the Jays’ fourth double play of the game.

Hunter picked up right where he left off in the seventh, getting Jose Bautista on a grounder to first, and then fanning Morales and Tulo. Four outs, three strikeouts, and 18 pitches for Hunter. Not a bad night’s work for the veteran Tampa righty.

Biagini was cruising along in the bottom of the eighth, getting Mallex Smith on a fly ball to right and “Sweet Jesus” Sucre on a grounder to short, but then Corey Dickinson got his attention by going down to get a 2-1 pitch at the bottom of the zone and pulling it into the right-field corner for a double. Not to worry, though, as Kevin Kiermaier grounded out to Smoak to end the inning. Not one to waste pitches, Biagini recorded five outs and gave up one hit, for extra bases, on just 12 pitches.

The ninth was a bit messy for both sides. Danny Farquhar replaced Hunter on the hill for the Rays, and quickly got the first two outs before giving up a sharp single to centre by Pillar that raised his average to .333. But then he got Zeke Carrera to fly out to right to end the threat.

Biagini was followed by the new submariner Joe Smith, who got the first out when Evan Longoria lined out hard to Baustista in right. But then he walked Brad Miller, and gave up yet another double to that guy Souza, apparently none the worse for wear after crashing into Saltalamacchia’s pads. Down by four and the Rays playing for a big inning, Miller was stopped at third.

This brought Logan Morrison to the plate, John Gibbons to the mound, and Jason Grilli, the de facto closer in place of Robero Osuna, into the game. Perhaps a bit overly-pumped (ya think?) Grilli overthrew a slider to Morrison, allowing Miller to score Tampa’s second run, and Souza to advance to third. But Grilli went on to fan Morrison and then Tim Beckham to seal the deal and bring on the famous Grilli victory pump.

So we can’t say that Toronto’s bats have really broken out yet, but thanks to a strong start by Marcus Stroman, a much-needed blast to the stratosphere by Kendrys Morales, flawless infield defence, and solid relief work by Joe Biagini and Jason Grilli, our Torontos lifted that ohfer monkey off their back and put a big black “1” in the win column for 2017.

Three games, three great starts, what’s to complain about? The bats will come around, and if the rotation continues to deliver, we’ll soon put the opening visit to Baltimore firmly in our rear-view mirror, where it belongs.

Francisco Liriano, over to you!

Whoosh. Down went Devon Travis.

Whoosh. Down went Josh Donaldson.

Whoosh. Down went Jose Bautista.

It was a Frank the Plumber moment. Frank did our plumbing for years, though unfortunately he’s now retired. A wiry little guy, he was great. Skilled, creative at solving problems, reasonably priced.

But Frank came with one caveat: he was a bit dramatic. Like any older house, our house has a lot of quirks, not least in the area of plumbing. No matter what the job, no matter how straightforward it seemed to us, there would always be a moment soon after he started when we would hear the dreaded, high-pitched lament: “Oh, no-o-o-o!” Then we knew we were in for it.

When Dylan Bundy looked positively dominant fanning the top of the Jays’ order in the first inning last night, Frank the Plumber’s “Oh, no-o-o!” was ringing in my ears. After Monday night’s low-scoring, well-pitched opener, in which the Jays’ fell to Mark Trumbo’s walkoff homer in the eleventh having wasted numerous opportunities to break the game open, what we needed most was to break out the lumber and score some runs.

Toronto had only faced Bundy for about three innings in relief last year, so there was going to be a bit of a learning curve tonight one way or the other. Either the Jays’ lineup would give him a rude introduction to starting in the American League East, or they would have to figure him out. From his overpowering start, it was clear the learning was all on the Jays.

Jay Happ, coming off a strong spring and a great 2016, did his thing in the bottom of the first, getting the Orioles to elevate for all three outs, interrupted by Mannie Machado reaching with two down when Justin Smoak failed to scoop Josh Donaldson’s low throw from third. The error went to Donaldson on a play that I’m sure Smoak thinks he should have made.

In any case, it was clear that a night of great pitching was in the offing, and when you’re in Baltimore that’s never a great thing, with the Orioles long-standing history of playing for the long bomb at home, going back to the late, legendary, Earl Weaver, who summed it up like this: “The key to winning baseball games is pitching, fundamentals, and three run homers.” Against the O’s in Baltimore, few mistakes go unpunished, so it’s best to put some numbers on the board early.

Bundy and Happ traded styles in the second inning, as all three Jays made contact while going three up, three down. There was an article the other day (sorry I didn’t bookmark it) that showed how Kendrys Morales was going to be a good fit in the AL East. Seems that in the whole league, Morales’ fly-ball outs averaged the greatest distance. Moving him from L.A., Seattle, and Kansas City to the bandboxes of our own division turns a lot of those 385-foot outs into home runs. So it was fitting that as the first hitter to hit one of Bundy’s pitches fair, he hit one almost to the wall in left, an easy play for Joey Rickard.

As for Happ, he caught Chris Davis looking, gave up a fly to centre to Trey Mancini, and then caught Wellington Castillo looking. It looked like Bundy and Happ were on for a classic pitchers’ duel.

But then a funny thing happened in the Jays’ third. In fact, a miraculous thing happened. Instead of flailing away ever harder in frustration at Bundy’s offerings, the bottom of the order suddenly changed the approach and concentrated on contact, with cut-down swings. After Steve Pearce popped out to second, Justin Smoak, hitting left against Bundy, held back and stroked one to left centre for a single. Kevin Pillar muscled one up the middle off his hands for a hit, Smoak stopping at second. Devon Travis held back and laid one nicely into right centre to score Smoak, Pillar going to third.

Wow. Three guys not trying to make Dylan Bundy look bad, and we’ve got a run and something still going. Unfortunately, home plate umpire Eric Cooper rung up an indignant Josh , on a four-seamer that Josh thought was both low and inside, and then Jose Bautista hit one absolutely on the screws toward right, but it was snagged by Chris Davis at first to end the threat. It was a disappointing outcome, to be sure, but still, things were starting to look up.

. . . Until the very next inning, the bottom of the third, when Happ missed his spot with two–three, actually—pitches, and the game was for all practical purposes decided. He left a fast ball up to Johnathan Schoop leading off, and Schoop rifled it into left for a base hit. Eric Cooper rung up J.J. Hardy on a pitch that left Hardy just as riled as Donaldson had been (payback?) Joey Rickard hit the ball right on the nose, but right at Steve Pearce in left. Then came mistake number two from the Jays’ lefty, a fast ball up and in that Adam Jones jumped all over, sending it a few rows deep into the short left field seats. 2-1 Baltimore. Finally, Happ didn’t quite get a two-seamer low enough on Mannie Machado, and he powered it on a trajectory right over Kevin Pillar’s head in centre. This was the cue for the first appearance of the season of Superman Pillar, who raced back, snatched it out of the air above the fence, and crashed face-on into the poorly padded wall. You had to cringe when you saw the padding absorb his impact briefly, followed by the concrete wall underneath knocking him straight back.

To everyone’s relief, after a brief respite on the warning track, Pillar was able to get up gingerly and carefully jog it off to the dugout. Whatever bruises he sustained, he was out there again next inning, and able to finish the game. Thanks to him, Happ and the Jays were only down a run.

And that was it, dear readers. It hardly mattered that Chris Davis roped one opposite field off Happ in the fourth to make it 3-1, which made it just that much harder for the Jays to forge a comeback against Bundy and the intimidating Baltimore bullpen.

Oh, Toronto made it interesting in the eighth and ninth, and we’ll give them their due in a minute, but this was a pitchers’ game all the way. Happ only gave up two more hits, a single that Wellington Castillo tried to stretch into a double, challenging the arm of the banged-up Pillar, but Pillar nailed him at second. And Mannie Machado singled off him in the sixth, after Happ had fanned Jones, and before he fanned Trumbo and caught Davis looking.

Happ went out after seven full innings, hung with a loss despite giving up three runs on five hits, with no walks and nine strikeouts on 89 pitches. Ryan Tepera mopped up for the Jays in the eighth, and only took eight pitches to get three ground balls to out machine Troy Tulowitzki at shortstop.

Bundy also went seven full, and after the brief breakthrough in the third, he was full value for the win: one run, four hits, no walks, seven strikeouts, and 98 pitches.

He was lucky to get the win, though, because Toronto didn’t show a lot of respect for the vaunted Oriole bullpen duo of Brad Brach and Zach Britton. For the second time in the game against a tough righty, Justin Smoak, batting from the port side, stroked one hard into the left-field corner for a leadoff ground-rule double. Unfortunately, Zeke Carrera, who ran for him and advanced to third on a wild pitch, died there when Donaldson struck out.

After Tepera made quick work of the O’s in the bottom of the eighth, it was Zach Britton time, and for the second time in two games, Toronto faced him down in every way possible except to tie the score.

Bautista singled to left. Morales singled to left. John Gibbons sent Ryan Goins in to run for Morales. Plate umpire Cooper intervened in events again by ringing up Tulowitzki on a checked swing without asking for help from the first base umpire. (What we have here is a basic lack of courtesy.) Russell Martin walked on a full count. This brought up Pearce and created a moment of delicious anticipation, as Pearce faced his former teammate and, apparently, good friend, Britton, with the sacks loaded and the game on the line. He saw seven pitches. Seven fast balls. Nothing but smoke. The slowest was a 95.5 mph two-seamer. He took two balls and fouled off both of them. He looked for all the world like he had Britton lined up, and would eventually do him in when he got his pitch.

But Britton won the battle with a two-seamer on the outside part of the plate at the bottom of the zone, and Pearce topped it, hitting a high bouncer to J.J. Hardy at short who turned it into a game-ending double play.

So Baltimore sweeps the two-gamer, taking advantage of a serious lack of production from the Jays’ lineup, and as if to answer his critics from the Wild Card game Buck Showalter gives Zach Britton three innings in two games. But is it the Zach Britton of 2016, or not? Consider his results over those three innings against a Jays’ lineup that wasn’t hitting much: 3 innings pitched, five hits, two walks, three strikeouts and 48 pitches. Trouble in the land of the steamed clam?

And what do we make of our Jays’ first two games?

Now, I try not to over-react to things. Of course it’s only two games, and of course it’s not statistically out of the question that a team can run into two fine pitching performances in a row. After all, look at what Marco Estrada and Jay Happ threw at the Orioles in the same games.

But.

But. Weren’t we here last year, same time, same refrain, almost?

Didn’t we start hearing Manager John Gibbons insist he wasn’t worried about the hitting pretty darn early in the season last year?

After the disappointment of these first two games in Baltimore, it’s definitely time for the Jays to storm into that perennial hell-hole in Tampa, knock some balls over the wall, and put up some seriously crooked numbers.

The resurgent Marcus Stroman will be first man up in Tampa tomorrow night. On with the show!

Talk about your topsy-turvy outcome!

In a near mirror-image of last year’s American League Wild Card Game, the Baltimore Orioles captured today’s opener of the 2017 season with an eleventh-inning walk-off home run by Mark Trumbo, served up by the grizzled Jays’ veteran reliever Jason Grilli

Dial it back to October 4, 2016. Change the venue from Orioles Park at Camden Yards to the TV Dome. Put Ubaldo Jimenez on the mound for the Orioles, and Edwin Encarnacion at the plate for the Blue Jays. Will we ever forget the image of Edwin’s majestic three-run shot, followed by a majestic bat drop that ended the season for the O’s and sent the Jays on to the ALDS? Of course not.

I’m sure if the Orioles had their druthers they druther trade today’s exciting victory for a reversal of that game in October last year. But that’s not possible, so it’s some consolation for them to have turned the tables on Toronto and hung a tough loss on them in the first game of the 2017 season, a game in which the pitchers dominated the hitters, and both teams missed opportunities to put things on ice in regulation.

Of course there can be no comparison between the electricity generated by the wild card game last fall and the atmosphere of today’s opener. But this game indeed had its own moments, its own important actors, its own interesting plays, both sizzling and otherwise. It introduced some new aspects to the Jays’ narrative, and revisited some of the old through lines.

There are, no doubt, those commentators and fans alike already groaning about the same-old same-old of Toronto’s bullpen giving up a loss after a fine performance by starter Marco Estrada.

But let’s be clear: we cannot hang this loss on bullpen failure, nor can we hang it on defensive lapses. While it is true that there was a single odd moment of failure to execute, when Zeke Carrera and Kevin Pillar played excuse-me as Wellington Castillo’s easy fly ball fell for a double, that embarrassing moment passed without inflicting any harm on the Blue Jays. And it was more than compensated by not one, but two marvellous defensive plays by, who’da thunk it, Jose Bautista.

The fact is that, contrary to most expectations for an early season match, this was a finely-pitched game on both sides, the totality of the pitching far outshining the ability of either team to deliver in the clutch.

And, Breaking News here: Baltimore manager Buck Showalter did not leave premier closer Zach Britton moldering on the bench like he did in the Wild Card game. Wonder if Showalter has really changed his approach, or if he’s just gotten tired of listening to all the criticism? In the event, Britton pitched six outs, the ninth and tenth innings, in a tie, and kept the Jays at bay, though he didn’t exactly blow them away, giving up three hits, to Devon Travis, Josh Donaldson, and newcomer Steve Pearce, while walking Russell Martin and fanning only Darwin Barney.

Pearce, by the way, acquitted himself very well in his first game with Toronto. He went three for five, hitting three ropes for base hits, scored the tying run all the way from first, going with the pitch on a 3-2, 2-out count that Zeke Carrera scalded into the right-field corner for a double. Pearce handled first base without any difficulty, and then moved to left for the homer-shortened eleventh, giving way to Justin Smoak at first after Smoak had hit in the top of the inning for Barney, who had hit for Carrera in the ninth against the lefty Britton and taken over in left. Have you got all that?

It was a measure of the hitting futility of the Jays that both Barney and Smoak struck out as pinch hitters. To reiterate, it was not a day for the hitters.

It’s not really surprising that after a winter of fine-tuning their rosters, both the Orioles and the Jays, who finished in a dead heat for second in the American League East last year, still line up pretty equally against each other. Potent offensive potential up and down the batting order, each oriented toward the big blast rather than small ball. Solid, in some cases outstanding, defensive capability. Very good pitching, with an edge to the Jays in starters, especially with Chris Tillman on the shelf, and an edge to the Orioles in the bullpen, especially with Jays’ closer Roberto Osuna not available to come off the disabled list until April 11^th.

The starters were Marco Estrada and Kevin Gausman, tabbed as Showalter’s number two, but temporarily elevated by the absence of Tillman. Estrada had an interesting first start, in that he struggled for his first three innings before turning out the lights in his last three. In the first Adam Jones nicked him for a double down the line, and he walked Mannie Machado, before geting Trumbo to fly out to right with runners at second and third. He was better in the second, but had to induce three ground balls after Castillo led off with the aforementioned bloop double to left.

Then, in the third, Baltimore teed off on him and put up two runs, though a great play by Bautista kept it from being worse. Leading off, newcomer Seth Smith pounded a double over Kevin Pillar’s head. Jones walked. Machado hit a lazy fly to left for the first out, but Chris Davis rifled one down the line in right that bounced off the top of the fence and back to Bautista, who turned and fired a one-hop strike to second to nail Davis trying for the double. The ball had been hit so hard that while Smith scored Jones was held at third. Trumbo then cashed Jones with another double to right for a 2-0 Baltimore lead and Castillo made the third out on a deep fly to Carrera in left..

So after three innings, Estrada had given up two runs on five hits, with two walks and no strikeouts, and had thrown 55 pitches. Then he settled into the kind of groove that we often see with him. Starting with Wellington’s deep fly, he set down ten straight batters, striking out four, and departed after six innings having thrown 89 pitches, only 34 in the last three.

He also departed with a tie, which would have seemed unlikely through the first four innings as Gausman frustrated the Jays while playing with fire against Toronto for the first three innings before setting them down in order in the fourth. The Jays finally plated their first run of the season in the fifth, through no merit of their own. Gausman grouped three walks around a single by Carrera, Kendrys Morales picking up his first Toronto RBI with the bases-loaded pass. Troy Tulowitzki followed by battling Gausman through nine pitches before the struggling righty got him to roll over and ground weakly to Machado at third to end the inning.

But in the fifth the Oriole starter’s pitch count ballooned from 62 to 97, and Gausman was definitely gassed. Surprisingly, Manager Showalter sent him out for the sixth and he got Russell Martin to ground out to short before giving up Pearce’s second base hit, which ended his day but left Pearce on first as his responsibility. Showalter turned to his hard-throwing first-man-up Mychal Givens, against whom the Jays have had mixed results in the past. This wasn’t one of his better outings as the first two batters hit the ball hard on him, Kevin Pillar flying out deep to Jones in centre for the second out before Carrera drove Pearce home to tie the game, finishing Gausman’s record for the day.

A word is in order here about Mr. Ezequiel Carrera. In the run-up to the final roster decisions before opening day, much was made of John Gibbons’ apparent affection for Carrera, which might have led to his making the team rather than Melvin Upton Jr., who has arguably better tools all the way around. And here he was today, starting in left, when the expectation had been that Pearce would be in left and Smoak at first. And there he was in the second inning, trading puzzled looks with Kevin Pillar as the two of them failed to camp under Castillo’s easy fly. Yet, there he also was, with the only base hit, sharply grounded up the middle, to combine with the three walks for the Jays’ first run in the fifth, and again driving in the tying run in the sixth with a double.

There’s something about that guy, Carrera. Maybe manager Gibbons isn’t so sleepy after all.

Mention needs to be made here about Carrera’s partners at the bottom of the order. Pearce, Pillar, and Carrera combined for six of the team’s eleven hits, set the table for their first run, and produced the second one. Meanwhile, despite two hits from Travis and three from Donaldson, none of which figured in the scoring, Bautista, Morales, Tulowitzki and Martin went a combined zero for 17, and left 15 runners on base. If you’re looking for the key to defeat on this day, there it is.

Except for Martin, the other three meat-of-the-order guys all had good springs, so one would hope this is only a one-day glitch.

With the score tied and the starters out, the game settled into nearly six scoreless innings of effective work by the two bullpens. There was little to choose between them. Gyvens, Brad Brach, Britton, and Tyler Wilson gave up six hits, walked two, and struck out four in five and two thirds innings.

For Toronto, Joe Biagini, J.P. Howell, Joe Smith, Aaron Loup, and Jason Grilli gave up one run, Trumbo’s walk-off against Grilli, four hits, walked one, and struck out none, also over five and two thirds. Biagini and the newcomer Smith both worked one and two thirds giving up just one hit each, Howell got the left-hander he was assigned, Loup gave up a hit to the only batter he faced (to be fair, he came in for a lefty matchup, and then had to face the right-handed pinch-hitter Trey Mancini, who singled to centre, then was stranded by Grilli).

Besides the good work of the relief pitchers, both Jose Bautista and Manny Machado contributed brilliant plays to keep the game tied. With one out in the bottom of the ninth, Wellington Castillo picked up his second hit of the evening, bringing up Joey Rickard, a regular pain to Toronto last season. The right-handed Rickard took an outside pitch to right. Bautista, having already picked up an assist on Davis in the third, and shaded toward centre, raced to his left and launched a desperate dive, just snaring the ball above the turf in the webbing of his glove. Jumping to his feet, he launched a wrong-footed shot-put back to first to double off the lumbering Castillo, who, smelling a chance to score from first as the ball went all the way to the wall, was dead to rights. There is no doubt that Bautista’s heroics kept the game-winning run off the board.

In the top of the eleventh it was Machado’s turn to shine. After Smoak led off by striking out hitting for Barney, Devon Travis, who already had two base hits, came to the plate and hit a hard grounder that was destined for the left-field corner until Machado went down to his right in approved Brooks-Robinson Baltimore style, snagged it, turned his upper body around to the left toward first, and fired a bullet from his knees to nab Travis at first. Wondrous on its own merits, the play took on new meaning when Josh Donaldson followed with a single to left that would have scored Travis with the lead run.

After five-plus innings of gritty relief pitching, and two game-saving plays, it was inevitable, given that these two lineups feature numerous hitters who can end it with one swing, that sooner or later one of them would. And as always in these cases, it was advantage home team, looking for the walkoff.

And so it fell to Trumbo to attack a Grilli mistake with two gone and nobody on in the eleventh, and that was the ball game.

A fitting, if disappointing, end to an Opening Day thriller between two tough teams who will be going after each with everything they have for the rest of the season.

And we get to watch.