If anybody was wondering who that dirty, bedraggled flock of birds was limping back into town Wednesday night looking like they were returning from the jungles of Central America rather than from sunny Florida, why, it was our very own Toronto Blue Jays.
After swaggering out of town on the wings of a rousing four-game sweep of the even more troubled Baltimore Orioles, the Jays had to come face to face with reality: playing the Rays in Tampa Bay is never fun, no how, no way.
I mean, who could have known, after the top of the fourth inning of Monday night’s game, when the Jays had matched the Rays run for run through three, and then taken a 4-3 lead in the top of the fourth on three base hits, that they would only score one more run in the remaining 23 innings of the series?
Even when Tampa took the lead back in the bottom of the fourth with a two-spot of their own, on a two-run homer by rookie Jake Bauers that dispatched erstwhile-ly effective Jays’ spot starter Sam Gaviglio from the game earlier than planned, it didn’t seem like that big a deal. After all, the pitching-starved Rays would be going pitcher by pitcher, inning by inning, as well, and sooner or later our guys would encounter someone they could hit.
But, nope.
Lefty Ryan Yarbrough, who’d given up the four early runs, settled and lasted through six innings, and Diego Castillo, Jonny Venters, and Sergio Romo kept “clean sheets” as they say in European football, infused by World Cup mania as we are at the moment. Castillo gave up a two-out base hit to Hernandez, and Venters walked one for the only Toronto baserunners.
Meanwhile, the Tampa Bay Mosquitos, er Rays, exploited a botched double play ball by John Axford in the seventh to tack on three more runs and kill any hopes the Jays had of mounting a comeback.
On Tuesday, Rays’ manager Kevin Cash, who seems intent on rewriting a hundred years of baseball tradition, declared a “bullpen day” for his pitching staff, which meant using a closer-quality pitcher as an “opener”.
The hitting challenged Jays went down flailing against an array of not-starter but pitcher-who-threw-the-first-two-innings Ryne Stanek, Austin Pruitt, Venters again, Chaz Roe, Jose Alvarado and Romo again. Only Pruitt gave up a fifth-inning run on a couple of hits and a ground-out, that brought Toronto within one at 2-1, but after Pruitt, who have up the run on four hits over two and two-thirds innings, nobody got a hit until Kevin Pillar got a one-out base knock against Romo in the ninth. Pillar died at second after advancing on defensive indifference, and that was the ball game.
Meanwhile, John Gibbons got a reasonably effective outing from inconsistent lefty Jaime Garcia, who pitched a decent-enough five innings, giving up two runs on a third-inning dinger by noted Jays’ killer Wilson Ramos, who ought to be reported to the SPCA.
Garcia had only given up one other hit, a single in the first, and a leadoff walk to Rob Refsnyder (why do these ex-Jay non-entities always come back to haunt us?) before Ramos’ home run. 93 pitches through five should have been enough, a pretty good outing for a scufflin’ lefty.
Problem was, Gibbie, nice guy that he is, sent Garcia back out for the sixth.
Of course, Garcia gave up a leadoff walk to C.J. Cron and a double to rookie Willy Adames that sent Cron to third. Then Gibbie pulled him, for Joe Biagini.
And of course, try as he might, the star-crossed Biagini let both runs score for an obviously insurmountable 4-1 Tampa lead, given that the Toronto T-Ballers weren’t allowed to bring their batting tees to the plate.
It would be nice if a little birdie whispered in Gibbie’s weathered ear that 93 pitches over five and keeping your team in the game is just enough, thank you very much, and furthermore that a nervous guy like Biagini does much better, at least some of the time, if he gets to start an inning when he comes in from the pen.
So, the no-hit Jays lost another one, with a definite assist awarded to John Gibbons for again mishandling his pitching staff.
All that was left to have happen to Toronto was to be shut out completely by a Tampa team of Wilmer Font, who has never failed to fail wherever he has pitched, Matt Andriese, the faux-starter who pitched the middle innings, and Diego Castillo, who got the win when the Rays scratched out a run in the bottom of the ninth off Ryan Tepera.
Tepera, who was pitching his second inning, was the fifth of a line of Toronto pitcherswho had been brilliant, from Jay Happ to Seunghwan Oh to Aaron Loup to Danny Barnes to Tepera, who as a relay had held the Rays to only three hits before the ninth, plus the three walks given up by a somewhat wild Happ, which is what caused him to go only five innings, leaving with an elevated pitch count of 98.
For the second game in a row the Blue Jays were mesmerized by Kevin Cash’s unorthodox pitching assignments. Font in particular seemed to find his new role perfectly suited to him. Though he was constantly in trouble, and it took him 66 pitches, he threw three and a third shutout innings. To give you an idea of Font’s record, he came outof the game with an ERA of 8.48.
Andriese then came in and went three and two thirds innings, threw 50 pitches, and gave up a hit and a walk.
Castillo gave up one hit in his two innings of work, and was the pitcher of record when
the Rays walked the game off in the bottom of the ninth. With Tepera in, the speedster Mallex Smith hit a one-out double, moved to third on a ground ball, and came in to score when Matt Duffy hit a clutch ground-ball single to left to score Smith.
As I said at the outset, nothing good ever happens when the Blue Jays play the Rays in their atrocious home tin orange juice can.
We can only hope that Toronto’s luck will change when the Rays become, as they inevitably must, the new Montreal Expos.
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