Long Ball Stories

After an off day following Toronto’s rather disappointing four-game split in Minnesota, the Jays came home for a frankly meaningless three-game series with the Kansas City Royals, who are equally on the outside looking in at this point.

From the perspective of yer humble scribe, any series that reaches its high point for the good guys in the middle innings of the first game is not only meaningless but largely devoid of interest.

Marcus Stroman pitched seven solid innings on Tuesday night while his mates finally got to Royals’ starter Ian Kennedy in the sixth inning with a single by Ryan Goins followed by a Darwin Barney home run for a 2-0 lead. After the Royals clawed one back in the top of the seventh on a sacrifice fly, the Jays iced the game with three runs in the bottom of the seventh on an RBI double by Russ Martin and an RBI single by Barney, giving him three for the night. Ryan Tepera gave up a homer to Alex Gordon in the eighth, then retired the side, and Roberto Osuna ran the table in the ninth for his thirty-seventh save.

Of note was the fact that Gordon’s homer in the eighth was later identified as the record-breaking dinger in making 2017 the season with the most home runs hit in major league history—with ten days left in the season.

The next night the Royals picked up a run with a first-out sacrifice fly before Brett Anderson settled down to retire the side. He didn’t remain settled for long, though, because after the Jays went down one, two, three in the bottom of the first, Anderson and Luis Santos gave up nine runs in the top of the second inning.

After the Blue Jays stranded a walk to Kendrys Morales in the bottom of the second, I happily turned the TV over to PBS to watch the third episode of Ken Burns’ monumental documentary on the war in Vietnam. You have to know the baseball’s bad if yer humble scribe would rather watch the scab of Vietnam being pulled off more excruciatingly than ever before. I lived that war, lived it in uniform, but not in country, as they said, and even I never knew how awful it was.

Oh, the final score of Wednesday’s game was 15-5. Teoscar Hernandez doubled home a couple in the bottom of the seventh, Raffie Lopez and Ryan Goins plated two more with sacrifice flies, and Lopez, a muscular little guy, drilled one out to centre with nobody on in the ninth.

On Thursday the Royals scored a run in the third inning on a single by former Blue Jay Melky Cabrera that stood up for a 1-0 Kansas City win in a pitcher’s duel between Jay Happ and Jason Vargas. Toronto only got two hits off Vargas and a selection of Kansas City relievers, and were utterly unable to provide any support behind Happ’s fine six and two thirds.

So the Royals left town with a series win that left them neither here nor there in terms of the wild card “race” that is gradually turning into a walkover for the Minnesota Twins under our old friend Paul Molitor.

Now, the Yankees coming to town: that was a different story, as it always is with the Yankees. But this time was special. It was the Jays’ last home series of the year, and so also, presumably, the last Toronto home series of Level of Excellence candidate Jose Bautista. And the Jays were well positioned to poke a stick in the wheels of the Yankees’ bike as they tried to run down the Red Sox for the American League East championship.

FRIDAY: MARCO AND GO-GO ON SHOW

First up for Toronto on Friday night was Marco Estrada, newly-signed to a healthy one-year contract by . . . you guessed it, the Toronto Blue Jays. And why not? From Estrada’s viewpoint, he’s had two outstanding years here, and a 2017 that ran into a low streak after a good start, before progressing to a great run of starts in the latter half of the year, and most remarkably he’s about to log the most innings he’s pitched as a Blue Jay.

The rotation should return to being a strong point next year; it’s obvious that Toronto’s management has committed to one more year of chasing the magic ring with this particular crowd, and most of all Estrada himself had indicated clearly that he would be very happy to remain in Toronto.

As for the team, all you have to do is look at the string of starts Estrada has put together since July thirty-first, marked by only two substandard outings, to know that from management’s perspective it was a no-brainer. And if they do get close to the crown, who pitched better for them in the post-season in 2015 and 2016 than Marco Estrada?

Estrada’s counterpart on the mound would be the annoying, poky, picky, Masahiro Tanaka, who seems to generate most of his outs by frustrating his opponents to the point where they’ll swing at anything. I’ve spent the last several years dismissing Tanaka’s ability, but most of the time, I’ve noticed, that by the time I’ve finished grousing about what a crappy, over-rated pitcher he is, he’s turned the ball over to the bullpen in the sixth or seventh inning with his team in the lead.

You can’t really talk about Ryan Goins as some kind of hidden treasure any more, now that everyone has noted his amazing penchant for driving in runs, the deeper the hole the better, two outs, two strikes, who cares? His relatively low batting average takes on a whole new light when you realize that his base hits, while few, have been so mighty especially with the sacks loaded.

And of course now that he’s started more games at shortstop this year than any other Blue Jay, it’s no longer possible to forget what a fine defender he is.

Still and all, no one could have predicted what a singular impact Ryan Goins would have on this easy, breezy 8-1 Toronto victory over Masahiro Tanaka and the New York Yankees.

Estrada started the game with one of those innings for which he’s noted: four fly balls, three that went for easy outs, and Aaron Judge’s forty-sixth home run of the year, a ball that he hit awfully hard and that didn’t stop until it hit the facing of the third deck in left field. Since he was only the second batter of the game, you couldn’t help worrying a bit about whether this was going to be one of those nights for Estrada. ‘Course, we didn’t know that the Yanks would never score another run, and they’d only get two more hits.

The Yankees handed Toronto a gift in the bottom of the first, in the form of a botched fielder’s choice that resulted in an error for Starling Castro. Teoscar Hernandez, who’d never faced Tanaka before, lined a 1-2 pitch into left field for a single. Josh Donaldson followed by hitting an easy bouncer to Todd Frazier at third, who went to second for the force on Hernandez. But Castro muffed the catch, the ball bounced away, and Hernandez advanced to third. After Tanaka fanned Justin Smoak, Jose Bautista, receiving the first of an unending string of thunderous ovations that would rain down on him on this special weekend, grounded out to third, scoring Hernandez, and the game was tied on the unearned run.

Both pitchers asserted their mastery in the second inning, Estrada taking eleven pitches to retire the Yankees on three ground balls, strangely enough, and Tanaka back in the dugout before he even got warmed up, needing only eight pitches to set the Jays down.

The Yankees’ third inning deserves a special place in the chronicles of the 2017 Blue Jays. Perhaps never before, and likely never again, had the Toronto fans been treated to the perfect execution of a trick play that should never happen, even to a T-Ball player. The victim was Todd Frazier, the perpetrator Ryan Goins, the benefactor Marco Estrada. The play? The hidden-ball trick.

It started with Frazier, the New York third baseman, rattling Estrada with a leadoff double to right on a 2-2 pitch. The rookie left-fielder Clint Frazier popped up to Goins at short, bringing Jacoby Ellsbury, who came into town on a tear, to the plate. Ellsbury put a jolt in the first pitch he saw from Estrada and hit it deep to right, looking good for a double over Bautista’s head. But Bautista, tracking back and to his right, raced back and reached up while leaping and made a fine running catch. Todd Frazier, who’d correctly played it half-way, waiting to see if the ball would be caught, hustled back into second in time to beat Bautista’s strong throw to Goins.

So there was Frazier, standing on the bag at second, looking off, apparently, toward the left-field corner. He certainly could not have been looking at his third-base coach. Goins, with Frazier’s back to him, made a lame and silly-looking—there’s no other way to describe it—fake throw back to the pitcher, and gloved the ball. Frazier didn’t have a clue that the ball hadn’t gone back to Estrada. Goins stood there, glove at his side, inches from Frazier’s leg, and waited. Then, Frazier decided to change feet on the bag. He lifted a foot off the bag, set it down on the infield dirt, and lifted his other foot to put it on the bag.

Echoing the climactic moment of “Peter and the Wolf”: “Bang! He got him!” Goins slapped the tag on Frazier, looked at the ump, the ump called Frazier out, and Goins scooted exultantly off the field before anyone changed his mind. Frazier stood out there stilled into disbelief, but it was true: he’d been doubled off second by the oldest and lamest trick in the world, the good old hidden ball trick.

In yet another emendation of the “make a great play, lead off the inning” phenomenon, Goins led off against Tanaka in the bottom of the third. Unfortunately, it was not yet time for the fairy tale to come full circle. He hit a come-backer to the mound for the first out.

But following Goins to the plate came Teoscar Hernandez, who is starting to write his very own fairy tale for the Blue Jays. With the two-homer night against Detroit already in the books, he was facing Tanaka for the second time in his life, having singled in the first and come around to score Toronto’s first run.

This time up, on the fifth pitch of the at-bat, a splitter that hung up there like a ripe grapefruit, Hernandez smacked it, and smacked it hard. So hard, in fact, that it was a near carbon-copy of Judge’s first-inning blast, banging off the facade of the third deck right near the name of Tom Cheek on the Level of Excellence—wherever he is now, there’s no doubt that the beloved Cheek was looking down with approval on the exciting rookie. In fact, if Hernandez is the real deal, maybe we can coin a term for when he hits a rocket to the banners: how about “he really Cheeked that one”?

Hernandez’ homer was the go-ahead run, and the Jays were never headed. Estrada wisely walked Judge to open the fourth and then retired the side in order.

In the bottom of the inning, Tanaka likewise walked the leadoff batter, Bautista, but he didn’t get off so easily as Estrada. With one out, Russell Martin lined a rocket into the Jays’ bullpen, putting the lead to 4-1 for Toronto. It was only Martin’s second home run since returning to the lineup at the beginning of August, but it was tattooed, to be sure.

Both pitchers stranded baserunners in the fifth, Estrada giving up two walks after striking out the first two batters before getting Ellsbury to fly out to left. Tanaka gave up a two-out single to Donaldson, but left him there.

In the top of the sixth, Estrada unwisely did not walk Aaron Judge, and the latter smacked one off the left-field wall for a double, the third hit off Estrada, and the third extra-base hit for the Yankees. It just goes that way sometimes.

If the Yankees had any hopes of mounting a charge in this game they peaked with Gary Sanchez following Judge to the plate. He hit an absolute rope over Darwin Barney at second that was destined for the wall in right centre. Except that Barney leapt for it, and came down with a sno-kone in the tip of his glove. Judge retreated safely to second, but Estrada retired Didi Gregorius and Starlin Castro to leave him there.

This brought us to the bottom of the sixth, when Tanaka Ryan Goins re-entered to steal the scene for the second time in the game, and knocked the battered Masahiro Tanaka to the sidelines for good.

It was his own fault, for sure, Tanaka’s demise, but he could have gotten out of with luck. But it ran out when the clutch-hitting, bases-loaded-loving Goins strode to the plate with two outs and the bases crammed.

Tanaka had walked Bautista and given up a single to Kevin Pillar. But then he fanned a brace of catchers, a sight you’d only see with the expanded rosters of September. First Russell Martin went down, and then Miguel Montero, serving as the DH. Manager John Gibbons went to his bench for Kendrys Morales, whose night off was interrupted by having to hit for Barney. Tanaka walked him on four pitches—the semi-intentional walk—to load the bases for Goins.

He then quickly jumped ahead of Goins with a called strike and a foul ball. Poor guy, Tanaka; he must not have read in the Japanese version of Baseball Reference that if anybody is more dangerous in the American League with the bases loaded this year than Ryan Goins, it’s Ryan Goins with the bases loaded, two outs, and two strikes on him.

Tanaka threw Goins a slider on the inner half that diidn’t slide, and there it went: Goins electrified the crowd for the second time that night on a deep drive to right that cleared the Yankee bullpen and disappeared into the first row of ecstatic fans for Goins’ second grand slam of the year, and an 8-1 Toronto lead.

That was all for Tanaka at five and two thirds innings, having given up eight runs and three homers in his most ineffective performance of the season. Tommy Kahnle came in and struck out Hernandez on a foul tip third strike, but it was kind of too late.

So 8-1 it was and 8-1 it stayed. The Jays had one base runner the rest of the way. Jonathan Holder struck out two in the bottom of the seventh while retiring the side in order, and Giovanny Gallegos gave up a two-out single to Montero in the bottom of the eighth before retiring Richard Ureňa on a foul popup to first for the third out.

Like the steady veteran he is, Estrada came back with the big lead and shut the Yankees down on eleven pitches in the top of the seventh to finish off a fine start.

Matt Dermody started the eighth to face the two left-handers, Clint Frazier and Ellsbury, and retired them both. Bautista once again electrified the crowd with a fine sliding catch in the heel of his glove of a ball by Frazier that was slicing away from him. Tom Koehler, who is certainly inserting himself into the equation for next year, came in and induced Sanchez to ground out to third for the third out.

Carlos Ramirez, also auditioning well for a 2018 role, retired the side in order in the ninth, to finish an eight and two-thirds innings total shutdown of the frightening Yankee bats, a result that kept the New Yorkers from gaining any ground on the Red Sox.

A GRAY SATURDAY IN THE SUN FOR THE JAYS

I can only offer a few comments on the Saturday game in the series, thanks to MLB’s annoying propensity for changing game times late in the season to accomodate the U.S. television networks. Originally the game was scheduled for the usual Toronto 1:08 p.m. Saturday start, but it was precipitously changed to 4:00, presumably because Fox or TBS or whoever wanted to broadcast the Yankees’ playoff-spot-clinching celebration.

Saturday is my grand-daughter’s day for her dance class and weekly visit to her grand-parents, and on this particular Saturday we were asked to do double driving, both picking her up and taking her home, a two-hour round-trip in the morning and the afternoon. We were to deliver her around 5:00, thus had to leave at game-time, and didn’t get back until after six.

So I followed as best I could on the radio, though it being the last homestand of the season Jerry and Joe were waxing a bit nostalgiac, and the thread of the play-by-play kind of got lost in the process.

What were the takeaways from the game? (Please pretend I didn’t write that last sentence. I hate asking what were the takeaways, almost as much as I hate asking what was the ask. Despite my best efforts to the contrary, the language is going to hell in a handbasket.)

The astonishingly mediocre and totally unimpressive Sonny Gray kept Toronto off the board for six innings, save for a third-inning dinger by exciting rookie Teoscar Hernandez, the fourth round-tripper of his September audition for Jose Bautista’s job. No doubt by now he’s earned at least a call-back from casting director Ross Atkins.

Joe Biagini turned in another in and out performance, going five innings, giving up only three hits but walking four and seeing the last hit he gave up, by Greg Bird, sail out of the park to right centre after issuing the second and third of his four walks, turning a 1-0 Toronto lead into a 3-1 Yankee lead which stood up for the win. So, a little more support would have been nice, and he could have gone farther, at only 74 pitches, but obviously Manager John Gibbons thought there would be diminishing returns by leaving him in.

Embarrassingly for him, Todd Frazier, the last batter Biagini walked, and the victim of Ryan Goins’ hidden-ball trick Friday night, got himself doubled off first when Brett Gardner lined out to Goins at short and he wandered too far off the bag. TOOBLANed twice in two days!

Chad Green, David Robertson, and Aroldis Chapman didn’t yield a hit to the Jays over the last three, Frazier got a measure of revenge with a home run in the eighth, and the Yanks added another insurance run in the ninth when Gary Sanchez’ leadoff double off Luis Santos came around to score on a Starlin Castro infield hit, making the final tally 5-1 for New York. And, yes, the 46,000-plus Toronto fans who had sold this game out months ago when Toronto was actually a possible contender, got to watch the Yankees celebrate their wild-card berth-clinching.

ROCKIN’ AND ROMPIN’ ON SUNDAY AT THE DOME

With New York still holding a slim but real hope of catching the Red Sox for the division title, the throngs who turned out on another gorgeous late-September Toronto day for the last home game of Jose Bautista and his mates were treated to a matchup of A-list lineups, the Jays being obligated to play their regulars out of respect for the race between New York and Boston that still existed.

For the Yankees, the only regular missing from the lineup was Gary Sanchez behind the plate, and of course he’s only a regular when the Yankees don’t care how many extra bases they give up as balls bounce off, and away from, the hapless rookie, who clearly has a good long career ahead of him, but as a designated hitter, not a catcher. As for Toronto, it was business as usual, with the strongest lineup they could field in the long-term absence of their injured keystone combo of Tulowitzki and Travis.

(And of course I continue to contend that, all things being taken into account, Goins and Barney concede nothing to the injured duo in their value to the team, Goins being arguably a significant upgrade on Tulo’s defence and obviously a more effective run-producer compared to Tulo at this stage of his career, and Barney providing lineup stability that Travis has never been able to muster, not to mention being a more reliable fielder.)

The game, of course, was focussed in every way on the presumed last appearance of Bautista, and every move he made on the field, regardless of its import to the game, was greeted with rapturous applause. Oh, look, Jose’s doing his wierd neck stretch! Yay!

His team-mates devised their own unique way of ceding the stage to him at the very start of the game. At the moment when the players normally emerge from the dugout all together to run and take their places in the field, Bautista, as the right fielder and farthest from the dugout, naturally appeared first and headed out to his position. But the rest of the starters held back and allowed him to trot all the way out to right, the sole focus of all eyes in the stadium, the recipient of a tremendous roar of recognition and tribute. It was clear from Bautista’s reaction that he had no idea this had been planned, and it took him a while to realize that he was not being followed by the rest of the team. It was a lovely, fitting tribute.

Appropriately, the pitching matchup favoured the Jays in Bautista’s last start, the reliable Marcus Stroman going up against lefty Jaime Garcia, yet another of New York’s quixotic acquisitions in the seemingly futile quest to strengthen their rotation for the post-season.

It was all Stroman in the early going, while the Jays chased Garcia in the third, notching five runs on four hits before Joe Girardi pulled the plug; this one was over by the middle innings, especially after Toronto piled on reliever Bryan Mitchell for an additional four runs in the fourth (three in the third and four in the fourth; there’s a nice symmetry for you) to push the lead to 9-1 for Stroman as he returned to the mound for a shutdown fifth inning.

Despite two runs in the sixth and two in the seventh, New York’s hopes for cutting the gap on Boston pretty well ran out of gas; their rally fell far short and the Bosox won to push their lead to five with seven games left on the Yanks’ schedule.

Offfensively, this was the kind of game that Toronto fans had been waiting for all year; pity that it was game 156 of the season, and game 82 of the home schedule. To the delight of the crowd, after Stroman had started smartly with three ground-ball outs on ten pitches in the top of the first, Teoscar Hernandez led off the game for the home team with another booming home run to the 200 level in left centre on a 1-0 pitch from Garcia. Even more delightful to the crowd was Bautista’s two-out line single to right on the first pitch he saw. It mattered little that, though he advanced to second on a wild pitch, he died there when Kendrys Morales, who also hit the ball sharply, lined out to right. Still, three hard-hit balls off Garcia augured well for the Jays.

Bautista brought the crowd to its feet again in the top of the second. With two outs and Jacoby Ellsbury on first after he had forced Starlin Castro who’d notched the Yankees’ first hit, Todd Frazier looped one into short right that bid fare to fall in cleanly, were it not for Bautista racing in like a colt to pick it off after a long run.

In the bottom of the second came that rarest of feats in this year of disappointing moments: the Jays cashed a leadoff double. Kevin Pillar hit one down the line and off the wall in left, and then stole third base, just like he was on some other team, like one that creates chances. After Russell Martin fanned, probably in shock at seeing a runner on third with nobody out, Darwin Barney came through with a solid poke to centre-fielder Ellsbury that was sufficient to bring Pillar home after the catch.

An extra frisson of excitement ran through the crowd when Ryan Goins worked Garcia for a walk, bringing young Hernandez back to the plate, but this time the throngs were disappointed as he tipped a third strike into the big mitt of Austin Romine.

Stroman issued his first walk to Greg Bird in the top of the third, but then threw some more ground-ball magic, getting Romine to ground into a Darwin-Barney-initiated double play, and retiring Brett Gardner on a grounder to Justin Smoak unassisted.

In the bottom of the third, the Jays once again pulled off a rara avis of their 2017 season, the big swing with two outs, to boost the lead to 5-zip for Stroman, which allowed the crowd to sit back and relax for the rest of the way.

With one out Justin Smoak doubled to left-centre, and Garcia completely lost it, issuing walks to Morales and Bautista to load the bases, without ever throwing another strike. That was enough for Joe Girardi, who came out with the big hook and yanked Garcia for Jonathan Holder to pitch to Kevin Pillar, who predictably, if you’ve been watching closely this year, popped out to Frazier in foul ground off third for the second out. But then, unpredictably, Russell Martin hammered one to the gap in right centre that cleared the bases, with Bautista scampering in to score close on the heels of the labouring Morales. Holder fanned Barney to strand Martin, but hardly anyone cared.

Stroman got himself into some trouble in the top of the fourth and gave up a run on a single by Didi Gregorius, after he had walked Chase Headley and Aaron Judge to lead off the inning. However, Starlin Castro forced Gregorius at second for the first out, with a video review overturning the initial call of a double-play out at first, and then the diminutive but combative right-hander settled things himself by freezing Ellsbury on a 3-2 pitch and then fanning Frazier to strand Castro at first.

In the bottom of the fourth another outburst by Toronto yielded four more runs, which made the issue academic, and gave signal to the gathered multitude that the good-bye party, for Bautista, for his team-mates, and for the failed hopes and bitter frustrations of an utterly unsatisfying season, might begin.

If you check back over the record, you might find, I suspect, that the next best thing Ryan Goins does at the plate after shining with the bases loaded is starting rallies when leading off. First-pitch hitting, he stroked a ground ball single to left. Hernandez walked on a 3-2 pitch. Josh Donaldson knocked in Goins with a line single to centre, with Hernandez moving up to second.

Bryan Mitchell, in for Holder who had failed to clean up for Garcia in the third, wild-pitched the runners to second and third. He wisely chose not to give Smoaky anything to hammer on 3-2 to load the bases for the man of the day, Bautista. Once again the crowd was sent into ecstasy as its hero slashed another one to right to score Hernandez and move the others up, the sacks still full for Morales.

Taking his cue from Bautista, Morales hit a drive the other way to left that scored Donaldson and Smoak. Bautista, perhaps overplaying his hand on a ball that ended up being just a single for Morales, tried to score from first on the play. He was called out by plate umpire Mark Carlson, no fan he of sentimental farewells. The Jays challenged the play but the call was upheld, and Bautista, called out, remained out.

Not done messing up yet, Mitchell hit Kevin Pillar with a pitch before taking his leave; Ben Helder came in and threw one pitch to get Russ Martin to ground into a double play.

Back in our salad days, when my wife was regularly protesting my interest in baseball, she used to say, “Balls and strikes and ins and outs and who cares?” I thought this charming enough, but completely disregarded, of course, its characterization of my obsession. Nevertheless (another word she was fond of; she always used it to preface telling me that I was full of . . . stuff), it’s an apt characterization of the rest of this game.

Notable among the various events that took place were the removal of Stroman after five and two-thirds, having given up the early run and two more in the sixth, the first on an Aaron Judge home run, the second when reliever Matt Dermody gave up a two-out double to Greg Bird that scored Ellsbury, a runner Dermody had inherited from Stroman.

Then the Yankees ended the scoring when Ryan Tepera gave up a one-out base hit to Chase Headley, and then Judge’s second homer of the game, his forty-eighth of the season to set some record or other, blah blah and all that. Actually, it brought him within one of Mark McGwire’s 1987 American League rookie home run record, which actually gave Judge the American League rookie home run record for players who did not imbibe PEDs with their baby formula.

Though Toronto threatened from time to time, they never scored again, and after Judge touched up Tepera, Aaron Loup, Tom Koehler, and Roberto Osuna ensured that the Jays’ lead, reduced to four, never got any slimmer.

Which brought us to the top of the ninth, when the Toronto crowd got to cut loose one last time for the much-beloved, often-misunderstood, flawed hero that is Jose Bautista. After Osuna fanned Chase Headley leading off, Zeke Carrera popped out of the dugout and jogged out toward right, manager John Gibbons classily bringing Bautista off in the middle of the inning so that he could leave to the cheers of those who would miss him, for good or for ill, for all the drama that he had brought to the franchise in his ten years of service.

Jose Bautista’s exit was a triumphal show of fraternity among the ball-playing set. First Carrera enveloped him in a hug. Then Pillar, and Hernandez after him, as they converged in short centre field. Then near second it was first Goins, then Barney, folllowed by a brief, manly mutual back-thump with Smoak, the country boy. Finally, a hug from Donaldson, and a wave to Osuna and Martin at the mound, and he was down into the dugout, and a gauntlet of hugs from the rest of the team.

Finishing the game was an after-thought for both sides, as both Headley and Judge looked at called third strikes from Osuna, who thus struck out the side.

So the Yankees left town no closer to, in fact farther behind, the Red Sox, their fate to be determined by hosting a single wild-card game, evidently with the Twins, though nothing as yet was carved in stone.

As for the Toronto Blue Jays, having completed their home schedule, reconciled to their fate, they had to pack up for three in Boston, three in New York, and a long winter of discontent.

Meanwhile, on the fake green grass of the TV Dome, players gone, grounds crew buzzing around, impersonally carrying out their duties, there was no palpable hint left of the immense presence of Jose Bautista, though the memories of his exploits will echo whenever the roar of the crowd again fills the building that he ruled. Just as Tom Cheek’s “touch ’em all, Joe!” will forever warm our hearts, that bat will ever remain suspended in the air for all to see and savour.

Exit rex.

Exeunt omnes.

After dashing the playoff hopes of the Baltimore Orioles, what could be more exciting than for the Toronto Blue Jays to fly into the Twin Cities for a four-game set with the Minnesota Twins, currently sitting in the second wild card slot in the American League?

The Twins, henceforth never again to be derided as the “Twinkies”, are a young, exciting, and hungry team, a team that gave Toronto all kinds of fits in their late August series in Toronto, when they took two of three from a Blue Jays’ team that still fancied itself in the race for that same wild card slot.

The Wild Card setup is a tawdry gimmick, designed only to boost year-end attendance in cities that would otherwise be moving on to hockey and basketball thoughts by now. Sure, we were thrilled to make it last year, and even more thrilled to take that incredible heart-stopper from the Orioles.

But for players and fans alike to be pining desperately for a chance to be assured of only one more game in their season, the wild card setup is little more than a cynical ploy.

Yet, with the Jays out of it now it’s surprising to see how the games left to play with contenders and pretenders add more than a little frisson of excitement to the experience.

I only have to mention for example the fact that the two one-run games that opened this series with the Twins were not only the fourth and fifth straight one-run games the Jays have played, but also the sixth and seventh such out of eight, going back to the Detroit series.

The outside observer might have thought that the pitching matchup for game one of the series rather strongly favoured the Twins, with rotational regular Jose Berrios, carrying a fine season reacord of 12-7 and a 3.94 ERA, facing off against the newly-arrived fill-in Brett Anderson, who’s essentially auditioning for a spot on next year’s Toronto team.

But Anderson has had some good outings so far for the Jays, showing off his impressive mix of breaking balls, his brisk demeanour on the mound, and some veteran savvy.

So it was that both starters put up zeroes for the first four innings. Both flirted with trouble, in particular Berrios in the second, when he gave up base hits to Kevin Pillar and Zeke Carrera, and then walked Raffie Lopez with two outs before he struck out Richard Ureňa with a wicked curve ball to end the inning.

Anderson gave up a leadoff single to Byron Buxton in the bottom of the second, and a double to the wall in right centre by Kennys Vargas, but fortunately in between the two Eddie Rosario hit into a double play.

Both pitchers threw a clean third. Amazingly, by the end of the third inning Anderson had only thrown 28 pitches. But after Berrios stranded a two-out walk in the fourth, Anderson ran into a spot of trouble in the Twins’ half of the fourth. With one out he walked Eduardo Escobar. But after fanning the dangerous Buxton, he gave up the world’s shortest infield single fielded by Raffie Lopez (yes, that’s right, an infield single to the catcher) to Rosario. Then Anderson wild-pitched the runners up to second and third before fanning Vargas on another great curve ball.

It was the Jays who broke through first, in the top of the fifth, with a solid double by leadoff batter Raffie Lopez, a successful sacrifice bunt (yay!) by Richard Ureňa that moved him to third, and a bit of luck, as Josh Donaldson lifted a short fly into left centre that fell into no man’s land between three fielders while Lopez scored from third. The Jays’ rally ended there as Justin Smoak was caught looking and Jose Bautista grounded out to short to strand Donaldson at first.

Anderson got one out in the bottom of the fifth, Jason Castro on a grounder to Smoak at first, and then the wheels fell off for him. All of a sudden he totally lost his command and walked the bases loaded. Number nine hitter Ehire Adrianza, playing left field, walked on four pitches. Brian Dozier walked on a 3-1 count. Anderson fought back to 3 and 2 on Joe Mauer before losing him. And Anderson is a guy who tends to keep the ball in play. Something was obviously wrong with him.

He only faced one more batter, Jorge Polanco, who rifled a 1-1 pitch into left to score Adrianza and Dozier, giving Minnesota the lead and suddenly putting Anderson on the hook for the loss, apparently, as we learned later, another victim of the altered game balls/blister problem, despite never having had a problem with blisters in his career.

Danny Barnes came in and threw one pitch. Eduardo Escobar lined it at Ryan Goins at second, who doubled Mauer off first, but it was now 2-1 Twins.

Berrios lasted two outs into the Toronto sixth. He was chased by a line single to right by Goins that was hit too hard to score Kendrys Morales from second. With Lopez due up, first and third and two outs, Twins’ manager Paul Molitor (may his tribe increase!) opted for left-handed Buddy Boshers. John Gibbons countered with Teoscar Hernandez hitting for Lopez, but Boshers was up to the challenge and struck out Hernandez with a curve ball.

From this point we saw a parade of relievers on both sides, all of whom contrived to keep the score tight at 2-1, right up until there were two outs in the Toronto ninth. For the Twins, Boshers was followed by Alan Busenitz, Trevor Hildenberger, Taylor Rogers, and their closer, Matt Belisle. For the Jays after Barnes went another full inning it was Tom Koehler for an inning, Leonel Campos for one batter, Aaron Loup for an inning, and Carlos Ramirez for another scoreless inning to continue his amazing oh-for-2017 ERA streak.

One of the odder things that any team did at the trade deadline was that the Twins divested themselves of their closer, Brandon Kintzler, trading him to the Washington Nationals, who had been desperate to acquire a funcional closer all year. Once the trade was finalized and July rolled into August, the Twins started to work their way back into playoff contention, so they needed to find a new closer, ASAP. They settled on the veteran Matt Belisle, a 37-year-old right-hander who had a grand total of five saves, three in 2012 with Colorado, in a career stretching back to his MLB debut with Cincinnati in 2003. Belisle, incidentally, had come the other way as part of the Nats’ package for Kintzler.

Belisle picked up his first save for the Twins on August sixth, and by the time he came into this one he had seven in the books. After two Toronto batters in the top of the ninth, he was only one out away from number eight. But that proposed out was none other than Justin Smoak. Belisle came away from this encounter with a little note in his pitchers’ log: if you’re going to throw an 0-1 slider inside to Justin Smoak, make sure it’s down, not hanging. Smoak hammered the hanger all to hell and back, and the game was tied, just like that, just like Smoak!

Belisle stayed in to get Bautista to sky out to Buxton in centre but, as they say, the damage was done.

Aaron Loup, who’d bailed out Campos in the eighth after Campos had walked Buxton leading off, started the ninth with his own mistake, hitting the first batter, Max Kepler, before making his exit. It only took Carlos Ramirez 5 pitches to record his tenth straight scoreless inning for Toronto, by popping up Brian Dozier and then getting Joe Mauer to ground into a double play.

Dillon Gee pitched the tenth for the Twins, and though he gave up a hustle double to Kevin Pillar with one out, he kept the Jays off the board, getting ground ball outs from Michael Saunders who hit for Rob Refsnyder, and Darwin Barney.

Luis Santos, who’d been nearly as effective as Ramirez since coming up in September, took over on the mound for Toronto in the bottom of the tenth. But anyone who watched any of the Toronto-Minnesota series in August knew that the Jays’ status in this game rested on very shaky ground as long as the brilliant, Toronto-tormenting, Byron Buxton was lurking in the shallows.

Santos quickly dispatched the first two Twins, taking nine pitches to pop up Jorge Polanco to short, and strike out Eduardo Escobar. Then the lanky and intense Buxton strode to the plate and settled in, all coiled energy, dangerous as a cobra ready to strike. He managed to lay off—sometimes he doesn’t—a low, outside fast ball. Then Santos threw him a curve ball that got down, but stayed in the middle of the plate. Buxton exploded, and you knew it was over as the ball leapt from his bat. So did he, as he watched it jump out of the park on a line, and so did the slump-shouldered Santos, who could console himself with the fact that he wasn’t the first Jays’ pitcher to be victimized by Buxton.

In dramatic but almost inevitable fashion, round one in Minneapolis went to the Twins. Did the Jays have anything left in the tank to try to derail the Minnesota playoff drive?

And after senior citizen and all-around jokester Bartolo Colon befuddled the Blue Jays’ batters in Toronto last month, what do you think their chances were against him on “Big Sexy Night” in Minneapolis?

Turns out, pretty good.

A word of explanation here.

At the end of August, when MLB had its “Players’ Weekend”, all the players put their nicknames on their jerseys instead of their last names. But there was a problem with Colon; it may be hard to imagine, but he wanted to put “Big Sexy” on his shirt as his nickname, and the league, not surprisingly, vetoed it.

But the Twins decided to thumb their noses at MLB and sponsor a “Big Sexy” t-shirt giveaway. The stands were full of people wearing bright red shirts with Colon’s favoured nom de geurre.

Perhaps it was all a bit distracting for Colon. He didn’t really mesmerize Toronto like he had in his last start. It took the Jays a few innings to see some results from their efforts against the wily old Colon, but they clearly had him timed up from the beginning.

There was a deep fly from Ureňa leading off the game, followed by a line shot to centre by Donaldson, a deep fly by Bautista in the second, a sharp line single to centre by Hernandez in the third, followed by a hard grounder to first by Ureňa that was picked by Mauer for the third out.

In the fourth, Donaldson led off with a vicious grounder right back at Colon, who stuck his glove down between his legs and played “Look what I got!” Even Donaldson had to laugh ruefully at Colon’s mixture of skill and luck as he trotted down toward first. Colon walked Smoak, Bautista flied out to centre again, and then Morales spiked one to left that died on the track for Rosario.

So far the Jays had nothing to show but the one single for some good swings they put on Colon. You had to hope their luck would turn.

Meanwhile, after two quick innings by Jay Happ, giving up only a single to, guess who, Buxton , the Twins had chipped away at the Toronto leftie for a run in the third and a run in the fourth.

In the third, Happ walked the Minnesota catcher, Chris Gimenez leading off the inning, and of course he eventually came around to score. Max Kepler singled Gimenez to second, Brian Dozier loaded the bases with an infield hit behind second, a tough chance for shortsop Ureňa, and Joe Mauer brought Giminez home with a sacrifice fly. Happ controlled the damage with a foul popup and a strikeout, but the Twins had the lead.

Byron Buxton created a second run in the fourth with his legs, laying down a bunt single, stealing second, and eventually scoring on Gimenez’ hard single off the wall in right.

Kevin Pillar cut the Minnesota lead in half in the top of the fifth with a leadoff home run to left. Russ Martin followed with a double to right centre, but Colon managed to put out the fire, though Ureňa made the final out with a scorcher to right, but right at Kepler.

Dozier restored the two-run cushion in the bottom of the fifth with his leadoff home run to left, but the Jays continued to rock Colon, though he managed to hold on into the seventh. Donaldson led off the sixth with a smash to the second deck in left to make it 3-2, but rockets by Smoak and Bautista were turned into outs.

Toronto finally finished off Colon and took the lead from the Twins the next inning, turning Happ from a potential bad-luck losing pitcher into a winner. As so often, it started with a leadoff walk, to Kevin Pillar. Martin followed with his second double of the game, a shot that rattled around in left long enough to allow Pillar to score from first to tie the game.

Ironically, the double by Martin, which finished off Colon for the night at six and a third rather lucky innings, was the only hard hit ball in the inning. Paul Molitor brought Ryan Pressly, a rightie, in to face Goins, who bunted Martin to third, but ended up with a base hit too when Pressly couldn’t make the play on him. After Hernandez flew out, and Pressly caught Ureňa looking, Donaldson hit one that deflected off Pressly for an infield hit that scored Martin with the lead run.

John Gibbons pulled Happ after he retired the left-handed-hitting Kepler on a short fly to left to open the bottom of the seventh, and Dominic Leone retired Dozier and Mauer to preserve the lead. Ryan Tepera pitched a clean eighth, and Roberto Osuna a clean ninth for the save. Pillar helped Osuna out by sliding on his butt to snag Robbie Grossman’s sharp liner for the second out.

Tyler Duffey kept Toronto off the boards in the eighth and ninth innings, despite walking two, one intentional, and giving up a two-out double to Donaldson in the ninth, but as it turned out this was one of those relatively rare occasions when the Toronto bullpen needed no insurance to close out the game, a close and satisfying 4-3 Toronto win that evened the series at one game apiece, temporarily stalled Minnesota’s drive for a playoff spot, and extended Toronto’s streak of one-run ball games to five in a row, three of which they had turned into victories.

Game three of the series, played on a still warm early Saturday evening in Minneapolis, marked the tenth start of Marco Estrada since the end of August, and his thirty-first start of the year. Starting on July thirty-first, in seven of his last nine starts he has looked like the Marco Estrada of 2015 and 2016, and not the Marco Estrada of the first half of 2017.

His return to effectiveness had been one of the main factors in Toronto’s grasp on the possibility of making the playoffs. Since that hope has been effectively squelched, his solid appearances have at least given Blue Jays’ fans something to look forward to as the season winds down.

And, on a practical note, his recent work has bolstered his chances of finding a good fit for himself for next year, when he will face the free-agent market. He has certainly been making a case for himself lately that he has much to contribute as a number two or three starter in any rotation in baseball.

Over his years with the Blue Jays, Estrada has suffered from a chronic lack of run support, and has seen many of his best efforts result in no decisions or low-scoring losses. After this string of five one-run decisions for Toronto, all the prospects were for another tight, low-scoring affair.

But it was the hard luck of the playoff-contending Twins to run into Marco Estrada at his best on a night when the Toronto offence, led by Josh Donaldson, gave him a lead to protect that ended up being more than enough for him to nail down the win, leaving Minnesota in desperate need of a Sunday win to gain a draw in the series.

Estrada would be faced by young Adelberto Mejia, a lefty with lots of promise who’d had eighteen starts for Minnesota, with a middling record of 4-5, and an ERA of 4.47. He also had a record of relatively short outings for the Twins, suggesting that Paul Molitor hadn’t been too willing to let Mejia try to go very deep once he got into some trouble.

Donaldson gave Estrada a run to work with in his first at bat, on the first pitch he saw from Mejia, a fast ball high out of the zone that the Toronto slugger reached up and crushed into the left-centre field stands.

Mejia quickly fanned Justin Smoak and retired Jose Bautista on a short fly to right before turning things over to Estrada for the bottom of the first.

Estrada took the ball and ran with it, if I can mix my sports. He retired the first twelve batters he faced, popping up six of them, and adding a fly ball and a line-out to left to his list of dismissals, making for a quintessential Estrada streak. By the end of four innings he had thrown only forty pitches.

He also had a 3-0 lead by the end of four. After the Donaldson homer in the first, Mejia had matched Estrada pitch for pitch through the end of three. The Toronto third sacker was the only Jay to reach base, as Mejia faced only one over the minimum.

But Mejia didn’t get an out in the fourth, and was out of the game after four batters and two runs scored. Donaldson led off with his second hit of the game, a line shot through the left side. Smoak hit a towering drive to left centre that thudded off the screen protecting the bullpen. By the time Buxton had played the carom, Smoak was on second and Donaldson had scored from first. Bautista hit a hard shot through the left side, but Smoak had to stop at third because the ball was hit in front of him and because, well, Smoak. But he scored on an a generously-awarded infield hit by Kendrys Morales, and the Jays were up 3-0.

The Morales hit should have been an error on shortstop Jorge Polanco, who backhanded Morales’ bouncer up the middle, and then tried a blind flip to Brian Dozier, covering second for the force, that pulled him off the bag. All hands were safe, and Smoak was across. Polanco should have gone to first for the more sure out.

Molitor had seen enough of Mejia, and yanked on his short leash. Dillon Gee came in, retired Kevin Pillar on a liner to left, and then ended the inning on his seventh pitch, which Russell Martin hit into a double play.

Gee pitched a second effective inning in the Toronto fifth, allowing only Richard Ureňa to reach on a walk.

Estrada induced four more balls in the air in the Minnesota fifth. Unfortunately, mixed in with the two popups—that made eight out of fifteen outs—and one fly ball was Eddie Rosario’s solo blast to centre, the first hit and first run for the Twins, and the only batter to reach base on the Toronto starter in the first five innings.

Gee and his replacement, Alan Busenitz, struck out the side in the Toronto sixth, Bautista hitting a hustle double to left centre off Gee after Smoak had been called out on strikes, but then staying there while Busenitz came in and fanned Morales and Pillar.

Estrada, eschewing the aerial route, fanned Jason Castro and Robbie Grossman to start the Twins’ sixth, gave up a base hit, the second of the game, to Dozier, but then went back to his trusty fly-ball routine to retire Joe Mauer for the third out, on an easy fly to centre.

The Jays looked like they were in business against Busenitz in the top of the seventh when Russell Martin led off with a blast to dead centre, but Byron Buxton (remember him?) ran it down with a nice over-the-head snag. Busenitz then took care of matters himself, making a nice recovery on a tough comebacker by Barney, and then freezing Ureňa for the third out.

Estrada walked Rosario, his first walk and third baserunner of the game, in the bottom of the seventh, but left him there by popping up the ever-dangerous Buxton and then fanning Max Kepler for the third out. At 90 pitches, Estrada was looking pretty good to try for eight complete, which would be the first time for him this year.

But first Toronto made their starter’s job a lot easier by adding on three runs, and they did it against Trevor Hildenberger, a reliever they hadn’t touched in four previous encounters this year.

Zeke Carrera hit for Hernandez and led off by beating out an infield hit to second. Donaldson then sent his third hit of the day through the left side, with Carrera reaching third on the hit. After Donaldson stole second on the 1-1 pitch to Smoak, they decided to put him on and load the bases for Bautista. A questionable call, here, taking the bat out of Smoak’s hands.

Bautista, with the Twins pulled around to the left in the shift, hit a pitcher’s nightmare, a popup that would’ve been a can of corn for a second baseman in normal position, but Dozier was pulled way around past the bag. It was too far in even for the speedy Buxton, and neither Dozier nor Polanco, the shortstop, had a chance on it. It dropped in, Carrera scored, and when Dozier kicked the ball away from the infield for an error trying to run it down, Donaldson scored, with Smoak stopping at second, keeping Bautista at first.

This brought up Kendrys Morales, still hitting left against the right-handed Hildenberger. As usual, the Twins cleared out the whole left side of the infield for Morales, giving him lots of room to shoot a no-brainer single to centre through the unoccupied territory around the bag, allowing Smoak to trundle around to score the third run of the inning, while Bautista stopped at second.

Molitor pulled Hildenberger for the right-handed Michael Tonkin, who survived a scare getting the first out when Kevin Pillar lined one hard to the track in left. Then he lost Martin to load the bases, which set him up to fan Ryan Goins and Richard Ureňa to get out of the jam.

The Twins had one last gasp against Estrada in the bottom of the eighth when Eduardo Escobar took him out to right field leading off. One thing about Estrada is that he’ll give up his dingers, but if he’s fortunate enough to do it with nobody on, it’s no big deal especially when your team’s given you six runs to work with. After Escobar’s homer, Estrada pitched a clean final inning to finish his eight with two runs, three hits, one walk, four strikeouts, and only 101 pitches.

Anyone who thinks Marco Estrada won’t pick up a decent contract somewhere next year is not paying attention.

All that was left for this game was for Josh Donaldson to have one more at bat, which came in the top of the ninth against left-hander Gabriel Moya. Already three for four with one homer, he came up with one out and nobody on. He took a called strike and then golfed a high drive to straightaway centre. Buxton might have had a chance to leap for it at the wall, but he was a little slow getting back, and could only watch helplessly as it bounced off the top of the wall and over.

Donaldson was four for five with two homers, the Jays led 7-2, and there was nothing left but for Matt Dermody to mop up, which he did effectively after giving up a leadoff double to Joe Mauer.

Dermody, just learning the style of the game, had never before finished off a victory for the Jays. After Byron Buxton flew out to Bautista to end the game, he turned and headed for the dugout, leaving Russell Martin like an abandoned groom standing at the altar with a sheepish grin on his face. Dermody was almost to the dugout when his mates pointed out to him that he needed to go back out there and shake Martin’s hand.

But the Twins weren’t laughing so much, considering that they were staring at losing three out of four to Toronto, exactly what they did not need when they were trying to secure their playoff spot.

On Sunday they would be playing for a much-needed split to maintain their spot in the standings.

As for Toronto, go figure, eh?

Joe Biagini was coming off his best outing of the year: eight brisk, dominating innings against Baltimore, in which he gave up two runs on six hits, and only threw 88 pitches.

A four-run Toronto first, started off by Josh Donaldson’s second first-inning solo blast in a row, followed by Twins’ starter Kyle Gibson walking four in a row for a second run, and a two-run, two-out single by Raffie Lopez, was followed in the second by another solo shot by Donaldson, a puny one that went only two rows into the stands, lol. Biagini, who had breezed the first inning on eight pitches, started the bottom of the second with a five-run lead.

By the end of the inning, the Twins had a 7-5 lead and Biagini was gone, departed after getting only one out, responsible for six of the seven runs, enough to saddle him with the loss.

It started out innocently enough when Eddie Rosario homered to left. More ominously, Rosario was followed by Byron Buxton, who took Biagini out the opposite way to right. Still, it was only 5-2, and there was nobody on base after Max Kepler grounded out to first.

But not for long.

Biagini never got another out. Escobar singled through the right side. In what may have been the pivotal at-bat of his short outing, Jason Castro fell into an 0-2 hole, took a ball, fouled one off, took another ball for 2-2, and then fouled off four in a row. Finally, on the tenth pitch, a waist-high inside fast ball, Castro singled to right. I would contend that if Biagini had retired Castro, he may have gotten out of the inning.

But, he didn’t. Robbie Grossman walked on a 3-2 pitch. Brian Dozier singled to left to score Escobar and keep the bases loaded. John Gibbons was not prepared to go any farther with Biagini, and brought in Tim Mayza for the lefty-lefty matchup against the veteran Joe Mauer.

If the base hit by Castro was the pivotal at bat for Biagini, the play not made on Mauer was the pivoital play of the inning. Mauer hit a hard one-hopper to the left of Goins at second, and the ball took a vicious second hop under Goins’ snatching glove. The ball was either a double play or an error and Goins missed it for the error. Two runs came in to tie the game, with Dozier stopping at third. Polanco grounded into a fielder’s choice at second scoring Dozier for the lead. Rosario singled Polanco to second. John Gibbons pulled Mayza for the hitherto effective Luis Santos, who gave up a double to the always-redoubtable Byron Buxton, scoring Polanco with the Twins’ final run of the inning. Max Kepler lined out to Smoak at first to end the carnage.

The inning was a disaster. The brilliant five-run lead was gone. The Jays were two pitchers into their bullpen. But it was still only a two-run deficit.

Of course the Minnesota starter Gibson settled down and started throwing strikes for outs. Santos matched him pretty well through the third and into the fourth, when Gibbie pulled him with two on and two out to bring in Aaron Loup to face and retire the left-handed Kepler, who grounded out to second.

Gibson retired the side in the top of the fifth, bringing us to the bottom of the fifth, when the roof really fell in on Toronto.

Or, rather, good ol’ Gibbie pulled it all down on his head with a completely inexplicable, and ultimately stubborn, decision to remove Loup and insert right-hander Chris Rowley to start the fifth, after Loup had faced one batter and thrown five pitches.

Before I proceed to dessicate John Gibbons here, for all the Aaron Loup nay-sayers out there, I just want to point out that if you check his game-by-game record he has made a lot more appearances, most of them effective, as a full-inning relief pitcher, rather than just as a lefty matchup specialist.

So here’s what Chris Rowley was facing as a right-hander with limited major league experience: switch-hitter Escobar, lefty Castro, and switch-hitter Grossman; both Escobar and Grossman having way better power numbers from the left side; the right-handed Dozier; the lefty Mauer; the switch-hitter Polanco, who also has better power numbers against righties; and the lefty Rosario. If you go far enough, after navigating the rightie Buxton, god forbid, you’re back around to port-sider Kepler.

So why Rowley instead of leaving Loup in, and taking his chances on the first three of these guys? Even worse, why leave Rowley in to suck it up for the whole inning when this is what they did to him: Escobar single, stolen base, to third on throwing error by catcher Lopez; Castro single scores Escobar; Grossman single pushes Castro to second; Dozier sac bunt attempt turns into an infield hit to load the bases for Mauer who hits a grand slam; Polanco flies out for the first out; Rosario hits a home run; Buxton strikes out; Kepler walks; Escobar finally strikes out to end the inning.

The Jays went into the inning down by two, 7-5, and came out down by eight, 13-5. Thanks, Gibbie. That was real smart.

Oh, not that it matters but in the sixth he put in lefty Matt Dermody to face Castro, Grossman, and Dozier. He retired the side on eleven pitches.

The Jays capitalized on a couple of doubles, by Zeke Carrera and Justin Smoak, to score two runs in the top of the seventh, not that it mattered. Course with a shut-down of the Twins in the fifth those were the erstwhile tying runs . . .

So with a little help from an easily-unsettled and unreliable Joe Biagini, and some atrocious managing by John Gibbons, the Twins breezed to an easy 13-7 win to escape with a draw in a four-game set that otherwise would have set them back on their heels instead of holding their ground in the race for the second wild-card slot.

The Jays are back home to host the Royals, who are also on the outside looking in, but have a little better place in front of the window than Toronto, and then the Yankees, who are steamrolling to the top wild card slot in the league.

It will be Jose Bautista’s last home stand ever (probably) in Toronto, so there’s that.

The next best thing to your team playing meaningul games in September is playing games that are meaningful for the other team. Especially if that other team is the Baltimore Orioles, ‘cuz we don’t like them birds so much here in Tranna.

The three game series with Baltimore that ended the Blue Jays’ brief home stand couldn’t have been tighter. If you’d dropped a piece of paper between the two teams any time during the series it would never have reached the ground. Scores of 4-3, 3-2, and 2-1 are all you need to know about how close this series was.

The fact that Toronto came out on the long end of the first two scores was gravy for the Jays’ disappointed fans, who, if they can’t watch playoff baseball themselves, are very happy to see that the Baltimore fans won’t have the pleasure either.

In an interesting sort of symmetry, Toronto benefitted from some shaky Baltimore defence to take a lead that they never relinquished in game one of the series, then returned the favour with a sloppy first inning in game three to set up the Orioles’ only win. The middle game was sharp, cleanly-played, and flat-out exciting, especially if you were rooting for the home side.

The Monday night matchup, Marco Estrada against Ubaldo Jimenez, was rife with possiblities. Would Estrada continue his resurgence as his career arc moves again toward free agency? Would Jimenez stone the Jays, as he has from time to time, or be stoned by them, as he also has from time to time, most notably in that electric moment when he dished up the Edwin Encarnacion dinger in last year’s wild card game?

Estrada managed to avoid the first inning wildness that has plagued him occasionally this year, retiring the Orioles on fifteen pitches in the first inning. In a harbinger of things to come, he caught Manny Machado looking for his first strikeout, and Machado was not at all pleased with the call by plate umpire Chris Segal on a 3-2 pitch that appeared to be right on the black at the bottom of the zone, the ninth pitch of his at bat.

From the bottom of the first on it almost seemed like the Orioles were playing with lumps in their throats and looking over their shoulders. For a team that had to create a chance to win every game the rest of the way in order to close the gap on a playoff spot, this was not the way they needed to comport themselves.

Their starter Jimenez struggled in the bottom of the first, loading the bases after retiring the first two batters. He walked Josh Donaldson, back in the lineup from his recent illness, gave up an opposite-field hit to Kendrys Morales, and an infield hit to Machado at third, before fanning Miguel Montero to leave the bases loaded, on his twenty-ninth pitch of the inning.

The tension for Baltimore built in the top of the second. Adam Jones fouled out to Jose Bautista in right, and then Trey Mancini picked up Baltimore’s first hit, a Texas Leaguer to centre. But Estrada frustrated both big sluggers, Chris Davis and Mark Trumbo, by striking them out looking. Neither was pleased with Segal’s calls as Estrada racked up his second and third called third strikes.

With the game still scoreless, the fuming Orioles, in particular Trumbo, took the field for the bottom of the second. More trouble found Trumbo in right, as leadoff hitter Teoscar Hernandez hit a high, short fly down the right field line. Circumstances coincided to create an outfielder’s nightmare for Trumbo. The twilight sky was bright and deceptive. Hernandez’ right-handed swing had imparted terrific out-spin to the ball.

First Trumbo lost it in the sky, and it fell untouched about ten feet behind him, in fair territory. It took a terrific turf bounce into foul territory, and a second one toward the seats, as Trumbo desparately gave chase. The second bounce hit the railing in front of the first row of seats just as Trumbo arrived to try to corral it. But it must have still been spinning, because it popped right out of Trumbo’s hands, and into the seats, much to the amusement of the Toronto fans.

Meanwhile, Hernandez had easily motored around to third, where he would stay, despite the Orioles’ unfounded protest that it should have been a ground-rule double. In fact, it was ruled a double in play, and Hernandez was allowed third base on the error on Trumbo, for causing a live ball to go out of play.

But wait, it got better. Adam Jones, who had not been personally offended by the plate umpire, was the next to make a damaging mistake in the outfield. After Ryan Goins efficiently scored Hernandez with a hard ground-ball up the middle, Darwin Barney stepped up and lined an even harder shot up the alley in right centre that one-hopped the wall and dropped at the feet of Jones, who picked it up. Barney, expecting the ball to be coming in, rounded second, looked out to centre, and realized that Jones had dropped the ball on the warning track for another outfield error, an unheard of second one in the same inning for the usually slick-fielding Orioles.

Barney took off again for third, and would have made it easily, except that he started his head-first slide about six feet too soon. Luckily for Barney, the relay went to the plate as he frantically swam/crawled along the infield dirt to finally clap his hand on the base between Manny Machado’s brilliant orange shoes. Jones and Trumbo should be thankful for Barney’s comical dive, because the enduring image of this game became, not either of their errors, but the sheepish grin on Barney’s face as he gratefully clutched the bag.

Barney scored immediately on a hustle double to right by Richard Ureňa, and the Jays had a 2-0 lead they would never relinquish. Because Hernandez would have scored in any case on Barney’s double, and likewise Barney on Ureňa’s double, both runs off Jiminez were earned.

The 2-0 Toronto lead after two innings put the Orioles into catch-up mode, and they never did, in particular because Estrada was brilliant, if short, and the Blue Jays’ bullpen was good enough over the last four innings.

Buck Showalter’s funk over the Baltimore hitters and Chris Segal’s strike zone only got deeper. Two more called third strikes in the third for Estrada, and another one to end the fourth, after the O’s had clawed back one run on a Machado double and a Jones single.

The Jays got that one back in the bottom of the fourth on a very long, very quick Ryan Goins solo jack to the 200 level in right.

A day late and a dollar short, Baltimore closed it to one again when Trumbo made up for his earlier woes with a leadoff homer against Estrada, who then finished his night by getting three ground-ball outs, a rather strange ending for the fly-ball/popup/strikeout pitcher.

An oddly familiar figure, the lanky Miguel Castro—remember him?—took over for Jiminez in the top of the sixth. Castro had been the other youthful golden boy beside Roberto Osuna in the Jays’ bullpen out of spring training in 2015. But Castro, originally having won the closer’s spot over Osuna, didn’t pan out. For the Toronto bullpen, the rest was history as Osuna took over the job, and Castro went on to the Rockies as part of the package in the Tulowitzki trade.

After suffering and overcoming some injury problems, Castro has resurfaced in Baltimore, and has been making a case for being part of the mix there next year. They’re even talking about trying him out as a starter. God knows the Orioles need starters.

Castro had some bad luck in his initial appearance against his original team, giving up a run without the ball reaching the outfield safely. He didn’t help himself by hitting Miguel Montero with a pitch leading off. Montero moved up to second on an infield hit by Hernandez. Both runners were advanced by Ryan Goins, again effectively using his at bat to ground out to first. Another infield single by Barney, deflecting off Castro, scored Montero with the fourth Toronto run.

Again Baltimore cut the lead to one in the top of the seventh, despite John Gibbon’s attempt to keep them off the board with his bullpen-by-committee. Danny Barnes, who had pitched a clean sixth for Estrada, walked Trey Mancini to lead off. Matt Dermody came in and caught Chris Davis looking, again, in an successful matchup situation. Then Tom Koehler got Mark Trumbo to ground out to third, but Mancini was able to advance to second. He scored when Caleb Joseph bounced a single up the middle. 4-3 Toronto.

And that’s where it stayed. Castro pitched a clean seventh to run his strikeout total to three, and Brad Brach a clean eighth to keep Toronto from picking up an insurance run, providing some nice one-run tension for the Jays at the end of the game.

Carlos Ramirez added to his sparkling ERA of 0.00 with a quick and clean eighth inning, aided by a third-out dive to his knees glove-side by Barney at third to cut off a shot by Jonathan Schoop.

And in the absence of Osuna, off on paternal leave (who knew?) Dominic Leone was elected to serve as closer, and he wrapped it up, after yielding a leadoff single to Adam Jones, and seeing him advance to second on a Mancini right-side grounder, by striking out the hapless Davis and the hapless (despite his homer) Trumbo to end the game. This time, at least they both swung at strike three.

So, one less chance for Baltimore to close the gap on its competition. Would the Jays be able to thwart their ambitions behind Joe Biagini on Tuesday night?

Well, that was a story of a different colour!

If Baltimore’s defensive sloppiness (tightness?) contributed significantly to their falling behind on Monday night, and not being able to climb out, this was a briskly played game, with neither team giving anything away, until the very end, when Toronto ripped the win from the very grasp of the desperate Orioles.

Joe Biagini has followed a strange path of alternating good starts and bad starts, and this was a good one indeed, eight innings, two runs on six hits, and only 88 pitches. This, after not being able to get out of the fourth inning in his last start in Boston. But Dylan Bundy, who had been very effective against the Jays back in April, going thirteen innings in two starts, giving up only one earned run on nine hits in total, was equal to the task, if a little shorter and only a little less efficient. Bundy went six full innings, and gave up only one run on five hits, walking one and striking out eight, on 89 pitches.

In short, this was a pitchers’ battle, and a fine one it was. Biagini had the better of it in the early going, breezing through three innings on only 26 pitches, despite giving up a leadoff hit to Adam Jones in the second and a two-out hit to Tim Beckham in the third.

Bundy stranded a leadoff single by Richard Ureňa in the first, then had to dig a little deeper in the second, but pulled it off admirably. Kendrys Morales, relishing the chance to hit from the right side against the portsider Bundy, drilled one into the gap in left centre for a leadoff double, then was able to move up to third safely when Bundy bobbled Kevin Pillar’s comebacker, and had only one option, to take the out at first. Ah, but then he pulled out his wicked slider and fanned Teoscar Hernandez and Ryan Goins, while Morales waited patiently at third before going back to his seat in the dugout.

Bundy wasn’t so fortunate in the third, though, as Toronto started to make serious contact on him. Luke Maile lined a leadoff single to centre. Then the warning track gods gave Bundy a hand by keeping both Ureňa’s and Josh Donaldson’s deep drives in the park. But his luck failed him with Justin Smoak, who went the opposite way on Bundy and ripped a double to right centre over Joey Rickard’s head that pinged off the DQ sign and away from the fallen Rickard. Maile, running from first with two outs, was able to come all the way around and score. Bundy then froze Jose Bautista with a wicked curve ball, but the Jays had the lead.

The middle innings zipped by, Biagini finishing the sixth on only 61 pitches. The only batter to reach on him was Chris Davis, who singled to lead off the fourth. Bundy retired seven in a row starting with the Bautista punchout in the third, but again was lucky that a couple of deep drives, by Morales and Pillar, stayed in the park to be caught.

Bundy’s stint was marked by reliance on his strikeout repertoire, as he fanned two in the fifth and two in the sixth, his last inning, the latter two after allowing Donalson to reach on a leadoff Texas Leaguer, and walking Smoak.

So Bundy left after a fine start, deserving more, though the Orioles did immediately take him off the hook for the loss in the seventh with their first run off Biagini.

Biagini allowed Trey Mancini to reach with a one-out double to the left field corner, only their fourth hit off him, but it was hardly his fault that the Orioles managed to bring him around to score the tying run. The big righthander blew away big Chris Davis on high heat that the lefty slugger couldn’t handle and couldn’t lay off. That brought up the second Baltimore Bopper, Trumbo, who didn’t exactly bop, but managed to lift a low strike over the infield that fell perfectly equidistantly between an onrushing Pillar and a retreating Goins, who was waving that he wasn’t going to get it either. Mancini came around on the hit to score and the game was tied.

Mychal Givens came in and settled Toronto’s hash quickly in the bottom of the seventh with two strikeouts and a popup on only eleven pitches. Givens effctively quashed any hope of the arrival of the walk-a-palooza that he sometimes puts on against the Jays.

You were kind of holding your breath when John Gibbons sent Joe Biagini back out for the eighth inning. Even after only 79 pitches, eight innings seemed a stretch. But Biagini was up to it, more or less, allowing only one batter to reach while retiring the side. Unfortunately, the one batter who reached was shortstop Tim Beckham who reached them all He put a confident swing on a tempting pitch and hit the big fly that sailed over the left-centre field fence for the home run that gave the Orioles the lead, and left Biagini finishing off the inning responsible for the loss.

The first indication that this game was not quite decided yet came in the bottom of the eighth, when the home town boys got to Brad Brach, for only the second time all year. The first was on June twenty-seventh in Toronto when he gave up a solo home run to Troy Tulowitzki with two out in the bottom of the ninth, a shot which didn’t mar Brach’s save, as he had gone into the ninth with a 3-0 lead. Get this: that was the only run Brach gave up against the Jays in twelve appearances, including this one.

Now wait a minute: if Toronto didn’t score against Brach in this eighth, how did they “get to him”? Well, first of all Richard Ureňa led off with a single to left centre, and made the rookie mistake of trying to stretch it when his team was down a run in a late inning. Trey Mancini shot him down at second and presumably taught him a lesson. But don’t worry, Ureňa’s night wasn’t done yet.

Then, Brach walked Donaldson, only the third walk he’d given up to Toronto in those twelve appearances. The walk was followed by Justin Smoak lining a single to right into the teeth of the shift, hit so hard that Donaldson had to stop at second. Zeke Carrera came in to run for Smoak, but before Kendrys Morales could stride to the plate, Buck Showalter was out of the dugout to call on his closer, Zach Britton.

And that’s why I say that Toronto “got to” Brad Brach: for the first time in twelve appearances he did not finish an inning that he started, and even though Britton fanned Morales to strand Brach’s runners, it still marked a significant milepost for Toronto that Brach wasn’t able to finish his inning. And keep in mind that if Ureňa had just checked in at first and not tried for second, the game would have been tied on Smoak’s hit.

John Gibbons played it just right in the top of the ninth, sending out Tom Koehler in relief of Biagini. Koehler retired the first two batters, Jones and Mancini, and then out popped Gibbons to bring in the lefty Tim Mayza to face the lefty Chris “All or Nothing” Davis. The move paid off for Gibbons as Davis went down swinging, and it paid off for Mayza because he was now the pitcher of record though with Britton returning to the mound for the final three outs, no one really made note of that.

If there’s anything more amazing than the fact that it was Zach Britton who not only blew the save in this game, but took the loss, while only getting one out, it was that of the five batters who faced down Britton and won the game for Toronto, not one was named Bautista, Smoak, Donaldson, or Morales. Rather, it was the supporting cast that did the job, Pillar, Hernandez, Barney, Maile, and finally, improbably, Richard Ureňa.

Pillar opened the inning by drawing a walk on a 3-1 pitch. On a 2-2 pitch, the Jays sent Pillar on the hit-and-run, and Teoscar Hernandez lined a single into right, with Pillar ending up at third. Barney, hitting for Goins, grounded into a fielder’s choice thereby replacing Hernandez on first, while Pillar was held at third. Then Luke Maile swung at the first offering from Britton and ripped a vicious shot to the left of Mannie Machado at third. Machado dove for the ball but couldn’t come up with it. He tipped it with his glove towards Tim Beckham. Maile was safe on the infield hit, and Pillar scored the tying run, with Barney checking in at second.

Then came Ureňa. With the count 1-1, Britton threw him a high fast ball on the inside corner. Britton may have been unlucky to have blown the game for Baltimore, but he was extremely lucky that the wicked line drive Ureňa hit back up the middle for the game-winning hit didn’t take his head off.

So there it was, the bottom of the Toronto batting order against the great Zach Britton, and Britton didn’t have a chance.

Maybe it didn’t really matter that Buck Showalter never used Britton in the Wild Card game last year, eh?

So as Wednesday’s final game of the series approached, the question was whether or not the Orioles could regroup to salvage at least one game, having handed one win to Toronto, and having had a second one stolen from them by the feisty non-contenders from Toronto.

As I mentioned in my lead, there was as much symmetry in this series as you can get in an odd-numbered sequence of events. The Orioles handed the first game to the Blue Jays, the second game was a hard-fought tooth-and-nail thriller, and the Jays handed the third game to Baltimore, so that they could avoid being swept by the cellar-dwelling Torontos.

Even more oddly, the Toronto breakdown in game three, like the O’s breakdown in game one, came early, and the rest of the game represented the playing out of a fait accompli.

If anyone could be justified in bringing suit against his mates for non-support, it would be Marcus Stroman on this Wednesday night. He pitched six innings, gave up six hits, walked three, and struck out seven. Oh, did I leave out the runs? Well, yeah, two of them, both unearned, in the first inning.

Not that Kevin Gausman didn’t deserve to win too: seven innings, 1 earned run, six hits, one walk, six strikeouts. But still, all things being equal, he should have left the game down 1-0, and it would have stayed that way until the last out.

It was passing strange indeed that the player who wrecked Marcus Stroman’s night was none other than third baseman Josh Donaldson, who seemed to have taken a bag of pre-game jitters onto the field with him for the top of the first.

Tim Beckham started off by hitting a Marcus-Stroman special on the first pitch, two hops, bounce, bounce, right to Donaldson. The latter glided in, picked the easy hop, took a step to line up his throw, took another step while he seemed to be counting the stitches with his fingertips, and then unloaded an awful, wild throw that left Justin Smoak with zero chance of staying on the bag for the out.

Instead of one pitch, one out, it was one pitch, runner on first who never should have been there. Stroman quickly set to work to eradicate the problem: he fanned Manny Machado with a wicked slider away in the dirt, and grounded out Jonathan Schoop to third on the second pitch, with Beckham moving up to third.

But wait, let’s revisit the Schoop at bat. He hit the ball hard on the ground at Donaldson. It was a pick-it-or-die kind of hit: pick it and double up Jones, or knock it down and miss the dp. On a ball we’ve seen Donaldson handle dozens of times, this time he knocked it down, and with Beckham in to second, he had no choice but to take the out at first. Though you can’t assume a double play, that was the inning right there, and on it went.

And it went on with Adam Jones, good ol’ Adam Jones, at the plate. Stroman didn’t get a call he wanted on the first pitch, which was low and away. Then he missed way outside. On 2-0, he came inside with a four-seamer that Jones liked, and he hit it hard to left. It might have been catchable with a good jump, but Teoscar Hernandez didn’t get a good jump. It looked like he lost it for a moment. It went for a double, Beckham scored, of course, and it was 1-0 Baltimore, with Jones on second.

As if that weren’t bad enough, Trey Mancini then launched one that carried to the wall in centre, unfortunately for Toronto it was a catchable ball that hit the wall just to Kevin Pillar’s right, well within reach if he’d gotten his usual jump on it. It bounced far enough away from him that Mancini, having knocked in Jones, went all the way to third for a very suspect triple.

Stroman managed to knuckle down and fan Mark Trumbo to leave Mancini on third, but Stroman and the Jays were down two unearned runs before they’d even lifted a bat against Kevin Gausman.

It didn’t much matter when they did lift their bats against Gausman; he sailed through his seven innings against Toronto.

Well, not quite sailed, but enough good innings to keep the Jays in his rear-view mirror. His worst inning was the third, when they broke through for a run on a leadoff double to right by Hernandez, who was sacrificed to third by Ryan Goins, and plated by a bloop double by Richard Ureňa. But the story of this game was that Toronto never really capitalized on their chances against Gausman. With one out, Donaldson moved Ureňa to third with an infield hit, but Gausman sawed off Smoak, who hit into a double play.

Toronto had runners at second and third with one out in the fourth after two singles and a mishandled ball by Mancini in left that let the trailing runner, Pillar, take second. But Russell Martin, back on the roster at last, and Hernandez put the ball in the air for easy and unproductive outs.

Pillar fanned behind a two-out double by Morales in the sixth, and Goins grounded into a double-play after a one-out walk to Hernandez.

And that was it for Gausman. They created a few chances; he was equal to them.

And the Baltimore bullpen was aces on this night, Darren O’Day retiring the side in order in the eighth with three strikeouts, and Zach Britton throwing a double-play ball, only his sixth pitch, to Pillar who grounded into the game-ending twin-killing in the ninth. Thus Britton redeemed himself for his shocking loss the night before.

As for Stroman, he danced through and around the Orioles from the second through the sixth in typical Stromanesque fashion, a walk here, a hit there, a little bases-loaded jam in the fourth, nothing he wasn’t able to handle without the help of a double play or two. The number says it all, two unearned runs in six innings.

The Jays’ bullpen was perfect again, keeping the team close through the latter innings, in case their bats might come alive.

Carlos Ramirez extended his scoreless streak in the seventh. The Orioles never put a ball in fair territory off him. He took fourteen pitches to fan two with very effective breaking balls, give up a walk, and retire the side on a foul popup to first.

Dom Leone gave up a weird double to right by Adam Jones, who used his bat like a cue-stick leading off the eighth. He then retired the next two hitters, fanning Mancini and getting Mark Trumbo on a fly ball to right on which Jones advanced to third. Matt Dermody came in to match up with Chris Davis, who hit a line drive toward right on the first pitch, a shot that Ryan Goins snatched out of the air at the last minute. This saved the Jays from giving up an insurance run that the Orioles in the end wouldn’t have needed anyway.

Ryan Tepera pitched a clean ninth inning, leaving it up to Toronto versus Britton, and we know how that turned out.

So on the whole it was a good series, exciting if flawed, which put Baltimore a little deeper in the whole in regard to making the playoffs. Whether being the agents, perhaps, of Baltimore’s demise is enough satisfaction for Blue Jays’ fans to savour over the winter as they try to put the bitter disappointment of the past season behind them, is a question that they’ll have to answer in the silence of their darkened post-season rooms.

In the meantime, there’s still some pretty interesting baseball to be played, though.

In a melancholy sort of way, there’s something quite exhilarating about a September series between two teams no longer harbouring any hope of making the playoffs.

The air is crisp and clear, September in the midwest, including the Canadian midwest, being the loveliest time of the year. The warmth of the day’s sun lingers into the evening, helping to ward off the encroaching chill of early fall.

Rosters have been expanded with new faces, rookies as well as veterans, all hoping to make an impression that will last through the winter and give them a leg up on making the team, or any team, out of Florida next spring.

Veterans continue to play hard to cement their positions and prove their continued worth. Even—especially—those players facing free agency have much to play for, in order to improve their worth on the open market, or to entice their current team to take a flyer on them for another year. Are you listening, Ross Atkins and Marco Estrada? Get a deal done. Soon.

In short, the game is reduced to its simplest elements: pitchers pitch, hitters hit, fielders field, and whichever team does it best wins the game. In the process, there is much to watch, much to appreciate, and much to ponder.

And so it was this weekend that the Toronto Blue Jays returned home from their week-long road trip to the unfriendly lairs of division-leading Boston, and wild-card-contending Baltimore. Considering the stakes at hand for their opponents, the Jays comported themselves about as well as they had this entire disappointing season, winning three games of seven and just missing taking six of seven by the measure of three extra-inning walkoff losses.

If Toronto came into this series hoping to make up for some of the close calls and failures of 2017, how much more so the Detroit Tigers, who came in with a record of 59-80, having lost hope ages ago, and being among the first teams to dismantle, dump salary, and start the process of retooling, not for 2018, but for some point beyond.

Consider the changes in the Tigers’ lineup since the two teams last met: traded away have been Justin Verlander, Justin Upton, Justin Wilson*, Alex Avila, and J.D. Martinez; on the disabled list: Michael Fulmer, Jose Iglesias, and Victor Martinez, most worryingly with an irregular heartbeat. Sadly, unless Victor Martinez makes his way back, the days of annotating Victor and J.D. as VMart and JMart, and making jokes about KMart, are over.

*Apparently, Tigers’ management has decided that if they haven’t been able to put it all together with a bunch of Justins, they need to go in another direction.

So on Friday night we were looking at a Tigers’ lineup that started with old reliable Ian Kinsler leading off at second, and then went quickly nouvelle vague with Jeimer Candelario at third, the familiar and destructive Nick Castellanos in right, John Hicks at DH, more familiar names Mikie Mahtook in centre and James McCann behind the plate, Efren Navarro at first, long-time utility guy Andrew Romine in left, and sparkling rookie shortstop Dixon Machado hitting ninth.

On the other hand, manager John Gibbons, returning Friday after a leave of absence, had a more veteran array of talent on offer for the Jays, with only callup Richard Ureňa at short and hitting ninth. Arguably, Ureňa was only out there because Josh Donaldson had apparently come down with a bug and was unavailable, so Ryan Goins was slotted at second and Darwin Barney at third. The early notion of leaving Goins at short and seeing how Ureňa might adapt to second seems to have been put off until the spring; Goins, being more experienced and versatile, is the more obvious candidate to play second, leaving Ureňa where he’s most comfortable. The other appearance of a newbie in Toronto’s batting order was Teoscar Hernandez, who took over for Steve Pearce in left field after one at-bat because, as we learned later, Pearce’s back had stiffened up.

The pitching matchup represented the same kind of distinction between the two teams on Friday, with Marcus Stroman taking the hill for the Jays and . . . Buck Farmer (??) starting for the Tigers. Okay, to be fair, Farmer, whose name belongs on my list of great baseball names, has been up and down with Detroit since 2014. And yet this was only his seventh appearance for the Tigers this year, coming in with a positive won/loss record of 3-2, but a dreadful ERA of 7.18.

But wait, we’ve heard this story before. Guy you’ve hardly heard of, guy his team-mates have hardly heard of (okay, that’s going a bit far), comes in and outpitches the established major-league starter.

Well, that’s what we got. Farmer only went five innings, gave up two runs, only one earned, on five hits, but dang it, he got the win to go to 4-2.

Even the earned run was tainted. Ureňa reached with a two-out base hit in the fifth, and then Hernandez, hitting in Pearce’s slot, lofted a blooper into centre. Mahtook came racing in and unwisely tried for a diving catch. The ball kicked off something hard, maybe Mahtook’s forearm, and kicked away. Far away. Running on contact, Urenã scored from first, Hernandez given credit for a double. No error was given, but still.

Then, in the sixth, when Tiger manager Brad Ausmus sent Farmer back out with only 68 pitches under his belt, his catcher let him down with a passed ball when the pitcher had Jose Bautista struck out leading off, but he reached, eventually coming around to score on singles by Justin Smoak and Kendrys Morales, the last batter Farmer faced. Unlike the fifth inning run that was earned on paper, but shouldn’t have happened, this one was definitely unearned.

The game was really decided by two pitches and two swings of the bat, it was that close. The second swing of the bat was the vicious one-hop liner that Kevin Pillar ripped toward third off reliever Drew VerHagen, who’d just come in to replace Farmer after Morales’ RBI single. With the two lead sleds Smoak on second and Morales on first, the Pillar one-hopper that didn’t go for a double, because it was skillfully picked by Candelario right at the bag, turned into a batter’s nightmare: Candelario spun with the pickup, poked a foot at the bag at third, fired the ball to second, where Kinsler whipped it to first, barely beating the hustling Pillar, as the video review confirmed, for a shocking, devastating, around-the-horn triple play to end the threat.

The other pitch? The other swing of the bat? Ah, that one hurt even more than the Pillar bullet turning into dust.

Marcus Stroman seriously breezed through the first eight batters, needing ten pitches for the first inning, twelve for the second, and five for the first two in the third, eight hitters, twenty-seven pitches. Then the kid Machado came up and ripped a double to right field. Kinsler, who has always been kind of a poor man’s Dustin Pedroia to the Blue Jays, in other words a real pain in the bupkus, hit one through the left side. Machado had to hold up on the ball, and checked in at third.

On second thought, maybe it wasn’t the one pitch that Stroman threw to Castellanos that disappeared over the centre-field fence for a grand slam, but the four straight bad ones he threw to Candelario, the new guy, to load the bases. If he had gotten Candelario, Castellanos would not have gotten to the plate. But, sadly, five pitches after Kinsler’s base hit, the Tigers had a 4-0 lead, on a ball that Kevin Pillar thought he had in the bag, until it just carried, and carried, over his head and over the fence, for a Tiger grand salami.

Then it was a question of whether Toronto could recover from the blow. Stroman did, but it was too late for him. He went out after six innings, still down 4-2 because of the slam, the only mistake he made that he was punished for. Give him a scoreless third inning, and he was brilliant on the night.

Toronto suffered the frustration of seeing the lead lengthen, rather than shorten, once the bullpens were involved. Danny Barnes came in for the seventh, and retired Romine and Machado on two pitches each, but then threw a changeup in to Kinsler after throwing five pitches away. Kinsler jumped on it, and it was 5-2.

The Kinsler homer was all the Tigers needed to hold off the Blue Jays, who clawed back within one in the eighth inning, on solo homers by Ureňa, his first in the majors, and Bautista, the three hundred and thirtieth of his career, and twenty-second of the season. Thus the generations pass in baseball.

But it was for naught. The Detroit bullpen, denuded of experience, has ended up devolving the closer’s job on Shane Greene, a twenty-eight-year-old righty who has logged major innings in relief for the Tigers in the last two seasons, but never closed before. Greene issued a two-out walk to the pinch-hitter Michael Saunders, but then fanned another pinch-hitter, Miguel Montero, to end the game.

Thanks to the grand slam gopher ball and the take-it-or-leave-it triple play, the young Tigers took the first game of the series from the Jays’ veterans. Little did we know that those two plays would be all that would stand between the Blue Jays and a series sweep.

I had the pleasure of listening to most of Saturday’s game on the car radio, courtesy of Jerry and Joe, because the last-minute starting time change from one to four pushed the game back into driving time for taking our grand-daughter home to Scarborough after her regular Saturday visit.

So, sticking with tradition, I’ll offer some quick observations on the first seven innings or so, before spending a bit more time on the end of the game, which I did see.

The game featured a pitching matchup between a pair of left-handers who were in effect auditioning for consideration for next year’s rotation for their respective teams. Chad Bell of the Tigers is one of those late-twenties guys who’s taken since 2010 to finally make his major league debut this year. He’d appeared in 19 games in relief for the Tigers, and this would be his second start, after going four innings in Cleveland on the third of September and getting cuffed around a bit.

Brett Anderson, on the other hand, has been pitching in the majors since 2010, and had accrued 86 decisions with a career ERA of 3.97. Yet he too was a tryout in this game. He’d been cut free by the Cubs in May, and the Jays picked him up to fill the rotation in Buffalo, with an eye toward seeing whether he has anything left to offer to a major-league team. This would be his third start with Toronto since being called up in late August. Thus far he’d had a loss and a no decision, allowing four earned runs in eleven and two thirds innings, while pitching quite well..

The Tigers struck first, in the first inning, when Anderson ran afoul of Miggy Cabrera, which is not such a grave fault: he’s certainly not the first. With Jeimer Candelario on first with a base hit, Cabrera belted a two-run homer to left. Luckily for Toronto, these were the only runs Anderson would give up in six full innings of work; he would only give up four hits the rest of the way, walking none and striking out five.

Toronto got one back in the bottom of the first thanks to the first of four base hits on the day by Kevin Pillar, who was by all accounts the star of this game. With two outs, Bautista on third and Morales on first, Pillar ripped a liner past Machado at short into left to score Bautista. And rip it he did; I saw the first inning before we left.

The game remained 2-1 until the bottom of the fourth, when, if you can believe it, and to the great amusement of Jerry Howarth, Kendrys Morales scored from third on the front end of a double-steal. Morales had walked. Pillar had singled him to second. Hernandez had hit into a force play, with Morales going to third. With two outs, after Barney had struck out and with Goins at the plate, Hernandez broke for second. In what he later admitted was a mistake, McCann threw down to second, but Hernandez stopped and got himself in a runown. While the rookie Machado elected to chase down Hernandez, Morales romped home with the tying run. The mirth over this play was only slightly dissipated when the official scorer decided that Morales had not stolen home, but had scored courtesy of a fielder’s choice, McCann’s throw to second.

I missed, but saw replays later, of Pillar’s brilliant catch against the wall in the top of the fifth off Machado after Anderson had struck out the first two batters. Now having seen it on replay, I would classify it in the top ten or so all-time of his catches, though that number of ten is getting to be mighty elastic these days.

I also missed Pillar’s leadoff, go-ahead homer in the bottom of the sixth off reliever Warren Saupold, which was eventually followed by an insurance run driven in with a clutch two-out base hit by Luke Maile that scored Barney, who’d reached on a single, stole second, and advanced to third on a right-side ground ball out by Goins.

With the Toronto lead at 4-2, and both starters gone, Anderson after his quality six innings, I arrived home to watch the wrapup of the game, starting with Carlos Ramirez in the seventh adding to his amazing string of scoreless innings, encompassing all of 2017, minors and majors, including three appearances totalling six innings with Toronto. He added a seventh perfect inning against the Tigers, striking out two in the process.

Dom Leone, continuing to impress with his solid work, pitched a quick eighth, taking eleven pitches to get two groundouts and then fan Kinsler to end the inning.

In the meantime, after Pillar’s homer off Saupold, it had been Daniel Stumpf who came in and allowed Saupold’s base runner, Barney, eventually to score on Maile’s single. Drew Verhagen finished off the sixth with no further damage.

Jeff Ferrell managed to keep Toronto from extending its lead in a rocky seventh. With one out, Ferrell walked Morales. Pillar hit a solid liner to left for his fourth hit of the game, Morales moving up to second. Hernandez hit a second straight line single to left. Coach Luis Rivera tried to challenge the arm of Andrew Romine, normally a utility infielder, in left, and sent Morales around third only to be gunned down at the plate by Romine.

Lefty Blaine Hardy came in to face and retire Goins to start off the eighth, but Maile, who is starting to make sharp contact, shot a double to centre. After Urena fanned for the second out, Bautista lofted a teasing little fly over Kinsler’s head at second. Kinsler tracked it back, dove for it, but it ticked off his glove for a base hit that scored Maile with a very important fifth run.

Which took us to the top of the ninth and the rather surprise appearance of Ryan Tepera as the closer, going for his second save of the year. We later learned that Roberto Osuna was unavailable because of a stiff neck.

For all of his advancement this year, on this Tepera was not quite up to turning in an efficient ninth inning, limiting the drama, which is what we would have wanted with a three-run lead going in. Yet, in the end, he held off the Tigers, earned the save, and closed out the Jays’ 5-4 win, the same score as Friday night, but with the other team on top.

Almost all bad things start with a leadoff walk, this time to Candelario. Miggy Cabrera singled to left, bumping Candelario up to second. Castellanos doubled home Candelario, Cabrera stopping at third. Nobody out, 5-3, tying run at second. Who ya gonna call?

Nobody, because there weren’t nobody out there no how! Tepera just had to buckle down and do it. Cabrera didn’t matter, but Castellanos had to be left out there on the bases.

And by god, Ryan Tepera did it. Here’s how: John Hicks grounded out to Smoak unassisted, the runners holding. Jacoby Jones popped out to Goins at second. And Andrew Romine, who’d saved a run in the seventh with his throw to cut down Morales at the plate, and who’d also made a Pillar-esque diving snag of a liner headed for the corner in left off Maile, a catch I didn’t see until just now watching the video, in the end, that Andrew Romine could not quite top the heroics of the real Kevin Pillar, and so took a called third strike from Tepera to end the game.

Whew! And I raced back in from the car to watch the last part of the game just to put myself at risk of a cardiac adventure?? Thank god it turned out okay for the good guys, or I’da been off to the emerg fer sure!

So, series tied at a game apiece, runs dead even at nine apiece, Sunday would tell the tale, whether the Tigers would leave town with their heads held high, or their tails (sorry) between their legs.

I started this narrative with commentary on the Tigers’ having already dismantled much of their long-standing core contingent, going with a lineup featuring quite a few new faces.

Sunday’s game, however, presented a promising new face breaking out for Toronto as well. Teoscar Hernandez, who has been a regular presence in the lineup since coming up from Buffalo, gave a performance that on its own merits, regardless of what he does from this point on, should merit him serious consideration for a regular spot in the outfield for Toronto next year.

Hernandez, it will be recalled, came to Toronto along with the departed Nori Aoki from Houston in exchange for Francisco Liriano, whose days in Toronto were numbered in any case. It should also be recalled that he had caught the attention of the Jays’ pooh-bahs in August, 2016, when his first major-league home run was hit against Toronto, in Toronto, in his first major-league game, while on a callup assignment for Houston.

In one of baseball’s typical little ironies, the victim of Hernandez’ first dinger in his first game? None other than Francisco Liriano.

On Sunday, facing the veteran right-hander Anibal Sanchez of the Tigers, Hernandez struck out to strand the bases loaded with one run already across the plate in the first inning.

But he made up for the first inning disappointment in the fourth inning when, after Ryan Goins reached on a one-out flare single to right, he took Sanchez to the deepest part of the ball park, hitting it out to centre to give Toronto a 3-0 lead, recording his first homer for Toronto, but his second career dinger in Toronto.

Then, in the fifth inning, maybe manager Brad Ausmus would later regret his decision to let Sanchez pitch to Hernandez with one run already in and a couple of runners on. Singles by Bautista, Morales, and Pillar had already plated one additional run, making the score 4-2 for Toronto. (In the top of the fifth, Manny Machado had reached on a fielding error by Ureňa, and Kinsler had homered to left off Jay Happ, cutting the lead at that point to 3-2, the closest the Tigers would come.)

With Morales and Pillar on base, Hernandez took Sanchez downtown again, this time to the opposite field, this time for three runs, giving him five ribbies for the game and basically salting it away for the Blue Jays.

It’s not like Hernandez was the only Jays’ rookie to impact Sunday’s game. Richard Ureňa seems to have found a spot as leadoff batter, not to mention his sparkling defensive play at short, leaving aside the careless error or two. In the first inning, his speed turned a Kendrys Morales single into an unusual RBI for the Toronto DH. He had led off the game with a ground single up the middle, and then looked destined to die at first as Josh Donaldson and Justin Smoak made outs, bringing up Morales. But Toronto manager John Gibbons started Ureňa on a 1-0 pitch. Morales lashed the ball on a line past the empty infield on the left side into left centre for a single. The speedy rookie never hesitated as Luis Rivera waved him home, and he scored from first on the single without even drawing a throw to give Toronto an early lead.

Jay Happ started for the Jays, and though he had to work his way out of trouble in three of the first four innings, on this day he had his strikeout mojo, eventually notching up nine which helped him out of a couple of jams, as in the first, when after striking out the first two Tigers he gave up base hits to Detroit’s twin terrors, Miggy Cabrera and Nick Castellanos, but extracted himself by fanning John Hicks to strand the runners.

Happ’s only lapse (nice phrase, that) came in the fifth, when he served up the homer to Kinsler that cost Toronto two runs, because of the afore-mentioned sloppy miss by Ureňa at short on an easy grounder by Dixon Machado, who rode home on Kinsler’s blast. But the dinger by Kinsler of course only put one run on the board in terms of Happ’s record.

The Toronto lefty’s strikeout total, not to mention his penchant for working in and out of trouble, led once again to an elevated pitch count, and he was more than well done after six at 113 pitches, though by this time he was cruising along on a 7-2 lead.

But Happ’s departure left a big chunk of outs to accomplish to seal the deal, and that’s where a third impact rookie had a big role to play for the Jays. Luis Santos, the chunky twenty-six-year-old right-hander with the crazy record in Buffalo this year (3-12, but a decent 4.07 ERA and a not-bad WHIP of 1.26), who has flown under the radar with all the attention garnered by Carlos Ramirez, was just the man to fill the bill.

Santos, with two solid appearances already under his belt, three and two thirds innings against Baltimore with one earned run, and two scoreless innings against Boston, was a real zip-meister in his three innings of mopup work. No runs, two hits, two strikeouts, and thirty-four pitches for three innings. Despite the Jays’ big lead he qualified for his first major-league save under the provision of pitching effectively over a number of innings to preserve a lead.

What’s amazing about Santos is his nonchalant, bring-it-to-em approach. No nonsense, just go after them, with a funky delivery of a nice repertoire of pitches that has so far been very effective. And how valuable can Santos be next year, as someone who has always started, for giving the team three innings of bridge work when it’s badly needed?

In fact, it’s become obvious, with the performance of the Toronto relievers who have been here all year, and the glittering work turned in by the recent arrivals, that the one place where Ross Atkins does not have to throw money around in the off-season for new talent is the bullpen, which is getting stronger by the game. In fact, the toughest job for management might be finding roster spots for all the relievers who deserve them.

Oh, and we didn’t even mention that Teoscar Hernandez (all for re-christening him “Oscar” raise your hands!) was on the front end of what was, given the way Santos followed Happ, a totally superfluous eighth run in the seventh inning. He reached with a one-out single to centre, and zipped around to third on a single to right by Darwin Barney, who quietly went four for four today when nobody was looking. By the way, I really like this first-to-third stuff. Where’s it been hiding all these years? From third, Hernandez was able to score on a James McCann passed ball off a pitch by Tiger reliever Artie Lewicki.

I was going to add Artie Lewicki to my list of great baseball names, but on second thought, especially since he’s from Detroit, the erstwhile pro bowling capitol of the world, maybe his name would be better suited for a character role in the proposed sequel to The Big Lebowski, a project which doesn’t exist, because I totally made that up.

On the whole, then, it was a fun and interesting weekend at the old TV Dome. Nothing to do with the pennant race, mind you, just some good, old-fashioned baseball. Toronto took the series, two out of three, from the bottom-dwelling Tigers (we should talk?) and were it not for the precise placement of a hot shot by Kevin Pillar, and the lousy placement of a pitch to Nick Castellanos, both on Friday night, the Jays would be sitting down Sunday evening to dine on big cat road kill, after a most satisfying sweep.

We came close, though.