Long Ball Stories

So riddle me this: how often is Chris Sale going to give up an improbably manufactured first inning run, and solo homers by Devon Travis in the second and Justin Smoak in the third, to be facing a 3-1 deficit for his Red Sox over the Blue Jays?

That’s the situation we faced last night in the series’ finale between the two East Division rivals.

No riddle here. The answer is obvious: not very bloody often.

So it’s really too bad that Marco Estrada and the Jays couldn’t hold on to that early lead, which would have given them a much-prized series win against the streaking Bostons.

As it was, Sale managed to shut the Jays down from the fourth to the sixth innings, just long enough to be the pitched-out beneficiary of J.D. Martinez’ three-run fifth inning shot off Estrada, who saw another fine beginning go south in the middle innings, leading to another less-than-successful outing for him and another loss for his team.

There were other factors at play last night as well. One was that the Red Sox picked up two very strange and lucky hits, one of which figured in the scoring. And, not for the first time, a defensive failure by Devon Travis contributed to the loss.

To hang this one at least partly on Travis may seem unfair, especially since he broke out, for one night at least, from his season-long hitting slump, chipping in a home run and a triple to the Toronto cause. But, as inarticulate people say, it is what it is: Travis bobbled a sure double-play ball that cost Toronto a run.

If you’d like to refer back to my headline, that’s “a run” as in one of 5 Boston scored against Toronto’s 4. And, yes, he contributed to two Toronto runs with his bat, but, cruelly, those were owed a long time ago, his slump’s gone on so long, and it’s just a weird coincidence that they turned up last night.

To carry this point one step further, if Toronto had been regularly starting a second baseman who could actually make the tough plays as well as chip in a hit or two and an RBI or three, how much farther ahead would the team be than it is?

Sale, who has usually mown down the Jays like a scythe, was off his form almost from the start. He jammed Steve Pearce for a soft liner to first. But he went 3-1 on Teoscar Hernandez before walking him, and Justin Smoak, hitting right-handed against Sale, lofted a bloop single to right, with Hernandez hustling to third. Then he hit Yangervis Solarte—hard, even if it was a curve ball—right on the kneecap to load the bases.

Then came a gutsy at-bat by Kevin Pillar, who was determined to get the ball in the air to score Hernandez. Sale threw him three straight high outside fast balls, the first one out of the strike zone, and the second and third ones each higher still. It’s called “climbing the ladder” by a pitcher. Pillar swung and missed the first two; the third one came in head high, but Pillar swung at it anyway, made solid contact, and skied out to J.D. Martinez, who was in right last night, with Mookie Betts in centre. The fly ball was deep enough to score Hernandez, and the Jays had broken on top against Sale for the first time that I can recall.

Sale came out loaded for bear in the second inning. Randal Grichuk fouled out to the catcher. Luke Maile struck out looking. Then the slump-ridden Travis shocked everyone in the ball yard, and everyone else watching, when he turned on a 1-1 fast ball right down the middle and just pounded it into the second deck in left.

In the third, after his team had picked up a run to cut the lead to 2-1, Sale fanned Hernandez, but Smoak hit a hanging 0-2 slider into the bullpen in left to restore the 2-run Toronto lead.

Well! Three innings in, and it’s Blue Jays 3, Boston 1 with the unbeatable Chris Sale on the mound for the Red Sox! Could it last? That would be up to Marco Estrada.

Estrada started out at his mesmerizing best. Betts fouled out to Smoak at first on a 2-1 pitch. Andrew Benintendi fanned on an 0-2 pitch. Then he stumbled a bit. Hanley Ramirez surprised everybody by grounding one through the vacant right side of the infield for a base hit. J.D Martinez squared up a high changeup, but it stayed in the park for Hernandez in right.

Estrada struck out the side in the second, one of the best innings I’ve ever seen him pitch. Mitch Moreland ran the count to 3-2 but fanned on a high fast ball. Eduardo Nunez ran the count to 3-2 and fanned on a wicked changeup. Rafael Devers took a low fast ball for a strike. He fouled off a cutter low and outside. Then he swung wildly at a fast ball high and well outside the strike zone. Three strikeouts and not a stiff among the Boston hitters.

Estrada’s streak continued in the top of the third when Christian Vazquez took a low fast ball for a called third strike. As a catcher, Vazquez should have been paying attention: it was the same pitch that plate umpire Ramon De Jesus had been giving to both pitchers consistently for the first two innings.

That brought Brock, aka Carl Yastrzemski, Holt to the plate. (Yes, that’s a bit of a sacrilege, but just think of what he’d done to the Blue Jays in this series.) After going 6 for 8 in the first two games of the series, he stood in with that short stroke of his and drove the ball to the wall in right centre for a double. Alarmingly for the Red Sox, Holt grabbed his hamstring rounding first and limped into second. He was replaced by a pinch-runner who also replaced him in the field, Tzu-Wei Lin.

After Betts flew out to centre, Benintendi finally broke off his string of frustration with a hustling double to right that scored Lin with Boston’s first run. Estrada walked Ramirez on a 3-2 count, but then neatly picked Benintendi off second for the third out.

When Smoak went deep on Sale in the bottom of the third he restored Toronto’s two-run lead, which takes us to the top of the fourth, when Estrada got the response he wanted but not the result, and a fly ball by Devers to Pillar in centre, instead of being the third out, drove in the Sox’ second run.

Martinez led off the inning with a single, bringing the left-handed Moreland to the plate. With the infield playing at double-play depth, Moreland hit a hard one-hopper right at Travis, who was positioned perfectly and made a nice snag of the tough ball. But as he turned to second and transferred the ball to his throwing hand he bobbled it just long enough that Gurriel had to eat it at second and settle for the forceout.

So when Nunez hit a golf shot into right centre for a double, Moreland was ahead of him at third instead of on the bench. And there was one out instead of two. Thus, when Devers sent Pillar on a bit of a run to flag down his fly ball, it was a sacrifice fly and not the third out, and the score was now 3-2 for Toronto.

With the score tight Sale settled in and retired nine of ten Toronto hitters in the fourth, fifth, and sixth innings, only walking Teoscar Hernandez on a ten-pitch at-bat in the fifth inning. Hernandez seems to have developed much better discipline at the plate. It’s a rare bird, let alone a rookie, who can work Chris Sale for two walks in the same game.

By the time Sale finished up his sixth and last inning he was in the lead and in line for the win.

This was thanks to Marco Estrada’s failing to finish off the Boston fifth, and giving up the blow that turned out to be fatal for Toronto’s chances for a series win.

Estrada got the first two outs quickly enough. In his first at-bat after replacing Holt, Lin popped up to Justin Smoak at first. Betts hit one hard enough, but to straightaway centre where Pillar hauled it in.

But then, Benintendi, starting to wake up from a long slump at the plate, pulled a crisp liner into right field for a single. Hanley Ramirez followed with a bloop single to right that was as strange as Nunez’ 9-iron double the previous inning. On a 1-2 pitch he reached down and away and just clipped it enough to send it on an arc into no-man’s land in right. Once again Ramirez’ muscle had given him a hit when lesser men would have made a feeble out.

Two bad results stemmed from Ramirez’ blooper. Three, actually. First, it extended the inning. Second, it brought J.D. Martinez to the plate. Third, it gave Boston his run, in effect the winning run of the game, because Martinez stepped in and slapped a high fast ball toward right that carried, and carried, and carried, over the bullpen fence for a three-run dinger and a 5-3 Boston lead.

Estrada finished the inning when Moreland flied out to left, but Martinez’ lazy fly ball home run finished Estrada.

The Blue Jays’ bullpen stepped up big time once again, and Boston never saw another baserunner until Danny Barnes walked but stranded two in the ninth.

One apparent shortcoming in Toronto’s bullpen is that there is no one out there clearly identifiable as a “long man”, a guy who can go two or three effective innings to hold the team close when the starter has gone short.

A surprising candidate emerged last night in Aaron Loup, who breezed through the sixth and seventh innings without allowing a baserunner, striking out two and throwing only 24 pitches.

Seung-Hwan Oh threw an equally effective one-two-three eighth with a strikeout on 14 pitches, and then Barnes survived a somewhat wild and wooly ninth in which he had to face Mookie Betts with two on and two out after two walks. Betts, mercifully, hit a short fly to centre for the third out.

Alec Cora went to right-hander Carson Smith to follow Chris Sale, and he gave up the Jays’ fourth run, forcing Cora to bring in Matt Barnes to put out the fire.

Barnes, who I noticed last night looks an awful lot like Danny Barnes, except his beard isn’t red, had his own rollicky eighth inning as Toronto wasn’t going down without a fight.

Smith had retired Luke Maile on a grounder to short to start off the seventh, but Devon Travis connected for a vicious low liner to the wall in left centre that rattled around enough to allow him to turn it into a triple. Kendrys Morales hit for Steve Pearce and grounded out to second while Travis scored the fourth Toronto run.

With two outs and the bases empty there was no reason to pull Smith. But there was when Hernandez followed by stroking an inside-out double into the open space in right. That’s when Barnes came in to stifle the rally by fanning Justin Smoak with a 2-2 curve ball after pumping two 97-plus fast balls in to him.

Matt Barnes had his own adventure in the Toronto eighth, but Toronto’s last gasp died with the video review umpire’s thumbs down from New York, a hell of a way to get a rally snuffed out.

With one out Barnes had walked Kevin Pillar on a 3-2 pitch, and then Curtis Granderson hitting for Gurriel on a 3-1 that was nowhere close. This brought up Randal Grichuk, inserted in the lineup because he’d gone 3 for 4 against Sale in his only start against him. Not this time, though: he’d fouled out to the catcher twice and grounded out to second in three at-bats against Sale.

This time he hit a chopper to Profar at short, and if Grichuk isn’t hitting, at least he can run. He turned an easy out into a play close enough to review. If there was one last turning point in the game, it was this: if John Gibbons won the appeal, the Jays would have the bases loaded with one out. If he lost the appeal, they’d have runners at second and third, but two outs.

The video review upheld the call on the field: Grichuk was out.

Matt Barnes fanned Luke Maile on a high fast ball on the outside corner, as Maile tried just a little too hard to replicate his earlier season success in similar situations.

You’re not likely to beat Craig Kimbrel twice in one series, and this time he was dominant. He fanned Travis, and then popped up Morales and Hernandez to secure the game and the series for Boston.

You don’t get too many chances to beat Chris Sale straight up. Hope it comes around again some time!

That Mookie Betts! If you could just clone him! Or maybe put out a contract? Anybody know anybody?

Aaron Sanchez has put together “almost” great games a couple of times this year, and he sure was looking forward to putting all the pieces together last night in the second game of the 3-game Toronto series at the TV Dome.

So it’s kinda too bad that he went 2-0 on Betts, the amazingly-talented Boston leadoff hitter, in the first inning last night, and had to throw a fast ball to get a strike. It was even more too bad that plate umpire Scott Barry didn’t even get to call that fast ball a strike, because Betts knocked it into the left-field seats before you could half get the volume adjusted on your TV set.

Instead of a nice tidy 14-pitch side-in-order affair, the Boston first for Sanchez turned into a messy 24-pitch business in which he had to pitch from the stretch for the last two outs because Teoscar Hernandez, not very comfortable in right field at the TV Dome, was handcuffed for an error by a Hanley Ramirez line drive.

It took a quick glove at third by Yangervis Solarte when the ball took a tricky last-minute hop to get a force on Ramirez at second for the second out. Then Sanchez decided to do it himself, blowing Rafael Devers away on high heat on a 3-2 pitch.

Wait, let’s back up a minute: Hernandez in right? That’s correct. John Gibbons decided that it was time to give Randal Grichuk a rest against the left-handed Eduardo Rodriguez, and still keep the lineup loaded with right-handed hitters, so it was Hernandez in right and Steve Pearce in left.

Too bad that the move had such an immediate effect, but at least it didn’t cost Toronto a second run.

Devers, who would have plenty of trouble and not much success in this game, gave Boston’s 1-0 lead back in the bottom of the first with a terrible throw into the stands that allowed Pearce to score from second on what was ruled an infield hit by Justin Smoak.

Pearce had gone one better than Betts by attacking the first pitch of the game from Rodriguez, though he didn’t hit it out, but smacked it off the wall in left. About halfway to second, Pearce realized that Andrew Benintendi had played the ball really well off the wall, and he was in trouble.

The throw beat Pearce to the bag, and second baseman Eduardo Nunez turned to swipe the tag on Pearce, but, as the Newfoundlanders say, there he was, gone! Pearce had launched himself into a head-first slide, but as he hit the dirt he rolled over to his right and grabbed the bag with his right hand, looking up at the sky, and the ump, with obvious relief.

It wasn’t Chris Coghlan doing a somersault over Yadier Molina at the plate, but until something better comes along it’ll do as the slide of the year. So after Hernandez hit a lazy fly to right for the first out, Justin Smoak ripped one down the line to third. Devers dove on both knees to the line, snagged the ball nicely, got up, pumped once for second, changed his mind, and then threw wild to first, with the ball going into the stands. Pearce came in to score, Smoak was awarded second, and the game was tied.

Sanchez settled in for the second and retired the side on 2 strikeouts and an easy grounder to second. Rodriguez, though, had to pitch around a second Devers error in the Jays’ half of the inning. After Benintendi made a nice running catch on a liner to left by Kevin Pillar for the second out, Devers fumbled a grounder by Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and then threw wild to first. He was charged with an error on the catch. Diaz ended the inning by also hitting a grounder to Devers, who threw him out at first after another double clutching motion before his throw.

Don’t know whether this is a chronic thing with Devers, or if he was just rattled, but he did it on nearly every ball he handled last night.

After the two runs in the first inning, the game settled into a pitchers’ duel, much like last night’s, but with neither team playing from behind.

After the Hernandez error on Ramirez in the first, Sanchez retired 11 of 12 through the end of the fourth, with 5 strikeouts. It’s interesting that the Sox had come into this series with the lowest strikeout total in the league, but they had gone down on strikes 14 times in game one, with Jay Happ ringing up ten, and they were on their way to another ten last night, 8 racked up by Sanchez.

After Pearce scored in the first, only the Devers error on Gurriel led to a Jays’ baserunner before the fifth inning, as Rodriguez also set down 11 of 12. Rodriguez had his ground-ball thing going, mostly, recording 6 outs on ground balls in that stretch, as well as 2 strikeouts of his own.

Well, something had to give, and it did, in the fifth inning, but it didn’t give very much. After all the fuss and bother each team had picked up an additional run, and the game was now tied at two.

Sailing into the fifth, after the next three batters Sanchez had a run in and was looking at runners on second and third and nobody out. Jackie Bradley Jr. drew a leadoff walk on a 3-1 pitch. Sanchez tried to go down and in on Christian Vazquez and hit him to put a second runner on. That brought the most dangerous Boston hitter this series, Brock Holt, to the plate. “Most dangerous hitter in the series?” Brock Holt? Are you kidding me?

Holt once again came through. He knocked out a double to left, his opposite field, scoring Bradley with the lead run and sending Vazquez to third. Mookie Betts flew out to medium-depth right and Hernandez with the catch and Vazquez at third sort of stared each other down. Vazquez decided to hold on to the bag rather than test Hernandez’ arm. Sanchez then walked Benintendi on a 3-2 pitch to load the bases with only the one out.

I don’t know what Jays pitching coach Pete Walker said when he came out for a mound visit, but it must have been magical, because the slugger Ramirez hit the first pitch on the ground right to Gurriel, who started an inning-ending double play to save Sanchez from further damage.

Lourdes Gurriel Jr. , who started the double play, for all practical purposes manufactured the tying run for Toronto in the bottom of the fifth. With one out he hit a grounder up the middle. Nunez made a nice play to get it and throw to first, but Gurriel beat it out for an infield hit. Then, whether it was a botched hit and run with Aledmys Diaz at the plate or a straight steal, Gurriel broke for second on a pitch in the dirt. Diaz swung over it, and Vazquez couldn’t corral it, so the young Cuban was credited with his first stolen base.

After Diaz grounded out to third with Gurriel holding second, Pearce worked the count to 3-2 on Rodriguez, and Gurriel broke with the pitch to score easily as Pearce lined a single over Holt at shortstop. Tied again, at 2-2.

For Aaron Sanchez, his last inning, the sixth, was, briefly, the worst of times, then the best of times. For the second inning in a row he started off with a hit batsman; this time it was J. D. Martinez. Then there was a whole lot of the best of times: Devers fanned on high heat on 0-2, Nunez fanned on high heat on 0-2, and then Bradley Jr., after looking at a steady diet of more fast balls, was caught looking on a beautiful 2-2 curve ball. For Sanchez, it was six innings pitched, 2 runs, 3 hits, 2 walks, 2 hit batsmen, and 8 strikeouts on 96 pitches.

Not bad for a start that began with a leadoff home run to Mookie Betts.

The Jays’ sixth was also the last inning for Rodriguez, but it didn’t go quite so well for him. He had a problem with the first batter, in fact on the first pitch, but it was a slightly bigger problem. Yangervis Solarte, who has been struggling at the plate since his good start, nearly jumped at a first-pitch hanging slider, chest-high, right down the middle. He got all of it, and deposited it in the second deck in left, and for the first time in the game Toronto had the lead, and Solarte was dancing again.

Would the Toronto bullpen be able to hold the lead for Aaron Sanchez?

Well, that question was answered pretty quickly. Sadly for the Blue Jays it was “no”. Danny Barnes came in to pitch the seventh and let the side down for the first time this season.

Barnes got the first out, but it was a loud one. Christian Vazquez hit one to deep centre that Kevin Pillar had to run a long way to flag down. That brought up the smoking hot Brock Holt, who lined an 0-2 pitch into centre, setting the table for Mookie Betts, who took a high fast ball for a called strike, and then tied into a second fast ball on the outside corner, and drove it over the fence into the bullpen in right field for a two-run homer that gave the Sox the lead again.

Barnes continued to struggle, had to be removed, finally, and it was only by the grace of whatever, that Seung-Hwan Oh was able to escape the inning without further damage. Barnes walked Benintendi and then Ramirez, while Benintendi stole second and third. The Ramirez walk was it for Barnes, and John Gibbons called on Oh to take over, runners at first and third with only one out.

Oh went to 3-2 on J.D. Martinez before losing him to load the bases. This brought up Devers and an uncharacteristic mistake by Andrew Benintendi at third. Devers hit a medium-depth fly ball to right, under which Hernandez camped. For some reason, Benintendi broke early from third, and was going back to the bag when the ball was caught, so he couldn’t attempt to score on what should have been an easy sacrifice fly, given Benintendi’s speed.

Nunez hit a hard ground ball right at Justin Smoak to end the inning, with the Red Sox ahead 4-3 on Betts’ home run, but a good job by Oh and a mistake by Benintendi at third kept things from getting much worse.

This might as well have been a softball game, because with the seventh inning finished, so was the game. The Jays’ bullpen kept Boston off the board with Tim Mayza and Ryan Tepera pitching around yet another base hit by Brock Holt off the lefty Mayza, for pete’s sake, in the eighth, and Tyler Clippard pitching around a 2-out walk to Martinez in the ninth.

More importantly, though, Joe Kelly in the eighth and Craig Kimbrel in the save situation in the ninth kept the Jays off the bases, and that was the ball game.

So last night the Blue Jays beat the Boston Red Sox three to one. Sadly, with the addition of Mookie Betts’ numbers to the mix, the result was Boston plus Betts four, Blue Jays 3.

Two one-run games, both 4-3, so far in the series. With Chris Sale on the mound tonight, winning the series is not going to be easy for Toronto, but we can hope.

I’m not saying that the Toronto Blue Jays wanted last night’s series opener at the TV Dome more than the Boston Red Sox, just that they needed it more.

Both teams came into town off their first series losses of the year, suffered on the road, the first real stumbling blocks to the respective teams in this young season.

But the Red Sox, coming into town with the best record in baseball, had only lost two of three in Oakland, one of them a no-hitter by Oakland starter Sean Manaea, and they still sported a gaudy 17-4 record, the best by far in major league baseball.

The Jays had lost three of four in New York to the Yankees on the weekend, and came into this game with a respectable record of 13 and 8, but they didn’t have the luxury of a four-game bulge on the entire world with which to console themselves.

Furthermore, in light of recent terrible events, the city itself needed pick-me-ups wherever they could be found. The first came with Monday night’s stirring Maple Leaf win over the Bruins to take their first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs to a game seven.

So when the same two cities confronted one another on the local ball diamond, the stakes were high, as were the emotions, considering that Boston had suffered its own tragedy with the Boston Marathon bombing exactly five years ago this month.

When Jay Happ came out throwing smoke and mirrors at the dangerous but overmatched Boston lineup, and the Toronto hitters cobbled together three cheap runs in the second inning, the game began to take on a wondrous aura for the team’s passionate fans.

The 2018 season has started remarkably well for the Blue Jays, and they should have come into this series with a bit of swagger despite the losses in New York. But hanging over their heads was one very cautionary note: the Red Sox carried over a seven-game winning streak in Toronto from 2017.

Happ started like a house on fire, as if he had taken on the banishment of Boston’s Toronto win streak as his own personal mission.

Mookie Betts popped up the first pitch of the game to Justin Smoak in foul ground. Happ blew Andrew Benintendi away with a high fast ball. Hanley Ramirez grounded out to Aledmys Diaz at short on the first pitch. Seven pitches from Happ and Toronto was heading for the bat rack, no first-inning explosion from Boston to overcome.

Rick Porcello is off to an awesome start with Boston, with four wins, an ERA of 1.40, and not having surrendered a single homer or walked anyone. He struck out the side to answer Happ. But there was a little note of concern in the fact that he issued his first walk of the season to Teoscar Hernandez on a 3-2 pitch, and took 21 pitches to navigate the four hitters he faced.

Until their uprising against Roberto Osuna in the ninth inning, perhaps the hardest hit ball the Red Sox hit, certainly the hardest off Happ, came from J. D. Martinez leading off the second for Boston. With the Jays pulled around to left for the powerful righty, Devon Travis only had time for two quick steps and a dive to his left to flag down a bullet headed for right centre. He got up just in time to make the play on to first.

Happ retired Rafael Devers on a grounder to short and Eduardo Nunez on a foul fly that Curtis Granderson ran down in right. Including the Martinez at-bat, the second-inning pitch count was 12, putting him for 19 after two, when he often takes 19 to navigate the first inning.

You had to anticipate that when Porcello came out for the bottom of the second we’d see more of the same, and the grounds for the duel between Jay Happ and Porcello would have been well established.

But something funny happened on the way to (at least) a seven-inning scoreless tie: the Blue Jays chopped and hopped and played altogether like a National League team that can’t hit, but still manages to bleed out cheap runs.

Porcello didn’t help himself going 3-1 on Steve Pearce leading off, then losing him, but the whole rest of the inning was down to Sleepy John Gibbons surprising us yet again in this strange new season.

With the slumping Russell Martin at the plate, Gibbie put on the hit-and-run. It was textbook, even if it did play out in slow motion. Pearce broke for second. The second baseman Nunez had the coverage with the righty Martin at the plate, and broke for second. Martin slapped at the ball and there it went, gently bouncing, bouncing, right toward the hole left by Nunez. The latter frantically retreated and tried his best to close on the ball, ending in a fruitless dive as it went went through to right. Pearce looked over his shoulder rounding second, saw that the ball had gone through, and chugged to third.

A thing of beauty it wasn’t, but it worked, and everything that happened afterward stemmed from it.

Kevin Pillar bounced one to Devers at third. My heart was in my throat (really! And it was only the second inning!) as I realized that the contact play was on and Pearce was barrelling for the plate. But lo and behold Devers, who had plenty of time, threw wide to the plate. Pearce was safe and Pillar was across first, with Martin at second.

Aledmys Diaz hit into a fielder’s choice at second with Pillar out and Martin going to third. Travis hit a grounder to Devers and now the contact play was on with Martin, who was out at the plate, leaving Diaz at second and Travis at first.

Then Porcello made his second mistake and it really compounded his problems: he threw a wild pitch to Granderson, and Diaz and Travis moved up. With two outs now and the infield at regular depth, meaning Devers was in a little bit with a lefty at the plate, Granderson hit the third ball of the inning to Devers, a hard shot that took a wicked hop off the seam of the turf and deflected off poor Devers’ glove out into no-man’s land in short left. Diaz scored easily; Travis scampered home after him, and Toronto had a 3-0 lead.

It was like every nightmare inning you’ve seen played out against Toronto in the last few years: three runs on only two hits, one of which nearly died in front of the right fielder, and the other died in left after the deflection.

Hey, against Rick Porcello, we’ll take ’em any way we can get ’em, right?

Both Happ and Porcello dominated from this point in the game, right until they finished up after seven innings. Porcello got a huge assist from Mookie Betts in the fifth inning that saved him a fourth run. Granderson, who must have eaten his Frisky Oats before the game, hit a wicked one-hopper off the glove of Nunez out in right field in the shift, so wicked that it made it through to the wall off his glove. Then came the play of the game so far for Boston.

Teoscar Hernandez hit a liner to right centre that was clearly headed for the gap for back-to-back doubles. Except that Betts was on his horse and closing fast. Then he threw himself into a dive that was angled toward the wall, as the ball was nearly past him. He dove andthe ball dropped right into his glove for the second out.

Porcello walked Smoak for his third walk of the night, and of 2018, remember, but Yangervis Solarte hit a broken-bat liner to second to end the inning.

In the sixth the Bosox finally broke through against Happ for a run, but they didn’t exactly tear the cover off the ball either. Brock Holt, that pesky little imp who’s getting playng time because ofthe injuries to that otherpesky little imp, Dustin Pedroia, and to the great Xander Bogaerts, started things off.

Just a thought, here: how are the Red Sox 17-4 coming into this game when Pedroia hasn’t played an inning, and Bogaerts has been out since April eighth? Scary, yes?

So Holt took two called strikes on the outside corner, watched one ball well low and away on the outside corner, and then threw himself across and slapped at a fourth outside pitch, this time at the chest. Of course it shot through the empty left side of the infield and then down into the corner for a double. It was the third hit off Happ and the first one to reach the outfield with even a touch of authority.

On this night the fearsome top of the Boston order, Betts, Benintendi, Ramirez, was as nothing to Jay Happ. With Holt in scoring position, the first Boston batter to reach second, Mookie Betts meekly flied out to short centre, and Andrew Benintendi went down on strikes for the third time. Only Hanley Ramirez stood between Happ and stranding Holt.

The problem with Hanley Ramirez is that he’s so damn strong. You can absolutely beat him in on his hands with a fast ball, which is what Happ did on the first pitch. Ramirez swung, caught the ball on the label, and hit a soft, weak liner that sailed—gently, mind you—over Travis’ desperately reaching glove and out into right centre for a very impressive “muscle” RBI single. Happ fanned J. D. Martinez for the second time to strand Rodriguez, but it was now 3-1.

In the bottom of the sixth Steve Pearce got into a hanging slider and everybody, including Pearce thought he’d gotten it all, but it faded a little at the end, which allowed Jackie Bradley Jr. to flag it down on the warning track in dead centre.

And if you judged by the seventh inning alone, it looked like both Porcello and Happ could go on like that all night long. Happ retired Boston on ten pitches for 97 for the night, and added his tenth strikeout, a season high, on the last batter he saw, Jackie Bradley Jr.

Porcello finished with a ten-pitch seventh, nine strikeouts, and 103 pitches in all.

On to the eighth as the tension built: this game was going to end up in an Osuna save opportunity. Nail-biting time!

Ryan Tepera came in to pitch the eighth for Toronto. Tepera has developed his own style, a little wild and wooly around the edges, but very effective. This was a typical Tepera performance. He gave up a one-out base hit (to Holt, of course), but bore down to fan Betts on a checked swing, and then Benitendi, for the fourth time on the night. That’s Tepera, all out for 20 pitches, devil take the hindmost!

Joe Kelly came in for Boston for the bottom of the eighth. Kelly, who’s waiting to hear about the appeal of his 6-game suspension for his part in the recent beanbrawl with the Yankees, finished Toronto off in short order, with one strikeout on ten pitches.

So the Boston ninth opened on the familar sight of Roberto Osuna seeking divine inspiration, or divine retribution on his opponents, whichever the case may be. Besides Osuna on the mound, there was one other change. Curtis Granderson switched to left field and Randal Grichuk came in as a defensive replacement in right, with Hernandez leaving the game. This change became significant, as both players would be involved in key plays during the inning.

It’s a little hard to know whether Roberto Osuna was a little off from the beginning or not, but as with past blown saves for Osuna, it did seem that as the inning wore on he lost confidence in his stuff, and it was also remarkable that on several occasions he and Russell Martin struggled to come to agreement as to his pitch selection.

Leading off, Ramirez was in the hole 1-2 when Osuna caught too much of the plate with the cut fast ball that he was accused of playing with too much on occasion last year. Ramirez lined it into centre for a base hit.

J.D. Martinez fanned for the third time on the night. But the free-swinging Devers turned on a high, inside 2-2 pitch and shot it to right for a single that moved Ramirez up to second. Then Grichuk came into play.

Nunez shot an outside pitch into right centre that should have been a double, but Grichuk quickly ran it down to hold Nunez to a single while Devers had to stop at third; Ramirez scored to narrow the lead to one.

Osuna reasserted himself to blow away Jackie Bradley Jr. on two overwhelming high inside fastballs. This brought Christian Vazquez up for the first time. He had taken over behind the plate after Sox manager Joey Cora inserted Mitch Moreland as an unsuccessful pinch-hitter for Sandy Leon in the eighth inning against Tepera.

Vazquez fell behind 0-2, but on the called second strike Nunez stole second with little effort by the Jays to hold him close at first, a bit of a strange call at the time, but meaningless in the light of Vazquez’ subsequent walk to load the bases.

Dan Iasogna, who was behind the plate last night, has a long and unpleasant history with the Blue Jays. Based on what happened on the sixth pitch of the Vazquez at-bat, that history is not likely to go away any time soon. On a 2-2 pitch, after Vazquez fouled off the fifth pitch from Osuna, the hitter took an obvious third strike from Osuna. It was up and in, all right, but clearly by every graphing method available it was a strike. Except, of course, that no pitch is a strike until the umpire calls it a strike, and Iasogna flat missed the pitch that should have ended the game.

Instead, Vazquez walked, bringing the most dangerous Sox hitter to the plate, Brock Holt. How weird does that sound? On a 1-0 pitch Holt singled through the left side scoring Devers from third. Third-base coach Carlos Febles waved Nunez on to the plate, carrying the lead run for Boston.

But recall that it was now Curtis Granderson in left, rather than Teoscar Hernandez. The veteran charged the ball and fired a strike to the plate to nail Nunez so easily that he didn’t even slide for the third out, sending the game to the bottom of the ninth.

Joe Kelly came out again for Boston and quickly retired Kendrys Morales hitting for Pearce and Russell Martin. Pillar extended the inning and raised hopes by bouncing a double past the diving Devers (hey, that’s a thing!) for a double into the corner. But Kelly induced Diaz to fly out to right, sending the game to extra innings.

With Osuna more than done at 31 pitches John Gibbons called on Tyler Clippard to try to hold the fort for Toronto. Clippard started badly, walking Mookie Betts on another questionable call by Iasogna on a 3-2 changeup down and in that seemed to be on the black. But he finished well. Really, really well. Alex Cora tried to start Betts and on the fifth pitch he got a terrific jump but Benintendi had to foul off the pitch to protect the plate. Benintendi finally flied out to right on 3-2, setting up Hanley Ramirez, who ended any suspense by smacking the first pitch on the ground right at Diaz, who started an easy 6-4-3 double play.

Cora pulled a bit of a surprise on the Jays for the bottom of the tenth by bringing his closer Craig Kimbrel into a tie game in extra innings on the road. Speculation by the broadcasters was that since Kimbrel hadn’t had much work Cora wanted to get him into the game.

Too bad for Cora. Too bad for Kimbrel.

Not that Kimbrel didn’t strike out leadoff hitter Devon Travis. Oh yes he did, caught him looking, he did. But he didn’t get by Curtis Granderson, oh no.

Grandy, fast becoming a fan favourite in Toronto for his enthusiasm and his professional focus, had never had a hit off Kimbrel, going 0 for 5 lifetime. Grandy took the first pitch from Kimbrel. Of course, he always takes the first pitch, but it was way low and inside anyway. The second pitch was closer but still high and inside.

So of course Kimbrel had to come in with a fast ball. He made it too good, though, and Curtis Granderson hammered it off the facing of the fourth deck in right to win the game.

If Curtis Granderson was already a fan favourite before last night’s game, imagine what he is now: outfield assist to stop Boston from scoring the lead run in the ninth, walkoff homer in the tenth.

Well, these guys aren’t so tough, are they?

After a bizarre spell of wildness in the sixth inning of Saturday’s game at Yankee Stadium turned a pitchers’ duel between Marcus Stroman and Jordan Montgomery into a blowout, Toronto’s hitters rolled over and played dead for the first time this season on Sunday to absorb their first series loss of the season.

This was not the result that had been hoped for to begin this early, crucial string of games for the surprisingly competitive Blue Jays. The weekend results did not augur well for the upcoming 3-game home series against the Boston Red Sex, who have experienced the hottest start of any team in baseball since the Detroit Tigers went 35-5 to open the 1984 American League season.

For your information, the Tigers were never headed, and went on to win the American League East pennant that year by a whopping 15 games over the Toronto Blue Jays, who would go on to win the division the following year for the first time in their history. In a bizarre twist, the Baltimore Orioles finished fifth in the East Division out of seven teams with a winning percentage of .525; the Kansas City Royals won the West Division with a winning percentage of just .519. Only the Angels and the Twins at exactly .500 finished above at or above .500 in the West that year.

It’s interesting to note, before going back to those sad weekend results in the Bronx, that imbalance anomalies still appear from time to time in the American League standings. In 2016 the East Division was far the strongest of the now-three divisions, and provided both Wild Card teams. If the present trend continues in 2018, there appears a fair chance that the same result may develop, since three of the top six teams are from the East, and only the West appears to offer the possibility of a second-best team that could make the Wild Card game.

So we’ve put off the sad story of Toronto’s lost weekend in April long enough.

Except for a too-fat 3-2 pitch to Aaron Judge in the New York third inning, Marcus Stroman for five innings Saturday looked like the Marcus Stroman of September 2015, or the Marcus Stroman of last year’s World Baseball Classic, and not the Marcus Stroman who scuffled and battled through all of last year for Toronto.

Here’s what he did for those five innings on Saturday: he gave up two runs on two hits, the second a single to Miguel Andujar in the fifth inning that was promptly erased by a double play. He issued two walks, struck four, and recorded eight ground ball outs. He achieved this while throwing only 63 pitches, just over 12 per inning.

The only glitch on his record in those five innings was the brief loss of control in the third inning that caused him to issue a 2-out walk to Brett Gardner, and then go 3-0 on Aaron Judge, who hammered the following pitch into the left-field stands for a 2-0 New York lead.

So the question for which we still await the answer is: why was it that he started the sixth inning like this: base hit, wild pitch, walk, base hit, wild pitch, walk? After four batters he’d given up a run, which extended New York’s lead to 3-1, loaded the bases, and had not recorded an out.

To make matters worse, with Aaron Judge at third as the lead runner with the sacks loaded, Aaron Hicks hit a teasing little dribbler to Stroman’s left on a 2-2 pitch. Stroman made a valiant effort to get the force at the plate on Judge, but the usually sure-handed Luke Maile muffed his last-ditch throw for an error that allowed Judge to score from third, tripling New York’s lead to 4-1, and there was still nobody out.

After that sequence of events it was a credit to Stroman that he was able to gather himself together to freeze Neil Walker on a fast ball up and in. But the rookie Miguel Andujar, on a tear in this series, was not to be denied. He took a 2-2 pitch from Stroman and fired it over Hernandez’ head to the wall in left centre, for a double that easily cleared the bases, with the speedy Hicks the trailing runner on first.

At 7-1, looking at the good end of the Yankee bullpen sitting out there waiting, this game was effectively over. Gibbie came and got Stroman and called for John Axford, who reloaded the bases on a walk and a base hit, allow Andujar to score on a sacrifice fly that was charged to Stroman, and then give up one of his own, knocked in by Judge with a base hit. If the game was effectively over at 7-1, what was it at 9-1?

Call it a day, eh?

Without belabouring the point, if we could rewind a bit, this was a really good game until the Yanks broke it open.

Left-handed starter Jordan Montgomery had rolled through the first six batters for Toronto before giving up an infield single to Aledmys Diaz and a walk to Randal Grichuk to lead off the inning. We held our breath again as Lourdes Gurriel Jr. came to the plate. But this time, though it was an effective at-bat, he didn’t deliver the thunder we hoped for. Rather, he grounded hard up the middle again, but this time into the shift and the Yankees converted a second-to-short fielder’s choice, with Diaz moving to third.

Montgomery proceeded to walk Steve Pearce to load the bases, but then fanned Oscar Hernandez and retired Yangervis Solarte on a soft fly to left to leave the bases loaded. He then stranded a leadoff hit by Kendrys Morales in the fourth, and after four innings the Jays had two hits and New York one, but an awfully long one that made the difference.

Montgomery failed to get by the same part of the lineup in the fifth inning without damage, but he emerged protecting the lead into the bottom of the sixth when all hell broke loose.

He walked Grichuk again, and then Gurriel picked up his first extra-base hit, a hustle double into left that moved Grichuk to third. Pearce hit a ground single to left to plate Grichuk with the first Toronto run, but Gurriel had to let the ball go through in front of him and so stopped at third. Montgomery shut the door again on Toronto, retiring three in a row to strand the Toronto rookie at third and Pearce at first.

So there you have it. A pitching duel between Marcus Stroman and Jordan Montgomery turned into a messy rout. Montgomery retired the side in the Toronto sixth while it was still close, and Aaron Boone pulled the plug on him, at 1 run, 3 hits, 3 walks, and 5 strikeouts, over 91 pitches.

The Jays never had a chance to get off the carpet. Chasen Shreve dismissed them on 13 pitches in the seventh, and then Boone was able to luxuriate in Jonathan Holder’s fine mopup job over the last two innings that allowed the manager to rest his better bullpen arms.

Holder didn’t give up a hit and struck out 2 on only 22 pitches for the two innings he worked.

Tyler Clippard in the seventh and Aaron Loup in the eighth locked down the barn door after the horse was stolen.

Sadly, there would be no series win for Toronto in New York this weekend.

The teams returned to a very different Yankee Stadium on Sunday afternoon, a Stadium basking in the warm sunlight of a real spring day.

The optimism the changed weather evinced in us, however, would not be fulfilled for Blue Jay fans on this beautiful afternoon, as the frustrating inability to cash baserunners continued for Toronto.

With Luis Severino on the hill for New York, scoring chances would surely be few and far between, making it all the more crucial that they be cashed.

Severino had already retired six in a row in the first two innings, on only 24 pitches, with 4 strikeouts, when the first baserunners gave Toronto a chance in the top of the third.

Kevin Pillar grounded their first hit up the middle and then Devon Travis walked on a 3-2 pitch, bringing to the plate Lourdes Gurriel, starting his third game in a row since coming up, but this time at shortstop, giving Aledmys Diaz a break. Gurriel rifled a 2-2 pitch into left field, but it was secured by Giancarlo Stanton, playing in left field for the first time in the series in place of Brett Gardner, for the first out.

Severino overmatched Curtis Granderson and Teoscar Hernandez; both hit weak grounders to end the threat and strand Pillar at second and Travis at first.

Justin Smoak hit a drive to centre that looked promising to deliver Toronto’s first run in the fourth inning, but it faded and hit the wall for a leadoff double. In a display of ineffectiveness we’ve barely seen all season to this point, Solarte fanned, Martin hit a weak grounder to short, and Morales popped out to short. Smoak never budged from second and another chance was wasted.

Other than Hernandez’ home run with nobody on and one out in the seventh, Severino only had to deal with minor problems on the way to a fine seven-inning outing of one run on three hits with two walks and six strikeouts.

In the fifth he had to hold his breath while his neophyte left fielder circled awkwardly but gamely around the Yankee sun field, and managed to capture two somewhat threatening drives, one off the bat of Pillar, and another off the bat of Gurriel, who continued to square up the ball nicely each at-bat.

In his last inning he nicked Kevin Pillar on the arm, and Pillar promptly stole second, but there were already two outs, and Devon Travis reached for an outside pitch and flied out to right.

In the meantime Toronto left-hander Jaime Garcia put in the kind of performance that might have sufficed for a win if his hitters weren’t facing Luis Severino at his best.

He gave up a two-out solo homer to Didi Gregorius in the first inning. In the second he gave up two more runs on a two-out RBI double to right by catcher Austin Romine.

Garcia caught a bit of bad luck on this one, though. He walked Gary Sanchez on 4 pitches leading off, admittedly his bad. He struck out Tyler Austin, but then had to face the streaking rookie Miguel Andujar, who hit yet another double, this one inside the line into the left-field corner, with Sanchez stopping at third.

Then he struck out acclaimed Yankee rookie Gleyber Torres in his first major-league at-bat. I don’t think anyone thought of tossing the ball out of play for a souvenir for Torres. With 2 outs, that brought weak-hitting catcher Austin Romine to the plate. Weak-hitting, yes, but with a fairly good record of run production against Toronto in limited appearances.

Garcia fell behind 3-1, a count that turns poor hitters into pretty good ones some of the time. Garcia threw a low fast ball headed for the outside corner. Romine kind of jumped at it and whacked it away from him, into right field, where it bounced for a while and became a double producing 2 RBIs.

3-0 against Severino after two innings didn’t look too good for Toronto. And as we’ve seen they didn’t make much headway at all against him from that point on. Even when the Hernandez homer cut the lead to 3-1, the Yankees staged a minor uprising in their half of the sixth which restored the 3-run lead and in the process brought Jaime Garcia’s not-quite-good-enough start to an early end at five and a third innings.

In the Yankee sixth Sanchez doubled to left and Austin singled to centre with one out. That brought manager John Gibbons out of the dugout and Garcia out of the game, to be replaced by Seung-Hwan Oh on the mound. Oh promptly gave up another double to Andujar. Yes, you read that right, folks, another double by Andujar, that plated Sanchez but not Austin. Torres popped out to Smoak in foul territory, in what was becoming Torres’ “oh-fer” debut. Austin Romine flied out to right to end the inning, and the Jays were down by three again.

Garcia gave up 4 runs on 6 hits with 3 walks and 6 strikeouts on 95 pitches for his five and a third innings. Like I said, not quite good enough, not against Luis Severino dealing his best.

Danny Barnes gave u p a meaningless unearned run in the seventh inning, manufactured b y Aaron Hicks’ speed, as he got on with a base hit, stole second and advanced to third on Russ Martin’s errant throw. He scored on a sacrifice fly b y Old Dependable Didi Gregorius.

Yes, a meaningless run, because while David Robertson gave up a base hit in the eighth and Aroldis Chapman walked two in the ninth, neither allowed the Jays to cross the plate as the y ensured a Yankee win in the game and in the series, on the strength of Luis Severino’s strong right arm and Miguel Andujar’s hot bat.

With all the superstars on the Yankees’ roster, you have to single out Andujar as being pretty well solely responsible for the Yanks winning three out of four in the series.

Here’s what Andujar did against Toronto in the three games he played, Friday through Sunday: he went 7 for 12; he racked up 13 total bases; he hit 4 doubles and a home run; he picked up 5 RBIs.

Aaron Judge? Piffle. Giancarlo Stanton? Puffle. Even King Didi Gregorius? What have you done for me lately? Miguel Andu jar? Now, there’s your man!

Toronto’s lost weekend in the Bronx is now over, and it’s time to regroup and get ready for those rampaging Red Sox . . .

Excitement buzzed around the Blue Jay world yesterday as word spread about a couple of roster changes, one of which was quite unexpected.

With Kendrys Morales returning from the disabled list, left-handed reliever Tim Mayza was being optioned back to Buffalo, as expected.

The second move saw Gift Ngoepe being optioned to Buffalo, which wasn’t exactly a surprise either, considering his poor performance at the plate this year.

But what really caused all the excitement was that the infield depth player being brought up to replace him would be Lourdes Gurriel Jr., which meant that Gurriel was jumping all the way from the Double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats to the big club.

Morever, it was soon confirmed by manager John Gibbons that Gurriel would be pencilled in to start last night’s game at second base. This raised more than a little speculation that Devon Travis’ foot bruise from a foul ball Wednesday night might actually be worse than expected.

With all the hype surrounding Vlady and Bo, Gurriel has flown a little more under the radar, though he’s been a highly-rated Jays prospect since he was signed, and he carries a baseball pedigree equally as lofty as those of Vlady, Bo, and Cavan Biggio, whose fathers were all major league players, two of them, of course, Hall of Famers.

Lourdes Gurriel Jr. is one of three baseball-playing sons of the Cuban great Lourdes Gurriel, the greatest Cuban player of his generation, winner of numerous championships and awards in Cuban baseball, and veteran of many a world championship tournament.

With no way to leave Cuba legally to pursue their careers, all three sons of Gurriel Sr. fled Cuba clandestinely at great risk to their personal freedom. The oldest, Yulieski, was too old to sign with a big club when he arrived, so he became a presence in senior independent league baseball in Quebec. The middle son, Yuli, of course, wears a World Series ring as the slugging first baseman of the Houston Astro.

Now there is Lourdes Jr., nine years younger than Yuli, who was signed to a 7-year contract by Toronto in November of 2016 for the relatively unheard of sum of 22 million dollars for an international agent.

And last night he made his major league debut, playing second and batting ninth for the Blue Jays in the Bronx against the Yankees.

The Jays needed a boost of enthusiasm after Thursday night’s frustrating one-step-forward-two-steps back affair in the opener of the four-game series at Yankee Stadium. It was a 4-3 loss that dropped their record to 12-6, in an April when it seems every game is already crucial, given the jet-fuelled start being experienced by the Boston Red Sox.

With two established right-handers on the mound, Marco Estrada and Sonny Gray, on the surface it would looked to have been a game where pitching dominated over hitting. But on closer examination, it was more likely to be a bit of an offensive explosion.

Estrada, of course, is a fly-ball pitcher, never a good thing in Yankee Stadium, with its inviting little spots that seem so close to the plate. Despite his 3-0 career record in New York going into the game, you could expect to see a few balls flying, and you did; three were jacked out of the park off Estrada..

Sonny Gray, meanwhile, has had his issues with Toronto, and lost 2 of 3 to the Jays lost year, though truth be told his defence let him down in both losses. He is a soft tosser who relies on control, though, the kind of pitcher who can get in big trouble in a big hurry if he can’t find the plate with his breaking stuff and has to come in with fast balls.

In his first start of the season against Toronto he lasted 4 innings and gave up only one run, but was in and out of trouble, scattering 7 hits and 3 walks, in a game that the Yankees’ bullpen coughed up to the Jays long after he was gone.

There’s a certain inevitability in some at-bats against Marco Estrada. The first time he pitched against the Yankees in the opening series he gave up two home runs to Tyler Austin, the young New York first baseman. Now, nearly 20 games into the season, Austin was still sitting on those 2 home runs.

After an easy first inning when Estrada gave up just a bloop single to Aaron Judge, Austin came up in the second inning last night with Aaron Hicks on on a walk ahead of him and didn’t he jack out number 3 for the season and number 3 off Estrada for an early 2-run Yankeee lead.

But this was a game in which no lead was safe, at least in the early going. After an easy 10-pitch first and a second inning in which he went a little wonky, walking 2 and throwing a wild pitch but not giving up a run, Gray came out for the third with the 2-run lead and promptly gave it right back,

After Gurriel lined out to centre on his first big-league at-bat, Gray issued his third walk to Granderson, and then threw a low inside fast ball to Teoscar Hernandez on a 1-1 pitch that Hernandez lined into the Yankees’ bullpen in left.

Hernandez’ shot tied the score but it didn’t stay tied for long, not with the Bronx Bombers looking for their perfect pitch off Estrada, and sometimes finding it. In the bottom of the third it came with two outs, after Gardner popped up and Judge was called out on strikes on a fast ball from Estrada. But the pesky Gregorius looped a little single into centre, and Stanton reclaimed the lead with a blast to right of his own.

The top of the fourth inning for Toronto was a special time, ya might say. They claimed the lead for the first time in the game with three runs, they forced Yankee manager Aaron Boone to pull Sonny Gray, and two of the three runs came courtesy of the first base hit off the bat of Lourdes Gurriel Jr.

The inning started with a run coming from back-to-back doubles by Russell Martin, a deep drive off the wall in left, and a ground-rule double by Kendrys Morales, hitting left-handed. Morales lofted a high twisting fly down the left line that Gardner could not get to, and when it hit it bounced into the stands.

Kevin Pillar lined a hard single to left on which Morales had no chance of scoring. With Aledmys Diaz at the plate Pillar advanced to second on a wild pitch, but Diaz popped out to Gregorius at short for the first out. This bought Gurriel to the plate for his second major league at-bat.

Well, you couldn’t pick a better scenario for making a good first impression, could you? Your team is down 4-3 to the mighty Yankees in Yankee Stadium and you’re standing up there against a veteran major league starter, with the tying and lead runs in scoring position. While kids all over the world can imagine themselves in a situation like this, how many wil actually get to act it out? And how many fewer get to don the hero’s mantle?

How exciting was it, then, that in his second major league at bat, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., in his first major league game, took a 1-1 pitch sharply up the middle that bounded between the converging Yankee infielders into centre field as Morales and Pillar scampered home to give the Blue Jays the lead at 5—4. (About the “scampering”: sure, Pillar scampered home from second; Morales from third? Not so much!)

The Gurriel hit was the penultimate blow to Sonny Gray’s start; he walked Curtis Granderson on 4 pitches, and that was it. Aaron Boone brought in young reliever Domingo German to face Hernandez whom he walked, also on 4 pitches. But then German found the key he needed, and retired Smoak on a short fly to centre and Solarte on a fly to right.

Once again the lead wasn’t safe. The Yanks had one more blast in the tank to use against Toronto, and Marco Estrada was only fortunate that the bottom of the fourth evolved the way it did. Aaron Hicks led off with a line single to centre, and I fully expected that Estrada had come to the end of the line.

But if this is in many ways a different John Gibbons this year, there’s one way that he’s the same old Gibbie. He tends to trust his veterans right to the limit. So Estrada stayed in, got a sharp grounder to third, and watched Gurriel show off an awkward but effective pivot and an extremely strong arm in turning the double play.

Without the double play, the hot-hitting Miguel Andujar’s following home run shot to right centre would have given the Yankees the lead. Ronald Torreyes followed with a double into the left-field corner before Estrada escaped further damage when Brett Gardner flied out to right.

Did I say no lead was safe in this one? It may have been a measure of where manager Boone felt he was with in terms of his bullpen corps, but he not only sent German back out to pitch the fifth against Toronto, but he let him absorb two more runs while leaving him in for the whole inning.

German went to 3-2 on Russell Martin before losing him. Kendrys Morales then contributed a shift-buster single to left, bouncing an easy ball through the empty left side of the infield as the Yankees overloaded the right side on Morales. Kevin Pillar struck out on a curve ball in the dirt that got away from Gary Sanchez behind the plate, allowing the runners to move up.

German then walked Aledmys Diaz to load the bases, bringing up—wait for it—Gurriel to the plate with the bases loaded and one out.

If you thought his first at-bat was a professional piece of work, how about this one? Gurriel swung and missed, badly fooled by a curve low and outside. He swung and missed at a high outside changeup, maybe a strike. German then threw a changeup down and away, and Gurriel went with it beautifully, stroking it through the right side on the ground to score Martin.

After Granderson struck out, Hernandez walked to force in Morales for the seventh Toronto run, before Smoak struck out to end the inning.

With a 2-run lead, of course Gibbie sent Estrada back out to try to finish the fifth and qualify for the win. The rest and the 2-run lead had miraculous restorative power for Estrada, who cut through the heart of the New York order, Judge, Gregorius, and Stanton, on 12 pitches. Gregorius fanned, and Judge and Stanton were put out on poor contact.

The next Yankee pitcher to try to stop the bleeding would be right-hander Adam Warren who came in to pitch in the top of the sixth. After starting Yangervis Solarte out with a curve ball for a strike, Warren made the mistake of throwing a high fastball out of the strike zone, hoping to get Solarte to chase. Solarte chased all right, and tomohawked the pitch into the right field streets for a solo homer to increase the Toronto lead to 8-5.

And just like that the taps were turned off. With nobody out in the fifth inning Toronto scored to make it 8 to 5, and that was the last run scored in the game.

After his rude introduction, Warren pitched very well for two and two thirds innings, performing the vital task of saving the rest of the arms in the Yankee bullpen, while keeping the Jays’ lead at three. He gave way to Chasen Shreve who got the last out in the eighth inning and retired the side in the ninth on only ten pitches in total.

Meanwhile, four Toronto relievers, Seung-Hwan Oh, Danny Barnes, Ryan Tepera, and Roberto Osuna, allowed one hit each and no more in their respective inning of work, Osuna finishing up for his sixth save in six opportunities.

So Marco Estrada gave up 3 big flies to the Yankees but survived to claim a win last night. The offence, keyed by 5 RBIs from its two youngest and least experienced members, put up enough runs to overcome the Yankee power and lead the Blue Jays to a game-two victory that evened this four-game series in the Bronx at one game apiece.

Today, we’re looking at Marcus Stroman versus Jordan Montgomery in game three in New York.

If it’s only April, how come it feels like October?

When Aaron Judge hit one of his typical monster home runs in the seventh inning last night off Tyler Clippard, it extended the Yankees’ lead to two runs against a Toronto offence that was having trouble scratching out support for Aaron Sanchez’ valiant effort on the mound for Toronto.

The Judge homer was one of those “Uh-oh, Toto, we’re not playing Kansas City” moments. Toronto had taken great delight in dismantling the Royals’ bullpen over its last three games, but the idea of going two runs down with six outs to go in the Bronx against the Yankees was a bit too much to contemplate.

Because, you see, even though C.C. Sabathia pitched short in his first start since returning from the disabled list, and the Yankees had used two of their awesome bullpen crew already, they still had David Robertson and Aroldis Chapman in the tank.

To their credit the Jays got to Robertson for a run in the eighth to cut the New York margin to one, but Devon Travis, Steve Pearce and Teoscar Hernanez came up empty against Aroldis Chapman in the ninth, letting more than a little air out of the Toronto balloon under which they had wafted into town from their northern habitat.

The Aaron Sanchez of 2018 is not the Aaron Sanchez of 2016. Yet. Despite his carrying a no-hitter into the eighth innng in his last start against the Orioles, Sanchez is not yet dominant either in the sense of the number of strikeouts he’s racking up—just 2 in six innings last night, and only 4 against Baltimore—or in his command of the strike zone.

His pitch count has been consistently higher so far this year, and there’s been far more of a sense of his labouring on the hill, not to mention fighting with the strike zones being imposed on him.

For example, in the first inning last night he retired Brett Gardner, Didi Gregorius, and Giancarlo Stanton with little fanfare and not much in the way of contact. And his walk of Aaron Judge might strike some as even sensible: if you don’t strike him out, it’s better to give him a pass then give him something to crush. So in a relatively uneventful inning Sanchez threw 22 pitches.

The math is obvious: at that pace he has to pierce 100 pitches to pitch into the sixth inning, with no chance of going to the seventh.

Sanchez’ labours continued in the second, as he racked up another 23 pitches, and gave up two cheap runs on soft-contact hits. Gary Sanchez fell away from an inside pitch and blooped one to right for a single. Neil Walker admittedly hit the ball well off the wall in right, but it was a catchable ball were it not for the positioning of the outfielders. Sanchez scored on a soft bounce-out to Travis at second, and Walker scored on Ronald Torreyes’ broken-bat bleeder to left over the glove of a leaping Aledmys Diaz. Cut out the cheap hits and Walker dies at second. Gotta be frustrating. Not to mention Sanchez was now up to 43 pitches.

Juxtapose the Yanks’ two runs with the fact that wily old C.C. Sabathia cruised through the first two innings on only 29 pitches, just allowing Yanvergis Solarte to reach on a walk leading off the second.

With the Jays facing the possibility of a long night against Sabathia, the two cheap runs looked awfully big, and they were. Toronto never quite caught up even when they did.

Instead of shutting down the Jays after the runs in the seoond, Sabathia started to ravel* in the third. Luke Maile continued his great stroking with a line single over Didi Gregorius that was actually harder hit than any of the 3 Yankee hits in the second. Devon Travis followed with a ground single past Didi, who didn’t know which way to turn.

*Little known fact from yer humble scribe, aka the Word Snob: “ravel” means to come apart; “unravel” is a redundancy.

Travis had fouled a ball off his foot in the at-bat and came up lame, but stayed in the game. This was after being hit on the arm twice in the KC series. Yet more worries for the embattled second sacker.

Steve Pearce was out on a little chopper to third that worked as well as a bunt, moving up the runners. Teoscar Hernandez also grounded out to third right at the bag, so Maile still had to hold at third. It was looking like another lost opportunity for Toronto but Sabathia rather obviously crossed up catcher Gary Sanchez, and the ball went bounding to the backstop, allowing Maile to score and Travis to move to third. Justin Smoak fouled out to Walker at first to end the inning, but the Jays were on the board.

In one of those cruel ironies of scoring the game, the scorer can’t really judge whether a pitcher has crossed up a catcher. The scorer can only go on what the ball actually did, and in this case it was judged a passed ball against Sanchez, though it was Sabathia’s mistake.

Aaron Sanchez settled in much more nicely in the third against the dangerous part of the Yanks’ order, fanning Judge, retiring Gregorius on an easy fly to left, and Stanton on a first-pitch grounder to Diaz at short.

That guy Maile produced another run for Toronto in the top of the fourth, after New York handed the Jays two leadoff baserunners. Solarte reached on a throwing error by the third baseman Torreyes, and then Sabathia plunked Pillar on the foot. The veteran righty almost got out of it, with Diaz skying to centre and Grichuk popping out to short, but that brought Maile to the plate, 2 out and a runner at second. I can hear it now: “That’s the way, the way he likes it.” He snaked a ground single up the middle to score Solarte and the game was tied after Travis flew out to leave Pillar at third.

Sanchie was even more efficient in the Yankee fourth; after 12 pitches in the third he retired the side on only seven pitches the next time out. Nice work if you can get it.

The Jays threatened again in the top of the fifth, when Sabathia’s comeback start came to an early end, and hard-throwing reliever Chad Greene came in to shut the door.

Herein lies the difference between a team like the Royals and a team like the Yankees. Manager Aaron Boone can go to his bullpen with one out in the fifth and get one and two thirds out of a Chad Green. The Royals haven’t got a Chad Green, or anyone even close to him.

Steve Pearce led off with a drive to the alley on which Judge showed his athleticism in the field, cutting off a sure double and holding Pearce at first. But he moved up anyway on yet another passed ball, and after Hernandez grounded out again with Pearce holding, Yost called on Green to turn Justin Smoak around to the left side.

Green did his job. Smoak hit an easy fly ball to centre, and Solarte fanned on a foul tip when Green threw him a heater upstairs.

After the Yankees withstood the Toronto threat in the top of the fifth, they managed to push across the lead run against Sanchez in the bottom of the inning. Once again, like the second inning, New York manufactured a run without any significant input from either Judge or Stanton. Once again, Torreyes, Gardner, and Gregorius were instrumental in the production of the run.

Sanchez walked Torreyes; Gardner pushed him up to second with a ground single to right. Torreyes had to hold up to avoid being hit by the ball,* so couldn’t go to third on the hit. But Judge moved him up to third with a fielder’s choice, which set him up to score on Gregorius’ single through the right side. After Stanton loaded the bases with an infield single, Aaron Sanchez escaped further damage when Gary Sanchez grounded into an unassisted force-out at third.

But you don’t want to be going into even the sixth inning down by a run to the Yankees. Their closers in the bullpen are just too strong.

Green breezed through the sixth with a strikeout and only needed 18 pitches to retire the 5 hitters he faced. In the seventh inning it was Dellin Betances, and any Jays who were hoping for another Betances meltdown were roundly disappointed, as he retired the side on 15 pitches.

Aaron Sanchez was finished after six innings, having given up 3 runs on 7 hits while throwing 99 pitches. Tyler Clippard came in to face his former team, and only faced 4 batters to retire the side. Unfortunately, one of them was Aaron Judge, and more unfortunately Judge unloaded on Clippard with a sold drive to left making the score 4-2.

With the Jays’ deficit 2 runs, and David Robertson and Aroldis Chapman still lurking ahead, the faint hope was getting fainter.

However, Robertson ran into trouble immediately in the eighth inning, and the Jays managed to edge back within a run. A major feature of the little rally was that veteran manager Sleepy John Gibbons pulled a fast one on rookie Yankee manager Aaron Boone.

Hernandez led off the inning with a base hit to left that Gardner hustled to cut off, holding Hernandez to first. Robertson walked Smoak on a 3-1 pitch and Solarte on 4 pitches to load the bases. Aaron Boone, looking ahead to the lefty Granderson hitting for Grichuk, mired in a slump as he was, hurriedly got Chapman, who of course is left-handed, up in the bullpen.

But Gibbie realized that Chapman hadn’t been up long enough to come in right away, so instead of waiting for Grichuk’s spot, he hit Granderson for Diaz, and Boone was stuck with Robertson facing Granderson. Of course, the move paid off because Grandy lofted a bloop single into centre that scored Hernandez and left the bases loaded. There were no heroes’ laurels for Randal Grichuk, however, as Robertson fanned him on a 1-2 pitch, and then survived a sharp drive to left by the now-dangerous Maile to for the third out.

John Axford survived a walk to Aaron Hicks in the bottom of the eighth to hold the lead at 4-3, but Chapman finally came in for the save in the ninth and blew away Travis, Pearce, and Hernandez, without necessarily keeping the ball in the strike zone, striking out the side to preserve New York’s narrow lead and give first blood to the Bronx Bombers in this New York showdown.

If hard didn’t work last night, soft might work tonight as Marco Estrada gets the ball for Toronto against Sonny Gray. Seems like we’ve seen this script before.

Tuesday it was all about “Doubleheader! Let’s take two!”

Last night it was all about “Get out the brooms!” And who better to be facing for a series sweep than the woefully underpowered and short-armed Kansas City Royals?

It’s not often that things work out just the way you’d imagined it, but last night’s 15-5 Toronto walloping of the Royals was one of those times.

Oh, it was close for a goodly while all right, resembling a real ball game between two real major league teams. But, unfortunately for the Royals, a real major league team has a real major league bullpen, and the Kansas City relief corps is just not up to snuff.

The matchup of starting pitchers wouldn’t have suggested a game that would end up in a blowout for either team. Jay Happ, on the hill for Toronto, has a proven track record over the last several years with the Boys in Blue, though he’s admittedly fought his control and burgeoning pitch counts somewhat in the early going this year.

Kansas City manager Ned Yost finally dispatched a right-hander to the mound last night, in the person of Ian Kennedy, a veteran with a long record as a mid-rotation starter. Kennedy had one 5-inning start against the Jays in the dog days of September last year, and only gave up 2 runs on 3 hits, but he’d gone six innings in each of his first two starts this spring against strong opposition, Cleveland and Los Angeles, and gave up only one run in total.

After Happ mowed down the Royals in the top of the first, the Jays broke on top with a run off Kennedy in their first ups. Flavour du jour Teoscar Hernandez whacked one off the glove of Mike Moustakas at third for a base hit, and then raced around to score as right fielder Jorge Soler obligingly air-mailed his throw over the cutoff man on Justin Smoak’s double into the right-field corner. Kennedy quickly finished the inning to strand Smoak.

Both pitchers standed a base hit in the second, Soler with a single to left for KC, and, annoyingly, a leadoff double down the opposite line by Pillar, whom the Jays failed to bring around.

The Royals jumped ahead in the top of the third when Moustakas delivered a clutch two-out double that scored Soler, who reached on a leadoff single, and the speedy Merrifield, whom Happ walked with two outs in the key at-bat of the inning, which gave Moose a chance to take his hacks.

But the lead didn’t last long. In the immortal words of Ernie Harwell, the late, beloved lifetime radio broadcaster of the Detroit Tigers, Toronto opened up a can of instant runs, and before you knew it had taken the lead, never to fall behind again in the game.

Kennedy walked Curtis Granderson to lead off the third, bringing Hernandez to the plate for his second at-bat. Flavour du jour? How about etoile du jour? Kennedy made the mistake of falling behind 2-1, so he had to come in with a fast ball. But not up and out over the plate, for pete’s sake! Hernandez crushed it to centre, exit velocity of 111 mph and a distance of 426 feet, into the front row of the second deck in dead centre.

Toronto wasn’t finished, though, because after Kennedy fanned Smoak, Yangervis Solarte was all over a 3-0 cripple from Kennedy and crushed it to right-centre, almost as convincingly as Hernandez’ shot.

After Kennedy walked Russell Martin Pillar reached on a muffed double play ball when the toss from Merrifield to Escobar covering the bag rolled out of his glove without lingering long enough for the out. Kennedy got out of the jam, but the rising had cost him the lead and 32 pitches, making it problematic that he would get past five innings, bringing the dreadful Royals’ bullpen into play early again.

Happ gave up a walk and a hit batter in the fourth, both coming to naught, and Kennedy pitched around a single by Granderson, taking us to the fifth with the Jays still up 4-2.

But Kansas City had some instant runs in their kit bag too. Happ gave up a base hit to leadoff man Jon Jay and biff! Merrifield hit one out to centre to tie the game. Happ had no further troubles, though a fielding error by his shortstop Aledmys Diaz with two outs cost him a few extra pitches, and it looked like he might be done after five innings and 92 pitches, with the game tied.

The thing about this Toronto team is that it doesn’t take kindly to ill-treatment by upstarts, and hitting a game-tying homer off Jay Happ was definitely ill-treatment.

With some crucial help from Royals’ left-fielder Paolo Orlando, which left Ian Kennedy kind of undressed in public on the mound, the Jays countered with 2 runs of their own in the bottom of the inning. This pushed Kennedy to the 106-pitch level that would mark the end of his day.

As usual, it started out with a walk, the erstwhile free-swinging Solarte waiting out a 3-2 count. After the slumping Russell Martin struck out, Pillar lined a single to left, with Solarte checking in at second. Then came Orlando’s folly, which may have been caused by the notorious bank of lights making it hard to play left field in the dome. Grichuk hit one of the hardest shots of this day of hard shots, a liner right at Orlando’s glove, but it went “Clank!” for an error that allowed Solarte to score, though Pillar could only move up to second because, of course, it was an obvious out.

Now with one out and the lead run in, Diaz popped out to first in foul territory.

Gift Ngoepe was due up next, but our local candidate for Manager of the Year had the wheels turning big time: obvious time for a pinch-hitter, even if it was only the sixth inning. Granderson and the switch hitters were already in the lineup, so his only choice was another righty. Who would it be? Pearce or Travis?

But OMG, who was this striding to the plate packing his potent lumber? None other than recent hero and noted backup catcher Luke Maile! What? The backup catcher coming into the game to hit in the sixth inning, even if he is on a hot streak? Is he serious?

Well, he was, and so was Maile, who delivered once again, a hard grounder through the left side that scored Pillar with the second run of the inning, upping the lead to 6-4 for the good guys. Granderson flew out to end the inning, and Kennedy was done, and so were the Royals, but they didn’t know it yet.

The big question now was, what would Gibbie do with his defensive array. Of course, the key to all of this is that Russell Martin is a valid major league infielder, who has played 31 games at third and even 4 at second in his career. And loves to play the infield. So it was Martin to third, Solarte to second replacing Ngoepe, and of course Maile behind the plate. Well, lookee that: even if Maile gets hurt catching, Martin’s still in the lineup. Is our sleepy-time manager smart, or what?

The next surprise was who was coming out of the dugout to pitch the sixth inning, with renewed vigour and a 2-run lead? None other than Mr. Jay Happ. Not only did he come back out but he buzzed through Orlando, Escobar, and Butera on only 7 pitches, to finish with six full innings on 99 pitches and in line for the win if the bullpen could hold off the Royals for him.

But first there was the matter of Kevin McCarthy, one of the Royals’ bullpen flamethrowers of Tuesday (as in pouring gas on the fire, not throwing 100 mph) who had to navigate the Toronto sixth, which he did, giving up Hernandez’ third hit of the night, a single to left, and walking Smoak to lead off before retiring Solarte on a fly ball and the side on a Martin double-play grounder.

Danny Barnes held the lead in the top of the seventh with another good inning of work, retiring the side in order on 14 pitches, and applauding Pillar’s good over-the-shoulder running catch of a deep drive by Mike Moustakas.

McCarthy came out again for the bottom of the seventh, and that was Ned Yost’s first mistake. His second one was to pull McCarthy in the middle of the frame and go to Brad Keller, another of the found-ins from Tuesday night’s Kansas City bullpen mess. Together they contrived to give up another 3 runs, putting the game on ice for Toronto.

After Pillar led off lining out to Merrifield at second, episode number ten zillion of the ongoing phenomenon of “make a good play in the field, lead off next inning”, McCarthy nicked Grichuk with a pitch. Maile lined yet another base hit into the left-field corner, and hustled it into a double while Grichuk stopped at third. Granderson walked on a wild pitch low and outside on 3 and 1 that allowed Grichuk to score, with Maile moving up to third.

Just as an aside, does any other team in baseball have two catchers who run the bases as well as Martin and Maile?

Exit McCarthy and enter Keller, who promptly gave up a drive to the alley in left-centre to Hernandez, who turned it into a triple while Maile and Granderson scored. Justin Smoak lined out to left for the third out, but it was 9-4 for the Blue Jays.

And in case you weren’t counting, Hernandez now had a homer, triple, and 2 singles, with possibly another at bat to come. He needed only a double to hit for the cycle, the very rare batting feat of hitting at least one each of all four base hits in a single game.

With the game safely out of reach of the Royals, this raised lots of silly speculation from silly broadcasters as to what might happen in his last at bat: if he hit an ordinary single would he try to stretch it to a double anyway? If he hit an obvious triple, would he stop at second? Of course, one had the luxury of thinking about these things only because it was unlikely that the game would be on the line if he came to the plate again.

Meanwhile there were still two innings to be played. Aaron Loup came on to pitch the eighth and got two outs, but gave up a solo homer to Jorge Soler to make it 9-5, and then gave up a following infield hit to Orlando on which Solarte, now at second, almost made a great play, going up the middle to flag the ball down and throwing off-balance just a fraction too late to catch Orlando, who can fly.

Gibbie decided he’d seen enough and brought in Ryan Tepera to secure the third out on a deep fly ball that Pillar tracked down in centre to retire Escobar.

Came the bottom of the eighth and next up for Ned Yost was Justin Grimm. Grimm had something to prove to his manager after walking the only 3 batters he faced Tuesday in game two of the doubleheader, when he started the process of throwing Danny Duffy’s fine effort under the bus.

Well, Grimm still has something to show manager Yost, because this time it was even worse. Solarte singled. Martin worked an 8-pitch walk. Pillar doubled down the line again to score Solarte. After Grichuk struck out, Diaz lofted a bloop single to centre to score Martin. Maile worked a 7-pitch walk. Granderson capped off the game and the series by hitting a hanging curve ball the opposite way to left, a fly ball that carried and carried into the seats for a grand slam and a final count of six runs in the inning, all earned off Grimm in a third of an inning, and 15 runs on the game.

Lefty Brian Flynn finished up by retiring Hernandez and Smoak. And Hernandez’ cycle attempt? Oh, he struck out, later said he was trying too hard.

Toronto lefty Tim Mayza finished up the ninth and allowed a couple of baserunners but kept a clean score sheet, as they say in soccer.

So a series sweep, finally. 31 runs in 28 innings against 12 given up. It was really nice of Kansas City’s bullpen to throw batting practice for us before our all-important 7-game stretch against the Yankees and the Red Sox.

On a roll and on to the Bronx!

You may have noticed I haven’t mentioned the Facebook Watch experience for yesterday’s game. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. Worst game experience of my fandom. Not another word about it.

If there’s one number that stands out in all the statistics we dealt with in yesterday’s exhilirating doubleheader sweep by the Toronto Blue Jays over the Kansas City Royal, it’s that before yesterday, only two members of the Royals had hit home runs since the beginning of the season. Mike Moustakas and Lucas Duda had hit five between them.

Contrast that number with the nearly-complete, up-and-down-the-lineup contribution that the members of the Blue Jays have made to their April hot streak: coming into the game, 10 different Blue Jays had hit home runs, 20 in all.

Of course those numbers changed yesterday, as the Royals nearly doubled their total in the friendly confines of the TV Dome, Duda and Moustakas adding one each and Alcides Escobar and Abraham Almonte finally posting new names to the Royals’ home run roster.

In fact, the Royals outhomered Toronto in the twin bill, but the Jays employed the baseball equivalent of a full-court press to engineer their sweep of the day’s festivities. So many players contributed to the two wins that just listing them makes for a long laundry list: effective enough starting pitching, nearly lights-out work from the bullpen, clutch hits up and down the line, from front-line players and bench strength guys, some big power at just the right moments to blow open game one, and an amazing clutch performance in the second game by the erstwhile peaceful and unobtrusive Luke Maile.

It was a funny atmosphere around Toronto’s baseball world yesterday. If the players were as yantzy to get on the field as their more devoted fans were to see them back in action, they must have been pretty keyed up.

After the great, ghost-banishing win last Friday night in Cleveland, there was a huge letdown around town as the team had to sit through three straight postponements, an almost unheard-of stretch, especially for a team whose home field is a covered dome, supposedly impervious to the elements.

Yet after the gods of spring had decreed a cold, wet washout of the two weekend games in Cleveland, there was more bad news late Monday afternoon, at the end of a weekend of nasty weather in Toronto, that the roof of the TV Dome had been damaged by ice chunks falling from the CN Tower that soars over the stadium so picturesquely on days when the roof is open. This led to the postponement of Monday night’s opener of the three-game series with the Royals, and the creation of a “traditional” double-header, a baseball fest that would follow the old style when double-headers were actually scheduled, with the second game following the first after a brief 20 to 30 minute break, allowing for some snacks, rehydration, and a change of shirts. Oh, and for the players, too.

Among the more obvious questions that needed to be answered were whether the starting pitchers would manage being put so far off schedule, whether the Toronto lineup would continue to contribute key hits from almost everybody in a distinct improvement over the last few years, and overall whether the team would have lost its momentum coming off three straight series wins and the abbreviated one-game sweep, if you want to call it that, in Cleveland.

Lefty Jaime Garcia, who’d waited since Saturday to start his next game, got the ball in yesterday’s opener for the Blue Jays. The first inning seemed to answer a couple of the return-to-action questions that had been raised.

Garcia had a good start, fanning Jon Jay to lead off the game, but then walked Whit Merrifield* on four pitches before adroitly picking him off in a badly botched straight steal attempt that ended in a tag play on Merrifield at second. The powerful Mike Moustakis grounded straight into the shift for the third out and the Jays were coming to the plate for the first time in four games.

*Now Whit Merrifield—that’s a great baseball name. He sounds like he’s right out of the Zane Grey baseball stories, written before the First World War and collected under the title The Red-Headed Outfield and Other Stories. And if you’ve never heard of Grey’s baseball stories, you must look them up. I have two copies of the book, but they’re too frail to loan. Anyway, they were written at a time when Whit Merrifield would have been a perfect name for a baseball player.

Okay, back to the action, with the Jays coming up in the bottom of the first. Steve Pearce, starting both games because of the Royals’ scheduling two southpaws to start against Toronto, blew the dust off and rifled an 0-1 pitch from starter Erik Skoglund into right field to start the game. But it looked like he was going to die at first. Teoscar Hernandez, posted in left while Pearce was the DH, was badly fooled on a curve ball for the first out and Justin Smoak skied to centre for the second.

And then the insouciant, irrepressible Yangervis Solarte, who never fails to love a pitch somewhere in the neighbourhood of the plate, swaggered to the dish. For all of his go-for-it aggressiveness, Solarte has shown a surprising ability to work the count. He went after the first two pitches—of course—and fouled them off, before holding off on three that went too far astray even for his eclectic taste. Then Skoglund threw a fast ball over the heart of the plate, and bing! It was 2-0 Toronto, as Solarte rifled the ball deep into the nearly empty second deck in left.

About those empty seats: it seems that Toronto’s ticket-buying fans, as rabid as they are when the team is going well, are still, under the surface, stodgy, schedule-bound Torontonians, who just really can’t, you know, deal with short-notice changes to their routines, like the scheduling of a make-up double-header. Which explains why the Dome at the start of the first game was as empty as I’ve seen it in recent years, emanating the cavernous feel of the old neglected stadiums of yore, like gloomy Municipal Stadium in Cleveland during the worst dog days of that franchise.

But yes, we were treated to another Solarte butt-wiggle, what passes as his baseball Happy Dance, before he entered the dugout to greet his excited team-mates.

The second inning brought the Jays up short, just as it buoyed up the Royals. Garcia took 26 pitches to work his way through a big mess, and was lucky to get away with only one run scored. He gave up 3 straight hits to load the bases, got a nice 6-4-3 double play that allowed the run to come in, hit Escobar on the foot, and finally retired backup catcher Cam Gallagher on a fielder’s choice.

Then the Jays picked up an infield hit by Aledmys Diaz and smacked the ball hard 3 times with no results to show for it, and so clung to their narrow 2-1 lead.

That only lasted until the top of the third, when Garcia struck out Jay and Merrifield, and then gave up back-to-back two-out jacks to Moustakas and Duda, increasing Kansas City’s homer total by 40 per cent in just a couple of minutes.

After the boost from his big lefty hitters, Skoglund came out and struck out the side in the third, pitching around an error by Escobar that let Smoak reach with 2 outs.

Garcia settled in the fourth and gave up a leadoff base hit but saw Russell Martin erase him with a good throw on a strike-em out throw-em out double play. More concerningly, though Skoglund walked Russell Martin on 4 pitches to open the inning, he fanned Pillar and then got some luck as Diaz lashed a wicked liner right over the bag at first that Duda laid out for, and then landed himself on the bag to double off Martin.

Going to the fifth Skoglund was looking better than Garcia, and that one-run lead was more than a little troubling. A key moment in the game came in the top of the fifth, in his last inning of work, when some gutsy scuffling by Garcia kept the Royals from blowing the game open.

Gallagher hit a ball to the wall in right centre that it looked like Pillar had tracked down, bobbled, and then secured near the wall. But the video review showed that the ball had bounced off the wall before he secured it, and Gallagher was “awarded” a double. Jay followed with a nice bunt single that moved Gallagher to third with nobody out.

Then Garcia reached down in his bag of tricks and found his off-centre contact mojo working, and the next three hitters put the ball ineffectually in the air. Merrifield lofted a twisting fly down the right field line that drifted foul. Randal Grichuk tracked it after a long run and hustled it in to keep the catcher Gallagher at third. Then the big guys went down easily, Moustakas on a foul pop to Russell Martin, and Duda on a fly out to centre.

Emboldened by Garcia’s tough resistance, the Jays came out in the fifth, took the lead with some sharp hitting, and never looked back. After Devon Travis lined out to right. Grichuk at long last broke his hitless streak with a booming double to centre. Steve Pearce immediately delivered him with a single through the vacated right side. Hernandez grounded a single up the middle, Pearce checking in at second. Smoak, hitting right-handed, also went through the empty right side to score Pearce and send Hernandez to third, whence he trotted home on Solarte’s base hit to centre. Smoak tried to go from first to third on the play but was thrown out by the centre fielder Paolo Orlando, and Martin was retired on a nice play in the hole by Escobar at short.

Controlling their swings, taking what the Royals gave them in terms of positioning, they quickly scored 3 runs to take the lead, and who were these guys? Certainly not the Toronto Blue Jays of recent vintage.

Both starters were done after five innings, and John Gibbons got a nice 4-batter inning out of Seung Hwan Oh, who gave up only a bloop single to Jorge Soler. Meanwhile, the Jays climbed all over Blaine Boyer, and by the time Burch Smith had put out the fire Toronto had counted six more markers, only two of them earned, breaking the game open for good.

It was quick and kind of dirty, and the centre piece of the rally was a decisive statement by Grichuk that his slump was over, a vicious three-run homer to left that scored Pillar, who’d reached on a throwing error by Cheslor Cuthbert* at third, and Diaz, who’d followed with an infield single to short.

*Cuthbert’s name makes him sound like he could have been Whit Merrifield’s double-play partner in Zane Grey’s baseball world. But Grey would never have imagined that half of his fictional keystone combo might have come from Corn Island, Nicaragua.

Travis started things over again with a single to centre, and after Granderson flew out deep to centre, Hernandez lined a double into the left-field corner, with Travis checking in at third. Smoak was given a free pass, allowing Solarte to plate Davis on a sacrifice fly to centre off Burch Smith, who replaced the beleaguered Boyer.

Given the error on which Pillar reached, Solarte’s fly ball should have been the third out, so the run he drove in, and the two that followed (plus Pillar’s, of course) were all unearned, for those of you out there who find it difficult to understand the assignment of earned and unearned runs. Smith walked Martin to load the bases, and Pillar, returning to the plate, doubled done the line to left knocking in Hernandez and Smoak. It mattered little that Diaz went down before Smith’s high heat.

With the game basically over after six innings, the rest of the game was denouement. Aaron Loup maneuvered through a rocky seventh for Toronto, and big Canuck John Axford came on and gave the Jays two full innings of mop-up work, impressing with his power and the movement on his pitches. He retired 6 in a row on only 25 pitches.

Smith finished off the game for the Royals, saving manager Ned Yost from going deeper into his bullpen, pitching 2 and 2 thirds with 1 hit, 1 walk, 3 strikeouts, and 1 hit batter, on 50 pitches.

I was pleased to see and hear the warm reception Ryan Goins received on his return to the TV Dome. In fact, he received it twice, granted an ovation when he took the field as a defensive replacement for Escobar at shortstop in the seventh, and again when he came up to the plate leading off the ninth, when the small crowd rose to his feet to pay him tribute. It was a nice touch at the end of a game that had long been over.

And, lest we forget, a game that boosted Toronto to a 10-5 record and once again gave us the possibility of winning another series by winning the first game.

When I was a kid growing up in Detroit my dad always took us to doubleheaders to see the Tigers, since it provided better value, twice the baseball for the bucks. I can well remember how impatient I would be sitting in the stands between games, forlornly surveying the empty field, waiting for the players to return to the dugouts for the second game.

I felt much the same way yesterday as I futzed around the house doing little tasks waiting for the second game to start. I kept checking to see when Gameday would move into “warmup” mode, my signal to get back to the tube.

I’d already checked over the lineup, and the broadcasters had clarified the big question of the day: how did Joe Biagini suddenly appear as the starting pitcher? The answer is that teams can add an extra player for doubleheaders, and unbeknownst to anybody the Jays had called up Biagini to take the start.

There must have been some matchup reason that Jay Happ, who was supposed to start the second game of the series all along, was being put back a day. With the Yankees and Red Sox coming up next, the pitching matchups are no doubt being given a lot of scrutiny.

Otherwise the lineup was basically the same as you’d expect for a second game on short rest. Luke Maile would catch, Gift Ngoepe would play second, and in a move that made sense at the time, Steve Pearce would take his hot bat to first base and swap with Justin Smoak, who moved to DH. Teoscar Hernandez’ solid start militated keeping him in left, so the Pearce/Smoak swap was a way to keep Pearce’s bat in the game and give Smoak a rest.

Biagini on the mound and Pearce at first inserted themselves into the game right off the bat, so to speak. On a 1-1 count, Royals’ leadoff hitter Jon Jay hit a fairly tough grounder to first. The ball played Pearce, and bounced off him. He dove for it, and threw behind Biagini who was coming over to cover.

The scorer gave Jay a base hit, which was a bit generous to Pearce, who should have handled the ball cleanly. Once he bobbled it, a rushed throw was all that would get the speedy Jay (John, that is), but it had to be perfect and it wasn’t.

The unsettled Biagini proceeded to walk Whit Merrifield and give up a short single to centre to Mike Moustakas to load the bases. Then he hit Lucas Duda to force in a run. All with nobody out.

Joe Biagini has nothing if not loads of grit, though, and he managed to get out of the inning without further damage, in part thanks to a stellar play at first by Pearce, who redeemed himself after the earlier bobble, with an able assist from Maile at the plate.

With Pearce playing in, Cheslor Cuthbert lashed one on the ground toward right. Pearce made a desperate dive to his right, snagged the ball on his backhand, and threw to the plate from his knees. Maile made a great stretch to corral the desperate throw and keep his foot on the plate for the forceout.

Then Biagini saved himself a run but just missed getting out of the inning. Ryan Goins hit a hard one-hopper back to him and he came to the plate for a second forceout at the plate, but he bobbled the ball slightly, which cost him a double play.

Abraham Almonte hit one deep to centre that Kevin Pillar hauled in for the third out, and the threat was over.

Veteran lefty Danny Duffy, by default the ace of the Royals’ staff, got some help from Moustakas at third who leapt and speared Teoscar Hernanez’ one-out liner, then followed a 3-2 walk to Justin Smoak by striking out Solarte to end the Toronto first.

After a quiet second for both teams, Kansas City touched up Biagini for another run in the third. He walked Merrifield leading off, and Moustakas brought him home with a double to centre off the wall. The big young right-hander asserted himself after the blow from Moustakas, and fanned the side, Duda, Cuthbert, and Goins all going down swinging.

Duffy was spot on tonight, and deserved better than he got for his effort. His only tough inning was the third, when he loaded the bases with one out for Smoak with a 10-pitch walk on 3-2 to Maile, a double to right by Pearce, and a walk to Hernandez. But Smoak hit it right up the middle where Ryan Goins was stationed near the bag in the shift, and what used to be a base hit was turned into an easy double play.

After that Duffy cruised through the sixth, giving up only Pillar’s line single in the fourth, the second and last hit he gave up. As a guy who works the corners and can be pushed into some deep counts, he’d thrown 100 pitches by the end of six, and that was enough for Ned Yost. He came out throwing a shutout on 2 hits with 3 walks and 8 strikeouts. Whatever else happened after that, he had done a good job, and gave the best performance by a starter in the series so far.

He also left with a 3-run lead, thanks to a leadoff homer by Almonte to centre in the fifth. John Gibbons pulled the plug on big Joe after five and two thirds innings, after he walked Jay, bringing the dangerous Merrifield up again. He did a pretty good job for a fill-in, and could go back to Buffalo quite satisfied: 3 runs, 6 hits, 3 walks, 4 strikeouts, and 106 pitches. The only thing he would really regret, I imagine, was hitting Duda with a pitch in the first to force in a run.

Danny Barnes came in and fanned Merrifield to strand Jay at first, and going to the seventh the game was in the hands of both bullpens. This was good news, mostly, for Toronto, and terrible news, totally, for Kansas City. Which in the era of 6-inning 100-pitch starts, is probably a large reason why the Royals came into this game 3 and 11 while the Jays came in at 10 and 5.

After Duffy finished up the Blue Jays’ sixth inning, Barnes came back out for the Royals’ seventh, and pitched around a walk to Cuthbert, ending up with a walk and 2 strikeouts in one and a third innings pitched.

Ned Yost called in Justin Grimm from the KC bullpen for the seventh. Ah, the KC bullpen. Balm for a sunny (snowy?) evening. Grimm’s an experienced guy who’s been around, starting with Texas and then spending five years with the Cubbies, where he even scored a World Series ring.

Unless there’s a big turnabout in his fortunes, he’s not likely to score another one any time soon, either pitching for the Royals, or pitching like he did tonight. He faced 3 batters; he walked 3 batters, on 17 pitches. Then he took a seat on the bench to watch Brad Keller come in and allow all three bases on balls to score, and one more for good measure as the Jays took the lead.

First to face Zimmer would be backup catcher Luke Maile, about to become Toronto’s newest folk hero. Zimmer threw him 3 sliders. He swung through the first, took the second for a called strike, and laced the third the wrong way into the right-field corner for a long single that scored Pillar and Diaz and sent Grichuk around to third.

Then John Gibbons started pulling some strings. He sent the slumping Devon Travis up to hit for the even more slumping Gift Ngoepe, and Travis responded by hitting a hard double-play ball on the ground to a drawn-in Moustakas, who—oops—couldn’t get it out of his glove to make a play. Grichuk scampered in with the tying run and Maile had reached second.

Up came Steve Pearce—remember him? He of the hot bat and hot-and-cold glove? Well this time he wielded his bat and stroked a single to centre to score Maile, and two relief pitchers had contrived to spoil Duffy’s truncated shutout and give up the lead to Toronto.

With Ryan Tepera coming in for the eighth this was all good news. But after he retired Almonte on a ground-out, the good news looked premature, as he gave up a very long and very loud solo homer to old Toronto nemesis Alcides Escobar.

Tepera finished up the eighth with the game tied, despite giving up a 2-out hustle double to John Jay.

Tim Hill, a lanky lefty who had come in to shut down the Toronto rally in the seventh, retired five in a row through the eighth on only 17 pitches, which brought us to the ninth inning, and the sight of Roberto Osuna on the hill for the Jays in the tie game. This is the new old: using your closer in a tied ninth inning, in the hopes of delivering a chance to your hitters in the bottom of the ninth. Everybody has taken a lesson from the sorry Buck Showalter/Zach Britton mess in the 2016 Wild Card game.

And it basically worked out for Toronto. Osuna held them off, and the offence had a chance to put it away in the bottom of the ninth, but that didn’t happen, and at the end of nine it was still tied.

Sometimes Osuna likes to make things more difficult for himself, like last night. He gave up a leadoff single to Moustakas, and then wild-pitched him into scoring position, with Lucas Duda coming up next. Osuna fanned Duda on a 2-2 changeup. Then Moustakas did Osuna a favour, wandering off second on Cuthbert’s comebacker.

Osuna played it textbook: ran right at Moustakas, freezing him about 15 feet from second. He was so nailed that he gave up, and let Osuna charge him and tag him out without a throw. Ryan Goins popped up to short, and it was off to the bottom of the ninth, and breath-holding time.

The Royals brought in righty Kevin McCarthy to start the ninth, and McCarthy fanned Maile to start the inning, but gave up another opposite-field ground single against the shift to Travis. Just to change things up, Pearce shot one through the stacked left side, and Travis, running with abandon, beat the throw to third.

Ned Yost decided to go to his closer, Kevin Herrera, to try to get out of the jam. Not sure about the logic of not using him to start the inning.

John Gibbons countered by hitting Curtis Granderson for Hernandez against the tough righty. Pearce immediately took second on Herrera, with no attempt to hold him at first. Also not sure why Yost didn’t then walk Granderson to re-establish the double play, but he didn’t, and it worked, because Herrera proceeded to strike out Granderson with a mesmerizing breaking ball, and fanned Smoak to send the game to extra innings.

With Osuna used, Gibbie went to Tyler Clippard for the tenth. It’s really worked out well for Toronto’s bullpen that Ross Atkins picked up 3 former closers in the off-season, Clippard, Seung-Hwan Oh, and John Axford. This provides for a wealth of veteran calm in tough situations.

Like Clippard in the top of the tenth. Almonte grounded out on a 2-2 pitch. Alcides Escobar lined a single into left. Drew Butera grounded out to Pearce at first, with Escobar moving up to second, and then John Jay hit a weak wrong-field fly ball to left to end the inning.

Like the Jays’, Kansas City’s closer was done for the night, and left-hander Brian Flynn came in to face Toronto. Solarte lined out to Merrifield in right on a nice running catch, but Pillar hit a ground single to left and advanced on a Flynn wild pitch. Then Ned Yost elected to put Diaz on with the intentional pass to restore the double play. But Flynn hit Grichuk with a pitch to load the bases with nobody out.

Home game, extra innings, bases loaded and nobody out, automatic win, right? But how many times have pitchers worked their way out of just such a situation? It was Luke Maile’s mission to end the suspense early, though, and he went with the pitch on a low 0-1 fast ball and rifled it into right field safely to end the game.

So in a 5-4 ten-inning win, backup catcher Luke Maile had 3 RBIs on 2 base hits including the game-winner in the tenth inning.

A team that has any pretension to contending for a playoff spot needs to see production from all 25 players on the roster. That includes the backup catcher. This year’s backup catcher is Luke Maile, and so far the kid’s all right!

And Maile’s hit capped off a long day and night of success for the Blue Jays, who swept the rebuilding Royals by preying on their struggling bullpen, getting key hits up and down the order, just enough starting pitching to get by, and great work by their own bullpen.

Which brings us to tonight’s series-ender against Kansas City, a series win already in the bag and another chance to bring out the brooms.

But don’t even mention those damn brooms, and keep them out of sight. Please!

Editorial note: Jerry Howarth many years ago stopped using the team nickname for Cleveland out of respect for the native peoples of North America. If it’s good enough for Jerry Howarth, it’s good enough for me.

By the end of the third inning of last night’s game, all of the warm and fuzzy thoughts I’ve been having about these surprising 2018 Toronto Blue Jays were draining away from me as blood from a cadaver on an icy slab.

It took less than an hour for my spirits to be carried back to the ugly days of the 2016 ALCS, when a terrible team hitting slump swept away any hope that the apparent team of destiny, walkoff winner of the Wild Card game and sweeper of the hated Texas Rangers, might carry on to its first World Series appearance in 25 years.

Shaggy herky-jerky righty Mike Clevinger was mowing down Toronto’s lineup like a rack of defenceless tenpins before the wily tosses of The Big Lebowsky. 9 out of 10 retired, save for a stirring double off the left-field wall by Kevin Pillar. 4 strikeouts. 4 groundouts. 43 pitches.

Meanwhile, the recently revived Cleveland hitters were treating the mystifying Marcus Stroman like a second-string batting-practice pitcher, spraying base hits all over the park and racking up a 4-run lead in the first two innings, and threatening

more in a two-out rally in the third.

Francisco Lindor, who came into the game hitting .208, keyed the attack with 2 hits in his first 2 at-bats. Jason Kipnis rapped an RBI double to the wall in centre on which Pillar took that one fatal step in before retreating too late.

Worse, Stroman’s infield defence, so crucial to the success of this quintessential ground ball pitcher, was less than crisp in the first inning, contributing materially to Cleveland’s first two runs. After Lindor’s leadoff single, Kipnis hit a sharp grounder right at Smoak, a perfect DP ball that would not even have required Stroman to take the return throw. Smoakie swooped with his big trapper, and left the ball on the dirt, leaving himself no choice but to take the out at first, sending Lindor safely to second and missing the bases-clearing double play.

Stroman followed by walking Jose Ramirez, always a tough out, on a 3-2 pitch. Yonder Alonso singled to centre scoring Lindor and sending Ramirez to third. After Big Edwin obligingly struck out on a checked swing call he didn’t like, Tyler Naquin bounced one up the middle that snaked its way past a diving Devon Travis, a base hit stemming from a lot of luck and another dive from Travis that didn’t quite make it.

No errors, a play that should have been made, and a play that might have been made, and 2 Cleveland runs.

In the second, luck contributed to the third run. With one out, old friend Rajai Davis, completely handcuffed on a 1-1 fast ball, topped it slowly to third. Well, of course he beat it out; Brooks Robbie wouldn’t have made the play.

So Davis was on base to be doubled home by Lindor who was doubled home by Kipnis for the fourth run.

Arguably, luck and lack of strong defence cost Stroman, who was throwing way better than he did in Texas last Saturday, when he actually threw more balls than strikes (last night it was 62 strikes and 37 balls in 99 pitches), three of the four runs and certainly contributed to his having thrown 72 pitches in three innings.

But it didn’t seem like it was going to matter, the way Mike Clevinger was mowing down the Jays.

But then came the turning point in the game: Clevinger took the mound for the top of the fourth. Oh, he struck out Teoscar Hernandez on a 3-2 pitch leading off, but the balls were really balls, nowhere near the plate.

Hernandez, you say? Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention: before the game the Blue Jays finally acknowledged the elephant in the room and put Josh Donaldson on the 10-day disabled list to tend to his “dead” shoulder, and brought up, not a backup infielder, but a bat, Hernandez, who’d had a good start in Buffalo with the Bisons.

Back to the Mike Clevinger turnabout scene: he walked Smoak on 3-1; none of the balls were close. He walked Solarte on 3-2; none of the balls were close. He went 3-0 on Russell Martin; all 3 balls were buried outside. But he fought back to 3-2 on Martin and flied him out to right for the second out, bringing Pillar to the plate. The Jays’ centre fielder had the only hit so far off him.

Pillar went down 1-2, took a ball, and then rifled a line single into left to score Smoak with Toronto’s first run, another two-out base hit with ducks on the pond. That brought the shortstop Aledmys Diaz to the plate.

So this Diaz guy, this guy they got for cheap from the Cardinals; they got him cheap because he had a so-so 2017 after making the All-Star Game in 2016. I don’t usually bother with slash lines, but in his case it’s really illustrative. 2016: .300/.369/.510, 2017: .259/.290/.392. His power production went from 17 homers to 7. It was a gamble both ways: the Cards were gambling he was a 1-year wonder, the Jays that there was something more to him than that.

Well, coming off the heels of a sixth-inning solo shot Wednesday night that brought Toronto back within one of the Orioles, he stepped up last night and won a big battle with Clevinger, or Clevinger lost it, same result. Clevinger threw him six breaking balls in a row. He fouled off two of the last three and the third one was in the dirt. Clevinger thought he could sneak a fast ball by him for the punchout.

Foolish, foolish Mike, he must have been thinking to himself as the ball disappeared over the centre-field fence for a 3-run homer and a brand new ball game.

Take your time in rehab, Troy, we got you covered here!

Go figure: the Indians had 7 hits and four runs in the first four innings, and the Jays had 3 hits and 4 runs in the first four innings.

Clevinger finally retired the side on a Randal Grichuk broken-bat grounder to short, but oh, looky here, Stroman’s pitch count after 3: 73, Clevinger’s after 4: 82. And whoever would have imagined that Clevinger would be gone from this game before Stroman?

Now for the next up in a series of well-worn baseball clichés, your pitcher needs to have a shut-down inning after you’ve rallied to catch up. As clichés go, it’s kind of a “well, duh”, but it still serves as a measure of a pitcher’s focus, if not his intestinal fortitude.

Marcus Stroman came out for the fifth and gave up a third hard shot to Francisco Lindor, but this time we got to see why Randal Grichuk is still in the lineup. He came in alertly, slid, and took a base hit away from Lindor with a sparkling catch. Stroman took seven pitches to get past Lindor, but then he got Kipnis to ground out on the second pitch, and Ramirez on the first pitch, for a 10-pitch inning, bringing him to 83, only one more than Clevinger.

But Francona chose not to give Clevinger another inning to try to get his early chops back, and went to the bullpen for Dan Otero, who settled Toronto’s hitters nicely for Cleveland, retiring the side on 13 pitches in the fifth, despite having to pitch around his catcher Yan Gomes’ throwing error, when he failed to complete a strikeout on Granderson by making a bad throw to first.

Gibbie is without question a pitchers’ manager, so there was little doubt that Stroman would come out for the Cleveland fifth. After all, if he held the fort, he’d have one more shot at securing the win, and after battling back from such a bad start he deserved it.

He got through the inning, but it was not an easy go of it. Once again it was infield defence that made things more difficult for him. Edwin grounded a single up the middle, and then Naquin rapped one on the ground to third, a good double play ball, despite Naquin’s speed. Solarte couldn’t handle the hop, and it went off him into left field. It was scored as a base hit, but it was a play that should have been made. Nevertheless, Stroman was able to buckle down and get the last two outs, fanning Gomes on a high fast ball, and retiring Zimmer on a comebacker.

All things considered, it was a gutsy performance by a pitcher who’s just not sharp yet, as he limited the damage to the 4 runs despite giving up 9 hits and having less than stellar support from his infield.

But it wasn’t enough to get him a win as neither team scored in an eventful sixth inning, with Cleveland having the better chance. Otero carried on for a second inning on the hill against Toronto and had to work around a rare fumble at shortstop by Lindor that let Russ Martin reach with one out. But he then made quick work of Pillar on a punchout and Diaz on a groundout to finish with only one baserunner allowed, 2 strikeouts, and only 27 pitches for two innings.

Danny Barnes came on to pitch for Toronto, and was happy to start with a clean slate for once. But with one out Lindor hit the ball hard for the fourth time, slapping a double the opposite way to left field. Barnes came back to fan Kipnis on a nasty breaking ball for the second out, setting up an interesting but messy play by Devon Travis that brought the inning to an end on a tag play at the plate.

Jose Ramirez hit one up the middle to Travis’ backhand, and Travis took two steps and went to his knees. The ball deflected squarely off his glove, so it stayed in front of him. Lindor, running from second with two outs, never slowed down at third, and it’s hard to know whether he kept going because he knew Travis hadn’t picked it cleanly, or he was just going for it anyway. To his credit, Travis pounced on the ball, made a strong slow slightly up the first-base line to Russell Martin, who caught it and made a very athletic diving sweep tag that caught Lindor on the hand; he was clearly out.

Kudos to Travis for finishing the play, but again I see him not catching a ball cleanly that’s not beyond his reach. Plays that should be made.

Zach McAllister came in to pitch the seventh for Cleveland, and he benefitted from an out at the plate as well, but didn’t escape unscathed as Barnes had. He issued a leadoff walk to Randal Grichuk, who promptly stole second and moved to third as Travis skillfully moved him up with a right-side grounder. Credit is also due to a guy who can help his team at the plate even in the middle of a slump.

This was the time for Terry Francona to play his little bullpen trick of bringing his best reliever in at the toughest spot, regardless of the inning. So with Granderson coming up the call went to Andrew Miller, which of course brought Steve Pearce in to hit for Grandy. Pearce hit a grounder to Alonso at first, and Grichuk was a fairly easy out at the plate on the contact play.

Then came the key play of the game, if it went almost un-noticed at the time. With Hernandez at the plate, 0 for 2 so far, Gomes wasn’t able to block one of Miller’s pitches, moving Pearce up to second. Then the rookie Hernandez had the audacity to get all over a 1-2 Miller slider that didn’t go where he wanted, and drive it into the left-field corner for a double and the go-ahead RBI.

Funny thing was, Miller, Gomes, the batter, and everyone watching the game thought Miller had struck out Hernandez on the previous pitch, a low slider on the outside corner. Hernandez even started for the dugout, and only stopped in his tracks when he realized that the only person in the park who didn’t think it was a strike was the plate umpire, Gerry Davis, but his vote was the only one that counted.

Now playing on the lead, John Gibbons was able to go to what looks like his set rotation for protecting a lead. Tyler Clippard breezed through an easy seventh on ten pitches. Ryan Tepera gave up a hit to Gomes leading off the eighth, but fanned Zimmer and induced a first-pitch double play from the speedy Davis. He clocked in at 9 pitches.

After the right-hander Matt Belisle easily retired Toronto in order on 14 pitches, Terry Francona had seen enough to send him out again in the ninth. This didn’t turn out to be a great idea because the Blue Jays’ hitters jumped on him for 3 insurance runs and Francona had to run in another reliever, Tyler Olson, to finish the inning.

Aledmys Diaz went with the pitch and lined his second hit of the night to right field leading off. Breaking for second as Grinchuk struck out, he beat Gomes’ high throw for a stolen base. Belisle then plunked Travis on the wrist, a frightening scene that left Travis in the game to run, but caused Gibbie to insert Gift Ngoepe at second for the bottom of the ninth. We await news on his condition.

Steve Pearce came up to the plate for his second at-bat and rifled the first pitch he saw into the left-field corner, driving in both Diaz and Travis, running all the way from first. We saw Travis protecting his hand as he high-fived in the dugout after scoring.

This brought Hernandez back to the plate with another RBI opportunity, and he didn’t waste it, driving a low 2-1 fast ball over the head of Zimmer in centre for his second run-scoring double. A very nice return to the bigs for Teoscar Hernandez.

Roberto Osuna had been heating up for the save opportunity so he was ready to go. In keeping with Gibbie’s policy of trying not to have relievers get completely ready without using them, he brought Osuna in to finish up anyway. Which he did with panache, striking out Lindor on 3 called strikes, grounding out Kipnis to short, and fanning Ramirez in a typical Ramirez at-bat, going down on the eighth pitch.

Lots of heroes in this one. Stroman, for hanging in. Diaz, for a big blast. Hernandez, for two clutch doubles, and for uncovering the humanity of Andrew Miller. Travis and Martin, for combining to cut Lindor down at the plate. Barnes, Clippard, Tepera and Osuna for keeping Cleveland off the board. Grichuk, for a great catch. Pillar, for the first two hits and first RBI off Clevinger.

It’s a team game, and last night the team won a big one, and banished some pretty ugly ghosts in the process.

One of the eternal verities of the Toronto Blue Jays, if you can call the period since their competitive breakout in the second half of 2015 an eternity, is that if Marco Estrada doesn’t give you a good chance to win when he starts, there’s a reason for it.

Last night the Blue Jays were in Baltimore for the finale of a three game series, and the players had the scent of a sweep in their nostrils. Estrada was on the hill for Toronto, looking to extend the sharpness that had seen him go from 3 earned runs in 7 innings against the Yankees to 1 earned run in six innings against the Texas Rangers in his first two starts of the season.

On the other hand the Orioles had Kevin Gausman going for them, the enigmatic former phenom who has spent his major league career blowing hot and cold for Baltimore. Gausman had had a terrible start to his year, with an ERA of 8.00 in two abbreviated starts of 5 and 4 innings against the Twins and the Yankees. Even more favourable for Toronto was that Gausman has not had a lot of success against the Jays in his career.

Prospects looked good for the Jays in the top of the first when they showed off one of their new skills developed for 2018, the ability to deliver a runner in scoring position with two outs. They had combined a leadoff single by Curtis Granderson and a two-out walk to Steve Pearce to set up Justin Smoak, who had reached on a forceout of Granderson, to come home on Kevin Pillar’s line single up the middle.

But Gausman retired 10 of 11 batters after Pillar’s hit, allowing only a 2-out double by Yanvergis Solarte in the third, showing near complete command while pitching Baltimore into the fifth inning.

Meanwhile, it looked from the start like Estrada was full value for turning in an even better performance than his last outing in Texas. He retired the first eight batters he faced before giving up a walk to Chance Sisco on a 3-2 pitch in the third, turning the lineup over to Trey Mancini, who fanned on—what else?—a 1-2 changeup to strand Sisco at first.

It was a vintage Estrada performance for those first nine outs, 4 strikeouts, 4 balls in the air, and only 1 groundout.

But from his first pitch of the fourth inning, it was a different Estrada on the mound. Manny Machado hit a booming double to left centre on the first pitch. Jonathan Schoop took Estrada to 3-2 before lining a double into left-field to deliver Machado with the tying run. Estrada recovered a little by fanning Adam Jones, who’d had a terrible series against Toronto, on 3 pitches.

But then Pedro Alvarez, who always seems to go deep in the count, walked on a 3-2 fast ball that was supposed to be a high tempter but got away from Estrada for ball 4. Then Chris Davis, whose only impressive moment so far in this series was shattering his bat over his knee after striking out Monday night, finally delivered with a line single to right that scored Schoop and gave Baltimore the lead, with Alvarez coming around to third.

After a brief visit from pitching coach Pete Walker, Estrada settled down and got two typical fly-ball outs to end the inning. But the first, off the bat of Tim Beckham, was deep enough to score Alvarez from third on the sacrifice fly, extending the Oriole lead to 3-1. The Jays avoided further damage when Randal Grichuk made a superb catch in foul territory on his knees after a long run on a looping ball down the line off the bat of Craig Gentry. Tuck that memory away for a moment.

Encouragingly, Toronto came right back with a run in the top of the fifth to cut the gap to one. Luke Maile, subbing in for Russell Martin’s rest night, continued his hard contact by hitting a hard one up the middle leading off. Gausman seemed to recover, retiring Gift Ngoepe (playing second to rest the slumping Devon Travis) on a soft fly to centre and fanning Granderson after a tough at bat.

But then Gausman lost it and issued his second walk of the night, 4 straight balls to Pearce. This brought Solarte to the plate for only the Jays’ second at bat with a run in scoring position in the game. Once again there were two outs, and once again the Toronto hitter delivered, Solarte flaring a single the opposite way to left field on which Maile, running on contact with two outs, scored easily. Gausman dodged further damage when Pearce hit a first-pitch frozen rope right at the third baseman Beckham.

Things weren’t looking too bad for Toronto as the game moved to the bottom of the fifth. It was only a 1-run deficit, and if Estrada could get his mojo back, at 73 pitches he might give them another two innings.

But Estrada wasn’t getting his mojo back this night, no-how, no way. Sisco, the number nine hitter, hit a drive to centre that Pillar couldn’t quite catch up with that went for a double. Estrada quickly jumped up 0-2 on Mancini before ballooning to a full count and losing him.

This brought Machado to the plate for the pivotal moment, or rather many moments, of the game. With runners on first and second and nobody out, Machado lofted a ball almost identical to Gentry’s in the fourth inning, a twisting looper down the line. Grichuk had a more difficult play this time, as he was playing the right-handed Machado to pull to left, and a foul ball to right by a right-handed batter is naturally slicing away from the fielder.

But Grichuk made another miraculous effort, caught up with the ball in a dive toward the line, and just missed the catch as the ball ticked off his glove and landed foul. Despite Estrada not getting the out, at least it was only a foul ball.

Or was it? There were the Orioles checking their video monitor; after a look they decided to ask for a review, claiming that Grichuk’s glove was actually in fair territory when the ball hit. Oh no, here we go again: not only did it have to be determined whether the ball was fair or foul, but if it was fair, where to place the baserunners?

Then commenced one very long delay while the play was reviewed in New York. I know that most review delays seem long, but this one was ridiculously long. Estrada stood on the mound. Then he threw a couple of pitches, but not too seriously, after the number he had already thrown. Then he sat down on the pitching rubber.

After this long delay, the crew chief started to take his headset off. And then he put it back on. What now? There could only be one answer: the ball had been ruled fair, and now they were discussing the placement of the runners.

Tick, tick, tick. God, it was long. But finally there was a decision: fair ball, base hit, runners to advance one base each, bases loaded for Jonathan Schoop.

Unless Toronto pulled off a home-to-first double play, Schoop had to be Estrada’s last batter, and he was. There was no double play in the works for Estrada, though. Schoop singled hard to centre, Sisco came in to score, Mancini had to stop at third, and Estrada headed for the showers. (I know pitchers don’t usually head for the showers when they come out of the game any more, but it’s still a good baseball expression.)

Down 4-2 and facing a whole lot worse, Danny Barnes came in and pulled off a minor miracle to keep Estrada’s left-behind flock of Oriole baserunners from scoring. He fanned Adam Jones on a 2-2 slider. He fanned Pedro Alvarez on a 2-2 79 mph changeup. Then he grooved one to Chris Davis, who creamed it to the deepest part of the park where Kevin Pillar hauled it in for the third route.

I’ve said these New Jays are feisty, and they are. Down 4-2, Pillar and Grichuk went down quickly to Gausman’s slants in the top of the sixth, but Aledmys Diaz crushed a 1-0 fast ball on the inside corner and it got out of the yard in a big hurry to narrow the gap to one. Maybe rattled, Gausman walked Luke Maile on a 3-2 pitch, but fanned Gift Ngoepe to end the inning.

Big John Axford came in to pitch for Toronto in the bottom of the sixth and was the victim of some serious bad luck that cost the Jays another run and restored the 2-run Baltimore lead.

First off, Tim Beckham hit a high chopper off the plate toward short. By the time it came down, Diaz had no chance on the speedy Beckham. No problem. Craig Gentry hit a hard one-hop shot to Ngoepe at second, a perfect double play ball. Except that Ngoepe dropped it, and had to go to first with it to retire Gentry. No double play and a runner in scoring position for Sisco, who has a knack for hitting in the clutch, it seems. Sisco hit a seeing-eye grounder on poor contact through the left side of the infield to score Beckham. Axford then seriously sawed off Mancini, who managed to poke the ball into right for another hit. Cheesed off, probably, Axford bore down and retired Machado on a short fly to Grichuk and punched out Schoop on a 2-2 slider in the dirt.

So after six innings it was 5-3 Baltimore, Marco Estrada was long gone, Kevin Gausman was out of the game, and it now became a question of whether or not the Orioles’ bullpen could hold onto the lead for three innings and withstand what has become the Jays’ usual late-inning uprising.

It did, and the uprising didn’t rise this time.

In fact, the O’s relievers were nearly perfect. Richard Bleier retired the side in order in the seventh, O’Day did the same on 18 pitches in the eighth, and closer Brad Brach took the save, though he gave up a 1-out single to the hot-hitting Luke Maile that raised Maile’s average in part-time work to .400 on 6 for 15.

With Maile on, Brach retired pinch-hitter Devon Travis, hitting for Ngoepe, on a liner to left, and then Granderson grounded out to end the game.

A note on Travis pinch-hitting for Ngoepe: many eyebrows were raised that it was Travis, mired in a slump at .086, bringing his lumber up to the plate instead of the “resting” Josh Donaldson, a much more likely suspect to knot the game up with one swing of the bat.

As for Toronto’s bullpen, Seung Hwan Oh had another less than stellar outing in the seventh inning, though he was able to marshall his resources to keep the Orioles off the board. After Jones fanned (third time in the game), Alvarez smacked a double to right centre and then Chris Davis slapped one through the vacant left side of the infield for a base hit with Alvarez stopping at third.

But then Oh stiffened and popped up Beckham and froze Gentry on an 0-2 fastball to strand the runners at first and third.

Tyler Clippard threw an easy and effective eighth, getting lazy flies from Sisco and Mancini, and then fanning Machado, all in 13 pitches.

So no series sweep yet, but a third series win in a row, a level of success not a lot of fans would have expected at this point in the season, especially with the number of players who are still performing less than optimally, or, worse, dealing with injuries.

As for injuries, it’s somewhat concerning that Donaldson was not used as the obvious pinch-hitter and we haven’t yet seen evidence of the strong arm we all know he possesses.

More concerning than Donaldson at the moment is that it came out after the game that Estrada had “felt something” in his back in the fourth inning, which explained his sudden drop in effectiveness. We can now add him to the list of important parts of this team to worry about.

Even so, take away the last run Estrada allowed, if Barnes had been brought in to face Schoop in the fifth, and the unlucky run scored off Axford in the sixth, and the Orioles and the Jays could still be playing, god forbid.