Long Ball Stories

Used to be, it was really something when the Toronto Blue Jays and the Baltimore Orioles got together.

Why, even as recently as the American League Wild Card game in 2016, the only real difference between the teams was the strange failure of Baltimore manager Buck Showalter to use the best closer in baseball in an extra-inning one-and-done affair.

That’s not to say, of course that the beloved and much missed Edwin Encarnacion would not have homered equally as dramatically against Britton as he did against Ubaldo Jimenez, but the fact is that Britton was still in the bullpen when Edwin hit the homer off Jimenez.

Since that magical night, the fortunes of both teams have suffered, but it’s undeniable that the fortunes of the Orioles have suffered more.

Recordwise, they’ve fallen much farther than the Jays, coming in with a terrible record of 18 wins and 42 losses, giving Jays’ fans something to feel grateful for, looking at our own record of 26 and 35.

But on the basis of what we saw here over a long four-game series, three of which were competitive and the fourth a blowout, all Toronto wins, it would seem not so much that the Orioles are significantly worse than the Blue Jays, but they they’ve lost the will to win.

On Thursday, the young right-handed starter David Hess combined with relievers Mychal Givens and Richard Bleier to keep the Jays’ hitters in check for eight innings of one-run, seven-hit ball, as the Toronto offence struggled to shake out of the doldrums they’d fallen into against the Yankees.

Meanwhile, after a very effective six innings by Jaime Garcia, Baltimore had gone deep against Tyler Clippard and John Axford to build a 4-1 lead to turn over to stand-in closer Brad Brach for the bottom of the ninth.

But Brach, who in previous appearances has eaten the Jays’ lunches, could only get one out while the Jays dizzily rallied for three to tie the game. With one out Brach walked Luke Maile. Aledmys Diaz doubled him to third. Randal Grichuk, looking for a fresh start after coming off the disabled list, doubled home Maile and Diaz to bring the home squad to within one.

The slumping Kevin Pillar, who’d been given the night off before pinch-hitting for Curtis Granderson against the lefty Bleier in the eighth inning, wasted no time cashing Grichuk with a solid single to centre to tie the game. At this point manager Buck Showalter had no choice but to pull Brach in favour of ex-Blue Jay Miguel Castro, who promptly threw a double-play ball to Yangervis Solarte to send the game to extras.

Danny Barnes dispatched the meat of Baltimore’s order, Adam Jones, Manny Machado, and Danny Valencia, another ex-Jay, on fourteen pitches, via a popup and two strikeouts, paving the way for Castro to come out for the bottom of the tenth.

Castro was victimized by the hustle of Teoscar Hernandez and a second clutch hit by Diaz to take the loss, though he almost got out of it. Hernandez turned a leadoff single into a double by sheer chutzpahthe likes of which Toronto hasn’t seen since the days of Ricky Henderson.

Castro did everything right after that, almost. When he went to 2-0 on Justin Smoak he was ordered to put him on. Then he fanned Kendrys Morales. And Maile. And went 0-2 on Diaz before the latter stung him with a rip that made it to the wall down the left-field line and was more than sufficient to knock Hernandez in with the walkoff fifth run.

The Orioles, who are supposed to be having serious problems with starting pitching, got another quality start Friday night from Andrew Cashner, who went six innings and gave up three runs, effectively scattering nine Toronto hits.

The problem for Baltimore was that Jay Happ was just that much better. He went seven innings, gave up one unearned run, in the first inning, and only two hits.

Sometimes a quality start isn’t enough, if it comes up against a better quality start.

Both teams scored in the second inning, but the Orioles got a tainted run resulting from a Devon Travis throwing error, while Russell Martin answered with a ripped line drive home run to left in the bottom of the inning off Cashner.

Though the run against Happ was unearned, he had to share some of the blame for walking Danny Valencia leading off, and then Mark Trumbo with one out. But he should have been out of the inning when Trey Mancini hit a double-play ball to Diaz at short. Travis recorded the out at second, but threw the ball away to first, not only blowing the double play but allowing the alert Valencia to come around to score.

Fast forward to the fifth inning, when Happ, who had only given up a bloop single in the third, gave up a two-out double to Craig Gentry, but stranded him there when Joey Rickard flew out to right.

Cashner wasn’t so lucky in his half of the fifth. He gave up a shot too, to Randal Grichuk, but it left the yard for a 2-1 Toronto lead, built on the two solo homers.

Toronto added another run in the sixth off Cashner when Hernandez, Pillar, and Martin linked base hits, with Martin getting the RBI.

After seven innings Happ turned the ball over to Seunghwan Oh, who got two outs in the eighth and was replaced by Ryan Tepera, who began a four-out save by finishing off the eighth for Oh.

The Jays added a run in their seventh off the left-handed Tanner Scott who got the first two outs, then gave up a base hit to Solarte and a triple to Hernandez, who notably whacked one over the head of the right fielder Craig Gentry, yes, the opposite way, to the wall, chasing Solarte home.

In the eighth inning Mike Wright Jr. gave up a hard-hit line-drive home run to the leadoff hitter Kevin Pillar, which set the final score at 5-1 for Toronto. Ryan Tepera retired the side on six pitches in the ninth, with the help of Valencia, who unwisely tried to stretch a leadoff single into a double by testing the arm of Hernandez, whose fine retrieve and throw made it close enough to review at second, but the out call stood. In all Tepera threwonly eight pitches for the four-out save.

Of the four games in this series, this one was the game that any team could have lost, because sometimes you just run into good pitching. Given that the Baltimore run in the first inning was unearned, Happ, Oh, and Tepera threw a shutout at the Orioles. Every team gets shut out once in a while.

Nothing to see here, no markers for long-term trends, let’s move on to Saturday and its lessons.

On Saturday the supposedlypitching-challenged Orioles got their third straight quality start, this time from Kevin Gausman, who pitched into the seventh-inning, and left on the losing end of a 3-2 score, thanks to the leadoff home run he’d given up in the seventh to the suddenly very hot Randal Grichuk.

Prior to that, the Jays had picked up a run in the third on three straight hits leading off the inning, the RBI going to Solarte, but Gausman had stranded the two runners with a fielder’s choice and a double play.

The Jays added a run in the sixth on back-to-back doubles, leading off, to Solarte and Hernandez. Again Gausman staved off further problems, this time by striking out the side to leave Hernandez at second base.

Meanwhile Aaron Sanchez, while still struggling to keep his pitch count down, as evidenced by the four walks he issued, continued to improve his effectiveness, giving up two runs in six and a third innings off six hits.

Unfortunately, the two runs came off Sanchez as he tried to pitch into the seventh, and just ran out of gas. Some consideration should be given to the role played by John Gibbons in leaving Sanchez out there in the seventh. He’d been lucky to get the first out as Kevin Pillar had to dive and just barely secure a snow cone off a liner by Mark Trumbo.

That drive, despite producing an out, should have rung the warning bell for Gibbie, but, no, he left Sanchez in there for two more hitters, Trey Mancini who singled and Chance Sisco who doubled Mancini home with Baltimore’s first run. Danny Barnes came in and gave up a single to Adam Jones that scored Sisco with the tying run, charged to Sanchez.

After Grichuk gave the Jays the lead off Gausman in the bottom of the inning, Joe Biagini and Tyler Clippard gave it up right away in the top of the eighth. It was starting to look like an Alphonse and Gaston routine.

After Aaron Loup came in and got the first out, Biagini faced two batters. He hit Jonathan Schoop on the shoulder with a runaway curve ball, and threw Mark Trumbo’s cheap little comebacker away trying to get the lumbering DH at first. Clippard came in and walked Mancini to load the bases, then fanned Jace Peterson and Sisco. Unfortunately, he also wild-pitched Schoop home to tie the score.

The Orioles scored without a base hit and without hitting the ball out of the infield. Nonetheless, they scored and the game was tied.

It stayed that way until it was the Orioles’ bullpen’s turn to give up the game to the Blue Jays in the tenth inning.

After the Orioles blew a chance to score off John Axford in the ninth, Axford shut them down in the tenth, setting himself up for his first win of the season.

Buck Showalter gave the ball to Mychal Givens for the Jays’ tenth. Toronto has experienced feast and famine with Givens. This time it was feast, with Givens playing the role of attentive waiter.

After he struck out Hernandez, he walked Smoak, and Morales followed with a line single right through the stacked right side of the infield. Pillar hit one hard to deep centre for the second out, and I was concerned that Smoak hadn’t tagged and advanced on the catch.

Not to worry, though, because Givens was determined to hand the game to Toronto and didn’t want them to have to trouble themselves by swinging the bat. He hit Grichuk to load the bases, and then walked Maile on four pitches for the ever-so-exciting walkoff walk.

Toronto 4, Baltimore 3, in ten innings for the second time in three games.

On Sunday Marco Estrada took the ball for Toronto, and Alex Cobb, who has been tough on Toronto in the past, was Buck Showalter’s pick.

It was no contest. The Orioles totally caved and handed the sweep to the Blue Jays just like they handed Saturday’s game to them.

All you have to do is look at the pitching lines. Cobb went three and two thirds and gave up nine runs on 11 hits. He walked one, struck out five, and threw 83 pitches. Marco Estrada threw a tidy six innings. He gave up two runs on four hits, walked one, and struck out nine, on 97 pitches.

Curtis Granderson beat the Orioles all by himself. He went four for five with two doubles and a three-run homer, and chalked up six RBIs.

Toronto responded to Baltimore’s first run in the top of the second with two in the bottom of the inning, both scoring on Granderson’s wrong-way bloop double to left with two outs. Kendrys Morales extended the lead to 3-1 in the third with his long-awaited fifth home run of the season, an opposite-field solo shot.

That set things up for the ring-around-the-rosy Toronto fourth, when they racked up six runs on seven hits, most of them ropes, and one walk. It was a rising that was marked by the Jays’ apparent attempt to knock Cobb out of the game. I mean really knock him out of the game, as Grichuk, Gio Urshela, and Solarte all hit shots right through his kitchen, any one of which could have had a seriously dangerous outcome.

It became apparent as Toronto sent ten batters to the plate (Grichuk went two for two in the inning), six of whom scored, that Showalter was reluctant to use another reliever so early in this game, but finally he had not choice, and Cobb was forced to hand the ball over to Pedro Araujo, who let in Cobb’s last run when Grichuk knocked in Pillar from second.

So all that was left to see, with the Jays holding a 9-1 lead, was how long Estrada could go, and how many relievers Toronto would need to finish off the affair. As we noted, Estrada went six innings, Joe Biagini gave up a run in the seventh, and Tim Mayza finished off with two scoreless innings, giving up only one base hit.

And there you had it, a Toronto sweep over some ghost team with a vague resemblance to the vaunted Orioles of yore. Two extra-inning squeakers, one well-pitched solid win, and a walkover, and all that was left was for the Orioles to slink out of town while the Jays jumped on a plane for sunny Florida, for a series in the atrocious Tin Can Dome.

Gulp.

As for the Orioles, I’m not sure what player capital currently on their big league roster is going to be around and contributing in one or two years’ time.

Chris Davis and Mark Trumbo are clearly finished, and are serious liabilities. Adam Jones, a streaky guy at the best of times, showed none of his previous ability to carry the team during the four games here. While of course Mannie Machado should reap a bountiful harvest when they inevitably trade him next month, Jones might not bring much in return.

Of the lineups the Orioles displayed during the four games, arguably only Trey Mancini and Jonathan Schoop are players that you would expect to see written into the O’s lineup every day for the next couple of years. Joey Rickard might also hang around as a useful—and highly annoying—utility piece.

And it’s not a great sign that both Mancini and Schoop went through town hitting under .230 for the season.

Let’s face it. Any team that turns to the much-travelled Danny Valencia to play third and anchor the middle of the batting order is in more than a little bit of trouble.

And we haven’t said anything yet about the Baltimore pitching staff. Though the bullpen still has the strong presence of Darren O’Day and Brad Brach, not to mention Britton when he’s not on the disabled list, the rest of the relievers have the feeling of being ad-hoc fill-ins. Again, if they’re placing a lot of hope on a Miguel Castro, it says something about where they are.

As for their rotation, well, it doesn’t suck as much as I might have thought, to use an expresssion I’ve never used before in this forum. They had three quality starts in the four games here, a performance which would suggest that the rotation is not actually responsible for the terrible Baltimore record.

What has contributed to their record? Based on what we saw here, they’ve given up, or somehow lost the will to win.