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.
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