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 116thpitch. 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.
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