Long Ball Stories

The big news of the day, of course, is the return of Jay Happ to the hill for the Blue Jays after his stint on the disabled list.

The bigger news regarding Happ is that he really was a good deal better than he looked, as of three batters into the game. After Billy Hamilton flew out to right to lead off the game, Zack Cozart and local boy Joey Votto hit back-to-back shots out of the deepest part of the park.

After last night’s embarrassing laugher, part of me was thinking that it was too bad we couldn’t bank some of those extra runs. After the two Cincinnati homers, the part of me that wasn’t totally alarmed about Jay Happ’s immediate baseball future was thinking that turnabout’s fair play and all that, and that tonight we were in for a thumping. But Happ, despite also walking Eugenio Suarez, the third baseman, finished the inning at 22 pitches, and only down 2-0.

In the meantime, we didn’t really have to save any power from last night. We still had some left for tonight.

The Reds’ starter was former Blue Jays’ prospect Asher Wojchiechowski, who in one of those neat turns of irony was the Toronto prospect traded to the Houston Astros in 2012 in exchange for his opponent on the mound tonight, Jay Happ.

And let’s be clear on this from the start: I have no intention of typing Asher’s last name ever again, so I’m going to call him Wojie, okay? With a “-ski” on the end of my own name, I can hardly be accused of giving short shrift to people with Eastern European names, but enough is enough, eh? (‘Course, the fact that my own “-ski” name is very short is highly likely thanks to some lazy nineteenth-century U.S. immigration officer at Ellis Island who didn’t want to write down my forebear’s real last name, so who am I to say anything about anything anyway?)

Wojie’s another one of those big guys, about the size of a tight end, and also another one of those pitchers who’s spent a long time getting ready for the show. He was drafted by the Jays in 2010 out of The Citadel, the southern military academy best know as the alma mater of President Frank Underwood of House of Cards fame. Interesting that a university’s main reference point is to a fictional character. Ah, the influence of Netflix!

After the trade Wojie worked his way up in the Astro organization until he made the team and was inserted briefly into their starting rotation in 2015, but that did not go well and it ended in the dreaded Designated for Assignment in May of that year. He had short stints with Arizona and Miami before signing a minor-league contract with Cincinnati on April twentieth. Since his callup he’d had a good long relief stint in his debut against the Rockies, picking up his first MLB win, and one briefer outing. Tonight was his first start with the Reds, and his first start since 2015.

It’s easy to imagine what he must have felt like taking the mound in the bottom of the first against the team that drafted him, in their raucous home digs, the night after their prodigious offensive display against his new team-mates.

And yet, as is often the case with the Jays when they don’t know whom they’re facing, he had a good run through the order the first time, though he needed a bit of luck in the bottom of the second after an easy first, in which he threw only nine pitches and retired Kevin Pillar on a jam-shot grounder to first, Josh Donaldson on a fly ball to centre, and then got a big assist from Scott Schebler in right, who made a great sliding catch going into the wall to catch a twisting foul fly off the bat of Jose Bautista.

He needed a much bigger assist from Joey Votto at first to keep the slate clean in the second. Kendrys Morales led off with a line shot right into one of the few open spaces in the shift in right centre. Justin Smoak, hitting into the same shift, hit an even harder shot down the line. But Votto, playing deep but a bit off the line, snagged it in a dive that carried him into foul territory, but he still had plenty of time to double Morales off first. Wojie recovered enough from the cannonade to fan Russell Martin.

In the third the tall righty got another assist from right fielder Patrick Kivlehan, who made a fine running catch on Troy Tulowitzki leading off. Wojie finishing retiring the order on a flare by Devon Travis to right, and a strikeout of Zeke Carrera. 35 pitches, nine batters up, nine batters down. Not bad for a kid getting his big chance, eh?

As for Happ, he kept the ball in the infield in the second inning, picked up his second strikeout, and retired the side in an efficient eleven pitches. It was good to see Donaldson make a very agile play on a tough grounder on which he had to make a spin move to make the throw to first to retire Kivlehan. Maybe the play was an indication that now he really is ready to go full tilt in the field.

But it took the Toronto lefty 34 pitches to negotiate the third inning, and though he kept the deficit at two, I was really surprised that he actually came out for the fourth inning, because I thought he had blown his reserve in the third.

Happ retired the pesky Hamilton on a sliced liner to left leading off the inning, but then he walked Zack Cozart. From what we’ve seen of Cozart so far, walking him is always a good option, except that it brings Joey Votto to the plate. But this time Votto grounded out to Smoak at first. Cozart moved up to second, but there were two outs. Then Adam Duvall bounced one into the hole between Donaldson and Tulo and beat it out while Cozart, off with the hit with two outs, moved up to third. Then Happ walked Eugenio Suarez to load the bases and bring up Scott Schebler who happens to be leading the National League in homers. Cue a great reflex play by Tulo at short to glove Schebler’s hard one-hopper and throw him out at first. Good job that the Jays weren’t in an extreme shift for Schebler, because the ball would have gone through for two runs.

Not only did Happ come back out for the fourth, but he breezed it, including his second and third strikeouts on 14 pitches, to end up with four innings pitched, two runs on 3 hits, 2 walks, and 3 strikeouts on 81 pitches. Then he got to sit back, relax, and watch his mates rough up Wojie in the fourth and take him off the hook for the loss. Happ wouldn’t get the win, of course, but he had to be satisfied with his first time out.

Second time through against Toronto just wasn’t the same for Wojie. He let one get away from him on an 0-1 pitch to Pillar and it hit him on the forearm, luckily without apparent serious harm to the batter. After the smooth ride he had in the first three innings, it’s not hard to imagine that the Reds’ starter was pretty shaken up by hitting Pillar. On a 2-1 pitch he threw a batting practice fast ball up and in to Josh Donaldson, and just like that the score was tied, and some lucky fan on the fifth level in left ended up with one hell of a souvenir. Yes, I said fifth level, I surely did. It’s a good thing the stadium was in the way, or some poor guy in an office in the factory district up Spadina would have been sweeping shattered glass of his desk.

Next Jose Bautista stepped in, and, thanks, Yogi, it was déjà vu all over again. 2-1 pitch, up and in, goodbye, back to back, this time to centre. Happ’s deficit was erased, and the big boys had pounded Toronto into the lead. It was almost three in a row, as Kendrys Morales drove Scott Schebler back to the fence for a leaping catch for the first out. Justin Smoak dribbled the ball fair in front of the plate and the catcher Mesoraco threw him out for the second out.

But Wojie had one last mistake to make, well, two, but only one counted on the scoreboard. With two out and nobody on, and just one run down, he had the chance to get out of the inning, and even to pitch into the fifth, and hold on long enough for his team to retake the lead. Maybe he was tired, maybe he was shell-shocked, but he had one more pitch to leave up in the zone, one more cripple that Russell Martin drove over the fence in left centre to extend the Toronto lead to two.

Just like that, it had been nine up, nine down, albeit with a little help, and then three big, booming home runs, the lead was gone, and after two more batters, so was Wojie. The other mistake? He lost control of another one up and in, and hit Tulowitzki. Back in the bad old days you would have assumed that this was done as a reaction to the way he had been roughed up, but nobody thought anything other than that he was a marginal, and very shaken up, pitcher who didn’t know where he was throwing the ball. Though he did fan Devon Travis on a 1-2 pitch to end the inning.

So, strangely, after four innings both teams had to turn to a new cast of characters. Neither manager’s choice suggested that he thought the game was out of reach. John Gibbons went to the very impressive Danny Barnes for the fifth. And Barnes struck out the side, putting away both Billy Hamilton and Joey Votto with his trademark high heat. Unfortunately, between these two signature events, Barnes grooved one to Zack Cozart, and the newly-mintd 4-2 Toronto lead had become 4-3.

By the time Barnes had finished the two innings he was able to donate to the cause of picking up Jay Happ, he had totted up two more strikeouts, a walk, and a foul popup, so that five of the six outs he threw were via the strikeout. In the circumstances, I think we can forgive the dinger.

In the meantime, Reds’ manager Bryan Price called on one of his relievers usually employed later in the game, Michael Lorenzen, a long, lean 25-year-old who has thrown 22 innings for Cincinnati this year with 26 strikeouts and an ERA of 3.18.

Lorenzen kept the Jays at bay with aplomb for three full innings, long enough for the Reds to tie the game in the seventh. He struck out the side in the fifth while giving up s single to Donaldson, gave up two one-out walks in the sixth, but erased one of them by throwing an inning-ending double play, and pitched over another walk in the seventh.

Meantime, Ryan Tepera came on in the seventh and gave up his first run as a reliever since April twenty-seventh, spanning 13 appearances, and it was the aggressive baserunning of the Reds that helped them chalk up the tying run. Number nine hitter second baseman Jose Peraza led off with a single to left. Then he broke for second, and Russell Martin’s throw barely ticked off the glove of Troy Tulowitzki covering the bag. The error was charged to Martin, but I thought that the throw was catchable, and the replay suggested that if caught the throw might have nipped Peraza, but it didn’t, and he ended up at third.

Billy Hamilton kept the suspense to a minimum by singling home Peraza with the tying run. That was all the Reds got, but it was only thanks to a bad decision by Hamilton and a great catch by Zeke Carrera in left that the damage was limited to one run.

After Hamilton drove in Peraza he stole second as well. Then Tepera walked Cozart, so of course here came Joey Votto to the plate again. Here’s where Hamilton, presumably running on his own, made a really bad choice and took off for third, with the left-handed power hitter Votto at the plate. Not only did Russell Martin have a clearer shot at him with Votto hitting the other way, but to take a risk here with Votto at the plate and Adam Duvall and Scott Schebler following flies in the face of all common sense.

Of course as usual hubris lost out and in a close play Hamilton was DOA at third for only the first out of the inning. Cozart, curiously, who must not have checked his e-mail, stayed at first while Hamilton was heading for third. He got to second anyway as Votto walked setting the stage for the key defensive play of the game. Adam Duvall scorched a liner into left centre on which Carrera raced laterally into the gap, launched himself into a flat dive, and just barely flagged the ball down for the second out. If he misses that ball, Toronto needs Morales’ subsequent homer to tie the game, not take the lead. Tepera’s strikeout of Eugenio Suarez to end the inning was rather anticlimatic, but the Reds had tied the game nonetheless.

After Lorenzen finished his stint, John Gibbons brought Aaron Loup in to start the eighth by matching up with the lefty Schebler. Just as Babby or Tuck (can’t remember which, so we’ll just amalgamate here) was saying, “You know, Loup’s numbers are actually much better against right-handed batters”, Schebler hit a double to right centre. So Loup was one and done, and Joe Smith came in to deal with the fallout.

Smith has been great coming in for a clean start to the eighth, but this time he had that little present of Schebler at second waiting for him. The next thing you knew there were two outs and Schebler hadn’t moved up as Smith fanned Devin Mesoraco and retired Patrick Kevlihan on a liner to first. Then things got dicey, as the lineup moved on to the pesky speed guys, Peraza followed by Hamilton.

Peraza hit a tough grounder to the left side that signalled that Tulo was back full tilt in the field again. He had to dive to keep the ball in the infield and keep Schebler from scoring, and he did, though Peraza was safely across with a hit. With Hamilton at the plate, the Jays let Peraza steal second in order to keep the infield positions where they needed them. But Hamilton then hit a harmless fly to centre, and a Guy Named Joe had done his job.

Blake Wood, another more seasoned member of the Cinci bullpen was brought in for the eighth inning and it didn’t take the heart of the Toronto order long to hang the collar on him for a loss. A single by Bautista brought Morales to the plate, and a good swing by Morales on a high 1-0 fast ball sent the ball over the fence in right centre and put Toronto into the driver’s seat.

After Morales’ shot, Wood efficiently tidied up the barn and locked the door for the Reds, but that horse was gone, baby.

And so it was Osuna time, and perhaps in anticipation of another round of the Knock-Knock Game because Russell Martin was behind the plate, Osuna was as neat and tidy as Wood had been, but without the dramatic precursor, and secured his tenth save in thirteen chances with three up, three down on eleven pitches.

So, after seventeen runs on Monday against Cincinnati, the Jays’ production was significantly curtailed tonight, but whether you measured tonight’s by runs scored or combined distance the four homers travelled, it was enough, in the end, to outscore a Cininnati team that for the second night in a row was unable to put up significant numbers against a hard-working Toronto pitching staff.

With a series win already in the books, looking ahead to tomorrow afternoon’s affair, the Blue Jays should have just enough time in the morning to check out the supplies in the broom closet.

Whatever were they thinking?

Hmm, I thought to myself. It was a happy little “hmm”. Kind of like when Winnie the Pooh is stung by a bee and thinks, “Ouch! Hmm, honey bee. Mmm, honey!”

I had just checked out the record of tonight’s starting pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds for game one of this Blue Jays’ three-game home interleague series. Lisalverto Bonilla. Interesting name, that. What’s he got? Oh, so far: 0-2, 6.17 ERA. Hmm. Tell me more. So I looked him up, checked out the always-handy career stats and game logs. Oh, dear.

He had three decent starts for Texas in 2014, and this spring is his first time back in the majors since. After a couple relief appearances, he’d had three starts for Cincinnati: May thirteenth at San Francisco he went 8 innings, gave up three runs on six hits; May nineteenth against Colorado he went 5 and a third, gave up six runs on eight hits; May twenty-fourth against Cleveland he went 5 innings, gave up three runs on six hits. Not too bad for a fill-in guy, two decent starts, one bad one. But: thirteen walks, only ten strikeouts, and four homers in eighteen-plus innings as a starter, two per game.

So, feast or famine? You never know with our guys, do you?

The auguries weren’t great in the first inning. Billy Hamilton, the speedy Reds’ centre fielder, leadoff hitter, and base stealer, essentially stole a run on the Jays after Marcus Stroman committed a mental mistake on a fundamental baseball play, so the Jays were down 1-0 before even getting to see what Mr. Bonilla was all about.

Hamilton bunted his way on with a good one back to Stroman on the first pitch of the game. Then he stole second while Stroman fanned Zach Cozart, tonight’s Cincinnati DH. Then Stroman picked him off with one of his patented hesitation, I see you, I got you, moves. But then he goofed. When a pitcher has a runner picked off, we used to teach in Mosquito ball (ages nine and ten), there should only be one throw. The pitcher runs at the runner, who freezes and then has to go somewhere. Whichever direction he goes, the pitcher times his toss and bang, he’s out. But Stroman forgot his training, and threw to Josh Donaldson at third from the mound while Hamilton scampered back to second. The problem is that when you play it like that, the runner has time to get back to the base safely while the defense is making two relatively long throws. It was an ouch moment for Stroman and the Jays.

So then Hamilton tried to steal third while Joey Votto was swinging away. Donaldson saved Stroman’s carcass for the moment. Breaking for the bag to cover a throw on Hamilton, the third baseman had to stop as Hamilton went by him, reverse and backhand the grounder that Votto had hit behind where he was running. Somehow he made the grab and threw Votto out at first, leaving Hamilton finally at third, but with two outs. With this play Donaldson looked like the circus strong man of old. But Adam Duvall picked up Hamilton with a clutch two-out base hit, and Stroman got to wear his mistake. Plus, it took him 27 pitches and numerous throws over to get out of the inning.

Now down 1-0, it was time for Lisalverto Bonilla to confront the formidable Toronto lineup. Well, that was quick if sloppy on both sides. Kevin Pillar lofted an easy fly to centre on a 3-1 pitch. Donaldson took a four-pitch walk. Jose Bautista forced him at second, and Kendrys Morales pounded one at the rover, but it went down as a simple

4-3 groundout to end the inning. Sixteen pitches, and nobody took advantage of the initial wildness of Bonilla.

Stroman settled right in and retired the side easily in order in the second. Just don’t ask Kevin Pillar how easy it was. At least not until his bruises heal. Scott Schebler is a tank of a guy who patrols right field more like a wide receiver than a tank, and happened to be leading these homer-heavy Reds with fifteen coming into tonight’s game. Schebler got one up in his wheelhouse from Stroman and hit it straight over Pillar’s head. Pillar went into his jackrabbit mode and raced back, knowing, he said later, that he was going to have to hit the wall to make the catch. He hit the wall and made the catch, somehow hanging onto it while he bounced back off the wall like a bean bag. He landed on his feet and finished off with a stylish back-pedal trot that surely masked big pain.

After the Pillar catch, Stroman saved his fielders more grief by fanning catcher Devin Mesoraco and second baseman Scooter Gennett.

It was time for Toronto to go to work on Bonilla and that 1-0 deficit.

It only took two hitters for the Blue Jays to spring in front, a lead they never relinquished. The new-fangled Justin Smoak cut down his swing on 3-2 to hit a single to centre. Russell Martin was up next and he fouled off a fast ball up and out in the zone, but put a good hit on the second pitch, a changeup in the same place. It looked like a moderately threatening fly ball to right, but it just kept going, and Martin trotted home behind Smoak. Devon Travis took a flyer at hitting one out to right as well with one out, but Schebler backed into the wall for a leaping catch. Bonilla walked Zeke Carrera, but Pillar grounded out to end the inning.

Stroman, finding his groove, retired the side again in the top of the third, making a nice play on a comebacker by shortstop Jose Peraza for the first out when the ball ricocheted off his foot and he had to pounce on it and throw.

Came the bottom of the third, and last call for both Bonilla and the Reds. It was an early night indeed. Channelling Winston Churchill, if the top of the third was the end of the beginning, the bottom of the third was the beginning of the end for Cincinnati.

After Josh Donaldson led off by beating out an infield single to third, Bonilla’s propensity for wildness came into play and finished him off. He wild-pitched Donaldson to second, walked Bautista, and then Morales to load the bases. Justin Smoak scorched one down the first base line, and were it not for a gritty dive into foul territory by local boy Joey Votto he would have had a double and counted two. As it was, it was a three-unassisted out that scored Donaldson with the third Toronto run. Bonilla then reloaded the bases by walking Martin on four pitches, bringing Troy Tulowitzki to the plate.

And Reds’ manager Bryan Price to the mound to take the ball from Bonilla, after two and a third innings, three runs, and three hits, but five walks, a wild pitch, and three left on for Robert Stephenson, a big young right-hander who started a few games for the Reds last year but has been used largely in middle relief so far this year. He also hadn’t pitched in eight days, which made him a candidate to eat some innings for the Reds. It also may have left him a little rusty. After Tulo disdained a low outside strike, Stephenson came in with a second four-seamer, up and in, and he might as well have kissed it goodbye before it left his hand, because Tulo crushed it for a grand slam and the Jays were ahead 7-1.

Devon Travis followed with a single to extend his hit streak to thirteen, and Zeke Carrera singled him to second before Stephenson got Pillar to ground into a double play.

From this point on, the game became a matter of endurance. For the Reds, it was a question of the endurance of the two poor guys on the hill who were tasked with taking punishment for the rest of the game. For the Jays it was a question of the endurance of their hitters who had to keep trudging to the plate and running to first and rounding the bases; god, it was tiring. And for the ball boys it was a matter of keeping up the supply of unbruised baseballs for the umpires.

Kidding aside, there were three story lines to follow once the game was 7-1 and unofficially out of hand. First and foremost, lest it be forgotten, Marcus Stroman settled in and delivered a strong performance again. And he was followed by more efficiency from a bullpen that has logged a ton of innings. Second, of course, were the booming bats. Tribute must be paid. Finally, a word or two on the unsung heroes of baseball, the guys who have to go long and suck it up for the team when they’re getting shellacked.

By the end of the third inning, the only dark cloud hanging over Toronto’s head(s) was the pitch count by Stroman. Thanks to the long first, he was up to 55 pitches. Stroman has not breezed this year, nor has he been dominant. He has been resilient, however, and has managed to work out of a lot more jams for himself, sometimes very efficiently.

In the fourth inning he gave up two-out singles to Eugenio Suarez and Scott Schebler before getting Devin Mesoraco to hit into a fielder’s choice. He expended another 18 pitches to accomplish this, taking him to 73, and another inning like this would be his last. Understand here that with the Jays’ lead up to 10-1 by the end of the fourth, the issue here was not worry about the Reds mounting a comeback on Stroman, but the need to limit the number of innings the bullpen would have to work.

But despite the fact that he hit Scooter Gennett to lead off the fifth, and gave up a solo homer to Adam Duvall in he sixth, he worked through the two innings in a total of 24 pitches, limiting the bullpen exposure to three innings of work. Typically, he was helped out by a double play after the hit batsman in the fifth, as Jose Peraza lined out to Justin Smoak who easily doubled Gennett off first.

One of the supreme ironies of life in the major leagues is that a younger players, or one with less MLB experience, can be faced with the fact that regardless of the service he’s provided, can become the odd man out when roster changes have to be made. No one would dispute the value that Dominic Leone has provided to the Toronto bullpen. Tonight he added to his lustrous record by pitching the seventh and eighth innings, giving up one walk, facing only seven batters and needing only 19 pitches to do it.

Leone has pitched 24 and two thirds innings in 21 appearances. He has struck out 25 batters, and has an ERA of 4.01, largely in the role of first man in when the starter comes up short, for example in the sixth inning. You cannot over-value his worth to Toronto’s hard-working bullpen this spring.

Yet, Jay Happ is coming off the disabled list to make a start tomorrow night and the team needs to make room for him on the active roster. Leone has “options” left, which means that for the entire year he can be sent back and forth between the Blue Jays and Buffalo as many times as the Jays want without ever being exposed to waivers or needing to be released. You will recall that Ryan Tepera experienced this last year. Despite his fine work, Leone is the least valuable member of the bullpen who can be optioned, ranking behind Danny Barnes and Joe Biagini in that regard. The other possibility of making room for Happ would be to cut J.P. Howell, a free agent signee. But the Jays invested three million in Howell, and it’s too early to give up on him, since they’re on the hook for his salary. He’s also a lefty, a rare bird these days.

So, we will learn tomorrow sometime that Dominic Leone is off to Buffalo, and if Toronto needs him in the sixth inning again tomorrow night, since he only threw 19 pitches tonight, too bad, he’s not on the roster.

Speaking of Howell, John Gibbons figured that with a fifteen-run lead, it would be a good time to air out his arm, so he was brought on to mop up for Toronto in the top of the ninth. He was fine, giving up a single to Scott Schebler, striking out Eugenio Suarez, and benefitting from two sharp and proficient plays on ground balls by sub third baseman Russell Martin. 22 pitches, and Cincinnati’s misery was done.

Now let’s turn to that fifteen-run lead. When last we checked, Tulo had cleared the bases in the third to put Toronto ahead 7-1. In the fourth Bautista nearly missed clearing the wall in left with a shot that went for a double. Stephenson issued a walk to Morales, and then coughed up a three-run homer to centre by Justin Smoak. Russell Martin followed with a single to left, but made an odd decision to try to stretch it into a double, and paid for his hubris by being easily thrown out by Adam Duvall.

Hubris? Smoak just extended the lead to 10-1 in only the fourth inning. There is a strong sentiment in baseball against “piling on”, and generally a team with a big lead will start to play “station to station” ball, i.e., doing nothing aggressive on the bases, playing it one base at a time. This style would have suggested to Martin to check in at first and be happy with that. In station-to-station ball, you obviously take the sure double; otherwise the game would be a farce. But trying to stretch a possible double . . . As I said, he paid for it, so fair enough.

The Toronto fifth inning was a hot sticky mess for Cincinnati, a mess they brought on themselves. Devon Travis led off with—what else—a double, and Zeke Carrera hit one to right so hard off the wall that Travis had to stop at third and Carrera held up with a single. Then Reds’ pitcher Robert Stephenson balked Travis home and Carrera to second. Then it got worse. The official scoring has it that Kevin Pillar reached on a fielder’s choice to the shortstop. What happened was that Carrera wandered off second with the ball in front of him, got caught in a rundown, but then got tangled up with third baseman Eugenio Suarez, who was called for obstruction (second time in a Jays’ game in what? Ten days?) Carrera was awarded third while Pillar took second.

Donaldson plated the second run of the inning with a grounder to shortstop, with Pillar holding second. Bautista advanced him to third with an infield hit and he scored on another single by Morales. With the score now 13-1, manager Brian Price finally pulled the beleaguered Stephenson and put in Jake Buchanan—little did he know—who gave up a single to Martin to load the bases, but then retired the side without further damage.

After a good sixth inning for Buchanan, in which he only gave up a base hit to Carrera, Buchanan ran into trouble of his own in the seventh, and the Jays extended their lead to 15-2 with an RBI double by Martin and an RBI single by Travis.

Buchanan added to his own woes in the eighth when a walk and a hit batter contributed to yet another two-run uprising by Torono, upping the ante to its final total of 17 runs on 23 hits. Ryan Goins knocked in one run with an opposite-field single to left with the bases loaded, and then Devon Travis knocked in the other with an opposite-field single to right with the bases loaded. Notice here only one run scoring on each bases-loaded hit. Station-to-station baseball.

So that’s about how you score 17 runs in a ball game.

Out of a sense of compassion, however, the story doesn’t end there, because we need to say a word or two about those unsung heroes of the baseball world, the pitchers who get to “suck it up” and “take one for the team” during a blowout, so that the bullpen won’t be totally destroyed for the next game.

In this case there were only two hapless souls, Robert Stephenson who relieved the starter Bonilla, and Jake Buchanan who mopped up after Stephenson. In many ways it’s a minor miracle that Reds’ manager Bryan Price was able to get away with using only two relief pitchers in this game, considering that the starter only lasted two and a third innings, and that the two relievers were peppered with twenty hits, ten off each, in the course of their work.

Major league managers and pitching coaches have to take the long view. It’s a gruelling season, with by far the most regular-season games in professional sports, and the daily grind of an average of six games a week is unrelenting. Coaching staffs always have to deploy their pitchers with one eye on the game they’re in, and one eye on the road ahead. That’s why, whenever a starting pitcher has a short outing, whether because of injury or because of being shelled, the first thing to come to mind is the need for “innings” from the bullpen. Most relievers are trained to go all out for one inning, but you have to have a couple of guys who can go two or even three if need be.

If a start is cut short because of injury, the manager is going to deploy the bullpen to try to keep the game close as long as he can. He not only wants “innings”, but good “innings”. But if the starter is bombed and has to be pulled early, the next game, and the next, come into play. In this case, the manager just wants “innings”, good, bad, or indifferent: here’s the ball, he says, it’s yours until your arm starts to hurt. If it damages your ERA I’m sorry, but it’s a team sport.

That’s why you have to tip your cap to the Robert Stephensons and the Jake Buchanans of the baseball world. When it became obvious that Bonilla had to come out, the game was still only 3-1 Toronto, but with one out and the bases loaded it was teetering on the edge, and fell over into blowout territory with Stephenson’s second pitch to Tulo. Still, teams have come back from 7-1 down, but when Smoak hit the three-run homer in the fourth off Stephenson, that was it. Stephenson was then condemned not only to finish the inning but to go as long as he could in the next.

That’s why he ended up with a line of 2 innings, 7 runs, 6 earned, 10 hits, 1 walk, and no strikeouts on 55 pitches.

And that’s why, when Bryan Price handed the ball to Jake Buchanan with one out in the bottom of the fifth he would have said something to the effect of “if you can get us to the end of this game, you’re it; if you don’t see anybody warming up it’s because there won’t be.”

And so Buchanan, in his first appearance with the Reds since being called up from their Triple A team, ended up going 3 and two thirds innings, giving up 4 runs on 10 hits with a walk and a strikeout on 61 pitches. To be fair to Price, Buchanan, who hasn’t had more than a cup of coffee in the big leagues since 2014, his first season in the majors, had been used exclusively as a starter in Triple A, and was averaging over five innings per start over eight starts this spring.

Still, it’s easy to imagine the poignancy behind the laconic statement in the play-by-play account of the game that Buchanan received a “Coaching visit to the mound” in the eighth inning, with two outs, runners on second and third, the score 17 to 2 Toronto, and Zeke Carrera, who’d gone four for four to that point in the game, coming to bat. Oh, and a bad matchup for the right-handed Buchanan.

The coach was actually the manager, Bryan Price, and there was no one up in the Cincinnati bullpen.

I have little doubt that Price’s message to Buchanan was something to the effect of, “Son, when this is over, I’m going to buy you a nice big steak, and a nice bottle of wine, because I owe you big time.”

And baseball fans everywhere owe it big time to that last guy in the bullpen, the one who sometimes has to suck it up.

One of the great old hippie sayings of the late sixties that ended up on the walls of many first apartments in one form of artistic presentation or another was “Life is What Happens when You’re Doing Other Things”.

Well, sometimes baseball happens when you’re doing other things. Like today, for example. This is a busY time of year for my wife and me because it’s end-of-year performance time for our grand-daughter, and we do almost all of the shepherding and accompanying duties related to her dance class.

Plus my wife’s god-daughter, whose cute new one-bedroom condo we hadn’t seen, just “adopted” a Bengal kitten, who judging by her photos might be a sweetheart, but might also be quite the wild little thing. She’s been named Hazel, and yes, Hurricane Hazel comes readily to mind.

So, today our grand-daughter was delivered to us at 12:30 and had to be dropped at the studio for rehearsal from one to three. I was able to listen to Jerry Howarth and company after we dropped her off, but only while we were driving to visit god-daughter and new kitten, not too far away. The radio signal faded, of course, as soon as we entered the parking garage, and I wasn’t able to check in again on Jerry until after our visit and we were pulling out of the parking garage.

This is what I like about Jerry Howarth and radio baseball broadcasters in general: when we picked up the signal again, he was reading out all of the scores from Saturday’s games and was asking if anyone recognized what stood out about the totality of the Saturday scores. It turned out to be that for the first time in baseball history, dating back to the 1860s, on a day when at least 16 games were played, no team scored more than six runs. Then he added another fun fact: in all of the sixteen games played on Saturday the twenty-seventh, not one (successful) sacrifice bunt was laid down. Hmph.

Aside: Hurricane Hazel’s pretty cute, but could still turn out kind of wild and woolly. The jury’s out at the moment.

We had to stop by the house for a minute before going back to the dance studio, just long enough for me to see Josh Donaldson being charged with an error on a backhand short hop that kicked off his glove off the bat of Mike Napoli. Buck and Tabbie were all “oh that’s a tough error to give on a ball like that”, but it was a quick-pick reflex play that a healthy Donaldson makes maybe eight times out of ten.

So we picked up the grand-daughter and, fortified with an ice-cream treat, headed toward the far reaches of Scarborough to take her home. Gammie drove while I continued the reading of A Connecticut Yankee. I had the radio on low so that if something big happened, I’d hear Jerry shouting. Alas, as the game wound to an end, there was no shouting, and the sound died to a sad drone as Tulo grounded into a forceout to end the game and the Jays’ win streak.

There was more shouting to be had in the reading of the Twain, anyway. Man, that’s good stuff.

I did watch a “Blue Jays in 30” broadcast, and what I saw was that Joe Biagini’s stuff was electric. What I also saw was that Andrew Cashner also put in fine effort, and he was full measure in suppressing a Jays’ offense that has been becoming more and more explosive in recent days.

What I learn from the box score is that Cashner’s seven innings, 1 run, five hits, two walks, two strikeouts on 97 pitches speaks for itself. What I also see is that Biagini’s start today was also a solid quality start by a rotation regular, as he went six innings, gave up two runs on seven hits, walked one and struck out seven on 95 pitches. Worthy of a win, but Cashner was better on this day.

I read an interview comment from Devon Travis from after the game. He said that every time an opposing hitter crossed his path he’d ask, “Who the hell is that guy?” ‘Nuff said.

What am I thinking about these Toronto Blue Jays on this quiet Sunday evening when we’re finally back home from all of our driving around and cat-visiting and Twain-reading?

First, that it will be hard to put Joe Biagini back in the bullpen. This could be a moot point, since they’re taking a long-term approach to Aaron Sanchez, which simply keeps the door open for Biagini. But if one of Francisco Liriano and Jay Happ doesn’t come back full bore, there’s another possibility for him, and then, god forbid, the team could lose one of the healthy ones that are still going. So I think Biagini will be starting for some time, which is a good thing, just in terms of his own arm, so that his new regimen as a starter won’t have to be altered again to become a bullpen piece.

Second, that if Devon Travis continues anywhere near his present tear, I will concede that his offensive upside clearly outweighs the occasional defensive or baserunning lapse. In addition, baserunning lapses can be trained away, and we don’t know if in fact the defensive lapses haven’t been related to offensive worries; will he play better in the field if he’s feeling good about his offensive contribution?

Third, that Toronto is a much stronger team defensively with Ryan Goins on the field, and he is at his very best at shortstop. Yes, this means that Goins should be in the lineup regularly at shortstop, and yes, this means that there is a huge problem for the Jays surrounding Troy Tulowitzki. Obviously, the raising of this point requires strong argument and solid reasons for it to be expressed.

Let’s look at Goins first. Understand that at no time will I make reference to analytical data. I don’t believe that you need analytics to support what is in plain sight if you’re watching closely. You could compare the game Goins played in the field yesterday with any game in which Tulowitzki had a significant number of chances since he arrived in Toronto, and Goins’ superior reflexes, instincts, and, yes, arm strength, would be clear. A comparison of Goins’ game Saturday and Tulo’s Friday night would be unfair, obviously, because it was Tulo’s first game back, but even in that regard, the performance of Tulo in the field on Friday, not to mention that of Josh Donaldson, raises serious questions about the Jays’ decision to activate them for the beginning of the home stand, when they may not have been ready to play up to capacity in the field.

When you consider the Tulo side of the equation, of course, the issue is the difference in offensive production. This comparison is without doubt skewed by factors on both sides. In the case of Goins, he has never had the opportunity to be in the lineup on a daily basis for more than a month or so at a time. So we can’t know what he would do if installed as a regular and allowed to develop. One might point for comparison to the way that Kevin Pillar forced his way into the centre field position on the defensive imperative and then, on the evidence of the first two months of this season, has matured as a more patient and effective hitter with regular at-bats.

What we have seen from Goins is a certain flare for the dramatic at the plate. For his average his RBI total is disporportionately high (.213, 20 RBIs), and he has had a number of clutch hits with runners in scoring position including one walk-off. Just to dip into the data a little, apparently two of his homers have ranked among the longest hit in the league this season.

Tulo, of course, has a proven track record, and there is no question that he offers more of an offensive upside than Goins at this stage in the latter’s career. However, let’s consider first that Tulo has lost a lot of time to injury since his arrival in Toronto. In 2015 he missed 34 regular season games with Toronto and had only 163 at bats. He had 463 at bats in 2016, but still missed 31 games. And of course he’s only appeared in 19 of the Jays’ 51 games this year. Unfair to comment on his injury record? Maybe, but didn’t we value Cal Ripkin’s durability? Don’t we marvel at the bumps and bruises Kevin Pillar accumulates over the course of a season without missing time? It’s often said that at 36 Jose Bautista has a young body; is it possible that at 32 Tulo has an old body?

Then there’s the production itself. Again, the comparison is tough, because Tulo spent more than nine seasons hitting at Skunky Beer Field in Denver, with its bandbox proportions and thin air, a venue that may have cost Canadian superstar Larry Walker his shot at the Hall of Fame, because it been considered that too much of his career was spent there. But what other division in baseball has as many hitter-friendly parks as the AL East, where the Jays play 76 games, and which is the most hitter-friendly of all? Shouldn’t hitting in the American League East have compensated for leaving Denver?

Actually, when you look at the numbers, the real comparison for Tulo is between a cluster of early years in Colorado, and his record since, rather than the comparison between Colorado and Toronto. Leaving 2008 and 2012 aside, two years hampered by injuries, in which he only appeared in 101 games in 2008 and 47 in 2012, he had seasons of 24 homers/99 ribbies, 32/92, 27/95, 30/105, and 25/82. His next three seasons, including the split 2015 between Colorado and Toronto, show 21/52, a very strange split in 2014, 17 and 70 in 2015, and last year 24/79, his highest home run total since 2013, but again, curiously, a relatively low RBI total. Similarly, in five of the six years before the trade to Toronto his batting average was over .300, but in 2015 after he came to Toronto it was only .239, and in his first full season in the hitter-friendly AL East it was only .254, his lowest non-injury-season batting average by 26 points under the combined .280 he hit in his trade year of 2015.

So to me we have the picture of a hitter in decline, who perhaps misses being almost the sole centre of attention on what was for years a mediocre team. If Ryan Goins can even remotely approximate Tulo’s recent (emphasis on “recent”, because Tulo himself shows no evidence of returning to his former levels) hitting numbers, then his defensive upside should be a decisive factor.

Some might raise the question of leadership. Fair enough. Sure, Tulo functions as the “captain” of the infield, but the shortstop usually does. Otherwise, team-mates attest to his work ethic and quiet leadership, which I’m sure are invaluable but can’t be assessed by an outsider. And which Ryan Goins would not even think of trying to emulate at this stage in his career. But he would have no need to step in fully to Tulo’s role right away, or ever. This team has plenty of leaders, from Bautista to Donaldson to Martin to Stroman to Grilli. And regardless of the rocky spots he’s gotten into a couple of times, if leading by example is what you’re looking for, then I would say that Kevin Pillar has taken some very strong steps in that direction.

But what to do with Troy Tulowitzki? That should be the easy part: Mark Schapiro and Ross Atkins did not bring him to Toronto, and should not feel responsible for whether he continues to be the best fit. I would play him fairly regularly for a couple of weeks to give him a chance to round into form and show that he’s healthy, and then I’d start looking for a trade.

If the Blue Jays are serious about making the post-season this year despite their bad start, a Troy Tulowitzki on the bargaining table would go a long way toward resolving whichever of Toronto’s injury issues seems more pressing by, say, the end of June, a possible hole in the starting rotation, or the inability of a Zeke Carrera/recovering Steve Pearce to provide consistent numbers from left field, which as a position has underperformed for the last three years, excluding Michael Saunders out-of-body-experience during the first half of last year. *

After that, Go-go takes over short, and watch the team go-go with him!

*I was curious because I hadn’t heard how Saunders is doing with the Phillies so I looked him up. Captain Canada’s doing okay, but wouldn’t have been any improvement over our left-field contingent this year. He’s hitting only .220, with six homers and 19 RBIs. By comparison, Pearce and Carrera have seven homers and 22 RBIs and are hitting a combined .253. Better news is seen in that he’s appeared in 49 games, so he’s stayed healthy, and surprisingly, playing exclusively right field, he’s had four outfield assists and only one error. Play on, Captain C, we still love ya!

It was a really close call. Gobbie’s reputation as a baseball savant almost sailed over the fence with the gopher ball that Marco Estrada served up to Shin-Soo Choo on the first pitch of today’s game.

Saturdays we have our grand-daughter all day. She’s almost ten, in grade four. It’s universally accepted by elementary school teachers that grade fours are the sweetest kids in the school. They sure are.

We take her to dance class in the morning, hang out around the house, do some gardening. We save the Saturday funnies for her to read. My wife’s helping her make a quilt for the baby of a friend of her mum’s. It was her idea. We play chess sometimes, and at the moment I’m reading to her, Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. I’d forgotten how funny it is. She likes fantasy and legend, so it’s perfect.

Gobbie?? When she was born, her grandmother’s intent was that we would be “Grammie” and “Grampie”. But she began to verbalize before she could pronounce very well, so “Grammie” became the rather charming “Gammie”, and, well, I turned out to be “Gobbie”. I wear it. It’s my own, and our five-year-old grandson, her cousin, has adopted it, so when I’m not Coach Dave, or yer humble scribe, it’s Gobbie, thank you very much.

I still chronicle the game, though, even with her here. We watch together, until she gets bored. But she likes the Jays, because they’re “her people”. She’s half Central American, and loves that we have lots of Hispanic players. She was sad that Edwin and his parrot left. We made a sign for Edwin for a game two years ago, and they put us on the Jumbotron. Twice. It was a nice sign. I still have it.

Today was Doors Open Toronto, and after dance class we made a quick trip to Montgomery’s Inn to see an art exhibit of work by a long-forgotten woman artist, Clara Harris, who painted landscapes in the Etobicoke area a century ago. There were photographs of what the places look like now that she painted back then. My grand-daughter was especially taken with the creaky old elevator at the Inn. The paintings too.

So we hurried to get home in time to eat lunch and catch the ball game. I’m trying to teach her a little bit each game. With Marco Estrada—another Hispanic guy—pitching, I wanted to have her watch the first inning to see how he fools the hitters with his soft stuff. Like I said, she likes wizardry.

Luckily, though, we didn’t catch the first pitch. The screen came on just as Shin-Soo Choo was rounding the bases after hitting it out. Well, that would have been embarrassing. It’ll teach me not to over-sell something.

After the Chin-shot that Estrada took, the game settled into what everyone expected, a pitching duel between him and the Rangers’ Yu Darvish. These two pitchers couldn’t be more different, yet more alike. Darvish is tall, imposing, and commanding on the hill. Estrada is compact, peeks over his glove like a sneaky little kid, and delivers the ball with a motion, as I’ve mentioned before, that looks like he’s afraid the baseball might break something. In addition, Darvish can summon up 96-97 when he wants to while Estrada’s amazingly effective “heater” has about two mph on R.A. Dickey’s “fast” ball, which puts Estrada’s at around 89 at best.

On the other hand, they are both complete pitchers with a full repertoire of effective pitches, which they employ with skill and guile that hitters find worse than frustrating. To watch Darvish go away, away, away to a power hitter, and then come in just enough to get one off the end of the bat to the second baseman is completely akin to Estrada throwing change after change until the hitter has slowed down his trigger to the point that the “heater” is by him before he knows it.

I’ve written before about Estrada’s need to throw his last warmup pitch before the batter steps in, not after, but there it went again. And, inevitably, it was followed by the real Marco Estrada’s first inning: Elvis Andrus frozen by a wicked curve ball that ended up down and away on the outside corner. Nomar Mazara walked on a 3-2 pitch, just as well, better than a dinger. Robinson Chirinos fanned on a 1-2 changeup, and Roughned Odor fanned on what else, a full count changeup, to the raucous delight of the assembled multitude.

Yu Darvish had his own adventurous first batter, when he came up and in on a 1-1 pitch to Kevin Pillar, and dinged him on the arm. Purpose pitch? Probably. Darvish lives on the outside corner, and it serves his purpose to push the hitters off the plate a bit. After Devon Travis hit a looper out to left for the first out, Pillar got a measure of revenge by swiping second after Darvish threw over a number of times, but languished there when Jose Bautista flew out to centre and Kendrys Morales struck out to end the inning.

After the first inning, the mirror imaging of the two craftsmen was almost perfect, right up to the fifth. They even got in trouble in the same inning, the fourth, in the same way, with the same conclusion.

With two outs in the top of the fourth, Odor slapped a flare the opposite way to left for a single, and Ryan Rua followed with a double, but Odor, who sometimes seems not to be quite all there on the field, didn’t get a good jump on the two-out hit, and had to be held at third, where he got to watch Estrada punch out Joey Gallo to end the inning.

The Jays came out in the bottom of the inning loaded for bear, and didn’t wait around for two outs. Bautista made the first one, but it was a hard liner to centre. Morales followed with a double down the line in right, another example of the extreme infield shift to the right on the Smoaks and the Morales, while the outfield plays straight up. Lots of room down in that corner if the ball beats the first baseman. Darvish fanned Smoak, but Russell Martin, smarting from being hit by Darvish in the second—you should have seen the death stare Darvish got—singled to right. Like Odor, Morales had to be stopped at third, because, first, Choo in right was playing in and, second, well, Morales running, right? So, like Odor, Morales had a perfect vantage point to watch Darvish fan Zeke Carrera to end the inning.

By the way, the Martin hit batsman in the second was the only base runner allowed by either pitcher in the second and third innings.

After the busy fourth, Estrada retired the side in order in the fifth, to complete fifteen outs of shutout ball after the Choo homer. He also racked up his last two strikeouts of the game, taking him to eight after five.

Darvish got the first out in the bottom of the fifth, when Ryan Goins grounded out to shortstop. Oh, I didn’t mention that Josh Donaldson and Troy Tulowitzki were being held out of today’s day game after last night’s game presumably to ease their re-entry into the every day lineup. As a consequence, Luke Maile was catching Estrada, Russell Martin was at third, and Goins at short.

With one out, Darvish went 3-0 before he walked Maile, the number nine hitter, on a 3-1 fast ball that he just buried. Then on a 1-1 pitch to Kevin Pillar, he threw a slider that uncharacteristically stayed up in the zone, and Pillar drove it to the deepest part of the park. Jared Hoying went back on the ball, and out-Pillared Pillar to take it over his head before crashing into the wall. As he bounced off he alertly flipped the ball to Delino DeShields to keep Maile at first before collapsing in a heap.

Hoying was eventually able to stay in the game, and Devon Travis stepped up to hit a single to centre with Maile coming around to third. This brought Jose Bautista to the plate for the pivotal at bat of the game. Which hardly lasted a blink of an eye. Darvish again left a slider up in the zone and Bautista got all of it. It’s been remarkable how similar a number of Bautista’s recent shots have been, whether they went for homers, doubles, or outs.

The Jays weren’t ready to quit, so Darvish still had some work to do. After walking Morales, he gave up a ground-rule double the opposite way to Justin Smoak, with Morales forced to stop at third. The Rangers sort of chose to pitch to Zeke Carrera by being careful about how to pitch to Martin, bringing Carrera to the plate with the bases loaded. The rising ended there as Darvish blew Carrera away with high heat.

But the damage was done, and suddenly, unexpectedly, Estrada and the Jays were in charge, with a two-run lead, and four innings to go to protect it. And protect it they would, with Estrada going one more inning, the bullpen providing three more innings of sterling scoreless relief, and Ryan Goins providing all the defence that any team would need.

In the Rangers’ sixth, Estrada would finish up midst a couple of the strangest plays you’d ever see, both involving Goins, who in fact would be involved in all three outs. First Elvis Andrus popped out to Goins.

Then Nomar Mazara did, too. Er, no he didn’t. Er, yes he did. He popped up, Goins settled under it, caught it, and then shockingly dropped it. It was one of those cases where he might have been transferring the ball when he dropped it, or not, but second base umpire Andy Fletcher signalled safe. Goins correctly picked the ball up and tossed it to Devon Travis at second, the base ahead of Mazara. Travis looked over at first and there was Mazara, gathering all kinds of wool about four steps off the bag. He whipped the ball to Smoak, Smoak tagged Mazara, and it should have been a case of “no harm, no foul”, but Mazara had reached first safely, so Goins was tagged with an error.

Robinson Chirinos then singled to centre, complicating matters immensely, and creating a “moment” as they say, because who was coming to the plate representing the tying run? None other than Roughned Odor. After his three-run homer in the ninth last night, best not to poke the bear, or take his current season-long slump (.209, 7 homers, 23 rbi) for granted. Of course the Jays were in their usual shift, so when Odor topped the ball softly past Estrada’s right side as he fell away to his left, out to Goins near second, it looked like a sure infield hit, and more trouble for the Jays.

But the trouble was all Odor’s, because about three steps out of the box, he must have tried too hard to accelerate, and his right foot slipped as he dug in. He staggered awkwardly forward and planted on both hands before he sprang up, then realized he was dead meat as Goins got to the ball and threw to first for the out. Remember the bat flip? It was worth the price of admission to see Odor grab his helmet, spike it into the ground, and watch it bounce away. Nice high bounce it was, too.

Manager Gibbons had Aaron Loup start the seventh inning, presumably targeting the left-handed power-hitter Joey Gallo, who was hitting second in the inning. As is so often the case, Loup struck out the righty Ryan Rua leading off, but then gave up a Texas Leaguer to Gallo. Not to worry. Gibbie went back to the pen for Ryan Tepera, who got Mike Napoli, pinch hitting for Jared Hoying, to hit into a double play to end the inning, courtesy of Ryan Goins and company.

The DP, as they say, was one for the ages. Napoli slashed the ball hard past Goins on his glove side. Except that Goins somehow got his glove on the ball on the backhand. When the ball hit his glove, ball and glove were behind Goins’ right hip and he was on his knees, basically facing third base. Yet he flipped back across his body to nip Chirinos at second, and Travis unloaded in a hurry to first, where Smoak had to stretch far into right field to record the out at first. Ryan Tepera was happy.

Gibbie gave Joe Smith a chance to redeem himself in the eighth after last night’s ninth-inning homer given up to Odor. This time he struck out DeShields and Choo, and had Andrus struck out on a foul tip, but didn’t get the call from plate umpire Hunter Wendelstedt. Of course, Andrus doubled to right centre after the non-call, but Smith retired Mazara on a grounder to Travis to strand Andrus at second.

Roberto Osuna came on for the save in the ninth, and Goins had yet one more spectacular play up his sleeve. Once again it involved Odor. With one out, he chopped the ball into the turf past Estrada toward Travis, who was playing out in right field in the rover position. When a pull hitter hits weakly into the shift and it gets past the pitcher, there’s trouble in River City, my friend. It’s not a whole in the infield there, more like the Black Lagoon. But Goins reacted instantly, racing toward first as he ball hopped slowly toward Travis, on whom Goins was converging from Travis’ right. Goins got to the ball before Travis, picked it and flipped it, hard on a line with his glove toward Smoak. Odor was called out, and the call was upheld after review. Osuna then fanned Rua for the save. Cue the Knock-Knock Game, with Martin having gone behind the plate after Maile was hit for in the eighth inning.

As for the Jays, Texas effectively shut them down after Bautista’s blast. Darvish was done after the sixth, in which he easily retired the Jays despite Andrus’ error on a Luke Maile ground ball allowing him to reach with one out. The big, stoic Darvish deserved better than the “L”, given that the only costly mistakes he made were the gopher ball to Bautista and the walk to Maile that preceded it and came around to score.

Old friend Sam Dyson had a quick seventh before running into trouble in the eighth, and needing help from Tony Barnette to keep the Toronto lead at two. After that easy seventh Dyson fanned Russell Martin leading off the eighth, but a bunt single by Zeke Carrera threw him off the rails, and he followed by walking Ryan Goins.

Then the wheels started turning like it was 1955 all over again. John Gibbons announced the lefty Chris Coghlan hitting for Maile. Jeff Bannister brought in Alex Claudio, a lefty, to pitch to Coghlan, and Gibbie counter-countered with Darwin Barney, who hit an infield single to Odor at second to load the bases. Then Bannister brought in Tony Barnette, who closed things down in a trice (well, if eleven pitches is a trice) by fanning Pillar and Travis.

And that was it: Jose Bautista and Marco Estrada three, Yu Darvish one, multiple assists to Ryan Goins, and a save to Roberto Osuna all added up to the Jays’ fifth win in a row, which brought them to within three games of .500. Onward and upward, say I!

Tonight was a festive homecoming in many ways for the Toronto Blue Jays.

It was the opening night of a ten-game home stand after a tough but moderately successful seven-game road trip which saw them inch ever closer to respectability on the season.

The opposition was provided by the ever-popular Texas Rangers, whose appearance at the TV Dome always raises the intensity ante.

Finally, tonight marked the return of both Josh Donaldson and Troy Tulowitzki to the left side of the Toronto infield, where their presence together had anchored the team through the playoff runs of both 2015 and 2016. Except when one of them, or both, was missing in action due to injury.

Not so festive a night for the likes of Ryan Goins, Darwin Barney, and Chris Coghlan, of course, who will see their playing time and opportunity to contribute significantly diminished now that the “big boys” are back.

As the Blue Jays took the field for the top of the first, there was a strong reminder that not everything had been restored to normal for the home team. Taking the mound was Mike Bolsinger, filling in yet again for one of the three missing rotation pieces. As much as the lineup from one to nine looked as strong as ever it has—imagine Devon Travis, on a tear like he is, hitting eighth—without one of the original solid five on the hill to face down the tough Rangers, you had to feel more than a little trepidation.

This is meant in no way to denigrate Mike Bolsinger, who has worked hard during his time in the rotation, and provided some valuable innings. He would, in fact, at this point appear to be well capable of handling a fourth or fifth slot in some team’s rotation, just not that of a contender.

His tendency so far to run deep into counts and allow a few too many walks and baserunners by other means (three hbp in one game??) has meant that he hasn’t been able to get past the magic fifth inning, and his starts so far have led to increased wear and tear on the bullpen.

The first inning for the Rangers was a good example of the way Bolsinger’s starts seem to go. Shin-Soo Choo, leading off for Texas, wacked Bolsinger’s second pitch of the game into right field for a single. If I may say so, the players coming out of Korea seem to have a flair for the flare, taking the bell well in front of the plate and going wherever it’s pitched.

Two batters later Choo was on third. He moved up to second when Elvis Andrus grounded softly to second, and then to third when Nomar Mazara grounded out to Tulowitzki who was stationed behind second in the shift. Then Johnathon Lucroy drew a walk after home plate umpire Alan Porter refused to ask for help on a possible checked swing strike. This made for a tense moment with runners at the corners and the ever-dangerous Roughned Odor at the plate. Odor quickly ended the suspense by carelessly slapping at the first pitch from Bolsinger and grounding weakly to Travis at second. Still, for Bolsinger, three ground-ball outs and seventeen pitches was a pretty good first inning.

The trouble with Porter behind the plate immediately resurfaced in the bottom of the first. It was Kevin Pillar’s fault, according to the unwritten rules of baseball, yet Porter’s response was way out of proportion. Texas starter A.J. Griffin couldn’t find the plate from the start and went 3-0 on Pillar leading off. Then Griffin threw a strike, low but definitely in the zone. Pillar didn’t see it that way, crossed the plate toward first and started to take off his elbow pad. He was shocked and stopped short when the pitch was called a strike.

There is a tradition as old as baseball that players must never “show up” umpires. This would include any movement or gesture that would suggest disagreement with an umpire’s call. It may sound like an outdated privilege for the umpire, but if you think of it in terms of stirring up an angry mob, you get a different picture, don’t you?

Thus, the catcher should never turn and speak to the umpire. Most umps will let a catcher say almost anything if he stays in his crouch looking forward. Also, batters should not start for first until they hear that ball four has been called. Pillar would be the first to admit that he shouldn’t have started for first.

But I have a bigger problem when that same umpire, a couple pitches later, rings up a batter on a pitch on the inside corner maybe but nearly in the hitter’s eyes that is clearly ball four, especially when that batter had just previously “shown up” the umpire.

The Pillar at-bat was quickly forgotten with the arrival of Josh Donaldson at the plate for his first hits since April thirteenth. Great hosannas greeted the erstwhile saviour at the plate. Even greater hosannas ensued when he drove the ball over Jared Hoying’s head to the base of the centre-field wall for a double. More quiet were the sighs of relief when he survived a head-first slide into second to beat a good throw in a close play that was only close because of how hard Donaldson hit the ball.

However, Donaldson died at second (sounds like the title of a baseball mystery, doesn’t it?) as Texas starter A.J. Griffin retired Jose Bautista on a ground-out and Kendrys Morales on a looper to second baseman Roughned Odor playing out in the “rover” spot in the shift.

Bolsinger gave up a run in the second inning that was a typical Bolsinger run in the sense that he walked Mike Napoli to lead off, and it was Napoli who came around to score. However, leaving aside the walk, the run was down to sloppy defense by the Jays, which not only made it unearned, but could have made the damage worse, were it not for the fact that Bolsinger threw two more ground ball outs.

The shift may also have contributed to the Rangers’ run. With Napoli, no twinkletoes he, on first, Joey Gallo grounded a possible double-play ball to Devon Travis in short right. But Travis threw wide to second, where it was Donaldson trying to make the pivot because of the the shift. He came off the bag and everybody was safe, with Napoli making it to third. Jared Hoying hit a sacrifice fly to Zeke Carrera in left that tallied the game’s first run, but Carrera yet again threw to the wrong cutoff man, toward the plate where he had no chance of getting Napoli. This allowed Joey Gallo to move into scoring position at second with one out, removing the double play as well, when the correct throw was to the middle-infield cutoff man, which would have prevented Gallo’s advance.

It was to Bolsinger’s credit that he cranked up his ground-ball machine to strand Gallo finally at third.

In the bottom of the second, A.J. Griffin only retired one batter and left the game clutching his left rib cage with his right hand, but not until the first four Jays’ hitters had reached and scored, seemingly to put the game away early. Griffin had walked Justin Smoak on four pitches to lead off the inning. He then threw two more balls to Russell Martin before finding the plate, except that Martin hit the pitch into left for a base hit. Troy Tulowitzki walked on a three-one pitch to load the bases, and then Griffin finally got ahead of a batter by throwing a strike to Devon Travis. Griffin’s next pitch to Travis was also a strike, but it never got to catcher Johnathan Lucroy because Travis rifled it into the left-field seats for the Jays’ second grand slam in two games and a 4-1 Toronto lead.

Griffin faced one more batter, Zeke Carrera, whom he struck out looking on three pitches, the knockout blow a beautiful curve ball, a no-doubt strike three. But the pitch also knocked out Griffin, because it was the pitch after which he clutched his left side with his right hand. After consultations with coaches and trainers, he was done (and was later placed on the disabled list, where he joins an ever-growing legion of starting pitchers this season).

Always an interesting story line is the guy who toils in obscurity in the minors for years and finally makes it to the show when he’s already or nearly a senior citizen in baseball years. Rangers Manager Jeff Bannister handed the ball to one such player to pick up for the injured Griffin.

Austin Bibens-Dirkx, who otherwise would be more notable for his complex moniker, is a 32-year-old right-hander who finally made it to the major leagues with the Rangers this year after working for eleven years in the minors since being drafted in 2006 by Seattle. When he came into the game his total major league experience was with the Rangers, seven and a third innings over three appearances this year. His assignment today was that of the last man in the ‘pen, to pick up for an injured starter in the early innings, and mainly to survive and accumulate innings and outs to save the rest of the bullpen for when they might be needed. In effect, this opportunity to go long would also serve as an audition for Bibens-Dirkx, and a chance for the Texas staff to evaluate him.

(With no disrespect proferred, I have no intention of typing even Bibens-Dirkx’ last name every time it occurs. He must go by his initials. I have two choices: he can be ABD, or he can be BD. ABD is the somewhat derogatory appellation accorded the hapless individual who studied for years, completed a B.A. and an M.A., did all the work for a Ph.D. thesis, but never finished it: All But Dissertation. This cuts a little close to home. Don’t ask. B.D. of course is the charming dumb jock of a football player in “Doonesbury”. This is an easy call: henceforth Austin Bibens-Dirkx shall be “BD”.)

Leaving aside the fact that he came in with nobody on base, BD easily passed the first part of this mult-part test, taking ten pitches to blow away Pillar and Donaldson on strikeouts.

Surely BD’s fellow journeyman Mike Bolsinger returned to the mound with renewed confidence after the Travis shot. That didn’t keep him from continuing to skate around trouble, this time needing a bad running mistake by Elvis Andrus to escape the inning still ahead 4-1.

Andrus led off the inning with a ground single to left between Donaldson and Troy Tulowitzky. I noted with interest that Tulo did not seem to make a complete effort to keep the ball in the infield, running over toward the ball and leaning down with his glove, not quite reaching it, but with absolutely no inclination to leave his feet. Maybe no need, he’d never have gotten Andrus anyway, but still . . .

Nomar Mazara followed by hitting one deep to Pillar in centre, with Andrus holding first. Jonathan Lucroy then bounced a double over Justin Smoak’s head into the right-field corner, where Jose Bauista hustled it down and initiated a quick relay to Devon Travis, who must have been surprised to turn and see Andrus chugging around third, ignoring, as we could clearly see in the replays, his coach’s stop sign. Travis’ throw to the plate was accurate, and Andrus was DOA for the second out, with Russell Martin making a great tag at the plate. Bautista finished off the Inning of Saving Mike by running into the alley in right centre and flagging down a deep drive by his pal Roughned Odor.

BD continued his first tour of the rocky valley of Toronto’s lineup in the bottom of the third, when he managed to get by Bautista, Morales, and Martin, but was introduced to the realities of pitching in the TV Dome to our heroes when Justin Smoak took him deep with two outs to increase the lead to 5-1.

Bolsinger’s dance with danger went on in the top of the fourth, when he gave up a second run to Texas but evaded worse damage. As usual, part of it was his own making. Not that he gave up a leadoff single to Mike Napoli, but that he then wild-pitched him to second, eliminating the double play and making it possible for Napoli to score on the two ground balls that followed. Bolsie wasn’t done, though, because Delino DeShields hit a two out chopper to third that sailed over/past Donaldson and went to the corner for a double. Donaldson looked slow and tentative on the ball, which offered as a backhand short-hop, a play he normally always gets to, and sometimes makes. Just sayin’. In typical fashion, the slow-throwing righty retired the dangerous Choo on a good foul tip grab by Martin to escape worse.

Out came BD for his second full inning of work, with five outs already racked up, just doin’ his job for the team. This time he had to strand a one-out Travis double to centre by punching out Zeke Carrerafor the second time , and getting Pillar on a fly to centre. Ho-hum. Everybody has to strand a double by Travis.

In the fifth the Rangers inched a bit closer, and this time it cost Bolsinger the chance at a win, as John Gibbons wasn’t about to risk letting the whole thing slip away. Again, the leadoff walk and the two-out cash-in did the trick for Texas. Andrus walked, stole second, held there while Bolsie fanned Mazara and got Lucroy to ground out to short. But then he walked Odor, and Andrus stole third while the Jays were in the shift for Odor. Mike Napoli knocked Andrus in with a base hit to left, a ground ball that somehow managed barely to sneak past the converging dives of both Donaldson and Tulo, and also knocked Bolsinger out of the game, with four and two thirds innings pitched, 86 pitches, a two-run lead and two on, the dangerous left-handed Gallo striding to the plate.

Okay, can’t see what else Gibbie might have done here. Luckily for him, though, his matchup of Aaron Loup to face Gallo resulted in a ground ball from Gallo to end the threat.

BD came back out for the fifth to give Jeff Bannister more than enough of the outs he needed, but working his way through the tough Jays’ order a second time cost Texas another run and restored the Jays’ three-run lead. This time he struck Justin Smoak out, but only after Kendrys Morales took him downtown.

Loup retired the side in order in the top of the sixth, which set him up for a possible garbage man win, since Bolsinger’s outing fell short. BD came back out for the sixth and got one more out for his team before running out of gas. After Russell Martin grounded out, BD walked Tulo and gave up a base knock to Devon Travis, and he was finished, after four innings and 84 pitches. He’d given up two runs, but left two on base for Jeremy Jeffress, who came on to pitch to Carrera, whom he walked to load the bases.

Kevin Pillar bounced into a first-to-home fielder’s choice for the second out. And then, with all of the power displayed by the Jays tonight, came the play on which the game actually turned. The hitter, Donaldson, didn’t even put the ball in play. Jeffress bounced one that got away from the catcher, and Travis, who had advanced to third on the fielder’s choice, scored easily to extend the Jays’ lead to 7-3. The run was added to BD’s effort, which in no way diminished his contribution to his team tonight

At the time, it was hard to imagine that one last add-on run in the sixth would turn out to be decisive, but that’s baseball sometimes.

Danny Barnes and Ryan Tepera have done yeoman work for the Jays during their recent resurgence, and tonight was no different. Though Barnes in the seventh and Tepera in the eighth both gave the Rangers a chance to close the gap, each slammed the door in their faces. In the seventh, it was a two-out walk by Barnes to Lucroy that brought Odor to the plate, only to have Barnes blow him away with his trademark high heat. In the eighth, Tepera gave up a one-out double to Joey Gallo, making it particularly interesting, but he fanned Jared Hoying and Delino DeShields to strand Gallo at second.

Meanwhile, Toronto had a chance to add an eighth run in the seventh off Jeffress, which as it turned out would have been nice to have, but they weren’t able to pull it off when Kendrys Morales, on the front end of a Morales single-Smoak walk-Tulowitzky single sequence, was waved home by third base coach Luis Rivera on Tulo’s hit, but thrown out at the plate by the left fielder DeShields.

Jeffress stayed on into the eighth, and he and Matt Bush retired Toronto in order, setting the stage for Joe Smith to mop up in the ninth, and why not? He’s been spot on for weeks.

And it was looking good, until there were two down, the Rangers down to their last out. Smith fanned Shin-soo Choo to start the inning, and then retired Elvis Andrus on a ground-out to shortstop. This brought Nomar Mazara to the plate, and a simple little dribbler threw Toronto’s hopes of an easy end into a cocked hat. Smith had to take some of the blame for it. Mazara topped the ball toward first. Smith broke off the mound for it, and Russell Martin raced out from behind the plate as well. It was the catcher’s play, as his momentum was toward first, whereas Smith, a right-hander, had an awkward play to make at best, while Martin awkwardly tried to avoid running into him.

Mazara was safe, and that brought Lucroy to the plate. Lucroy doubled to left, sending Mazara to third—four runs down, the Rangers weren’t taking any chances. This brought everybody’s favourite Ranger, the delightful Roughned Odor, to the plate. With only one hard-hit ball off him, and a four-run lead, there was no reason not to let Smith pitch to Odor. In any case, there was no matchup to be had, at least none that Manager John Gibbons would trust, given that he wasn’t likely to try J.P. Howell again and Aaron Loup had already been used.

Smith’s first pitch to Odor was a slider way inside for a ball. His second was a fast ball almost as bad, but Odor, who never saw a bad pitch he didn’t want to hit, fouled it off. Then Smith left a fast ball up in the zone, and Odor deposited it over the fence in right centre, counting three for the Rangers and bringing them to within one.

Remember the Travis run on the wild pitch? And the run Morales didn’t score? Well, there we were, Toronto 7-6, two out in the ninth, and time for Roberto Osuna to come in for what had suddenly become a save situation. It was a tough spot, with the menacing Mike Napoli coming to the plate, but Osuna was up to it, fanning Napoli on a nasty 2-2 slider to finish a game that had been a breeze from the Jays since the second, but almost turned into a nightmare in the ninth.

So Toronto won its fourth in a row, and contributed to a continued skid on the part of the Texas Rangers. For once the Blue Jays had the opportunity to look with some sympathy at the plight of another team that should be contending but is struggling. Some sympathy, but not much. After all, it was the Texas Rangers.

And to this observer questions linger over the decision to return Donaldson and Tulowitzki to the lineup at the start of the present home stand. Their apparent inability, or unwillingness, to try to finish off tough plays to me is an indication that neither was actually ready to return to the defensive lineup. I’m not sure if receiving the accolades of the crowd for their triumphant return plus two base hits, neither of which figured in the scoring, was value enough received for rushing them back into action.

A tale of two baseball games:

On April twelfth in Toronto, Marcus Stroman was the starting pitcher for the Blue Jays against the Milwaukee Brewers. At the end of the game his ERA had “balooned” from 1.42 to 1.76. He pitched a complete game, 9 innings, and gave up two runs on seven hits while walking one and striking out four. He threw 100 pitches. He took the loss that day, to even his season record at 1-1.

Today in Milwaukee Stroman started against the Brewers once again. This time his pitching line showed that he went five and two thirds innings, gave up four runs on four hits with four walks and struck out five. He threw 106 pitches. By the end of the game his ERA had gone from 3.00 to 3.30. But today he took credit for the win, raising his record for 2017 to five wins and two losses.

What was the difference between these two games, besides the obvious, that Stroman had been a much more effective pitcher on April twelfth in Toronto than he was on May twenty-fourth in Milwaukee?

Everything else about the Blue Jays, that’s what. First of all, there was the lineup. Troy Tulowitzki was at shortstop. Josh Donaldson was in the batting order, but not ready to play in the field coming back from a day’s rest because of the lingering effects of a right calf injury suffered in spring training. Because Donaldson was serving as the designated hitter, Kendrys Morales started at first, Darwin Barney at third, and Justin Smoak was on the bench. Steve Pearce was in left field. Devon Travis led off and Kevin Pillar hit eighth.

Oh, and Stroman took the loss because the Toronto lineup was shut out on four hits and three walks with eight strikeouts by a combination of Chase Anderson, Corey Knebel, and Naftali Feliz. Backup catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia ran for Donaldson when he walked in the ninth inning.

Today, Tulowitzki, Donaldson, and Pearce are on the disabled list. Playing in the National League park, after Morales started at first yesterday and hit a monster home run that turned out to be the game winner, he sat out today while Smoak played first, went one for four and did not figure in the scoring, though his ten home runs and 29 RBIs continued to lead the team. Ryan Goins was at shortstop. Russell Martin played third. A different backup catcher, Luke Maile, was behind the dish, this being a day game after a night game, a situation in which Martin is normally relieved of his catching duties. Chris Coghlan patrolled left field for the second game in a row against the Brewers. Kevin Pillar led off and kept his batting average above .300 even though he only had one hit in five at bats. Devon Travis hit second, and saw his batting average drop from .240 to .238, though his average for the month of May was .351, and he had hit fourteen doubles in the month, which added to the two he hit in April when he was struggling at the plate, gave him sixteen for the year. This tied him for the major league lead in doubles with Mitch Moreland of the Rangers and Ryan Zimmerman of the Nationals.

Oh, and Stroman got the win because this crazy patchwork lineup scored eight runs on ten hits with one walk while striking out only seven times. Pillar, Travis, Goins, and Jose Bautista hit home runs, Goins’ was a grand slam, and he had six total bases on the day, having doubled in the fifth inning as well.

“What a diff’rence a [month] makes!”* (Give or take a couple of weeks.)

*A slight adaptation of the title of a great song of Dinah Washington, an American R and B singer who deserved a wider audience than she ever had.

The irony of it all is that Toronto now comes home on a three-game win streak and having gone four and three on the road by playing a scrappy, gritty, and now explosive type of ball that is very reminiscent of some of their best runs of the last two years. Yet the lineup that has finally come together to deliver this improvement, from all reports, is about to be shaken up by of the imminent return of Josh Donaldson and Troy Tulowitzki.

Conventional wisdom would have it that replacing Goins and Coghlan/Barney with the All-Star duo on the left side of the infield can only be a good, even a great, thing, but what happens if the whiff rate starts to escalate again, just as the present group seems to be getting it under control?

Ah well, let’s stick with the present, as in today’s game, shall we?

Marcus Stroman started out with better command than in his last start, and breezed through the first and second innings with just a walk to Domingo Santana in the second. He ran into a spot of trouble in the third which cost him a run, but there was an pattern to the proceedings that excused his lapse to a certain extent, though it did show him capable of being rattled on the mound.

Stroman was really upset about two strike calls that he didn’t get from home plate umpire Mike Winters. I’m going to pledge right now that I will not mention ball and strike calls unless I am absolutely backed up by PitchCast. These two calls were definitely bad calls. After the first, an 0-1 pitch to Keon Broxton that would have made it 0-2 but was called a ball, he threw a cutter that was basically a batting-practice pitch and Broxton parked it in the left-field seats.

The second call didn’t show up on the scoreboard, but it was still illustrative. Winters stiffed Stroman on an 0-1 pitch to Jonathan Villar, exactly the same pitch he missed on Broxton—at least he’s consistent—so he brought the next one in over the plate where it could be reached, and Villar reached out and slapped it to left for a base hit. Stroman then seemed to forget that Villar was on base, rocked into his windup and was correctly called for a balk. He went on to walk Eric Thames on a 3-2 pitch before settling down and striking out Hernan Perez.

So the Brewers took a 1-0 lead, which was concerning at that point because Matt Garza was dealing pretty confidently for Milwaukee. He ran through the order without a base runner first time through, with three strikeouts, and showed absolutely no respect for the Stroman of Swat**, throwing him a steady diet of breaking balls until he struck out.

**One of Babe Ruth’s more famous newspaper monikers was the “Sultan of Swat”.

But the Milwaukee lead didn’t last long. With the lineup turned over to begin the fourth inning, Garza made the mistake of hanging an 0-1 slider to Kevin Pillar, who crushed it to left to tie the game. Pillar’s aggressiveness seemed to spark his mates, because Travis followed by jumping at the first pitch but didn’t get it, popping out to Thames at first. But then Garza made a big mistake. For some reason he didn’t try to punish Travis for the Pillar homer, but Jose Bautista, well might as well send him a message, ’cause he’s so lovable, ya know?

So Garza’s first pitch to Bautista was seriously up and in, and flipped Bautista. Then he threw one way away. Then he threw one away but in the zone. Like the bears and the porridge, this one was just right, and Bautista hammered it straight out to dead centre.

D’ya think these guys might learn some time not to poke the bear with Bautista? I don’t even know why Garza did it, other than that he belongs to the militant anti-flipper brigade. Well, if you don’t want a bat flip, don’t flip the batter. Not to mention that Garza and the Brew Crew were now down 2-1.

I just want to mention in passing here that one of the Sportsnet writers just published a piece about how the next big thing in baseball analytics was going to be extreme outfield shifts and a move toward a fourth outfielder at times. Well, if you saw the first two times Justin Smoak came to the plate tonight hitting from the left side, tomorrrow’s already here. The Brewers stationed Jonathan Villar in a position akin to the old rover position in soft ball, forming an outfield triangle with the centre and right fielders. It worked twice tonight as Smoak hit a looper right to him in the second, and a hard grounder to him in the fourth. Both would have had some likelihood of being a hit without Villar’s positioning. They’d better handle the ball carefully on grounders though, because it’s a much longer throw to first for the second baseman.

Of course these things have their limits. His next time up, in the sixth, the new improved 2017 Justin Smoak lined a single through the gaping hole on the left side of the infield to become one of the passengers who rode home on Ryan Goin’s grand slam.

But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Stroman settled down again in the bottom of the fourth and fanned Travis Shaw, who went down twice on strikes again in a very bad showing for Shaw against his old team. Then he got a groundout to Martin at third by Santana, with Martin handling the chance with aplomb. Finally, he fanned catcher Jett Bandy.

In the top of the fifth the Jays produced another run for a little cushion, but Garza did a good job of limiting the damage. This time it was the bottom of the order for Toronto. Chris Coghlan ran one up the middle on the ground to lead off, the first of two hits run up the rug by the left fielder. Ryan Goins then ripped a grounder past Thames down the line for a double that moved Coghlan to third. The Brewers called foul on this one but nobody listened. Then Luke Maile chipped in with a solid RBI, a deep sacrifice fly to centre on Garza’s first pitch that also moved Goins to third.

That brought the Stroman of not-much-Swat to the plate, and Garza was not going to give up a ribbie to the likes of him. He went after Stroman with a vengeance. Stroman managed to put himself in the hole by fouling off two wicked sliders, and then he was at Garza’s mercy, finally going down on very high heat. Kevin Pillar then popped out to second on the first pitch.

Stroman went back to work in the bottom of the fifth and walked Eric Sogard on a 3-2 pitch. But then he got the ground ball he needed, and the slick Goins-to-Travis-to-Smoak double play nipped the speedy Broxton. Brewers manager Craig Counsell must have felt that his lineup could turn things around for Garza so he let him hit with two outs and nobody on and a pitch count of 65 after four, and Garza grounded out to second. What with the double plays, it seemed like Stroman might join Garza in a possible deep outing.

But things changed big time in the sixth, and neither starter survived the inning. Maybe Counsell should have taken a shot at a pinch-hit homer instead of letting Garza hit. Leading off, Devon Travis finally broke out of his doubles jinx (some jinx!) and elevated one of his drives about twenty seats deep into the left field seats, making the score 4-1. Bautista lined one hard up the middle for a base hit. Smoak hit his shift-buster to left, with Bautista holding second. Russell Martin scorched one to centre that Broxton made a great catch on, sliding on his knees, while the runners held.

It was the loud out, not the base hits, that brought Garza’s day to an end. Oliver Drake, a right-hander, was brought in to face Chris Coghlan and then Ryan Goins, both left-handed hitters. There is a problem, you see, with an all-right-handed pitching staff.

Drake, who by name it seems to me should be a distinguished author, or perhaps a cerebral detective, threw six pitches to the two lefties. The first four were balls to Coghlan to fill the bases. The fifth one was a dodgy called strike, a splitter that looked high and inside. The sixth one was definitely a ball, not quite as high but inside.

Ryan Goins didn’t care where that pitch was because he jerked it out of the yard, far into the second level of stands in right, and suddenly the Toronto lead was doubled and it was just like 2015 all over again. It should be noted that two of Goins’ home runs this year have ranked among the longest shots of the year in major league baseball. Who knew?

Drake quickly dispatched Luke Maile and Marcus Stroman who fanned for a third time but the damage was done, and it was now just a question of keeping the Brewers’ potent lineup from mounting a comeback.

Stroman gave a good shot at doing just that but in the end he couldn’t survive the sixth either. It was a rocky ride from the start, but he had a shot at getting out of the inning until he threw a two-out gopher ball to Domingo Santana with two on that brought the Brewers half-way back.

Jonathan Villar drew a walk leading off, and then Stroman struck out Eric Thames, but gave up a double to the wall in centre by Hernan Perez. Curiously, Villar, who can fly, didn’t score from first on the double. It was almost as if he didn’t trust his own eyes that Kevin Pillar wouldn’t run the ball down, like usual. So with runners on second and third and one down, Stroman caught Travis Shaw looking, for another strikeout for Shaw, and Stroman was that close to walking off the sixth with a seven-run lead.

The gritty right-hander then went to 2-2 on Santana and but just threw a mistake, inner half, above the waist, and Santana didn’t miss it. That was the end of Stroman’s outing today, at five and two thirds innings and a bunch of fours: four runs, four hits, four walks, and five strikeouts. What did him in, presumably, was the pitch count of 106 pitches. Dominic Leone came in to finish the inning by striking out Jett Bandy, who went down for the second time today.

With the game in the hands of the bullpen, the question was whether the Toronto bullpen could continue its recent run of fine multi-inning outings. The short answer was yes.

Leone pitched his own full inning and retired the side in order. Aaron Loup retired the side in order in the eighth with two strikeouts and then a big assist from Jose Bautista, who made a nice run into the alley in right centre to haul down a drive off the bat of Hernan Perez.

The Milwaukee relievers pitched equally well and the score remained 8-4 going to the ninth, so with no save situation Manager John Gibbons brought in Jason Grilli to finish off the game. Given the way he’s been pitching lately, there was a lot of angst in the land when Shaw finally broke loose and led off with a double to right. But Grilli settled in and got the next three batters on soft contact in 17 pitches to finish the game.

The Milwaukee bullpen helped keep Toronto’s lead at four through to the end. Jared Hughes pitched a clean seventh, and Wily Peralta, who had a good start against the Jays in Toronto earlier in the year, gave up two hits while finishing off the game. Chris Coghlan picked up his second single of the night in the eighth, and for the second night in a row a rookie outfielder for the Blue Jays picked up his first major league hit, and for the second night in a row it was a double. This time it was Dwight Smith. As far as we know, he did not hurt himself doing so.

So Toronto comes home from a seven-game road trip during which they split two games in Atlanta, lost two out of three in Baltimore, and won two Milwaukee. Were it not for the bad start to the season, were it not for the fraught nature of their losses to Baltimore, were it not for the two terrible losses to Atlanta at home before they left, everybody would be just fine with a 4-3 road trip. But these are not normal times, this is not a normal season, and introspection seems to run deeper than usual.

With the All-Star left side ready for duty this weekend, and the Jays now having nearly approximated their record at the same point as last year, maybe we can relax and start enjoying the show.

Still, the quesion lingers: Donaldson and Tulowitzki have been out for a long time. Keyed by the all-around play of Ryan Goins, the stepping up of Kevin Pillar, Jose Bautista and Justin Smoak, the amazing hot streak of Devon Travis at the plate, the constant looming presence of Kendrys Morales, and the ability of puzzle pieces Darwin Barney, Chris Coghlan, and Zeke Carrera to chip in some useful work, has the team built a chemistry and some momentum that will now need a reset? And especially whither Ryan Goins, who has blossomed with regular duty. Will Manager John Gibbons be able to find him enough playing time to keep him at this level?

As for the team’s immediate prospects, seven out of ten at home would do nicely, bringing us to 28-29, but first it’s the Texas Rangers, who just got swept in Boston and will be loaded for bear, and first up for Toronto is fill-in Mike Bolsinger. Hold on to your hats, folks!

Tonight’s tight 4-3 Toronto victory in Milwaukee over the resurgent Brewers represented something old and something new in the ongoing saga of Toronto’s strange 2017 odyssey.

The old? Well, not so old, but for the second start in a row, Joe Biagini pitched four really good innings, and suffered one really bad one. To be fair, this time out the bad inning didn’t put the Jays in the hole, but only allowed the Brewers to crawl a little closer to Toronto on the scoreboard. A lot closer, actually. Another difference was that this time it was hardly his fault, unless you want to blame him for throwing ground ball after ground ball, only to see them snake their way through the Toronto infield for crucial base hits.

The new? Well, if you go back far enough in Blue Jays history, this isn’t so new either, after all. For the second night in a row that wild and crazy guy John Gibbons reached into his wizard’s hat and pulled out a brand new third baseman, none other than Jose Bautista. Of course, Bautista came to the Jays as a third baseman from the Pirates in 2008, and did play third for Toronto, but hadn’t done so since 2013.

First Russell Martin at third, and now Jose Bautista? Okay, I’m making too much of this. Both players have a certain amount of experience playing in the infield, and it’s certainly not a stretch for either of them to put in a game at third, or, in Martin’s case second as well, where he’s finished up the odd extra-inning game, or first for Bautista, where he’s put in the odd inning.

The answer, of course, is National League baseball in a National League park. If this topic interests you, I’ve appended below an explanation of how this lineup was probably put together. You may pop down to the bottom and check it out now, or read it as a sidebar afterwards, or just forget about it. Kind of a choose-your-own-ending thing.

Joe Biagini had a lot to think about as he prepared for his fourth start since being inserted into the rotation because of the rash of injuries to Toronto’s starting pitchers.

His first two starts, necessarily short because he needed to be stretched out in terms of the number of pitches he would be allowed, were beyond successful, nine full innings, no earned runs, six hits, no walks, and nine strikeouts, on 93 pitches. Put that all in one game and Biagini is the American League pitcher of the week.

But the third start, in Atlanta on May seventeenth, was another story entirely. The first six batters reached base against him in Atlanta. They all scored. Five of the runs were earned. There was more than one anomaly in this outing. The first was that the four consecutive base hits he gave up, culminating in a three-run homer by catcher Kurt Suzuki, followed a throwing error by Biagini. With the leadoff batter on with a ground single that had sneaked through the left side, Biagini fielded a one-hopper from Freddie Freeman that arrived at the mound with DP already stamped on it. But Biagini’s throw to second pulled Devon Travis off the bag, all hands were safe, and the deluge followed. It was sad to see the sag in Biagini’s demeanour after that play.

The second anomaly was that after the Suzuki homer, Biagini retired twelve in a row, and only left the game for a pinch hitter in the fifth inning because the Jays needed to do everything they could to cut into the 6-2 deficit they faced.

Being a clearly thoughtful and reflective young man, he must have considered long and hard about this next start tonight. The big issue would be how he would handle misfortune if it should arise.

And arise it did, on just the second batter of the game. After Biagini fanned leadoff hitter Jonathan Villar, newly-minted super slugger Eric Thames, Toronto’s gift to the baseball world, grounded one sharply up the middle. Ryan Goins and Devon Travis converged on it, but Travis made as they say in tennis an unforced error. Moving away from first from his position at second, Travis should have peeled off and let Goins take a shot at it, since the shortstop’s momentum was toward first. But he didn’t yield, they both backed off to avoid a collision, and the ball trickled away for an infield single.

Then, to my eye, it happened a second time. Ryan Braun hit one hard, right at Kendrys Morales playing first. A clean pick would have been an easy double play, and I’m not saying that the clean pick would have been easy or should have been made. And this is not really about Justin Smoak versus Morales at first; Smoak’s very good, but not perfect, with the glove. And you can’t argue with Morales being in the lineup today.

But sometimes the hard play has to be made; it’s what distinguishes the good defensive team from the mediocre. At any rate, Morales knocked it down, and by the time he got to it, the DP was off the table, so Thames moved up to second while Morales took the out at first.

How did Biagini handle all of this? He used two of the most bodacious curve balls you’ve ever seen to fan Travis Shaw and solve the problem himself.

Well, okay, then.

Perhaps buoyed by Biagini’s effort to overcome the fielding blips, the Toronto hitters, who had wasted base hits by Kevin Pillar and Jose Bautista in the top of the first, did a better job of finishing things off to hand their pitcher a 2-0 lead, though actually it was Biagini himself who delivered the second run.

Devon Travis led off with a Texas Leaguer into right that maybe Domingo Santana could have caught with a decent jump. Russell Martin, back behind the plate after his turn at third on Sunday, went behind the pitch from the big Brewers’ starter Jimmy Nelson, and lined another shot to right for a hit, with Travis coming around to third. Chris Coghlan, who shares with Darwin Barney the ability to string out an at-bat, worked Nelson for a 3-2 walk to load the bases. This brought Ryan Goins to the plate, and on a 1-1 pitch he emulated Martin, going the other way with a sharp liner just out of the reach of shortstop Orlando Arcia. With Martin behind Travis on the bases, and the ball hit hard, they had to play station-to-station, Travis coming in to score and the bases still loaded with nobody out.

Up to the plate lumbered the eager Biagini, hopeful of aiding his own cause. Now, Biagini is no Marcus Stroman with a bat in his hand, but he’s nothing if not gutsy. After being badly fooled on a 1-1 sinker way down and in that he swung over, he managed to get his bat on the next sinker, one that didn’t sink, and bounced it out toward short, just out of the reach of the pitcher. Martin came in to score, Arcia made the easy force-out to Villar at second, and Villar turned it over, but Biagini hauled his large self very smartly down the line and decisively beat the relay to stay out of the double play.

His RBI put the Jays up 2-0, but his effort down the line came to naught, as Coghlan was out at the plate on the contact play with Pillar batting, and Nelson fanned Zeke Carrera to end the threat. But still, there are a lot of little things that go to make up a real major leaguer, and Joe Biagini has shown himself to be a real major leaguer.

There was some commentary from one of the beat reporters that maybe Biagini ran into trouble in the fifth because of the extra effort involved in running out the fielder’s choice in the second. That’s a bit of a stretch. In the bottom of the second, he walked Santana on an awfully good 3-2 pitch, retired Hernan Perez on a liner to Goins at short, and then got the double-play ball to third from catcher Manny Pina. 13 pitches. Guess he was a little out of breath.

Oh, wait! Double-play ball to third? To Bautista? Another beat reporter (these people, really!) called it a rather awkward double play. I beg to differ wholeheartedly. The hitter was the catcher, so Bautista knew he had time. The ball was to his glove side; he picked it cleanly, set up his footwork textbook-style for the throw, and fed Travis a perfect ball to the outfield side of second that would bring Travis off the bag safely and ready to plant for his throw to first. Awkward? No way, Jose!

The game rolled through the third with the pitchers in control. Between them Nelson and Biagini threw 20 pitches, and Biagini threw three ground balls to the Brewers. After the double play, that made five.

Another what-if moment came for Biagini in the top of four. After Nelson got ground ball outs from Martin and Coghlan, Goins stepped in for the second time against Nelson and got his second hit, this time a rousing double to right centre. This brought Biagini up for the second time with a runner in scoring position. Could it be? Alas, no. Obviously not a dues-paying member of the pitchers’ fraternity, Nelson threw Biagini a nasty 1-2 slider down and away. Biagini lunged and made contact, but it was a soft little hopper that the catcher Pina corralled and put the tag on the pitcher, who wasn’t sure whether it was a fair ball.

Obviously not breathless, Biagini got soft wrong-way contact from Thames again in the Milwaukee fourth, resulting in a lazy fly to left. He walked Ryan Braun, caught Travis Shaw looking with a slider, and got Santana on a grounder to third, which Bautista handled flawlessly.

Came the fifth inning, the pivotal point in the game. It was a good one for Toronto, but not a great one for Biagini, and the events of the fifth led to the long denouement that was the rest of the game.

For the Jays, it all started with two, as Nelson gave up a line single to left by Bautista after retiring Pillar and Carrera. This brought Kendrys Morales to the plate, and he stroked the key hit of the contest, getting all of another 2-1 sinker that didn’t, and hitting a monster blast to dead centre. Much as we loved it, little did we know how important that shot would be.

With Milwaukee down 4-0 and coming to bat in the bottom of the fifth, one of the most frustrating and exciting innings of the season was imminent. Biagini kept throwing ground balls, but they kept finding holes. Perez to left, Pina to centre, Arcia to centre scoring Perez. Jesus Aguilar, hitting for the pitcher, rolled one slowly to second that moved the runners up for the first out. Jonathan Villar rolled one through the right side that scored both of them. Villar stole second, and then Biagini pitched very carefully to Thames, staying way away with four straight to put him on. Who says they eliminated the four-pitch intentional walk?

That was it for Biagini, as much as everybody wanted him to finish the inning and qualify for the win. Manager John Gibbons went to the pen for Danny Barnes. Next thing you know, with Ryan Braun at the plate, Villar and Thames pulled off a double steal. With the double play off, Barnes did the only thing he could: facing the unfavourable matchup with two power-hitting lefties, Braun and Shaw, he and catcher Russell Martin set them both up beautifully to finish off with high heat. High heat, high drama.

Barnes then went on to pitch a clean sixth, during which the third out was recorded by Bautista with another good play at third, diving glove-side and coming up throwing to take a hit away from Pina, who’s gonna be glad not to be looking down at Bautista playing third any time soon. If it was a disappointment that Biagini didn’t get the win for Toronto, it was absolutely natural justice that it went to Barnes.

Joe Biagini’s grit, Danny Barnes’ brilliance, and the bats of Ryan Goins and especially Kendrys Morales set the table for the Jays’ bullpen to try to take it home against this powerful Brew Crew.

Ryan Tepera followed Barnes to the hill in the seventh and, ahem, kept the Brewers loose, but also kept them off the board. He fanned Arcia on a terrible (or brilliant, depending on whose colours you wear) breaking ball in the dirt. He fanned Nick Franklin who hit for the Milwaukee pitcher. Then he walked Villar, who promptly stole second. With a base open, he nicked Thames to bring up Braun who flied out to Anthony Alford—more on him later—who’d hit for Barnes and then stayed in to play right. It was a bit crazy, but it looks like that’s what you get with Tepera, who, like Tina Turner, never “does easy”.

Joe Smith, however, “does easy”, and he did so in the eighth, striking out poor Shaw for the fourth time, and Santana, before Perez grounded out to short. Eleven pitches and it was over to Osuna.

Osuna got the save with a little less drama than usual, though it took 19 pitches and a two-out walk to get there. Manny Pina grounded out to short. Orlando Arcia lined out to centre. Eric Sogard hit for the Milwaukee pitcher Naftali Feliz and drew a walk, but then Osuna fanned Villar to put it away and draw the curtains back on the Knock-Knock Game with Russell Martin.

As for Toronto, the Blue Jays basically circled the wagons around their bullpen, and only their seventh was of interest. With the pitcher Barnes up first, John Gibbons sent Alford up to hit for him. At this point Alford was zero for six in his major league debut stint with Toronto. Rob Scahill, who had pitched a pretty clean sixth in relief of Jimmy Nelson, was still on the mound for the Brewers.

Alford walloped an 0-1 pitch from Scahill over the head of the centre fielder Perez. The only question was double or homer. Unfortunately, it didn’t have the elevation and Alford was on second, the ball out of play for a souvenir, on Alford’s first MLB hit, a rousing double. Alford made it to third with a nice bit of base running when Kevin Pillar grounded out to short, but was eventually stranded there.

For those who don’t know the story, last off-season Alford’s parents’ home burned to the ground with no injuries but costing them all of their belongings, and the Blue Jays’ organizational brain trust and players’ group pitched in to get them set up again, in one of the warmer and fuzzier stories of the off-season. But the losses included all of the sports memorabilia related to Alford’s nascent career. So the first-hit ball from tonight became the first piece in a new collection, and what a pleasure it was to have his mother present in the Milwaukee ball yard to receive it.

In an unbelievable turn of events, Alford, having tasted life in the show and found it to be good, had another at bat in the ninth inning and struck out. But in the process, when he fouled one off, he felt a pain in his hand and it was later learned that he had broken the hammate bone in his palm, and instead of going back to New Hampshire to hone his skills he is now headed for the disabled list, where there may or may not be enough space to add his name at the bottom.

ADDENDUM: JOEY BATS AT THIRD? MAKES PERFECT SENSE TO ME!

There is a much greater effect on the creating of a lineup for an American League manager getting ready to play in a National League park than you might imagine, starting from the fact that teams’ rosters are built slightly differently according to the league. National League teams would tend to go with perhaps one less relief pitcher in order to make room for an extra position player, since there is more of a need to pinch hit.

In this case, the problem was compounded by the fact that there is an anomaly in the Milwaukee pitching staff: they have zero left-handed pitchers, starters or relievers. Zero.

So John Gibbons was facing two problems: pack as much power as possible into the eight spots in the batting order available to him, to make up for the fact that the pitcher has to hit, and, even worse, American League pitchers have had very few major league at bats, and at the same time get all of his left-handed batters into the lineup. But how do you do that with Zeke Carrera only able to play the outfield, Chris Coghlan able to play both infield and outfield, and you absolutely have to have both Bautista and Kevin Pillar in the lineup, since you’re are already unable to use both Kendrys Morales and Justin Smoak at the same time, losing one of the power switch-hitters who would be hitting left against all the Milwaukee righties. And with Devon Travis hitting the way he is at the moment, there’s no way Coghlan was going to take his place at second just because he hits left.

So to review: we already knew that Gibbie was going to give one game at first to Morales and one to Smoak. Tonight it was Morales, whose two-run homer iced the game for Toronto. Martin or Maile behind the plate? The power bat, obviously. So now you’ve got three infield positions and three outfield positions to fill. Bautista, Pillar and Travis are in because of their bats, and Pillar also because, well, Super Kevin. If the Blue Jays have had a team leader in this strange spring, it’s been Pillar. Goins hits left and is the linchpin of the infield. Carrera and Coghlan are in, and Darwin Barney is out, because the latter hits right, and not with as much power as the other right-handed hitters. It might seem obvious that Coghlan would be at third, Carrera in left, and Bautista at home in right.

But if you look at Coghlan’s career record, he’s spent far more time in the outfield, and very little at third before this year, and frankly he has been less than steady at third for the Jays. So this interesting exercise in organizing a batting order tonight actually came down to Gibbie’s instinct that the team would be stronger defensively with Bautista at third and Coghlan in left, alongside Pillar and Carrera.

As it happened, Coghlan had easy chances in left, and Bautista sparkled at third. Good call, Gibbie!

When Marco Estrada is on his game, all you can do is sit back and enjoy it.

While he’s almost always very good, you can never really tell when he’s going to be at his best, which is as good as it gets in terms of starting pitching in the American League.

When Estrada took the hill for the bottom of the first in Baltimore, the auguries were decidedly mixed. Baltimore isn’t really the greatest fit for Estrada’s “skill set”, if I can use a term I actually despise.

As we all know, Estrada’s a fly-ball pitcher. His off-speed pitches and his location make it hard for hitters to make solid contact, and he throws a lot of easy fly balls and popups. A power lineup like Baltimore’s has a better chance of somebody squaring one up once in a while, or more than once in a while. In addition, they play in a hitter-

friendly park with reachable fences. For a guy like Estrada, to whom it’s all the same whether the batter fouls out to the catcher or hits one to the warning track in left, it would be better if the warning track were a little further out.

On the other hand, Estrada’s record has never shown much distinction in terms of wins and losses despite a fine career ERA of 3.82 and despite consistently sporting among the lowest opponents’ batting averages year after year. This is because at least during the Toronto part of his career he has never received much run support.

Yet tonight, facing Baltimore in Baltimore, Estrada had to feel pretty good going to the mound. Because with a little egregious help from Orioles’ second baseman Jonathan Schoop, his team had put up a big three-spot in the top of the first before he had even thrown a pitch.

Robert Fulghum is one of those pop phenomena who’s easy to envy. Make that hate. In 1988 the Unitarian Universalist minister published a book of essays containing his gentle musings of life lessons. It was based, I’m sure you know, on the charming essay, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”. Had there been viral sensations in 1988, the essay would have gone viral, and the book built around it has become a perennial best-seller. Hate? Sure. Anybody who can turn a whimsical little essay into an industry and a money-making monster is kind of easy to hate, in a sort of non-visceral, at-arm’s length way.

Anyhoo, the reason for the digression about Fulghum, of course, is to reinforce the point that everything you need to know about tonight’s ball game was contained in its first inning. As a former principal of mine used to tell the students on the first day of classes, “Let us begin as we intend to continue.” By the end of the first inning the story line of the game was set and never deviated.

Left-handed veteran Wade Miley, one of the few Baltimore starters so far this year to be depended on for a solid start by manager Buck Showalter, took the hill for the Orioles. With the resurgence of switch-slugger Justin Smoak and the acquisition of switch-slugger Kendrys Morales, going up against a lefty these days tends to put a little swagger into the Toronto lineup. Often, though, swagger doesn’t translate into runs with our boys.

And it looked like another one of those days, as Kevin Pillar led off by popping out to third on an 0-1 count, and Jose Bautista checked his swing and dribbled one back to Miley. But then Jonathan Schoop, stationed near normal shortstop depth in the Morales shift-left formation, jogged over glove-side to the latter’s bouncer, picked it up, and tossed Morales out at first. Except, no, is that the ball still lying there in the dirt? Why, yes it is. The casual, normally highly-skilled Schoop just somehow forgot to pick up the ball.

If there’s anything to beware more than the two-out walk, it’s the two-out error. A big part of Justin Smoak’s newly-found repertoire is a much more professional, contact-seeking approach with two outs and even two strikes, which is where he found himself against Miley. That includes going the other way, which Smoak somehow managed to do on an inside strike up in the zone, singling to right. Morales checked in to second, bringing the ever-puzzling, but currently very hot, Devon Travis to the plate.

Now here’s how puzzling Travis is. Miley threw a first-pitch fast ball to every single batter in the inning except Travis. He started Travis on a curve ball, a good one, low and breaking in to Travis from the left side. Was Travis sitting on it because of a wild guess? Was he lucky? Or is he just instinctively a really good hitter? Whatever the reason, after bouncing doubles off walls all over the place in the last week, Travis finally hit another hard one to left centre, but this time with a better angle, and suddenly Toronto had a three-unearned-run lead, and if Schoop and Miley go out to dinner tonight, I’m sure Schoop will be picking up the tab. Or maybe Travis should cover the tab for both of them.

So Estrada took to the hill for the first time through the Orioles order with the unexpected luxury of a three-run cushion, and it was up to him to take advantage of it. And did he ever.

Against all expectations, Schoop, leading off, took the first pitch for a called strike. Eventually, on 2-2 after a fast ball, Schoop flailed at a changeup. Adam Jones saw the change first, and fouled one off that was up in his eyes. He never saw another change, and maybe didn’t see the eye-high 89 MPH fast ball that he swung through for strike three.

Mannie Machado didn’t wait around to be embarrassed, but grounded out to Russell Martin at third on an 0-1 change, the second changeup Estrada threw to him.

Wait a minute. Was that Russell Martin throwing Machado out from third? Why, yes it was. That Russell, what a funny guy. First he sneaks his way off the disabled list and back into Friday night’s game, and then he conjures up an infielder’s glove and sneaks out to third in the disguise of Josh Donaldson. Don’t worry, folks, with the spate of injuries he has had to deal with, manager John Gibbons has had to become more creative with his lineup. With a lefty on the hill, it was a good idea to stack as many strong right-handed bats in the lineup as he could. With Martin having returned to his post behind the plate the night before, this was an opportunity for his bat to be in the lineup in a day game after a night game. Besides, Martin has been a wannabe sometime-infielder his whole career, much like Marcus Stroman sees himself as a slugging second baseman who just happens to pitch. Ballplayers, eh?

So, there you had it: Toronto takes advantage of a totally unnecessary error to jump on top, and Estrada is in “let’s see just how silly we can make them look” mode.

The Jays never scored again, in fact never really threatened. Oh, Darwin Barney reached leading off the fifth when Mannie Machado joined Schoop in the looking-silly column by just not picking up Barney’s easy grounder. Barney eventually wended his way around to third, but died there.

Oh, and Kevin Pillar reached on a slow roller infield single to Schoop in the third, and got to second when Miley bounced a check-in pickoff attempt to first (write this down in your memory book for a day like this may never come again: Machado’s error on Barney in the fifth, after Schoop’s in the first and the bad Miley pickoff, made for three Baltimore errors on the day). Pillar almost made it to third, trying to advance on a short bouncer that got away from catcher Caleb Joseph, but Joseph gunned him down.

So that was it. Miley deserved better, going seven innings, giving up six hits but no earned runs while walking but one and striking out three on 107 pitches. Alec Asher mopped up with his very best Ultimate Spin-Mop, striking out two, and walking one, but erasing the walk with a double play, on 26 pitches over the last two.

Good job that Travis got all of that curve ball in the first, because that’s all the Jays’ hitters were going to get today.

But oh, this was Marco Estrada’s day. Beginning to end, it was all about him. It’s hard for me even to write that horrid contemporary cliche, “it was all about him”. Because the way Marco Estrada carries himself, it’s never all about him. Famously, he gives his catcher free rein, and never shakes off a pitch. (Indicative here of his self-effacing flexibility, this was one of his best starts of the year, and it was caught by Luke Maile with Martin playing third, and Estrada handed the whole game plan successfully to Maile, with whom he’s just barely gotten acquainted, as if the master himself were behind the plate.)

Then there’s his demeanour on the mound. A windup and delivery that for all the world resembles the style of the knucksie, like his old team-mate R. A. Dickey, or Steven Wright of the Red Sox. It’s funky and old fashioned looking, and you might think it looks more like the way you’d deliver your darts in an English pub, if, that is, you’d never actually seen a dart thrower’s stance. You know when you watch his delivery that it’s not coming at you at 98.

But I can imagine what’s going through the hitter’s mind. Not 98, but what, where, most importantly, what spin? What is he doing with those devilish fingers of his?

Then there’s the peekaboo above the glove as he peers in for the sign. I know that the bobblehead makers had a decision to make, whether to show Marco’s face or not, but I’m sure the recent Marco bobblehead would have been a lot more popular if he had been posed peeking out from behind his glove.

But when he finally throws the ball (not that he takes any time between pitches), he’s something else entirely. A wizard. A trickster. A guy who after a fairly long apprenticeship (interesting how many cases of this we have on the Blue Jays) is a master of what he does, and what he does is confound hitters, who find it impossible to square it up on his pitches, or even, in recent times, to make contact with the ball at all.

Estrada’s pitching line today, though instructive and mighty good, doesn’t tell the whole story. There’s a lot to be mined from it, to be sure: seven and two thirds innings, one run, five hits, one walk, twelve strikeouts, on 115 pitches. And don’t worry about that pitch count: his arm appears to be made of India rubber. (All in, the Orioles struck out thirteen times today. The other one came via Joe Smith, who ended the eighth by ringing up Chris Davis, who has become more hapless by the at-bat in this series.)

Let’s just survey the Orioles’ Murderers’ Row here, and see what we’ve got: Schoop twice, Jones once, Machado once, Davis looking, twice, Trumbo once, One-ell Welington finally neutralized, twice, Caleb Joseph, who usually eats the Jays’ lunch, twice. He also struck out rookie shortstop Paul Janish once, which hardly seems fair.

When you read through this it’s easy to foresee that the next time we play the O’s there might be a lot of “Orange Flu” going around the Baltimore clubhouse. Here’s another little research project for the metrics guys: follow up next game a crowd like the middle of the Baltimore order and see whether or how they remain messed up after hitting against Estrada.

Oh, sure, Estrada didn’t throw a shutout, but with all the power horses around these days, who ever does, hardly? And as I said earlier, every once in a while one of his fly balls is just gonna keep flying right out of the park. So Adam Jones tied into one in the fourth with nobody on—the best kind—to make it a little closer, but really, so what? Give the home fans a little something for their money, right?

It’s always tense to sit through holding a 3-1 lead for five innings, but if we had known that it was carved in stone from the first inning, we could have just relaxed and enjoyed the ride with Estrada. I kinda ended up doing that anyway.

I mentioned that Smith rang up Chris Davis to end the eighth. Estrada started the inning, and wasn’t exactly sweating. Hyung-Soo Kim hit for Janish and skied to Pillar on an 0-1 pitch. Schoop fouled out to Russell Martin on an 0-1 pitch. Then, on a 1-2 pitch, Estrada’s nemesis for the day, Adam Jones, threaded a grounder up the middle for a base hit. Ring the alarm bells, Gibbie, your starter is finished. Well, not really, after eight pitches in the eighth, but it turned out okay because we got to see Smith make big Chris Davis look like he was playing Frozen Tag to end the “threat”.

Before he fanned Davis, though, there was a scary moment. Mannie Machado was first to face Smith, and one of Smith’s sweepers brushed Machado back and made contact with his back hand. Buck Showalter, who can’t be in any other mode, looked dark and angry, which you can’t really blame. After attention, Machado took his base, and came back out for the ninth to finish the game.

I have to say, though, that this was at least one case where it didn’t look like he made much of an effort to get out of the way. Oh, he leaned back as the pitch came in, but made no move to fall away from the pitch until after it was past him. Of course Machado didn’t want to get hit on the hand, but I have a problem with power hitters who hang over the plate, play macho on inside pitches and don’t bail like they were taught in Little League, for pete’s sake. Then they take a pitch on the hand, go on the DL with a broken bone and it’s all boo-hoo. Okay, rant over.

Roberto Osuna came in for the save and cleaned things up, in a messy kind of way.

He had to face Mark Trumbo leading off, and of course Osuna gave up a single, bringing One-ell Welington Castillo to the plate. Gulp. If this was going to be a bad Osuna moment it was going to happen now, and why not? Look who was at the plate. But this time Castilo grounded one out to Travis at second, and Travis was able to turn it into an easy double play.

So we could breathe a little easier, until Trey Mancini grounded one up the middle that went for an infield single. Oh well, it wouldn’t be Osuna time without a few base runners, right? But Seth Smith hitting for Caleb Joseph popped out to third for the game and the save for Osuna.

So Travis’ homer in the first that was enabled by a sloppy error by Jonathan Schoop stood up for the win.

But this was Marco Estrada’s night all the way, and don’t you forget it. He may not look like it, either on the mound or sitting in the dugout, but Marco Estrada is one hell of a pitcher.

Sometimes, you just have to tip your cap.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter if it’s your team that took it on the chin. That it’s your team that’s struggling against all odds in the face of an incredible string of injuries to get back in the divisional race. That it’s your team that’s desperate to close the gap with the team that has become its fiercest rival, to turn the page on losing five close games to them, out of seven already played this year.

Sometimes it almost doesn’t matter that a wave of exultation was turned into the ashes of gloom in a matter of minutes.

Sometimes, you just have to tip your cap.

Once again in Baltimore, for the second night in a row, it was the seemingly benign presence of Welington Castillo, benign presence belied by an explosive and timely bat, that destroyed the chances of victory for a Toronto Blue Jays team that has found victory so very hard to come by in this puzzling and frustrating season.

Leaving aside everything else for the moment, it all came down to this, the seventh inning. Just two moments, in fact, in the seventh inning. One for the visitors. One for the home team.

After six innings, reasonably enough, Baltimore manager Buck Showalter had decided that his starter, Kevin Gausman, was, shall we say, gassed. Though he had only given up two runs, he’d been touched by the Jays for ten hits and a walk, and already thrown 110 pitches. He was in line for the win, as the scoreboard read Baltimore 4,Toronto 2 at the moment. With the rookie Anthony Alford at the plate hitting for Ryan Goins, the left-handed Richard Bleier, in to neutralize Ryan Goins and perhaps looking ahead to Zeke Carrera coming up third, went to 3-2, and struck Alford out on the seventh pitch.

He should have been nearly out of the inning on the next batter, but for a breakdown of the Orioles’ usually sterling defense. Kevin Pillar grounded an easy one to Jay Hardy at short, but Hardy threw low to first; the one-hop seemed to bounce right back out of the middle of first sacker Chris Davis’ glove, and Pillar was safely aboard. Because the throw was bounced, the error was given to Hardy on the throw, but this one was on Chris Davis. The throw was in time, the hop was true, and I’m sure even he would say this was a throw he picks cleanly 99 times out of a hundred.

Bleier finished off his brief outing by walking the man he was supposed to get, Zeke Carrera, on a 3-1 pitch. Meanwhile, concentrating on Carrera, Bleier was perfunctory in checking Pillar, Pillar picked up on it, and easily stole second with a great jump. Thus the walk to Carrera filled an empty base.

Up to bat came Jose Bautista. Into the game came Mychal Givens, Showalter’s stocky, flame-throwing righty, whom Showalter uses almost exclusively in the tightest late-inning situation. In fact, were it not for the existence of Brad Brach in the current absence of Zach Britton, I would suspect that Givens would become the Orioles closer.

In any case, it was an epic confrontation, right-handed power against right-handed power. Bautista disdained the first pitch, a low strike call by plate umpire Tom Woodring. He spoiled the second. He refused to chase the third and fourth, both outside, one high, one low. Then Givens made a mistake and served up what Bautista was looking for, an inner half, thigh-high fast ball.

He turned on the pitch and jerked it. You just knew it was gone. Sound, trajectory off bat, obviously pulled, the only question was whether he hit it hard enough to avoid the hooking action that wanted to pull it foul. He did. The swing and the contact were remarkably similar to the swing and contact of his last home run, on the seventeenth at Atlanta.

Having trailed since the third inning on a scratched-out first inning run, a solo homer by Mannie Machado in the third, and a two-run shot by Mark Trumbo in the fourth, up to the point of Bautista’s home run, Toronto manager John Gibbons elected to leave Dominic Leone in the game to begin the hold job. Leone had come on in the sixth to bail Toronto out of a jam when he relieved starter Mike Bolsinger. Leone had gone 3-0 on Seth Smith and then the Jays elected to pass him to load the bases for Adam Jones, a risky move that paid off when Leone got Jones to hit into an inning-ending double play

So why not leave Leone in to start the next inning? Sure. Toronto showed an interesting array in the field behind Leone. Alford stayed in the game in right, Bautista was returned to his long-ago stomping grounds at third, and Barney slid over to short for the departed Goins.

Leone did his job and retired Machado on a grounder to short, but Aaron Loup didn’t do his, sort of, allowing Chris Davis to reach on yet another opposite-field base hit from an Oriole slugger. In came Danny Barnes to pitch to Mark Trumbo. Barnes got the ground ball he needed, maybe, to end the inning, a sharply-hit ball to short. But it deflected off Barney’s glove into short centre field for another base hit.

Now think back to Alford being struck out in the top of the inning by Bleier wihle hitting for Goins. Sure, it’s easy to say that Goins could have struck out just as easily as Alford, and we know that Barney is a solid fielder, but the Trumbo ball was an either/or: a base hit, or you make the pick and it’s a pretty easy double play with Trumbo truckin’ down the line. I just don’t get hitting for your best infield defender leading off the inning when you’re down 4-2. Maybe later in the inning, with ducks on the pond, but not leading off. In a close game you have to protect on both sides of the ball, and Goins is your best protector, not Barney.

Oh well, just Castillo at the plate. Law of averages, right? He’s not going to do it again. So why the sick feeling in the pit of my gut when he settles into the box? Oh, that’s why. After getting a called strike one, Barnes went to his trademark high hard one and Castillo swung through it for strike two. He went right back to it and this time the unlikely hero was ready and the ball was flying out of the yard to centre. Bautista’s homer had been neutralized, and the Baltimore bullpen had a two-run lead to protect.

No matter who’s injured out of the Baltimore ‘pen, you don’t want to hand the Oriole relievers a two-run lead to protect for only two innings, and this night was not any different. The Jays never had a baserunner in the eighth or ninth, as Darren O’Day atoned for his sloppy outing the night before with a nine-pitch eighth, and closer Brad Brach only took twelve pitches to earn his ninth save. Of the six hitters faced by the Baltimore relievers, only Zeke Carrera hit the ball with any authority, driving Seth Smith back to the wall in right off Brach to end the game.

The Orioles, sitting on the lead, gave Cesar Valdez, newly arrived to take Aaron Sanchez’ spot on the roster, a chance to sample a tough middle of a lineup, and he handled it okay in the bottom of the eighth. He got Seth Smith on a weak wrong-field fly out to left, walked Adam Jones, popped up Manny Machaco, and finished his inning by getting Chris Davis to pull one high and foul into the right field corner, where Anthony Alford ran it down with a nice effort for the third out.

My sense of Alford, who will surely be sent back soon, so that he can play every day in Double A, is that he has a lot of physical skills, in particular speed, and he absolutely looks comfortable playing a major league corner outfield position. As for his bat, he did hit the one ball hard Friday night, and showed lightning speed down the line, creating close plays out of routine ground balls.

So let’s go back and take a little closer look at how we got to that crucial seventh inning.

Kevin Gausman was on the hill for Baltimore, and for a guy who was promoted to number one in the rotation when Chris Tillman started the season on the disabled list, he hasn’t exactly been inspiring, going into tonight’s game with a 2-3 record and an ERA of 7.19.

His first inning didn’t inspire either, as he needed 22 pitches, a double play, and a strikeout of Justin Smoak to hold the Jays to one run in the first. In the second the Orioles turned another double play to erase Russell Martin’s one-out single.

Oh, news flash, I did write “Russell Martin” just now, didn’t I? Yes, he was reactivated before the game and started behind the plate. And his hit in his first at bat was no fluke, a hard liner into left off Gausman. Mike Ohlmann, by the way, was designated for assignment, poor guy. It’s a stage on the way to being released, made likely by the Jays’ resigning Jarrod Saltalamacchia to a minor-leage contract. I’m not sure if I’d let Ohlman, who’s still a prospect, go in favour of Salty, who seems to be playing out the string at this stage, unless Ross Atkins knows something we don’t know.

Back to Gausman, however. He had to fan Kendrys Morales in the third with Goins and Bautista at first and third after base hits. He escaped possible damage in the fourth when Martin, swinging the bat freely in his return, lined very hard into an inning-ending one-hopper double play that erased Devon Travis, on board with a one-out single, after Smoak had led off by driving Hyung-Soo Kim right back to the wall in left with his left-handed stroak off Gausman. In the fifth he had to strand Darwin Barney at third and Kevin Pillar at first with base hits by striking out Bautista.

In the sixth the hard contact on Gausman finally paid off in a run when with one out Smoak hit one out to the deepest part of the park. Then, when Travis followed with a ringing double to right, the Oriole starter needed a little help from his friend behind the plate to limit the damage. The plate umpire Woodring rang up Martin on a ninth pitch in almost exactly the same spot, only a little more off the paint, than the sixth pitch that he’d called a ball. I hate to keep harping on ball and strike calls, but if MLB is going to insist on publishing the PitchCast of every at-bat, dicy ball and strike calls are going to become more and more of a problem.

In any case, Martin was out, but truly furious—he should go for a drink and bellyache session with Joe Smith, after what happened to him in last night’s game—Barney popped out to second, and Travis died at second.

So that’s how Kevin Gausman got through six complete, managing to come up with the big K, mostly, to squirm out of his own situation. Still, that’s how you get to 110 pitches while giving up ten hits but only two runs. Three of his five strikeouts ended innings with runners in scoring position, he got the help of two double plays to end innings, and, maybe this was the key, for all of his deep counts, he only walked one.

Pretty clearly that was the difference between Gausman’s outing and Mike Bolsinger’s five and a third. Bolsinger only gave up six hits, but unfortunately for him two of them were of the very long variety. He gave up a solo homer to Machado in the third, and the two-run job to Trumbo in the fifth, which followed one of his five walks. The walks ate into his pitch count, and kept the rhythm of the game slow, with lots of base runners on both sides. The Toronto starter ended up throwing 102 pitches.

With Aaron Sanchez back on the DL, Bolsinger will clearly be kept around to fill a spot in the rotation. He’s put in some hard innings to earn that trust, and I admire his pluck, but he really hasn’t show enough to give the coaching staff much thought to his future with the organization. He’s a curve ball and control pitcher who’s walked 11 batters in 15 and two thirds innings in his three starts, not to mention the bizarre three hit batsmen in his start in Atlanta. Like I said, I like the guy’s grit, and he’s also come up big against some tough hitters in clutch situations, but with an ERA sitting at 6.32 . . .

After all this Toronto fan-boy type navel-gazing, it’s really most appropriate to wind ourselves back around to the beginning of this piece, and end where it started: All hail to the new Duke of Welington! He may not be the Sultan of Swat, because there was only one of those, but to the Toronto Blue Jays at least, One-ell Welington Castillo is the Duke of Destruction.

Tonight was supposed to be all about Aaron Sanchez. Instead, it was all about the Baltimore Orioles’ slugging catcher Welington Castillo.

And maybe to a certain extent about Jays’ Manager John Gibbons. But that’s just me.

Not sure what the weather was like at Waterloo on June 18, 1815, but it was pretty dodgy around Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore for tonight’s opening game of the current three-game series between the division-contending Baltimore Orioles and a Toronto Blue Jays team that is desperately fighting an injury jinx, one that bodes fair to keep them from ever recovering from their terrible April start.

The start of the game was delayed for about 30 minutes because of a passing shower. Once started, it was a brisk and entertaining affair that from the Blue Jays’ point of view went on just a little too long. The fact that the teams had to wait out a further downpour that took an hour to clear just after Toronto had failed to score in the top of the tenth inning made it even more of an anticlimax when the Orioles took little more than ten minutes to wrap up a walk-off win over a Blue Jays’ team that seems to carry a hex around with it wherever it goes these days.

Maybe they would have had better luck if the bottom of the tenth had been washed out completely, and the game resumed before Saturday evening’s scheduled affair. Maybe Welington Castillo would have gotten hold of some spoiled crab cakes for lunch on Saturday and been unable to do the good guys in when the game resumed.

And maybe if Napoleon had had a couple more horses, or maybe a few Sherman tanks and a couple of Kim Jong Un’s bargain-basement Explode-a-Phone missiles, he might have fought off that wily old two-ell Wellington, and changed the course of history. But, he didn’t.

Well, the bottom of the tenth was played Friday night, and one-ell Welington did hit his second dinger of the game off poor bewitched Jason Grilli to salt away a game that the Torontos should have won in regulation, extra innings be damned. So much for trying to avert the course of history.

Though it was Castillo’s night, as Toronto observers we really must start, after all, with Aaron Sanchez. And I think we have to start with this: no miracle is going to happen any time soon to transform this year’s Aaron Sanchez into the brilliant dominator of 2016. The team has to stop hoping/pretending that his blister and fingernail problem will soon be fixed.

As much as we all had waited longingly for him to return to the rotation, and as much as his pitches tonight showed much of their wicked nuance, he wasn’t quite right. We could see that from the very beginning, and we were deluding ourselves if we didn’t realise that his return is going to continue to be a work in progress.

He was uncomfortable on the mound. From the beginning he struggled with his control. Sure he caught the hapless-looking Chris Davis gazing at a brilliant curve ball to end the first, but he had walked Jonathan Schoop—which is actually hard to do—leading off the game.

In the second, he hit Trey Mancini, which gave the Orioles just the extra base runner they needed to combine with three base hits to score the first run of the game. Why did they need three hits and a hit batsman to score a run? Because the lead runner, the one who scored, was the labouring Mark,Truck Trumbo, who can only advance one base at a time, like a pawn in chess, if he only reaches first on his at bat. Good job for the Orioles that he hits lots of homers.

Sanchez was able to retire the side in order in the third, but gave up a single to Castillo in the fourth (maybe a small victory, in retrospect), and then walked Schoop—again—to lead off he fifth. More concerning than the walk to Schoop was that the last two outs were hit hard, Mannie Machado driving the ball into right centre for Pillar, and Chris Davis hitting a hard grounder that Justin Smoak coolly picked at first for the third out.

In the meantime, the Jays were up against Chris Tillman, the erstwhile ace of the Baltimore staff, who was making just his third start of the season after starting the season on the disabled list. Prior to today’s start, he had accumulated only nine and a third innings so far this year. We should point out that the injury woes being suffered by Toronto’s pitchers this year are not uniquely a Toronto problem. If you survey the whole array of both leagues, the number of starting pitchers facing arm trouble is astonishing. The marginal starters thrust into action by Seattle in the recent Toronto four-game sweep were just one of the more egregious examples of how teams are scuffling to deal with this problem.

Like Sanchez, Tillman had a bit of a sketchy start. He retired Zeke Carrera, who was leading off in the stead of the still-suspended Kevin Pillar, on a comebacker, but gave up a single to the resurgent Jose Bautista, whose every plate appearance tonight was greeted by vigourous booing on the part of the Baltimore fans, eager to prove their general manager’s off-season comments about Bautista to be correct. Then Kendrys Morales hit a rope to left, but right at Kim. We need to start noticing how many times Morales hits the ball really hard the opposite way when he’s batting left. At some point teams are going to have to start moderating the shift they employ against him. Then Tillman went 3-0 on Justin Smoak, none of them close, before Smoak finally bit on what was ball four away, and looped it the wrong way to Kim in left. No real damage here, but, like Sanchez’ first inning, there were intimations.

Tillman settled in a little better than Sanchez, and the Smoak fly ball to left was the start of seven outs in a row, including two strikeouts, which took him, comfortably enough, to the top of the fourth, now protecting that one-run lead tallied by Trumbo in the second.

Unlike Sanchez, though, Tillman failed to scatter his little stumbles. They were concentrated in the Toronto fourth, led to three runs, and could have resulted in a fourth, were it not for a curious decision, the first of two on the night, by Manager John Gibbons.

To the delight of the Baltimore fans, Tillman led off the fourth by plunking Bautista. Then he walked Morales, and the marvelously maturing Smoak took what he was given and knocked Bautista in by crossing up the shift and singling to left, with Morales chugging up the ninety feet to second. In all fairness, if I point out that Mark Trumbo clogs the bases if he only hits a single, the Jays are in a similar situation with Morales and Smoak on base, although we have witnessed some stirring runs to freedom by both of them this year.

Smoak’s RBI single brought Devon Travis to the plate, Travis, who delights me as much every time he slashes out another base hit—watch that batting average climb— as he scares me whenever the ball seeks him out at second in a tight situation, or whenever he’s on second and somebody hits a ground ball left side. But now Travis was at the plate, so it was all good. He chipped in another trademark double to right, which scored Morales with the second run and moved Smoak on to third.

Then the Jays resorted to some small ball to try to extend the lead. The first instance, which simply arose from the circumstances, involved a cool piece of hitting by Ryan Goins, and a very sharp baserunning read by Smoak from third. Smoak may be slow on the bases but he certainly ain’t stupid. On a 1-0 pitch, Goins hit the ball just sharply enough, and just far enough away from Tillman toward first, to bounce on toward second. Smoak, watching from third and inching farther off the bag, recognized at the very first instant that Tillman wasn’t going to field he ball, broke for the plate, and scored without a throw while Schoop, with no other option, took the out at first for the first out of the inning. Travis, of course (or perhaps we shouldn’t take this for granted) moved to third on the play.

Now came the decision by John Gibbons to attempt the most radical of all small-ball plays, the suicide squeeze. He had the right guys at hand to give it a try with Travis’ quickness at third and Barney’s veteran calm at the plate.

Now, time out for some commentary from yer humble scribe. I love the suicide squeeze. When successful, it’s one of the most beautiful plays in baseball. I even wrote a little piece about squeeze plays last year for my site that you can check out here if you’d like: http://longballstories.com/baseball-101-coach-dave-explains-the-squeeze-play/

But the suicide squeeze isn’t always appropriate. Here, we were only in the third inning. Tillman was scuffling, and you kind of knew he wasn’t going seven and two thirds on this night. If you think you need to try the suicide squeeze against, say, Brad Brach in the ninth inning of a tie game, that’s one thing. But I’m not convinced that it’s appropriate in a situation like this.

Now a lot of the “informed” commentary about tonight’s game suggested that the Jays botched this squeeze attempt. But if you’ve read my little Baseball 101 piece , you know that if the defensive team smells it out, there are some easy ways to foil the play. The Orioles smelled it out, and defensed it properly. Tillman wasted the pitch low and outside as Travis broke for the plate. Barney couldn’t have reached the pitch, even to foul it off, with a clothes pole. (I just realized many of my readers wouldn’t even know what a clothes pole is.) Travis was a dead duck.

The ultimate irony, of course, was that with two outs and nobody on, Barney got hold of one and drove Kim right back to the wall in left for the third out, which would have been a sacrifice fly had they not tried the squeeze. So, we ended up with three runs instead of four, and, going back to history for a minute, if wishes were horses . . .

We should mark the major league debut tonight of Anthony Alford, who was called up from Double A New Hampshire to replace the injured Darrell Ceciliani, and got the start in left. He went hitless, but in the top of the fifth he hit likely the hardest shot of the night off Tillman, a liner right at Kim in left that never cleared more than maybe twelve or fifteen feet off the ground.

The sixth inning represented a potential turning point in the game for Toronto, and a real one for the Orioles. In the top of the inning the Jays accumulated some base runners but let Tillman off the hook again. In the bottom of the inning, John Gibbons intruded his thought process, or rather lack thereof, into the game, to my mind directly contributing to the loss of the Toronto lead.

Normally, I tend to question Gibbie’s judgement when he comes out with the hook for his starting pitcher. I often think he’s hasty, and I generally am uneasy seeing a starter pulled in the top of the seventh, say, when he’s just given up a hit or a walk with one out.

Tonight, on the other hand, I have to fall on the other side of the issue. As we’ve said, Sanchie was clearly not quite back to optimum, and there had been concern and discussion in the dugout among the coaches during his stint. He was up to 82 pitches at the end of five innings, and was just back from supposedly resolving his finger problem. To me, it was time to shake hands and look to the Leones, the Barnes’s, and the Teperas to pick him up.

But Gibbie was all no, no, he’s fine, he’s strong, his stuff’s good, he’s got some mileage left. Of course, hindsight is always more accurate, but he trundled Sanchez back out there, and here’s what happened:

In two pitches, the game was tied. Mark Trumbo pulled a single, not with a late swing to right, into left, and Castillo jumped all over the next one and pounded it over the centre-field fence. Beyond that, after he caught Mancini looking on a 2-2 pitch, Hyung-Soon Kim drilled one right at Pillar in centre, and Jay Hardy sent Alford back to the wall to pluck his drive from above the fence with a well-timed leap. This was Alford’s first real major league test in the outfield, and he passed with flying colours. But Baltimore had tied the game off Sanchez.

Historically, and this year as well, when you’ve got a tie game after six innings between Toronto and Baltimore, there’s a pretty good bet you’re looking at extra innings. Tonight, you’d have won your bet.

Actually, but for a video review to confirm that a ball brushed Justin Smoak’s leg, the Jays would have taken the lead, admittedly on a bit of a fluke, in the seventh inning, and that run would have stood up in regulation, because Danny Barnes, Joe Smith, and Ryan Tepera were extremely effective out of the bullpen for Toronto.

Barnes gave up a two-out walk to Mannie Machado in the Baltimore seventh, but then blew away Chris Davis to end the inning. Joe Smith nearly had to be shot with a tranquilizer gun in the eighth, but came out all right in the end. With two outs, after getting Trumbo on a comebacker and freezing Castillo, Smith absolutely had Trey Mancini caught looking on a beautiful strike three that plate umpire Jerry Meals missed, plain and simple. You can look at pitch number six of the at-bat for yourself on PitchCast. Smith was beside himself. It was all Luke Maile could do to calm him down enough to get Kim to pop out to end the inning. Anyone for computerized strike zones? Tepera, who is getting more effective every time out with his combination of killer stuff and the occasional wild and wooly pitch just to keep the hitters honest, then breezed the ninth.

To go back to the seventh, old Blue Jay nemesis Darren O’Day put himself in a world of mess, and was lucky to get out of it with the help of the review team in New York. Chris Coghlan pinch-hit for Alford and singled to centre. Manager Gibbons put the bunt on for Luke Maile, and kept it on even after he’d fouled off two; he then bunted through for strike three. O’Day wasted this reprieve by trying a silly pickoff attempt on Coghlan, who wasn’t going anywhere, and threw it away, allowing Coghlan to move up anyway.

Zeke Carrera grounded out to first for the second out, with Coghlan moving to third. Then O’Day dug himself deeper by walking Bautista, then Morales, bringing Smoak to the plate. On a 2-2 pitch, crazy things happened. O’Day threw a wild pitch that bounced away from Castillo, but Smoak swung at it anyway for what would have been strike three, except that Castillo had to finish the strikeout by throwing down, and he was still chasing the ball when Smoak crossed first and Coghlan crossed the plate.

But here the rule book intervened. No doubt you already know that a strikeout is not recorded until the catcher either: (1) secures the ball in his glove before it hits the ground, i.e., catches it cleanly, (2) picks up the ball and tags the batter-runner out, or (3)throws the ball to first base to complete the out before the batter-runner reaches the base. EXCEPT: if in the process of swinging and missing for strike three, the ball hits the batter, the batter is automatically out. Why? Because if the ball deflects away from the catcher after hitting the batter, the catcher has no chance of completing the strikeout, so it’s not fair that the batter-runner reach base.

The video review in this case showed that the ball did indeed brush Smoak’s pant leg above his foot. There was nothing for it but to accept that Smoak was automatically out, and soCoghlan’s crossing the plate was irrelevant. The score remained tied.

As it did through the ninth, when Brad Brach breezed through the Jays as easily as Tepera had through the Orioles. Michal Givens retired the Jays in the top of the tenth despite walking Smoak with two outs.

Then the deluge came. It had been predicted that the rains would come again at about 11:00 in the evening and they were right on time. They lasted for about an hour before they slowed and the grounds crew were able to start uncovering the field and preparing it to resume play.

While Givens pitched the top of the tenth, Roberto Osuna had been warming up for Toronto. But after the rain delay it was Jason Grilli who came in to pitch rather than Osuna. There’s nothing surprising about this. Presumably Osuna would have been “hot” as the top of the tenth ended, and there was no way that he would have been able either to stay ready or get ready again to resume an hour later. You can’t treat bullpen arms like that.

Grilli looked well up to the challenge, until he wasn’t. Facing the fearsome heart of the Baltimore order, he completed the extraordinary feat of throwing called strike threes past both Machado and Davis. But it’s a tough crowd, this Baltimore lineup. With two outs, Trumbo swung late and hit a popup down the right field line that Bautista couldn’t get to. Trumbo was beaten on the pitch; it should have been the third out, but that’s baseball. It was also baseball that this brought the one-ell Welington to the plate, who had homered to tie the game in the sixth. Of course, he did it again, for the Baltimore win.

All you could think after the ball went out : I stayed up and waited out the rain just to see that?

Toronto has played seven games with Baltimore this season. Baltimore has won six. All but one of the games was decided by two runs or less. The record between the two teams could easily be reversed. But they’re not, and that’s why the Orioles are fighting with the Yankees for first in the division, and we’re still in last place.