Long Ball Stories

While winning two out of three from the wild-card leading Yankees doesn’t help the Blue Jays’ near lost cause of making the playoffs as much as a sweep would have done, it’s not bad to kick back and watch an effective Marco Estrada, a shutdown bullpen, and well-executed small ball combine to keep the playoff door open for our heroes, even if only by a teeny crack. As in tonight’s nice, crisp, 4-0 Toronto shutout of the maybe-not-quite-there-yet New York Yankees.

By the way, if I haven’t ever actually defined “small ball” in the way it is commonly used in the baseball lexicon of today, the shortest explanation of the term is that it’s an offensive approach that doesn’t rely on home runs and big explosive innings to score runs. Think single, sacrifice bunt, single to score one. Or walk, stolen base, single. Or leadoff double, ground ball right side, or bunt, or fly ball to right to move the runner to third, sacrifice fly. Think squeeze play, or even suicide squeeze (you’ll find a piece on this exciting aspect of baseball in my article archive). Think hit and run, which if it works is beautiful, and even if it doesn’t result in a base hit moving the runner to third, in most cases it helps to avoid the double play by starting the runner from first.

When you look at the “line score”—the inning by account of team scoring that heads up the box score of the game—and see a picket fence, ones in four different innings for the Blue Jays, as in tonight’s line score, it means one of two things: either the Jays hit a bunch of solo homers against a fly-ball pitcher, or they played small ball. Tonight, save for Jose Bautista’s solo dinger in the seventh inning that made the count 4-0, it was small ball that put the runs up on the board.

There’s no question whatsoever as to the meaning of the row of nine zeroes opposite the Yankees’ name in the line score: faced by a resurgent, crafty Marco Estrada, who is making people think seriously about Toronto re-signing him for next year, the big, bad Yankees took a horse collar. When Estrada left after seven brilliant innings, Ryan Tepera and Roberto Osuna were well up to their responsibility to protect his gem.

It’s not like Estrada was pitching some kind of perfect game, but he sure was good at shutting down threats. With two outs in the first he walked Aaron Judge and then gave up a double to right by Didi Gregorius, and only sharp work by Jose Bautista retrieving the double held Judge at third, where he was stranded when Estrada fanned Gary Sanchez.

In the second inning, after he’d fanned both Todd Frazier and Jacoby Ellsbury on killer change-ups, Garrett Cooper collected his seventh hit in nine at-bats, a double to right centre, but then Ronald Torreyes hit a short fly to right for the third out.

In the third inning he gave up his third straight two-out double, a ground-rule job to left by Judge, but Gregorius flew out to centre. He actually retired the side in the fourth on eleven pitches, but had to face Cooper leading off in the fifth.

Cooper collected his eighth hit of ten at bats in the series, a hard single into the left field corner that would have been a double but for the hustle of Steve Pearce who tracked it down in the corner and hurried it back in to hold Cooper to first. Estrada walked Torreyes, but then induced a fly ball out and a popup to second that Rob Refsnyder ran a long way to track down. This brought Judge back to the plate, with two on, two out, and the Jays leading by a 3-0 count. In a key at-bat of the game, Estrada froze Judge on a 1-2 count with a low outside changeup on which the Toronto starter might have caught a break from plate umpire Jerry Meals.

In the sixth with one out Estrada walked Sanchez, and then watched helplessly as Todd Frazier’s jam shot somehow found its way safely into right field. The base-runners seemed to bring focus to Estrada’s work: he got Ellsbury to foul out to Russell Martin behind the plate, and then, finally, retired Cooper on a fly ball to left.

Estrada went out with a flourish in the seventh, retiring the side on ten pitches, bumping his pitch total to 110. He ended up keeping the Yankees off the board on five hits with three walks while striking out six. It had to be frustrating for the Yankees that three of their five hits were doubles, and they weren’t able to cash any of them.

Ryan Tepera gave up a two-out single to Sanchez in the eighth, and then applauded Refsnyder’s effort in going to his knees on the backhand behind second to corral Frazier’s ground ball base-hit bid, and throw the hitter out for the third out.

In a non-save situation, Roberto Osuna threw 22 pitches, almost all breaking balls, in the ninth, and not one of them was hit into fair territory. He walked Ellsbury leading off, fanned Cooper (yay!) who ended up 8 for 12 in the series, fanned Chase Headley hitting for Torreyes, walked Brett Gardner, and fanned Aaron Hicks for the third out. It was an interesting ride for Osuna, but it never became a save situation.

Sonny Gray, the centre piece of New York’s trade deadline wheeling and dealing, took the mound for the Yankees. Gray had pitched well enough in his previous start for Oakland against Toronto, giving up no earned runs in six innings, but being saddled with the loss as the result of a four-run outburst by Toronto that stemmed from his own fielding error, when he threw the ball away in an ill-advised attempt to turn a doubtful double play.

Tonight he retired the side in the first, stranding a one-out walk, but then suffered a form of Chinese water torture, giving up one run apiece in the second, third, and fourth innings. The only real difference between Estrada’s performance against the Yankees and Gray’s against Toronto, is that for those three innings in a row Toronto hitters managed to put the ball in play efficaciously with the runners in scoring position; the Yankees, as we have seen, didn’t.

With one out in the second, Steve Pearce having fanned on a 3-2 pitch leading off, after taking two strikes from 3-0, Zeke Carrera hit a double to centre. With Ryan Goins at the plate, the Toronto shortstop worked the count to 3-2, then fouled off the sixth pitch from the Yankee starter. At this point, Gray, having a brain cramp eerily reminiscent of his disastrous error against the Jays in Toronto, made an unnecessary throw to second; his throw went astray for an error, allowing Carrera to advance to third. Goins fouled off two more pitches, and then, with Carrera running on contact, he hit a little bouncer towards first that Gray cut off and tried for the play at the plate. But Carrera streaked in and evaded the tag with a great slide for the first run, while Goins was across first with an RBI fielder’s choice. Unfortunately the Jays got burned trying to continue their aggressive play, as Kevin Pillar swung through the pitch with the hit and run on, and Goins was easily out at second. Pillar bounced back to Gray for the third out, but there was that first Toronto run, unearned but real.

Jose Bautista, on base with yet another walk, manufactured the second Blue Jay run in the third by stealing second as Russell Martin struck out, on what should have been a double play, strikeout, catcher to second for the tag. But there he was on second after the video review confirmed his right to the bag, just waiting for Josh Donaldson to knock him in with a single to left. Now it was Jays 2, Sonny Gray no score.

In the fourth inning Zeke Carrera was involved again, this time by getting the sacrifice bunt down with Steve Pearce on first with a single. With Pearce on second, Gray walked Goins to set up the double play, but Kevin Pillar grounded a single through the left side to score Pearce with the third run. Rob Refsnyder hit into a double play to end the inning, but Estrada had three runs to work with after four innings.

Gray got three ground balls in the fifth to work around a two-out walk to Donaldson, and then struck out two while retiring the side in the sixth, his last inning. If you want the visual proof that only Toronto’s situational hitting separated these two teams today, all you have to do is look at the pitching lines. Estrada: seven innings pitched, no runs, 5 hits, three walks, six strikeouts on 110 pitches; Gray: six innings pitched, 2 earned runs, 4 hits, 4 walks, six strikeouts on 104 pitches.

The lefty Chasen Shreve finished up for the Yankees, going two innings through the eighth. He gave up the two-out solo homer to Bautista in the seventh which was nice to have for extra cushion, but ultimately inconsequential, and struck out three on 27 pitches over the six outs.

And so Toronto takes two of three from the visiting Yankees, not enough to close much of the gap on the teams in front of them in the wild card race, but just enough to keep them thinking. And keep us thinking too.

Following the huge disappointment of Sunday’s meltdown by Robert Osuna, which cost the Blue Jays a series win in Houston, they came home to a day of regrouping, which may have contributed to their solid 4-2 win behind a strong Jay Happ on Tuesday night.

But the holes in their starting rotation, which exacerbate the over-use of the bullpen on occasion, have made it very difficult for Toronto to string out the run of wins they need to get themselves back in the race for a playoff spot.

That’s why watching the Jays and the Yankees Wednesday night, it would be really hard to see Toronto as the same team that shut down New York the night before.

Once again I’m combining two game reports because, thanks be to god, I saw very little of the Wednesday Yankee dismantling of Buffalo’s, er Toronto’s, pitching staff, so I thought I’d tack it on to the Tuesday game report, so we can spend more time on something a little more positive.

I missed most of Wednesday’s game because our grand-daughter’s birthday was last week, and we finally had the opportunity to celebrate it by taking her out to dinner at her favourite restaurant. This involved a trip downtown for an early dinner and then a drive across town to take her home. So I didn’t get home until about 9:00, just in time to see things go south on Toronto, as they went from one run down to six behind in the late innings.

Ah, but Tuesday’s game was another story.

It was a matchup between two veteran lefties, Jay Happ and C.C. Sabathia. By the numbers, their respective ERAs matched up quite well, though their won/loss records, Happ at 4-8 and Sabathia at 9-4, simply reflected the relative success of their teams, the Yankees chasing the Red Sox for the division lead, and the Blue Jays struggling but failing to escape from the cellar in the division.

The first inning marked a distinct departure for Toronto from recent experience, in that Happ had a relatively easy time of it, stranding a two-out walk to Aaron Judge that may have been more strategic than in error.

On the contrary, it was Toronto that started with a rush for once against Sabathia, and by the time the inning was over it was 2-0 for the home team.

Jose Bautista started things off by taking an outside pitch from Sabathia down the right field line for a double. Then a strange thing, no, a very strange thing, happened: Russell Martin laid down a sacrifice bunt to move Bautista to third. That’s right, in the first inning, playing in Toronto, not at Wrigley Field, Toronto employed the sac bunt after a leadoff double. I doubt that it was called by manager John Gibbons.

Funny thing is, the sac bunt became irrelevant when Josh Donaldson powdered one to right centre off Sabathia for a two-run homer. Next up was Justin Smoak, who drew a walk, bringing Kendrys Morales to the plate. Morales fanned on a checked swing for the second out, but Steve Pearce kept the inning alive with a double to left. Unfortunately, this was not an occasion when Smoak was able to make it all the way around, despite the advantage of being able to take off with the pitch with two outs, so he only made it to third. Kevin Pillar hit the ball hard on the ground, but right to Garret Cooper for the final out. Still, the Jays had two runs, the Yankees none.

To their credit the Yankees came back in the top of the second and put the first two hitters on against Happ, as Chase Headley hit one off the end of the bat into right for a single, and Didi Gregorius followed with another base hit to right. Happ, who doesn’t usually throw too many double-play balls, threw one to Todd Frazier, who swung at the first pitch from Happ and hit it to Ryan Goins to start the twin-killing, with Headley moving up to third. All Happ had to do was get by the newly-arrived rookie first baseman, Garrett Cooper, to preserve the lead. But as the Toronto pitching staff was to learn, getting by Cooper’s not so easy. He hit a two-out single to right to score Headley before Ronald Torreyes grounded out to second to end the inning.

As C.C. Sabathia was coming out to the mound for the second inning, something was picking at my memory. I was trying to figure out whose image was called to mind by watching Sabathia on the mound. Sabathia, with his cap slightly askew, his ears a bit Dumbo-ish, his belly pushing out his shirt, even the fingers of his glove slightly splayed out, like some old raggy thing that badly needs to be restrung. Even from behind, he looks a little off-kilter, like he might just fall over.

Then it came to me: Max Patkin, the self-declared Second Clown Prince of Baseball. At this stage of his career and in his life, C.C. looks an awful lot like Max Patkin. Check it out at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z61l4QMCb8E Lest you think this is an insult to C.C., be aware that I’m old enough to have seen many clips of Max Patkin in action, and I have a lot of affection for his act. But Patkin never had Sabathia’s arm, nor his stellar career.

So the veteran lefty came out for the bottom of the second after seeing his team cut the lead to one, and blew the Jays away on thirteen pitches, two ground outs and a strikeout of Bautista. Happ answered in the top of the third with a perfect inning: he struck out the side but walked Aaron Judge, which was a fine result, because Judge didn’t hit one out on him.

It looked like a game that was going to stay tight and low-scoring, and be a battle between the two crafty left-handers. It’s not like the Jays blew the Yankees out of the water in the bottom of the third, but the course of the game changed in a significant way: the Toronto lead was extended to 4-1, and the inning marked the surprising end of Sabathia’s night.

The damage was done quickly. Russell Martin singled to left past the shortstop Didi Gregorius. Josh Donaldson, who’d never taken Sabathia out before the first inning tonight, did it again, with a rope down the line that stayed fair, scoring Martin ahead of him. After Sabathia fanned Justin Smoak, Kendrys Morales doubled to the left-field corner, but Sabathia retired Steve Pearce and Kevin Pillar to strand Morales, though it took a nice over-the-shoulder catch by Ronald Torreyes on a teasing looper by Pillar to get the third out for him.

Happ did what he needed to do in the fourth as the beneficiary of two extra runs, and that was to shut the Yankees down, retiring them on nine pitches with the help of a marvellous leaping grab by Donaldson, doing it all tonight, of a screamer off the bat of Todd Frazier.

Surprisingly, though C.C. Sabathia did not come out for the bottom of the fourth. Having been touched up only by Donaldson, it didn’t add up that he’d be pulled after three complete, especially after clamping down after each of Donaldson’s homers. We later learned that his arthritic right knee—his landing knee—had been acting up, and it worsened to the point where he couldn’t continue. It’s a bit odd to think of someone three years short of forty being limited by arthritis, but if he weren’t a ball player I guess we wouldn’t think twice about it.

Brian Mitchell, a 26-year-old right-hander who’d started the season with the Yankees, but had just been recalled from Triple A where he’d been starting, came out for the fourth inning. Normally, losing your starter after three innings in the first game of a three-game series is a bit of a disaster for a team, triggering a domino effect of having to use too many pitchers out of the bullpen for too many innings with two games still to play.

But this time the Yankees caught a break in having Mitchell available. With his recent string of starts in the minors, he’d been well stretched out, and was up to the task of shutting down the Jays over a protracted outing. He ended up going four innings plus a batter, giving up no runs on four hits with only one walk, on 67 pitches. An oddity in his performance was that he compiled zero strikeouts against the whiff-happy Toronto lineup, meaning that he was generally in the zone and pitching effectively to contact.

Mitchell had to work around two base runners in each of the fourth and fifth innings, pitched a clean sixth, and worked around his own one-out error in the seventh. In fact, the only real problem Mitchell had to deal with was fielding off the TV Dome mound and its surrounding turf. In his first inning of work an easy grounder by Jose Bautista went right through his wicket for an error, and in his last inning his cleats caught in the turf and he fell awkwardly before he could release his throw to first to retire Donaldson on what was generously, though fairly, scored a base hit.

After Mitchell’s fine work, leaving with Steve Pearce on first after a leadoff infield hit in the bottom of the eighth, he gave way to the newly-acquired bullpen stud David Robertson, who got Kevin Pillar to hit into a double play erasing Pearce, gave up a base hit to Ryan Goins, and retired Darwin Barney on a looper to centre. Mitchell and Robertson had held Toronto scoreless for five innings.

But beyond Donaldson’s two round-trippers, the story of this game really wasn’t about how the Jays’ hitters succeeded, or didn’t, against the New York pitching, but whether the Yankees’ hitters could mount a counter-attack against Jay Happ and the Toronto bullpen.

After shutting down the Yankees in the fourth inning, Happ pitched around a leadoff single by Garrett Cooper, his second hit of the game, in the fifth. In the sixth, facing Aaron Judge leading off, Happ froze him with a 3-2 fast ball right down the middle.

But then he went 3-2 on both Gary Sanchez and Chase Headley, and lost them both. Manager John Gibbons went one more batter with Happ, so that he would face the left-handed Didi Gregorius, who flied out to left for the second out, but Gibbons wasn’t about to let a tired Happ face the right-handed slugger Todd Frazier. So Happ was done, with a line of 5.2 innings pitched, one run, four hits, four walks, and 5 strikeouts on 97 pitches. Dominic Leone came on to face Frazier, whose infield single loaded the bases, bringing the dangerous Cooper to the plate again. In perhaps the key at-bat of the game, Leone got Cooper to fly out to Bautista in right to end the inning.

Danny Barnes started the seventh, gave up a base hit to Ronald Torreyes, and then got a double-play ball from Brett Gardner. But when Clint Frazier followed with a base hit to right, the call went out for Ryan Tepera to come in early, before the eighth, to face Aaron Judge, who for the second at-bat in a row looked at a called third strike, this time a curve ball.

Tepera of course came back for the eighth, and struggled, but managed to hold the Yankees to one run and turn the game over to Roberto Osuna with a two run Toronto lead. Tepera hit both Gary Sanchez, who doesn’t appear to have paid attention during the “drop away from inside pitches” drills, and is lucky he didn’t leave the game with a broken bone, and Chase Headley. Didi Gregorius popped out on the infield fly rule, Todd Frazier walked to load the bases on a 3-2 pitch that looked pretty good, and Garrett Cooper strode to the plate with a chance to break the game open for the Yankees. But the best he could do against Tepera was a sacrifice fly to score Sanchez with New York’s second run. When Torreyes lined out to centre, the threat was over.

For anybody worried about how Roberto Osuna would do this time out in the save situation (which included everyone watching), it wasn’t worth troubling ourselves over.

It took Osuna only 9 pitches to dispose of the Yankees and secure the win for Toronto. A soft liner to short, a popup to second, and the coup de gràce, a foul popup to first by Aaron Judge, who ended his night with two strikeouts, two walks, and the popup. After the horror of Sunday’s ninth-inning breakdown by Osuna, it was balm to the afflicted, and a good start to the crucial Yankee series.

But one question lingered: with Cesar Valdez going on the disabled list, who was going to start for Toronto Wednesday night against Masahiro Tanaka?

And a special award goes to anyone who, 48 hours before game time on Wednesday, would have come up with the name, Nick Tepesch. Say who?

Nick Tepesch is a guy who was actually in the Texas Rangers’ rotation in 2014, but anyone who doesn’t know that is forgiven: after all, 2014 is the antediluvian period, i. e., before the flood, pre-Tulo trade, pre-bat flip, pre-everything, and who was paying attention then?

Anyway, Tepesch missed 2015 with an injury, had a cuppa with the Dodgers last year, and another cuppa with the Twins this spring, but spent most of this year for the Twins at Rochester in Triple A, until the Twins cut him loose and the Blue Jays picked him up for rotation depth in Buffalo, along with most of the Red Army Chorus. (Don’t laugh: some of those bassos have tremendous arms!) His Buffalo record is pretty short: three appearances, two starts, twelve innings, a win, an ERA of 3.00 and a rather impressive WHIP of 0.92.

By the time I got in the car from the restaurant tonight it was the bottom of the third inning, the Yanks were leading 3-1, and the Jays were coming to bat. Raffy Lopez, who was spelling Russell Martin behind the plate, not a bad thing, since he had at least caught Tepesch in Buffalo, was leading off. He reached on catcher’s interference, and Jose Bautista popped out, and then Tanaka walked Josh Donaldson and Justin Smoak. Tanaka obviously wasn’t sharp. Steve Pearce scored Lopez on a sac fly and Kevin Pillar popped out, so the Jays had shortened the Yankee lead to 3-2 without a base hit. The Yankees hadn’t driven Tepesch out of the box, and Tanaka wasn’t particularly sharp.

Ominously, though, I learned that all three Yankee runs had come on solo homers. Having heard that Tepesch is a bit of a soft-tosser, images of Marco Estrada or even R.A. Dickey having a bad day came immediately to mind.

The game progressed under Jerry and Joe’s narration as we rolled up the Parkway and headed east. Tepesch survived two two-out base hits, one by that rookie guy Garrett Cooper, when Brett Gardner lined out to Pillar in centre. Tanaka racked up another walk, Ryan Goins with two out, but fanned Nori Aoki to end the inning.

Tepesch’ not-so-bad debut ended in the fifth. But he was pulled by manager John Gibbons before actually giving up the fatal blows. That was left to Leonel Campos, who came in to a pickle and hopped into the brine himself to join the fun. Chase Headley was caught looking by Tepesch for the first out, and then the fill-in righty walked Aaron Judge. So far, so good, really. But when Didi Gregorius, who always seems to find a way to pop the Jays’ bubble, doubled to centre, with Judge stopping at third, Gibbie decided to call it a night on Tepesch, and brought in Campos, who started well by fanning Gary Sanchez, but then gave up back-to-back two-out doubles to Todd Frazier and Jacoby Ellsbury, plating both inherited runners from Tepesch, and one for Campos, just for extra.

Tepesch was out, it was 6-2 New York, and by now we were heading home to Etobicoke, thinking black thoughts about Aaron Sanchez’ blister and a mediocre record that forced us to sell off Francisco Liriano.

As we pounded along the 401, Bautista led off the bottom of the fifth with a solo homer to cut the lead to 6-3, and Tanaka walked Donaldson, causing Yankee manager Joe Girardi to call quits on Tanaka an inning short of qualifying for a victory, and bring in Chad Green, who proceeded to strike out the side.

Aaron Loup came in and pitched a clean sixth, bringing the Jays back to the plate for the bottom of the sixth, when as we got closer to home in the gathering dusk they put up another rally. Whatever magic rock Chad Green had rubbed before coming in for the Toronto fifth must have had only one dose in it, because the bottom of the Jays’ order chased him unceremoniously in the sixth. Nori Aoki singled to centre. Darwin Barney hit into a force play. Mr. Clutch of 2017 Ryan Goins doubled to centre to score Barney, making it 6-4.

Exit Chad Green and enter newly-acquired Tommy Kahnle for the Yankees. Kahnle promptly endeared himself to Joe Girardi by wild-pitching Goins to third while walking the number nine hitter, Lopez. Kahnle popped up Bautista for the second out, but Donaldson singled to centre to score Goins and surprisingly send Lopez around to third, but Justin Smoak struck out on a 2-2 pitch.

We arrived home as the top of the seventh began, and I excitedly settled in to watch my boys pick up that next run to tie it up, anticipating an exciting finish to a see-saw game. Silly me.

Looked pretty good for an inning, as Dominic Leone and David Robertson traded clean innings, each using only twelve pitches.

Ah, but then came the eighth, and the beginning of the end for the Toronto bullpen. John Gibbons sent Leone back out for the eighth, which almost never works, even though the pitcher might have been lights out in the previous inning.

In this case Leone gave up a single to Todd Frazier, and he was finished. The lefty J. P. Howell came in to match up with Jacoby Ellsbury and struck him out. Gibbie then called on Taylor Cole, a recent callup from Buffalo who after six years in the minors, was making his major league debut, parents in the stands and all. Too bad what should have been a happy occasion turned into a walk off the plank for Mr. Cole.

Garrett Cooper (remember him?) doubled to left, Frazier to third. Ronald Torreyes singled both home. 8-5 Yankees. Brett Gardner walked. Chase Headley singled to left, and the Yanks tried to send Torreyes, but Nori Aoki gunned down Torreyes at the plate for the second out. The only positive note came when Cole struck out Aaron Judge on a 3-2 count to end the inning. Besides letting in Leone’s run, Cole had given up only one of his own, despite giving up three hits and a walk.

If he had been allowed to take his seat then, after the eighth inning, it wouldn’t have been a great debut, but he could have cherished the Judge strikeout, licked his wounds over the base hits, and bought Aoki a steak (Wagyu beef?) to celebrate surviving his first major league pitching appearance.

But baseball is a cruel game, and sometimes it doesn’t go like a fairy tale, even a tainted one. Cole was brought up as a fresh arm, perhaps just for one game to give an arm a break in the Toronto bullpen. John Gibbons needed to have him at least try to get through the ninth, for the sake of the rest of the pitching staff, and so out he came to face the Yankees again.

Gibbie’s strategy didn’t pay off, and unfortunately the brunt of his decision fell on Cole. Gregorius singled. Sanchez singled. Cole hit Todd Frazier to load the bases (and send Frazier to the disabled list, we later learned). This is where I take issue with John Gibbons, who should have pulled Cole at this point, even if you can understand why he was sent out in the ninth in the first place. But he didn’t pull him. Jacoby Ellsbury dribbled one out to second base that scored Gregorius and moved the other runners up because Rob Refsnyder could only play it to first. Cooper, again, singled to centre to score both Sanchez and Frazier. 11-5 Yankees. Oh, then it was time for Danny Barnes to bail out Taylor Cole, after the latter had given up four runs on six hits in one inning in his major league debut.

Barnes got the last two outs to end the farce, and the series was tied.

Taylor Cole? Oh, the Didi Gregorius single leading off the ninth deflected off his right foot and broke a toe, and he was put on the 10-day disabled list. Maybe he’ll get a Purple Heart?

It looked awfully good going to the bottom of the ninth today for Toronto to accomplish a surprising series win over the American-League-leading Houston Astros.

Didn’t we have a three-run lead? Wasn’t Roberto Osuna ready to go, after having blown the Astros away in the ninth inning last night, two strikeouts and a fly ball, on eleven pitches? Wasn’t the post-game spread going to be so-o-o good, and the flight back to Toronto such fun, after a 4-2 road trip that could have been 5-1?

But, it wasn’t to be. Osuna wasn’t wild, oh, no. That would have been somehow understandable, given that nearly every one of the great closers has had the occasional bout of crazy wildness. (Aroldis Chapman, anyone?) No, the problem was that he was eminently hittable, and the Astros simply undressed him in public, right there on the mound, without even hitting a home run. Four runs on five hits in two thirds of an inning, and the Astros had a walkoff win in the series clincher.

Cue the watercress sandwiches, the tight seats in economy on the plane home, and the questions and doubts, which are all we are left with.

And it had all been going so well. Marcus Stroman tiptoed through the minefield of the incredibly dangerous Houston lineup for six and two thirds innings, giving up three runs, only two of them earned, on eleven hits, a couple of walks, and six strikeouts. He pitched his heart out, throwing 118 pitches, and left with a 6-3 lead, thanks to an early two-run homer by Jose Bautista in the third, a shocking two-run homer by the newest Jay Nori Aoki and a two-run double by Old Reliable Justin Smoak, all four runs in the seventh inning, that looked to have decided the game.

Meanwhile, all the Astros had been able to muster was three runs in the fifth, which they accomplished via two solid base hits, a double by Josh Reddick and a single by Jose Altuve, two infield hits, by Derek Fisher and Carlos Beltran, the latter not figuring in the scoring, and a shocking error on a ground ball that went through the legs of Ryan Goins off the bat of Yuli Gurriel that did figure in the scoring.

As we’ve come to expect from Stroman, his achievement today was hard-earned. Starting with a ground-rule double by Josh Reddick in the first, he had base-runners on in every inning but the second, and in his best inning, the sixth, when he struck out the side, it was still and all after a leadoff base hit by the Houston catcher Juan Centeno.

In the third he walked Centeno and gave out a two-out single to Jose Altuve, and needed a fine running catch in the alley in right centre by Bautista of a another gap-seeking drive by Reddick to retire the side. In the fourth he needed a double-play ball off the bat of the ubiquitous Centeno to escape a bases-loaded one-out jam created by base hits by Gurriel and Carlos Beltran and a walk to Alex Bregman. After striking out the side in the sixth (after the—remember?—Centeno hit), he gave up a hard two-out single off the wall in right in the seventh by Marwin Gonzalez, followed by another Beltran base hit that ended his night. Dominic Leone came in and stranded the two Astros by getting Alex Bregman to fly out to right.

Only in the fifth inning did he allow too many runners, and only in the fifth inning did the mighty Astros’ offence contribute anything like a coherent attack, though there was that big “E” hung on Ryan Goins in the middle of it that helped things along.

Stroman had cruised, if that’s the word for what he does, into the fifth inning on the strength of Bautista’s two-run homer in the third, his seventeenth, that chased Darwin Barney, who had reached on a throwing error by Marwin Gonzalel, playing short tonight.

Like the two previous innings, Stroman let the leadoff batter get aboard, but this time he started out in a little deeper, because it was a double down the left-field line by former Toronto draftee Jake Marisnick. Derek Fisher followed with an infield single to second that moved Marisnick up to third.

MLB should have a free-pass base hit for Jose Altuve, like the no-pitch intentional walk, for when the diminutive second baseman comes up with nobody out and runners on first and third. You just know he’s going to get a base knock and score the runner from third, so if you’re worried about the pace of play you could just wave him on to first and bring the run in. Which is a roundabout way of saying that Altuve as expected scored Marisnick with a single to centre.

With nobody out and runners at first and second Josh Reddick’s little squibber back to Stroman served the same purpose as a sacrifice bunt, and Fisher and Altuve moved up to second and third. At this point, I’m not sure how it happened, whether he was thinking too much of his possible options, but Ryan Goins let Yuli Gurriel’s sharp but easy hopper through his legs for an error that allowed Fisher to score the second run and Altuve to move up to third. Still only one out, Gonzalez’ deep fly to Steve Pearce in left was easily enought to bring in Altuve with the third run, giving Houston the lead.

Carlos Beltran kept the inning alive with an infield hit to second, but then Bregman grounded out to Goins, who did not make a mistake this time at shortstop for the third out, leaving Stroman in the hole and on the hook for the loss.

Mike Fiers had the start today for the Astros, the second start he’s had against Toronto this season. He’d had a decent outing in Toronto on July eighth, a quality start, in fact, in a 7-2 loss to Toronto that from Fiers’ perspective wasn’t nearly that bad. He’d gone out after six innings down 3-2, having given up three runs on only five hits but three walks, with six strikeouts. On that occasion he’d have to sit helplessly on the bench, his game finished, while the usually formidable Chris Devensky coughed up four more add-on runs for the Jays in the seventh.

His start today was similar in the sense that it was just short, by a fourth earned run, of another quality start over six innings. Like the first time against Toronto his hit total was notably low, only four hits, but he walked three again and, oddly, struck out six again.

Fiers had only given up one walk in the first two innings, and struck out Nori Aoki, making his first start for Toronto in left field, who led off the third. Then Marwyn Gonzalez let him down by making a bad throw to first on a routine ground ball by Darwin Barney. Jose Bautista, who had watched Fiers go to his trademark curve ball throughout the first two innings, was waiting for one, timed it up, and hit it out to left field for a two-run lead on the first hit given up by Fiers, the Barney run unearned, of course.

Fiers kept the Jays off the board for the next three innings, stranding a walk in the fourth, a walk in the fifth, and in the sixth yielding a single to Justin Smoak, only the second base hit he had given up, but the perfect positioning of his infield turned a hard shot by Ryan Goins into a fast shortstop-unassisted to first double play.

With a 3-2 lead after the Houston outburst in the fifth, and going on only 84 pitches after six innings, there was no doubt that Fiers would come out for the seventh. Too bad that he did, as he gave up his third and fourth hits to the first two batters, an opposite-field ground ball single by Kevin Pillar and a stunning line-drive home run to right by Nori Aoki, playing in front of what had been until this week his home-town crowd. Suddenly Mike Fiers was down 4-3, and when he hit the next batter, Darwin Barney, A.J. Hinch decided to come and rescue his starter, signalling in the lanky veteran right-hander, Luke Gregerson.

The Jays weren’t finished, though. Bautista fouled out to the third baseman, but manager John Gibbons started Barney from first and saw Russell Martin pull off a perfect hit-and-run, Barney scooting to third. After that baserunning success, the Jays pulled a rock by trying the contact play from third (have I said that I hate the contact play?) on what turned out to be the wrong pitch, with Josh Donaldson hitting a weak grounder back to the pitcher, who easily got the ball to the catcher Centeno for the tag play and the second out. However, the Big Smoaker hit a towering drive to centre that was misplayed off the wall by Jake Marisnick. It went for a double and chased both Martin and Donaldson home, giving the Jays a 6-3 lead with two innings to go.

The Jays had a golden opportunity to expand their lead in the eighth, after Goins and Pillar led off the inning with singles to left off the left-handed reliever Reymin Goduan, in Goins case another base hit against a lefty. Aoki hung in for eight pitches, fouling off one bunt attempt, going to a 3-2 count, then fouling off three more pitches before Goduan finally punched him out. This was Goduan’s last batter, and manager Hinch brought in his prized young bull, Francis Martes, who is certainly worth all the fuss, judging from what he brought to the game today. He fanned Barney and Bautista to end the inning and leave Goduan’s two runners in place at first and second.

Leone stayed on after finishing the seventh for Stroman, and pitched a quick and powerful eighth, adding another jewel to the crown of his 2017 record with the Jays; Centeno grounded out to Smoak unassisted at first, Marisnick fanned, and Fisher fanned. The total for Leone was one and a third innings pitched, two strikeouts, and twenty-one pitches. Can we clone Leone?

Martes stayed on for the Jays ninth and continued his impressive performance. He might not always be on the plate, but he’s still impressive. He walked Martin leading off, saw him advance to second on a past ball, retired Donaldson on a popup and Smoak on a short fly to left, put Kendrys Morales on with an intentional pass, and got Goins on a hard grounder to first for the third out.

So, as I said at the beginning, it was looking pretty good for a series win in Houston as the Jays went to the bottom of the ninth up three and relying on Roberto Osuna to bring them home safely.

But whoever it was who came out of the bullpen for Toronto in the bottom of the ninth, it wasn’t the Roberto Osuna we’ve come to know and love. First the sorry details, and then some analysis. Jose Altuve knocked the second pitch from Osuna into centre for a single. It was a 92.5 mph four-seam fast ball. Hold that thought, but Altuve, it’s what he does. Josh Reddick took a called third strike that he disputed so vociferously that he was tossed by plate umpire Rob Drake. According to the pitching chart, Drake was right. Yuli Gurriel singled to left, Altuve to second. Marwin Gonzalez singled hard to right. The Astros chose not to challenge Bautista’s arm, and the bases were loaded.

Carlos Beltran grounded into a fielder’s choice, Smoak to Goins, with no chance to turn the game-ending double play. Altuve scored, Gurriel to third. Alex Bregman tripled on the first pitch from Osuna into the left-centre gap, scoring Gurriel and Beltran to tie the game. Omar Centeno finished off his very active game with a line single over Darwin Barney’s head, and Bregman trotted home with the winning run.

So, what happened? The real question is what happened to Osuna’s fast ball? Remember that Altuve’s hit came on a four-seamer under 93? So, in five pitches to Reddick, he threw one fast ball, a two-seamer at 92.3. He got a two-seamer up to 93.8 on the only pitch he threw to Gurriel, which went for a base hit. He threw a 94.3 mph fast ball to Gonzalez, the only fast ball he threw to him, and it went for a single. He threw only sliders to Beltran and Bregman. The only fast ball he threw to Centeno was a four-seamer at 94, and it was hit for the game-winner.

What happened is fairly obvious. On this night Roberto Osuna didn’t have his good fast ball, and his mediocre fast ball was tasty to the Houston hitters. As to why his fast ball was down in velocity, who knows? Temporary blip, or sign of over-use?

If a temporary blip, so be it. It cost us a series win in Houston, but who could criticize Osuna for a blown save, even if it was the third one in two weeks, after all he’s achieved in Toronto?

But he’s still only 22 years old, and has already achieved a lot, 85 career saves, and 191 game appearances. Maybe it’s time to start being concerned about his arm, which already underwent Tommy John surgery early in his minor league career, in 2013 when he was with low-A Lansing and only 18 years old.

So Toronto comes home three and three from a road trip that could have been, even should have been, five and one. The final death knell to a season of lost opportunities? It’s getting harder to deny it.

Okay, folks, so the aggregate run total for the first two games of the Toronto series in Houston with the world-leading (the Dodgers being not of this world) Astros reads Houston, 19, Toronto 11, which when you look at it that way doesn’t even seem so bad on its own.

But the key point here is that, unlike soccer playoffs, aggregate totals don’t count for poop in baseball, and the only takeaway from the Friday and Saturday night affairs in Texas is that both teams emerged with one win and one loss, leaving it all up to Sunday afternoon’s game as to which team will win this series, and, for that matter, the season’s series between the two teams, which is currently knotted at three wins apiece. (Yes, our struggling Jays are tied in the season series with the home-and-chilled-out Astros, who have probably already ordered the plastic sheeting for this fall’s clubhouse celebrations.)

I’m doing a two games for one deal here, for a couple of reasons. The first is that I couldn’t bear to spend even 1200 words, let alone 1500 to 2000, on Friday night’s drubbing of a significant portion of the Toronto pitching staff. The second is that I had to pick up son and family from the airport, arriving at Pearson Saturday evening just at game time, and bring them back to the house for a rather late post-flight-from-Victoria dinner. And, yes, that’s the family with the five-year-old who begs to stay to watch just one more commercial break instead of just one more inning. I have to start working on that boy or his inner Don Draper is going to win out over his inner Kevin Pillar . . .

So I followed the first couple of innings of Saturday’s game with Jerry and Joe in the car, peeked at the middle innings throughout serving and eating of said dinner, and settled in to watch the stirring end of a stirring game attentively, though it was too late to start taking my own notes. So, as per tradition, I’ll only reference what I saw of Saturday’s game.

If the Cesar Valdez Cinderella story ended up in his last start with the clock finishing the midnight bells before he got safely away, this time the pumpkin-carriage blew up right at the curb, raining pumpkin seeds and mice bits all over the poor befuddled prince hurrying out of the ball to catch his girl.

Sorry, that’s a bit much.

But what happened to Valdez wasn’t a bit much. It was way much, as the Astros gave him a couple of hopeful dances in the first three innings before lighting a firecracker and tossing it down the bodice of his ball gown in the fourth.

Houston started Brad Peacock, who’d thrown six shutout innings at the Jays in Toronto on July ninth, albeit giving up five walks along with five hits on his rocky way, and he wasn’t fooling a lot of people tonight, starting with Kendrys Morales for one in the top of the fourth for, who hit a two-run dinger after a walk to Justin Smoak, with the result that he and Valdez were still in the game after three and a half innings, with Houston up by a not-insurmountable 3-2 count.

Valdez had succumbed to the two-out lightning strike in the first inning, giving the Astros a 2-0 jump start after Peacock breezed through the Jays in the top of the first on seven pitches. With Jose Altuve getting the night off Derek Fisher was in the leadoff spot, and he and Alex Bregman grounded out before Josh Reddick singled and the veteran Cuban all-star “rookie” Yuli Gurriel drilled one to left for the lead.

Peacock gave up a walk in the second and an infield hit in the third, getting up to only 36 pitches for three, while Valdez retired Houston in the second in order, and gave up another run in the third on a one-out double by Derek Fisher and a two-out RBI single by Gurriel, again.

But when Morales touched up Peacock in the fourth it cut the Houston lead to one, and it looked like we had a ball game going for us. But then the heavens opened up, or maybe hell rained down, on the visitors, as Houston chased Valdez, cuffed Matt Dermody, and roughed up Mike Bolsinger for a total of nine runs, to turn that ball game that was into a farce.

In fact, when you break down the inning, maybe manager John Gibbons would have been better off leaving Valdez in. Carlos Beltran led off with a single, followed by a walk to Brian McCann. The rookie Trevor White doubled to left, scoring Beltran and moving McCann up to third. With the score now 4-2 Houston, and two runners in scoring position, Valdez fanned Jake Marisnick on his seventieth pitch, which wasn’t really a huge number to get ten outs against the high-octane Astros.

At this point, though, Gibbons elected to yank Valdez and match up Matt Dermody with the left-handed Derek Fisher, who grounded out to second for the second out, scoring McCann with the fifth run. But the problem with matchups, especially in the early/middle innings of a game, is that you’re stuck with a one-hitter guy that you have to leave in, or you start burning your bullpen. So Dermody was left in to face the right-handed Alex Bregman, who has given Toronto fits in the last two years, and he delivered again, hitting a two-run homer, to right yet, to extend the lead to 7-2.

When Dermody gave up a base hit to the next lefty, Josh Reddick, Gibbons finally realized that Dermody had outstayed his usefulness, and brought in Bolsinger with his can of gasoline to throw on the fire and it got really crazy after that, a walk to Gurriel, a three-run homer to Marwin Gonzalez, a double to centre by Beltran, abetted by an ill-conceived dive for his liner by Zeke Carrera, another walk to McCann, a run-scoring single by White, a run-scoring single by Marisnick, and a walk to Fisher before Bregman scared the pants off everybody with a drive to the wall in left that was hauled in by Steve Pearce just short of another three-run dinger.

By the time it was over it was 12-2 Astros, and legions of Jays’ fans everywhere were heading for the medicine chest for industrial-strength Tylenol, or to the liquor cabinet for something quicker.

Yet I would argue that Gibbie would have been better off, certainly no worse, to leave Valdez in to work things out. If Valdez gets the same groundout—I know, there’s no certainty of that—it’s 5-2, Trevor White is on third, and there’s a righty facing Bregman, who had grounded out twice against Valdez already. In the fourth inning, with a depleted bullpen, the manager can’t go to any of his high-leverage guys, and who’s to say that his low-leverage bullpen guys, like Dermody and Bolsinger, are any better than Valdez, who’s done sort of okay so far in the game? Just sayin’.

Anyway, after that mess there’s not too much to say about this one, except to cherry-pick a couple of notable moments from the rest of an un-notable game.

It wasn’t particularly notable that Houston wasn’t finished after the fourth inning massacre. After Aaron Loup skated out of trouble in the fifth, they got to him for two in the sixth. Danny Barnes gave up one in the seventh, and it was almost a moral victory that the forgotten J. P. Howell only gave up a leadoff homer to the bashing rookie Trevor White in the eighth inning, and then retired Houston on three ground balls and eleven pitches.

Brighter news for Toronto came from the fact that they solved Brad Peacock this time. Despite the fact that he extended his record to 10-1, he didn’t exactly cover himself in glory, going six innings but giving up seven runs on nine hits. Besides Morales, Russell Martin lit him up for a solo homer in the fifth, his twelfth, and Ryan Goins took him deep in the sixth with two on, his fifth homer of this strangely productive season, taking his RBI total to 39.

Joe Musgrove, Reymin Goduan, and James Hoyt shut out Toronto over the last three innings, keeping the Jays from mounting a comeback (he wrote, without the slightest trace of irony.)

As I noted at the beginning of this story, there’s no carryover in baseball, and all Toronto needed Saturday evening to shake off the ugly effects of Friday night was a strong seven innings from Marco Estrada, an even stronger two-inning hold by Ryan Tepera, some extra-inning heroics by unsung heroes Ryan Goins and Rob Refsnyder, and an effective close by Roberto Osuna.

Easy, no?

I only picked up the full thread of the game in the bottom of the seventh inning, after the Jays had just scored in the top of the inning on a strange play, as a I saw later from the replays, involving the rookie first baseman White and the catcher McCann. With Pillar on third and nobody out, Jose Bautista hit one to White, who immediately fired it in to McCann, who caught it in front of the plate and threw it back to first to try to retire Bautista, without ever looking behind him to see if he had a chance of tagging out Pillar (he did).

I was aware that Estrada had pitched a decent game thus far, keeping the Jays close and giving them some much needed length after last night’s mess, but as I sat down to watch the situation quickly grew dire. Carlos Beltran singled to right leading off. The tough little Bregman grounded a double into the left-field corner, pushing Beltran up to third. Typically, in the seventh inning this would have been it for manager Gibbons’ starter, but for whatever reason he left Estrada in, and Estrada rewarded his faith with a great finish, getting Brian McCann to foul out to Martin behind the plate, and fanning the rookies J.D. Davis and Trevor White, who had touched up Estrada with a solo homer back in the third.

Solid relief pitching on both sides sent the game into the tenth inning. Chris Devenski took over from starter Charlie Morton in the eighth, and kept the Jays off the board despite walking two. We should mention here a statistical oddity: except for giving up seven Toronto hits, to Estrada’s five, the lines of the two starters were identical, seven innings, three runs, two walks, seven strikeouts.

After Devenski, Ken Giles gave up a base hit in the eighth, but struck out two.

Meanwhile, Ryan Tepera was at his best for Toronto, providing two innings of bridge work, giving up a walk and striking out two on only 23 pitches.

Houston manager A.J. Hinch opted to bring out Francisco Liriano to face his old mates in the top of the tenth, and it didn’t go well for the ex-Jay. Liriano didn’t do that much wrong, mind; he fanned Justin Smoak on a 3-2 pitch for the first out. Manager Gibbons sent Rob Refsnyder up to hit for Zeke Carrera, and Liriano made his big mistake, walking the light-hitting utility man on four pitches.

From what we’ve seen of Refsnyder, he may be light-hitting, but he runs well, and as he was to demonstrate slides even better. With Steve Pearce at the plate, he stole second. Then, after Pearce fanned, with Gibbie out of options to hit for Ryan Goins (except for Marcus Stroman, come to think of it, who could also have come in at second for the bottom of the inning, with Barney moving to shortstop), more specifically out of infield options, since Refsnyder had hit in the DH spot, Goins came to the plate for lefty-on-lefty, against his former team-mate. He went to 1-2 on Liriano, which put him in his magic spot, two outs, two strikes, and a runner in scoring position, and what did he do but single to left, leaving the eun in the magic hand of Rob Refsnyder.

The Goins hit was well-struck. Derek Fisher charged and fired for the plate. It was in time and McCann turned to tag Refsnyder. But only Refsnyder’s hand was there; the rest of his body was sweeping by McCann well into foul territory. But that hand snuck in between McCann’s glove, holding the ball, and his padded knee, and touched the plate without being tagged. The Astros called for a review, but the evidence was clear: Refsnyder had scored, and not been tagged out.

Thanks to Ryan Goins’ magic bat and Rob Refsnyder’s magic hand, the Jays turned a 4-3 lead over to Roberto Osuna and this time he was perfect. He replicated Estrada’s feat of striking out J.D. Davis and Tyler White, and closed out the exciting win with a ground ball to third by Derek Fisher.

So, as I was saying, forget the run totals, and just mark this: going into Sunday’s series finale, this series, and the Toronto-Houston season series, are both dead even, and tomorrow’s game will tell the tale.

If there were any doubts remaining about whether Jay Happ has returned to last year’s level of excellence, this afternoon’s outstanding performance against the Chicago White Sox should have put them to rest once and for all.

For a moment it was questionable whether Happ would survive the first inning, let alone go on to pitch as well as he did. It seems like no matter who’s on the mound, Toronto just can’t seem to avoid first-inning trouble these days.

Tim Anderson led off with a fluke infield hit, bouncing a ball between first and second that both second baseman Rob Refsnyder and Justin Smoak broke for. Smoak saw that it was too far for him and headed back to first, but lost track of the bag while reaching for Refsnyder’s throw, and Anderson was across the bag safely. Tyler Saladino lined out to third for the first out, but Happ lost Jose Abreu on four pitches. Kevan Smith lined a shot to left for a base hit but Pearce got to it too quickly for Anderson to score, and Happ found himself surrounded by Sox with only one out.

If there was a key at-bat for Happ in this game it came right then, as he faced the rookie left-handed hitter Nicky Delmonico. It was tough sledding for the rook as Happ quickly got two called strikes on low pitches, the second one probably too low. Delmonico fouled one off that was thigh-high and out over the plate, took a slider low and outside for ball one, then fanned on the same pitch he had fouled off, a fastball out over the plate. With two outs, Happ fielded the easy come-backer from Leury Garcia and took the even easier out at the plate, tossing underhanded to Miguel Montero to force Anderson for the third out.

After having had to bear down and throw 22 pitches to retire the Sox in the bottom of the first, Happ cruised through six more innings on 104 pitches, and gave up only one run on four more hits after the first inning, no walks after the first inning, and a total of ten strikeouts, starting with that crucial punchout of Delmonico in the first.

He retired the side in the second on eleven pitches, gave up a leadoff triple to Tim Anderson on the first pitch he threw in the third, and then took only seven more pitches to retire the side and strand Anderson at third, inducing three ground balls, none of which enabled Anderson to score. In the fourth he took twelve pitches to blank the Sox, and picked up only his third strikeout. Likewise the fifth, on thirteen pitches, and two more strikeouts, bumping his total to five.

The Sox finally got to him for a run in the sixth, but it was hardly an overwhelming display of force. Tyler Saladino led off with a base hit to left, the first hit since Anderson’s triple in the third, Happ having retired nine in a row since then. Jose Abreu fanned, bringing up Kevan Smith, who beat out a little chink shot in front of the plate that Miguel Montero hustled after, but not in time to make a play, with Saladino on to second. Montero came up lame on the play and would have to give way the next inning to Russell Martin. Delmonico hit one back to the pitcher, and Happ’s best play was the force at second for the second out, moving Saladino to third, whence he scored on a base knock by Garcia. Yolmer Sanchez fanned to end the inning, bringing Happ’s count to seven in six innings.

Happ saved his best for last, and finished with a flourish by striking out the side in the seventh inning, giving him his first double-digit strikeout game of the season at ten. Remarkably, after they had seen him twice (Hanson and Engel), and three times (Anderson), two of his last three strikeouts were on called third strikes. So much for the hitters having the advantage on the starter the last time around.

There has been much discussion around which is the “real” Justin Smoak, the guy with the part-timer, so-so career record up to this year, or the offensive monster of 2017. There has been almost as much talk about the “real” Jay Happ, given that the period of his second half of 2015 with Pittsburgh, and 2016 with Toronto was such an outlier related to the rest of his career numbers, especially since he was struggled at the beginning of this season. But a quick look over his game results since he returned from the disabled list at the end of May shows that he quickly rounded into 2016 form, with the exception of a couple of outings, and has now established himself as, if not the number one on the staff, the co-number one, sharing the spot with Marcus Stroman.

By the time Dominic Leone took over for Happ in the bottom of the eighth, the Jays had built a 4-1 lead, plating the first two off veteran left-handed starter Derek Holland, who turned in a very serviceable six-innings of five-hit, two-run ball himself.

One effect of starting a left-hander against Toronto is to turn Justin Smoak and Kendrys Morales around to hit from the right side, and Smoak in particular enjoys the change of scenery. In the third inning he came up with one out and Josh Donaldson on first after drawing a walk from Holland. Smoak had already hit a solid line single off the Chicago starter in the first, and this time he picked out another one he liked and drove it to the wall in left centre for a double while Donaldson came around to score the first run of the game.

It stayed 1-0 until Steve Pearce teed off on Holland leading off the sixth and drove it over the fence in left for a 2-0 lead. As we’ve seen, the White Sox cut the lead in half in the bottom of the sixth, and keeping in mind the two recent blown leads, you had to be worried about taking a one-run lead into the late innings on somebody else’s home grounds.

Mouths got a little drier as Chicago manager Rick Renteria brought in the lanky right-hander, Jake Petricka, who’s had good success against the Jays, to pitch the seventh. He worked around a one-out walk to Donaldson in tiptoeing around the heart of the Toronto order.

After Happ finished off the Sox in the seventh with a flourish, Petricka, who had thrown 18 pitches in the seventh, came back out for the eighth. Maybe Renteria should have played it one inning at a time, because the Jays had Petricka’s number in the eighth. Or maybe he had his own number, considering how much he contributed to the Toronto uprising.

He started by walking Steve Pearce, who alertly came around to third when Kevin Pillar followed with a single to right. Russ Martin followed with a single to left to score Pearce and bring Pillar around to third, where he was perfectly poised to score the inning’s second run on a Petricka wild pitch. That was all the scoring for the Jays, but Martin stole second and advanced to third on a second wild pitch by Petricka. He had to hold there when Darwin Barney grounded out to third, and then Renteria brought in Juan Minaya, who got Jose Bautista to fly out to end the inning.

Even at 4-1, the past was hanging darkly over the park in the bottom of the eighth when it took three Toronto pitchers to retire the White Sox, working around two walks in the meantime. Dominic Leone came in and fanned Tyler Saladino and Jose Abreu, raising hopes of a quick and clean ending, but then he walked Kevan Smith, bringing up the left-handed Nicky Delmonico. This brought Aaron Loup into the game to face Delmonico, but once again he failed to put away the one batter he needed to: Delmonico drew a walk. This brought Joe Biagini into the game, and he put the rising down, such as it was, by fanning Leury Garcia to end the inning.

After Donaldson gave the Jays a little more breathing room with a leadoff homer in the ninth off Chris Beck, who then retired the Toronto hitters in order, Biagini was sent back out to try to save wear and tear on the arm of Roberto Osuna, since on the face of it it wasn’t a save opportunity. Yet.

But it was, once Biagini gave up two base hits leading off the inning. The call went out to Osuna after all, and this time there was no touching him. A foul pop to first, a strikeout, and a fly ball to centre on eleven pitches, and the game was in the bag.

The Blue Jays now pack their bags and head to Houston for a three-game series with the Astros, who are only thirty games over .500. Too bad they don’t go down there with a series sweep already in the bag.

After seeing the bullpen blow two of their last three games, it’s now clear that all of the typical markers of a Toronto win—a solid performance by their top pitcher and home runs by both of their most consistent sluggers—don’t necessarily guarantee chalking it up in the “W” column.

But tonight, for once, it did.

It was a typical performance for Marcus Stroman, bendy but not breaky, shutting down the Chisox at crucial points, getting in a jawing match, this time with Chicago shortstop Tim Anderson instead of an umpire, and holding on long enough, seven innings, to give some of the bullpen arms a break.

Likewise it was typical for Josh Donaldson, who homered in the first off Mike Pelfrey to give Toronto a quick 1-0 lead, lofted a sac fly to centre in the third to plate Darwin Barney, and capped off a three-run rising in the sixth with a double to centre to score Jose Bautista.

And it was a quintessential Justin Smoak moment, that, immediately after Stroman had coughed up a two-run double to Chicago catcher Omar Narvaez in the bottom of the fourth to tie the score, with two out in the top of the fifth and Donaldson on first with a walk, he powdered a 1-1 sinker by Pelfrey that stayed up in the zone, giving the Jays a lead they would not relinquish.

It would be interesting to go back, game by game, homer by homer, to look at the circumstances of every homer Smoak has hit this season. It seems to me that the preponderance of his dingers has either tied the game or given his team the lead.

Marcus Stroman has had an odd season, very much a contrast to the dominance that he showed in his first few major league starts after he was called up at the end of 2014, and the utter brilliance he displayed when he returned to the rotation in time to join up with David Price to lead Toronto to the division championship and a spot in the ALCS in 2015.

Now, despite his strong record of 9-5 and an ERA of 3.08 going into tonight’s game, it has become the norm that he will throw more pitches per inning, struggle with his control from time to time, and have to work his way out of far more pickles than you would expect from your team’s number one starter. In short, though he may get us there in the end, no one would confuse a Marcus Stroman outing with a strong start by a Max Scherzer or a Yu Darvish.

Tonight he retired the side in order in only one inning, the fifth, fortuitously the shut-down inning his team needed after Smoak’s homer in the top of the inning had restored the team’s lead. He kept his pitch down, and only walked one, but he still danced in and out of trouble.

For the rest, apart from the fifth, it went like this: first inning, a double by Jose Abreu, and three sparkling plays, two by Darwin Barney at second and one by Ryan Goins at shortstop, to turn tough ground balls into outs. Second inning, a walk to Tyler Saladino and a double-play ball to Narvaez. Third inning, a bloop double to left by Alex Hanson, subbing for the injured Willy Garcia, who’s been placed on the concussion disabled list after last night’s collision, and three ground ball outs.

In the fourth inning Stroman was more breaky than bendy as the White Sox scored two to tie the game. After getting by Abreu, Chicago’s most dangerous hitter, who hit the ball on the nose but right at Steve Pearce in left, he hit Matt Davidson on the wrist with a pitch, got the rookie Nicky Delmonico to hit into a force play, and then gave up two two-out base hits, a single by Saladino and a double by Narvaez that chased both runners home and knotted the game.

After his shutdown fifth, Stroman watched as his mates added on three more runs in the top of the sixth, and then came out and coughed up two runs to the first two batters he faced, a single to Abreu and a home run to Kevan Smith, who hit for Davidson, who was taken out as a precaution after being hit by Stroman in the fourth. With Toronto still holding a 7-4 lead and Stroman working on a pitch count that was still fairly low, manager John Gibbons opted to leave him in, and he proceeded to retire the side in order after the Smith homer.

The Jays added a run in the seventh (I’ll review the Toronto scoring in a moment; I just want to follow through on the StroStory first), and Stroman had come out of the two-run sixth still at a low of 79 pitches, so Gibbie trotted him out again for the seventh, and was rewarded with another full inning from his starter, while we were rewarded with another moment of wierdness from our favourite fiery pitcher. We’re not actually sure what happened, but somehow Stroman’s strikeout of leadoff hitter Tim Anderson led to nasty words between them, and a hasty invasion of the field by both benches.

Even in retrospect this seemed like a sandbox dispute between a couple of brats over which one gave the other the cut-eye first. As Anderson departed the field he was jawing at Stroman, who took no notice until the jawing continued even after Stroman had taken the ball back from Donaldson after the post-strikeout throwaround. Stroman did not like that. One bit. He came off the mound a couple steps toward Anderson, and shouted something to the effect of “WTF?” Anderson stopped in his tracks, shouted back, and here came the dugouts. Order was restored, no one was ejected, and no plausible explanation ever emerged as to what had transpired. The only thing we’re left with is kids in the sandbox.

After the fuss, Stroman popped up Hanson, gave up a base hit to Leury Garcia, and retired Yolmer Sanchez on a ground ball to second to end his night, having pitched seven innings, giving up four runs on seven hits with one walk, five strikeouts, and one temper flareup (a new category in the pitching line, just for MS), on 99 pitches. Typical night for the 2017 version of Marcus Stroman.

And fortunately for Marcus Stroman the Jays were opportunistic at the plate tonight and managed to provide enough support for him to claim the win. The Donaldson homer in the first gave him a stake, and in the third, for once, Toronto did not waste a leadoff double, this time by Darwin Barney. Jose Bautista lofted a deep fly to centre on which Barney tagged and moved up to third. From third with one out he was able to score on a Donaldson fly ball, also to centre. How many times have we railed over the failure of the Jays to capitalize on a leadoff double? This was one time that they came through for us.

After Stroman gave up the game-tying double in the fourth and Smoak’s homer re-established the lead in the fifth, the Blue Jays never trailed, picking up three more runs in the sixth to extend the lead to 7-2 before Smith’s homer cut it to 7-4 in the bottom of the sixth.

Pelfrey got the first two outs in the top of the sixth, then ran into trouble by giving up a walk to Kevin Pillar and a single to Barney. That was enough for Chicago manager Rick Renteria, who pulled the plug on Pelfrey and brought in the right-hander Gregory Infante, who appeared in five games for the White Sox way back in 2010, and then spent the last seven years wandering in the wilderness until being called up in mid-May, and since then has worked regularly out of the Chicago bullpen. Unfortunately, he didn’t bring much to the banquet tonight for the White Sox.

Infante walked Bautista to load the bases, gave up a two-run single to Russell Martin, letting both his inherited runners score, and then an RBI double to Donaldson, driving home Bautista, before finally fanning Smoak to end the inning.

Renteria sent Infante out for the eighth inning and he didn’t do any better than in the seventh; he faced three batters, gave up a run, and didn’t get anyone out. He walked Kendrys Morales and then gave up a booming double to the base of the wall in right centre by Steve Pearce. When centre fielder Leury Garcia crowded the wall and had the ball come back past him, it allowed the ponderous Morales to score all the way from first. Ryan Goins then lined a single to left, on which Pearce had to hold up, and only made it to third. This was the end for Infante.

Right-hander Juan Minaya, a late-May callup to Chicago’s bullpen, came in with runners on first and third and nobody out, and managed to retire the next three batters without allowing another run. He came out for the top of the eighth and fanned Donaldson before Renteria replaced him with the lefty David Holmberg, which turned Smoak and Morales around to hit right-handed (still don’t get the logic of this—they read every other statistic, don’t they see that both hit lefties better than righties?)

In any case, Holmberg survived a rocky two thirds in the eighth, giving up a single to Morales and hitting Pearce, then wild-pitching them to second and third, but popping up Smoak and Goins to get out of the inning.

Holmberg had a slightly smoother ride in the Toronto ninth, walking Pillar leading off but seeing him gunned down by Narvaez trying to steal, and giving up a two-out Texas League single to Bautista before fanning Russell Martin for the third out.

Ryan Tepera in the eighth inning and Dominic Leone in the ninth both had interesting adventures but managed to preserve the lead and the win for Stroman.

With one out in the eighth, Tepera actually gave up three consecutive hits, the latter two of the blooper variety, but the White Sox were kept off the board when Kevan Smith tried to score from second on Tyler Saladino’s Texas Leaguer to centre, but was cut down by a fantastic throw from Kevin Pillar, who charged the ball, picked it up on the fourth hop, and cut loose with a bomb that carried right into Martin’s glove just as Smith slid into it for the out. Buoyed up by the support, Tepera fanned Omar Narvaez to strand the runners at first and second.

Leone gave up a two-out triple to Leury Garcia in the ninth inning after Anderson fouled out to Zeke Carrera in left and Hanson struck out, but Sanchez left him there when he flied out to left to end the game.

So, sometimes it all works out, and sometimes, most of the time, actually, the bullpen protects a lead and delivers a win. It’s just that we’re not giving the bullpen enough leads to protect this year, and that’s a problem.

Tomorrow afternoon Jay Happ pitches for a series win against the White Sox. He should be going for a sweep.

Backed by a three-homer outburst and the opportunistic exploitation of a terrible Chicago collision in the field, Marco Estrada appeared to have completed the job of righting himself tonight with seven brilliant innings of one-run, four-hit pitching.

After the dramatic finish of Sunday’s finale against the Angels in Toronto, an efficient shutdown of the struggling White Sox in Chicago Monday night was just what the doctor ordered for the Toronto Blue Jays.

Until a rare but nasty bug, the late-inning bullpen collapse, laid our heroes low again for the second time in the last three games.

Josh Donaldson hit a two-out solo homer in the top of the first off veteran right-hander James Shields to stake Estrada to a 1-0 lead, and then made a nifty play on leadoff batter Leury Garcia’s slow roller to give Estrada a further boost in the bottom of the inning. The next two Sox flied out, and Estrada was through one on only six pitches.

The game rolled along quickly until the top of the fourth. Shields had settled in after the Donaldson shot and retired seven in a row, and Estrada had faced only one over the minimum, a Matt Davidson walk in the second inning. After three, Shields, who usually labours, had thrown only 38 pitches, and Estrada had gotten by on an amazing 31.

In the top of the fourth, though, Shields’ twin weaknesses, a tendency for wild streaks and a vulnerability to the long ball, cost him two additional Toronto runs, on solo homers by Russell Martin and Justin Smoak, and a long inning in which he also gave up a single to Kendrys Morales, walked two to load the bases, and nearly doubled his pitch count to 70 before escaping without further damage.

In the Chicago fourth Estrada allowed his second-base runner. He was awarded a tough error when he failed to come up cleanly with a hard comebacker by Jose Abreu, but he popped up Davidson to Smoak in foul territory, and fanned prized Chicago rookie Yoan Moncada to end the inning.

After Shields had a more settled fifth inning, Estrada finally gave up his first hit, two in fact, to Tim Anderson and Willy Garcia, but retired the side without further damage to preserve his shutout, finishing it off by fanning the free-swinging Leury Garcia.

The top of the sixth was Shields’ last inning; he struck out the side but there was no joy in the achievement. By the time he finished it off by fanning Jose Bautista, the Jays’ lead had been doubled to six and Chicago had lost both right fielder Willy Garcia and the rookie Moncada to injury in a horrific collision that happened when both tried to track down a blooper into short right centre by Darwin Barney with the bases loaded. The fact that when the ball rolled out of Garcia’s glove without being transferred it was ruled no catch, and all three runners crossed the plate, was of little significance compared to the concern over Garcia, whose head came into significant contact with Moncada’s knee, and Moncada, whose knee was obviously injured. Both had to be removed from the game. Alan Hanson and Yolmer Sanchez came in to replace them in right field and at second base respectively.

After Brad Goldberg, who replaced Shields on the mound, retired Toronto in the top of the seventh with the help of a double play that erased Donaldson’s one-out single, the two replacements for the injured Sox players teamed up to produce Chicago’s first and only run off Estrada. Sanchez led off with an infield single, moved up to second on Kevan Smith’s base hit, advanced to third on a fly ball to right by Tim Anderson, and scored on a sacrifice fly by Hanson. Estrada finished seven innings giving up one run on four hits. It was only the second time since the end of May that he had gone more than five-plus innings, and the first time since that June twenty-fourth outing that he had looked like the Marco Estrada of old.

Goldberg stayed on for the Toronto eighth and got another double play to erase a walk to Steve Pearce to close out a quick second inning of work.

With a five-run lead, it was a good time to save some wear and tear on the arm of Ryan Tepera, so manager John Gibbons brought in Joe Biagini to hold off the Sox in the bottom of the eighth. Biagini had trouble finding the plate, issuing a leadoff walk to Leury Garcia, who promptly stole second. With the arms waiting behind Biagini in the bullpen, and that big five-run lead, there was no reason to be concerned about a runner at second, especially after Tyler Saladino flew out to right for the first out, and Garcia failed to tag and advance to third.

Even when Jose Abreu doubled Garcia home with the second run it was no big deal. Ah, but when Matt Davidson teed off on Biagini to right to make it 6-4, the unease was starting to creep, er, trot, in. Overworked or not, it was time to bring in Tepera, because we were now in setup man mode.

Tepera ended the inning with two comebackers to the mound, but unfortunately the first batter he faced, the accidental second baseman Sanchez, put all of his relatively small self into a high inside 0-2 cutter from Tepera and sent it sailing over the fence in right to cut the lead to 6-5.

Chris Beck made quick work of the Jays in the top of the ninth, clearing the way for Roberto Osuna to take the hill, with the save opportunity definitely on after the Chicago eighth.

Osuna got Hanson on a hard grounder to Justin Smoak at first. One out. Adam Engel hit a short chopper to Donaldson at third and beat it out. The call stood after a rather hopeless Jays’ challenge. Next up was the free-swinging Leury Garcia, who was ruled to have been nicked by an Osuna slider. Again, the play was reviewed, and again the call was upheld. The tying run was now on second. Osuna fanned Tyler Saladino for the second out, bringing Jose Abreu, the only really fearsome Sox hitter left in the lineup after the Great Chicago Fire Sale, to the plate.

Abreu hit a not-so-fearsome blooper into right centre that scored Engel with the tying run, brought Garcia around to third, and brought Davidson, who had homered in the eighth, back to the plate. Osuna went to 2-2 on Davidson before the Chicago hitter lined one solidly into centre to bring the game to a painful end for Toronto.

After being so good for so much of the season, even making the All-Star team, it’s hard to fathom that Roberto Osuna would blow two saves, lose two games, in three days. But, painful as it might be for these struggling Blue Jays, there it is.

Tomorrow has to be a better day.

Or should we, maybe like General Manager Ross Atkins, who dispatched Francisco Liriano to Houston and Joe Smith to Cleveland today at the trade deadline, be thinking next year, since there’s really no longer a tomorrow for us in 2017?