Long Ball Stories

Aaron Sanchez’ first two starts this year confirmed that his 2017 blister problem was well behind him. What they did not confirm was how close he might be to returning to the brilliant form he displayed in 2016 as the league’s ERA champion.

Well let me tell you, friends and neighbours, based on last night’s 8-inning gem on a cold night in Baltimore, Sanchie, the Sanchie of old, is well and truly back.

Okay, so he wasn’t exactly the same guy. He walked 5, hit a batter, and only struck out 4. And he hardly ever got a tick over 93 mph. Well, twice.

But you know what? Maybe all that was a good thing, because he didn’t give up a base hit until the top of the eighth inning. And he finished the eighth inning in a tie ball game at 1-1, having given up 1 run on only the three hits in the eighth, one of which was a tainted scorer’s decision.

Finishing the eighth inning ended up being the best thing Aaron Sanchez did last night, because it left him in place as the pitcher of record when veteran Curtis Granderson stepped into the box with two out in the top of the ninth and parked a 1-2 pitch from Darren O’Day in the right field seats for a very significant first career home run in a Blue Jays’ uniform.

To cap off a night of true delights, Roberto Osuna took the ball for the bottom of the ninth to protect the 2-1 Toronto lead and proceeded to retire the side on 15 pitches to notch his one hundredth career save.

With his work last night, Osuna became the youngest pitcher in major league history to reach 100 career saves, beating the record of Francisco Rodriguez, who was a year and a half older in 2006 when he achieved that mark while pitching for the Los Angeles Angels.

But make no mistake, as the score indicates, this game was no walk in the park for anyone. While Andrew Cashner didn’t flirt with a no hitter, giving up 4 scattered hits, he did throw 7 innings of shutout ball with 3 walks and 6 strikeouts, and left the game in a scoreless tie with Toronto.

It was only after Cashner left, in the top of the eighth, with former Jays’ prospect Miguel Castro taking over, that Toronto scratched out a run, benefitting from Castro’s wildness and a bad throw from right field by Anthony Santander. This was the run that Baltimore matched in the bottom of the eighth when they finally reached Sanchez, setting both teams up for the dramatic ninth that would follow.

It was a different Aaron Sanchez we saw tonight. As I mentioned at the outset he was not throwing the 96-plus fast balls that have always been a big part of his repertoire. He was also throwing significantly more of the changeups that he had worked to develop this spring.

You can’t deny the results of the changes. He certainly had a little trouble finding the plate, but never got into trouble over it, his 5 walks and one hit batsman being distributed over 6 different innings, whereas he only retired the side in order in the second and third innings.

The other notable thing about his outing was that he was remarkably efficient, despite the wildness, going into the eighth inning having thrown only 82 pitches. So the other side of the coin of his wildness was he got a lot of first-pitch and low-count outs, rather than pitching consistently deep into counts as he had done in his earlier starts.

Nor was Cashner ever in much trouble. He allowed 2 baserunners in the second inning, and two in the fifth, and never let anyone touch third base, although Curtis Granderson almost did in the first, which is a strange story in itself.

Granderson had walked on a 3-2 pitch to lead off the game. After Josh Donaldson flied out to left, Justin Smoak got into a long battle with Cashner, going to 9 pitches on a 3-2 count. John Gibbons had started Granderson from first on the sixth pitch, as soon as it reached 3-2. Smoak fouled off three in a row, Granderson going each time. Finally Smoak struck out on the ninth pitch, and catcher Chance Sisco threw the ball away trying to get the runner at second. The ball skipped into the outfield, and Granderson took off for third. But the Orioles got the ball back in quickly to the middle of the diamond, where Cashner picked it off, joined the merry chase, and tagged Grandy out in a tangle at third.

Having said all that, the entire fun play was declared null and void because plate umpire Marvin Hudson ruled that Smoak was actually out not on strikes but because he had interfered with Sisco’s throw to second. In the case of batter’s interference with a catcher, the play is immediately called dead, and no runner may advance, so Granderson lost his stolen base and had to return to first. Anticlimactically, Yangervis Solarte struck out to end the inning.

And that was the story of the top of the first. After that it was a breeze for Cashner, as Toronto had only three at-bats with a runner at second, and went 0 for 3 in those opportunities.

Fast forward to the Jays’ eighth, with Cashner finished and Castro on the hill. Weirdness abounded here as well. Donaldson struck out on a checked swing, but Castro walked Smoak. Smoak moved up as Castro skipped a wild one to the backstop. Solarte whacked a single into right. Anthony Santander charged the ball briskly and cut loose with a strong throw, causing Smoak to be stopped at third, until Santander’s throw skipped off Sisco, squirted past Castro who was correctly backing up the play, and dribbled into the Toronto dugout, allowing Smoak to score because the ball went out of play.

With Solarte at second, Steve Pearce hit a grounder to third that was booted by Tim Beckham. Randal Grichuk ran for Pearce at first. Castro worked his way out of the jam by retiring Russ Martin on the infield fly rule, and Kevin Pillar, who lined out to left.

So the tension was ratcheted up going to the bottom of the eighth, with the Jays holding a one-run lead and Sanchez still not having given up a hit.

Well, that changed in a hurry, and not without controversy. Tim Beckham, whose error had just let Pearce reach base (a reversal of the “great play/lead off next inning” phenomenon) stepped to the plate and ripped the first pitch sharply to third, where it went right through the wickets, a hard one-hopper that Donaldson failed to get his glove on as it shot between his legs and into the left-field corner, while Beckham reached second.

A very strange scorer’s decision gave Beckham a double for Baltimore’s first hit, breaking off Sanchez’ no-hit bid. If the game had ended in that situation, the consequences would have been terrible. Scorers often change their decisions after reviewing video, even after the game. If the scorer had stood by his decision, he would have been roasted for wrecking Sanchez’ dream. If he’d changed it, he’d have been roasted for caving to the public outrage.

Luckily for him (her? There are women official scorers, but we don’t know who the scorer was for this game.) Santander made up for his error by grounding a clean single to right, with Beckham stopping at third. So, the end of a controversy. The no-no would have been gone-gone anyway.

But then the catcher Sisco came to the plate and doubled to right, plating Beckham and sending Santander to third.

Now it became very interesting. Sanchez’ no-hitter was gone. The lead was gone. And Baltimore had runners on second and third with nobody out. The game was teetering on the line. The big question was whether Gibbie would leave Sanchez in to try to get out of his own jam, or congratulate him on a great game and call in a reliever.

When Pete Walker came out for a mound visit, it became clear that Gibbie was going all in on Sanchez, and his gamble on the big young right-hander paid off, as Sanchez reached down and pulled out enough extra to extricate himself from the jam.

Trey Mancini, who’d hit the ball right on the screws 3 times in a row with nothing to show for it, didn’t square it up this time, and lofted a short fly to centre for the first out. Craig Gentry, who was running for Santander at third, was wisely held up. With first base open, nobody would have let Manny Machado swing the bat, so he was waved to first on the intentional past.

This brought Jonathan Schoop, mired in an early season slump, to the plate. He took a called strike on a fast ball on—or just off—the outside corner, and then couldn’t hold off on another fast ball, neither over 93 mph, that was high and outside. He topped it off the end of his bat to Devon Travis, who started a 4-6-3 double play.

So Aaron Sanchez, his no-hitter and lead gone, had still earned the right for one shot at gaining the win, thanks to John Gibbons’ faith in him. But it had to be in the top of the ninth, because after that he would no longer be the pitcher of record.

For the top of the ninth, Orioles’ manager Buck Showalter opted for Darren O’Day, his primary closer in the absence of the injured Zach Britton. With his old nemesis Jose Bautista no longer around, the auguries were pretty good for O’Day, who has been mostly successful against Toronto in the past.

He sure started with a rush, as the over-eager Devon Travis and Aledmys Diaz both jumped at the first pitch and grounded out, Travis to second and Diaz to short.

This brought the veteran Curtis Granderson to the plate. Granderson held off on a slider in the dirt. Then he took one that stayed in the zone. Then he fouled off a slider and a fast ball, both low in the zone. Than O’Day made a mistake, a huge mistake, and Granderson punished him for it. He threw a below-90 fastball up in the zone, and Granderson smacked it out of the park to right field.

Toronto now had a 2-1 lead, and Sanchez stood in line for the win. O’Day was not quite out of the woods yet, though. He gave up a base knock to Donaldson and walked Smoak before Solarte finally popped out to Beckham at third to end the inning.

The night before, Roberto Osuna had been up in the bullpen and ready to come in for the save when Josh Donaldson hit the grand slam that put the game out of reach of the Orioles. His blast also ended the possibility of Osuna earning a save, because the save conditions no longer existed. So the opportunity to gain his hundredth save had to be deferred to another game.

Which, as it turned out, came just 24 hours later. This time, though, there was a particular cachet to the assignment: there wasn’t a person in the dugout who wasn’t all in for Sanchez earning the win after his great performance.

Osuna seems different this year. He carries himself more calmly, and seems to understand his talent more clearly. Last year he got in trouble from time to time as he experimented with a not very effective cutter, and was criticized for not relying on his fast ball and slider.

Last night he threw 15 pitches, 7 fast balls, 7 sliders, and one cutter. Adam Jones tied into an 0-1 slider but hit it to the deepest part of the park, where Kevin Pillar easily gathered it in. Pedro Alvarez put up quite a fight, fouling off the one cutter and then a slider and a fast ball before popping out to Diaz at short on a slider. Chris Davis also went to six pitches before lining out softly to Travis in the shift in short right for the game.

The end was neat and clean and all very easy, and at the end of it Toronto had a 2-1 victory, Aaron Sanchez had his first win of the season in most impressive fashion, and Roberto Osuna had become the youngest pitcher in major league history to have earned one hundred saves. And Curtis Granderson, the last-minute, bargain barrel free agent signing so many derided, was the hero of the night.

Not to mention that the so-called mediocre, stand-pat Blue Jays had guaranteed their third straight series win, and their second in a row on the road.

And let’s have no talk about the brooms here! We have to do all we can to keep on the good side of the gods of fortune.

So it was quite the matchup last night in Baltimore between the surprising Toronto Blue Jays and the exhausted Baltimore Orioles.

Toronto swept into town on the fresh breeze of a 2-1 series win over the Rangers in Texas, their first road series of the year.

The Orioles, on the other hand, limped back into town from a weekend series in New York that they actually won 2 games to 1over the Yankees, but drained and arm-weary from a 14-inning victory on Friday night, and a 12-inning victory on Sunday afternoon.

The pitching assignments lined up strength versus strength, Jay Happ against Dylan Bundy. The question to be answered was whether the Orioles could score enough against Happ to enable Bundy to give them some innings on the lead and rest their bullpen.

Well, Bundy gave his team the innings all right, seven of them, giving up only 2 runs on 4 hits with 2 walks and 10 strikeouts.

The problem for Baltimore, though, was that no matter how many baserunners they had in no matter how many innings, the powerful Happ shut the door on them time and again, only giving up a solo home run to Manny Machado in the third inning.

Bundy only made two mistakes, but the first one was to walk Curtis Granderson before Steve Pearce hit his third home run in three games.

So it ended up being Baltimore manager Buck Showalter’s worst nightmare after the nightmare weekend in New York, having to go to his bullpen with his team behind in the game.

And when he did, with Mychal Givens replacing Bundy for the start of the eighth, there began the process of a pitching duel featuring tense moments and miraculous escapes devolving into a decisive rout of Baltimore’s undermanned relief corps.

There was something about Jay Happ last night, that he seemed to need runners on base to get him to reach down and pull out his best.

Dylan Bundy had raced through the top of the Jays’ order on 15 pitches with two strikeouts and a ground-out. But when Happ came out for the bottom of the first he promptly yielded a leadoff single to Trey Mancini and a walk to Manny Machado on a 3-2 pitch.

Then, for the first time in what became a pattern for his six innings of work, he bracketed fanning Adam Jones on high heat with punching out Jonathan Schoop on the inside corner and the soon-to-be-haplessly-infuriated Chris Davis with a well-set-up fourth straight fast ball on the outside corner. It took Happ 20 pitches to get out of it, but boy, was it fun.

In the second inning former Blue Jay Danny Valencia reached on a throwing error by first baseman Josh Donaldson, and Tim Beckham singled to right with Valencia checking in at second.

Wait, what? Josh Donaldson at first? How did that happen? Well, Kendrys Morales was in the starting lineup at first base, and Justin Smoak was the designated hitter. But in the top of the second, after Morales hit a solid single to right centre, he had some obvious issue with his right hamstring, and after one more play he was pulled for a pinch-runner, putting Yangervis Solarte in the game.

With Smoak already in the lineup, John Gibbons had to find another solution, and came up with Donaldson, with Solarte going to third to replace him. Not sure why the other options, Pearce or Solarte, weren’t utilized, but there it was. (Note: if the team moves the DH into a position, it loses the DH and the pitcher has to hit in the DH spot for the rest of the game.)

So, the error: Valencia hit a ball between first and second. Donaldson, nothing if not eager to impress at his new job, over-enthusiastically ranged far to his right to snag the ball, but he was in a terrible position to make the throw to Happ covering, and it skipped into foul territory. Problem was, Donaldson cut in front of Travis, who had plenty of time to make the play.

Back to the second: 2 on, nobody out, it was time for Happ to get to work, striking out Anthony Santander, Caleb Joseph, and Trey Mancini. By now he had 6 strikeouts in two innings and had stranded 4 baserunners. His pitch count was 43 for the two innings, but who was counting?

Third inning, after he gave up Machado’s leadoff homer, he got a popup and then Adam Jones singled only to be erased when Davis grounded into a double play. I’m not sure what was wrong with the Orioles, but Happ retired them in order in the fourth inning, his only 1-2-3 effort of the night.

Ah, but the fifth inning made up in drama for what the fourth lacked. Joseph singled to left. Mancini walked. Machado flew out to right with the runners holding. Schoop was barely grazed by a Jay Happ pitch to load the bases for Adam Jones. Bye-bye tie game? Not on your life! Jones chopped one back to Happ, who went to the plate but made a messy throw. Russ Martin had to make a great play just to get the force at home, and he was in a terrible position to throw to first. His throw wasn’t very good, and the inexperienced Donaldson couldn’t handle it. Mancini came in to score as the Jays tracked down the ball. Bases still loaded, 2 outs!

But wait, what’s going on? Home plate umpire Chris Segal was signalling that Jones was out, and the Jays were coming off the field. Buck Showalter didn’t like it, but Jones had been called out for runner’s interference for going down the line in fair territory, rather than in the marked runner’s lane on the foul side of the line. The reason the lane is there is so that a catcher can have a clear throw to first. So Happ had escaped again, despite his own poor throw, and Toronto still led 2-1.

Other than the fourth inning, the sixth was Happ’s easiest. He only allowed Beckham to reach on a base on balls, and picked up his eighth and ninth strikeouts, Davis and Santander. It may have been the best thing on Baltimore’s highlight reel this sad night, but after Davis struck out, he treated us for the second time against Toronto to a demonstration of his bat-breaking skill, splintering his useless lumber after going down in flames to Happ again.

By the way, Danny Valencia hit one to Donaldson at first that he and Happ turned into a perfect 1-3 putout, just like they do it in spring training. Josh took the ball, Happ hustled over, and took a perfect feed for the out. The kid’s got some potential at first, methinks.

All of the extra work that Happ put in meant that his night was done after six innings, as he had gotten up to 104 pitches. It was time for Gibbie to go to the bullpen for the seventh.

Meanwhile Bundy, whose pitching line was better than Happ’s in every respect except the one that counts, had a far quieter night of it. The only time he allowed more than one baserunner was the second, when Steve Pearce obligingly helped him out of the only jam he was in all night.

Pearce had led off with a rip into left that beat the Baltimore shift. Morales followed with the deep single to right that moved Pearce around to third and caused the big first baseman to leave the game. Then Russ Martin bounced one back to Bundy, and with nobody out Pearce made a cardinal baserunning mistake, allowing himself to be trapped off third for the first out. Bundy followed with a walk to Pillar, but then stranded the runners.

Dylan Bundy deserved better in this start, but these Blue Jays are feisty, and in truth he would have had to pitch the whole game to have given Baltimore a chance to win.

A game that had been a pitchers’ duel for six/seven innings turned into a bullpen duel, and Buck Showalter came to this duel without his second, and without any pistols. It was no contest.

Though I have to say that the Baltimore hitters found Danny Barnes’ offerings much to their liking, and hit four balls solidly after Caleb Joseph struck out. Mancini and Machado singled, but then Schoop was out on a solid liner to centre and Jones out on a solid liner to left. Let’s just say that Danny Boy was lucky this time.

Ryan Tepera pitched around a base hit by Valencia in the eighth, an inning that was marked by a further sign of the humiliation of Chris Davis. Leading off, and remember that this game was 2-1 at the time, with everybody but the ball girl on the right side of the infield, Davis showed bunt toward the open space, and then, with two strikes on him, he tried it again, and dragged one fairly hard to Tepera’s left. With the right side playing ultra deep, Tepera was the only line of defence, and he cut the ball off with a valiant dive and threw Davis out at first.

John Axford pitched a wild and wooly but oddly effective ninth that was largely irrelevant because by then the Jays were up by a half-dozen, thanks to the fact that they had stripped bare the temporary weakness of the Baltimore ‘pen.

Showalter sent Mychal Givens, the flame-thrower, out to pitch the eighth inning. It’s not that Givens had been overworked on the weekend in New York. He had thrown two innings on Friday night, 33 pitches in total, and didn’t pitch in the second and third games of the series.

With Givens, it’s more that his 2018 has not started out well. At all. In 6 appearances (including last night) he’s pitched only 7.2 innings, when he’s usually good for 2 innings per outing, his ERA after this game is 7.04, and he’s “only” fanned 9 in the 7-plus innings, which is low for him.

The Jays greeted Givens rudely in the eighth inning, and it was only by the grace of a bad baserunning decision by third base coach Luis Rivera that Toronto didn’t add to its lead.

Aledmys Diaz singled to right. Curtis Granderson singled to right. Josh Donaldson was walked on four straight bad ones, bringing Justin Smoak to the plate. Hitting left-handed against Givens, Smoak flared a short fly to left. Rivera decided, with only one out, to challenge the strong arm of Trey Mancini and it was a very bad idea. Easy 7-2 double play, as Diaz was DOA at the plate. Givens escaped the bullet for the time being when Pearce flied out to right to end the inning.

But it was a measure of the paucity of troops Showalter had available that after that shaky showing in the eighth inning, he sent Givens out to start the ninth, with 16 pitches, 2 hits, and a walk already under his belt.

The result was predictable, though Givens came close to bringing it off. He walked Solarte, the Jays’ Designated Walker so far this season, fanned Russell Martin, gave up a single to Kevin Pillar, and dinged Devon Travis on the elbow pad to load the bases. Aledmys Diaz obligingly fouled out to the catcher, bringing Granderson, who had singled off Givens in the eighth, back to the plate.

Showalter was damned either way. He could stick with a flagging Givens, already up to 37 pitches, or try a lefty matchup on Granderson. He opted for the matchup.

Nelson Cortes Jr. is a 23-year-old rookie left-hander who doesn’t throw very hard. His first two outings hadn’t been too bad for Baltimore, giving up a run on 3 hits in one and a third against the Astros, and keeping the Yankees off the board for an inning with one hit.

But this wasn’t his night, nosiree!

Cortes went to 3-1 on Granderson then issued the bases-loaded pass that gave the Jays an insurance run. Roberto Osuna, smelling his hundredth career save, the youngest to get there in MLB history, bore down in the Toronto bullpen.

This brought Donaldson to the plate. Donaldson is always on the quest for the perfect pitch, and he never seems to care what hole that might put him in. Cortes threw two four-seam fastballs to him, neither of which touched 90. The first was “right there” and I muttered bigly at Donaldson on the tube. The second was a bit inside, but the ump gave it to Cortes. I mumbled louder. My wife, the placid neutral observer, wanted to know what I was upset about, because he wasn’t out yet.

Just as I was explaining forcefully to her how I hate that Donaldson always puts all his eggs in the basket of one pitch, Cortes threw him one more weak fastball up in his wheelhouse, and Donaldson knocked it out of the park for the grand salami that turned this baby into a laugher.

Roberto Osuna sat down, just as happy to have to wait another day for his big achievement.

Wife: “Well, there you go, Mr. Smart Guy!” Me: “Splutter!”

There was one more incident of note before Gibbie turned the ball over to Axford for his practice inning. After the big dinger, Smoak whacked a base hit to centre for his second hit of the night, bringing Randal Grichuk to the plate for the first time. Grichuk had been sent out to right in place of Pearce to tighten the defence when it was still close, and the late rally had won him an at-bat. Delighted to be facing Cortes in the doldroms of the worst slump of his career, Grichuk nailed one over Jones’ head in centre for a double, sending Smoak to third. Both died there, however, when Yangervis Solarte grounded out to second to end the inning, finally.

Like I said a few days ago, it’s always good to win the first game of a series, because then you’ve got two shots at winning the series.

Tonight it’s Aaron Sanchez against Andrew Cashner, another likely pitchers’ duel. Let’s see if Sanchez can find his 2016 groove at long last.

For a starting pitcher in the visitor’s dugout, there’s only one thing that could be better than seeing your leadoff hitter belt the first pitch of the game into the left-field seats.

That’s when the numbers three and four hitters get base hits ahead of your DH, who blasts a three-run dinger to the opposite field power alley, giving you a 4-0 lead before you’ve even thrown a pitch.

That’s the hand that Jaime Garcia, this year’s addition to Toronto’s starting rotation, found himself holding yesterday afternoon in Arlington. With the well-respected veteran left-hander Cole Hamels on the mound for Texas, Steve Pearce stepped into the box, waved off the traditional take of the first pitch of the game, and jerked it right down the line into the left-field seats.

Pearce’s shot was a carbon copy of the one he hit off lefty Mike Minor in the sixth inning of Saturday night’s loss to the Rangers, and showed that he was loving the fact that Texas’ string of 3 straight left-handed starters had given him three straight starts as the right-handed-hitting half of Toronto’s left-field platoon.

After Josh Donaldson lost another round of his favourite game of “let’s play umpire” and walked away in a funk, rung up by plate umpire Jim Reynolds, Justin Smoak, who’s mashing without smashing for the most part, lined a beauty up the middle for a base hit. Then Yangervis Solarte, getting the start at second while Devon Travis was rested, went with the pitch and rapped one over the glove of the leaping Roughneck Odor for another base hit, Smoak prudently checking in at second.

This brought Kendrys Morales to the plate. Hamels, who used to throw in the mid-90s, is now down to around 90 mph on his fast ball. So when he throws a four-seamer, like he did on a 2-2 pitch to Morales, it’s best that it not be waist-high on the outside corner. Morales couldn’t have been given a better opportunity to break his 0 for the season home-run record, and he didn’t waste it, rifling the ball over the wall in right centre, chasing, if you can describe Morales’ jogging like that, Smoak and Solarte home with the fourth run of the inning.

One of the cardinal rules for starting pitchers in baseball is don’t let the other guys get off the mat when your guys give you a lead. No doubt Garcia had every intention of shutting the Rangers down in the bottom of the first, but he hadn’t reckoned with the hotness (at the plate, dummies!) of Shin-Soo Choo and Elvis Andrus.

Choo cemented his position in the first ranks of Toronto tormenters by stroking one into the opposite alley for a double leading off.

Then came a really weird interlude provided by a really weird dude, Odor. I forgot to mention in yesterday’s piece Odor’s Saturday night weirdness, which consisted of mocking Marcus Stroman’s hesitiation pitch by lifting his leg ridiculously and jumping toward the mound as he took a first inning pitch. Then, he faced Stroman and grabbed his crotch like a male stripper. Weird? You betcha.

So tonight it was baseball strangeness from Odor, but a form of strangeness later explained by Joe Siddall, the Jays’ broadcast analyst and a former big league catcher. With a runner on second, nobody out, and his team down 4-0, Odor showed bunt on the first pitch. Wait, what? You’re going to play to score this run like it’s an extra-inning game? Second pitch, he did it again, and actually dragged one fair down the line to first, where Justin Smoak picked it up and tagged him while Choo advanced to third.

It turns out that the play, which pretty obviously did not come from the bench, was, according to Siddall, designed not to advance the team’s agenda, but Odor’s own. His average had plunged from .271 to .204 from 2016 to 2017, and he’s only hitting just over .200 so far this year. So here’s the thing: Odor’s bunt was intended to avoid hurting his batting average. If he was safe at first, he got a base hit. If he made an out, it would be a sacrifice and no at-bat. I’m wondering what kind of reception Odor got in the dugout for such a selfish play.

Andrus knocked Choo in from third, but then Garcia got his fly-ball mojo working and retired Adrian Beltre and Joey Gallo on easy flies to left and centre to end the inning and strand Andrus at first.

Well, that’s a lot of words to cover just one inning, but, you know what? Even though Toronto needed a fifth run to secure the win, everything was in place for the game to proceed in that direction. It was like that corny book that nobody I know ever read, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarden, by the loathesomely cliché-ridden Robert Fulghum. Everything we needed to know about this game came in the first inning.

Hamels continued to weave in and out of trouble, pitching around a fumbled grounder by Andrus in the second. In the third he gave up the eventual winning run when Kevin Pillar hit a hot shot that deflected off him for an infield hit after Hamels had gone single-walk-single on Smoak, Solarte, Morales to load the bases with one out. Hamels was saved from further damage when the slump-cursed Grichuk hit into a double play.

The Texas lefty got through the fourth and fifth with only a base on balls against him, before running out of luck and gas in the sixth, when the rest of the ceiling left up after the first-inning barrage finally came crashing down.

It started with Andrus’ second error, a bad throw on a grounder by Pillar, so the last two runs were unearned. With one out, the veteran balked Pillar to second, the second balk call in two games, both by experienced starters, a bit of an oddity. With two outs, Luke Maile, subbed in for Russell Martin’s Sunday of rest, came up, hoping to continue swinging with the authority he’d shown so far. And voilá! A ringing opposite field line double to right that scored Pillar and chased Hamels, who was still responsible for Maile at second.

Maile scored when Curtis Granderson looped a two-out single to centre off reliever Chris Martin to complete Hamels’ record at 7 runs, 5 earned, over five and a third innings, and finished Toronto’s scoring for the day.

Meanwhile, Jaime Garcia had gotten two quick outs in the second, then gave up a double to Ryan Rua and walked the rookie centre-fielder Carlos Tocci, but struck out our old friend Shin-Soo Choo for the third out.

Then he pitched a clean third, gave up a walk in the fourth, and then a clean fifth, all the while totting up five strikeouts, a tidy sum coming in useful situations for a guy who’s supposed to nibble and induce weak contact.

After getting through five innings with only the 1 run, 3 hits, and a couple of walks on 81 pitches, Garcia ran into the wall in the sixth, or rather into one of Joey Gallo’s infrequent good contacts, and so finished the night at 5 and a third innings and three runs on 96 pitches, leaving with a comfortable lead.

With the bases empty and one out, Tyler Clippard came in and walked the catcher Chirinos before retiring Profar on an easy fly to left and then fanning Rua to end the inning.

From a manager’s perspective, the only dark spot in the proceedings so far was that John Gibbons had to use a reliever in the fifth inning, meaning that he would have to use at least one extra pitcher to close out the Rangers.

And speaking of the Rangers, with Hamels out of the game, after Martin had given up Hamels’ last run on the Granderson base hit, their bullpen closed the door on Toronto.

I don’t whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing for Toronto, but it’s certainly a fun thing that the ageless Bartolo Colon has caught on with Texas, and is quite happy to be giving the Rangers some innings in a sort of middle relief role. It’s always entertaining to watch Colon pitch, but I’m not sure how entertained the Jays were, watching him throw 2 effective innings, striking out 4 batters and retiring 6 of 7 Toronto hitters he faced. Only Yangervis Solarte managed to touch him for a single in the seventh.

Alex Claudio, a thin, crafty left-hander, finished up for Texas, and retired the side in order, getting a double-play ball off Smoak to erase an infield hit by Donaldson, a play to short on which Andrus again showed off a less than optimal arm.

With Toronto playing on the lead, of more concern to us, of is how the Jays’ bullpen would manag to protect the lead against the rebuilding but feisty Rangers. After Clippard finished the sixth for Garcia, Aaron Loup came in to start the seventh.

If there’s a question right now in the Toronto bullpen, it would be Aaron Loup. He didn’t work out yesterday either, but this time he had a bit of bad luck. Rookie Carlos Tocci, looking for his first major-league hit, fought off a 1-2 pitch and willed it into centre-field for a hit and a ceremonial tossing-the-ball-out-of-play. In the lefty-lefty matchup, Choo chopped one to Donaldson at first, and we all held our breath as his throw to second was a little off, but Aledmys Diaz stretched for it at the bag for the force out. This brought Loup’s second lefty to the plate, Odor. Odor took ball one, swung wildly at a ridiculously low and outside pitch, and when Loup went back there again, Odor lunged for it, caught it with the end of his bat, and poked an absolutely cheap double into left field where no one was.

So the unlucky Loup exited with runners on second and third and one out, leaving the mess for Ryan Tepera, who’s always ready, it seems, for a good dust-up. And this time he was facing the meat of the order, Andrus, Beltre, and Gallo.

He started off by walking, perhaps wisely, the hot Andrus to load the bases and make it all just a bit more piquant, shall we say. Ah, but then he set to work and fanned Beltre on a full count, and popped Gallo out to Luke Maile behind the plate on an 0-2 pitch.

The sequence of relievers was not working well for John Gibbons, who usually likes to be neat and thrifty with his bullpen. When Garcia couldn’t finish the sixth, he had to use Clippard early. When Loup couldn’t finish the seventh, he had to use Tepera early.

But if Gibbie is going to send any reliever back out for a second inning, it’s Tepera, who’s a horse and seems to relish the challenge. After 14 pitches to get out of the second, he might have had enough left in the tank to go a quick eighth, but, alas, no. Gibbie’s hand was forced again when he went 3-2 on Chirinos before walking him, and 3-2 on Profar before fanning him. He was now at 26 pitches all thrown all out, and you’d start seeing diminishing returns at that point.

So it was back to the pen for the preternaturally calm Seung Hwan Oh. Surely he could wrap this baby up, at least as far as the eighth was concerned. Well, no. Rangers’ manager Jeff Banister sent Nomar Mazara up to hit for Ryan Rua, and Mazara singled to right, moving Choo up to second. Then Drew Robinson hit for Tocci, but sent up an infield fly for the second out. Back to the top of the order for Choo, who delivered Chirinos with a single to centre and sent Mazara to third.

You can imagine how annoyed Gibbie was as he came out of the dugout to yank Oh and bring in Roberto Osuna, for a 4-out save attempt, something that usually doesn’t end well. Save? Oh, yeah. Choo’s RBI cut the Toronto lead to 7-4, and that made it a save situation.

Osuna made it interesting by throwing one inside to Odor, which the latter somehow contrived to get his shirt in front of, and earned yet another cheap base for himself. That filled the bases for Andrus, which didn’t look good for the good guys, but the non-plussed Osuna fooled him into a checked-swing tapper back to himself for the third out.

After the drama of the eighth, the Rangers ninth was pure anticlimax. Osuna took 9 pitches to retire Beltre on a ground-out, Gallo on an admittedly deep opposite field fly to left, and, the icing on the cake, to fan Chirinos to seal the deal for his fourth save of the young season.

Well begun’s half done and all that, but after a few dicey moments towards the end, the Boys in Blue held on for the win, for their second series win in a row, and a record of 6 wins in their first ten games. 2017’s record for ten games? 1-9.

Back to the East tonight for the first of three with the Orioles.

Bird Fight!

If MLB doesn’t want fans to second-guess umpires on balls and strikes it should remove the graphic charting of pitches from the TV screen.

In last night’s 5-1 Blue Jay loss to the Texas Rangers, the FanGraph consistently showed home plate umpire Mark Wegner squeezing the strike zone on Marcus Stroman, but not on Rangers’ starter Mike Minor.

Maybe the fact that Stroman’s a righty and Minor’s a lefty meant that there was something skewed about how Wegner was seeing the ball cross the plate. I would hope that it wasn’t because Stroman is rather well known as kind of a bratty little kid in the baseball world, whereas Minor is a veteran journeyman with a longer service record who’s put up with a lot of adversity to get the chance to join the Texas rotation.

In any case, Minor was getting the calls on the edges that he needed to survive, and Stroman wasn’t. And when we say that he wasn’t getting calls, we’re not talking about pitches that might’ve touched the black, but pitches that were clearly on the black.

Combined with the surprisingly frigid weather in Arlington, with a game time temperature of 5 degrees (Celsius), wind-chill down to zero, which would cause more “feel” problems for Stroman than Minor, because of the amount and variation of spin that Stroman normally uses, the debatable strike zone created a lose-lose situation for the Toronto right-hander.

It’s a simple matter, really. If you don’t get the calls on the edges, you have to come in more with your pitches, which is just what the hitters want to see. The more of the plate you get, the fatter the pitch; the fatter the pitch, the harder it’s hit.

It’s remarkable that Stroman got through to the fifth inning without the roof falling in on him earlier.

After giving up a lone single to the hot-hitting Elvis Andrus in the top of the first with two outs, Stroman came out for the second and proceeded to throw eight pitches in a row that were called balls to Joey Gallo and Jurickson Profar. Then he got the ground ball he was looking for from catcher Juan Centeno, but it was a slow dribbler to Devon Travis at second that might as well have been the sacrifice bunt that he had failed to lay down on the previous two pitches.

Were it not for a marvellous catch in the gap in right centre by Randal Grichuk off Ryan Rua, the game might have broken open right there. Grichuk raced back to his right and reached up and stabbed the ball with his glove just when it looked like it was past him. Of course, Gallo tagged and scored from third, but if the hit had fallen Profar would have scored as well, and Rua would have been on second with a double with one out. Stroman escaped with most of his skin intact when he induced number nine hitter Drew Robinson to bounce an easy one to Justin Smoak at first.

In the third inning Stroman’s defence came to his rescue again. The Rangers had Shin-Soo Choo on third and Andrus on first after a nicely-executed one-out hit-and-run. It was Andrus’ second hit of the night after 3 hits on Friday night. Nomar Mazara smoked one to the left side of Travis. This time he came up with the ball, and brilliantly spun around to fire to second for the force, where Aledmys Diaz, back in the lineup, was crossing the bag to blister it to first for the double play. It was slick, lightning-fast, and not to be forgotten, but it did not obscure the fact that Stroman had dodged another bullet.

In the fourth inning Stroman had to pitch out of trouble again, and for the only time all night he may have gotten a little help from Wegner behind the plate, though Joey Gallo led off and walked on a 3-2 pitch that appeared to have caught the high inside corner of the zone. Profar followed with a single to right.

But Stroman swiftly dispatched the Rangers in order, leaving the two runners stranded, by punching out catcher Juan Cedeno for the first out and Drew Robinson for the third. In between, the suddenly-dangerous Ryan Rua hit a harmless short fly to centre. The thing is, the called third strikes on Cedeno and Robinson were both in almost exactly the same place, barely on the inside corner to the left-handed batters, the one on Robinson if anything a little iffier than the one on Cedeno.

While these two calls that Stroman got from Wegner put paid to any conspiracy theories about umpirical partiality, it does raise the question of quality, and quality control, if you will. The inconsistency of ball and strike calls can have a dramatic effect on the outcome of a game. If the plate umpires can’t get it right, isn’t it time for technology to take over?

If you’re wondering why I haven’t said anything about the Jays’ hitters, it’s because there’s nothing to say.

Mike Minor is a 30-year-old with a career record of 45-43 and an ERA of 3.91, reasonable enough numbers turned in primarily for the 2010 to 2014 seasons with Atlanta, followed by a stint with the Royals in their bullpen last year before catching on wiith the Rangers as a starter this spring.

If you’re wondering about the gap between 2014 and 2017, it was caused by major shoulder surgery in May of 2015, while he was on the 60-day disabled list with the Braves, who released him at the end of the season. The Royals signed him in February of 2016, but he still didn’t pitch for them for an entire season.

Minor’s not an overpowering guy. Like Marco Estrada and Jaime Garcia he survives on location and guile, and in this game that was good enough, especially with the odd break from Mark Wegner. Minor walked Pearce leading off the game, struck out Donaldson, and walked Smoak. After Smoak, he retired 11 Toronto batters in a row, which took him to the top of the fifth, one out, facing Kevin Pillar, with the Jays still looking for their first hit.

Pillar finally picked up that hit, ripping a double down the line into the left field corner. Unfortunately for Texas, left fielder Ryan Rua over-charged the ball as it came off the wall, and it bounced past him, allowing Pillar to turn his Platonic ideal of a double down the line into a tainted triple.

If there was a turning point in this game, it did not come in the bottom of the fifth when Stroman’s inability to get the calls where he needed them finally resulted in a 4-run rally during which the cocky right-hander’s start imploded once and for all. For me, the turning point in this game came in the top of the fifth, when the Jays failed to score Pillar from third with one out to tie the game. If Stroman, and the Rangers, had gone into the bottom of the inning in a tie game, maybe something might have turned out differently.

But behind Pillar Aledmys Diaz struck out, and the slump-riddled Grichuk lofted an easy fly to left on the first pitch to end the inning.

When Stroman came out for the bottom of the fifth, he wasn’t even close enough to talk about Wegner. He walked Choo on five pitches, one of which might have been a generous strike, and then Odor on four, none of which were particularly close. Still, with Stroman, there’s always the double play. But not this time.

It had to be a sign of his total distraction, but what happened next was almost incomprehensible. After Andrus flew out to centre, and with runners on first and second, he went into the stretch facing Mazara, started his delivery, and then did his hesitation hitch, an obvious balk. So the runners moved up and the double play was negated. He fanned Mazara for the second out, getting tantalizingly close to another miraculous escape and bringing Joey Gallo to the plate.

Gallo, who goes big or, more often, goes home, for the first time in the series went big, ripping a double to right to plate both Choo and Odor. Jurickson Profar then delivered Gallo with his own ground double into the right field corner. That made the tally 4-1, and was the end of the line for Stroman, though he was still responsible for Profar at second.

Danny Barnes came in and gave up a sharp grounder to Travis’ left that eluded him and went for the single scoring Profar. This was another play when Travis moved smartly to his left, went to his knees, but somehow had the ball skip past him. Not an easy play, and certainly not an error, but yet another crucial play that needed to be made to stop the bleeding. On plays like this, it’s almost as if he goes to his knees a step too soon, then can’t quite reach the ball.

Rua followed with another base hit moving Centeno up to second, but Robinson took a called third strike to end the bleeding with the tally Texas 5, Toronto no score and only one hit.

And that was basically it, folks. Barnes for another inning, Clippard for the seventh and Axford for the eighth kept the Rangers off the board.

Meanwhile, Steve Pearce finally got to Minor in his last inning, the sixth, with a shot into the seats down the left-field line. So Minor finished with 1 run and 2 hits over 6 innings, the 2 walks, and 7 strikeouts, over 93 pitches. Kevin Jepsen pitched the seventh and eighth for Texas, walking 1 and striking out 1, and Jake Diekman pitched a clean ninth, with one strikeout.

So there you have it, folks. Marcus Stroman struggled and struggled with a strike zone he just couldn’t understand, until the Rangers finally got to him in the fifth with enough punch to put the game away.

On the other hand, Mike Minor threw a fine six innings, and Toronto ended up with the weird stat of amassing 7 total bases in the game on only two hits off the bats of the P-P Boys, with Pillar hitting a triple and Pearce the home run.

The good thing about winning the first game of a series is that if you lose the second game you can still win the series, so it’s up to Jaime Garcia on Sunday, and we shall see.

Still over .500 with the loss. Never reached .500 last year. Just sayin’. Again.

It’s funny how easy it is to forget just how good Marco Estrada can be.

Last night he returned to Arlington, Texas, the scene of the most important great game he’s ever pitched, when he brought Toronto back from the brink of elimination in Game 3 of the 2015 ALDS.

Now, two full seasons later, facing a very different team of Texas Rangers, at the cusp of a new and suddenly hopeful season for his own team, he showed that the brilliance of which he is capable has not diminished one whit.

For six innings Estrada, backed by a robust offensive presence by his mates, dominated the Rangers as only he can, with precision, subtlety, and an amazing knack for delivering precisely the very coup de gràce best suited for each hopeless opponent, whether veteran or rising prospect.

The Jays had let Matt Moore off the hook in the top of the first, Kendrys Morales flying out weakly to centre after Moore had loaded the bases on walks to Justin Smoak and Yangervis Solarte (the first of three walks on the night for Solarte, who showed a discipline at the plate that was positively un-Blue-Jay-like) and brushing Russ Martin with an inside breaking ball.

Normally, that might have made the Toronto starter come out a little unsettled, to think that he could have had a nice lead to start with. Not Estrada, though. He came out and carved up Chin Soo Shoo and Joey Gallo like a surgeon, before deigning to let Elvis Andrus, who ended up having a great night, smack a hard grounder to third that Josh Donaldson adroitly went to his knees to snag and then throw to first for the out.

But it was what he did to Choo and Gallo that showed Estrada at his best. Of course he only throws at best a little over 90 for a fast ball, but because hitters are so on edge for his killer changeup, the “heater” is arguably his most effective pitch. Choo took a first-pitch changeup for a strike, took a fast ball that missed, swung through a fast ball, and then waved at a changeup that dropped out of the zone. Gallo took a fast ball strike low in the zone, fouled off a fast ball up and away, and waved at a changeup that Martin had to block in the dirt. Both looked hopeless, or perhaps clueless, at the plate.

After Moore seemed to settle in with a quick 9-pitch second inning, future Hall of Famer Adrian Beltre hit a hard bouncer up the middle that Devon Travis took nicely on the backhand, but then he rushed a leaping throw to first that sailed over the head of Smoak while Beltre was still fifteen feet from the bag, just lumbering along as he does. Beltre was given a home-field-scorer’s base hit, but Travis had enough time to plant and go into a full pitcher’s windup to throw out Beltre. A bad decision on his part, but no error scored against him.

As a “fly-ball” pitcher, Estrada is susceptible to the occasional fly ball that goes too far. With Beltre on first, Nomar Mazara, who can hit the ball a long way when he makes contact, hit one a long way, but to deep right centre field, where Randal Grichuk tracked it without too much trouble for the first out. Then the weak contact elevation induced by Estrada’s interference with the hitters’ timing caused catcher Robinson Chirinos to pop out and Roughned Odor to hit an easy fly to right for the third out, stranding Beltre.

It’s interesting how sometimes a pitcher can inspire his team-mates to produce the support he deserves. After two innings of Estrada magic it was time for the bats to step up. On his second time up against Moore, Pearce ripped a liner to third for the first out. Josh Donaldson stepped up and decided to take what the Rangers were giving, and hit a bounding ball through the gaping hole open on the right side of the infield because of the shift, for the Jays’ first hit.

Smoak took the opposite approach and challenged the shift hitting a grounder into it and through to left field as Donaldson moved up to second. Then Moore contributed to his own problems by walking Solarte for the second time. Russ Martin hit a third ground-ball single right up the middle. Donaldson scored on the hit, and when centre-fielder Drew Robinson booted the ball off to his left, Smoak scored and Solarte moved up to third, still with only one out. Kendrys Morales picked up his third RBI with a fly ball to right. Martin moved up to second on Mazara’s mental-error air-mailed throw to the plate that had no chance of nailing Solarter, but died there when Pillar flied out to centre.

So Estrada went to the bottom of the third with a nice 3-run cushion. Eager to get the bats back to the plate, he retired Texas on 14 pitches: pop-up, strikeout, groundout.

Moore only got one out in the Toronto fourth; Grichuk popped up on the first pitch. But Travis doubled down the line past Beltre. Honestly, I don’t hardly think Beltre moved on the ball, which to me was the type of hit that the Donaldsons at their best gobble up. I’m wondering if it’s time for Beltre to give way at third and finish up his career as a DH, sitting on a throne in the corner of the dugout and cracking jokes while his mates play the field for him. No disresepect intended, but watch for it.

After Pearce drew a walk behind Travis, Donaldson lined a single to right field opposite the shift, scoring Travis as Pearce alertly hustled to third. And that was it for Matt Moore, at only three and a third innings and, eventually, six runs, since old friend Jesse Chavez came in and yielded a sacrifice fly to Smoak, a third straight walk to Solarte, moving Donaldson to second, and a ground single, again up the middle, by Martin, scored Donaldson with the last run charged to Moore.

So, three and a half innings in, Toronto was up 6-zip and Estrada was dealing like only he can. Does life get any better?

Well, a little, for a while, as it turns out. Estrada gave up a hit to Andrus in the fourth but put the Rangers down through the fifth with 3 more punchouts on only 27 pitches. After five innings, Estrada had only thrown 70 pitches, and looked good for two more for sure.

Meanwhile, to his credit Chavez had breezed the fifth to hold the score to 6-0, but Rangers manager made the mistake of sending him back out to face the middle of the Jays’ order in the sixth, but then what did he know?

It started out well enough, with Chavez fanning Donaldson and retiring Smoak on a ground out to medium right field (might as well call it what it is). This brought Solarte to the plate, Toronto’s “walking man” (when he’s not dancing), who was 0 for 0 with three free passes so far in the game. This time, though, Solarte, whose bat manager John Gibbons likes so much that he posted him at shortstop tonight, defensive concerns be damned, was having no more of those bases on balls.

After two more off the plate, Chavez finally came in with one down at the bottom of the zone, and Solarte turned on it like a cobra, a very well-muscled cobra, and golfed it almost instantaneously into the right-field seats, hit so hard that it had no chance of going foul. Thoughts of, “oh, that’s why they got him!” danced through my head like happy little Blue-Jay-geared sugar plums.

Solarte might be the team’s new designated cheerleader, following in the august if silly footsteps of Muni Kawasaki and Zeke Carrera, but he’s also a pro, and knew not to show off with his team up 7-0. He quietly rounded the bases, suppressing a little skip coming down from third, but he just had to let it out at the end of his route, giving his signature butt wiggle just before descending into the welcoming arms of his new mates in the dugout.

When Russell Martin, who does everything calmly, calmly blasted an 0-1 pitch over the wall in left centre for Toronto’s first back-to-back home runs of the year, he trotted calmly around the bases to touch for an 8-0 lead, while Jeff Bannister bitterly reconsidered his confidence in Chavez. The latter exited with as much dignity as he could by fanning Kendrys Morales on a 2-2 pitch, a low breaking ball, of course, and it was time for Estrada to take the mound again.

But beware of the baseball gods. When they make things too easy, it’s only because they like to mess with your minds. With one out, Drew Robinson having grounded out to Travis, bad news came to the plate, in the person of the Rangers’ leadoff hitter and DH, Shin-Soo Choo, who must sip from the same flagon of anti-Toronto mead as The Duke, Welington Castillo. On a 2-2 pitch, Estrada made his only real mistake of the night, leaving his changeup up in the zone, whence Choo deposited it promptly and decisively into the right-field seats. 8-1 Toronto, too bad for spoiling Estrada’s shutout, but not to worry, right.

Unfortunately, a combination of probable annoyance over the mistake to Choo and likely fatigue set in on Estrada, and, though he kept the Rangers from further scoring, he proceeded to load the bases, chew through a total of 35 pitches in the inning, make us all very nervous, and end all possibility of his pitching into the seventh.

After fanning Joey Gallo (what else is new?) for the second out, he gave up base knocks to Andrus, his second of three on the night, and Beltre’s, his second, before walking Mazara to load the bases. This brought us to the crucial moment of the game, as Gibbons left Estrada in to face the Texas catcher Robinson Chirinos. The latter dragged it out to a 7-pitch 3-2 count before Estrada finished him off with a low fast ball that he knocked softly into centre for an easy fly out.

So Estrada exited with a line of 1 run, 5 hits, 1 walk and 7 strikeouts on 105 pitches over his 6 innings pitched, and with an 8-1 lead, it seemed like Toronto could just mail in the rest of it and get ready for Saturday night’s game.

It didn’t quite work out that way, because though this isn’t the playoff-bound Texas team of yore, they’ve still got a bit of piss (Roughneck Odor, we’re talking about you here) and vinegar left in them.

While Matt Bush and Alex Claudio were doing the job on the Jays’ hitters in the seventh and eighth that Moore and Chavez couldn’t do earlier, conversely Aaron Loup and Seung-Hwan Oh didn’t exactly profit from the nice situation Estrada had left behind.

Between them, they contrived to give up a big four-spot in the seventh inning, and suddenly that sense of breezing along the coast road enjoying the scenery came to a crashing halt. When you’re only up by three, a bloop and blast is all it takes to bring you to nail-biting territory, so the Loup-Oh combo didn’t help things at all.

Loup walked right into a buzzsaw. The aptly-named Odor greeted him with a double to centre. He moved to third when Ryan Rua hit a grounder behind second in the shift that was handled by Ngoepe, who had come in at short for Solarte, who moved to second replacing Travis. No reason was given for pulling Travis after his infield single in the top of the inning.

Drew Robinson scored Odor on an infield single to short. The dangerous Choo hit a double the wrong way to left centre that scored the speedy Robinson from first. That was it for Loup, who had given up 2 runs and was responsible for Choo on second. In came Oh to retire Gallo on an off-balance short fly to left, but then with two outs he couldn’t seal the deal, quickly giving up Andrus’ third hit that scored Choo, and a Beltre double (I didn’t say he couldn’t hit, did I?) that scored Andrus from first. Finally Mazara flew out to left and the bleeding stopped at 8-5.

Luckily for Toronto Ryan Tepera and Roberto Osuna kept the lid on for the rest of the game, though note that Osuna ended up being used because Texas had turned it into a save situation. Tepera pitched around another base hit by Stinky Odor, and Osuna actually gave up his first two hits of the season while gaining his third save.

The Toronto closer gave up a fluky single off the end of his bat by Robinson, but then erased him with a double-play ball to Choo before Gallo hit a last-gasp single, but then Andrus hit into a fielder’s choice to end the game.

Phew!

It was pretty for six innings, not-so-pretty for three, but we got more runs than they did, Estrada pitched great for six strong, and that’s all that counts. 5-3 and the first game of the road trip in the bag.

Did you realize that if a team never sweeps a series, and only wins two out of every three games, they end up with 104 wins for the season?

What’s so hard about that?

Well, if you’re a glass half-full kinda person, you wake up today thinking, “Wow, 4 and 3, what a great start to the season! Maybe we’re on to something after all!”

But if you’re a glass half-empty type, you’re all about, “No-o-o, we lost a one-run game when we went 3 for 10 with runners in scoring position, the bullpen blew it, and I don’t get what the umps did in the fifth inning. How are we not leaving for Texas 5 and 2?”

Looking at it objectively, splitting the season-opening series with maybe the strongest team in baseball and winning your next series is what baseball is all about, the grind of 162 games, and the realistic goal of winning about five and a half out of every ten, because that’s about the best you can hope for, year in and year out, and most years it’ll get you into the playoffs.

But it’s undeniable that sometimes a team misses the playoffs by just one game, so, of course, every game counts. Yer humble scribe has never been one to buy the “Oh, it’s early yet, things will sort themselves out” line. That’s just fine for the Grapefruit League, but once the bell rings for real, the unattainable goal has to be to win them all.

Since close games can always be looked at as winnable games, it’s only natural to focus on the factors that might have contributed to a one-run loss. Equally, it’s always important to look at the good side of things, as in what went right.

So let’s start with some of what went right for Toronto in last night’s 4-3 loss to Toronto, in which Jose Abreu plastered a Ryan Tepera mistake in the top of the eighth inning to provide the winning run for the young, aggressive, rebuilding Chicago White Sox.

First of all, it seems that there’s no concern over any blister issue with Aaron Sanchez. He threw 6 innings, gave up 3 runs on 5 hits, walked 2, and fanned 7, on 98 pitches. A little caveat here, though: nobody mentioned it on the broadcast, but the camera did catch him studying his fingertips on the bench at one point.

Even so, his stuff was, as usual, very good, even if he struggled a bit with location, though I’ll have more to say about this in the “what went wrong” part of this piece.

Second, the defence behind Sanchez and the relievers was stellar. The infield pulled off four double plays. An around-the-horn number started by a rather weak throw from Josh Donaldson at third erased the leadoff Sanchez walk to Yoan Moncada in the first.

The other three DPs, curiously, were all started by Devon Travis and turned skillfully by the obviously gifted Gift Ngoepe (sorry!) The first came in the very weird Chicago fifth inning, and ended the never-ending bases-loaded saga that we’ll return to a bit later.

The second, in the next inning, ended a threat started by Donaldson missing a tough chance in short right field that allowed Nicky DelMonico to reach. The Donaldson error was followed by The Duke, Welington Castillo’s, only base hit of the night, a ground single to left that brought the swift DelMonico around to third. Aaron Sanchez then got the dangerous, bespectacled Yolmer Sanchez to hit one to Travis to get out of the pickle.

The last DP rescued Tepera from even worse damage in the eighth inning. After Abreu hit the game-winning homer, Tepera hit Matt Davidson on the wrist on an 0-2 pitch. Unfortunately, Davidson had to come out, replaced by the pinch-runner Leury Garcia, who was erased at the front end of the Travis-Ngoepe-Smoak twin-killing that victimized the very fast DelMonico.

The third good thing that came out of the game was that apart from Tepera, the two other relievers were solid. Seung Hwan Oh, after giving up a one-out liner to Adam Engel that just escaped Ngoepe’s impressive leap, calmly fanned Moncada and Avisail Garcia, utilizing well-set-up high fast balls to get both Sox hitters to chase.

Aaron Loup finished up in the ninth, for the ssecond night in a row. This time the veteran left-hander was tasked with holding the Sox’ lead to one run, and he managed it like the pro he has become, using the same high heat to dispatch Yolmer Sanchez and Tim Anderson before getting Engel on a soft fly to left to end the inning on 14 pitches.

It’s a very interesting commentary that in the age of Aroldis Chapman and the triple-digit fast ball, both Oh and Loup were able to use location and skillful setups to notch strikeouts with fast balls that clocked, in the case of Oh, at 90 and 91, and Loup at 89 and 92.

Another good thing to note was that, though they didn’t do much against the young Sox starter Carson Fulmer until the sixth inning, when manager Rick Renteria wisely pulled the the plug on him after Donaldson and Smoak led off with solid shots for base hits, the bats came alive against the Chicago bullpen, even if it didn’t show up in the score sheet. Both Donaldson and Smoak would eventually score on solid base hits by Steve Pearce and Kendrys Morales (second hit and second ribbie in two nights) against the lefty slants of Aaron Bummer.

Donaldson in the seventh, Smoak and Pearce in the eighth, and Morales again in the ninth all squared up the ball nicely and hit it hard with no results to show for their efforts. Even Ngoepe, earlier, hit one of the hardest shots off Fulmer, a drive to the track in dead centre in the fifth.

Then there are the negatives to consider, starting with the abysmal 3 for 10 with runners in scoring position. Sure, Toronto has done worse—way worse—in this category, but last night’s dip was not in character with what they had displayed during the four-game winning streak. Particularly frustrating was the sixth inning, when they tied it up after the crazy Sox fifth, but could have done much more. Both Randal Grichuk, who struck out, and Russ Martin, who grounded to third on a play that saw Smoak tagged out at the plate, failed to get the ball out of the infield when the Jays had runners on second and third with nobody, then one, out. And though Pillar hit the ball hard on the ground with Martin on third and Morales on second, he hit it right at shortstop Tim Anderson to end the inning.

Allied to the failure to produce with runners in scoring position is the fact that Toronto’s lineup is not producing consistently up and down the order. Though Donaldson, Smoak, Granderson, Pillar, and Pearce and Maile in limited appearances, not to mention Aledmys Diaz and Yangervis Solarte, who sat this one out, have all started rapping the ball hard and effectively, they are distributed throughout a lineup that has, so far, some serious black holes in it. At the end of last night’s action, Travis was hitting .050, Grichuk .087, Martin .133, and Morales .143. Even Ngoepe, hitting an even hundred and not on the roster for his bat, isn’t at the bottom of this list of sputterers.

At least Jose Bautista was putting a jolt in a few last year when he was hitting south of .200. Seriously, though, I know it’s early but this crew really has to start putting the head on the ball a little better, especially with ducks on the pond.

Somebody on the coaching staff should be a little concerned, too, with Aaron Sanchez. Though his blister problem seems to be resolved, there was some evidence that the time he missed last year, the frustration that he faced, might have gotten into his head.

I didn’t make note of when this happened, but I think it was the beginning of Sanchez’ problems in that crazy fifth inning. He thought he had struck out Castillo on a 3-2 pitch, a high fast ball. He must have started mouthing off at plate umpire Greg Gibson, who, to his credit, chose not to confront Sanchez but warned Russell Martin to settle him down. This resulted quickly enough in a mound visit from John Gibbons, which should have resolved the issue.

But Sanchez gave up a base hit to Yolmer Sanchez, before striking out Anderson after the latter had fouled off a couple of 1-2 pitches. Then it got worse, as he hit Adam Engel with a pitch to load the bases.

This brought up Yoan Moncada, and a play that in my opinion, even with replay review, the umpires got wrong. He hit a towering drive to left that almost carried out. Granderson went back to the fence and leapt. With only one out, none of the runners left their bases, waiting to see if the ball would be caught. The ball hit Granderson’s glove, hit the wall, and popped up so that Granderson could catch it as he fell.

The original call was that Moncada was out on a catch, but the video replay clearly showed the ball hit the wall before Granderson secured it, so Moncada couldn’t be out. Now, here’s the problem: The Duke returned to third base and stayed on the bag. Both of the following runners were forced to do the same as a result.

So, if the ball was not caught and was in play, with the bases loaded all runners were forced to move to the next base. Granderson hustled the ball in to Ngoepe, who relayed it to Donaldson standing on third, who then tagged Castillo who was on the bag. That should have meant that the runner on second, Sanchez, was out. In fact, if they had thrown the ball home to third to second, with all of the runners standing there, it would have been a triple play. But in any case, Sanchez should have been out, and I believe Castillo would also have been out if Donaldson had had the presence of mind to tag him before stepping on the bag, because The Duke was forced and third base was no longer his.

But after a long delay of video review and then discussions with John Gibbons, it was decided to “award” Moncada first base, which was rightfully his anyway, and move all the runners up one base, which meant that Castillo scored. Hmmph. I say wrong-o. It would have been more equitable in the circumstances to find some justification for declaring “no play” and bringing Moncada back to the plate.

So maybe it’s not so surprising if Sanchez was rattled enough to plug Avisail Garcia to force in a second run, for a 3-1 Chicago lead, before getting Jose Abreu to hit into that double play.

Separating out the issues, first there should be some concern about Sanchez’ composure, because it seemed to let him down in the inning.

Second, though, I think that the umps, and the review team in New York, screwed up royally with their resolution of a confusing play, and I have the feeling that this could become a case of the proportions of Merkle’s Boner. And if you don’t know about Merkle’s Boner you need to look it up, because it established back in 1908 that the runner is absolutely required to finish his route to the next base when forced.

Appeal and replay of game anybody? I’m not holding my breath.

So, sadly, when the Jays scored 2 in the bottom of the sixth it only tied the game, and when Abreu hit his dinger it won the game for Chicago, when it might only have made the score 3-2 for Toronto.

Well, hold on to the good here: we’re off to Texas with 4 wins in our first 7 games, and that’s a good thing.

Normally I like my baseball nice and tidy. 3-1, 5-2, 2-0, like that. Occasionally, just like changing up my ice cream flavour, I’ll take, say, a 9-6. As long as the good guys have the 9.

But 14-5? Normally, yecchh! Normally, maybe I shoulda watched TFC beat Mexico Club America in the miserable rain at BMO Field. But this 2018 season is not normal times so far, folks.

Yes, last night’s Blue Jays’ laugher over the Chicago White Sox was from almost all perspectives one hot, stinking mess of a baseball game. But damn, this team is all of a sudden fun, and if they keep it up on the upcoming road trip, I don’t think anybody will be talking about small crowds any more when they come back.

Tonight’s crowd of just under 17 and a half thousand was treated to enough pitching to hold the young, free-swinging Chisox in place, and more solid and timely hitting packed into a Blue Jays’ game than I can remember in, since, well, September of 2016, when the hitting doldroms first struck, and that eventually doomed Toronto in the 2016 LCS against Cleveland.

Check out these numbers: 15 hits. 7 doubles, including 2 by Luke Maile, thank you very much. 1 triple. (Let’s gold-plate that one!) 2 homers, neither a solo shot. 7, 2-out RBIs. 7 for 14 with runners in scoring position. Only 4 runners stranded in scoring position, and only 7 runners left on base.

Sure, Aledmys Diaz made a bad throw on a ground ball in the sixth to let Yolmer Sanchez reach, and Aaron Loup made a rushed throw down the line to try to nip Avisail Garcia at first on a little dribbler when he was mopping up in the ninth. But Loup made up for his bad call with two strikeouts, including a sweet punchout of Matt Davidson to end the game. As we’ll see, Aledmys Diaz more than made up for a measly throwing error.

And sure, Jay Happ threw way too many pitches in the first two innings, and was only able to go 5 and a third for the win. And sure, the Sox scored first and kept pecking away at the Jays’ lead after they put up a three-spot in the bottom of the third, to the point where it was only 7-5 going into the bottom of the eighth.

But for the fourth game in a row Toronto exploded late to secure the win, and this time they did a tattoo on a couple of veteran Chicago relievers. In the process they set up a date with a diminished White Sox bullpen tomorrow night in game three of the series. When you put up 7 runs in the eighth inning, you can overlook a lot of niggling little negatives.

In fact, the only concern after the game is that Diaz had to come out in the seventh inning with back spasms after feeling something wrong on his home run swing in the third. With Troy Tulowitzki out of the picture, and Diaz’ bat suddenly coming alive in a big way in the last two games, we have to hope that he really is “day to day”, and a night off tomorrow plus an off day Thursday will be all he needs to recover.

If there’s any consolation over Diaz’ injury, here is what he did after he tweaked his back in the third inning. In the fourth he doubled to right centre and got himself thrown out at third protecting Pillar who was scoring all the way from first. In the fifth he made a fine play to retire Jose Abreu, ranging to his left behind the bag to catch up to a low, hard scooter, planting, and firing to first. In the sixth, after making the throwing error in the top of the inning, he hit a Texas League blooper to right for a single, then stood at first tentatively stretching his back. Then he alertly tagged up and dashed to second on Curtis Granderson’s fly out down the left field line, so that he was in position to score on Donaldson’s smash single to the left-field wall.

If Aledmys Diaz can play like that with a wrenched back, maybe they should just pack him in ice and send him back out to play hurt!

One of the most noticeable features of this team so far is that it’s deeper and enjoys a lot more flexibility as a result, with more players contributing than in recent years. Consider that it was only in this fourth game of the win string that Kendrys Morales returned to the lineup.

Josh Donaldson could hit but not throw? Bench Morales, put Solarte at third, and DH Donaldson. Solarte delivers at the plate, as does Josh, and Morales remains lurking on the bench if you need a pinch-hitter.

Devon Travis and Russell Martin need regular rest? Solarte can shift over to second because Donaldson’s back just in time. And nobody right now is very concerned about whether or not Luke Maile is an “adequate” backup to Martin. That’s the Maile who handles pitchers so well, is currently 3 for 8—all crisp line drives—with 3 RBIs, and don’t forget, a stolen base. Gift Ngoepe might not be Ryan Goins at the plate, but he’s certainly a good enough glove to fill in where needed.

Curtis Granderson’s too old and a desperate acquisition? Who’s cavorting around the field like a young colt, and contributing in multiple ways, to the point where the platoon idea of switching mid-game seems to have been scratched, leaving Steve Pearce as a reasonably viable backup, and a pretty hot bat once the weather warms up.

So this game started with Jay Happ dancing a tightrope between staying on and blowing hitters away, and falling off into a morass of trouble. In the first two innings he allowed 4 base hits and a walk, gave up a run and threw 47 pitches. But it could have been so much worse: he also struck out five, and retired Jay-killer Duke Wellington Castillo with two on and two out in the first on a weak ground ball to Donaldson at third. Donaldson’s throw looked fine, by the way, though he did bounce one weakly while getting an out later in the game.

Happ finally settled down in the top of the third, after hitting Abreu on the foot to put him on leading off. Avisail Garcia then hit a hopper back to Happ who calmly turned around and started a nice 1-4-3 double play, neatly converted by Yangervis Solarte, who, remember, is not a regular second baseman. Then Happ spread a little icing on the cake by punching out The Duke with a low fast ball that Castillo, to his dismay, took.

It took Happ only 9 pitches to do all of this, so things were definitely looking up as the Jays came to the plate except that it was the bottom of the order due up.

Bottom, shmottom! Maile ripped (I mean ripped a double into the left-field corner leading off. Diaz ripped (see above) a line-drive homer into the bullpen. A can of Ernie Harwell’s “Instant Runs”, and lead erased. That was, by the way, Diaz’ second homer in as many at-bats, after the one in the eighth inning Monday night.

Sox’ starter Miguel Gonzalez, a soft-throwing, well-travelled righty, had stranded a Solarte leadoff double with panache in the second, but here in the third he wasn’t out of the woods yet after Diaz’ blast. With two outs he walked Justin Smoak, and then that frisky kid scampered around to third on Solarte’s looping single to right (ah the benefits of running with two outs!)

Gonzalez should have been out of it when Randal Grichuk hit a fairly routine grounder to short, but the usually sure-handed Tim Anderson just plain muffed it, and Smoaky came in to score the unearned third run.

The Jays were never headed after that, but, like I said, the Sox hung on their tails through seven and a half innings, and then it was game over. I mean, really game over.

Anderson immediately atoned for his error by hitting one that scraped the top of the fence in left to get a run back leading off the fourth. Happ shrugged it off and fanned two more in retiring the side to push his total to 8 in 4 innings of work.

Not liking that 3-2 count on the scoreboard, Toronto put some more space up on the Sox right away in the fourth, achieving the odd feat of the team hitting for the cycle in the inning to notch three more runs. It was a “natural” too, coming in the order of single, double, triple, home run.

After Luke Maile struck out, Kevin Pillar muscled one into centre for a broken-bat base hit. Diaz followed with the double we mentioned, that ended up with Pillar across the plate and Diaz out at third. Granderson followed with a deep drive to centre that Adam Engel almost caught up with, in a desperate drive. But the ball ticked off his glove, and by the time the Sox had retrieved it to the infield, Granderson was on third. From there he had an easy ride home on Donaldson’s second homer of the year, and of the series, a shot down into the left-field corner.

Sox manager Rick Renteria seems committed to playing his outfield in, relying on their blazing speed, but he was burned twice in this inning, as the drives of both Diaz and Granderson soared over the heads of the Sox’ desperately retreating fielders.

With the score now 6-2, Chicago wasn’t ready to quit by any means. With one out and nobody on in the fifth Avisail Garcia blasted one to deep left that was measured at 481 feet, the longest so far this year in MLB.

Manager John Gibbons sent Happ out for one more inning, but with a pitch count at 87, he was going to be on a short leash; the pursuit of a team win being far more important than the pursuit of a quality start.

Happ retired The Duke yet again on a popup to second, but when Anderson shot a single to right centre that was enough for Gibbons, and the call went out for Danny Barnes. For some reason Anderson had Barnes’ and Maile’s numbers, and stole second and third while Barnes pitched to Engel, so when Engel finally grounded out to short, Anderson was able to score from third and cut the Toronto lead to 2 again.

After Sanchez reached on the Diaz throwing error, Barnes fanned Nicky DelMonico to end the inning, and after five and a half this game was still hanging very much in the balance.

In the bottom of the sixth Diaz and Donaldson victimized lefty reliever Hector Santiago, who had come in for the starter Gonzalez, with the single/advance on the fly ball/single combination, and with three innings to go we were up by three, but not with a lot of certainty as to the eventual outcome.

John Axford replaced Barnes on the mound for the seventh, and Diaz was finally pulled for Ngoepe at shortstop. Axford came in over-throwing, and kept everybody loose, from the Chicago hitters to catcher Maile. It was an adventure, but he worked around a walk to Yoan Moncada and a base hit by Abreu to keep the Sox at bay.

Notable in Axford’s adventure was the play he made for himself to throw out Moncada on a brisk tag play at the plate. After Moncada walked, he had moved up on Garcia’s short dribbler to Donaldson, who had to go to first and bounced a soft throw off the turf again. Grichuk in right nearly caught Abreu’s liner, but it fell for a single, while Moncada had to hold up and only got to third. Davidson chopped it to Axford’s left, and the big Canadian pounced on it and made a perfect throw to Maile for the tag. The Duke, facing frustration all night, hit into a fielder’s choice to end the inning.

After Santiago breezed the Jays’ seventh with a couple of strikeouts, Tyler Clippard came in to pitch the eighth in a hold situation. Clippard quickly got the first two outs, but grooved one to Yolmer Sanchez, who hit one a mighty long way to right centre to cut the lead to 2. Clippard fanned DelMonico for the third out, but he was not happy with his outing, having allowed Chicago to creep back within 2.

Not to worry, though, because all hell was about to break loose over the heads of the ChiSox relievers. Hector Santiago so far was successfully giving Chicago some length out of the bullpen, at the cost of minimal damage. But the third time was definitely not the charm for him: he only lasted three hitters, while giving up a double, a walk, and a run and recording one out, leaving Granderson at second.

Renteria called for the big righty Gregory Infante, hoping that Infante could keep the Jays’ lead at three and give the Sox a bit of a chance in their last kick at the can in the ninth. Sorry, Rick, Infante wasn’t your guy tonight. Infante took his manager from just hold ’em close so we have a chance, to please finish the inning so I don’t have to use another pitcher.

Neither happened, as Toronto busted it wide open on Infante. This was the sequence: Donaldson walk, Smoak ground rule double scored Granderson, Solarte intentional walk to load bases, Grichuk sacrifice fly scored Donaldson, Morales single scored Smoak (Morales’ first hit and RBI of the season finally), Pillar double scored Solarte, and Infante was done, having achieved one out, and eventually (Pillar and Morales scoring after he left) giving up 5 runs on 3 hits and 2 walks.

Finally, mercifully, Renteria pulled the plug on Infante and brought in Juan Minaya to face Maile, who hit another solid rip to centre for the double that plated the last 2 runs. Even Ngoepe almost joined in the fun, making a loud third out with a liner to Moncada at second.

The final damage was 7 runs, for a total of 14, and a 9-run lead. Roberto Osuna, who had been warming up alongside Aaron Loup, had long since taken his seat, and it fell upon Loup to finish up, as we have seen.

So a sort-of tight, sort-of back-and-forth game turned into a laugher, and that’s always a good thing, as long as the laugh’s not on you.

I’m still not a big fan of sloppy score-fests, but like I said, you gotta like what Toronto’s done in these last four days.

One more game on the homestand, Marco Estrada’s up next for Toronto, and wouldn’t it be nice to head for Texas with a 5 and 2 record, on a 5-game run?

Historical note: if we win tomorrow night, we’ll be only three short of last year’s win total for all of April. On April fourth. Just sayin’.

After the Chicago White Sox scored 18 runs in their first two games in the spacious surroundings of Kansas City’s home grounds, blasting 7 home runs in the process, who would have thought that you could have a game score the likes of:

TORONTO 4, WELLINGTON CASTILLO 2, CHICAGO WHITE SOX 0?

And after the four big games with the Yankees, it was time for Toronto to trot out its fifth starter, Jaime Garcia, their off-season acquisition from the “slightly discounted, a little too close to his best before date”, shelf.

The prospects were for a game with big bashing on both sides, in the case of the White Sox because we didn’t expect really great things from Garcia, and in the case of the Blue Jays because we were facing the young Reynaldo Lopez, a fairly unknown entity with a pretty light track record in major league baseball, only 19 appearances, 14 starts, and 13 decisions.

Well, just goes to show that you shouldn’t anticipate too much from a ball game.

Garcia was very good, the bullpen was very good, and the Sox only garnered six hits in the game. The only reason they were on the board at all was because they had acquired Wellington Castillo, the former Baltimore catcher who has a remarkable penchant for hitting home runs in Toronto. He hit one off Garcia in the fourth and Seung Hwan Oh in the seventh. Fortunately, they were both solo shots.

Other than Castillo, or “The Duke”, as I call him, Chicago only garnered three harmless singles off Garcia, and a one-out double off Ryan Tepera in the eighth inning by Jose Abreu, whom Tepera stranded at second.

Oh, and Lopez? He pitched even better than Garcia. He didn’t allow a safety until Curtis Granderson picked up an infield hit leading off the fifth. It was a scorer’s decision that could have gone either way as Tim Anderson got to the left-handed Granderson’s hot shot on the backhand with time to make the play, but the ball deflected off his glove. Lucky for the official scorer that Lopez didn’t go on to pitch a one-hitter, because he’d have had some ‘splaining to do.

Lopez didn’t throw a one-hitter, obviously, but he was damn good, 6 innings, 1 run, 2 hits, 2 walks, and six strikeouts on 100 pitches. Besides Granderson’s scratch hit, he was only touched up by Josh Donaldson, in the sixth, when he was visibly flagging. Aledmys Diaz had led off the inning with a one-hop rocket to third that Yolmer picked cleanly to throw him out.

Lopez rallied to fan the slumping Devon Travis, who exited tonight’s game with an average of .063, but he threw a too-fat 2-2 fast ball to Donaldson that the Toronto DH was able to extend his arms on and drove out of the park the opposite way, down the right field line. This tied the score at ones after The Duke had dinged Garcia in the fourth.

There’s always something with Donaldson. Guess he has to step up his cheeky game now that Jose Bautista isn’t around any more to annoy opposing teams. This time there was to me some blame on both sides. Veteran Chicago coach Daryl Boston apparently keeps a referee’s whistle at hand, and blows it whenever his defence makes a good play. Oh well, everybody’s gotta have a thing, I guess.

Anyway, he had used it after one of Donaldson’s earlier at-bats, and our prickly superstar apparently took umbrage, because after doing his usual “praise god” uplifted arms thing crossing the plate (like god has any time to help Josh Donaldson hit home runs with all the other crap going on in the world) he turned to the Chicago bench, put his hand to his mouth, and mimicked blowing a whistle back at Boston. Twice.

Boston, to his credit, thought the whole thing was rather funny, and had a good chuckle over it.

So this was a 1-1 game after six innings, with both starters having been congratulated for a job well done and the game turned over to the respective bullpens. Based on the Toronto ‘pen’s performance in the Yankee series, you had to like our chances.

But fiirst there was The Duke to contend with, who just happened to be leading off in the seventh against Oh, who had been stellar in his first two outings against New York. Oh tried to be cute with a couple of sliders in the dirt, but Oh no, The Duke wasn’t having any of it. He’d have a nice 2-0 fast ball, just right about here, so that he could hammer it over the left-field fence, again, if you please. Welcome to the Duke show at the TV Dome, Mr. Oh.

After Castillo’s blast put the Sox in front 2-1, Oh wobbled his way through a 23-pitch inning featuring a walk to Leury Garcia and Yolmer Sanchez’ second hit batsman of the game. But he got through it without further damage, and that’s a good thing, because despite his not-so-stellar work, it lined him up for a garbage win.

Crusty Chicago manager Rick Renteria called on former National Leaguer Luis Avilan, a lefty who came over to Chicago from the Dodgers. Avilan was brought in to turn around Yangervis Solarte, and pitch to Curtis Granderson, or get John Gibbons to hit for Granderson. Solarte hit 60 points lower against lefties last year, and hit only two of his 18 home runs from the right side. The move to a lefty worked against Solarte, as he hit a broken-bat dying quail liner to short for the first out.

Now it was John Gibbons’ move: stay with Granderson, or put in Steve Pearce. Apparently because it was still a bit early, the seventh inning, he decided to stay with Granderson, and it worked well. The veteran used all of his wiles to pull off a 10-pitch walk, and that was all for Avilan.

Next in was the righty Danny Farquhar, to face Randal Grichuk and then Russell Martin. After Pillar and Smoak had carried the team on the weekend, it seemed like it was time for some of the slumping regulars to step up. Donaldson had already hit one out, and with one on and behind by one run in the game, now was the perfect time for somebody else to do some damage. Grichuk shouted in frustration as he missed his pitch and flew out to right for the second out, bringing Martin to the plate.

Farquhar threw a fast ball for a rather notably low called strike, and then he threw two changeups in the dirt. Martin took the first one and swung through the second, to fall to a 1-2 count. Farquhar decided it was time for a fast ball. So did Martin. No doubt Farquhar did not want to throw it in Martin’s wheelhouse, but there it was, and there it went. I knew it was gone from the crack. My wife said, “how did you know?” “When it sounds like that and looks that off the bat, you just know”, said I, smugly. It went out to left and the Jays were up 3-2.

This was their third straight late-inning strike. But it was a slim lead and they needed the bullpen to hold it. No more Oh-nos from anybody, even if it was The Duke at the plate!

Despite giving up the hustle double to Abreu as mentioned above, Ryan Tepera once again bridged effectively to the Jays’ closer. He handled Matt Davidson and The Duke exactly the same way, burying a breaking ball on the 2-2 pitch for the punch-out. Buck Martinez, who’s becoming a bit of a prophet, said to Pat Tabler just before Tepera’s final pitch to The Duke, “but Castillo hasn’t seen a breaking ball yet.” So of course he finished off with “now he has!”

Like I said, tonight was the night for the other guys to step up. Despite contributing to the rally against the Yankees on Sunday with a double, Aledmys Diaz hadn’t done much at the plate so far.

So it was good for him and too bad for Danny Farquhar that the latter stayed in the game for the eighth, and chose to start Diaz off with a fast ball down the middle. But Diaz was sitting on it, hit a shot that bore a resemblance to Martin’s the inning before.

Now down 4-2, Farquhar retired Travis and Donaldson for the first two outs, and then gave way to Aaron Bummer (his real name), a lefty. Again, Renteria was looking to turn around both Smoak and Solarte, and neutralize Granderson. It worked, sort of, as Smoak reached on an error by Sanchez at third on a pretty easy chance. Then Solarte walked, to give way to the matchup Renteria was looking for, and Granderson put a charge in one to left, but it fell shy of the wall for the third out.

Having rested on Sunday like a good boy, Roberto Osuna was well-primed to rack up his second save of the year. In only 8 pitches he retired Anderson on a foul fly to right, Leury Garcia on a sharp one-hopper to third that Solarte picked nicely and fired across, and Sanchez, whom he overwhelmed with 98 mph high heat for a nice game-ending touch.

On Sunday the Blue Jays rebounded from their slow start to secure a split with the Yankees and reach the .500 mark for the first time since the end of 2016. Tonight, thanks to Jaime Garcia. another fine bullpen performance, and some big swings from three of the slow starters, they extended the win streak to three straight, and popped their heads above .500 also of course for the first time since 2016.

Hope our boys like the smell of the air up on those heights!

Jay Happ is next up tomorrow night as the rotation turns over for the first time.

First time through, seems like it was a little more than a qualified success, wouldn’t you say?

Editorial note from yer humble scribe: much as I’d like to write reams and reams on these two great games, we had the grand-kids for Easter-egging on Saturday, so, though we all watched a fair bit of the game, I had to organize the big hunt, so was unable to do a game log. Hence, a combined report, based on available sources for Saturday’s game and my usual log for Sunday’s game.

After two games of the most dismal batting display you could imagine, whoever would have thought that the Blue Jays would sweep the weekend series and send the Yankees out of town reeling from two straight losses, with their giant bashers, Aaron the Whacker and Giancarlo the Thwacker, looking decidedly ordinary?

And whoever would have thought that while Judge and Stanton ended up slipping quietly out of town, Toronto’s Kevin Pillar and Justin Smoak would be the talk of the whole league? Smoak is hitting .467 with 2 homers and 8 RBIs, and Pillar is hitting .462 with 1 homer, 1 RBI, 4 runs, and 3 stunning stolen bases.

Meanwhile, the Whacker is batting .200 with no homers and no RBIs. And the Thwacker is hitting .286, with the two homers, 3 hits, and 4 RBIs all from his booming opening day debut, and only a meaningless double in the three games since.

Maybe Toronto’s front office didn’t make a big splash this winter, and maybe it won’t play out to our liking over the whole season, but after this first four-game set with the division-favoured New York Yankees, one thing you’ve gotta say about the 2018 flight of Blue Jays that Messrs. Atkins and Shapiro have assembled is that they sure as hell have some spunk.

Saturday Manager John Gibbons put together a different all-right-handed hitting lineup to face veteran C.C. Sabathia, the wily veteran who famously dissed the Blue Jays and Toronto as a possible destination after re-signing with the Yankees in the off-season. Steve Pearce subbed in for Curtis Granderson in left and led off. Josh Donaldson continued as the DH with the switch-hitter Yangervis Solarte getting the start at third. After two straight games it was time for Russell Martin and Devon Travis to get a break, so Luke Maile got the start behind the plate and Gift Ngoepe found himself starting at second base.

Marco Estrada got his first start of the season and was in fine form. After walking Neil Walker to lead off the game, he induced Judge to hit into a double play. Stanton’s following double was stranded when Didi Gregorius grounded out to third. After that, were it not for New York third baseman Tyler Austin, Estrada would have thrown six innings of one-hit shutout.

But Estrada, as we all know, is a fly-ball pitcher, and vulnerable from time to time to fly balls that leave the yard. On Saturday, first baseman Tyler Austin, way down in the eighth spot in the order, took him deep twice, with one on in the fifth and a solo shot in the seventh.

As a result, though Estrada recorded a quality start, he departed with no decision after seven innings with the game tied at three.

Austin’s first homer erased a two-run Toronto lead cobbled together against Sabathia, who still has all the tools needed to contribute to New York’s rotation. After the two-game drought, Jays’ hitters finally managed to cash in baserunners in the first and third innings, though the run in the third was unearned, allowing Sabathia to depart after five innings having given up only one earned run on 5 hits with 2 walks and 4 strikeouts.

With one out in the first inning, Donaldson finally picked up his first base hit of the season, hitting a booming drive to left centre that cleared the reach of left fielder Billy McKinney, who crashed into the scoreboard in a valiant effort to make the catch. Smoak followed with a single to left that scored Donaldson. It was clear when McKinney handled Smoak’s hit that he wasn’t right, and he had to leave the game to be replaced by Brett Gardner.

McKinney is the second Yankee outfielder to go down in the first 3 games of the season, following Aaron Hicks, who was placed on the 10-day disabled list after the opening game. This is an example of how expectations can meet the reality of the major-league grind: two games and one inning into the season, and the mighty Yankees were suddenly short-handed in the outfield.

In the third inning, Brandon Drury’s throwing error allowed Steve Pearce to reach base leading off. After Sabathia fanned Donaldson, Smoak stepped in and ripped a double into the left-field corner, allowing Pearce to come all the way around from first to score.

After Austin’s home run off Estrada tied it up in the fifth, Sabathia escaped trouble in the bottom of the inning as Solarte hit into an around-the-horn double-play. Donaldson had walked following Pearce’s leadoff strikeout, and moved up on Smoak’s third hit, a soft liner the wrong way into right. So Sabathia left with the game tied after 84 pitches.

In the bottom of the sixth the Jays took the lead again. They benefitted from a second Yankee injury that left Pillar in scoring position with two outs. Pillar had walked after Randal Grichuk’s leadoff groundout. Aledmys Diaz then hit a shot back up the middle that deflected off relief pitcher Adam Warren’s ankle, right to Austin at first who recorded the out while Pillar moved up to second. Warren was unable to continue, and Jonathan Holder was brought in to face Luke Maile. The latter made the most of his first base hit of the season, a sharp liner to left that plated Pillar with the go-ahead run.

Austin tied it up in the seventh with that second dinger off Estrada, and when the Jays couldn’t profit from a one-out single by Granderson off Dellin Betances in the bottom of the seventh, the stage was set for the most dramatic inning of the young season so far for Toronto. Yankees’ catcher Gary Sanchez had helped Betance’s cause by showing off his laser arm in gunning down Granderson who had a great jump trying to steal second but was DOA when Sanchez’ throw was right on the bag.

Ryan Tepera came on for the top of the eighth to relieve Estrada. He pitched effectively to the dangerous top of the Yanks’ order. Neil Walker lined out to centre. Aaron the Whacker took a called third strike. Judge’s one-to-one homer to strikeout ratio is in serious need of some dingers to catch up with the punchouts at this early stage of the season. Tepera was careful with Giancarlo the Thwacker and walked him on four straight. This brought the dangerous Didi Gregorius to the plate, but Tepera put him away with a popup to catcher Maile in foul ground.

Neophyte manager Aaron Boone sent Betances back out for a second inning of work. That was his first mistake. He also left him in the whole inning. That was his second mistake, and Betances, if not Boone, cost the Yanks the game.

The big righty who can throw a hundred-plus but likes to play around with junk fell behind leadoff hitter Yangervis Solarte with two awful low-80s breaking balls, and when he came in with a fast ball Solarte, who hit 18 homers for the Padres last year in their huge ball yard, was all over it, hammering it 455 feet to dead centre, where it smacked off the facing of the third deck into the delirious crowd below.

Solarte will no longer be a new-guy Who Dat for Toronto, not only because of his prodigious blast, but because of the exultant leap he made approaching the plate, and the dance he did going into the dugout. Luckily for Toronto fans, they got a chance to see Solarte bust some more moves just a few minutes later.

Because it was time for the Kevin Pillar show. Perhaps never in Toronto history has a mere insurance run garnered the attention of the whole baseball world on what Pillar pulled off on Betances. After the Yankee reliever struck out Randal Grichuk, Pillar picked up his only hit of the day, a ground single to right.

When Aledmys Diaz fanned for the second out, it looked like the Jays would have to be content with the one-run lead and nail-biting time in the ninth. But Pillar was having none of it. Noticing that Betances was paying little heed to him, he stole second with Maile at the plate, without a throw as the pitch was wild inside. Maile subsequently walked, bringing the so-far light-hitting Gift Ngoepe to the plate. Pillar stole third without a throw. Then Maile stole second, forcing Sanchez to hold the ball with Pillar threatening off third.

Then it happened, the rarest single play in the game: against the worst possible odds, Betances throwing from the stretch on the right side, looking right at Pillar, watching him take the huge lead that the Yanks were allowing him by playing the third baseman Brandon Drury deep. Bouncing on his toes as Betances started to come stretch, suddenly he bolted for home, before the pitcher had settled into his stretch. Instead of stepping off, Betances followed through to the plate, but his throw was wild and the exultant Pillar crossed the plate standing up.

Cue the Yangervis Solarte happy dance again in front of the dugout. He later told the interviewer that he was more excited about the steal of home than he was about his own homer. This guy’s gonna be fun. Maybe more fun than we’ve seen since the departure of the great Muni Kawasaki.

It hardly mattered that Ngoepe went down swinging, as Betances struck out the side while taking a big loss for the Yankees.

The two-run lead made it possible to relax while Roberto Osuna picked up his first save of the year with a clean ten-pitch ninth. Just to put some icing on it, Osuna froze Jays’ nemesis Brett Gardner with a wicked 0-2 fast ball at the bottom of the zone to end the game, leaving the Whacker and the Thwhacker looking on helplessly in vain.

Toronto needed a win badly after the first two losses to New York. This win gave them so much more than their first win of the year. We might look back on it as a harbinger of the season to come. We can only hope.

After Saturday’s exhilirating win there was an altogether different atmosphere going into Sunday’s game. With Marcus Stroman on the hill for his first start of the season, and the Yankees scrambling to fill their lineup card after three injuries in three games, things looked pretty good for the home side.

The lineup behind Stroman reverted to the lineup of the second game, with one exception. Travis, Martin, and Granderson were back in, Donaldson was still at DH with Solarte at third, but Aldedmys Diaz, hitless so far for the series, was given a rest and Ngoepe inserted at shortstop.

Stroman had a bit of trouble finding the plate in the first inning, or, rather, a bit of trouble understanding what plate umpire David Rackley was looking for in a called strike. After Brett Gardner grounded out, he walked the Whacker and the Thwhacker, which isn’t such a bad thing, so long as they don’t come around to score. Then Stroman, Martin, and Rackley started to find themselves more on the same page, and he fanned Didi Gregorius and Neil Walker, in the process showing off some of the wickedest stuff he has.

The Jays wasted a couple of baserunners in the first as well, but maybe it hurt a little more because they got the first two batters on, Devon Travis with a walk and Josh Donaldson with a hard smash off Gregorius’ glove that went out into the field for a base hit. But Yankees’ starter Sonny Gray, throwing his usual steady diet of curve balls, starting homing in on his spots, and fanned Smoak, Solarte, and Granderson, all on wicked hooks.

After Brandon Drury reached on a rushed throwing error by Solarte to lead off the second, Stroman decided to do everything himself, fanning two and making a great play to cover first and make the out on a hard-hit ball that deflected off Justin Smoak right to Travis, who had to make a hurried thow to a sprinting Stroman to nip Tyler Wade just in time.

The Jays jumped into the lead in the bottom of the second, but again it was a little disappointing because of another lost opportunity to inflict more damage on Gray.

With one out Russ Martin drew a walk from the Yankee curveballer. Kevin Pillar followed with a vicious line drive base hit up the middle. This brought Gift Ngoepe to the plate, and he delivered his first hit as a Blue Jay, a ground single to right through the wide open spaces of the shift. Unfortunately, third base coach Luis Rivera decided to test Judge’s arm from right. Bad call, as Judge nailed Martin at the plate, with Pillar coming around to third on the play.

Good job that Devon Travis duplicated Ngoepe’s poke to right, which scored Pillar. Bad job that Martin hadn’t been held at third to score on the hit. So, we got one but could have had two. The threat ended with Donaldson grounding out to second. The good news in all this is that both Ngoepe and Travis managed two-out base hits with runners in scoring position.

It didn’t take long for the good cheer generated by that early lead to dissipate. Well, it took a while, because Stroman fanned Gardner and caught Judge looking to lead off the third. Ah, but it all starts with two outs, and all that. Stanton walked on a 3-1 pitch. Didi Gregorius (him again!) walloped a double to centre that scored Stanton, running with two out. Neil Walker plated Gregorius with an opposite-field grounder through the vacant left side. Brandon Drury capped things off with a huge shot to left centre that scored Walker and topped off the New York lead at 4-1. Just like that. Miguel Andujar ended the inning with a come-backer to Stroman, but the Jays’ showy righty had dug himself a mighty deep hole.

Interesting that in quick succession we saw three two-out base hits with runners in scoring position while facing the shift so beloved by the analytics geeks. Could this be a trend?

After this flurry of scoring the pitchers took command for three full innings. Gray, having gone deep in counts and allowed 10 base runners on 7 hits and 3 walks, couldn’t hang on for what looked like a win. When Justin Smoak led off the fifth inning with a base hit after a 9-pitch at-bat on Gray’s 89^th pitch, Yanks’ manager Aaron Boone had seen enough and called for the imposing Chad Greene, who stranded Smoak by fanning Solarte and Granderson, and retiring the side with a groundout by Randal Grichuk. Greene went on to fan two more in the sixth for another impressive performance, though he couldn’t keep Pillar from chalking up another solid base hit with one out.

Stroman finished off with 7 outs in a row after Drury’s homer, three grounders in the fourth and two strikeouts (notably Judge and Stanton) and a deep fly from Gregorius in the fifth, to finish up a largely effective outing at 85 pitches, with all the damage limited to the Yankees’ third inning.

Danny Barnes, who’s settling in to the first-man-in slot in the bullpen, kept the Yanks off the board in their sixth, allowing only the very effective Drury to reach on another base hit.

If you’d asked me how this game was going to turn out after six innings, I would have said it was a no-hoper, given the rest of the horses snorting to get into action in the New York bullpen. Turns out that the more impactful bullpen performance came from the home team’s relievers.

After a not-great first appearance in the opener, John Axford came in to pick up the ball from Barnes, and he displayed an erratic effectiveness that might come in handy this season.

He cruised through a first-pitch groundout by Austin Romine, and froze Brett Gardner on some heat with nasty movement. Then he walked Judge. Then he walked Stanton. Maybe he knew something we didn’t, because he retired Gregorius on a first-pitch foul popup to first.

Greene turned it over to Tommy Kahnle, who’d thrown up an effective four outs against the Jays on Friday night. This time, not so much. He walked leadoff man Josh Donaldson on a 3-1 pitch, bringing Justin Smoak to the plate. Kahnle fell behind again with a sailing changeup, so he decided to come in with his heater before he fell farther behind. It was a heater all right, and got a little hotter when Smoak squared it up and sent it over the centre-field fence to cut the Yankee lead to one. Gardner, playing centre today with Stanton in left field for the first time in his career, didn’t think the line shot was out, and had himself all lined up to play the double off the wall, but then his shoulder sag told us all that the ball had cleared the wall.

Kahnle retired Solarte and Granderson, and then gave it up to David Robertson, who got the third out with two pitches to Randal Grichuk.

Like Axford, Tyler Clippard showed a little useful wildness in the top of the eighth, walking Drury (smart move!) with one out, and then retiring the side on 18 pitches. Little did we know that he had set himself up for a nice bullpen win.

Robertson, who has historically been very tough on the Blue Jays, came out to pitch the bottom of the eighth, having plenty of gas in the tank after only two pitches in the seventh.

Russ Martin led off with a sharp line single to centre. Trying to get something going to manufacture the tying run, manager Gibbons elected to start Martin on a 3-1 pitch with Kevin Pillar at the plate, but Pillar flied out to centre and Martin had to retreat to first. With one out, Gibbons changed the strategy, and had Martin holding when Aledmys Diaz, inserted at shortstop after Kendrys Morales hit for Ngoepe in the sixth, finally squared up his first base hit of the season, a booming double to dead centre. Unlike the second inning, Luis Rivera played it safe and held Martin up at third. The runners had to hold when Devon Travis hit a come-backer to Robertson for the second out.

Now we come to what was styled as Aaron Boone’s first managerial mistake for the Yankees, the decision to issue a free pass to Josh Donaldson to load the bases and pitch to Justin Smoak. I’ve already said that I think he made a big mistake with Betances in Saturday’s game, and I don’t think this one was such a big deal. It was an either/or, with little upside either way, except that with the bases loaded you’ve set up the force at every base. Pretty standard stuff, to me.

The manager’s damned either way on this one. If he got burned by Donaldson, they’d say “why not put him on?” When he got burned by Smoak, it’s “why walk Donaldson and let him hit?” So let’s lay off Boone on this one, okay?

So this is by way of getting around to the fact that with one out and the bases loaded in the bottom of the eighth inning, Justin Smoak fouled off three knuckle curves and held off on one in the dirt, while running the 3-2 count to 8 pitches, and virtually forced Robertson to throw a fast ball, that he belted over the centre-field fence for a grand slam and a 7-4 lead. Solarte flied out to right, but that horse was gone, baby, so don’t bother with the barn door.

Since Roberto Osuna had pitched in the last two games, Gibbie tabbed Seung Hwan Oh to close out the game, and Oh finished it off with panache, ending the game on a fly ball to centre by Stanton after giving up a soft line single to left by Judge with two outs.

So after the first four games of the season, the Jays find themselves at .500, with two wins and two losses, and how satisfying is it that the two wins came after the two losses, and that both came on exciting late-inning uprisings?

The fans who’ve already written off the Jays for the year might better have a rethink.

This could be interesting.

And did the Yankees look this weekend like they have a lock on the division?

Looks like I did write reams and reams after all.  Oh well.