Long Ball Stories

I can’t say whether the outcome of tonight’s game between the Blue Jays and the Orioles was written in the stars, but from the point of view of a Toronto fan it sure as hell looked like it.

It was really nice for once to be on the right side of a well-pitched, low-scoring game, with Marcus Stroman throwing seven and two thirds innings of shutout ball and the Jays scoring just enough to ensure Stroman’s heroics on the mound did not go unrewarded.

For just a moment it looked like Yogi Berra time, as in “déjà vu all over again”. After Stroman had missed badly inside with the first pitch of the game, he came in with a get-me-over fast ball that sayed up in the zone, and leadoff hitter Seth Smith smacked it into left field for a solid base hit. Top of first, one on, nobody out: stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

But what you haven’t heard, at least lately, is what came next. After taking two called strikes and seeing Stroman waste one, really high, Machado reached for a tempting pitch on the outside corner, up in the zone, rolled over on it, and hit it out toward the shortstop, stationed near the bag, who started an easy double play. Just so there was no doubt in our minds as to who was on the hill today, Jonathan Schoop tried to play umpire with Stroman on the 1-2 pitch with two outs, and lost his bet, as plate umpire Quinn Wolcott declared to the world that he would give the outside corner to the pitcher tonight, and rung up Schoop for the third out.

The second suggestion that things might be different tonight came on the second pitch by Baltimore’s left-handed starter Wade Miley to leadoff man Jose Bautista. Bautista had fouled off a waist-high fast ball on the outside corner for strike one, and Miley came back with a curve in exactly the same spot. Bautista went with it, and hit a fly ball to right that kept going, and going, as Seth Smith drifted back, and back, and back, until he pulled up in bewilderment and watched the ball just clear the fence for a solo homer and a 1-0 Toronto lead. We had all just witnessed a rare bird indeed, an opposite-field home run by Jose Bautista.

Miley quickly settled down and retired the side in order after the homer, but there it was, after one inning, Toronto in the lead, and not the other team. After three innings it was still 1-0 Toronto, both pitchers having had to strand scattered base hits without either team developing a real threat. Miley gave up hits to Kendrys Morales and Steve Pearce in the second, but Troy Tulowitzki grounded into a double play to erase Morales before the Pearce hit. In the third he walked Darwin Barney leading off, and then Russell Martin, but once again there was an intervening double play off the bat of Bautista.

As for Stroman, he gave up solo hits in the second, to Trey Mancini with two outs, and in the third to Caleb Joseph leading off, but Baltimore was unable to capitalize on either. Then in the Orioles’ fourth Stroman kept them off the bases altogether, putting up his first clean inning.

He had his ground ball mojo working through the first four innings, getting eight outs on ground balls. He deployed his three strikeouts to best effect by using them to record the third out in each of the first, second, and fourth innings.

If the turning point of this game didn’t come in the first inning, it surely came in the Toronto fourth, when a combination of Justin Smoak power, good base running, and a dicy fielding play by Baltimore shortstop Paul Janish all combined to put up three more runs on the board for Toronto, runs that effectively iced the game. The command that Stroman was displaying with his stuff was so good that making up four runs against him would look like an insurmountable task for the Orioles, who could only hope that Stroman would run out of gas early enough for them to mount a comeback against the Jays’ bullpen. (Um, he didn’t.)

Smoak led off the inning with another home run to straightaway centre field, his twenty-first of the year, and one last statement to boost his chances of making it into the starter’s spot at first for the All-Star Game. After getting a called strike on a marginal slider on the outside corner, on a 1-1 count Miley tried to go back to the same spot with a fast ball, but it caught just a touch too much of the plate, and Smoak made him pay the price for it.

If the Smoak homer had ended the Jays’ offensive thrust in the fourth, the game would have taken on a very different aspect, but Miley followed up by walking Morales. Though he next struck out Tulo, he soon found himself surrounced by Jays after giving up one-out singles to right by Pearce and to left by Pillar that loaded the bases. Darwin Barney eased the pressure on him by popping out to short right with the runners holding. This brought Bautista back to the plate for what would become the key at-bat of the game.

On a 3-1 pitch, Bautista hit a sharp one-hopper to the glove side of the shortstop Janish, who went to his knees to made a nice pick of the hard-hit ball. This should have ended the inning, except for two things. With the first baseman playing well off the bag with the pull-hitter Bautista at the plate, Pillar had taken a huge lead at first. Second, whereas the ball was hit sharply enough that Janish had plenty of time to take the out at first he chose to go the short way to second for the force. But because of his lead, Pillar beat the throw to second, allowing Morales to score the third run. Jonathan Schoop alertly turned the ball over to first, in the hope of still being able to catch Bautista for the third out. Unfortunately for him he threw the ball in the dirt, Mancini couldn’t pick it, Bautista was safe, and Pearce followed Morales to the plate with the fourth, unearned, run.

Despite Pillar’s advancing to third on the error, Miley escaped further damage by fanning Russll Martin to end the inning.

So after four Marcus Stroman had a four-run lead. His offence wouldn’t provide any further cushion for him, but he didn’t really need it. At all.

In fact, he became stronger and more efficient after the three-run outburst. In the fifth he stranded a two-out walk to Joseph, getting Janish to ground out (what else?) to short to end the inning. In the sixth, he fanned Smith and Machado, and retired Schoop on a fly ball to right, on only eight pitches. In the seventh, he struck out Adam Jones and retired Mark Trumbo and Hyun-Soo Kim on grounders, the latter after he gave up a two-out single to Trey Mancini.

At 101 pitches for seven innings the assumption was that Stroman was finished. Danny Barnes had been warming up and was ready to start the inning. But oh, that John Gibbons, he’s a man of many surprises, he is! Who should emerge from the dugout, fresh as a daisy, but Marcus Stroman, ready to brave the Orioles’ lineup one more time.

He almost got to the eight-inning mark, but Gibbie’s hook was well within reach and ready to be employed at a moment’s notice. Stroman got the first two outs from the bottom of the Baltimore order, punching out Joseph and retiring Janish on yet another grounder to short. But then Seth Smith stepped in and lined one smartly into right that fell in front of Bautista for a base hit, and that was it for the Toronto manager, who called quits on his young starter’s fine effort at the seven and two thirds innings’ mark, with Stroman having held the O’s scoreless on five hits with one walk and eight strikeouts, on a career-high 119 pitches.

Danny Barnes came in and walked Mannie Machado, who’d been kept quiet so far in the series, and whom it probably wasn’t a good idea to wake up, bringing the tying run to the on-deck circle, before blowing away Jonathan Schoop to end the threat and preserve Stroman’s shutout performance.

Though Ryan Tepera had been warming up in the bullpen, now it was Roberto Osuna who was getting ready to come in to pitch the ninth, despite the fact that it wouldn’t be a save situation. Not sure here if Gibbie was just being excessively cautious in wanting to preserve the win, or was using Osuna in order to keep his focus on the field rather than on the anxiety issues with which he has been dealing.

In any case, Osuna was simply unhittable. For the second outing in a row, after finishing off Sunday’s win in Kansas City, he struck out the side. This time on fourteen pitches, and on this night he couldn’t have faced a stronger part of the order: he fanned Adam Jones, caught Mark Trumbo looking, and fanned Trey Mancini to end the game.

Baltimore manager Buck Showalter made an interesting call to finish off the game after Miley departed. After the odd fourth inning, Miley had walked Donaldson, and then fanned Smoak and Morales before retiring Tulowitzki on a ground ball into the shift. So he finished up with five innings, three earned runs, six hits, four walks, five strikeouts, and 109 pitches.

For the sixth inning Alex Asher, who has been a spot starter for Baltimore, was given the call, and Showalter was happy to have him save the bullpen by pitching the rest of the way, going three full innings and giving up only one hit while striking out three and throwing only 37 pitches. I imagine the Toronto hitters would not be happy to see Asher’s name penilled in for a start against the Jays later this season.

One of the essential characteristics of the ace of a pitching rotation is to be the stopper, the guy who can come in and give you a guaranteed (well, more or less) winnable start, and put things back on the right path. Marcus Stroman definitely provided such a performance tonight, and contributed a great deal to the growing respect he has been earning around the league.

Toronto’s power outage continued tonight against the very mediocre Baltimore starter Kevin Gausman, as the Orioles took advantage of Jays’ starter Joe Biagini’s curious inability to finish off innings in the early going to secure a 3-1 win that wasn’t as close as the score would suggest.

On Sunday against the Kansas City Royals, Toronto’s hitters went two for seventeen with runners in scoring position. Tonight they went oh for three. That’s right, zero hits with RISP in only three opportunities. Were it not for their fruitless attempts to mount a rally in the fifth and sixth innings, they might as well have just handed their results to the official scorer at the end of each inning without even taking their ups.

Troy Tulowitzki’s two-out solo homer in the bottom of the ninth off Orioles’ closer Brad Brach, while it might have enlivened the crowd in attendance at the TV Dome just before embarking on their homeward trek, and might have been an encouraging sign on a personal level for the struggling Tulo, was a hopelessly inadequate rejoinder to another feckless offensive effort by the hometown heroes.

I want to say really nice things about Joe Biagini, because he’s a really nice guy, a guy who seems totally devoid of the MLB persona that he’s supposed to be carrying around. There is no question that Joe Biagini has electric stuff, and there’s little question that maybe as soon as next year, pending the possible departure of some of our free agent starters, he’ll be an important part of the Blue Jays’ rotation.

But, unlike his body of work out of the bullpen over one season plus, the totality of his pitching starts since coming into the rotation would suggest that he’s not fully formed as a starter yet. Tonight a pattern emerged in the course of his performance that would suggest that he was somehow lacking in the killer instinct that the best starting pitchers all seem to have. Yet we’ve seen that killer instinct out of the bullpen on many occasions. We know he’s capable of it. We just don’t know why it’s sometimes not there when he starts.

Tonight, eight pitches in, he had two outs and nobody on after retiring both Seth Smith and the struggling Mannie Machado, both on easy grounders to second baseman Darwin Barney. It looked like we could relax a little and enjoy Biagini making the Orioles eat out of his hands.

Then Jonathan Schoop rifled an 0-1 pitch into left field for a base hit, bringing Adam Jones to the plate and a sick feeling to our guts. The sick feeling started to rise as Biagini suddenly lost the plate, eventually burying the four pitches that made up Jones’ 8-pitch, 3-2 walk, moving Schoop up to second and bringing Mark Trumbo, the under-paid, not-wanted 2016 American League home run champ, to the plate.

Trumbo, who has had too many significant hits to recount against the Jays in the last couple of seasons, took two more in the dirt, as Biagini continued to pull his pitches, fouled one off, and then with a flick of his mighty wrists lined one hard off the top of the wall in centre, a shot that had Kevin Pillar retreating from the wall to play the carom almost from the crack of the bat. With two outs Jones scored as well as Schoop on the double, and we were in the hole again, without ever raising a bat in anger.

After a quick and reassuring twelve-pitch second, marked by a terrific Darwin Barney diving stop on a ground shot up the middle by Baltimore catcher Wellington Castillo, Biagini got two quick outs in the third, once again retiring the top two hitters in the Baltimore order, getting to six outs in a row since the Trumbo double. That brought—uh, oh—Schoop to the plate again, with two outs and nobody on.

As you could have predicted, Schoop ripped one past Josh Donaldson at third and down into the corner for a double. Wasting little time to take advantage of the opportunity, Adam Jones fouled off a pitch in the dirt. When the next pitch from Biagini stayed inside but was up just enough to make the bottom of the zone, he shot it into left between Donaldson and Tulowitzki, and it was 3-0 Baltimore, with six innings to go for Toronto.

By then Toronto had had two looks at Ken Gausman, who has been terrible against every other team he’s seen, but gotten past the Jays by throwing batting-practice fast balls for first-pitch strikes, putting them behind and changing their approach. It looked to be going that way again, with the added filip that the Jays almost wanted to help him beat them.

Jose Bautista had led off the game in the home half of the first, with Toronto already down 2-0 remember, by taking a called strike, then watching Gausman fall behind 3-1 by throwing everything down and away. Way down and away. Then he tried to come up and in, and Bautista fought it off and looped it into centre for a Texas-League hit. Gausman quickly went 0-2 on Martin, before Martin started battling. After eight pitches it was 2-2, and you felt that a dramatic turn was about to take place. Oh, yeah, you were right. On the ninth pitch Martin hit an easy double-play ball to Paul Janish, filling in at short for the injured J.J. Hardy.

In the second, Gausman started out with the yips once again, and walked Justin Smoak by burying one on a 3-2 count. With Morales at the plate and nobody out, in his infinite but inscrutable wisdom Jays’ manager John Gibbons decided to start Smoak from first (yes, you read that right) on the no-out 3-2 pitch to Kendrys Morales. Not only did Morales fan for the first out, but of course Smoak ran into the second out. To his credit, Smoak made it close enough at second to slide. To his credit, though, he didn’t slide very hard, protecting one of the few growth assets Toronto has this year.

So after two and a half innings, the Orioles had a lead, not a huge one, but not a single run, either, and the Jays had already shown themselves to be less than equal to the task of making a fight of it.

Though labouring all the way, Biagini settled down enough to go five and a third innings without incurring any more serious damage. He had problems in the fourth and fifth innings, but they were self-inflicted, and he managed them. The fourth looked more like one of Biagini’s interesting innings of relief.

With two outs (naturally), on a Trey Mancini popup and a Castillo fly ball to centre, Biagini walked Hyun Soo Kim and Janish, then wild-pitched them to second and third, before dramatically fanning Seth Smith to end the inning.

In the fifth, he walked Machado leading off, bringing Schoop to the plate and the sick-making feeling back to the gut. Ah, but this time Schoop grounded one right to Tulowitzki near the bag, and the latter fed Barney for an easy double play.

In the sixth inning Biagini induced a foul popup off the bat of Trumbo for the first out, then gave up a ground single through the left side to Mancini, and then gave up the game ball to manager Gibbons, who wasn’t going to wait around and see what Castillo would do on his third crack at Biagini. So Biagini left with just short of a quality start to his credit, five and a third innings, three runs, five hits, four walks, only one of which figured in the scoring, and three strikeouts, on 98 pitches. Actually, in 2017, across major league baseball, these numbers in fact probably represent the new normal, and maybe we’ll see a downgrading soon of the requirements for a quality start. (When in Rome, etc.).

One thing that has been consistent about these frustrating Toronto Blue Jays has been the quality work of the bullpen, which time after time has been asked to go long, or at least medium long, and has seldom failed the task. Tonight was no different. Gibbie brought in his go-to bridge man, Dominic Leone, who got Castillo to fly out to left, walked Kim to push Mancini to second, and then retired the side on a Janish fly ball to centre.

Leone stayed on for the seventh and retired the side in order. Ryan Tepera came in for the eighth, gave up a one-out double to right to the ubiquitous Trumbo, who moved to third on a Mancini fly ball to right, but died there as Tepera fanned Castillo to end the inning.

In speaking of the bullpen and its accomplishments this year, the arrival of Chris Smith, called up from Buffalo to make his major league debut pitching the ninth inning for Toronto, is the appropriate point to mark the departure of the not-always-effective, but always-interesting Jason Grilli from the Toronto roster. Earlier today, it was announced that Zeke Carrera had been reactivated after the completion of his rehab stint, with Dwight Smith being optioned to Buffalo, and also that Grilli had been designated for assignment, and his spot taken by Chris Smith.

What will be missed about Jason Grilli is his veteran presence on the team, and his infectious enthusiasm. What will also be missed is the effectiveness he brought to his work out of the bullpen for Toronto since his arrival from Atlanta last year in mid-season. But of course we’ve already been missing that, because he’s obviously not been the same pitcher this spring as he was last year, and if the writing wasn’t on the wall before his disastrous four-homer inning on June third against the Yankees, it certainly has been since then.

In any case, it’s salve atque vale, grizzled warrior Grilli. If you don’t find another landing spot in the show, be assured that your last gig was one of your best!

As for the future of the Jays’ bullpen, Chris Smith managed a smooth introduction to the show for himself, retiring Baltmore in the top of the ninth on two popups and a line out to centre, while giving up an inconsequential base hit to Craig Gentry with two outs. He took his seat after just thirteen pitches.

As he watched Toronto bat in the bottom of the ninth, surely there was a part of him that couldn’t help thinking “what if”, about the chances for a Toronto rally in the bottom of the ninth, that would give him a “W” in his first major league appearance.

However, after a quiet evening at the plate for the Blue Jays, who were as inneffective against the Orioles’ bullpen as they had been against Gausman, hope for Smith died with Brad Brach’s strikeout of Zeke Carrera that ended the game.

As I read back through this piece, I realize that I haven’t written a word about the Jays’ offence since the second inning, except to mention Carrera’s strikeout ending the game. While that may seem like a huge omission to some, it’s hardly worth worrying about. Not much to write about anyway, because the bats just weren’t in it tonight.

After the Smoak/Morales fiasco in the second, Toronto went out in order in the third and fourth, but picked up two base hits against Gausman in the fifth, the secondsssss a ground single to centre by Steve Pearce that moved Morales around to third that came with two outs and was followed by Kevin Pillar skying out to right.

Gausman ran out of gas in the sixth, retiring the first hitter, Barney, who hit the ball hard, but right at the right-fielder, Seth Smith, but then giving up another ground single to centre by Bautista, and walking Martin. That was enough for manager Buck Showalter, who despite that it was only the sixth inning, went to his high-leverage, later-inning specialist Mychal Givens. Unfortunately for Showalter, Givens’ performance wasn’t calculated to reassure, and before Givens got out of the Gausman mess that he made worse, Showalter’s blood pressure must have risen a few dozen points, judging by the growing tightness of his collar.

With Donaldson at the plate, the first thing Givens did was to bounce one that Castillo couldn’t flag down, letting the runners move up and removing the double play option. Then came the single crucial play of the game. Donaldson teed off on a 3-2 slider low in the zone, and ripped a line drive toward left. Unfortunately for him and his team, Mannie Machado was perfectly stationed for Donaldson, and the line shot was right at him, for the second out. To say that Givens was careful in walking Smoak on four pitches is putting it mildly, but he obviously felt better going after Morales, whom he fanned on a 1-2 pitch to end the threat.

Givens finished his stint with a clean seventh, Darren O’Day stranded a two-out single by Martin in the eighth, and Brach gave up the Tulowitzki homer in the ninth on the way to his fourteenth save.

With any kind of an effective offence Joe Biagini’s start was good enough for a win, but with the Jays still in their terrible trough of inneffective at-bats, only a complete-game shutout would have been enough to keep poor Joe from absorbing his seventh loss of the year. Sad!

Well, that was a big relief, but did it really resolve anything? I hate to be a skeptic, but . . .

Yes, there were pluses that came out of today’s 8-2 win over the Royals in the series-ending game, in which the Jays avoided the dreaded broom. Francisco Liriano had a very solid outing, one of his best and most consistent of the year. It was the third long start for the Jays, following on the performances of Jay Happ Friday night, and Marco Estrada yesterday. This had significant effect on the bullpen, providing some rest for some very overworked arms.

In fact, if it weren’t for Jorge Bonifacio, Liriano would have carried a shutout into the seventh inning, having scattered only three singles and a walk through six. But Bonifacio was in the lineup, and never having faced Liriano, he seemed to form an instant liking for the Jays’ veteran left-hander. In the first inning, after striking out leadoff man Whit Merrifield, Liriano got Bonifacio to bite on a high, inside pitch that the KC left-fielder fouled off. Then he threw two away for balls, and came back high and inside, but not enough of either. Bye-bye, baby. In the fourth inning, having allowed only Bonifacio to reach base, Liriano yielded a double to the Royals’ rookie and he scored when Eric Hosmer followed with an RBI single. By the time Liriano left, Bonifacio’s bashing had been rendered irrelevant by Jose Bautista’s two-run homer in the fifth, and the big five-run outburst in the sixth.

Speaking of Jose Bautista and other plusses to come out of the game, he broke out of a mini-slump in terms of his power output. As well, Josh Donaldson finally put a ball in play with runners in scoring position, instead of hitting doubles with nobody on and dying at second.

Finally, most importantly in the long run, Roberto Osuna mopped up in the non-save situation, blowing the Royals away and showing that at least on this day whatever mental/emotional strain he is going through has not affected his ability to get outs when the team needs them.

So what is there to be curmudgeonly about? Simply this: the eight runs put up by Toronto today did nothing to resolve the team’s essential problem, that they are not getting base hits with runners in scoring position. By my count, thanks to their own hitters getting on base, and especially thanks to the wildness of the Kansas City bullpen, Blue Jays’ hitters had seventeen opportunities to drive in runs with base hits with runners in scoring position. Only two of them, that’s right, exactly two, were converted, the Donaldson bases-loaded double in the sixth, and the Bautista single with Kevin Pillar on third in the seventh.

If you’re interested, the batting average for runners in scoring position for two for seventeen is .118. By contrast, also by my unofficial count, the Royals went two for six, a batting average of .333. There are some questions in my mind that I would have to look into, or somebody could correct for me, about how certain situations are taken into account in terms of batting average for hits with runners in scoring position. It seems logical to me that since there’s no obvious requirement that a run actually score, a base hit with a runner on second that results in an out at the plate would still count even though the run didn’t score.

I mention this because in the eighth inning today, with Lorenzo Cain on second base, Eric Hosmer hit a bloop single that he tried to stretch into a double, but he was thrown out at second for the third out of the inning. Cain, in the meantime, didn’t particularly hustle off second, and so didn’t cross the plate before Hosmer was tagged out at second. The run he was carrying was waved off, but that doesn’t change the fact that Hosmer got a base hit with a runner in scoring position, does it?

So let’s go back and look at some of the situations in which the Jays’ hitters dropped the ball, so to speak. In the first inning Russell Martin hitting out of the two-hole hustled a base hit into a double. Donaldson fanned and Justin Smoak struck out looking. In the second inning, with two outs Pillar singled to left advancing Troy Tulowitzki, who had walked, to second. Ryan Goins struck out to end the inning.

In the third inning, also with two outs, Donaldson walked and Smoak moved him around to third with a single to right centre. Kendrys Morales popped out to the third baseman stranding both runners. That’s oh for four with runners in scoring position in only three innings.

In the fifth inning, Toronto finally got on the board when Goins led off with a base hit and Bautista brought him home with a prodigious blast to left. Then Martin walked, and Smoak reached base when Alcides Escobar muffed his grounder to short pushing Martin to second where he died when Morales fanned. That made twice for Morales stranding runners in scoring position. Then Tulowitzki joined the parade by flying out to right to end the inning, and get the count up to six chances with runners in scoring position, and zero base hits.

Even in the sixth, when they scored five runs, they had six more chances to convert with ducks on the pond, and only Donaldson delivered with his bases-loaded double to right, so that took them up to one for twelve in scoring chances.

Jason Hammel laboured through five innings for Kansas City, benefitting along the way, as we have seen, from his opponents’ fecklessness when it came to cashing in baserunners. Still, he would have left in line for a win if he hadn’t grooved one to Bautista in the fifth, with Goins on ahead of him with a single. In any case, he went out with a line of two runs, five hits, three walks, and six strikeouts on 105 pitches.

Though Hammel’s walks didn’t enter into the scoring, his successors put three on via the free pass in the sixth alone, which contributed greatly to the visitors’ outburst. Not to mention an error by Cheslor Cuthbert at third that contributed materially to the Jays’ rising.

Lefty Scott Alexander started the inning, having given up a couple of base hits while throwing a scoreless inning in relief Friday night. Darwin Barney, hitting for Dwight Smith againt the lefty, singled to centre. Alexander proceeded to walk Kevin Pillar and Steve Pearce hitting for Goins.

(I have a question for John Gibbons: with two on and nobody out in a tie game, why put Pearce in to swing away when you can leave Goins in to bunt the runners up, and hold Pearce back for later duty? Oh, I get it. Bunt? Never. Well, hardly ever,)

That was the end for Alexander, and with the top of the order up, manager Ned Yost went back to the bullpen for the right-hander Peter Moylan, who’s always given the Blue Jays fits. Not this time, though Cuthbert and home plate umpire John Tumpane, had to share the blame with him.

Moylan certainly had a case against Tumpane, if the PitchCast graph is even remotely accurate. He walked Jose Bautista, the first batter he faced, on a 3-1 pitch, to force in Barney with the lead run. But it was the fourth pitch of the at-bat, that would become ball three, that was pretty clearly a strike and would have evened the count. Then there was the second pitch to Russell Martin, also clearly a strike, on an 0-1 count. Since the third pitch was a called strike, he would have had Martin struck out before he hit the grounder to third that Cuthbert fumbled, in his hurry to try for the force at the plate. Martin was safe at first, Pillar was across with the second run of the inning, and Moylan was steamed.

Maybe too steamed to pitch to Donaldson with the bases loaded. Donaldson laced an inside pitch down the right-field line for a double that scored two and increased the Toronto lead to 6-2, finally breaking the horse collar of hitting with runners in scoring position. Out came the hook for Moylan, who decided to go out in a blaze of glory, lambasted Tumpane, and was tossed for his efforts.

Ned Yost brought in another lefty, Mike Minor, to face—and turn around—Smoak and Morales. This time the strategy worked to the extent that both sluggers were turned away, but with runners on second and third and nobody out, the Royals were still lucky to restrict the damage to one additional run. Martin had to hold at third when Smoak grounded out to short too sharply, with the infield drawn in. But then Morales grounded another one to short, Martin broke for the plate, and Escobar elected to try to cut off the run. His throw was a bit off, Martin slid around the tag, and the score was 7-2, with Donaldson moving to third and Morales safe at first.

I’d like to insert a quick word here about the athleticism of Russell Martin. Is there another first-rank catcher in the major leagues who can move as seamlessly to an infield position and/or run the bases as well as Russell Martin, let alone do both? Even when he struggles at the plate, Martin is a complete ballplayer.

Sad to say that we can’t forget the drought of hitting with runners in scoring position: Donaldson was still at third and there was still only one out. Tulowitzki struck out on a checked swing, and Barney popped up to end the inning, extending the record to one for twelve . . .

After the long inning for the Jays in the top of the sixth, Liriano came back out and made quick work of Kansas City in the bottom half, giving up a one-out bloop single to right by Cain, but then getting Hosmer to ground into a double play on the next pitch. At 84 pitches after six innings, Liriano looked good for at least one more, and every inning saved for the bullpen after the last week was worth its weight in gold.

The Royals sent Naftali Feliz out to pitch the seventh, and the resurgent Kevin Pillar greeted his first pitch with a booming drive to right centre that went for a double. Pillar who went two for four on Saturday finished up with three for four today, and his average, which had dipped below .250, came out of today’s game at .260, suggesting that his recent drought may have come to an end.

Steve Pearce, bless his lunch-bucket soul, fought off a changeup up and in and rolled it down to Hosmer at first, giving himself up and moving Pillar to third. One of the things that’s supposed to happen with Jose Bautista leading off is that later in the game, if the bottom of the order gets something started, a reliable clutch guy with a high on-base percentage, is waiting on deck. This time there was no nonsense about “hitting it on the ground is a mistake”, as Bautista ripped a grounder past Merrifield at second into right centre to score Pillar with the eighth Toronto run.

Out came Liriano for the bottom of the seventh, but of course Mr. John Gibbons was sitting on pins and needles as usual, and the leash was very sort for Liriano. After Sal Perez doubled to centre leading off, Liriano walked Cheslor Cuthbert, and that was it for the starter. Danny Barnes came in to pick him up, and did a good job of it, if a little unusual in its execution: for once he didn’t strike anybody out, but rather got three catchable balls to the outfield, as the Royals succumbed for the moment to the mania for launch angle. For the sake of their fans, I would hope that it was only a momentary lapse.

After Kevin McCarthy retired the Jays in the top of the eighth, with the aid of an inning-ending double play, the Royals had one last shot at cutting into the deficit against Dominic Leone, but it was too little too late, and died a-glimmering with some uncharacteristically sloppy base running by Kansas City.

Leone actually got the first two outs, fanning Merrifield and getting Bonifacio on a fly ball to right, but then Lorenzo Cain hit a bouncer up the middle that Barney got to with a sliding stop, but it was too late to throw Cain out at first. With Hosmer at the plate, the Jays ignored Cain at first, and he moved up on defensive indifference. Hosmer then dumped a tweener into right-centre that should have scored Cain easily, but Cain was leisurely about getting off from second, just as Hosmer was getting the idea that he might stretch the hit into a double.

Of course, Hosmer was out at second on a close play from Pillar to Barney, and the out call was made before Cain crosseed the plate. The Royals appealed the call at second base, but New York upheld the call on the field: Hosmer was out, and Cain’s run did not score.

Travis Wood came in to pitch the ninth for Kansas City, and for a moment it looked good for Toronto to add some more runs. Pillar led off with his third hit of the day, a single to left, and then Wood brushed Pearce’s shirt to put him on. Bautista hit the ball hard, but right at Escobar who started a quick rally-killing double play. Pillar went to third on the play, but died there as Martin grounded out, which made for two more opportunities with RISP wasted by Toronto.

Ordinarily, pitching the bottom of the ninth when your team is up 8-2, is not exactly a prestige assignment. There’s a reason why it’s called “mopping up”. But today was different: after all the publicity about Roberto Osuna’s issues with anxiety off the field, and his removal from the bullpen on Friday night, when a healthy Osuna was badly needed, it was significant that he took the mound this afternoon to wrap up the game for Toronto.

Whether it was a fair test of his condition or not, considering the low stress situation involved, it was good to see him out there, and even better to see him strike out the side on seventeen pitches. It hardly mattered that Escobar reached on an infield hit to shortstop with two outs, especially when Osuna caught Ramon Torres looking to end the game.

Was it good to win this game? Of course.

Was it good the way they won this game? In some ways yes, in some ways no.

Until they start capitalizing on their chances and taking the runs that are on the table for them, we can’t really hope they’ll catch up with the front-runners.

I’m appending some comments about this afternoon’s 3-2 loss to the Royals to the end of my long-form coverage of last night’s 5-4 loss, because I missed today’s game, and have only reconstructed its major details through “Blue Jays in 30” and my study of the box score and play-by-play.

But first, Friday night. If you must.

It was all so pretty. Easy, almost. And then it wasn’t.

These weren’t the Royals of 2015. Not at all. But then they were, and pretty is the last word you’d use.

With Roberto Osuna not available tonight, for reasons that were never given, it was up to the rest of the bullpen to try to protect a 4-1 Toronto lead in the bottom of the ninth at Kaufman Stadium in Kansas City. Ryan Tepera got the first two outs all right, but neither he, nor Aaron Loup, nor Jason Grilli, ever got the third one. A good name for a baseball novel, maybe a mystery: The 26-Out Game.

And before we go any further, let’s not lay a single smidgeon of blame on the relievers here. First, it’s a wonder that any of them can even lift their arms at this point. And second, this game should never have been that close. I’m talking about you, Blue Jays’ hitters!

Let’s start by giving credit to Jay Happ for a masterful performane tonight. Each start he’s made since his return from the DL has been stronger than the last, and this one was the best by far, as he went six and two thirds innings and gave up one run on four hits with no walks and five strikeouts on 105 pitches.

While the one run scored off Happ in the seventh may have technically been earned, it was tainted nonetheless. Lorenzo Cain led off with a soft double just over Troy Tulowitzki’s glove at shortstop; despite Kevin Pillar’s hustle and quick release Cain just beat the throw to second. Then Ryan Goins fumbled a soft grounder by Eric Hosmer to allow him to reach and move Cain to third. Finally, Salvador Perez lined another one to left that Dwight Smith charged and got his glove on, but couldn’t quite corral, allowing Cain to score. To be fair, if Smith had caught the ball in a dive Cain would have scored anyway on the sacrifice fly.

With runners on first and second and nobody out, Happ reached back for a little extra, popped up the over-eager Mike Moustakas on the infield fly rule, and struck out Brandon Moss on four pitches. This prompted manager John Gibbons to pop out of the dugout with the hook. Alcides Escobar, who hits right, was coming to the plate, and Gibbie didn’t want the lefty Happ to face him.

This is where I have trouble comprehending Mr. John Gibbons. He’s all non-traditional when it comes to such things as bunting and starting the runner, but when it comes to pitching matchups he’s as rigid as can be. Happ was throwing really well and hadn’t been hit all that hard in the inning. Escobar was hitting under .200 on the season.

Admittedly, Danny Barnes came in and retired Escobar and the Royals on an easy fly ball to centre, so what’s the big deal? Well, it’s this: Barnes came out again for the eighth, having faced one batter and thrown six pitches already. Fast forward to the eighth, when Barnes was running out of gas with two out and a man on second, Jorge Bonifacio, whose one-out drive to left had been lost in the lights by Dwight Smith and fallen for a double. So he brought in Ryan Tepera, who like Barnes got the last out, fanning Lorenzo Cain on six pitches.

In the ninth, then, the game was in Tepera’s hands, with Osuna unavailable for whatever reason. But Tepera had faced a batter in the eighth. He got to two outs before also running out of gas, which was just when Gibbie ran out of effective pitchers.

Have you followed all this? If Gibbie lets Happ deal with Escobar, and he does so successfully, Barnes comes in fresh for the eighth, and Tepera fresh for the ninth. Certainly a scenario much more promising than what transpired, especially when Tepera ran out of gas trying to close it.

And don’t get me started on bringing Aaron Loup in to face Alec Gordon. But let’s look on the bright side first. That is, everything that happpened before the Royals came to bat in the bottom of the ninth.

Happ cruised through the first three innings, getting balls in the air in the first, adding a strikeout and a couple of grounders in the second, and another strikeout in the third. The only hard hit ball was a grounder by Alec Gordon on which Goins made a nice pickup of a tough hop to get the out. After three Happ had thrown only 41 pitches.

In the fourth he gave up his first hit, a one-out double to Jorge Bonifacio, who advanced to third on a groundout to second by Cain but died there when Justin Smoak handled a tough chance on a high bouncer by Eric Hosmer to feed Happ to end the inning.

In the fifth Happ gave up a Texas-Leaguer to left by Brandon Moss with two outs, but Alcides Escobar fouled out to Russell Martin behind the plate to end the inning. Then Happ pitched a clean sixth to bring him into the seventh, as we were saying, having given up no runs on two hits.

Meanwhile, the Jays were having a tough enough time cracking the Royals’ rookie starter, right-hander Jake Junis, who was going after his third win against one loss in his fifth start for Kansas City. His record in his starts so far this season had been decidely spotty, though he he’d had one solid performance against San Diego on June eleventh when he went seven innings for the win and gave up three runs on six hits.

Junis gave up a hit but nothing more in each of the first three innings, and clocked in at 47 pitches, comparable to Happ’s record at that point. Jose Bautista had led off the game by shooting a bouncer to right for a single, taken advantage of the big hole created by the Royals’ shift, but he was erased on a strikeout/throw out/caught stealing with Josh Donaldson going down at the plate on the front end.

In the second inning with two outs Dwight Smith singled to left opposite the shift and was promptly balked to second, the second balk gifted to Toronto this week, when Junis dropped the ball while on the rubbber. But Kevin Pillar was over-anxious and flailed at an 0-2 slider very down and away.

In the third the Jays mounted their best threat against Junis so far, but it was perhaps doomed by coming with two outs. Bautista reached again on soft contact with a Texas Leaguer to centre that Cain should have caught; it was generously scored a hit. Russ Martin finally hit a hard shot that was rewarded as he lined one off Moustakas’ glove into foul territory at third for an infield hit. But then it was Josh Donaldson who brought things to a close by striking out while trying to check his swing on another slider that was ridiculously down and away.

Toronto finally broke through against Junis in the fourth, picking up two runs largely owing to the generosity of the Royals’ starter himself, who started the inning by nicking Kendrys Morales with a low inside curve ball. There was clearly little damage done to the big DH, as he managed to gallop all the way around and score on Troy Tulowitzki’s sliced double to right centre that spun away from Jorge Bonifacio just far enough that it would have taken perfect throws to cut down Morales at the plate. While Bonifacio’s throw to Whit Merrifield was dead on, Merrifield’s throw to the plate was just enough off line toward first to allow Morales to slide in safely with the first run of the game.

Dwight Smith got hold of one off Junis and drove it deep enough to centre that Tulowitzki was able to tag up and move to third on the catch, which was the first out of the inning. Then Kevin Pillar drew a walk, and moved up on a wild pitch to Ryan Goins by Junis that also allowed Tulowitzki to come in with the second run. Pillar wound up at third when Goins grounded out to second, but was stranded there when rookie Ian Parmley, just called up from Buffalo and playing his first major league game, also grounded out to second.

Junis stayed on into the seventh, and left with only the two runs against him on six hits. He’d retired Toronto in order in the fifth, gave up another ground ball single to centre by Dwight Smith with two outs in the sixth, which came to nothing, and was finally “knocked out” if you can call it that by walking Goins to lead off the seventh and giving up a successful sacrifice bunt (you read it here first!) to Parmley, who could claim credit for knocking out the Kansas City starter on a ball that only went twenty feet.

KC manager Ned Yost brought in the unhittable, at least to Toronto, Peter Moylan to stifle the Jays and leave Goins out there on the base paths. Just wild enough to be effective, Moylan continued his dominance over the Jays by making Bautista look foolish on a low outside slider, walking Martin, and then making Donaldson look as foolish as Bautista on an equally low and outside slider.

The Jays missed a glorious opportunity to add on in the eighth inning, when with one out Tulowitzki reached on a slow bouncer to short that was ruled a hit, but that Alcides Escobar muffed with enough time to throw out Tulo, in my opinion. Dwight Smith followed with his third ground ball hit of the night, a high chopper over Hosmer’s head at first that went down into the corner for a double, with Tulo stopping at third.

This set the stage for a play that in retrospect might have been crucial to the outcome of the game, though at the time it seemed innocuous enough. Kevin Pillar hit a modest grounder out to second that Merrifield played on to first. When the play was over, I was surprised to see that Tulowitzki was still at third. Generally I’m not a big fan of the contact play, because I hate to see runners at third wasted, but this was the opposite of the contact play, and seemed to me like a perfectly good grounder to the middle of the field that should have scored the runner. But Tulo stayed home, and ended up still there when Darwin Barney, hitting for Goins against the left-handed Scott Alexander, grounded out to short.

Keeping in mind that the domino effect of John Gibbons yanking Happ with two outs in the seventh was still playing out, Danny Barnes turned it over to Ryan Tepera with two outs in the eighth and Bonifacio on second. Tepera fanned Cain to strand Bonifacio, but at what cost?

The top of the ninth played out like the dream Toronto fans have been waiting for all season. Then of course there was the nightmare, but first the good stuff. Toronto was facing Joakim Soria, a veteran with over 200 saves under his belt, though in his latest stint with the Royals the closer’s job is occupied by Kelvin Herrera, and Soria has been mostly used as a setup man.

After Soria struck out Parmley leading off, Bautista got things going with his third base hit of the day, a single to right, which was also his third safety that was not pulled. It will be interesting to see if that was an anomaly or if it becomes a trend. Soria then walked Martin on a 3-2 pitch. It was interesting that just before Soria threw a wildly inside ball four he threw over to first, presumably to keep Bautista on a short lease. I’m wondering why this obsession with whether or not Bautista might be running. So many pitchers seem to be affected by it, yet how often does he actually run?

This brought Donaldson to the plate, and a big, black cloud to park over my head. In my mind I was already typing my shorthand annotation for “ground into a double play”, or “strikeout swinging”. But lo and behold, Donaldson surprised with a Texas Leaguer to right field on a low outside pitch that not only scored Bautista from second but sent Martin around to third. Justin Smoak followed with another wrong-way 1-2 single to left to score Martin, and Toronto had put up two, count ’em, two, magical insurance runs. It hardly mattered that Tulowitzki grounded into a fielder’s choice, pushing Donaldson to third, and that Soria finally struck out Dwight Smith, keeping him from hitting a fourth ground-ball base hit.

With a 4-1 lead to protect, Tepera came out to salt the game away. Whatever the reason for the absence of Roberto Osuna, you had to like our chances with Tepera.

Especially after he won a ten-pitch struggle with Eric Hosmer leading off, who finally lined out to centre. Then it all went south, not just for Tepera, but for the whole team.

We should have given some thought to the fact that with Salvador Perez coming to the plate, Tepera was already fifteen pitches into his stint. Whatever the reason, arm fatigue or mental fatigue, his second pitch was supposed to be a sinker but did nothing except wait in the middle of the zone for Perez to whack it to deep left centre. Again Smith may have misplayed the ball, in that it cleared his glove and hit the wall as he was drifting back for it, and it hit the wall and kicked toward Pillar coming over from centre while Perez motored into second.

While he looks pretty comfortable at the plate, the jury has to be out on whether Dwight Smith is ready to be a big league outfielder.

Mike Moustakas then hit a soft little liner to Tulowitzki in short centre field for the second, and, little did we know, last, out of the game. Tepera walked Brandon Moss, bouncing one in the process, which allowed Perez to advance to third. Alcides Escobar reached down and looped a Texas Leaguer into right centre that scored Perez and moved Moss around to third. And also brought John Gibbons out with the hook, with the left-handed Alec Gordon coming up.

Time for Gibbie to play the traditionalist, and bring in Aaron Loup to face Gordon, Loup, whose batting average against for left-handed batters is over .300. Gordon’s single to centre didn’t help that stat, and with one pitch the Royals were down to a one-run deficit, and Loup, who put Gordon on with that one pitch, had qualified to lose the game if Gordon scored.

In came Jason Grilli to pitch to the talented rookie Whit Merrifield with the tying run on third and the winning run on first. Unfortunately, Grilli came in likely over-pumped, and had trouble finding the plate. One off the plate inside, one outside, one close that Merrifield fouled off, and then one across the bill of his cap. Sooner or later, Grilli had to come in with it, and Merrifield was ready, pulling the ball into the left-field corner where it went to the fence, and took a deadening bounce off the chain-link which gave the speedy Gordon enough time to come around and score the winning run.

So, on the surface the Jays lost because Tepera, Loup, and Grilli coudn’t get that third out in the absence of Osuna, but if you dig a little deeper you have to question the impact of John Gibbons pulling Jay Happ with two outs in the sixth, and the failure to send Tulowitzki on Pillar’s ground ball in the eighth inning.

Sometimes, baseball is a bit more subtle than what pitcher failed to get which out. Last night’s loss gives us two good examples of that.

And sometimes baseball isn’t subtle at all. Consider a Toronto game in which the following elements existed:

1: Marco Estrada pitches seven innings, gives up three runs on five hits and strikes out six while walking four.

2: Toronto outhits its opponent nine to five.

3: Toronto’s offence produces two home runs.

4: Toronto plays ostensibly error-free ball.

Would you expect that the Blue Jays would have won such a game?

Yeah, me too. And we would have been wrong, as today’s game against Kansas City turned out to be a 3-2 loss to the surging Royals.

How does this happen? It’s quite simple, really, as I look over the box score and play-by-play, having missed the entire game for my grand-daughter’s dance recital. (She was terrific, by the way, and thanks for asking.)

First, the two homers were both solo jobs. Second, Kansas City starter Jason Vargas did an effective job of scattering the Blue Jays hits, and didn’t walk anybody. In only two innings, the fifth and the seventh, did the Jays get more than one base hit, and I’ll talk about those in a moment.

The Royals, as they frequently do, were quick to cash in on opportunities. Of their five hits, one was a solo homer, one was a leadoff triple, of sorts, and one was a triple that followed a single, so four of their five hits were directly involved in the scoring. If you’re counting, only two of the Jays’ nine hits were involved in the scoring.

The problem with the Toronto hitters is the failure to produce in run-scoring opportunities, so obvious that it’s a given. Let’s leave aside the failure to come up with the two-out base hit, such as the first inning, when after Josh Donaldson hit a two-out double to left Justin Smoak hit the ball on the nose but right at Alec Gordon for the third out. That’s where luck comes in to a certain extent—your soft ones fall in, our hard ones get caught.

But then in the fifth, when the bottom of the order, Kevin Pillar and Darwin Barney, led off with base hits, and manager John Gibbons puts the bunt on, ya gotta figure something’s gonna happen. Sure: Luke Maile pops up the bunt attempt, and Jose Bautista hits into a double play.

Then in the seventh they bunched two hits again, a home run and a single, but in the wrong order, with Pillar hitting a solo homer followed by a Barney single. Bad luck? The fates hovering overhead, laughing behind their sleeves? KC karma stronger than TO karma?

In any case, the fact is that Toronto produced nine base hits and only two runs. This is not a prescription for success.

In the category of not missing the trees while being lost in the forest (that’s a hot mess of a proverbial mash-up), let’s note that, first, Marco Estrada pitched a really good game, and for the second game in a row, despite a second loss to Kansas City, gave the team, and the bullpen in particular, some much needed length.

Second, Kevin Pillar continued to swing the bat well and get some results, two for four with the homer.

Third, ditto Troy Tulowitzki at the plate, also two for four with the homer, and I see by the videos that he also made a great play at shortstop to end a threat, and he made it by diving for a ball to his right. Was he really not ready to come back when they activated him? Can his recent lassitude, if we can put it that way, be attributed to his physical condition? Is there some hope that he might pick up his play, and give his team a much-needed boost?

Only the die-hard fan can take such comforts from the fourth loss in a six-game road trip.

Guilty as charged.

Well, I sure am glad that I’m not going to be obsessing over every detail of this ugly mess!

Had to miss the game today, other than the first inning, because it was another one of those family obligation days. Our grand-daughter’s big end-of-the-year performance with her dance studio is this weekend, with performances on Saturday and Sunday, and, yes, I’ll be missing Saturday’s game as well, but not Sunday’s.

So tonight was the dress rehearsal at the performance venue in Mississauga. We had to pick up the grand-daughter from her school in the far reaches of Scarborough at 3:30, get her back to our place in time for a light supper and costume and makeup (and no, I don’t do the makeup) and then get her to the Mississauga City Centre area by 7:00.

Given that this assignment required a round-trip crossing of the 401 in rush-hour traffic between Islington Avenue and McCowan Road, we had to leave home at 2:30, so I was able to catch the first inning of the game. By the time we got back to the house at just after five, it was just in time to enjoy the long faces of Gregg and Jamie and Tim and Sid as they muttered together over the sorry performance of the Blue Jays.

Hence, I apologize, I shall confine myself to general remarks related to the game, except for the first inning, in which Russell Martin, batting second for the first time this year, doubled to left on a play that Nomar Mazara might have made, but was stranded there by Justin Smoak, hitting third in the absence of the slightly-injured Josh Donaldson, and Kendrys Morales. Another wasted double.

Then in the bottom of the first despite the confidence that Stroman himself exudes and that emanates from him to the entire team, Toronto started out in the hole again. Stroman retired Shin-Soo Choo on a grounder to short on the first pitch of the game. Then he jumped ahead of Elvis Andrus with a two-strike count before completely losing the plate, missing badly on four straight balls to put Andrus on, which is not what you want to do. Stroman turned around and fanned Nomar Mazara on a 1-2 pitch when the only ball he threw was a pitchout, and went ahead 1-2 on Adrian Beltre. But then he threw a mistake to Beltre, a pitch up and in, and Beltre lined it into the left-field corner for a double.

The Jays had a chance to cut Andrus down at the plate, despite the fact that he had the advantage of the jump off first with two outs. The ball was hard hit, and Smith got to it quickly, but his throw short-hopped the cutoff man, Troy Tulowitzki, and Tulo in turn mishandled it so that there was no throw to the plate. Texas one, Toronto no score, after one. Again.

So that’s what I saw. Now, having listened to most of the game on the radio while driving, here is what I think about what happened today.

First off, despite the fact that Marcus Stroman has given some strong performances this year, and has been the most reliable of the Jays’ starters, that is not to say that he has been as consistent as you’d want a number one starter to be. I spent a lot of time last year wondering which Marcus Stroman would show up for a given start, and it really hasn’t been that different this year. It seems that today was a good example of that, as he simply wasn’t able to keep the ball in the park.

Second, if we can’t even get a quality start out of Stroman, then the bullpen has to carry the load all of the time, and that just doesn’t work. Gibbie tried to save the bullpen by riding Cesar Valdez right into the ground and the result was that we fell further behind.

Third, the lack of clutch hitting is becoming crippling. Justin Smoak and Kendrys Morales can’t carry the team every game. They’re power hitters, and are going to strike out their share of the time. Every time they fail to pick up a base runner it’s magnified, because they’re the only ones that are doing it consistently.

Fourth, in retrospect, we should have listened to ourselves reassuring ourselves about the rotation in the off-season. If there’s one lesson to be learned from the 2017 season over all, not just the Blue Jays, it’s that you can’t rely on your starting pitching, no matter how good it looks on paper. It seems that in the contemporary era to be a starting pitcher is to be either headed for the DL, on the DL, or returning from the DL. Or extremely rare.

Finally, we’re damned lucky to come out of Arlington with two wins. To come home with a winning record on this road trip, the way Kansas City has been playing, will be a tall order indeed. We need some length from our starters, and some shortened swings from our hitters, not to mention way less thinking!

The most enduring trait of Jays’ manager John Gibbons is his steadfastness, which can be seen in his approach to baseball strategy as well as in his handling of his players.

When it comes to strategy, for a lot of fans an appropriate synonym for steadfastness is stubbornness, as in: “Why does he have to get hit with a two-by-four before he calls for a bunt?” And it’s not such a great attribute, unless you think baseball is always and only about the three-run homer.

But when it comes to his players, that same steadfastness, which manifests itself as loyalty and consistency, is a positive thing. I have no doubt that his players appreciate his willingness to stick with them through thick and thin, and I would think that most fans, if they thought about it at all, would realize that slapping the panic button every other day is not a good management technique.

But there comes a time when a change in approach becomes inevitable, and it seems that Gibbons and his players had reached that point following the depressing spectacle of Tuesday night’s desultory 6-1 loss to the Rangers. I know that a certain segment of the fan base, including all the “Bobs from Barrie” out there who call in to the talk shows, had reached that point long ago, but then none of them are actually responsible for the management, care and nurturing of twenty-five plus professional baseball players. (In fact, I’d be surprised if most of the “Bobs from Barrie” can manage to keep themselves clean and get themselves dressed and fed every day, but that’s another rant for another day.)

So there was little surprise when the lineups came out for tonight’s game three of Toronto’s series with the Texas Rangers in Arlington that it had a radically different, if not exactly new, look. First, there were the omissions: Kevin Pillar was not only not leading off, he wasn’t in the lineup at all, replaced by the rookie Dwight Smith in centre and batting second. Troy Tulowitzki was sitting out in favour of Ryan Goins playing shortstop with Darwin Barney being inserted at second to replace Goins. Luke Maile was behind the plate, although this change was probably the least significant, given that Maile has to spell Russell Martin from time to time anyway, and with three night games followed by a day game in Texas it was inevitable that Martin would sit at least one of the last two games there.

Though I’m not convinced that the beginning of Pillar’s batting slide can be directly traced to his brief, unfortunate suspension, it was clear that his new, improved approach at the plate was not being applied as consistently as it had been. And while it’s unfair to make much out of one mistake in the field by a double-plus defender, the fact is that his misjudgement of the drive by Jonathan Lucroy in the first inning of last night’s game, which was a key point in Toronto’s first-inning meltdown, may have been an indication that his batting woes could be starting to carry over into the field. In any case, the irony of his sitting tonight is that at the plate last night he hit the ball really hard three times with nothing to show for it, though what most people remember is his epic strikeout in the seventh inning with the bases loaded that killed the only chance of a rally the Jays had in the game.

The absence of Tulowitzki from the lineup was a change that was less obviously demanded, or at least less loudly expressed, but to me was a move that had been crying to be made almost since Tulo came back from the DL; he hasn’t hit very much; he’s been particularly ineffective with runners on base, and he’s been far less than aggressive in the field. Tulo’s a pro with a proven track record, so to me the only conclusions could be either that he’s suffering from a relatively early decline in skills, or that he’s still playing hurt.

So the revamped order had Jose Bautista leading off, followed by Smith, with Josh Donaldson hitting third, Justin Smoak hitting fourth, and Kendrys Morales fifth. With the defensive changes in place, Steve Pearce moved up to sixth and Goins up to seventh against the right-hander Tyson Ross, followed by Barney and Maile.

Now we get into chicken-and-egg stuff: did the revamped lineup cause the six-run outburst in the top of the first, or was Tyson Ross so bad on the hill for Texas that something like this would have happened no matter what lineup changes had been made? Not being a bandwagon-jumping type, I’m not weighing in on that one. Like ol’ Sergeant Joe Friday of TV yore, all I want to do is just give you “the facts, ma’am”.

Here are the facts of the first inning: leading off, Bautista walked on a 3-2 pitch. All of the balls were really balls, including a trio up in the eyeballs. Then Tyson Ross started worrying about the Jays starting Bautista, or giving him the green light to run. So of course he threw over and spiked the ball in the dirt, letting Bautista move up to second anyway. Then, as the clouds separated in the skies and choruses of angels’ voices were heard singing their hosannas, Dwight Smith came up and grounded out to first, moving Bautista to third with the first out. Josh Donaldson wasted the opportunity created by Smith by looking at a called third strike, but Justin Smoak singled to centre to score Bautista. Kendrys Morales grounded a single to centre that was so much into no-man’s land that Smoak was able to come around to third.

Steve Pearce doubled to left to score Smoak and bring Morales around to third. Ryan Goins doubled to left centre, splitting the drawn in outfielders—will they ever learn to stop playing him shallow—plating Morales and Pearce for the third and fourth runs. Finally, Darwin Barney yanked one down the left-field line that you and I and the fence post all thought would hook foul but didn’t, and just cleared the fence in the corner for the final two runs. Luke Maile ended the carnage by lining out to Mike Napoli at first.

Okay then, six runs should be about enough to cover off if Joe Biagini has another bad start, we caught ourselves thinking. And when he walked Shin-Soo Choo on a 3-2 pitch leading off the bottom of the first, we thought, “oh boy!” But Barney made a nice sliding stop on Elvis Andrus and threw him out at first, moving Choo up, and Nomar Mazara moved him along to third with another ground ball to Barney, and then Adrian Beltre swung late and hit a soft liner to Bautista in right for the third out.

A different Tyson Ross came out for the second, though he was wearing the same number, and put down the Jays in order on twelve pitches. Biagini dispatched the Rangers in nine pitches, and it looked like we were settling in to a quiet pitchers’ duel, but with Toronto way ahead.

In fact, though, Smoak was the catalyst for a seventh run in the third inning, as he hit a deep drive off the wall in right on which Choo played too close to the wall, allowing another sloppy bounce back away from the fielders. The Rangers were lucky that it was Smoak running; anyone else would have made a triple out of it. And what’s with the outfield environs in Arlington that make it so hard to play in them? Pearce singled to left through the shift with Smoak moving to third, and Goins picked up his third RBI with a ground ball out to second. (Yay! Situational hitting!)

7-0 after three, even better, but that Joe Biagini, he’s such a nice guy. Can’t stand too much prosperity, can he? Joey Gallo stroked one the wrong way up the alley in left centre for a leadoff double. He had to hold second while Delino DeShields grounded out to Donaldson in front of him. Then Choo more than atoned for his mistake on the Smoak double and got two runs back for the Rangers by hitting a homer to right to cut the Jays’ lead to 7-2. Biagini had to strand an additional two-out base hit by Mazara, as Beltre ended the inning by grounding into a fielder’s choice.

After three, we were sitting pretty at 7-2, but with these guys in 2017, you never really know, do you?

In the top of the fourth Texas manager Jeff Bannister decided that the second-inning Tyson Ross wasn’t coming back any time soon, after 3 innings pitched with seven runs on seven hits, and called on Ernesto Frieri to come in and try to eat some innings. Another recent arrival, as it seems every team is stocked with guys who just arrived from someplace else, Frieri had been recalled from Triple A and put in one previous appearance, throwing two thirds of an inning against Seattle on June eighteenth.

His job tonight was carried out with aplomb, and whatever caused the Jays’ offence to explode in the first inning was effectively squelched by Frieri’s perfomance. For the record, he threw three scoreless innings and gave up two hits and a walk while striking out two. Toronto basically went into a circle the wagons pattern, and we had to wait and see whether they could protect their lead.

Certainly compared with his last performance Biagini did a decent job of keeping the lid on the Rangers. He lasted into the sixth inning, which was appreciated by the Toronto relief crew, and ended up giving up four runs on seven hits with one walk while striking out five. Whether he needed to be pulled at five and two thirds innings and 90 pitches is questionable, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

After giving up the two-run shot to Choo in the third inning, Biagini had a shutdown fourth, with two strikeouts and a popup. In the fifth he ran into trouble right off the bat, the bat of Joey Gallo leading off that is, who hit an opposite-field drive that took Steve Pearce back to the wall in left, and really it was Pearce who ran into trouble. Later stating that when he checked his position relative to the wall he lost track of the ball momentarily, he tried to reach it blindly, and crashed into the wall as the ball hit hard and caromed hard back toward the infield. Gallo circled the bases for an easy inside-the-park homer, while Pearce was obviously hurt in left, another blow for a team that has suffered more than its fair share this season, especially since Pearce had brought a very hot bat back into the lineup after his recent stint on the DL.

Biagini had a struggle to get out of the fifth without yielding any more runs to Texas. Dwight Smith in centre made a fine diving catch on a liner by Delino DeShields for the first out. Choo bunted his way on, Andrus singled him to second, but then Biagini stiffened and fanned Mazara and retired Beltre on a grounder to second, an interesting play that went in the books as a simple 4-3 ground-out to second, but was a little more than that. First, the grounder bounced close enough to Biagini that he had a swipe at it but didn’t touch it, and it bounced out over second. Darwin Barney, who had been holding Choo at second, released with the pitch to the plate and retreated to his position. Then he had to come back behind second to field the ball. He went for the closest play, the force at second on Andrus, but Andrus beat him to the bag. Because Barney knew it was Beltre, he had the time to step off the bag, set, and fire to first to get Beltre. Funny, but it worked for the third out.

In the sixth, though, after Frieri finished off his fine stint with a clean sixth against the Jays, manager John Gibbons obviously had Biagini on a very short leash. How else to explain that he was knocked out of the game by a cheap Texas Leaguer to centre off the bat of Mike Napoli, which came with two outs, after Biagini had fanned Odor and retired Jonathan Lucroy on a grounder to short, on a total of eleven pitches. As it turned out, there’s room to second-guess Gibby on this one.

He brought in Aaron Loup for the matchup with Joey Gallo, and again Loup failed to get his man, as Gallo doubled to right, with Bautista getting the ball in quickly enough to hold Napoli at third. It’s more than ironic that the more effective Loup has become in full inning assignments, the less effective he has been in situational matchups.

In any case, that was enough for Loup, and Danny Barnes came in to face DeShields, who hit a grounder to left that scored Napoli and Gallo, and led to a replay review. Josh Donaldson had cut the throw to the plate from Dwight Smith, ominously into the game for the shaken-up Steve Pearce, and had DeShields trapped off first. DeShields was originally called out, but the review overturned the call and he was on first with two outs.

With Choo batting DeShields stole second off Barnes, but then Barnes fanned Choo to end the threat, with the score now 7-5 for Toronto.

And that’s how the game ended, with both bullpens finishing without further damage, Texas using Dario Alvarez, Tanner Scheppers, and Keone Kela to navigate the seventh, eight, and ninth. Meanwhile, Barnes pitched the seventh after finishing the sixth, Tepera turned in a clean eighth as he settles nicely into the setup role, and Osuna pitched around a two-out walk to Choo and used fourteen pitches to record his eightheenth straight save after three missed opportunities at the beginning of the season.

So Toronto managed to hold on to the lead it had accumulated in the first and third innings, and emerge with a victory which gives them the chance tomorrow afternoon to take the series, three games to one, and get to that elusive .500 plateau for the first time this season.

Did all the fuss about the lineup changes really matter? Who knows? Maybe the players in the starting lineup approached the plate with renewed vigour in the first inning, and this, combined with Tyson Ross’ inability to throw strikes, let them pile up the lead.

But then the same revamped lineup went on to clinch a win without every really threatening much more damage, so which is the truer picture? Tomorrow afternoon’s game might provide the answer to that, with the return of Troy Tulowitzki to shortstop and the installation of Kevin Pillar into the bottom power slot of sixth, with the movement of Russell Martin to second in the order.

It should be mentioned, of course, that Pillar didn’t sit out the whole game, as Smith had to shift to left when Pearce was removed in the sixth inning, and Pillar went back into centre. Ironically, in his one at bat in the eighth inning he singled to centre, advanced to second on a balk by Dario Alvarez, and then stole third, putting himself in scoring position with two outs. Barney walked behind him and then stole second, while Luke Maile lined out to third to end the inning. And if there were any consideration of giving Pillar a second day off, Pearce’s collision with the wall in left put paid to that notion. The team will be lucky if he doesn’t go back on the DL.

And so it goes . . .

Can you have a turning point before you even start moving?

If this game wasn’t consigned to the dustbin of history when Delino DeShields bunted his way on for a base hit to lead off the first, it was definitely sent there when Francisco Liriano served up a nice, juicy gopher ball to Carlos Gomez, the game’s fourth batter.

Before anyone says “Hey, we’re in a batting slump here. We only scored one run. Don’t start in about the pitching” let me concede that Toronto not only hit the ball really hard really often against Rangers’ starter Nick Martinez, with absolutely nothing to show for it, but they also cringingly blew a number of golden scoring opportunities against Martinez, yet another fill-in starter, all of which made his pitching line of six and a third innings pitched, one run and two hits, look way better than he actually threw.

But Toronto started out in the hole tonight and it was a deeper hole than you’d like to see. After the Jays elevated three balls for outs in the top of the first, a solid drive to deep centre by Kevin Pillar, and popups by Josh Donaldson and Jose Bautista off Martinez, Francisco Liriano took the mound hoping to build on his solid last start against Tampa Bay, when he went seven innings and gave up two earned runs on five hits with two walks and nine strikeouts.

But Texas leadoff hitter Delino DeShields took Liriano out of his comfort zone on his first pitch of the game, dragging a perfect bunt up the first-base line for a hit. Elvis Andrus made one attempt to bunt DeShields to second, fouled it off, and then popped out to shortstop. Then, despite continued attention from Liriano, DeShields easily stole second with Adrian Beltre at the plate. Liriano certainly didn’t help his own cause by wild pitching DeShields to third whence he scored on a grounder to short by the veteran Beltre, who knows an easy RBI staring him in the face when he sees one. (Unlike some local heroes we could mention.)

Okay, then, two outs, nobody on, one run in. Fageddaboudit. Get the batter and get back in there and get the run back.

Carlos Gomez, the well-known square peg/round hole guy who’s carried his big bat all over MLB, along with his well-deserved reputation as a disruptive influence lacking motivation, sems to have found a home in Texas. Must be the chance to make friends with Roughned Odor, or something like that.

And, without going into the technicalities of how Liriano pitched to him, which was apparently all wrong, according to Gregg Zaun, he had other ideas about the inning being over, golfing a low inside strike well back into the seats in left, to double the Texas lead.

So, could we come off the field now and start working on the two-run deficit? Nah. Odor lashed a single to left. Jonathan Lucroy hit a liner to centre that, truth be told, Pillar misjudged, starting in on it before retreating frantically to run down the ball over his head which scored Odor. Was the Lucroy ball catchable with a good read? Don’t know, but it definitely wasn’t with a bad read. Finally, famous strikeout king Mike Napoli didn’t strike out, but stroked a clutch two-out single to left to score Lucroy with the fourth Texas run. It mattered little that the veteran Napoli tried for second on the play, probably to protect Lucroy coming in to score, and was easily thrown out on a play that went 7 (left fielder) to 2 (catcher) to 4 (second baseman), with Napoli out at second on a tag play.

If I were a Hollywood script writer paid big bucks to produce formulaic pap, I could have written the script for the rest of this game in plenty of time for an afternoon mint julep before tomorrow’s game three of the series, without breaking a sweat.

The script would involve another parade of Toronto relief pitchers heroically throwing themselves into the breech. It would involve the vaunted Toronto sluggers all trying to get the game back to square one with a single swing of the bat, even when there was nobody on base ahead of them. It would involve the heartbreak and agony of watching them squander real opportunities to get back into it. It would resolve itslf in the confusion and frustration of a team that’s just not quite all together yet, seventy games into the season, confusion and frustration that is surely felt equally badly by the team’s legions of fans, yer humble scribe included.

Leaving my sad script aside, Liriano actually settled in reasonably well after the terrible first inning, and lasted four and two thirds. From the second through the fourth the only runner he allowed was a leadoff double to centre by Elvis Andrus, who immediately erased himself by getting thrown out by Russell Martin trying to steal third.

In the fifth, though, he elevated a get-me-over first-pitch fast ball to Nomar Mazara, and in almost a carbon copy of his shot the night before off Estrada, Mazara leapt, it seemed, at the ball and just drove it out of the park. If Mazara ever gets all of his tools sorted out, he’ll be some kind of ballplayer, because the raw talent is there.

After Mazara’s homer a couple of walks and a sacrifice bunt by DeShields left Liriano with two on and two out, and with faint hope of the Jays’ hitters pulling out a “W” for him in the top of the sixth, there was little point in leaving him in, so John Gibbons called in Leonel Campos, just arrived to take the place of Joe Smith, to pick up Liriano. It took Campos four pitches to fan Carlos Gomez, who seems to swing at almost everything, to strand the runners and hold the Rangers at 5-0.

In the meantime, Nick Martinez was benefitting from the perfect positioning of his defence, not to mention the feckless approach of Toronto hitters with runners on base, to keep the Jays off the board. In the second, Kendrys Morales led off with a double to right that might have been misplayed near the wall by Mazara (as I was saying about Mazara . . . ). Justin Smoak hit a hot grounder up the middle that was fielded by the shortstop, but actually qualified as a ground ball right side that moved Morales to third with one out. Excellent, now for the sacrifice fly, or the second ground ball up the middle to score the run. Over to you, Troy Tulowitzki. But Tulo’s struggles continued at the plate, as he was sawed off on an 0-1 fast ball way inside, and hit a foul popup to the shortstop Andrus. Russell Martin grounded out, and Morales died at third.

In the third inning, after Steve Pearce almost beat out a short hopper to Andrus, Ryan Goins drew a walk on a 3-2 pitch, to turn the lineup over to Kevin Pillar. Who hit maybe the hardest hit ball of the night, a line drive right at Mike Napoli at first, who caught it one step from the bag and easily doubled off Goins.

In the fourth inning Josh Donaldson pulled a hard liner into left for a leadoff single, but the Jays failed to advance him at all. In the fifth, after Tulowitzki popped up to the shortstop again, Martinez walked Martin, and both Pearce and Goins hit the ball on the nose behind him, but came away empty-handed, Pearce hitting a screamer right at Gomez in centre, and Goins a hard grounder that couldn’t get past Odor out in the rover spot. In the sixth two more hard liners, by Pillar and Donaldson, went right to outfielders and only yielded outs for Martinez, who then fanned Bautista to end the inning.

Manager Jeff Bannister trotted Martinez out for the seventh, but he was on a short leash. He got the first out, when Morales, again hitting the ball hard, lined out to right, but then he walked Smoak, and that was it. Martinez left after six and a third innings, having given up no runs so far on only two hits with three walks and two strikeouts, on 103 pitches.

Jose Leclerc came in to pick up Martinez and opened the door to the only real Jays’ opportunity to break out in the game, though it was without much effort on the part of Toronto’s hitters. With Smoak on first with a walk, Leclerc walked Tulowitzki and Martin to load the bases, and then settled in to do battle with Steve Pearce. With one out, it was an epic, eleven-pitch battle, with Pearce fouling off nine pitches and taking only one ball before he took what he thought was ball two on a pitch that home plate umpire D. J. Rayburn decided was strike three.

Ryan Goins followed and jumped on Leclerc’s first pitch, on the outside corner, and lined it into left for an RBI single that plated Smoak and spoiled Martinez’ clean slate, so he ended up giving up one earned run in his start. With the bases loaded, though, Kevin Pillar was badly fooled on a 3-2 slider and struck out to end the threat.

The Jays still had one chance left, in the eighth. Next in from the bullpen for Texas was the righthander Jeremy Jeffress, who quickly got two outs, retiring Donaldson and Bautista before giving up yet another opposite-field base hit by Morales. Bannister decided to make that strange call again, and bring in a lefty to turn Justin Smoak around. And again Smoak reminded the Texas manager why that’s not such a good idea as he doubled to left centre on the second pitch from the lefthanded Alex Claudio, with Morales coming around to third. This gave Tulowitzki another chance to do some damage, but he rolled over on Claudio’s first pitch and grounded out to short to end the inning.

That was Toronto’s last shot at getting back into the game. When Adrian Beltre homered off Dominic Leone in the bottom of the eighth to extend the Texas lead to 6-1, it hardly mattered that Steve Pearce finally picked up his first base hit of the night off Keone Kela with one out in the ninth. Kela got the last two outs on a popup by Goins and yet another fly ball to centre by Pillar, with Pearce stranded at second after advancing on a passed ball, as the game ended.

As for the Toronto bullpen, it came out of the first game of the series with fourteen consecutive outs. With Liriano out of the game after four and two thirds innings, Campos, Jeff Beliveau, and Dominic Leone combined for another eight consecutive outs, making a string of twenty-two consecutive outs before Adrian Beltre broke off the string with a home run to centre with one out in the eighth off Leone, who then retired Gomez and Odor to start a new string for next time.

Campos, after finishing Liriano’s fifth inning by fanning Gomez, retired Odor leading off in the sixth with a grounder to Smoak unassisted. Unfortunately Campos, who’d just arrived from Buffalo to replace the injured Joe Smith, pulled up lame after going for the ball by Odor, and couldn’t continue. Presumably he’ll be going on the DL, joining Joe Smith whom he replaced. And the beat goes on.

Mention should also be made of Jeff Beliveau, who picked up the win last night with a clean eighth inning, in which he threw only ten pitches, and came back tonight to record five more outs, with two strikeouts, on 24 pitches. Good job, and good job he’s a lefty!

Take away the strange first inning and it’s a 2-1 ball game, and in a one-run game any number of things might have been done differently, so there’s no saying that it actually would have ended up that way.

In any case, thus ended yet another opportunity for the Jays to get to the .500 level, but I don’t think we need to focus much on that. Far more significant is how do we do overall on this seven-game road trip, and where do we stand in relation to the rest of the division?

Tomorrow let’s kill a chicken and look at some bloody entrails and see if we can get a handle on this crazy season.

Tonight’s game was quicksilver. It wouldn’t lie still long enough to let itself be pinned down.

First it was about Marco Estrada soldiering on without his best stuff, but managing with his wit and wiles to keep his team in the game.

Then it was about Austin Bibens-Dirkx, aka BD, and how he was not going to be the story of this game, as yet another fill-in/callup/ex Blue Jay prospect who would stonewall the feckless Jays’ offense yet again.

Then it was about the long-awaited arrival of Steve Pearce and the radical concept of scoring runs without hitting homers.

Then it was about how even a Marco Estrada can be brought down by bleeders, bases on balls, and bad luck.

Then it was about a depleted bullpen that must be running on fumes stepping up in spectacular fashion one more time.

Finally, it was about ninth-inning heroics, and more runs without homers.

But in the end, it was all about the bullpen. A bullpen that was called on yet again to fill in an unreasonable number of innings when the starter fell short. In the end it was about a bullpen that, after an initial bout of wildness by Dominic Leone, retired fourteen Texas Rangers in a row, starting in the fifth inning with the bases loaded on Leone walks and one out, when Aaron Loup came in to strand the runners by striking out Shin-Soo Choo and retiring Elvis Andrus on a comebacker.

In the end it was about Leone, who put out one fire before starting another. It was about Loup, who went one and two thirds and struck out three in what may have been his strongest outing ever for Toronto. It was about Jason Grilli, who continued his reputational rehab with a clean seventh and a strikeout. It was about still-newcomer Jeff Beliveau, who threw a strong, clean eighth with two strikeouts, and was in the “right place at the right time” (if we mean lucky, why don’t we just say lucky?) to pick up a win. And it was about Roberto Osuna, who seems to have eschewed the strikeout as too labour intensive, retiring the side for the save with an infield liner, a groundout, and a popup, on nine pitches.

And all of this on the day that the news came out that the redoubtable and almost unhittable Joe Smith, who had become setup man non pareil for Toronto, has been placed on the disabled list with shoulder inflammation, and replaced on the roster by Leonel “Red Eye Special” Campos, who has shown well in limited appearances so far with the Jays. Whether Campos is just another Joe Smith or not, waits to be determined.

From the start it looked like Marco Estrada might have sorted some of his issues out since his last and most horrendous start against Tampa Bay on June thirteenth. Eight pitches in he had two outs on a foul popup to third by Shin-Soo Choo and a strikeout of Elvis Andrus. Then it happened, the classic Marco Estrada (2017 version) first-inning moment, the lanky and powerful Nomar Mazara nearly leaping at his first-pitch fast ball, low but not low enough, outside but not outside enough, and driving it like a lightning bolt into the grandstand in right for a 1-0 Texas lead. Shocking, but not the end of the world: Mazara has the tools to do that sort of thing against anybody, and it was only one run, right?

Understandably a little rattled, Estrada walked Adrian Beltre on four pitches, but then regrouped and caught Roughned Odor looking on a 3-2 pitch.

Estrada was bendy but not breaky in the second and third, stranding a leadoff single by Carlos Gomez in the second, and surviving consecutive base hits leading off the third by Choo and Andrus. To be fair, only the Gomez hit, a liner to centre, was very respectable. Choo’s hit was a defensive 1-2 count slap job to left, a trademark of his, and Andrus reached down and across the plate to loop his hit into left. But at the end of three, the Rangers had one run on four hits, two of them sort of cheap, and Estrada had two strikeouts on fifty pitches. Swimming upstream, maybe, but swimming all the same.

In the fourth inning the tide changed for Estrada, the stream ultimately became the Niagara River, and before the inning was over it had swept him away. But before we get to the demise of Estrada, we have to have some context for the mess the inning became for him, and that means turning to the meeting of Toronto’s hitters with their former minor-league colleague, Mr. Austin BD.

The Jays’ first inning seemed to foretell another of “those” games, and I assume I don’t have to define “those” games any more. Kevin Pillar, over-anxious at 1-2 and with his average slipping by the day, reached for an outside pitch and flied weakly to right. Josh Donaldson grounded to Beltre at third, and almost evaded a circus tag by Joey Gallo at first after Gallo had to flag down an errant throw from Beltre. Jose Bautista grounded out to Beltre with no extra drama. Eleven pitches for the Jays, the Mazara lightning bolt, and Mr. BD was back on the hill for the second inning.

Not so easy this time, though. Kendrys Morales hit the ball hard down the first-base line, and was only retired as the result of an odd, shift-induced sequence. The ball was hit to Gallo’s glove side, and deflected off his glove, but right to Roughned Odor, stationed in the rover position. Odor fielded it, and threw, not to Gallo, but to BD covering first for the out. An interesting play to be sure, but if Morales runs any better, it’s still a base hit.

But it was a hard-hit ball. So was the one that Justin Smoak hit over the fence in right centre on the very next pitch, giving Smoak twenty already for the year, and tying the game at one. BD quickly recovered to retire Troy Tulowitzki and Russell Martin to end the inning and then continued on a roll in the third, retiring Steve Pearce on a grounder behind second in the shift and striking out Ryan Goins and Pillar.

After Estrada escaped the two leadoff hits by Texas in the bottom of the third, the Jays came in to take their hacks against BD in the fourth. Donaldson started by grounding out to third, but then the Rangers’ starter tried to sneak a changeup down and in past Bautista on three and two. But it got a little too much of the plate, and Bautista’s bat got a little too much of it, resulting in a resounding Bautista homer to left and a 2-1 Toronto lead.

Morales followed with a booming drive to right. I had my thoughts about Mazara starting in left tonight, and Choo in right, the reverse of what we had seen when Texas visited Toronto earlier in the year. The previous arrangement made sense because Mazara has the far superior arm, and is generally a much more secure defender than Choo. The Morales drive backed Choo right up into that odd corner in the middle of the right-field fence in the Texas ball park. I’m not sure if Mazara would have played it any better, but Choo seemed not to know quite where he was, and the ball hit the wall near enough to his glove that it might have been catchable. In any case, Morales ended up on second, and there was still no one out.

Smoak followed with a solid drive to left that fell for a single near the line, given that the outfield was shifted around toward right for him, with Morales stopping at third after holding up to see if the ball would be caught. Troy Tulowitzki, continuing to struggle in the clutch, fanned for the second out, but then Martin drew a walk from BD to load the bases. Finally, finally, bases loaded, two outs, Steve Pearce ripped the first pitch from BD into the left-field corner for a bases-clearing double and a 5-1 Toronto lead. Ryan Goins grounded out to end the inning, but barn door, horse gone, etc.

So having fought to keep his team in the game, Estrada was able to come out and enjoy the richness of this new lead his mates had given him. Not so much. No chance to enjoy the fruits of our collective labour!

I was writing yesterday about the game of inches. It really is, you know. Despite walking two batters after being given the lead, Estrada was that close to getting out of the fourth with no harm. Twice. But it didn’t happen; he ended up giving up five runs on one solid hit, two cheap hits, and three walks, departing the game after only three and two thirds innings, exactly one out deeper than his last start against Tampa Bay.

Despite the fact that he walked two of the first four hitters he faced in the fourth, Estrada was a pitch away from being out of the inning unscathed, from the fifth batter on. That’s because while walking Carlos Gomez and Jonathan Lucroy, he also struck out Mike Napoli after walking Gomez, and Joey Gallo after walking Lucroy. The Gallo strikeout turned the order over and brought Shin-Soo Choo to the plate. Choo, who always seems to do something to annoy Toronto, produced the single most heartbreaking moment of the game.

Estrada started Choo off with a changeup high in the zone on the outside corner that Choo took for a strike. Estrada went back to the same pitch in the same spot, just a little farther outside. Choo reached for it, just barely made contact, and squibbed it into no man’s land between Estrada and a charging Justin Smoak. Estrada dove for it and it ticked off his glove, making it totally unplayable. Even if he had corralled it, there was no one home at first, and at that point the bases were loaded for Elvis Andrus, who by his past record against Toronto, would either strike out flailing wildly, or do some damage.

Damage was the order of the day. Andrus hit a two-hopper in the hole that just evaded the outstretched glove of a flailing Troy Tulowitzki, and went into left field for a two-run single. I’ve watched and rewatched the video of this hit, and I keep coming away convinced that a Super-Kevin, or even a Zeke Carrera dive, would have kept this ball on the infield and saved a run. Seriously, folks, I’m troubled by my own darker instincts here. Is it too much to ask, in major league ball? Am I being too hard on Tulo?

After a visit from Pete Walker, Estrada walked Nomar Mazara on four pitches, possibly by design, as none of them were close, the first wildly outside, the other three all high. If they chose to put Mazara on and pitch to the veteran Adrian Beltre, I can understand their reasoning, but I’m not sure I agree with it. However, it’s unfair to employ hindsight on these matters, so I won’t comment further on Beltre’s hitting a 2-2 fastball into the right centre field alley to clear the bases. Except to point out that he swung at a pitch up in his eyeballs. Yogi Berra swung at pitches like that and he’s in the Hall of Fame. Beltre will be there too, no doubt, as soon as he’s eligible.

Inches drove Marco Estrada out of the game. The inches that determined the exact placement of the Choo squibber. The inches by which Andrus’ bouncer evaded Tulo’s glove. Even the inches above the strike zone where Estrada’s fatal fast ball to Beltre ended up.

Some inning, the fourth: Toronto takes the lead on a blast and a bases-loaded double, and Texas overcomes the deficit and takes the lead on one decent hit . . . Well, you get the picture.

I’ve already given you the rundown on how the bullpen shut down Texas the rest of the way, keeping Toronto within that magical one run deficit right to the ninth. I should return to Aaron Loup, however, whose contribution to tonight’s eventual win was monumental.

Dominic Leone had only needed six pitches to strand Beltre at second, getting Odor to fly out weakly to right. But home plate umpire Jim Wolf must have got his hands on the same bucket of balls from which Estrada had drawn all those wild ones, because Leone came out in the bottom of the fifth, after BD had retired the side in order for Texas in the top of the fifth to qualify for a possible win, and couldn’t find the plate. At all.

In a display from Leone that we hadn’t yet seen, with one out, after Carlos Gomez flew out to centre on the first pitch of the inning, he walked Napoli on a 3-1 pitch. He walked Lucroy on a 3-2 pitch. He wild-pitched the two to second and third, and then walked Gallo on a 3-1 pitch to load the bases.

That was more than enough for John Gibbons. With the left-handed Choo coming up, he brought Loup in to try to get out of the jam, and Loup answered the call with a flourish, striking out Choo on a 1-2 pitch, and then grabbing a sharp comebacker off the bat of Andrus to take the easy out to end the inning. It was icing on the cake, and very nice icing indeed, that Loup came back out for the sixth and fanned Mazara and Beltre before ending off his share of the evening’s duties by getting Odor on an easy grounder to second.

If the goal of the relief corps is to deliver the game to the closer in the same shape that it was received, then Texas’ relievers succeeded equally as well as Toronto’s. They were just a little messier about it. Tanner Scheppers, a right-hander recently recalled from Triple A and making his first appearance of the season for the Rangers, was called on to start the sixth, and he gave manager Jeff Bannister an inning and two thirds of shutout, if somewhat shaky, relief.

In the sixth Scheppers gave up a one-out single to right by Smoak, and then a double down the left-field line by Tulowitzki, followed by a walk to Martin. Surrounded by Jays in a nice cozy circle, he managed to pop up Steve Pearce on the infield fly rule, before retiring Goins on an opposite-field fly ball to left. In the seventh he popped up Pillar, walked Donaldson, and fanned Bautista before Bannister called on the lefty Dario Alvarez to turn Morales around. Still don’t know why they do that, but this time it worked, and Alvarez fanned Morales to strand Donaldson.

Alvarez’ sole job had been Morales, and so righty Jose Leclerc came on to set up for the Rangers’ closer, Matt Bush, and he did a good job of it, despite issuing a two-out walk to Martin, who collected three walks on the night. The walk was sandwiched between striking out Tulowitzki and Pearce, so it was all good for Leclerc.

Came the ninth inning, with Bush on the hill and Ryan Goins at the plate. Both bullpens had done their jobs, and delivered the same score to the ninth that had pertained at the end of four. Goins, who had been oh for three to that point, and had stranded four base runners, three in scoring position, wasted no time. He put an inside-out swing on a 97 mph heater on the inner half and hit it hard to left centre. The ball didn’t have the legs to make it to the wall, but Goins was looking for a double as he rounded first. Gomez’ throw made it close at second, but Odor never really had control of the ball as it bounced off Goins’ helmet. More of a concern was the fact that Goins had slid in with his glove hand extended and felt some pain in the hand. He stayed in the game, however, and later indicated that there was no lingering problem with the hand as a result of the play.

After Pillar failed to move the runner up to third, popping up to second, Donaldson was up. I do not understand why Gibbie did not have Pillar, who can bunt, try to sacrifice Goins to third. The Toronto manager of course prefers to rely on his big guns to do their thing, and this time it worked, as Donaldson lashed a first-pitch curve ball from Bush into left field to score Goins with the tying run.

Then came the pivotal play of the game, and this time it was all on Donaldson. With Bautista at the plate in the process of being walked by Bush, Donaldson, on a very short lead, read Bush perfectly and got a great jump for second, stealing the base in a flourish. This put him in scoring position when Morales delivered the game-winning hit, another opposite-field drive to left-centre that scored Donaldson and moved Bautista around to third.

The Jays went on to miss a glorious opportunity to add on to their lead and ease the pressure on Roberto Osuna, but they failed to pull the trigger with the bases loaded and one out. Following Morales’ hit, Bush walked Smoak to load them up, but Tulo was out on the infield fly rule, and Martin struck out to end the inning.

And then it was left for Osuna to finish off the last three outs in the bullpen’s streak of fourteen consecutive outs.

So this was a game that was momentarily bad, then okay, briefly very good, then a disaster. And then you just had to sit back and admire the great work of the bullpen, and hope that somehow, some way, the hitters could scratch out a couple of runs to make the difference. In the end, they did.

One under .500 again. Will this time be the charm?

Stop me if you’ve heard this before.

The Blue Jays were locked in a scoreless pitchers’ duel this afternoon, with the recently-returned-from-the-disabled-list Jay Happ going pitch for pitch against the recently-returned-from-the-disabled-list James Shields of the Chicago White Sox.

Then in the top of the fifth inning Chicago bleeped and blooped its way into, not only a lead for Shields to protect, but a three-run lead at that.

This is where you interrupt me and say, wait, I can’t stand this script any more. I can’t—I won’t—read another word!

And you would be well within your rights to cash in your chips and check out for more cheerful climes and cheerful times.

But today you’d have been wrong. Dead wrong.

Sure the Jays had blown glorious scoring opportunities in the first, when they lost yet another run to a ground-rule double, and the fourth. And sure, by the end of the Chicago fifth, with the score 3-0 for the Chisox, of the seven singles given up by Jay Happ, three of them were of the reach-down-and-hit-it-off-the-end-of-the-bat variety, and two more were ground balls that just snaked past the diving gloves of Toronto infielders, including the single by Jose Abreu that knocked in the second and third runs.

And sure, finally and most maddeningly, for the second day in a row a sacrifice bunt by Melky Cabrera, for god’s sake, figured prominently in the proceedings. Talk about adding insult to injury, to have Melky kill us with the bunt when John Gibbons would have run the bases starkers before giving him the bunt sign when Melky was a Blue Jay.

But then in the bottom of the fifth, down 3-0 to a James Shield who had effectively closed the door on two possible rallies already, Steve Pearce, who had grounded into a double play to erase a Russell Martin walk in the second, lined the first pitch of the inning, a high fast ball on the outside corner, into right field for a base hit. And then a strange play on a ground ball scorched to third by Ryan Goins that should have been yet another double play had the same effect as if Goins had bunted Pearce to second.

It was a low liner to Todd Frazier’s left, and before he could get his glove down it deflected off his heel, but right to shortstop Tim Anderson on one hop. Too late for the force at second, Anderson briskly threw Goins out at first, leaving Pearce in scoring position. And then Kevin Pillar, who was hitting all of .100 with runners in scoring position, softly lofted a 1-0 curve ball into left field, Pearce got a good read on it, and scored without a throw to cut the lead to 3-1. In fact, Toronto was inches away from a second run in the inning as well. Josh Donaldson, up next, hit one to the deepest part of the ball park, where Willy Garcia hauled it in, with Pillar smartly moving up to second on the catch. But Jose Bautista, unlike Jose Abreu in the top of the inning, didn’t quite get his hard-hit grounder up the middle past the shift, and the little rally was over.

I suppose all sports are games of inches, but sometimes it seems that baseball is far more so, especially if you think about the numerous replay reviews we’ve watched in the last two years of close plays at first: which first, ball in glove, foot on bag? Foot on bag, ball in glove? After Jay Happ came out for the top of the sixth and breezed through the meatiest of the meat of the Chicago order, Frazier, Davidson, and Avisail Garcia, on eight pitches, James Shields bid fair to do the same, striking out Kendrys Morales with a called third strike and retiring Justin Smoak on another hard grounder into the shift. But then those inches reared their ugly heads. (Surely, if inches had heads they’d be ugly, wouldn’t they?)

These were the inches by which Troy Tulowitzki’s soft bouncer up the third-base line with two outs stayed fair, as it bounced right into the bag, leaving a bemused Frazier to look on helplessly while Tulo crossed the bag at first without a throw for an infield hit. Tough couple of innings at third for that Frazier guy, who’d had, remember, Goins double-play shot carom off his foot for a virtual sac bunt the inning before.

But there were more inches to come, about six to eight of them, by my guess-timation, and these were the inches by which Russell Martin’s following deep drive to centre first of all cleared Willy Garcia’s outstretched glove, and then managed to bounce off the top of the fence and out for a two-run homer, a tie ball game, and another dramatic late-inning dinger by Toronto’s star catcher and proud Montrealer.

This had all started, remember, with two outs and nobody on. Now, still with two outs and nobody on, and Anthony Swarzak into the game to replace the unlucky and rather angry James Shields on the mound, Steve Pearce came up again. Once again he collected a base hit, this time a single to right on a 2-2 pitch on the outer half of the plate. Which brought Ryan Goins to the plate: Goins, who brought his Mixmaster to the game today to help him stir things up. This time, on a 1-0 pitch, he got a high 95 mph four seamer up in his wheelhouse, on the inside corner, and hit a majstic drive to right centre that split the outfielders and went to the wall. Pearce, running with the hit with two outs, scored easily from first as Chicago misplayed the relays to the plate, and Goins ended up on third with a go-ahead triple.

Goins died there as Pillar grounded out to third, but Jay Happ was able to come out for the top of the seventh at 92 pitches, but now pitching on the lead. He was only an out away from a full seven-inning start, too, when he made the mistake of letting Melky Cabrera come to the plate with nobody on to bunt over. Happ fanned the catcher Kevan Smith leading off, and then retired the second baseman Yolmer Sanchez on a grounder to second, bringing Melky to the plate with two outs and nobody on. Unfettered by strategic concerns, Melky swung away and hit the ball over the head of Steve Pearce in left to the wall, and rolled into second with a double.

With only the one-run lead, John Gibbons decided that Happ had done enough to keep Toronto in the game, and went to the bullpen for Danny Barnes. Keeping in mind the scratchy nature of the run-producing hits given up by Happ, this had to count as a second successful start for the big left-hander: six and two-thirds innings, three runs, eight hits, all of them singles except this last double by Cabrera, no walks, and nine strikeouts over 98 pitches.

Maybe Happ would have retired Tim Anderson to finish off the inning, but a bullpen call is always a good one if it works, and this one worked. It took the now-reliable Barnes just two pitches to get Anderson to hit a can of corn* to centre for the third out.

*A “can of corn” is an old baseball term for an easy fly ball out. It’s a funny one, though: I wouldn’t want to try to catch a tin can of corn dropped over a hundred feet or more from the sky, armed with just a baseball glove!

I’m not quite sure why Chicago manager Rick Renteria decided to leave Swarzak in to start the seventh against the Jays, but he did, and it didn’t work out well. He literally dodged a bullet from Josh Donaldson who led off. Donalson lashed one back up the middle and Swarzak flicked his glove at it from his finish position. He was twice lucky: the ball hit his glove instead of his rump, and hitting his glove deadened the ball so it didn’t bounce very far away, and he was able to take the out at first. Jose Bautista then borrowed a page out of the Chisox’ play book and reached for a low outside pitch, lifting it into centre for a single.

Renteria decided he’d seen enough from Swarzak, and brought in the left-handed Dan Jennings. This would have the effect of turning around both Kendrys Morales and Justin Smoak, who would hit right against him. This is not the first time an opposing manager has done this, and I still don’t get it, considering that both switch hitters have better power numbers hitting right than left.

It didn’t work out too well for Renteria this time, either. Jennings threw two fast balls that were wildly outside, and then was forced to come in with one, and Morales crushed it to left, bouncing it off the facing of the Level of Excellence, targeting Tony Fernandez’ sign, to be exact. Considering the season that Toronto has had, a 6-3 lead looked a lot sweeter than a 4-3 lead.

But the Jays weren’t done yet, keeping in mind there was still only one out. Justin Smoak lined a single to left off Jennings, the lefty having gone oh for two in dealing with the big Toronto switchers. He stayed in to face Tulowitzki, and got a ground ball, but it wasn’t good enough for an inning-ending double play, and went for a fielder’s choice. That ended Jennings’ brief moment on the stage, and Renteria opted for the big right-hander Michael Ynoa to come in and face Russell Martin, now with two outs.

Ynoa didn’t work out that well either, as he walked Martin, bringing Pearce, already two for three on the day, to the plate. With Tulo at second and Martin at first, Pearce powered a 1-0 pitch high into the left-field corner where it hit fair, bounced up to the fence in foul territory, and was touched by an idiot fan who undoubtedly cost Toronto Martin’s run, as he was placed at third on Pearce’s ground rule double that had counted Tulo for the seventh and final Toronto run, a run charged against Jennings. Another lost run to the ground rule double, but this time not from a bounce out.

Ynoa wasn’t quite done yet, though he didn’t give up any more runs. Dwight Smith was sent out to run for Pearce, who could trot off with a good day’s work to his credit. Ynoa

then fell behind Goins 3- 1 before walking him, bringing Pillar to the plate with the bases loaded and two outs.

Pillar bounced one toward right that looked like it had a good chance of going through, but Sanchez got to it on his backhand, and made an awkward flip throw to first which bounced in the dirt and was scooped by Abreu as Pillar crossed the bag. What was I just saying about replays at first? Pillar was called out, but of course manager John Gibbons asked for a review, given the weight of the moment, it being the third out with the bases loaded. It was pretty clear from the replays that Pillar was out, and the review confirmed it fairly quickly, so the game moved on to the eighth with the Jays suddenly holding a 7-3 lead, and Jay Happ in line for the win.

I was surprised, after a very long bottom of the seventh, to see Danny Barnes come back out to pitch for Toronto, since it seemed like Joe Smith time, and Smith hadn’t pitched at all in the first two games of the series, and Barnes, it seems, has appeared in almost every game this season. (Actually, this was Toronto’s sixty-eighth game, and it was Barnes’ thirty-fifth appearance, and by way of comparison, Ryan Tepera, who also seems to be on the mound every time you look, has made thirty appearances.)

In any case Barnes did just fine, facing only four more batters after retiring Anderson to end the top of the seventh and pick up Happ. He fanned Jose Abreu, retired Avisail Garcia on a short fly to right, walked Todd Frazier, and fanned Matt Davidson, quite a tidy bunch of prey to gather into his hunting pouch. He took 24 pitches to navigate the inning, so he just might get a rest Monday night in Texas.

The Sox’ top of the eighth was certainly not without interest to the obvervant fan, though. First there was the Garcia popup to Bautista in right, a ball that Bautista took after calling off Ryan Goins, who had called for it and clearly had it lined up. At the last minute Bautista called for it, Goins dropped away, and then Bautista realized he didn’t actually have it in his sights. Luckily, he stuck his glove out at the last minute and caught the ball rather awkwardly at his waist. What was interesting to see was that after the play was over Bautista clearly communicated to Goins that he had been mistaken in calling the infielder off, and you could see how relieved he was that the ball had been caught.

And then there was Matt Davidson, possibly inventing a whole new play, maybe to be called the Davidson Pretend Base on Balls, to cover a delayed steal of second. Davidson was completely responsible for a major mistake here, but the upshot of the play was that Todd Frazier ended up on second with a very strange stolen base.

On a 2-2 count of a long at bat, Davidson lost track of the count, for which he needs to be fined big time in the White Sox’ kangaroo court*, and thought that ball three, which Barnes threw in the dirt, was ball four. He stepped across the plate, bent over, and started to take off his shin guard. Frazier, on first, either playing along with a set play (please god, no!) or caught up in the same dream world as Davidson, thought it was ball four too, and started leisurely jogging toward second.

Russell Martin, of course, knew exactly what the count was, and when he saw Frazier wandering toward second, he fired to Smoak at first, who turned and threw to second to retire the now panicked Frazier, who was moving more urgently toward the bag. But Smoak’s throw hit the sliding Frazier in the back and bounced away. It took a long time for it to be scored as a stolen base, but there was no real alternative. Natural justice was restored two pitches later when Barnes fanned Davidson on his trademark high hard one.

*It’s a long-standing tradition in major league baseball that teams convene a clubhouse kangaroo court, empowered to find guilt and impose fines and other punishments, to call out mistakes, not errors, that should not be made by major league ball players. Such as: losing track of the count, losing track of the outs, passing a base runner ahead of you, forgetting the batting order, and so on. Some mistakes, of course, cross into game-changing errors. If the player who’s forgotten his place in the order steps into the batter’s box and takes a pitch, he is out for batting out of order. And sometimes a player can commit an error because of a brain cramp.

Not too long ago, an un-named outfielder on an un-named team thought the fly ball he had just caught was the third out. He turned and tossed the ball into the stands, which is now common practice. Then, to his horror, he realized that it was not the third out, and there was at least one base runner enjoying his freedom mightily. You be the umpire: how do you score this one? Worse, how does the player ever go into the clubhouse again?

After the high drama of the Jays’ comeback, and the craziness of the Davidson Play, the end of the game was anticlimactic. Michael Ynoa settled down and dispatched Toronto’s two, three, and four hitters on just thirteen pitches. Perhaps to give him the work after the two losses, John Gibbons brought Roberto Osuna into a non-save situation and he retired the bottom of the Chicago order, also in thirteen pitches, with two strikeouts.

There are 162 games to be played in the major league championship series. Some of them, regardless of the standing of the teams involved, are of little significance. Some are eminently forgettable. Some are over before an out is recorded, and some teeter on the brink for hours, which sometimes feel like days.

But some games are near epic, their scenes and moments to be indelibly etched in our minds. Especially given the desperate need of the Toronto Blue Jays to salvage one of these three games with Chicago, I think this game qualifies as one of the very special ones.

But will it be remembered for the Martin homer, for the Goins triple, or for the Davidson Pretend Walk? Only time will tell.

Like Lucy Ricardo, I have some ‘splainin’ to do.

I only saw the first two innings of today’s game, because of a prior commitment to a reception for a gallery showing of my wife’s paintings. This time it was a cat show, which is to say an exhibition of paintings featuring cats, in support of a cat rescue operation in Brampton.

And no, the cat show did not take place in a cat house. And if I have to explain that to you . . .

So, in the first two innings I got to see Marcus Stroman’s typically brisk and efficient first inning of work, and I saw two of the Chicago White Sox take him deep back-to-back in the top of the second. And I saw Toronto come back within one in the bottom of the second, thanks to a clutch two-out drive by Ryan Goins that bounced over the wall in centre, scoring Kenrys Morales from second, but unfortunately holding Troy Tulowitzki at third because of the ground-rule double, when he would easily have scored on the hit.

By the way, being the home team, it seems we get inordinately burned by the ground rule double rule; is there any hope of softening the warning track to dampen those ridiculous high bounces? Please?

Because of my firm policy of writing only about what I have seen, I’m going to keep this short and confine myself to comments about what I know to have happened, and the trends that they suggest.

Much might be made of three home runs given up by Marcus Stroman, but there has been a long string of top starters in baseball who had a propensity for giving up more than the occasional long ball. The trick is to keep the other guys off the bases and minimize the damage. The three today were solo shots, and they allowed Stroman to stay within the bounds of a quality start: seven innings pitched, three runs, six hits, one walk, five strikeouts, 90 pitches.

And was there any reason to pull Stroman after seven and 90 pitches? Ryan Tepera gave up the add-on run in the eighth; it was unearned, to be sure, but maybe things would have been different . . .

The not-so-invisible elephant in the room for the Blue Jays is their inability to score except via the home run. Okay, they scored two today without a dinger, but that wasn’t enough to win a quality start, was it?

I keep going back to Josh Donaldson’s eerie thought about ground balls being mistakes. It’s obvious to me that there are two cultures on this team around hitting. There’s the Donaldson/Tulowitzki/Bautista (to a lesser extent—he often becomes a different hitter with runners on and two strikes on him) cerebral approach that focusses everything on the question of launch angle.

From my own observations it seems that there is a direct connection between this approach and the propensity of these hitters to take called third strikes. It would seem that the philosophy is that if you don’t hit the home run, or at least the double, whatever else you do is irrelevant, and if you strike out looking it’s all the same. Next time.

I’m not going to bother trying to refute this notion, support for which comes from Donaldson’s famous quotation. It’s interesting, though, that just this evening I was dipping into a very old collection of baseball short stories. Most people who would recognize the name Zane Grey would know him as a writer of rather lame western fiction, dating back to the turn of the twentieth century. Fewer people would know that he also wrote a great deal of baseball fiction, some of it pretty corny, but the very best collected in a book entitled The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories.

What struck me about revisiting these stories is that the traditional kind of baseball that they describe, moving the runner up by hitting ground ball right side, taking the extra base, bunting, playing the hitter to pull, the best hitters spraying the ball to all parts of the field, is the very baseball that the Kansas City Royals of recent years rode to great success. The baseball played by Zane Grey’s minor leaguers seems very fresh, or perhaps the Royals’ style was a real throwback. I should mention that The Redheaded Outfield was published in 1915.

The point is, though, that the style worked. It worked then. It works now. Chicago added on a run today with a suicide squeeze. They also added a run when a play wasn’t made in the field. It was scored by a runner on third who got there by way of a single, a sacrifice bunt by Melky Cabrera, no less, and a tagup on a fly ball to centre. If the runner was still at second, he wouldn’t have scored on the error.

Did they take a lead they never gave up on their three homers? Sure they did. But at the same time the extra runs made it that much harder for a team relying on one or more four-baggers to get back in the game.

The other distinct style in the Jays’ lineup is the more free-swinging, take your chances style, as exemplified by, among the top seven hitters, Kevin Pillar, Kendrys Morales, Justin Smoak and Russell Martin. You can sort out for yourself which among these is more or less likely in a given at-bat to change the approach with two strikes, hit opposite the shift, go with the pitch, even shorten up on the bat from time to time. (And lest anyone didn’t hear Tuck and Babbie going on about it, we could see how much Joey Votto chokes up with two strikes on him.) The one thing that links all these Toronto hitters is that, just from observation, it’s far more likely if they strike out that they strike out swinging, rather than taking a pitch that’s marginal but they don’t like.

All four of the above hitters are most effective hitting straight away, or even a little bit opposite. The Smoak homers to left centre when he’s hitting left. The relatively high number of Morales base hits the opposite way with two strikes on him. The undeniable power of Russell Martin to the opposite alley. While all four of these batters share the likelihood of striking out in a given situation, they’re also far more likely to put the ball in play and “make things happen”.

The quintessential spray hitter with power who makes things happen is Devon Travis, but since he’s on the shelf again there’s no point in including him in the mix here. Nor is there any point in including Darwin Barney, Ryan Goins, Luke Maile or even the injured Zeke Carrera in this discussion, as they all share the need to scramble and give themselves up for the team when needed. Maybe with a guaranteed spot in the order one or more of them would be identified as in either camp, but that’s not possible at the moment.

It’s hard to include Steve Pearce anywhere, because we haven’t seen enough of him to make much of an assessment. Career-wise, with a .252 batting average and over 1700 at bats, he probably falls more into the main group of hitters headed by Pillar, Smoak and Morales.

So, from my perspective the anatomy of a long-term, team-wide batting slump, or perhaps the recipe for it, reads something like this: opposing pitchers taking an intelligent approach to our hitters; in the case of the Blue Jays, showering them with breaking balls, the more the better; cerebral sluggers sticking to their guns and not biting on “junk”, even junk in the strike zone; free swingers sharing a mix of bad luck and frustration over the steady diet of junk.

The corollary of all this, of course, is that in the absence of offensive production, every mistake made by Toronto (two uncharacteristic fielding errors by Josh Donaldson today, for one glaring example among many) is magnified beyond all importance, cranking up the tension on the entire team.

Are we at a point where we should be looking for answers, or at least assigning blame? Are the hitting coaches supporting the Donaldson/Tulowitzki approach, or are they hesitant to challenge it? Have Justin Smoak for sure and Kevin Pillar to a certain extent improved because of, or in the absence of, help from the hitting coaches? It’s interesting that both Smoak and Pillar are repeating narratives of reflection and readjustment they initiated themselves over the winter.

Last year, Toronto limped into the wild card slot in the midst of a major batting slump, pulled out a scintillating win against the Orioles, braced up for Texas and then reverted to recent form in the ALCS against Cleveland. And this was with a starting rotation that was deep, consistent, and firing on all cylinders.

Is it any wonder with the batting slump still the order of the day that the other changes experienced by the Blue Jays as a team have brought them to this tough situation?

More to the point, what, if anything, can be done to address the situation? If we wait for opposing pitchers to start throwing batting-practice fast balls to us, it’s going to be a long, hot, desultory summer.

But we’re not there yet.