Long Ball Stories

Honestly, folks, is there some kind of a perverse twist on the Curse of the Babe going on here?

I can accept that Boston has the best record in baseball and Toronto has, well, not played up to hopes/expectations for the last month. I can accept that in the circumstances it’s not surprising that the Red Sox laid an embarrassing drubbing on our boys this past week at home in Boston.

But what I can’t get my head around is how Boston roughed up Toronto over those three games.

Because “roughed up” is hardly the word for it. I can’t ever remember seeing so many bleeders and bloopers and excuse-mes in crucial at-bats in a single series in my life. And every single one of them was in the favour of the hometown boys.

It’s just not bloody fair.

And when you add the number of not-errors-but-mistakes that a Toronto team struggling to cover the defensive array without enough capable hands on deck to the annoying persistence of lucky bounces and contacts by the Red Sox, the Blue Jays never really had a chance in this series.

Not that the Jays’ pitchers, starters or relievers, did a great deal to ward off the crack of doom when the Sox saw the door opened, opportunists that they are.

On paper, Aaron Sanchez had his worst outing of the year, giving up seven runs on nine hits in five innings on Monday night.

But consider how the run swere scored. After retiring Andrew Benintendi in the first, Sanchez gave up base hits to right field to Xander Bogaerts on a 2-2 pitch, and Mitch Moreland on a 2-0 pitch. Then, with the not-so-fast J.D. Martinez at the plate, the Toronto right-hander threw his double-play ball. But Devon Travis made a bad throw to first, not an error but not what was needed, and Martinez was safe with Bogaerts scoring.

Sanchez gave up a walk in the second and a base hit in the third, and had only thrown 45 pitches.

In the top of the fourth a Kendrys Morales base hit cashed in Kevin Pillar’s leadoff double, so Sanchez came out for the bottom of the fourth ready to maintain the 1-1 tie.

Then the roof fell in. Slowly and softly, to be sure, but it still fell in. Eight batters later, five base hits later—only one hit hard—with a passed ball thrown in for good measure, the Red Sox had scored five runs to take a 6-1 lead, insurmountable given the way Toronto’s hitters were letting a rather tentative David Price off the hook. (Since when does Price go away, away, away with every right-handed batter?)

Sanchez was still in the game, coming out for the fifth inning. And why not? Not a bit of it was his fault.

Rafael Devers had led off by slapping a ground ball through the shift-abandoned left side of the infield. Eduardo Nunez followed with another ground ball that went past the notably immobile substitute shortstop Yangervis Solarte for another cheap base hit.

Then the most damaging moment of the inning, especially for a ground-ball pitcher looking to throw a double-play ball: one got past Luke Maile that was judged a passed ball, and the runners moved up, erasing the double play and putting Devers at third with nobody out.

Brock Holt hit a harmless fly ball to left, except that with Devers on third it was a sacrifice fly. Christian Vazquez hit a blooper into left that fell in for a single, with Nunez holding at second. Jackie Bradley Jr. lofted a deep but lazy fly ball to left centre that somehow eluded both Pillar and fledgling left fielder Russell Martin, falling in for a double that scored Nunez with Vazquez stopping at third.

Then Sanchez made a huge mistake and threw a wide one to the left-handed Andrew Benintendi, just what he was looking for, because Benintendi has perfected the Wally-Moon-like skill of slapping fly balls the other way, just far enough and high enough to clear the Green Monster, thus counting three more runs with a homer that went 346 feet . . .

That’s how Boston took a 6-1 lead, and that’s why manager John Gibbons didn’t think it necessary to yank Aaron Sanchez.

Since the game was already out of reach it’s not necessary to spend much time on the run the Red Sox scored off Danny Barnes in the sixth when Barnes walked Bradley Jr and Benintendi hit another moon shot to left, this time falling in near the foul line and going for a triple, as the Sox had Martin running hither and yon in left.

Fast forward to the second inning Saturday, with Marco Estrada on the hill for Toronto.

Boston had already scored two off Estrada in the bottom of the first on balls that were well and truly struck. Xander Bogaerts hit the wall so hard in left that Curtis Granderson, back in the lineup with the righty Rick Porcello throwing for Boston, was able to hold him to a single. Mitch Moreland plated Bogaerts with a double to the right-field corner, and then J.D. Martinez lined a double into the left-field corner that tallied Moreland.

So in the second inning, as if they needed another run, they picked one up once again without a lot of effort to it. With one out, Sandy Leon hit a fly ball to right, out near the track, a truly catchable ball on which Teoscar Hernandez—bless his trying heart—got turned around and misplayed into a double. After Bradley Jr. flew out to centre for the second out, Benintendi hit yet another moon shot off the wall for a double that scored Leon.

When a team’s playing from behind, the most soul-destroying thing that can happen is when they score a run to close the gap, their opponents immediately tack on another run to restore the lead that was.

That’s what happened in the fourth inning. After Justin Smoak drove a Porcello pitch over the right-field wall for Toronto’s first run, cutting the Boston lead to 3-1, Brock Holt hit a dreaded broken-bat bloop single to right with one out, and promptly broke for second. Maile’s throw was right on the bag, and beat Holt’s sliding feet. Should have been a “caught stealing”. But Solarte didn’t handle the throw, and wasn’t able to get the tag on Holt.

Holt was a runner in scoring position with double luck in his pocket: his blooper fell in, and Solarte didn’t convert the caught stealing. There he was, then, on second, ready to score on Bradley Jr’s legitimate line single to right that should have been harmless.

For some reason John Gibbons decided this was it for Estrada at only 63 pitches; yet another Toronto starter failed to go at least five innings. The bullpen had to go to work again, down 4-1 in the game.

Aaron Loup came in and got the last out; he walked Bogaerts on a close 3-2 pitch leading off the fifth, but Moreland hit a comebacker that Loup converted into a double play, and then Loup fanned Martinez. It was the highlight of the day for Toronto.

Joe Biagini came on for the sixth inning, and, like Sanchez the night before, saw things get quickly out of hand without any of his doing. Devers hit a chopper to short, and Solarte couldn’t make the play on the backhand. It went for an infield single. With the runner going, the returning Dustin Pedroia singled to right, Devers cruising into third.

Sandy Leon came up with one tainted double under his belt already. This time he hit a sort of sharp bouncer to Biagini’s left. Biagini made the worst possible choice on it, and tried to snag it. He deflected it towards the first base side, exactly where Devon Travis had been. But Travis had headed up the middle to cut the ball off, and it ended up dribbling into the outfield behind him.

With the defence pulled around to the right in the shift and Martin heading to cover third, Leon saw that there was no one at second and lumbered into an infield double, scoring Devers.

This left Porcello completely in charge with a 5-1 lead, three of which resulted from, shall we say, less than solid hits. So that was it for Saturday’s game. Toronto’s two-run rally in the top of the seventh, that cut the Boston lead to 5-3, was countered by three unanswered Boston runs in the seventh and eighth, leading to a second 8-3 Red Sox victory, giving them a nice little pair to draw to for three of a kind on Wednesday afternoon.

While the starters were still in Wednesday’s game the hex actually was working a bit against the Red Sox, even if they did have a 4-2 lead when both starters were gone.

Surprisingly effective fill-in starter Sam Gaviglio had another good outing for Toronto, holding Boston to two runs for five innings before J.D. Martinez absolutely crushed one in the sixth after a base hit by Benintendi.

Gaviglio had retired six in a row to start the game, five grounders and a strikeout, on 22 pitches. But in the third he gave up a base hit to leadoff hitter Blake Swihart, and a one-out opposite field (where else?) double off the wall by Bradley Jr. that scored Swihart with Toronto’s first run. Then all kinds of weirdness ensued, all of it falling in the Jays’ favour.

Benintendi hit a sharp liner to centre for a base hit. Pillar charged it so well that even the quick Bradley had to hold at third. Then, in typical Red Sox fashion, Benintendi immediately stole second. Or not. Manager John Gibbons called for a video review, despite that all of the first looks made it obvious that he was safe. Except that one that showed the runner’s fingers dangling above the bag when the shortstop Aledmys Diaz tagged his opper body. Call overturned, Benintendi erased for the second out.

With two outs and Bradley on third, the pressure was off. So of course Gaviglio bounced one to the plate that got away from Luke Maile, and Bradley came in to score, evading Gaviglio’s swipe tag on a toss from Maile. Or not. Another unlikely video review. And another unlikely overturn: Bradley’s fingers hadn’t quite reached the plate, either, and the inning was over.

Toronto wasn’t so lucky in the fifth inning when Eduardo Nunez exchanged his bat for a nine-iron and golfed a low strike from Gaviglio into the stratosphere that came down right at the barrier on top of the monster, and was caught by a fan in the first row. Then ensued the age-old question: was the fan hanging over into the field of play when he made the catch? After consultation, it was determined that he was not, and Nunez’ high and soft approach to the elevated green was annointed a home run for a 2-0 Boston lead.

Teoscar Hernandez finally broke the ice against a very effective Rodriguez in the Toronto sixth, powdering his own legitimate shot well and truly over the wall in dead left field after a two-out walk to Gio Urshela, ironically the only one issued by Rodriguez in his six and two-thirds innings of work.

But the tie only lasted until Martinez’ dinger in the bottom of the inning that left Gaviglio on the hook for a possible 4-2 loss, despite turning in another very effective outing for Toronto.

So Toronto scored two runs in a ninth-inning uprising that saw Boston manager Alex Cora try to save Craig Kimbrel. That didn’t work out so well. Brian Johnson started the inning and immediately gave up hard-hit base knocks to Pillar and Solarte, which ended the no-Kimbrel experiment.

The Sox closer came in and walked Smoak to load the bases, and then gave up a vicious line double to right by Kendrys Morales that scored the two runners from second and third. Kimbrel then retired the side in order.

Those two runs should have tied the game, but they just made it close, because the Red Sox curse had returned in the bottom of the eighth, and the Sox’ lead had grown to 6-2, thanks to a misfire on a double-play ball by Jays’ closer Ryan Tepera, and a “double” by Nunez that was exceeded in cheesiness only by Leon’s comebacker to the pitcher for a double in Tuesday night’s game.

It all came down like this, if you want the sordid details.

Bogaerts led off with a clean single to left. Martinez then nubbed one back to Tepera, Martinez, the eternally slow Martinez. Tepera, who had plenty of time to turn two, made a bad throw to second, and no outs were recorded, instead of the gift-wrapped double play Martinez had handed to Tepera. Rafael Devers popped up to short for what should have been the third out.

This brought Eduardo Nunez to the plate, and he came without his nine iron this time. Oh, no, this time he brought a tennis racquet up to the dish. He swung late, not very hard, and hit a line drive, well, a soft little flare that wasn’t very high, just enough to sail . . . ever . . . so . . . slowly over the desperately stretching glove of Justin Smoak, who stretched every sinew of his long body but just couldn’t . . . quite . . . reach it. It fell softly and safely to earth in short right, settling in like a wounded quail. Both runners scored, and Nunez ended up on second.

Thus it was that when Toronto scored two runs in the top of the ninth, they were still two runs short, all because of a bad throw and a dying quail.

The curse of the fens had struck again, and the Red Sox had a sweep.

Was that all Toronto needed, to get out of town?

Playing in the pretty confines of Philadelphia’s cozy ballpark, yet another space named after a greedy financial institution, was all it took to turn the Toronto Turkeys of Thursday afteroon’s embarrassment at home back into a flock of Blue Jays who can fly with the best of them?

Used to be, going into an inter-league series with the Phillies, Toronto’s spring training partners in the Clearwater-Dunedin area, was a tonic for the ERAs and the batting averages, given the woeful state of the perpetually-rebuilding Phils.

Not so much any more. These here Phillies are some ball club. It might be a little early; it wasn’t expected this year, but for all intents and purposes I think we can declare “mission accomplished” on the rebuild of this Philadelphia team.

So what happened when the Blue Jays dragged their sorry feathered rumps into town after a dreadful homestand?

The starters lasted. The relievers relieved, some of them mightily. The hitters hit, just enough. And when they lost one game out of three, it was crisp, clean, and entirely deserved by the Phillies, so who could gainsay them one out of the three?

NAIL-BITIN’ FRIDAY NIGHT

This past weekend was art show weekend at the gallery where my wife shows her paintings. We had an opening at 7:00 Friday evening, and a closing and pickup of paintings at 4:00 Sunday afternoon.

So I had to be creative to follow the game when I couldn’t watch. Luckily I’ve finally entered the twenty-first century, and have had a smart phone for the whole season. Makes life much easier when there are conflicts with the Jays’ games.

I only watched the last part of the game, from the bottom of the seventh on, just in time to join the nervous nellies watching Toronto try to close the deal after some crisp hitting and a great start by Sam Gaviglio vaulted the Jays into a 6-1 lead after five and a half innings.

From the start of the game I got to exercise my nimble fingers (ha!) on my phone by switching between Gameday and the memo pad where I was scoring the game in my usual notetaking style, all the while listening to Ben and Mike call the game on the radio.

I was disappointed, of course, not to have seen Toronto’s hitters jump start the game by delivering three two-out base hits with runners in scoring position to post a three-spot in the top of the first.

But there is something deeply satisfying about hearing a good radio caller narrate a rally for his team. (For, let there be no doubt, the radio broadcasters are fans of the team they work for in ways that the television guys just aren’t allowed to be.)

When Teoscar Hernandez beat out the two-out grounder to third that scored Josh Donaldson with the first Toronto run, the excitement emanating from the radio booth was almost palpable. And then, to have not only Yangervis Solarte but also the slumping Kevin Pillar drive the ball into opposite corners for doubles that scored first Hernandez and then Solarte, was, as they said in a play somewhere, “too much happiness”.

Even better, though, was to listen to the casual narration of Jays’ starter Sam Gaviglio’s easy, and much appreciated, three-groundout, twelve-pitch bottom of the first.

Gaviglio came to the plate with one out in the bottom of the second, and we paused for the curiosity of finding out how another Toronto pitcher might do at the plate in this National League park. Well! Phillies’ starter Zach Eflin through him a fat fast ball up and in for an easy strike three on a 2-2 count, but Gaviglio put a nice swing on it, caught it fat, and sent it on a line to left centre. Left fielder Rhys Hoskins moved to his left and put on an ill-advised leaping dive but the ball sailed past his glove, hit and bounced all the way to the wall, while the surprisingly impassive Gaviglio easily chugged into second.

Unfortunately, he died there, and had to be content to come back out for the second with the lead still 3-0.

Neither the exhilaration over his hit, nor the exertion of running it out, nor the disappointment at not crossing the plate, affected Gaviglio’s pitching, though, as he came out for the home second and recorded two more groundouts for five in a row, followed by a popup. This time he took 14 pitches, for 26 in total after the two innings.

Without actually watching him pitch, it was obvious to me that Gaviglio’s approach had a seriously negative effect on the timing of the Philadelphia hitters.

In the bottom of the third, though, a really strange thing happened. The Toronto righty threw only another 14 pitches for 40 after three, picked up another groundout, his sixth, his first fly ball out to left, and his first strikeout.

But with two out and nobody on, after retiring eight batters in a row, Gaviglio was facing his counterpart, Zach Eflin, who had managed to keep Toronto from extending its lead in the second and third.

If Gaviglio had any thoughts yet of throwing a no-hitter, and if he was thinking of himself as the best hitting pitcher on display this night, Eflin was having none of it. On an 0-1 pitch Gaviglio threw him a sinker that stayed up in the zone, and, like Gaviglio had done to him, Eflin put a good swing on the ball, hit it on the barrell, and away it went, headed irretrievably for the Phillies’ bullpen in right centre field.

3-1 Toronto after three.

Buoyed by his big hit, Eflin came out and shut Toronto down in the fourth. Gaviglio ran into his first trouble in the fourth, other than not missing Eflin’s bat. He walked Rhys Hoskins leading off, fanned Odubrel Herrera, and walked Carlos Santana. Then he got his ground ball mojo back, and Mikael Franco hit into a fielder’s choice, and Nick Williams grounded out to third.

Any semblance of a duel between the starting pitchers came to an end after three batters into the Toronto fifth. Curtis Granderson singled to right and advanced to second on Josh Donaldson’s slow roller to third. That gave Grandy a good vantage point to watch Justin Smoak’s drive to centre on a 1-0 pitch that chased Grandy home before Smoak’s dignified trot followed him across. It was 5-1 for the Blue Jays

Eflin got the second out, but let Toronto off the mat again, with a little unwanted help from his defence. Yangervis Solarte followed Smoak’s homer with a base hit to right, a solid line drive. Solarte moved up on a passed ball, and Kevin Pillar reached on a bad throw by the third baseman Franco that should have been the third out, while Solarte moved up to third, and then scored on a single by Russell Martin off reliever Victor Arano; Phillies’ manager Gabe Kapler had rescued Eflin from further damage after Franco’s error.

So Eflin was out, Gaviglio was still in and pitching with a 6-1 lead. Things were looking good for the visitors, but of course with Toronto it seems like things are never easy these days.

Gaviglio had his best inning in the fifth, fanning the catcher Jorge Alfaro and right fielder Aaron Altherr on six strikes and retiring Pedro Florimon on a first-pitch liner to centre. After five innings he’d thrown only 69 pitches.

But Toronto was to stall at six runs. Arano pitched a good sixth after finishing the fifth for Eflin; Adam Morgan kept the Jays in check in the seventh and eighth, and Tommie Hunter finished off the ninth.

In fact, after Martin’s RBI single in the fifth, the Jays only had one more baserunner the rest of the way. Justin Smoak reached on an infield single in the seventh off Morgan, but was erased in a double play.

Sam Gaviglio came within one batter of the magical six-inning start with only one run allowed, but with two outs in the bottom of the inning Herrera doubled to left and Santana crushed the first pitch he saw from Gaviglio over the right-field fence to cut the lead to 6-3. Gaviglio fanned Franco for the second time to finish his sixth inning; he had given a quality start of six or more innings pitched with three runs or less, a start that was much needed by the bullpen, but 6-3 was a lot less secure than 6-1.

But it was plenty secure for one inning in the capable hands of Seunghwan Oh. Oh threw 21 pitches, and the only pitch that was hit in fair territory was a popup to the shortstop by Florimon for the second out.

Prior to that he’d walked Scott Kingery and fanned Alfaro, and after the popup he fanned Altherr.

Mindful, no doubt, of his two previous meltdowns as closer, manager John Gibbons elected to bring Tyler Clippard in for the eighth inning and leave the closer’s role for Ryan Tepera.

On the scoreboard Clip didn’t do a lot better in the eighth inning than the ninth, as the Phils cut another run off the Jays’ lead, but it wasn’t totally his fault. Cesar Hernandez started the inning with a drive to right that was catchable, except that Teoscar Hernandez, who is still learning the outfielding trade, took a bad route to the ball, and it got by him and hit off the wall for a double.

If Teoscar had caught Cesar’s hit, Cesar wouldn’t have been on second when Rhys Hoskins lined a double into the left-field corner, and Hoskins would have died on second as Clippard ran out the side after Hoskins’ shot with two popups and a strikeout.

In came Tepera to attempt to earn the save, thereby protecting Toronto’s now two-run lead.

Well, it was tense, really tense. I mean “god, I can’t look!” tense. He gave up one more run, and the Phillies were in a position to do even more damage, when he finally shut them down.

Would you believe bases loaded, one out, one run already in on a wild pitch? And would you believe that Tep got out of it? Both the situation he faced, and the fact that he survived, are true, and Toronto won the first game of this interleague series by a razor-thin margin of 6-5.

With one out, the inning started with a hit that barely made it out of the infield. Jorge Alfaro hit a chopper that just snaked through between Solarte and Gio Urshela at short. Pedro Florimon who was 0 for 3 to this point, lined one into right centre and hustled to second while the catcher Alfaro was held at third.

The throats got a little tighter when, with one out and the tying runs in scoring position, Tepera bounced a wild slider past Russell Martin to the backstop. Alfaro scored to make it 6-5 and Florimon moved up to third.

The throats got a lot tighter when Tepera then walked both Aaron Altherr on a 3-1 pitch and Cesar Hernandez on four pitches to load the bases. It was at this point that John Gibbons came out, not to bury Tepera, but to praise him, apparently. He seemed to give his substitute closer a pep talk, and then retreated to the dugout.

Whatever Gibbie said seemed to have worked, because in the most important at bat of the entire game Tepera threw a 2-2 fast ball to the young slugger Rhys Hoskins on the outside black* and plate umpire Joe West rung him up, much to his dismay.

*It’s a tradition for plate umpires to allow pitchers strikes that are thrown “on the black”. If you’ve never seen a home plate up close, you should know that it’s designed rather strangely, in that there is about a two-inch bevel all the way around it. During the game the bevel has a tendency to be covered in dirt so that the players and the umpire can only see the flat part of the plate. When you see umpires sweep off the plate they are usually clearing dirt away from the side bevels so that they can be seen. Whether covered by dirt or not, the bevels are part of the plate and therefore within the strike zone. When an ump gives a pitcher a pitch that he envisions is over the bevel, the pitch is said to be “on the black”.

With two outs the tension eased considerably. And it disappeared when the over-eager Odubel Herrera jumped at the first pitch and hit a hard chopper to second. Solarte had time to back up for a good hop and throw him out to end the game.

So it took Ryan Tepera one run, two hits, two walks, a wild pitch, a strikeout, and 26 pitches to record his first save.

I’m sure he’s hoping that the next one will be a little easier.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON PITCHERS’ DUEL

When you looked at the pitching matchup for Saturday’s game, it looked more like a pitching mis-matchup, with the hot young Philadelphia star Aaron Nola, coming into the game sporting a 6-2 record and a 2.37 ERA.

Facing Nola for Toronto would be Jaime Garcia, coming off a stint on the disabled list for shoulder issues, preceded by some very inconsistent and unproductive starts.

Well, Nola was as advertised. How about walking second batter Josh Donaldson in the first inning, and then not allowing a baserunner until the seventh inning with one out, when he issued his second walk, to Justin Smoak?

Not only did Nola retire 19 of the first 20 batters he faced, he struck out ten of them.

In the end, Nola and manager Greg Kapler found themselves in the same trap as many other managers and fine young pitchers find themselves. He carried a no-hitter into the seventh inning with only the one walk, but the moment the no-hitter was broken, Kapler was out of the dugout to take him out.

Not only did Russell Martin break up the no-hitter with his ground single through the left side, he also drove in the Jays’ first and tying run. More importantly, the hit came on Nola’s 113^th pitch.

Nola—and Kapler—were rapidly reaching a moment when it may have been necessary to take him out even if the no-hitter was still on. The fact that Nola had walked Smoak and Solarte to set up the situation for Martin to tie the game was the last factor in stretching his pitch count. Martin’s hit solved the problem for Kapler and made it easier for him to take Nola out.

I’m waiting to see what the buzz is the first time some young stud is pulled from a no-hit bid in the eighth inning because he’s at 120 pitches. I think that such an event would mark another irrevocable change in the traditions of the game, right up there with the adoption of the defensive shift.

But we started out saying that this game was a surprising pitchers’ duel, so let’s look at the real surprise, the performance of Jaime Garcia.

I keep thinking that Garcia at his best, and we’ve seen some great innings, or even strings of innings, from him this year, not only resembles Marco Estrada physically, but pitches very much as a left-handed version of the slow-throwing changeup specialist.

In his first three innings Garcia gave up two base hits, one in the first by Rhys Hoskins and one in the second by Scott Kingery. Neither was hard hit, and Garcia stranded both of them. He struck out one in the first inning and two in the second, and by the end of three innings, he’d thrown only 41 pitches.

In the fourth, much like Estrada, Garcia’s pitches started to come up, and he retired the side on three fly balls, the first two easy outs, but the third a deep drive by Aaron Altherr, the hardest hit ball so far off Garcia, that Pillar went back to the wall and made a great, if typical Pillar, catch on.

Mikael Franco led off the fifth and followed Altherr’s drive at the end of the fourth with the second straight shot hit off Garcia. But this one, a line drive to left, cleared the fence for the first run of the game, a run that would stand up until Martin broke up Nola’s no-hitter in the seventh with his RBI single.

After the Franco drive, Garcia settled right back down and generated two more groundouts and a strikeout. At the end of the five innings he’d still thrown only 52 pitches. I was going to say that this was something of a minor miracle for Jays’ starters these days, but that would be understating the significance of his feat.

After a brief rain delay in the middle of the sixth, Garcia dismissed the Phillies on two more groundouts—seven to this point—and a popup. Another nine pitches, to 61 for six.

Not only did Garcia have to wait out the rain in the sixth, he had to wait out the Jays’ top of the seventh, when they took a good while scoring the tying run and seeing Nola pulled for the reliever.

Even so, he got the first two outs in the Phillie’s seventh so quickly that when he gave up two base hits with two outs John Gibbons left him in to retire the side and finish seven complete innings. He finished as he started, efficiently: he fanned Santana, retired Altherr on a grounder to third, gave up a base hit by Franco and a bunt single by Kingery, before ending the inning on a weak comebacker by Alfaro. All of this took twelve pitches. That’s twelve pitches.

So, Aaron Nola’s line was six and two thirds innings, one run on one hit with three walks and ten strikeouts, throwing 113 pitches.

Jaime Garcia’s line was seven innings pitched, one run on five hits with no walks and five strikeouts, throwing 73 pitches.

Was that 73 pitches over seven innings? A tad over ten pitches per inning? For Jaime Garcia? Yup!

After all that beautiful pitching, the denouement of the game came off a bit flat.

Seranthony Dominguez, who finished off the seventh for Aaron Nola, gave up a one-out infield hit to Kevin Pillar, who was hitting for Garcia in the eighth, and then threw a double-play ball to Curtis Granderson to end the inning.

Joe Biagini came in to start the Philadelphia eighth inning for Toronto, his first appearance in his new role as definitely a reliever. His first appearance, nay, his first batter, was a rude comeuppance for his aspirations.

Nick Williams hit for Dominguez, and, unlike in his starts, Biagini started him off with a well-placed fast ball for a strike. In fact, he started out all three of the hitters he faced with a strike. Would that he had done so in his starts!

Unfortunately, Williams turned on Biagini’s second pitch and deposited it over the centre-field fence for the run that would be the only thing differentiating these two teams on this day.

Biagini quickly retired Hernandez on a first-pitch fly ball to centre, and Hoskins on a grounder to first. Then John Gibbons put in Aaron Loup to pitch to the left-handed Odubel Herrera. As often happens, Loup plunked the man he was supposed to get, but then retired the switch hitter Carlos Santana to end the inning.

Luis Garcia came in to close out the game for the Phils, and only took ten pitches to finish it off. Donaldson started things off with an infield hit, but Smoak fanned and Teoscar Hernandez grounded into a double play to end the game.

So John Gibbons hit for Jaime Garcia in the seventh inning, but the Jays didn’t take the lead in the inning. The Phillies scored the winning run in the eighth off Garcia’s reliever Biagini.

The question might arise, then, should Gibbie have let Garcia hit for himself and let him start the eighth, since he had only thrown 73 pitches? It’s fun to play with, and we can all have our opinions, but here’s the bottom line: after about 100 years of baseball tradition having set certain things in stone, any manager playing National League rules letting his pitcher hit in the seventh inning in a tie game: just ain’t gonna happen, no way, no how.

So, no point in talking about it. Their relievers didn’t give up a run, our only reliever gave up one, and that’s why we lost this beautiful pitchers’ duel.

RUBBER GAME SUNDAY? GIVE THE BALL TO THE HAPP-STER!

After hanging on through a hair-raising ninth inning on Friday night, and losing a close pitchers’ duel on Saturday, it seemed like some of the elements that had been missing from Toronto’s approach were starting to fall into place.

First of all, their starting pitching was pretty darned good, compared to all recent experience. Sam Gaviglio left with a three-run lead, one out short of a quality start on Friday night, and Jaime Garcia threw arguably one of the team’s best starts of the season Saturday afternoon in a losing effort.

Secondly, effective and productive hitting suddenly showed up for the first five innings Friday night, showing that it really was possible for this Blue Jays’ team to jump out in front when the opportunity was made available to them.

Then they shut down, almost totally blanked from the sixth inning Friday night through the entire game Saturday, with the exception of Russell Martin’s RBI single that broke up Aaron Nola’s no-hitter in the seventh inning.

Finally, they needed effective work from the bullpen, something they didn’t get Friday night, though they did barely cling to a lead that should have been good enough, and something they didn’t get from Joe Biagini on Saturday afternoon when he served up the game-winning home run to Nick Williams, the first batter he faced after coming on in the eighth for Garcia.

So, how about a game in which they put it all together? What would that look like?

Well, first it would look like grabbing an early lead on the Phillies’ starter, rookie Nick Pivetta.

Curtis Granderson had ensured that Toronto wouldn’t be no-hit for a second time this season by a Canadian boy (Pivetta is from Victoria, B.C.. What’s with these B.C. guys making it to the Show as starting pitchers, eh?) Grandy led off the first with a line single to left over the head of the shortstop Scott Kingery, but Pivetta kept the Jays off

the board and stranded him at third after throwing the ball away on a pickoff attempt at first, an error that allowed Granderson to move all the way around.

But in the second it was Pivetta’s wildness to the plate that cost him two runs. After third baseman Mikael Franco took a double away from Kevin Pillar by snatching his hot shot and throwing him out, Pivetta walked the next two batters and then wild-pitched them into scoring position.

Enter Devon Travis, who really needed a pick-me-up at the plate and got it as he lined a double to the wall in left centre to notch the two baserunners and give the Jays a 2-0 lead.

Doubling back to Kevin Pillar for a moment, this would prove to be an incredibly frustrating day for him, as he absolutely tattooed the ball in all four of his plate appearances, and never hit it out of the infield, robbed four times. Anybody out there who thinks that Pillar is into his early-summer reversion didn’t see him swing the bat on Sunday. But, just an 0 for 4.

After the second inning Pivetta settled down nicely and ended up going five innings, giving up just the two runs on four hits, while walking two and striking out seven on a fairly high 86 pitches for five.

Tommie Hunter came on for the Phillies in the top of the sixth, and the Jays once again picked up a crucial solid base hit, an opposite-field double to left with the bases loaded by Dwight Smith Jr. that brought home two more runs, doubling the Toronto lead to 4-0.

That was it for Hunter, as Phillies’ manager Gabe Kapler went to his bullpen, with two outs, first base open, and the eighth hitter, right-handed Devon Travis standing in. He brought in the right-hander Edubray Ramos to face Travis, whom the Phils immediately waved to first on the intentional walk, bringing Happ’s position in the batting order to the plate.

Kapler was trying to force John Gibbons’ hand and pull Happ for a pinch-hitter, but given the effectiveness of Jay Happ on this afternoon (see below) it was no surprise that Gibbie let Happ hit, since he was throwing a two-hit shutout through five innings.

Sadly, there was no further display of Happ’s hitting prowess as we saw against the Mets earlier in the season. Faced with the chance to break open his own game in a significant way, Happ made contact off the reliever Ramos, but skied out to right field to leave the sacks loaded.

The second thing it would look like for Toronto to put it all together would be a second consecutive quality start, and they got just that from the increasingly confident and effective Happ.

Through three innings the big lefty allowed only a second-inning walk to Aaron Altherr. He gave up a walk and a single with one out in the fourth and then fanned Altherr and Williams. With a couple of popups and another strikeout in the fifth he was breezing, on a modest 69 pitches.

But Happ’s defense let him down in the sixth, leading to three Philadelphia runs, making a lot of throats a lot tighter around the ballpark.

With one out, Mikael Franco hit an opposite-field single to right beating the shift, a tactic that we seem to see used an awful lot more by our opponents than by us. Carlos Santana, not the swiftest bunny in the den, hit a little teaser to third that Josh Donaldson barehanded and threw away.

Franco ended up on third and Santana on second, credited with an infield single and advancing on the error. Aaron Altherr grounded one up the middle for a base hit that scored Franco, but Kevin Pillar, hoping to hold Santana at third, overcharged the ball and left it on the grass behind him, allowing Santana to score the second Philly run and Altherr to advance to second.

Nick Williams singled to right to score Altherr, before Scott Kingery popped out to bring the inning to a merciful end. Altherr’s run was unearned because he should not have been on second when Williams came to bat.

After Adam Morgan retired the Jays with a walk left on in the top of the seventh, Happ came back to record two quick outs in the bottom of the inning. John Gibbons decided not to let him face the young right-handed slugger Rhys Hoskins again with the slim lead, and brought in Seunghwan Oh, Happ finishing up with six and two thirds innings, two earned runs, six hits, two walks, and eight strikeouts on 100 pitches.

Needed a quality start to put together a good game? Check.

Oh retired Hoskins on a grounder to third, and then after Luis Garcia put down the Jays in order in the top of the eighth, he came back out for the bottom of the eighth.

The third element needed for a win is good relief work. Oh gave the Jays four outs without allowing a baserunner, striking out two and inducing a popup in the eighth. He only needed fifteen pitches for the four outs.

Gabe Kapler sent Hector Neris out for the top of the ninth to try to hold the Jays within one run. He almost made it, striking out Devon Travis and the pinch-hitter Kendrys Morales. But he couldn’t get by Curtis Granderson, who homered to right on an 0-2 pitch to extend the Toronto lead to 5-3 before Neris fanned Josh Donaldson to finish striking out the side.

If you wanted to add a little sub-element to starting pitching, timely hitting, and shut-down relief as the key factors in a win, it might be the ability to pick up an insurance run. Check that box too.

Ryan Tepera has clearly supplanted Tyler Clippard as the closer in the absence of Roberto Osuna, and he picked up the save for the second time in the series. This time it was significantly easier than Friday night.

Tepera started badly, losing Nick Williams on a 3-2 pitch for a leadoff walk, enough to make the milk curdle in my teacup. But two ground balls to third later and the game was over. Scott Kingery’s grounder was converted into a forceout at second, and then the catcher Jorge Alfaro’s grounder went round the horn for a double play to end the game.

Effective relief pitching as the third element of success? Check, and check.

So we had to go on the road to win a series for the first time in how long?

Fenway Park next. Batten down the hatches!

WEDNESDAY NIGHT PAIN:

Toronto seems to have fallen into a pattern of loss: one good win, in most series, at least one tough loss, and a game of lay-down-and-die.

Tuesday night the Jays scored early on some hard-hit balls, albeit with some help from the Angels, and Jay Happ was masterful. Toronto looked like the team that many of us think it can be, even still, this year: a team that can compete with the best of them.

Wednesday night they looked to be heading for a second fine win over a very imposing Angels’ squad, until Tyler Clippard couldn’t close out the save, and some strange and unlucky baserunning incidents cost the Jays a chance for a comeback walkoff (that shouldn’t have been needed: see: blown saves).

Yesterday afternoon, in Toronto’s second Facebook-only game (boo! hiss!) whomever Josh Gibbons sent out on the field were only a crowd of imposters; they couldn’t possibly have been any of the current Blue Jays.

How do I know this? Because this crowd played like the Toronto Turkeys, and as turkeys are wont to do, they served up an easy series-winning win to the hungrier Angels, who like to feast on the road, it seems.

Words fail me when it comes to trying to describe what we saw in the ninth inning of Wednesday night’s game. But, I’ll try, though though first by setting the scene.

It started like a pitchers’ duel, and for the first three innings it looked like Aaron Sanchez might be coming a little closer to the pitcher we used to know. After three he’d scattered two walks and a hit, and his pitch count was a little better, though the third inning showed some regression, as he threw 17, 14, and then 21 pitches.

Tyler Skaggs, on the other hand, was pristine through eight hitters, and then was rocked by two shots in the third, an opposite-field line homer over the fence in right by, of all people, Devon Travis, followed by a liner into the gap in left centre for a double by Teoscar Hernandez. Unfortunately for the Jays, the drives came with two outs, and Hernandez was stranded.

There was good and bad for the Jays in the middle innings. They added a run in the fourth on a solo homer by Yangervis Solarte, and another in the fifth when Solarte knocked in his second run of the game, plating Josh Donaldson, on second with a two-out double. Solarte grounded a single up the middle for the RBI.

Also good was the fact that Sanchez kept the Angels off the board through the fourth and fifth. Not so good was that he emptied the tank doing it, throwing 21 pitches in the fourth and 24 in the fifth for a total of 97 and out after five.

Once again it was walks and deep counts that did Sanchez in. He yielded his second walk in the fourth inning, and walked the bases loaded in the fifth for a total of five walks in the game.

It’s great to throw a two-hit shutout. Not so great if it’s only over five innings, you give up five walks and throw 97 pitches. Not to mention another four inning night for the bullpen. On this night, the last point would be the key.

John Axford took over in the sixth, and had no luck at all. He gave up three hits, a snaky ground single up the middle by Andrelton Simmons, a decent line drive to right by Zack Cozart, and a terribly fluky wrong-way bloop single down the left field line by Martin Maldonado, which was surrounded by Blue Jays, none of whom could corral it, primarily because left-fielder Curtis Granderson was playing deep and around to centre.

Maldonado’s lucky bleeder counted Simmons, but there’s karma in baseball sometimes, because Maldonado would get payback for his luck at the end of the inning.

John Gibbons pulled Axford and brought in Seunghwan Oh, who managed to keep the Angels from scoring any more, but was the beneficiary of some of the oddest plays you’d ever see.

So, Oh’s pitching to Kole Calhoun with Cozart on second and Maldonado on first. Calhoun hits a tough liner to Granderson’s glove side in left. Grandy races over, slides, makes the catch, almost. An out call was made before the ball appeared falling free. Cozart, who had gone back to second to tag, suddenly was forced to third. Grandy threw from a prone position to third in time to record the out on Cozart.

Now Maldonado’s on second and Calhoun’s on first with one out. Oh fans Ian Kinsler for the second out, bringing, wouldn’t you know it, Mike Trout to the plate.

And of course Mike Trout’s going to get the two-out base knock to score Maldonado and keep the inning going. Except that someone forgot to tell Maldy and Calhoun to run like hell.

After the Angels lost one runner at third to Granderson’s alert play, Calhoun tried to go first to third on a single to left, but was out on a close play that was reviewed, with the out call standing. Meanwhile Maldonado lollygagged around the bases, figuring nobody was going to get him out anywhere, and he was a good several strides from the plate when Calhoun was called out at third.

Um, you have to cross the plate before the out is recorded at a base, or, guess what? It doesn’t count! So the score remained 3-1 for Toronto going to the home half of the sixth.

And if you think that was enough weirdness on the bases for one game, you don’t know about the bottom of the ninth yet.

In the meantime we had a textbook lesson in the difference between two bullpens. Phillies’ rookie manager Gabe Kapler ran out Jim Johnson, who threw two innings, the sixth and the seventh, on 25 pitches, and his only problem was solved by a brilliant play by his shortstop Simmons. The last batter Johnson faced in the seventh was Donaldson, who smoked a no-doubt double to the alley in left centre, a screaming low liner that was destined for the wall, until Simmons leapt out of nowhere, leapt higher than he had any business leaping, and snagged it for the third out.

On the other hand, Toronto, which had used Axford and Oh in the sixth inning, used Danny Barnes, Aaron Loup, and Ryan Tepera for one out each in the seventh. If you are counting, that’s five relievers for two innings, though Tepera was game for another inning, and brilliant in the bargain, getting an easy fly, an easy grounder, and a strikeout, and throwing only 15 pitches in total for the three outs.

Justin Anderson worked the bottom of the eighth for the Angels and gave up a walk to Kevin Pillar, but stranded him there.

Here’s where you question things in retrospect. With Roberto Osuna still out of the picture, John Gibbons seems committed to Tyler Clippard to close, despite having given up the grand slam against Oakland in Toronto in his second last appearance.

Yet, there was another option: Tepera had only thrown 15 pitches, and is as capable of going two innings as anybody. Why not burn him for the next game and try to win this one with him?

Just a thought. Like I said, in retrospect, of course.

To be fair to Clippard, one little missed play meant that he could have been two outs and nobody on in his save opportunity. He fanned Kinsler, who so far is not hitting for the Angels like he hit for the Tigers, for the first out. Then he walked Mike Trout, which might not have been a bad move. Then Trout tried to steal second, and Russell Martin threw him out.

Except . . .

Except that Devon Travis didn’t catch the ball, a bullet, low, thrown right over the bag, the perfect throw that hits the glove just as the foot hits the glove . . . and Travis missed it, and there was one out and Trout on second.

Clippard lost it. He walked Justin Upton. He walked Albert Pujols to load the bases, bringing Shohei Ohtani, who’d done nothing so far in the two games, to the plate. What happened next, though, wasn’t Clippard’s fault. He threw a changeup way inside that had Ohtani swinging in self-defense. He hit the ball anyway, completely sawed off his bat, and muscled, almost willed, the ball into centre field for a base hit that scored Trout and Upton to tie the game, and sent Michael Hermosillo, running for Pujols, to third.

Ohtani stole second, setting up the winning two runs to race across the plate on a ground ball single up the middle by Andrelton Simmons. It was, shockingly, now 5-3 Angels, and for the second time in less than a week, Tyler Clippard had given up four runs in the ninth on a blown save.

When you look at it, though, not one ball in the inning was hit hard, and if Travis makes the tag on Trout, I don’t think we’re looking at a Blue Jays’ loss here at all.

Ah, but the Jays, down two, still had to hit in the ninth, and therein lies another story of strange baserunning that may have cost Toronto a game Clippard’s wildness had already put in jeopardy for them.

The Jays started with a rush that stirred your soul. Dwight Smith Jr. hit for Gio Urshela and lined a single into right field. Granderson hit a drive to right that Calhoun gambled on. He dove for it, missed it, and Grandy was at second with a double, with Smith stopping at third.

I had some thought that Smith should have been waved, which could even have let Grandy go all the way to third.

But, no, the tying runs were at second and third with nobody out.

Then a strange thing happened. Kendrys Morales was sent up to hit for Devon Travis. Not so strange that he was pinch-hitting, but this left the Jays severely compromised as to infielders if the game went to extra innings. (We later learned that the plan was to put Morales, the new jack-of-all-trades, at third, presumably sliding the weak-armed Donaldson to short.)

Morales crushed one, and watched it go before starting his home run trot. But the baserunners, Granderson and Smith, played it carefully; they were in no danger. If it was a homer, the game was over. If Calhoun flagged the ball down at the fence, they’d be ready to tag and move up, with Smith scoring. If it stayed in the park and hit the fence, they’d score easily.

But it didn’t happen that way. Calhoun didn’t catch the ball, and Trout picked it up very quickly off the wall. The jogging Morales had to stop at first, Smith scored, but Grandy was held at third as the throw from Trout came rocketing in to the relay man.

On that ball hit that way, there is probably a 99% chance that Morales has a double and Grandy scores the tying run. But this was apparently the one percent, and it didn’t go our way.

Teoscar Hernandez then hit a medium fly to right, where Calhoun, who also has a cannon, was lining up for the catch. Of course Coach Luis Rivera sent Grandy, but the throw was up and catchable on the third base side, and Grandy was DOA. Morales finally moved up to second on the throw to the plate, but this only had the effect of opening up a base for Donaldson to be waved aboard, bringing Justin Smoak to the plate.

The Angels’ reliever, Mr. Herkity Jerkity himself, Blake Parker (how does this guy not get called for a balk on every pitch??) finally managed to fan Smoak to end a game that was extremely difficult for our side to have lost.

THURSDAY ENNUI

I don’t think I’ve ever felt more like Camus’ l’étranger than while I was watching Thursday afternoon’s game on the damnable FaceBook platform.

How soon it was after the opening inning that I just didn’t give a damn, and thought it was all just merde!

If the Jays were flat on Thursday afternoon after the Wednesday disaster, how much flatter were we observers who had to watch these non-events unfold?

First off, Nick Tropeano, who doesn’t throw much of anything but strikes, completely muffled the Blue Jays on the mound for the Angels. Dwight Smith Jr hit his first major league home run for Toronto, a solo shot in the sixth inning.

That’s it, folks, that’s all. Tropeano went seven and a third innings, gave up the one run on four hits with one walk and six strikeouts on 92 pitches. By the time he left the game the Angels were leading 5-1, and would pick up three more runs, one in the eighth and two in the ninth, so it hardly mattered that the Jays only had one hit from Noé Ramirez and José Alvarez the rest of the way.

With the day game after the night game, this was a rest day for some of the Blue Jays, a day for somewhat of an alternative lineup. Josh Donaldson was the DH with Yangervis Solarte at third. Kendrys Morales got the start at first, Luke Maile was behind the plate, and Smith Jr. in left instead of Curtis Granderson, despite the fact that Tropeano is a righty.

Devon Travis and Gio Urshela formed the keystone combination. Though both are the nominal starters at their positions at the moment, neither is contributing offensively, and both are hitting below .200.

So, with Tropeano throwing good strikes, it was a lineup that couldn’t offer much threat against the Angels.

Marco Estrada had the start for Toronto. In his recent starts the real Estrada has been really close to breaking out, and with each start you wonder if this is the one when he’ll go eight shutout innings on three hits.

Well, Thursday’s wasn’t that start.

He pitched around the obligatory first-inning walk to Mike Trout followed by the obligatory Trout stolen base to retire the side on 17 pitches.

But in the second inning Estrada started off by walking Shohei Ohtani on four pitches after a first-pitch strike. Then he went to 3-1 on Andrelton Simmons, had to come in with a fast ball and Simmons whacked a ground-rule double to left, with Ohtani stopping at third. Both scored on a single to left by Martin Maldonado, and it was 2-0 with nobody out in the second, another one of those lightning lapses Estrada has experienced this year.

In the third inning with one out the Angels struck again, Justin Upton hitting a ground-rule double, immediately cashed by a single by Pujols. Estrada was lucky to escape without further damage, as the very slow Pujols only reached third on Ohtani’s following double, and tried to score on a comebacker to Estrada, who threw him out at the plate.

All of this takes pitches, though, and by the end of the third inning Estrada was up to 59, and after Sanchez’ inability to go five innings the night before, it was becoming clear that the bullpen was not going to get much rest in this game either.

After a quiet fourth inning, Estrada gave up a leadoff homer to Trout in the fifth, and didn’t survive the inning, being pulled after four and a third innings and 88 pitches.

At this point, you could hope for two things. You could hope for the diminished lineup of Toronto to start working over Tropeano, and you could hope that the exhausted Toronto bullpen might come through with another brilliant performance for four and two thirds innings while the hitters tried to solve a pretty tough pitcher.

Well, this was a day when neither of these things was going to happen. I’ve already covered the fact that Tropeano and the two Los Angeles’ relievers never lifted their feet from the throats of Toronto’s hitters, to use a terrible metaphor.

Nor were the relievers up to it. Aaron Loup pitched a tidy one and two thirds innings following Estrada, but John Axford gave up a run in the seventh, extending the deficit to 5-1.

The recently-recalled Deck McGuire came in for the eighth inning and walked the first two batters he faced. He did a good job to hold the damage to one run after that, with the help of some more strange Angels’ baserunning that resulted in another tag play at the plate.

With the over-use of the Toronto bullpen over recent games, John Gibbons sent McGuire out again for the ninth, and this time the Angels nicked him for two more runs, as they put Toronto even further behind in their rear-view mirror.

What Toronto needed to win this series was some effective work at the plate and a good start of at least six innings, preferably seven, from Marco Estrada. They got neither, and the issue of which team was going to win the series was never in doubt.

With this dismal homestand behind them, the Jays packed their bags and slunk out of town, carrying with them the hope that they might be able to regroup away from an increasingly tense atmosphere at home in the Dome in Toronto.

When Kevin Pillar almost lined into a double play five batters into last night’s game against the Angels, threatening to cut short a promising start, my Spidey sense was alerted to the possibility that it was going to happen again, this awful melange of bad luck and poor play by the Blue Jays.

Then, with two outs, runners on first and second, and the uber-slumping Russell Martin at the plate, the worm finally turned.

Martin scorched one to right. It was headed for the alley, but still definitely within range for an ordinary right fielder.

But Chris Young, a well-travelled veteran valued more for his bat than his glove, was on patrol for LA in right. He took a bad route to the ball, but almost managed to cut if off, only to have it deflect off his glove and bounce away.

Smoak and Donaldson both scored, and Martin ended up at second.

This sort of thing is only supposed to happen in favour of the other team, not in favour of the Blue Jays, according to the lights of recent weeks.

And with the even more uber-slumping Kendrys Morales at the plate with Martin on second and two outs, that worm not only turned again, but put on a white robe, stood up on his tail, and spun like a Turkish dervish.

Angels’ starter Garrett Richards, no doubt steamed, got an early visit from his pitching coach to settle himself down. Morales stepped in, took a curve for a called strike, and then laid off two low and inside balls. Apparently, Richards didn’t get the memo about low and away breaking balls to Morales. Then he threw a hanging slider right in the sweet spot, and for the first time since the beginning of the month, Morales didn’t miss it.

He massacred it into the right-field seats, and the Toronto lead was 5-0. In a truly ironic twist after the terrible performance in the field on Sunday, four of the five runs off Richards were unearned.

The question then became how would Jay Happ respond? He had run through the fearsome top of the Angels’ order, Ian Kinsler, Mike Trout, and Justin Upton, on eleven pitches, striking out Kinsler to lead off the game.

The answer to that question was he’d do pretty damn well, and after the top of the second you felt you were in for a good ride with Happ:

Albert Pujols hit a soft bouncer to Justin Smoak at first with Happ covering on the first pitch. Shohei Ohtani, the Angels’ designated hitter and premier pitcher, walked on a 3-2 count in his first TV Dome at-bat, but Andrelton Simmons grounded into a fast (had to be, with Ohtani and Simmons running) around-the-horn double play. Two innings, twenty pitches, is that a sigh of relief?

Once Happ settled into his rhythm, the story line would become how far could he go, and could the bullpen hold off the Angels once he was finished? Oh, for the days of the complete game start!

In the third Happ gave up his first base hit, a one-out ground ball by Chris Young that sneaked through the left side of the infield, and nearly doubled his pitch count, but it was still below 40 for three at 38.

The Angels chipped two runs off the Toronto lead in the fourth, despite only one solid hit off Happ, who made the primary error of walking the leadoff batter, who happened to be Mike Trout.

Of course he came around to third on the one good hit, a line single to right by Upton. And thence he was able to score on Albert Pujols’ exceedingly cheesy popup single that drew a crowd in left centre, but a crowd that had been playing too deeply for such a lollipop.

Upton, who moved to second on Pujols’ blooper, moved to third on Ohtani’s fielder’s choice, and scored on Simmons’ high chopper to Donaldson, on which the Toronto third sacker had no play at the plate and had to play it on to first to get Simmons.

Happ had had enough of that nonsensethough. Ten pitches to retire the side in the fifth, twelve pitches in the sixth, and twenty in the seventh, his last, only because all three hitters worked him deep into the count, Ohtani with a strikeout, Simmons with a walk, and then Cozart with another double play started by Donaldson

So Happ finished seven innings, gave up two runs on three hits with three walks and a relatively low five strikeouts over 99 pitches.

Richards, meanwhile, threw much better than the score, obviously, given the four unearned runs. But he needed some luck to keep the Jays from adding to their lead.

He gave up just one base hit in the second and third, but then had to work his way out of trouble in the fourth, when he walked Martin leading off and gave up a base hit to Morales off Kinsler’s glove that moved Martin to third with nobody out.

But Martin was caught out in a botched contact play on Gio Urshela’s grounder to thirth that resulted in a one-person rundown by catcher Martin Maldonado, Travis fanned, and Grandy flew out to right, leaving Morales at second.

In the fifth Garrett faced the Jays down after Donaldson reached third leading off with a double to the same alley as in the first inning, and moving up on a Garrett wild pitch.

But none of Smoak, Hernandez, and Pillar could do the job and it remained 5-2 as Garrett wrapped his night up at 92 pitches and turned his game over to the Angels’ bullpen.

But Toronto remained stalled at five runs. Noé Ramirez retired six in a row in the sixth and seventh, striking out three on only 25 pitches, and Cam Bedrosian issued a leadoff walk to Justin Smoak in the eighth, threw a double-play ball to Teoscar Hernandez, and got a fly ball from Kevin Pillar, all on eleven pitches.

The Angels had crawled a run closer in their eighth off Ryan Tepera. They cashed in a leadoff double by Martín Maldonado; he moved to third on a grounder to first by Kole Calhoun and scored on a sacrifice fly to right by the veteran Ian Kinsler. Sometimes this game seems so easy: leadoff double, ground out, sac fly, run.

Los Angeles certainly had things lined up for a comeback in the ninth with Justin Upton, Shohei Ohtani and Albert Pujols set to face Tyler Clippard, standing in once again for the missing Roberto Osuna.

But it was easy-peasy for Clippard to earn his second save. He fanned Upton, retired Pujols on a fly ball to centre, and popped up Ohtani, who went hitless in his Toronto debut, on only ten pitches.

The nay-sayers might natter about Toronto only scoring when runs are handed to them, as in last night’s five unearned markers, but you have to put the ball in play for the other team to make an error,

The fact is, the Jays not only put the ball in play, they hit it hard. Donaldson, Hernandez, Pillar with his liner to third, and Martin all smoked the ball. Good things happen when you square it up a few times.

And good things happen when you can send Jay Happ to the mound, especially with a cushion like that. Five runs in the first? Happ the starter? Put it in the books, baby, and let’s move a little closer to .500 tonight.

TUESDAY BEAT DOWN UNDER THE STORM CLOUDS:

In my last piece I made a bad joke about the weather forecast for the two-game series between the Blue Jays and the New York Mets Tuesday and Wednesday. I mentioned that the Mets’ ballyard is in Flushing, and that it was supposed to be wet.

Sorry about that. I should bite my tongue. Or my keyboarding fingers. Or something.

Tuesday evening’s game was delayed over an hour and a half, and during the delay there was great scepticism as to whether it would even be played.

Wednesday afternoon’s game started right on schedule because, well, because the league told the umpires to start it no matter what the weather. And they did. And all the while it “poured down rain” as my late mother-in-law used to say.

There’s an old story about the Hall of Fame pitcher Dizzy Dean, who went on to have a long and fruitful career as a radio broadcaster for the St. Louis Cardinals. During the Second World War security restrictions forbade the broadcasters from mentioning the weather during the game. But one time Dizzy couldn’t resist, and came out with this: “We ain’t supposed to say what the weather is, but that ain’t sweat what is runnin’ down the pitcher’s face.”

And I can confirm that Wednesday afternoon it wasn’t sweat running down the pitchers’ faces, and every other part of their physiognomies as well.

But luckily for the scheduling pooh-bahs of MLB the clouds stopped bleeding Tuesday night and the game finally started. Maybe the schedulers were happy, but not our heroes, no sir!

Despite the fact that the Mets’ heralded starter Noah Syndergaard, aka Thor, was more of a snore, at least on the mound, the Jays were, once again, unable to achieve much against frankly mediocre pitching.

At the same time, the supposedly light-hitting Mets didn’t seem to care who was serving them up for Toronto. Whoever it was, they liked his stuff, and the whole crowd, Thor right up in the front row, had a great time knocking it all over the park. For the whole game.

One in the second, five in the fourth, three in the fifth, and, for good measure, three more in the eighth, what fun they had, these lousy Mets’ hitters.

They had so much fun that it’s easy to forget that after three innings Toronto was actually ahead 2-1.

Syndergaard started by striking out the side in the top of the first. Looked as advertised so far. Jaime Garcia held the Mets off the board in the bottom of the first, but gave up a base hit, a stolen base, and a walk in the process.

In the second inning Syndergaard looked significantly less intimidating. Teoscar Hernandez leff off with a sharp single to left to break the strikeout string at three. But he was stranded on the bases, along with Russell Martin, who drew a two-out walk, when the big Viking fanned Richard Urena to end the inning.

The Mets capitalized on two, no, make that three, Toronto mistakes to take a one-run lead in the bottom of the second. The first mistake was that Jays’ starter Jaime Garcia walked the newly-arrived Mets’ catcher Devin Mesoraco, who came to New York from Cincinnati in return for the disgruntled Matt Harvey, whose days in the Big Apple were never very happy. Mesoraco looks like a pretty good fit for a team that was looking for any kind of a catcher at all. That he’s pretty good is a distinct bonus.

Anyway, walking the leadoff man is bad. Grooving a fast ball to a pitcher who can hit some is bad. Syndergaard hit a fast ball up and in down the left-field line, and Mesoraco, the catcher, lumbered all the way around to score because Teoscar Hernandez, who got to the ball quickly, made a terrible weak throw to the cutoff man for mistake three.

For some reason probably having to do with pointy-headed analytics, Mets’ manager Mickey Callaway bats his pitcher eighth, not ninth. I thought it was just because Thor isn’t such a bad hitter, but he did it with Zack Wheeler Wednesday night too.

Hitting ninth, the shortstop Amed Rosario, who can also hit some, hit a hard grounder to Urena at short for the second out, with Syndergaard holding second. So it’s not a given that Mesoraco would have scored subsequently even if the Hernandez throw had been accurate. Defensive positioning, pitch selection, approach at the plate all could have changed drastically if Rosario had been facing one out, runners at second and third. Conclusion: maybe Hernandez gave the Mets a run, and maybe they would have scored it anyway. In any case, the scorer didn’t give Hernandez an error for allowing Mesoraco to advance.

You might have expected the mighty Syndergaard to come out and dominate like in the first inning after knocking in the lead run, but it was just the opposite. He faltered, and the Jays put up two runs to take the lead back.

They even did it with a two-out base knock, a rare accomplishment that could have led to great things, but instead ended up being the only highlight for Toronto in a long and dreary night.

After plate umpire Bill Welke rather cruelly punched out Jaime Garcia on a pitch that was low and away, Curtis Granderson roused the crowd of sentimental New Yorkers who remember his happy years with the Mets by lining a single solidly into right. But when Josh Donaldson popped out with a massive swing for the second out, it looked like Grandy was going to die at first.

Then it got interesting. With Justin Smoak at the plate Granderson stole second. When Smoak grounded a single up the middle Granderson was stopped at third. Maybe rattled, Syndergaard nicked Teoscar Hernandez’ shirt to load the bases, prompting a coaching visit to the mound.

The time out didn’t help much because Syndergaard went 2-0 on Yangervis Solarte, and then threw ball three, a sinker low and away, but Solarte reached down and knocked a grounder into centre to score both Granderson and Smoak. Kevin Pillar ended the rally by flying out to right, but it was a nice little moment, if fleeting and forgotten.

We had a little while to savour the fact that we were in the lead in a close ball game. Garcia came out and fanned two and flew out the third to centre on just twelve pitches. Syndergaard also rallied to retire the side with two strikeouts in the top of the fourth, leading us to the bottom of the fourth.

Little did we know that this game was going to blow up in the face of Jaime Garcia and the Blue Jays.

Even after Jay Bruce hit a fluky opposite-field pop ground-rule double to lead off the inning there was no reason to suspect anything was up.

Mesoraco worked a walk on a 3-2 count for the second time against Garcia, and former Blue Jay Jose Reyes hit a soft single into centre to load the bases, bringing Thor back to the plate carrying his thunder-stick. This time he hit a sacrifice fly to centre; thus far he had driven in both Mets’ runs, in a tie ball game.

Then the floodgates broke. Rosario hit one off the top of the fence for a double that they had to review to see if it was a homer. It wasn’t; Mesoraco scored and Reyes stopped at third, giving the Mets the 3-2 lead.

Pete Walker visited Garcia, and it helped for the moment, as Brandon Nimmo went after the first pitch and popped up to third. But that was the last gasp for Garcia; he couldn’t get the third out.

Juan Lagares doubled to right to score Rosario and and Reyes, and Garcia was done at four and two thirds innings. Just to make it neat, Jake Petricka gave up a double to Asdrubal Cabrera to score Lagares and finish Garcia off at 6 runs allowed.

With one out in the top of the fifth, the Jays last gasp died on a hard shot by Hernandez that ended up in an easy double play to neutralize Donaldson’s double to the wall in left centre and Smoak’s subsequent walk. By the time Thor had finished off Hernandez he had reached 103 pitches and he was finished for the night, having dodged a few bullets but leaving with a 6-2 lead.

He needn’t have worried about getting the W. His mates bushwhacked Petricka, once again with two outs, for three more runs.

Deck McGuire, who’s been in the minors since the Jays drafted him in 2010, finally made his Toronto debut after coming back to the franchise from a brief stint with Cincinnati during which he made his first six appearances in the majors last year.

McGuire did a pretty good job mopping up for the Jays, pitching three and a third innings and holding the Mets off the board until he ran out of gas in the ninth and was tattooed for three more runs. He also distinguished himself by rapping a hard line single into left in the eighth inning when John Gibbons let him bat for himself in the eighth because he wanted him to finish the game on the mound, to save the exhausted bullpen stalwarts from having to put in more work.

WEDNESDAY RAKIN’ IN THE RAIN:

I have to take a moment to recognize two milestones that occurred on May sixteenth of this year. 118 years ago my mother, Loretta Marie Remski, was born in Detroit, Michigan. She died at the age of 78 in 1978. She was not a baseball fan, but she was a kind, generous, and nurturing mother to all of her ten children. Also on May sixteenth we celebrated the second birthday of our second grandson, O, a happy, intelligent, interesting little boy who has a lot of his great grand-mother in him, and whom she would have loved as much as we do.

I watched and annotated the first five innings of Wednesday’s game as usual, then listened to the rest of it, except for the ninth inning, as we slowly made our way across town for the after-school birthday celebration for O.

Wednesday was a day when no baseball game ever should have been played. If it had been started before the rain, and it rained like that, they would have stopped it. But you can blame this one on the greed of the officials of major league baseball. They have crammed the schedule so full of paying dates that it’s sometimes nearly impossible to make up a rained-out game. The fact that a game is an inter-league game makes it even more difficult, because there’s far less chance of the game being made up “in passing” so to speak.

All that being said, and I hope nobody coming out of that mess ended up getting hurt, I’m sure as hell glad they played that game, because it turns out that a little slick on the bat and a little slick on the ball makes the Toronto hitters much, much better.

After laying over and playing dead on Tuesday night under the threat of rain, the Blue Jays came back Wednesday afternoon in what counts in baseball as a torrential downpour, and turned the tables on New York, giving them a fearful beating and winding up winning 12 to 1, with unheralded Richard Urena administering the coup de gràcewith a three-run homer in the top of the ninth.

Meanwhile, Jay Happ pitched the performance of the month for Toronto. Hell, it seems like the performance of the century, when you think about it. All he did with a ball he couldn’t even grip properly was throw a two-hit shutout for seven innings with no walks and ten strikeouts, on 101 pitches.

I won’t say too much about Jay Happ and the Mets’ at-bats through the rest of this piece just because there’s little to say. Just keep in mind that while the Jays were piling up runs and putting in long innings at the bat, Happ was just toodling along, sitting the Mets hitters down equally effectively whether he had a long wait or a short wait between innings. Consider his performance to be like an anti-virus programme quietly running in the background, doing its thing, while other, flashier things, were going on in the foreground.

There was really no early hint about the way this game was going to turn out. Justin Smoak hit a two-out solo homer off Mets’ starter Zack Wheeler in the first inning, but that run stood up as the only score for the first three innings.

There wasn’t that much to choose from between Happ and Wheeler through those first three. Other than Smoak’s dinger, they basically went pitch for pitch. The only hard-hit ball off Happ came from the bat of Michael Conforto in the second, a drive to the base of the wall in centre that Kevin Pillar ran down and caught as he slid awkwardly into the wall.

In the third inning we saw the phenomenon of both pitchers striking out the side. After three Wheeler had thrown 41 pitches and Happ 43.

The Jays extended their lead in the top of the fourth when Teoscar Hernandez jacked one down the line and out to left to chase home Josh Donaldson’s leadoff walk. Kevin Pillar and Luke Maile picked up two-out base hits before Wheeler fanned Gio Urshela to end the inning.

In the bottom of the fourth Wilmer Flores hit a double to left centre that was the only hard-hit ball off Happ, and made him the only Mets’ batter to reach second base, but Happ induced a little grounder to second by Conforto, and fanned the rookie Phillip Evans to strand Flores.

In the fifth the Jays chased Wheeler, who must have reached the end of his usefuleness in the fourth, because he gave up three more runs in the fifth without getting an out.

Wheeler went to 3-1 and then walked Jay Happ leading off. Nothing makes a National League manager madder than his pitcher walking the other pitcher, especially leading off. Granderson doubled to the wall in right centre with Happ going to third. Donaldson ripped one up the middle to score Happ and move Grandy to third. Smoak hit one to dead centre over the head of Juan Lagares and Donaldson chased Grandy home with the fifth and sixth runs. Wheeler walked Hernandez, and manager Mickey Callaway called it a day for Wheeler with Toronto up 6-0.

Robert Gsellman came in and shut down Toronto to strand Smoak and Hernandez, but it was only a holding action.

A.J. Ramos came in to pitch the sixth inning for New York, and maybe Callaway shoulda stuck with Gsellman, because Ramos started by serving up a ground ball single to right by, you got it, Jay Happ, leading off, and the inning went downhill from there. Grandy doubled Happ to third for the second inning in a row; Donaldson scored him on a sacrifice fly that also moved Grandy to third. Smoak walked. Hernandez knocked in Grandy with a base hit, Smoak advancing to second. Solarte hit into a fielder’s choice after a video review requested by the Mets, with Smoak going to third. Pillar knocked Smoak in with a base hit to centre.

Finally, Jacob Rhame was brought in to pop up Luke Maile for the third out, but it was 9-0, and with Happ going two more innings it was all over.

Let’s just pause on one moment before moving ahead to the ninth. With one out in the seventh and Rhame still on the mound for New York, Jay Happ’s spot in the order came up again. Of course he hit, because he was going to pitch at least another inning, saving on a relief pitcher, and besides, why not, with a 9-0 lead? So with one out Happ came to the plate, swung at the first pitch, and lined a single to centre field, giving him two base hits and a walk in four plate appearances. Much searching of record books ensued, to try to find another two-hit game by a Toronto pitcher.

So in the ninth inning, with lefty Buddy Bauman on the mound for the Mets in his second inning of work, Maile led off with his second hit of the game. He looked destined to be stranded as Bauman retired Urshela on a deep drive to centre on which Lagares made a brave if foolhardy spectacular catch, crashing into the wall, and Morales on a fly ball to left. But Richard Urena, who is capable of such doings though we tend to forget that, ripped a line drive into the seats in left for a final insult to the Mets, giving the Jays the same number of runs as the Mets scored in Tuesday’s game.

For however it matters, Danny Barnes served up a solo homer to Brandon Nimmo in the bottom of the ninth to break the Jays’ shutout, after Aaron Loup had pitched a clean eighth.

So the Jays scored a split in the two-game series with the Mets, and even won the runs-scored battle by a slim 14-13 margin. All played under either threatening or weeping clouds, a not-quite-wasted short visit by the Blue Jays to the Big Apple.

Check out these pitching lines against Toronto in the last two games of the Red Sox series last weekend:

David Price: 5.1 innings pitched, 1 run, 5 hits, 3 walks, 6 strikeouts, 93 pitches

Drew Pomeranz: 4 innings pitched, 3 runs, 5 hits, 5 walks, 6 strikeouts, 103 pitches

The question is, did Toronto win one or both of these games to win or sweep the series?

The answer, which is no trick and no joke, is: Neither.

And that’s because even after the thrilling Friday-night twelve-inning walkoff, the Toronto offence only mustered five runs in total in the succeeding two games of the series.

They couldn’t put away Price, who spent all of his time on the mound trying to throw junk at the outside corner against right-handed batters, most of which missed the mark and just looked weak.

They couldn’t put away Pomeranz, who spent all of his time on the mound trying to avoid throwing the next pitch. (If I hated what I do as much as he seems to, I’d find something else to do with my time, wouldn’t you?)

I wonder if there’s anybody still out there who thinks the Blue Jays should have made a serious bid for David Price. He has not been a happy camper in Boston, and he certainly hasn’t given them the performance that they expected when they signed him.

His rocky relationship with the organization and the fan base got a little rockier when he had to miss his last start, in the “crucial” series with the Yankees, because of a “mild” carpal tunnel problem.

Without getting too far into the details, one reporter had written a story recently about how many of the Red Sox players, Price chief among them, spend a lot of off-hours playing a particular video game. After Price was scratched from his start on May ninth against the Yanks because of the carpal tunnel issue, a Boston Globebaseball writer, Dan Shaughnessy, wrote a column in which he linked the earlier story to Price’s reported injury.

Much discussion and denial ensued, and Price had to go very much on the defensive about the whole issue, making the rather shaky medical suggestion that because he’s played video games his whole life and this is a new condition there can’t be a connection.

Yeah, and a guy who eats and drinks and smokes to excess for forty years and has a heart attack when he’s sixty isn’t going to blame it on his bad habits because the heart attack just happened and he’s been overindulging all his life and getting away with it. Duh.

So, should Toronto have shelled out in excess of 217 million over seven years to David Price to get him to stay after 2015? Nah, don’t bother to answer. Boston can have him, right?

So he started for the Sox on Saturday,

Did pretty well for the first couple of innings, one baserunner, a walk to Josh Donaldson in the first, and striking out the side in the second. But here’s the thing. I thought he was throwing a lot of soft stuff, and when I counted it up he threw only 8 fast balls in 28 pitches.

The other thing was that starting with the strikeout of Anthony Alford to end the second, he was throwing a lot of pitches away, and not hard (on Alford it amounted to five pitches out of six).

In the third, after the Sox put up a three-spot on Marco Estrada, Price escaped a bullet, a bullet hit by Donaldson. He fanned Luke Maile leading off on a 3-2 pitch, then gave up base hits to Gio Urshela, playing shortstop on Saturday, and Teoscar Hernandez. Donaldson came up and hit a bullet right to the glove of Xander Bogaerts at short. Urshela, with a normal leadoff at second, was a dead duck for the double play.

But it was the fourth inning that skewed any chance of Price going deep in this game. He only gave up one run on two base hits, but he walked two and went deep into too many counts, and threw 28 pitches.

Even pitching with a lead, Chris Sale he is not. He got through the fifth quickly, but only lasted two batters into the sixth, as Justin Smoak greeted him with a monster home run, and after he retired Kevin Pillar on a foul popup to first that Hanley Ramirez made a nice catch on, he was finished for the day.

The problem with Toronto in this game, in fact in both games, is that the Jays’ starters continued to struggle, and just could not contain the get-on-base-and-run game that the Red Sox used both days, as they did all last year, to extend their early leads.

And as the Toronto hitters continued to fail to take advantage of opportunities off a not terribly impressive Boston bullpen (excepting Craign Kimbrel and Joe Kelly, who of course can’t take every inning, especially when their starters can’t get out of the fifth or sixth inning), Boston would continue to capitalize on leadoff walks and leadoff base hits.

On Saturday as soon as they turned the lineup over the first time on a hitherto effective Marco Estrada, the gloves came off. Mookie Betts and Andrew Benintendi hit back-to-back doubles and Ramirez hit one out.

The Jays got one back in their half of the fourth on the RBI single by Anthony Alford that cashed in Price’s walks that had put a runner in scoring positon.

But then the Sox extended in the sixth on a quick double by Bogaerts followed by a base hit by Rafael Devers, so when Smoak hit his shot Toronto were still two behind.

Any hope of tying it up with a bloop and a blast in the ninth was washed away when Betts and Beni(intendi) struck like lightning against Ryan Tepera after he’d retired the first two batters. A Betts double and a Benintendi single and it was 5-2.

Kimbrel came out for the save with fire in his eye. A comebacker and two punchouts over ten pitches and it was in the books for the Bosox, which left the Blue Jays looking to Joe Biagini versus Drew Pomeranz on Sunday for a series win.

Which was like waiting for rain that would never come.

If there are two pitchers in all of baseball more deliberate and reluctant to throw to the plate, I can’t imagine who they might be.

And yet, Sunday’s script was pretty much a carbon copy of Saturday’s.

Biagini gave up a two-run dinger to J.D. Martinez in the first, but still got through the first two innings on only 28 pitches with three strikeouts. You could almost think that, one bad pitch aside, we were on to something.

Then he came out for the third. And threw 41 pitches. He only gave up one run, if you can believe it, on one hit, but those three walks, well . . .

So we were down 3-0 and there was little hope that the next inning, or two at the most, would be any different for Biagini.

And the only thing that changed was the rhythm, for a moment. He had a quick ten-pitch fourth, but couldn’t get out of the fifth, finishing at four and two thirds, four runs, only four hits, but three walks and three strikeouts on 90 pitches.

Drew Pomeranz was no better than Biagini. He needed 26 pitches and a great play by Brock Holt at second, who flagged down a would-be base hit by Yanvergis Solarte with a runner at second, to get out of the first inning.

In the second he buckled down and struck out two after letting the first two on. The third inning was particularly puzzling to watch, as Pomeranz meandered his way through 32 pitches while allowing only a four-pitch walk to Smoak. How do you even do that? By comparison his last full inning was a breeze, only 16 pitches to take him to 84 for four innings and set him up for his early exit in the fifth.

Though the Jays finally pushed Pomeranz out of the game in the fifth inning, the three runs they scored off three hits and a walk at the top of the inning, and a subsequent RBI single by Russell Martin off reliever Hector Velazquez were all they got, as the Sox bullpen wobbled but didn’t break over the last four innings.

Once again the Sox picked up an insurance run in the eighth inning off Sam Gaviglio, who put Benintendi on with a leadoff walk, had him steal second and move to third on a sharp base hit by Martinez.

Tyler Clippard came in to try to hold the Bostons at bay, but he dropped a bouncer back to the mound that was a pretty sure shot for a double play and Benintendi came in with the fifth run while Clippard took the out at first and berated himself.

With a two-run lead Kimbrel finally got a break after pitching in the last two Yankee games and the Saturday game in Toronto. Joe Kelly came in to pick up the easiest save in the history of saves*, retiring the Jays on four pitches.

*I don’t know if it was, actually, but you could only go one pitch better, right?

Chris Sale aside, and remember that the Jays eventually won his start, Boston has very mediocre starting pitching at the moment as some of its stars continue to underperform, so it’s a measure of how poorly the Jays have been hitting in recent games that they could only take one of three from the Sox.

Off to see the Mets in Flushing, but we hear it’s going to be wet.

Flushing? Wet? Sorry.

NOTE FROM YER HUMBLE SCRIBE: I am skipping Game 37 and going on to Game 38, and for good reason. I was in a state of denial when Jay Happ’s situation in the first inning of Thursday’s rubber game was transformed from a relatively mundane first and third with two outs into “OMG, he just gave up a grand salami!”

A game that starts like that can’t turn out any way other than awful. I watched, 1 kept score, I muttered at the screen at all the salient points, but honestly, folks, I can’t write about that game, I really can’t.

So, here: Seattle won the rubber match of the three-game Mariners-Jays series by a ridiculous 9-3 score. There were no redeeming features in this game. That’s all I have to say about it.

So I wrote that Luke Maile was the star of Wednesday night’s win against Seattle.

If he was the star of that game, what does that make him after he hit the walkoff homer against the Red Sox Friday night? . . . After hitting the tying homer.? . . . After knocking in the second run of the game? Not to mention that he tagged out Hanley Ramirez on a play at the plate.

Even when Maile did something wrong, it was big. As when he fired a no-hoper to first all the way down the right field line that allowed Brock Holt to score from first and the batter, Sandy Leon, to reach third after striking out.

After the game Maile said, “Well, after I threw them a triple, the stupidest mistake of my career, I had to do something to make up for it.” And boy, did he ever!

We would have been perfectly happy with the tying home run off Chris Sale in the seventh, but then he went out and walked off the game in the twelfth.

Luke Maile can make a stupid mistake behind the plate on my team any time he wants!

This was a strange game in so many ways.

If I told you that Chris Sale pitched a complete game against Toronto with 15 strikeouts and a string of 15 consecutive outs, what would you think?

Sure, so would I: Boston wouldn’t need more than three runs to chalk up a win.

But like I said it was a strange game. Aaron Sanchez started for Toronto, and once again struggled to find his way. He started the game by walking Mookie Betts on a 3-1 pitch. It is inevitable that if a Toronto pitcher walks Betts in the first inning, he will score. When Andrew Benintendi hit a single into right, Betts was going with the pitch, so ended up at third with nobody out.

Hanley Ramirez swung over two Sanchez changeups, and then took a marginal 97 mph fast ball that might have been outside, but plate umpire Ed Hickox liked it. With one out, Benintendi stole second with J. D. Martinez at the plate because that’s what Boston does.

Sanchez got Martinez and Xander Bogaerts on ground outs to end the inning, but Betts scored on the Martinez grounder to first. When the Red Sox start the first inning with a Betts walk and a Benintendi hit-and-run plus stolen base you’re actually happy when they only score one.

And one is often all that Chris Sale needs, but again, this was a strange day. Teoscar Hernandez rudely belted Sale’s first pitch, a get-me-over fast ball, into left centre for a double. Josh Donaldson grounded a 1-1 pitch up the middle for a base hit to score Hernandez.

Well, that was refreshing! Boston went to all that trouble for a run, and the Jays answered on the first four pitches from Chris Sale.

Stung, as you might imagine, Sale fanned Yangervis Solarte and Justin Smoak, and retired Kevin Pillar on a fly ball to centre for the third out, but it wasn’t a typical Chris Sale first inning.

It was Sanchez who settled down right away, giving up a base hit to Eduardo Nunez after an easy comebacker and before two popups to Lourdes Gurriel Jr..

But Sale still struggled to settle into his routine. Kendrys Morales led off the second with a liner to the right-field corner that bounced out for a ground-rule double. Anthony Alford flied out deep to right and Morales alertly advanced to third. That brought Luke Maile to the plate. Sale threw him a changeup in the dirt, and then another changeup off the plate outside. Maile reached out and sharply lined the outside change into right for the inning’s second opposite-field hit and Morales trotted home.

With only four outs recorded so far in the game Sale was down 2-1 and suffering the indignity of a visit from his pitching coach in the second inning. Sale got out of the inning by fanning Gurriel Jr., letting Hernandez reach on his own throwing error, and fanning a very disgruntled Donaldson on a disputed checked swing. Remember the Donaldson strikeout.

Move ahead to the top of the fourth inning, arguably the worst defensive inning of the year for Toronto. You cannot give the Boston Red Sox five outs and hope something good will come of it.

Bogaerts led off with a blast to centre that tied the game. Nothing you can do about that, just be glad he was leading off. Moreland followed with a single to left centre after a long at-bat. Nunez hit into a force of Moreland for the first out.

Brock Holt, who is as fast as he is annoying, hit a perfect double-play ball to Solarte at second, a hard shot that was gloved cleanly. But Solarte tossed underhanded to Gurriel Jr. at the bag. The ball came off his fingertips in a slow, high arc that threatened to sail over the shortstop’s head, and the latter by dint of a big stretch managed to catch the ball and complete the force.

But the double play was out of the question, and Holt was at first.

Then Sanchez struck out Sandy Leon with a ball in the dirt, and chaos ensued. The ball dribbled away to Maile’s left while Holt took off from first and Leon chugged down the line. By the time Maile found the ball he should have just eaten it, but he tried for Leon, and heaved the ball wildly all the way down the first base line.

To compound the problem, Hernandez didn’t move to back up the throw. I’m tempted to make a joke about t-ballers and dandelions in the outfield, but I won’t. Hernandez is a rookie, and deserves a break, especially after walloping Chris Sale’s first pitch of the game.

Long story short, Holt scored and Leon ended up on third, maybe thinking about calling for oxygen from the dugout.

Mookie Betts made the fifth and final out by flying out to right field, where Hernandez had returned to duty.

Don’t give Chris Sale a gift. Ever. Remember the punchout of Donaldson to end the second inning?

That was the first of fifteen consecutive outs collected by Sale, which took him all the way to two outs in the top of the seventh and Luke Maile striding to the plate, still wearing the goat’s horns for his epic error.

Meanwhile Aaron Sanchez struggled through to five full innings on 96 pitches. He gave up one last walk in the top of the fifth, leaving him with a line of two earned runs, five hits, three walks and four strikeouts.

Then the bullpen took over for Toronto, and boy, did they take over. John Axford erased a leadoff walk with a double play and threw ten pitches in the sixth. Seung-Hwan Oh pitched a perfect seventh with two strikeouts on thirteen pitches. Ryan Tepera one strikeout, twelve pitches, retired the side. Tyler Clippard threw a perfect ninth with two strikeouts, both looking, on twelve pitches.

Then, with all of the usual suspects used up and—spoiler alert—the game going to extra innngs, handsome right-hander Sam Gaviglio made his Blue Jays’ debut in the top of the tenth, and what a debut it was.

But first let’s go back to Maile striding to the plate in the seventh. Two out, nobody on. Sale threw him a slow slider low in the zone for a strike. Then he tried to steal strike two with a fat fast ball up in the zone. Maile put a swing on it and watched it go, right into the Toronto bullpen over the fence in left centre. Tie game! Salvation for Maile!

Locked up in a tie, and Toronto’s bullpen throwing darts, Chris Sale soldiered on. At the end of seven he was at 94 pitches. He only needed ten for the eighth, and looking at him on the bench you knew he would devour manager Alex Cora alive if he so much as tried to shake hands with him after eight. He was in it for the long haul.

And it almost cost him a loss in the ninth inning. He had retired four in a row after the Maile homer, three of them by strikeouts. This brought Kevin Pillar to the plate, hitless so far in the game.

In a close game Pillar has been clutch for Toronto, and it seems even more so if he hasn’t had a base hit yet. So Sale goes 1-0 on him, and then throws a really good fast ball, low on the outside corner. But Pillar was determined to stay with the pitch and take it where it wanted to go. He hit a booming drive to right centre that hit high off the scoreboard.

Pillar was bound for third base almost right out of the box, a risk worth taking at this point, and he damn near made it. Perfect throws from Benintendi, who took it off the wall, and Holt, who made the relay to Devers at third, were needed to cut him down by the slimmest of margins, confirmed, of course, after a video review.

Morales grounded out to end the ninth on Sale’s 116^thpitch. Sale was well and truly done, and had not conquered the Blue Jays. Nor had they conquered him.

Gaviglio, who had been scheduled to start for Buffalo on Friday night, was brilliant. He pitched three full innings through the twelfth, gave up one hit, hit one batter, plunking Bogaerts right on the side of the rib cage, which obviously hurt, struck out three, and threw only 44 pitches.

If our sixth fill-in starter is going to be a big Italian-American from the Buffalo rotation, it looks like Joe Biagini has some serious competition.

A concerning note was that in the tenth inning Betts hit an easy hopper to short that Gurriel Jr. handled well but bobbled away when making the transfer to his throwing hand. Of course Betts immediately stole second, but died there as Gaviglio shut down Benintendi and Ramirez on easy chances.

Matt Barnes had a shaky tenth for Boston, and he was lucky that the game wasn’t lost then, as he walked the first two hitters he faced, Curtis Granderson, finally coming off the bench to hit for Alford now that the lefty was gone, and Maile.

Manager John Gibbons tried to get a bunt out of Dalton Pompey and it was a disaster, as he fouled off the first attempt, and was ruled to have swung at the second.

But then Gibbie did something incomprehensible, or that was caused by dozing on the bench. He left the bunt sign on with two strikes, and of course Pompey bunted foul for the third strike and the runners had to hold first and second.

[Rule review here: if a batter bunts a bunt attempt foul with two strikes on him, it’s a strikeout. This rule was probably created to keep skilled bat handlers from fouling off dozens of pitches from the bunt position. Very rarely does a hitter get a bunt sign with two strikes on him.]

Barnes fanned Gurriel Jr. and retired Hernandez on a little flare to right, so the two walks never left first and second.

Carson Smith pitched the Toronto eleventh and gave up Pillar’s second hit, a two-out single to right. Pillar stole second, but Morales stranded him there striking out.

Gaviglio gave up a leadoff single to Brock Holt in the top of the twelfth but stranded him at first with two flyball outs sandwiched around fanning Mookie Betts. The good thing about all of this was that the Jays had been knocking on the door, and Gaviglio was sailing in smooth waters.

Alex Cora brought in the lefty Brian Johnson to face Granderson, but Johnson lost him on four pitches, bringing the now-absolved Luke Maile back to the plate for another shot at it.

Johnson’s first pitch was pretty good, a fast ball down the middle, but right at the bottom of the zone. Maile’s swing was better, though, as he went down, got it, and flared it a little bit to the right, like a controlled-fade chip shot. Only a lot harder.

If you’re a Red Sox fan there must have been nothing sadder than watching Benintendi and Betts criss-cross uselessly in right centre as the ball soared into the second deck.

Did the sight make me sad? Not so much.

There were two heroes on this night, and their identities are obvious: Sam Gaviglio, who picked up his first win for Toronto, and Luke Maile, who did, well, just about everything.

How wolfishly the Blue Jays’ hitters must have felt as they contemplated facing the soft-tossing slants of journeyman lefty Wade LeBlanc Wednesday night, 24 hours after they’d been overwhelmed by the power of James Paxton.

So how’d that work out for them? Not so good, it turns out, as LeBlanc, the starter that nobody wants but everybody could use, twirled and spun and kept Toronto off balance and behind on the scoreboard for five innings.

With the injuries to Curtis Granderson and Steve Pearce, and the falloff in production from the promising start of Lourdes Gurriel Jr. , the leadoff spot for Toronto has fallen by default to Teoscar Hernandez.

It only took Hernandez three pitches to end the hitless spell after Paxton’s no-hitter Tuesday night. Showing a good approach, he slapped an outside 0-2 changeup on the ground through the vacant right side of the infield for a base hit.

So simple. How come nobody could do it the night before? Oh, yeah, Paxton. Right.

Unfortunately, in his own way LeBlanc was nearly as effective as Paxton. He went 3-1 on Josh Donaldson, fought back to 3-2, and then threw a cutter that may or may not have been on the low inside black, but in any case Donaldson deigned not to swing, and plate umpire Quinn Wolcott deigned to ring him up. Yangervis Solarte then hit a bouncer back to LeBlanc that the latter adroitly turned into a double-play, with Robinson Cano doing the honours at second.

Thus was wasted the first base hit the Blue Jays had mustered since Sunday afternoon in Minnesota. As I recall, they didn’t tot up a whole bunch on that day, either.

The Hernandez hit was the only safety allowed by LeBlanc until the fourth, and only one other Jay reached base in the first three innings, Gurriel Jr., whose fly ball to left centre got swept up in the swirling wind currents and fell for an error charged to Dee Gordon, the centre fielder. (Did I mention that the dome was open for the first time Wednesday night?)

Unfortunately for Gurriel, he was so dead certain that Dalton Pompey’s one-out liner to left centre was going to fall in that he broke too far off second and was doubled up

by Guillermo Heredia, who made a nice catch and threw behind the runner.

By the time LeBlanc got to the bottom of the fourth, he had a little wiggle room, with a two-run lead, as we shall see, so he was able to emerge from the fourth, his only tough inning, still on top.

Once again it was Hernandez leading off with a base hit, but this time it left the yard for his sixth of the year, and the Jays were on the board for the first time since the ninth inning Sunday against Tampa Bay. LeBlanc gave up two more base hits with one out after the homer, singles to Solarte and Pillar, but managed to pick up fielder’s choices from Smoak and Martin after each hit to limit the damage.

LeBlance was back on track and sailing in the fifth, throwing only eight pitches to get two ground ball outs and fan Pompey. It should be said though that Pompey was called out on a checked swing that looked pretty checked to the untrained eye.

To everyone’s surprise except the Mariners’ coaching staff, LeBlanc did not come out for the sixth inning. He’d only had one bad inning, and had reached a measly 58 pitches for five innings, but it turns out that he’s transitioning back into the rotation, and was on a limited pitch count.

Good thing for the Jays, because maybe they could hope for a little more against the Seattle bullpen.

Now, Jaime Garcia, Toronto’s starter. What can I say about him in this game, other than that it was a stereotypical start for a lefty? (Back in the old days, before the likes of Chris Sale, or even Jay Happ, all lefties were considered to be wild and wooly until proven otherwise.)

When we talk about Jaime Garcia’s performance in this game, we have to talk about Luke Maile, too. If there was ever a night when a catcher’s performance behind the plate resembled a country bear auditioning for a spot as a dancer in a Russian circus, it was the act Maile had to put on while Garcia was on the mound.

The game actually started with the dreaded strikeout on a wild pitch allowing the batter to reach. That’s because Garcia’s strikeout pitch in the dirt was so wicked that Maile didn’t have a chance on it.

That leadoff batter was Dee Gordon, and of course this being the Mariners he would come around to score. In this case, almost instantly, as Jean Segura doubled him home and took third on the throw home. So Garcia was down 1-0 after two batters, and was looking at worse to come.

But then something funny happened. The Jays’ defence stepped up, and Garcia worked his way through with some help from Maile, who kept the ball in front of him. Robinson Cano flew out to right, but the wind pushed the ball in so that Hernandez had to charge it, and he was flying toward the infield when he caught it, forcing Segura to hold at third.

Nelson Cruz hit a one-hop shot that should have been past Gurriel at short, who was playing at normal depth because the Jays were conceding the run to get the out. But Gurriel snagged the ball, and it was hit so hard that when he came up with a strong throw to the plate, Segura, who runs well, stopped cold halfway to the plate and was tagged out by Maile coming up the line without even a rundown. Two outs!

But Garcia wasn’t out of the woods yet. Not this night. With Cruz on first on the fielder’s choice, he walked Mitch Haniger on a 3-1 pitch. Then he hit Kyle Seager to load the bases.

This prompted an extraordinary moment: a first-inning mound visit by manager John Gibbons who was not taking his pitcher out of the game. It would appear that he came out to, as my Dad used to say years ago, to “talk turkey” to Garcia. It must have worked, because Garcia froze Ryon Healy on a beautiful curve on the outside corner with his twenty-fifth pitch to end the inning and escape, improbably, with only one Mariners’ run on the board.

And that’s just the kind of night that Jaime Garcia had on the mound.

He had a relatively easy second inning, aided by another baserunning mistake, this time by Guillermo Heredia, on first with a one-out walk. For some reason he broke for second while Garcia was holding the ball, and he was an easy out, pitcher to first to short. Only 14 pitches in the second.

But then there was the third, when the Mariners picked up another run, and it could have been much worse. The run was unearned, and another example of the crazy situations where the pitcher made the error that caused the run to be unearned.

Leading off, Segura topped one to the right of the mound, an obvious infield single. But Garcia decided to make the throw anyway, and it was worse than any of his wild ones to the plate. Segura ended up on second, moved to third on Cano’s groundout to Smoak, and then had to hold third when Cruz hit another hot one, this time to Martin at third, who threw him out for the second out.

Did I say Martin at third? Yup, Russell Martin had the start at third, with Maile behind the plate and Donaldson as the DH, reportedly because Donaldson’s “sore arm” needed some more rest.

Two things about Martin at third: first, he played one hell of a game there, and handled everything that came his way, including some really tough chances. Second, he must have been really happy that it was Maile catching Garcia, rather than himself.

But back to Jaime, who wasn’t out of it yet. Haniger plated Segura with a ground-rule double to left-centre, and then Garcia walked Seager on a 3-2 pitch before retiring his boy Healy on another grounder to Martin at third.

Garcia was now at three innings, 64 pitches, and one earned run. Heartened, he breezed the fourth inning on ten pitches, then walked two but didn’t give up a run in the fifth, finishing with a line of 5 innings pitched, one run, three hits, five walks, three strikeouts, and 92 pitches. It was a gutsy performance by Garcia to keep his team in the game, but it was no more gutsy than that of Luke Maile behind the plate.

Seung-Hwan Oh came in for Garcia in the sixth and absolutely died the drama down, imposing his calm visage on the flow of the game. Three up, three down, as has become the norm for him. Notably, the third out was a little hopper to third by the speedy Heredia. Russell Martin charged it, barehanded it, and fired a strong throw to first to nip the batter by a hair. Vintage Josh Donaldson from the vacationing catcher.

Hmm. Morales to wherever, Josh to DH, Martin at third two games out of three, Maile behind the dish two games out of three . . . Ya think? I’d do it in a New York minute.

(Whatever the hell that expression means. Wait—we have Google now: it probably originated outside New York, maybe in the sixties, and it refers to the frenzy of the lifestyle of New Yorkers. Perhaps best defined, as in an old Johnny Carson joke, as the time it takes for the car behind you to honk after the light has turned green.)

In the bottom of the sixth the Jays lost a golden opportunity to tie the game on a really strange NewYork umpire’s review. Hernandez led off against reliever Chasen Bradford—put a “t” in his first name and he sounds like one of the judges from the Salem Witch Trials—with another hit, this time an opposite field double to right. The ball skipped into foul territory, ran down the wall, and was grabbed by a young woman in the front row.

This person was apparently unaware of the First Commandment of sitting in front row seats at the ball yard: Thou shalt not touch a ball in play hit by the home team! And she was wearing a Blue Jays shirt, too. Sheesh!

Anyway, the ump’s called time, and, amazingly, pointed to third, where Hernandez had been heading, having rounded second under a full head of steam. You see, this wasn’t a ground rule double, but a case of fan intereference, in which case the umpires can place the batter-runner where they think appropriate.

But that old pooh-pooh Seattle manager Scott Service raised a stink about it and the umpires went to the headsets. It was most disappointing when the decision came back to place Teoscar at second.

Still, at second with nobody out he should have scored, but didn’t. The key at bat was that Donaldson was punched out yet again on a checked swing. Hernandez moved up briskly on a deep fly to centre by Solarte, but got there with two outs. After a walk to Smoak and a pitching change, Nick Vincent replacing Bradford, Pillar lined out to right and Hernandez died on third.

John Axford pitched the seventh for Toronto and benefitted from two more fielding gems to keep the deficit to one. Martin again sparkled with a quick glove to his left to snag a hot one-hopper from Dee Gordon, and Kevin Pillar almost made a diving catch on a sinking liner from Segura, but kept the ball in front of him so that it was a single instead of a triple or worse.

Toronto ended up with a runner at third and two outs in the bottom of the seventh, and this time it was Hernandez, who couldn’t come through again, flying out to right on the first pitch to leave Maile on third after a two-out triple.

Wait—Maile, a triple? Oh, yeah, it was a turf bounce of a base hit that went high over Heredia’s head in left because he charged it too hard. Still, it was the shortest throw to third, and you have to give the hard-working backup catcher full marks for not resting content with a double.

Too bad there were already two outs when it happened, though Vincent had been lucky that Gordon had made a sliding catch on a Gurriel drive prior to Maile’s hit, or it would already have been tied. Pompey walked on a 3-2, setting up a first and third for Hernandez, who skied out.

The M’s got a runner to second with a walk and stolen base off Ryan Tepera in the top of the eighth, but he shut them down after that. The second out was a Ryon Healy grounder to third on which Martin showed off his strong arm. Frisky as a colt out there, that kid! Tepera finished off his inning by fanning Mike Zunino with his trademark nasty diving slider.

This brought us to the bottom of the eighth, when everything changed. I mean everything. It was like an artillery barrage, except that the Mariners’ setup man, Juan Nicasio, didn’t have a trench to dive to for cover.

It was boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Little Boom! Boom! Four doubles and Kevin Pillar’s single on which he was thrown out at second protecting Smoak while he scored. I’ll explain the reference to protecting in a minute.

As Nicasio was going to a 2-2 count on Donaldson leading off, Buck and Tabby were gushing, as they do, about how well Nicasio had been doing as setup for Seattle. Then on 2-2 Donaldson hit a liner to left centre and hustled it into a double.

Nicasio went to 3-2 on Solarte, hitting left, who slashed one the opposite way to left for a double that scored Donaldson. While Seattle was getting a review of whether Solarte popped off the bag, John Gibbons sent Anthony Alford in to run for Solarte, carrying the lead run. An interesting question arises: Alford was announced into the game in effect before Solarte was officially safe; if the call was overturned and Solarte out, had Alford been used or not? (This is right up there with the tree falling in the forest . . . )

Problem resolved: Solarte was ruled safe and Alford took his place at second. Smoak boomed a double to right centre to score Alford.

Pillar hit one of his patented shots into the left-field corner, but Heredia got to it and played it quickly; Pillar, who might otherwise have stayed at first, wanted to make sure that the ponderous Smoak would score, so he tried for second, drew a throw, and was called out while Smoak scored.

That’s what I was referring to earlier when I mentioned Pillar giving himself up to protect the other runner.

With the bases empty and one out, Nicasio gave up another drive to left centre by that hustling third baseman Martin who dove into second with a flourish for the fourth double of the inning. His hit also ended the night for Juan Nicasio, who came in to protect a 2-1 lead and left down 4-2 with a runner on second and one out.

This brought super-sub catcher Luke Maile to the plate. Maile shook off all his aches and pains from five innings blocking Garcia’s junk, strode up to the plate after the new pitcher, Erik Goeddel, had fanned Gurriel Jr. . Maile shot one through the left side of the infield to drive in the frisky Martin with Toronto’s fifth run. Maile took second on the throw to the plate and advanced to third on a wild pitch.

But for the second inning in a row Luke Maile died at third. Curtis Granderson, hitting for Pompey, struck out to end the inning. I doubt that Maile cared he hadn’t scored this time.

What’s really neat about taking the lead in the bottom of the eighth inning is all you have to do is run out your closer and most times it’s over. But who would be the closer with Osuna on the shelf?

If you look back over the box score, there were only two real possibilities left, Aaron Loup and Tyler Clippard. Gibbie wanted to reserve the option of bringing in the lefty mid-inning if needed, so Clippard got the call.

Clippard gave up a base hit to Ben Gamel, who hit for Heredia. But then Gordon skied to right, and Clippard fanned Segura and Cano to end the game in impressive fashion.

So, where do you go with the accolades for this one? Jaime Garcia, for fighting through five innings? Luke Maile, for fighting Garcia for five innings, hitting a triple, and an RBI single? The whole bullpen? Or the meat of the order for crushing it in the eighth?

How about all of the above? “A” for effort for the whole team on this one.

How many levels of irony can be found in the fact that James Paxton of the Seattle Mariners threw a no-hitter at the Toronto Blue Jays Tuesday night in Toronto?

First, as everybody in Canada knows by now, Paxton is Canadian, born in Ladner, British Columbia. (This was, by the way, the second no-hitter by a Canadian in MLB history. The first was by Phillies pitcher Dick Fowler in September 1945, in Fowler’s first game after returning to the Phillies from duty with the Canadian Army during the Second World War.)

Second, though it never came close to a signing, in 2009 Paxton was drafted by the Blue Jays a year before he joined the Seattle organization.

Third, though it was very nice indeed that Paxton pitched his no-hitter in Toronto, had he done it at home in Seattle against the Blue Jays, there would have been a lot more Canadians in the stands to cheer him on, as only 20,513 fans turned out for Tuesday’s game in Toronto, a significantly lower number than the typical Toronto fan draw for a game in Seattle.

On top of all of this, Paxton may felt just the tiniest bit of vindication after victimizing the Blue Jays, since it had been a slip of the tongue by a young Blue Jays general manager, Alex Anthopoulos, in 2009 that had cost Paxton his senior year of baseball eligibility at the University of Kentucky.*

So there was a lot of baggage to set aside when Paxton took the ball for Seattle against the Jays Tuesday night.

But once he started wheeling and dealing, it was all real baseball, right in the here-and-now, no room for back stories, what ifs, or whatevers.

Paxton fanned Teoscar Hernandez and Josh Donaldson to lead off the game, and breezed through the first two innings on 20 pitches.

But after three batters in the third, Paxton found himself face to face with pitching coach Mel Stottlemyer Jr. He had just walked Kendrys Morales on four pitches, given up a very long and loud fly ball to centre to Lourdes Gurriel Jr. , and walked Anthony Alford on a 3-1 pitch.

Whatever Stottlemyer said to Paxton was pretty effective, because he quickly got the last two outs of the inning, and only gave up a one-out walk to Justin Smoak in the fourth, and never allowed another baserunner.

In Paxton’s last start on May second against Oakland, he went seven shutout innings, gave up five hits, walked one, struck out sixteen, and threw 105 pitches. He left the game with a 2-0 lead, and then watched his bullpen cough up a win for the Athletics.

Tuesday I guess he decided that he needed to do it all himself. I mean, if you go scoreless and hitless for nine innings, the odds are pretty good you’re going to snag a win for yourself, right?

Besides the fact that he chalked up a W with the no-hitter, he was significantly more efficient, needing only 99 pitches to navigate the 27 outs. It’s an interesting study in the difference between power pitching and effective pitching. Sure, it’s effective to strike out sixteen, but if Oakland had been able to bunch their five hits, they might’ve scored a run or two.

On the other hand, if you throw outs without building up a high strikeout total, you obviously can maintain an energy reserve to call on when needed. Paxton’s ninth inning, when he could smell the oats in the barn, is illustrative of this. Anthony Alford fouled out to right on one pitch. Teoscar Hernandez fanned on three pitches. Josh Donaldson grounded out sharply to Kyle Seager on the third pitch, an 0-2 count, to finish things off.

This took seven pitches, and the amazing thing is that he never threw a ball, and he cranked up the velocity for each batter. The one pitch to Alford was clocked at 95.5. The three pitches to Hernandez ranged from 96.4 to 97. The three pitches to Donaldson came in at 98.3, 99, and 99.5. That’s right, he increased the gas on each of the last three batters.

I mentioned that Donaldson grounded sharply to Seager at third for the final out. Another significant aspect in any no-hitter has to be the defence behind the pitcher. As a general note, Paxton, who likes to take the ball and serve it up without a lot of fuss, is the kind of pitcher who keeps his defence on their toes.

Good thing for that, because they made some great plays behind him. Naturally, as the game progresses and the possibility of a no-hitter grows, the pressure grows on the defence. It’s just not the same that somebody made a great play in the second inning, when the pressure was minimal, as when he has to really pull one out in the late innings.

In that framework, we have to highlight three plays that were made, four, really, that helped bring the no-hitter to fruition. The seventh inning was show time for Seattle’s infield. Yangervis Solarte led off with a tough grounder to short which Jean Segura handled but threw low to first. Ryon Healy made a terrific scoop to secure the out.

After Justin Smoak flew out to centre, Kevin Pillar came to the plate. If I was going to bet on anyone to break up this one, it would have been Pillar, not because of his good numbers, but because he’s been even better in the late innings and in the clutch. This time was no different. On a 2-2 pitch, Pillar hit a trademark double down the line into the left-field corner . . . except that Kyle Seager dove instinctively, snagged it when it was already past him, leapt to his feet, spun, and threw almost without looking. The throw was low, but once again Healy dug it out, and came off the bag with a huge fist pump. And he wasn’t even pitching.

There was only last sparkler in the eighth, when Kendrys Morales spiked one into left centre but Dee Gordon was up for it, racing over to cut it off, skidding on his knees, and picking it off for the out.

So that’s how Canadian James Paxton, Big Maple, threw a no-hitter at the TV-Dome on Tuesday night.

Wait, what?

There was another team out there? It was a ball game?

Oh, right, unlike the May second start against Oakland, Paxton needed some run support to make this no-hitter happen.

And for this part of the story we have to highlight not the Mariners hitters, but the other starting pitcher, Marcus Stroman.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction: at some point, maybe sooner rather than later, we are going to find out that there is in fact something wrong with Marcus Stroman. It’s more likely to be physical, given his injury-slowed spring training, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t rule out some other mental/emotional or stress-related issue.

Because ever since Marcus Stroman was the pitching star of the U.S.A. in the 2017 World Baseball Classic, he’s never truly gotten his mojo back. Last night was one of the clearest examples of how this Marcus Stroman is not the Marcus Stroman of 2016 or earlier.

Even in the first inning Tuesday night, when the bare record would suggest vintage Stroman, three ground ball outs on twelve pitches, the signs were there. He went 2-0 on Dee Gordon before he grounded out on a 2-2 pitch. Jean Segura grounded out on a 2-0 pitch. Stroman only pitched ahead on Robinson Cano, who grounded out on an 0-2 pitch.

Stroman kept Seattle off the board in the second inning, but this time at the cost of 21 pitches. He walked Nelson Cruz on four pitches. He struck out Kyle Seager on three beautiful pitches on the inside corner. He went to 2-1 and then to a full count on Mitch Haniger before he hit into a forceout. Healy hit an infield chopper to Josh Donaldson who couldn’t make the barehanded play, on a 3-1 pitch. Finally, Mike Zunino grounded out on a 1-1 pitch.

Here’s a way to visualize Stroman’s problem: first inning, 12 pitches, second inning, 21 pitches, third inning, 26 pitches and two runs.

In the third he walked the leadoff hitter, Ben Gamel, on a 3-1 pitch. Dee Gordon missed a bunt attempt for strike one, then Stroman fell behind 2-1, and Gordon ripped one past Smoak down the line for a double with Gamel stopping at third. He rallied to fan Segura on three pitches, but Cano scored the run with a grounder to first. With two outs and a runner on third, he had a chance of getting out with only one run and fewer pitches.

But he fell behind Nelson Cruz 2-1 and had to come in with a fast ball that Cruz fought off and laid out as a single to right to score Gordon with the second run. Finally, Kyle Seager flew out to centre but hit the ball hard. After three innings Stroman was at 59 pitches and down 2-0.

That would have been enough for Paxton, but with one out in the fourth Ryon Healy flared a single the wrong way to right centre, and then Mike Zunino went the wrong way as well, right over the wall to give Paxton two more runs to play with. Stroman still had to pitch around an infield single/error on throw reaches second by Gamel, and after four innings he was at 73 pitches.

Stroman’s meagre hope of lasting past five innings did not survive the first three batters of the fifth, all of whom reached on singles to load the bases. He was lucky to give up only the run knocked in by Haniger on a sacrifice fly, and ended up down 5-0 to a guy throwing a no-hitter. He had thrown 88 pitches, which in the end wouldn’t have been too bad, except that way too many of them were either out of the strike zone or fall-behind cripples.

The past and better version of Marcus Stroman would have relished a one-on-one battle with James Paxton, but the 2018 version gave up the ghost way too early.

After his weak start, it didn’t really matter, except for the stats, that Tim Mayza, Jake Petricka, Aaron Loup, and John Axford all kept the Mariners scoreless for the last four innings of the game.

That cleared away all the distractions, and we could concentrate on watching James Paxton wrap up his brilliant, well-deserved, no-hit game.

*At some point during the ultimately unsuccessful negotiations between Paxton and the Blue Jays, Anthopoulos had made the mistake of referring to powerful players’ agent Scott Boras as Paxton’s “agent”, rather than his “representative”. When Paxton tried to return to Kentucky for his senior year, some stiff-neck at the NCAA heard about the reference to an “agent”, and started the process that resulted in his losing his last year of college ball.

Paxton even filed a lawsuit against the university and the NCAA, but the suit did not proceed, and Paxton ended up pitching briefly for the independent-league Grand Prairie AirHogs in 2010 before being drafted by Seattle.

Note from yer humble scribe:  I have chosen not to mention the other major development in Toronto baseball on Tuesday, so as not to diminish the accord given to the great achievement of James Paxton in no-hitting the Blue Jays.  

I’m referring, of course, to the terribly sad and shocking news that early Tuesday Roberto Osuna was arrested and charged with an assault, which sources have indicated was an instance of domestic violence.  He has been placed on administrative leave by MLB while it conducts an investigation independent of the police investigation.  Osuna is likely facing a significant suspension under the league’s domestic violence protocol.  Aroldis Chapman received a 50-game suspension for an incident that never came to court.

My heart aches for the shame that Osuna must be feeling, but more so for the pain that the victim must be suffering, and I can only hope that he will be able to resolve this issue in a way that is fair and just for the victim.

Friday:

Oh, that orange juice bowl. Every time the Blue Jays take a dip in the orange juice bowl they forget how to swim

Early Friday morning the weary and forlorn Toronto Blue Jays dragged themselves into Tampa Bay for a three-game weekend series with the resurgent Rays, who do not look very much like the team that was supposed to roll over and play dead this year while it rebuilt.

Playing at Tampa Bay has never been a good thing for the Blue Jays. Before this series, in the team’s history their record in Tampa Bay had been 72 wins versus 104 losses, a terrible record that suggests that something darker than mere chance might be at play.

A quick look at the record uncovers an interesting little fact: in 1998, the Rays’ first season of play, their team record was 63-99. Against Toronto, the Rays went 0-6 in Toronto, but beat the Blue Jays 5-1 in the six games played in Florida.

Since then it has ever been thus, so it is not at all surprising that given their condition on arrival the Jays slumbered through the three games on the weekend, and only managed to avoid a sweep on Sunday by virtue of the gritty personal effort of Marco Estrada and the sheer offensive chutzpah of Kevin Pillar.

The team suffered a complete offensive breakdown on the weekend, and were as putty in the hands of the Tampa pitching staff, scoring only six runs in the three games.

And this is a team that despite that dismal Florida showing remained fourth in all major league baseball in runs scored for the season, and first in home runs with 51. Yes, that’s first in homers, as in three more than the Yankees, Indians, and Angels, and five more than the Red Sox. Without Josh Donaldson for much of the season, I might add. Not to mention the slow starts of Justin Smoak and Kendrys Morales, with four and three respectively, far off the team leader, Yanvergis Solarte, who has nine.

So, you get the point: what kind of wool is it that Tampa Bay pitching pulls over the eyes of Toronto’s hitters when they play in Tampa?

Take Friday night, for example, what looked like an egregious mismatch: Jay Happ starting for Toronto and Andrew Kittredge starting for the Rays, as the first up in a self-proclaimed “bullpen day” for Tampa Bay, as if they needed a bullpen day more than the Blue Jays!

Maybe it was all a scam by Rays’ manager Kevin Cash, though.

Cash left the right-hander Kittredge in for two innings and 36 pitches. He’d started the first looking like he wouldn’t last long. Curtis Granderson led off the game running out a double to left centre. Josh Donaldson walked on a 3-2 pitch. Solarte hit one high and deep to right that stayed in the park, but allowed Granderson to advance to third.

Oscar Hernandez hit a fly ball solidly to centre that scored Granderson and for once the Jays had a first inning run. It’s lucky for the Jays that they didn’t know they wouldn’t score again until the eighth inning.

Cash ran Kittredge out there for the second inning, and he picked up his first strikeout of the game, and gave up his second hit, a Luke Maile opposite-field single that crossed up the shift, a harmless two-out single followed by a fielder’s choice for the third out.

After two innings, down only 1-0, Andrew Kittredge . . . did not come out for the third inning. Out of the bullpen came the left-handed Ryan Yarbrough. This is where I question the intent of the Tampa manager: was starting Kittredge a bait-and-switch tactic, and did he really intend to get the most innings out of the lefty?

Or did he just take a wild guess and hit the jackpot, when Yarbrough gave up a leadoff base hit in the third, and then proceeded to mow down fifteen Toronto batters in a row, to take Tampa Bay through to the eighth inning, by which time the Rays had a 4-1 lead?

Yarbrough’s pitching line is about all you need to say: 5 innings, 1 hit, 4 strikeouts, 58 pitches. Total command.

Jay Happ meanwhile started without any of the fuss and drama of his recent starts. A first-inning walk to C.J. Cron on 4 pitches made you worry a little, but then Matt Duffy grounded one up the middle that Aledmys Diaz cut off, flipped the ball to Lourdes Gurriel Jr. at second with his glove, and the latter lasered to first for a lovely double play.

In the second he picked up his first strikeout, and benefitted from a nice play up the middle on his backhand by Gurriel to get the third out on Denard Span.

28 pitches and Happ was through two with no damage, having faced the minimum.

He continued his streak of facing the minimum number of batters through the first two outs of the third inning before centre fielder Johnny Field [but can he hit?] hit one out to left to tie the game at ones. After three Happ still had thrown only 40 pitches.

But in the fourth inning, with Yarbrough having already started to impose his dominance on the Toronto hitters, Happ walked the leadoff batter, which as always was a bad thing. It wasn’t like the Rays were all over Happ, but by the end of the inning they were up 3-1, and that’s all they’d need in this game.

Cron walked again on a 3-2 pitch. Matt Duffy grounded one up the middle but avoided the double play this time as the ball snaked through. The hot-hitting catcher Wilson Ramos lined one into right centre for a base hit that scored Cron and sent Duffy to third. Happ fanned Daniel Robertson for the first out, but Denard Span hit into a fielder’s choice that scored Duffy with the Rays’ third run.

This was one of those games that, though close, never really seemed to be in reach. Barring a sudden wave of fatigue or hitting the wall, it was clear the Jays weren’t going to get to Yarbrough.

The question was, what might they be able to do once he was done? That question didn’t get answered until the top of the eighth, when Sergio Romo trotted out to the mound to take over the pitching chores.

By that time the gap had grown to 4-1, as Jake Petricka, recently recalled from Buffalo, and had come on to finish up the sixth inning for Happ, was touched for a run in the Tampa seventh on a double to right by Johnny Field and a base hit to left by the Rays’ shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria, who had originally been signed by Toronto.

So when Aledmys Diaz homered off Romo with one out in the eighth inning for Toronto it only returned the Tampa lead to two runs, and when Toronto did no further damage to Romo they would be looking at Tampa’s closer Alex Colome in the ninth.

The Rays notched two more off the lefty Tim Mayza in the bottom of the eighth, via a bloop single by Span and a home run to centre by Brad Miller, the lefty Mayza was supposed to retire.

At this point with a 4-run lead the Rays didn’t have to use Colome, but they decided he needed the work anyway, which quelled any hopes that Toronto may have had for a late rally.

Teoscar Hernandez reached third after getting on by means of an error, but that was it and Toronto was done, for their second straight desultory loss.

They’ll have to shake out of it tomorrow evening against Jake Faria, who’s historically pitched well against Toronto.

Saturday:

If you thought it was bad that Toronto lost 6-2 on Friday night to a bullpen committee of the Tampa Bay Rays, how much worse would it be if the Blue Jays lost the second game by a 5-3 score while allowing 3 unearned runs, and fighting the most skewed strike zone you could ever imagine?

That’s what happened Saturday evening in Tampa Bay, and it was not a pretty sight, believe me.

Aaron Sanchez has been slowly rounding into form this spring, and with the addition of a very effective changeup to his repertoire he offers the possibility at the end of his journey of being a more complete pitcher than he was in 2016, when he just happened to be the ERA champion.

But as he works to regain his confidence and command, one new problem has emerged.

Sanchez is a pitcher who has such live movement on his pitches that it appears to be very hard for umpires to be able to see exactly what the ball is doing as it approaches the plate. I say “appears to be” to be charitable to the poor guys who have to stand back there and try to see what almost can’t be seen.

Sanchez has had problems with the plate umpire over his strike zone in several of his starts so far this season, but none were worse than what he faced on Saturday. From the moment C.B. Bucknor called his first trademark fast ball at the knees a ball, Sanchez started fretting about Bucknor. Which made Bucknor fret about Sanchez, and his team-mates. Which didn’t help anybody.

And the more Sanchez frets over the strike zone, the more he struggles.

The big right-hander didn’t help himself with three walks in the first inning, but the run the Rays scored not only wasn’t earned, it absolutely wasn’t his fault.

He went 3-1 on Denard Span and walked him. Then he got C.J. Cron to hit into an easy double play. Then he walked Matt Duffy, and it was in this at-bat that Sanchez learned that a low strike wasn’t a strike. Then he walked Brad Miller, still obviously troubled by the low strike call on Duffy. Then Wilson Ramos hit the ground ball to Gurriel that should have ended the inning.

But Gurriel picked the wrong time to make his first error as a Blue Jay. The ball clanked off his glove, Ramos was safe, and Span scored for a 1-0 Rays lead.

Sanchez had a better second inning, but he was still chewing through pitches like they were a bag of Doritos and he was Donald Trump. Just one walk in the inning, to Mallex Smith who stole second but died there, but his pitch count still had risen to 47 by the end of the inning.

The Rays picked up a second run in the third inning in a good example of the kind of inning that’s a minor nightmare for a ground-ball pitcher: 2 ground balls that snaked through for base hits, then a weak flare single by the catcher Ramos to knock in the run. It was only 2-0 at the end of three, but Sanchez was quickly coming to the end of the line, now at 63 pitches for three innings.

In the meantime Jake Faria had faced the minimum number of batters for the Rays, erasing a one-out walk in the first to Josh Donaldson with a double-play ball, and striking out two.

But despite Sanchez’ troubles the Jays were only down 2-1 after Teoscar Hernandez homered to left to lead off the fourth, the first hit and first run off Faria.

This was a point at which the game could have gone either way, but it depended on Sanchez settling down and throwing a couple of good innings.

Didn’t happen, and by the end of the Rays’ fourth their lead had increased to 4-1, and Sanchez was gone.

The first Tampa run in the fourth was manufactured by the speed of Mallex Smith. The second resulted from the speed of Denard Span. But the inning was lengthened and the Tampa runs abetted by a second Gurriel error, which was compounded by a failure to scoop his low throw by Kendrys Morales, who was playing first because Justin Smoak’s wife had a baby daughter and he was on paternity leave.

Got all that?

Smith beat out an infield single to short despite the heroic effort of Aledmys Diaz to dig the ball out on the backhand and fire it to first. He took second on a grounder to third and scored on Span’s single into the corner. Span stole second and moved to third when Cron was safe on Gurriel’s throwing error. From third he scored Tampa’s fourth run on Duffy, and that it was it for the frustrated Sanchez.

In a moment of supreme irony, Aaron Loup came in to get the final out by striking out Brad Miller looking on about the same pitch that Bucknor wouldn’t give to Sanchez. Must be the cut of Sanchez’ jib.

After Faria’s four effective innings, you’d think that if Toronto was going to brace up and fight back it would have to start right away, but the top of the fifth was the measure of where this game was going. The slumping Russell Martin rolled over on the first pitch and grounded out. Morales hit a lazy fly the wrong way to left. Gurriel put a charge in one, but it stayed in the park in left centre.

The Jays did pick up a couple of runs in the eighth to bring it to 4-3, only to have Tampa add on a third unearned run in the bottom of the inning to make the final margin two.

Toronto’s eighth inning flurry could have tied the score, except that Mr. Bucknor behind the plate intruded on the proceedings again to eliminate a hitter who would have gone on to score. Gurriel finally got all of one leading off to cut the lead to 4-2.

But then Bucknor punched out Dalton Pompey on a 3-2 curve ball from Sergio Romo that you could watch, over and over again, in agonizing slow motion, as it bent around the strike zone, never coming closer than six inches to the black. So Pompey wasn’t on base when, long story short, Diaz doubled to left centre which might have scored Pompey, and Hernandez followed with a single to left the scored Diaz, so Pompey would have been ahead of him. Outrageous, and we’ll never hear a word of it from MLB headquarters.

So it was left as the final frustration for Russell Martin in the bottom of the eighth to bat away a bunt for an error leading to Tampa’s final run, the one that made it look easier for Colome to wrap things up in the ninth as he finished an extended five-out save.

With Tyler Clippard on the mound, Mallex Smith hit a ground-rule double to right. Playing for the extra run, manager Kevin Cash had Johnny Field lay down a bunt. It wasn’t very good, driven hard enough into the turf that it hopped right up in front of Martin charging from behind the plate.

Martin was never going to get Smith at third, but he certainly had a shot at Field at first. But he batted the ball with his mitt rather than securing it, and Field was safe at first. Smith eventually scored on a sacrifice fly by Cron that would have been the third out.

So the score of Saturday’s game was a little complicated: the Rays earned 2 runs for themselves. The Jays handed them three. C. B. Bucknor stole one from Toronto. In your mind, then, this was a 4-2 Toronto win with the Umpire bringing up the rear. On the scoreboard it was something else.

Sunday:

You’d think after two such abysmal showings at the plate that the Blue Jays would break out with some big numbers to avoid the sweep. Or even that Tampa Bay might score more than a couple of runs without the help of the Toronto pitchers and defence.

This despite the fact that the Rays had Chris Archer going for them, and Toronto had Marco Estrada. To be honest, neither has much resembled the pitcher that he was in previous years, although in Estrada’s case he has shown flashes of his old mastery, stringing together several effective innings either before or after giving away the farm.

Yet both looked more like the pitcher of yore on Sunday, and we quickly settled into a for-real pitchers’ duel.

After only giving up one base hit in the first two innings, Estrada survived more of a scare in the third, and had to navigate dangerous waters in the fourth and fifth before finishing up with an easier sixth inning, aided by a fortuitous double-play ball.

The Rays pushed their aggressive button a little too hard in the third, and for once they were stopped cold by the Blue Jays. It started with a walk to Mallex Smith and then of course a stolen base. Carlos Gomez hit a sharp single into centre, Smith had to hold up on it, and when Kevin Pillar came up throwing he was held at third.

After Estrada fanned Denard Span, Gomez tried to steal second and Luke Maile threw him out, with Smith holding at third. The next thing you knew, Smith was trying to steal home, the second such attempt we’ve seen in a Jays’ game this year. But Estrada stayed calm, didn’t rush his motion, and threw a pitch that Maile could handle which took him straight into Smith’s path, legally. Smith bounced off Maile and was dead as a doornail. Well, out at the plate, I mean.

In the fourth after C.J. Cron drove Pillar to the wall in centre for a nice catch, Estrada gave up a grounder to Duffy that went off Solarte’s glove at second for a hit, and walked Brad Miller before getting the dangerous Wilson Ramos to hit into a double play started by Josh Donaldson.

In the meantime Archer had stranded a double by Pillar in the second, and had Gomez bail him out in the fourth with a nice catch of another drive by Pillar after the Jays had put two runners on with base hits, Solarte and Smoak, both of whom defied the shift to hit cleanly into a crowded right field.

If you want a turning point in this game it was the fifth inning, when Toronto finally scratched out a run, and Tampa Bay missed its third opportunity in five innings to break into the scoring column.

For Toronto it started with Anthony Alford, who led off the inning with his first base hit since being recalled from Buffalo. Alford immediately stole second, a welcome addition to the team’s repertoire. Luke Maile hit one deep to right field, and Alford moved up to third on the catch.

Then came the key play of the game, at least before the top of the ninth. Aledmys Diaz hit a grounder into no-man’s land between first and second. Archer was a bit late covering the bag, and he and Diaz converged at first as Archer took the throw from Brad Miller. Diaz was safe, Alford scored, and Diaz was down.

The replays show that he had caught the side of the bag with his left foot, turning his ankle. Diaz would be carried off, to be replaced as a baserunner by Lourdes Gurriel Jr , who would take over at shortstop as well.

Archer stranded Gurriel, but the run stood, and it stood until the bottom of the eighth inning.

Marco Estrada was pulled after six innings, despite that he was throwing a four-hit shutout, because his pitch count was already 96. His last inning was his shortest at nine pitches, but he needed some help from his friends. After walking Cron, Duffy smacked a liner over Solarte’s head at second, but Solarte leaped and made a circus snag, came down, and doubled Duffy off first. Miller lined out to Hernandez in right for Estrada’s last out.

Tyler Clippard gave up a hit but struck out two in the seventh.

Meanwhile, Archer retired the side in the sixth and seventh innings to finish strong, having given up the one run on five hits with no walks and six strikeouts, on 97 pitches. Matt Andriese pitched around a couple of baserunners in the eighth, and the game remained 1-0 for the visitors going to the bottom of the eighth.

As usual, Ryan Tepera appeared for the eighth inning, well established as John Gibbons’ setup man.

However, this time what Tepera set up was a 2-2 hanging slider that Carlos Gomez pounded over the wall in left to tie the game. Tepera got out of the inning without further damage but not without some adventure, finally getting a strikeout and a groundout to keep the Rays from taking the lead after they’d put runners on first and third with only one out.

With the game tied at one, Marco Estrada had done his job, and now it was time for the Toronto hitters to step up and make a difference. And who better to be leading off against the Rays’ closer Alex Colome but the Jays’ most consistent hitter this season, Kevin Pillar?

Pillar had already had his impact on this game. He’d recorded the first base hit against Chris Archer in the second inning when he’d lined a double into the corner in left. Then in the fourth he saved a run by taking a leadoff extra-base hit away from C.J. Cron with a leap against the wall in centre. The catch increased in significance when Matt Duffy followed with a base hit off Solarte’s glove that would have plated Cron in scoring position.

In the home half of the fourth, it had taken a good running catch in right by Carlos Gomez of a Pillar drive into the alley to keep the Jays from cashing one or two base runners.

Facing Colome in the ninth after he’d completed a five-out save on Saturday, Pillar swung at a 2-1 fast ball that the Rays’ closer left out over the plate and lashed it into left centre field. He later said that with the game tied in the ninth he was thinking double all the way as he raced into scoring position.

For once scoring the leadoff double from second looked simple. Kendrys Morales, hitting left, hit a high chopper to shortstop Drew Robertson stationed up the middle, and Pillar moved up to third. At this point, Colome contributed to his own downfall by bouncing one to the backstop, which allowed Pillar to score, illustrating the importance of moving up from second to third on a groundout.

The wild pitch was somewhat academic, because Anthony Alford skied out to Gomez in right for the second out that would have scored Pillar anyway.

Roberto Osuna came in for the save, and struck out Joey Wendle leading off. Then he got three ground balls. The first ran up the middle for a single by Drew Robertson. The second and third were converted for the outs that closed out Osuna’s ninth save in ten opportunities.

It took a couple of first-rate efforts, from Marco Estrada and Kevin Pillar, to extract one hard-fought win out of the three games played in that hell-hole that the Tampa Bay Rays call home.

The Jays came home sporting a record of 19 and 16, ready to face the very tough Seattle Mariners in the friendly confines of the TV Dome.