Although we don’t have the comparative “metrics” from past seasons or previous eras, so we can’t actually make comparisons, my general impression is that today’s hitters in baseball, being generally bigger and stronger, generate more bat speed and power. It seems undeniable that balls are going farther and faster off the bat than ever before. Just in terms of anecdotal evidence, and this is something that could be researched, I’m quite convinced that there are far more straightaway long balls that go for homers to centre field than I can ever remember from years of watching baseball. Shots that used to elicit oohs and aahs from the crowd are now seen as commonplace events.
Is it not likely, then, that pitchers are at greater risk of being injured by a line drive than at any time in the past? Is Major League Baseball tracking the numbers of pitchers getting hit by batted balls over a season? The last five seasons? The last ten? The severity of the injuries? The time lost to the DL? If they’re not, they should.
Baseball traditionalists are doing a lot of whining about the current spate of new rules and how they are changing, even ruining, the nature of the game. But how anyone can criticize initiatives to improve the safety of players I don’t get. During the recent festivities we saw endless loops of Pete Rose plowing Ray Fosse at the All-Star game in 1970. Last fall we saw endless loops of Chase Utley’s assault on a defenceless Ruben Tejada in the National League Division Series. Although the new rules certainly need tweaking, and some sense of what’s appropriate within the traditions of the game and what’s not needs to be developed, only a Don Cherry would suggest that it’s okay to put catchers and middle infielders at risk of deliberate serious injury by reverting to “anything goes”. As for Pete Rose, it’s the same Pete Rose who thinks he’s done enough time for betting on the team he was managing, and the same Pete Rose who contemptuously compared Ichiro Suzuki’s Japanese professional baseball hit total to “high school records”. Pete Rose, meet Don Cherry.
Similarly, maybe it’s time to start thinking seriously about the safety of pitchers. If the tall foreheads in New York don’t see this as an issue yet, it’s time for pressure to be put on them at least to start collecting data. There is more to be said on the subject of pitcher safety, and I am working on a post on the topic to be published soon in the Articles section.
Today’s game between the Oakland A’s and the Blue Jays at Oakland-Alameda Coliseum (finally, a stadium with a stadium name), a game that the pennant-hungry Jays needed in the worst way, was significantly impacted by pitcher injuries from batted balls. In the case of the Blue Jays’ Jay Happ, it brought a great pitching performance to a premature end, cost the Jays the lead in a game they had to win, and posed the possibility that Happ might have been put out of commission for some time to come. In the case of the A’s, a ball off the bat of Josh Donaldson that hit Andrew Triggs on his landing foot in the first inning caused his mound appearance to be cut short, and could have turned the game into a sorry farce from the perspective of the Oakland team.
First of all, we have to explain why Andrew Triggs was even on the mound in the first inning, when it was Rich Hill’s start for Oakland. Hill had originally been slated to pitch against the Jays on Friday night, but his start had been put back to Sunday because he needed a little more time to heal a blister on his pitching hand that had cropped up before the All-Star game. Let’s not pause to tsk-tsk over the fact that “dainty” pitchers can’t pitch with blisters or torn fingernails. It’s simple, people: if you can’t grip the ball properly, you can’t throw your pitches. Ironically, in what was billed as Hill’s likely last start for Oakland before going on the auction block, and with a whole row of scouts in attendance to check out the goods, it only took Hill five pitches to leadoff hitter Devon Travis to realize that the blister problem was not resolved and he couldn’t continue. While Travis waited to resolve the issue of his three-two count, the A’s manager, trainer, and pitching coach huddled at the mound, before decidng that Hill had to come out. As soon as Hill came out, the scouts all packed up their radar guns and sat back to enjoy a ball game for once.
Triggs, a 27-year-old rookie with 16 appearances, one start, and 29.1 innings of major league experience under his belt, was summoned from the pen to take over. Now, you have to understand that when a starting pitcher falters or is hurt this early in a game, it’s not like the manager has a backup starter or the next day’s starter all ready to go. Normally, the rotation is sacrosanct: you don’t even think of going there. In a given bullpen, there might be two guys who are designated as middle or long relief, and when there’s an unexpected call for a “long man”, it won’t necessarily come at a time when your long man is rested and ready to go. So it’s likely Manager Bob Melvin didn’t have many choices besides Triggs.
The first two balls hit off him were shots, a liner by Travis right at the left fielder. The second, off the bat of Josh Donaldson, was a low, wicked liner right up the middle, and Triggs wasn’t as lucky this time. The ball hit him in the left foot and caromed toward third for an infield hit. Cue the return of manager and trainers. As a righty, it was Triggs’ landing foot that was hit, and that’s far more problematic than if the push-off foot is hit, because the pitcher is thinking about the landing all through the delivery. Much discussion, several practice pitches, and a determination that Triggs would continue. He limped through the inning, rather valiantly, I thought, and limited the Jays to an unearned run when Edwin Encarnacion followed Donaldson with a third straight rope, to left, a single that Khris Davis swiped at and missed, for an error that gave Edwin second and allowed Donaldson to score. A hit batsman to Russell Martin, a Michael Saunders strikeout, and a Troy Tulowitzki soft flare to right brought the inning to a close with no further damage, except to Triggs’ foot.
But that was it for Triggs, and in the top of the second Melvin had to bring in his third pitcher of the day, a 23-year-old left-handed rookie, Sean Manaea. This one was a keeper, or just better at dodging bullets. He pitched five effective innings for the A’s, giving up two runs, three hits, no walks, and four strikeouts on 69 pitches. Too bad Melvin had to shuffle the deck twice to find a starting pitcher.
The only runs yielded by Manaea came in the fourth inning. Russell Martin led off with a double on a ground ball into the left-field corner that took a lot of catcher hustle to stretch into two bases. Michael Saunders followed with an effective at-bat which ended with the right-side ground-out to first that the Jays needed to advance Martin to third. Saunders’ good effort went for naught, but in a good way, when Tulowitzki turned on one of the few mistakes Manaea made and deposited it in the left-field seats for a three-nothing Jays’ lead.
As well as Manaea was throwing, the Tulo homer and the three-run lead were deeply appreciated by Jay Happ, who was cruising through another gem. He set the first nine A’s down in order, with three strikeouts. Jed Lowrie led off the fourth with the first base hit off Happ, but then he struck out Marcus Semien and Josh Reddick, before old Blue Jay Danny Valencia, the A’s DH today, lined a single into centre. Happ helped his own cause immensely, with two on and two out, by pouncing on a little squibber toward third from Khris Davis, whirling and throwing him out at first by a whisker.
After the Tulo homer in the bottom of the inning, things looked great for a Happ-y cruise, especially since he had only thrown 52 pitches in the first four innings. Complete game thoughts, anyone? Then, with one out in the fifth, after Billie Butler popped out to Tulo at short, it happened to Happ. Jake Smolinski lined one up the middle, and it hit Happ’s left forearm and bounced away for an infield single. This time it was Manager John Gibbons, pitching coach Pete Walker, and trainer George Poulis convening on the mound to assess the damage. Once again, some freezing, an examination, and a few practice throws, and he was ready to go. Ryon Healy hit into a force play erasing Smolinski, and Matt McBride flew out to centre to end the inning.
But it was obvious that Happ was hurting. Closeups in the dugout showed that the stitches on the ball had broken his skin, and that he was swelling noticeably. The trainer put a tensor sleeve on him, but of course he had to take it off to go back out to pitch. He wasn’t the same pitcher in the sixth inning. After retiring Lowrie on a fly ball to right, the A’s finally broke the shutout as Marcus Semien, who had been shut down very effectively to this point in the series, took one out to centre. It was cruel fate that the last out that Happ recorded came on another hard shot back at him, that luckily glanced mostly off his glove rather than his gluteus, and that he was able to pick up and make the play at first. Danny Valencia followed with an opposite-field single to right, the dangerous Khris Davis took a walk, and Manager Gibbons was out to retrieve his prized lefty before any further damage could happen.
Jesse Chavez came in, and for the first time in quite a number of appearances, failed to get the job done. Bob Melvin pinch-hit the left-handed Yonder Alonso for the right-handed Billy Butler, and he proceeded to pound one into the gap in left centre, allowing both inherited runners to score on the double, and leaving Happ to contemplate the no-decision he hadn’t anticipated before Smolinski labelled him with a baseball. Chavez finally got the third out in the sixth, but not before plunking Smolinski (take that, you brute!) and giving up an infield hit to Ryon Healy. (By the way, I’ve been spelling Healy’s first name “Ryan”, because I never bothered to check his spelling. Why would I? Aren’t all Ryans “Ryan”?)
(It should be noted here that besides Josh Donaldson, the other Jay to have made his way to Toronto from Oakland is Jesse Chavez. According to a sign picked out in the stands by the TV cameras, there is actually a Jesse Chavez fan club in Oakland. Who knew?)
Thus the effect of Sunday’s field day on pitchers: end of six, score tied, new pitchers in the game for both teams, and the Jays’ salvaging the third game of the series in serious jeopardy.
After Manaea’s fine work, Mark Rzepczynski (let’s just call him “Shep”) got a couple of outs in the seventh, and left a couple of base hits on for Liam Hendriks to bail him out. Hendriks went on to pitch an effective eighth before turning it over to John Axford for the decisive top of the ninth. Former Jay Shep to former Jay Hendriks to Axford, who’s never pitched for the Blue Jays, but is Canadian. Is there a theme here?
Following Chavez’ rocky sixth, Brett Cecil gave up a leadoff single in the seventh, struck out Semien, and then got the lefty he was sent in to get, as Josh Reddick grounded into a double play. Jason Grilli pitched his most effective frame yet for the Jays, striking out the two most dangerous Oakland hitters, Valencia and Davis, and getting Alonso on a fly ball to Carrera in right, on just 14 pitches. Good job that Grilli ended up with the win after an inning like that. And we should mention that despite losing two out of three, the Jays’ bullpen was close to perfect for the entire series.
At the close of my piece on Saturday’s game, I speculated as to whether Bob Melvin would be able to use his bullpen troika of Axford, Ryan Dull, and Ryan Madson three games in a row. Today, without a lead to protect, he chose to send Axford out to hold the Jays in the ninth, and it was probably a bridge too far for the big Simcoe, Ontario, right-hander. He did get Kevin Pillar to ground out to short leading off, but then Justin Smoak pulled a seriously old pro trick on him, taking an outside pitch and poking it up the third base line, completely vacant because of the extreme shift deployed against him when he hits from the left side. Gibbie immediately replaced Smoak with Andy Burns at first, with Junior Lake coming up. Lake then singled to centre, one of the oddest base hits you’ll ever see. With one strike on him, Lake swung on an inside pitch that sawed him off, and should have been a weak right-side grounder. But—and you can see this clearly on the replay—the ball skidded along the bat toward the barrel, made contact again with the barrel, and with enough force to be muscled up the middle into centre field, Burns stopping at second.
This brought Donaldson to the plate, Donaldson, the Oakland favourite son, who had been relatively quiet at the plate so far in the series. Lucky for us that he saved one big blow for just the right moment. He turned on a 2-1 pitch from Axford and sent it screaming down the line and into the left-field corner for a double. Andy Burns scored the lead run. Junior Lake, running from first, scored the insurance run. Khris Davis, who had been burning us at the plate throughout the series, showed himself to be just as dangerous in the field as at the plate. Dangerous to the Oaklands, that is. Do you remember that Donaldson scored our first run in the first off Triggs when he scored from first on Encarnacion’s single that was waved at and missed by the A’s left fielder? That would be Davis. And whose arm did Jays’ third-base coach Luis Rivera know he could challenge by sending Lake to the plate on Donaldson’s hit? That would be Davis. In fact, he missed the cut-off man, and there wasn’t even a play at the plate. The Khris giveth, and the Khris taketh away.
Though Axford intentionally walked Encarnacion, and unintentionally walked Martin, loading the bases and forcing Melvin to come fetch him out of the game, Michael Saunders fanned against the lefty Patrick Schuster on a 3-2 pitch to end the inning, to avert the possibility of more add-on runs. But the Jays had the lead, 5-3, and Roberto Osuna coming in to clean up, which he did, with a popup, a strikeout, and a fly to left, for his nineteenth save in twenty-one opportunities, on 13 pitches.
In three games in Oakland, the A’s scored 16 runs, and the Blue Jays scored 16 runs, but the A’s won two games out of three. Sure, this is a disappointing result, but it’s a damn sight better than losing three in a row. A sweep of the two games in Arizona, and we can still come home three and two on the road trip. (Remember, a .600 winning percentage clinches the division .) Aaron Sanchez gets the call Tuesday night. Who better to give us a push in the right direction?
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