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.
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