In the run-up to tonight’s first game of a three-game weekend set with the Seattle Mariners at the TV Dome, I thought that the pitching matchup looked pretty favourable for the home team. Marco Estrada got the start for the Blue Jays, which always promises an interesting, even compelling drama unfolding between pitcher and hitters. Added to this was the frisson of doubt created by the fact that it was to be his first start since returning from the DL, his back issues that developed before the All-Star break presumably resolved.
Starting for the Mariners was the left-hander James Paxton, about whom I knew very little going in, save for a current record (2-4, 4.56 ERA) that, like the record of Patrick Corbin whom they faced Wednesday afternoon, I could only have characterized as equally “meh”.
By the conclusion of Paxton’s outing tonight against the Jays, there were four more things about Paxton that I didn’t know before. First, he has been highly regarded by the Mariners—and by the Blue Jays before them—for quite a while, ever since his college baseball days at the University of Kentucky. Second, he is Canadian, from Ladner, British Columbia, and would be facing fellow Canadian Left Coaster Michael Saunders for the first time, but not fellow Canadian Russell Martin, who apparently got woozy in the sauna, fell, and hurt his left knee, taking him out of the lineup for a while. (I wish I were making this part up.) Third, he was the centre of a very strange and tangled legal case involving a player agent and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, a case which I vaguely recalled, but did not connect with the pitcher starting tonight until it was mentioned on the broadcast—I’ll fill you in on what seem to be the main lines of the story as I’ve been able to ferret them out.
Fourth, and by far most relevant for our discussion of tonight’s game, he was about to make the vaunted Blue Jay hitters eat cheap Dollar Store bird seed out of his baseball cap, which didn’t leave a great taste in their mouths.
The Mariners’ lineup is a little deceptive, in that as constituted last night the leadoff hitter was recent callup and suspected banjo hitter Norichika Aoki leading off, followed by somebody named Seth Smith hitting second, who is actually more of a somebody than I thought, though he’s been hiding out in the National League and exclusively out west, for a number of years, hitting .273 this year with 11 homers in a little less than full playing time. After them, it gets interesting. Very interesting. Robinson Cano. Nelson Cruz. Adam Lind. Kyle Seager. Whew. As it turned out, though, it wasn’t any of the big bashers in the middle of the order, but Aoki, Smith, and number nine hitter Shortstop Shawn O’Malley, a .220 hitter, who did what little damage was done to Marco Estrada tonight.
When the crafty, reliable, right-handed ace of the Jays’ staff took the mound in the first inning, it was quickly evident that a bit of rust had to be shaken off before the typical Estrada performance would start to unroll.
Aoki quickly made me regret dismissing his slight self as a possible threat on the second pitch of the game by lashing a shot to right centre that perfectly split Kevin Pillar and Junior Lake. Lake played it off the wall perfectly and hit cutoff man Devon Travis dead on with his throw. The latter whirled, cocked his arm . . . and ate the ball, because the speedy Aoki already had third base sewn up. Not surprisingly discombobulated by such a start to his night, Estrada plunked Smith, setting up the double play, though not of course intentionally. Cano obliged, with a grounder to Troy Tulowitzki, but the Jays didn’t turn the double play, thanks to a strange bobble by Devon Travis after getting the force at second that let Cano reach first, with Aoki scoring on the play. The bobble of the DP ball didn’t really contribute to the run, because it would have scored even if the ball had been turned over to first. It just made Estrada’s work a little tougher. But after giving up a single to Cruz, he retired Seager and Lind to escape the inning down only a run.
Estrada retired the Mariners in order in the second on just seven pitches, suggesting that he had found his equilibrium after the rocky start. I wouldn’t say that he cruised after that, stranding doubles by Aoki in the third (I swear, I will never diss unfamiliar Japanese players as banjo hitters again!), and Lind in the fourth, and loading the bases with one out in the sixth on a base hit, a walk, and another hit by pitch—lucky that Marco doesn’t throw very hard. He got out of this one by striking out the nine hitter, O’Malley, and getting some help from Kevin Pillar, who raced in and slid to his knees to grap a sinking liner to centre by that damned little Aoki, that ended the inning but could have broken the game wide open.
Only in the fifth inning did he allow another base runner to score, and that cost him, and the Jays, the game, because, as we shall see, two runs was just enough for Mr. Paxton, hurling for Seattle. The winning run didn’t exactly come from muscle or an Estrada mistake, either, except possibly for his giving up a leadoff single to O’Malley. Estrada then retired the dangerous and imposing Aoki on a popup to first. Aoki having failed to move the runner up, O’Malley took matters into his own hands, and swiped second. The mysterious Mr. Smith, Seth, then doubled O’Malley home with the only run that mattered. But this wasn’t your typical double, a boomer off the wall, or a liner into the corner or between the outfielders. Oh, no, we now have a new kind of double to add to the lexicon. Let’s call it the Willie Keeler double, after the great early singles hitter Wee Willie Keeler, who famously explained his success thus: “I hit ’em where they ain’t.”
With the Jays in the exaggerated pull shift for the left-handed Smith, the hitter bounced a simple grounder up the line at third. It bounced and bounced and bounced. Josh Donaldson ran and ran and ran. Josh Donaldson dove, but it wasn’t even close. Agonizingly, the ball bounced slowly down the line and kicked into foul territory, and by the time Darwin Barney, playing his second major league game ever in left, ran it down, Smith was at second and O’Malley was taking fives high and low in the dugout. Estrada ran out the string, but his night was done with a decent line, very representative of his body of work this season, at six innings, two runs, seven hits, one walk, three strikeouts, and the two hit batters, neither of which were involved in the scoring. Welcome back Marco!
And welcome to the bigs James Paxton, because tonight was your night anyway.
The story of Paxton’s road to a position on a major league roster is a strange and rather tangled one, and the specific details of it have to be pieced together. Suffice it to say, though, that if tonight’s start represented Paxton’s breakout performance as possibly even a marquee major league starter, it’s a form of poetic justice that it should have come at the expense of the Toronto Blue Jays.
Paxton had been high on the Jays’ radar not just because he was a Canadian pitcher who had talent, but because he had proven himself as a starting pitcher over three seasons with the University of Kentucky Wildcats. They drafted him in the first round in 2009, but he was the only first-round draftee not to sign that year. He rejected the Jays’ bonus offer, which was supposedly within guidelines set by MLB, and announced that he would return to Kentucky for his senior year of baseball and to finish his degree. From here the story seems to be that Blue Jays’ President Paul Beeston felt that Paxton had been unduly influenced by superstar players’ agent Scott Boras in making his bonus demand, and he let his suspicions leak to a reporter of the Globe and Mail, who published it in a Globe baseball blog.
NCAA athletes are not allowed to have professional agents directly represent them in negotiations with professional teams if they hope to retain their eligibility status with the NCAA. When the compliance office of the NCAA somehow picked up the story of Boras’ involvement with Paxton, it announced that it would investigate, and invited Paxton to an interview. Paxton refused to participate in the investigation, the NCAA warned Kentucky that their whole team’s status could be questioned if Paxton was allowed to play, Kentucky suspended him, he sued the university, the lawsuit was thrown out, and Paxton was out of college ball, out of his degree programme, no longer tied to any major league team. He played independent professional ball for part of one season, and then was drafted by the Mariners in 2010. Since then he has worked his way up the ladder but at an uneven pace, making his major league debut in 2013, but even this year waiting to be inserted into the Seattle rotation until just recently.
Rocky road that it’s been for Paxton, judging from his performance tonight, he shouldn’t have any concerns about staying in the rotation for the foreseeable future. In the first five innings tonight he faced one batter over the minimum, giving up an opposite-field home run to Michael Saunders in the second, while striking out seven. In the sixth he walked Josh Thole and gave up a double to Josh Donaldson but escaped unscathed, and in his last inning, the seventh, he gave up a leadoff single to Troy Tulowitzki, who was promptly erased in a double play. Summing up, he faced three batters over the minimum, ended up with nine strikeouts, and left the game with a one-run lead, after 97 pitches over seven innings, having given up one run on three hits with one walk and the nine strikeouts.
Most impressive is what he did to the heart of the Jays’ order. With excellent command, blazing speed, and a sharp curveball, he struck out Encarnacion three times, Donaldson twice, and Tulowitzki twice, as well as Saunders and Barney once each. So blown away were the Jays by Paxton’s dominance, they remained back on their heels against Edwin Diaz, Seattle’s setup man, who retired the side in order in the eighth with two strikeouts. In the ninth, the Mariner’s closer Steve Cishek, wobbled, showing a tendency for serious wildness, gave up a walk to Encarnation and a single to Tulo with two outs, but struck out the side, fanning Michael Saunders to end the game with the two runners aboard. Thus the Jays’ record of futility at the plate extended to 14 strikeouts against three Seattle pitchers.
But it was Paxton’s night, and if he smiled a secret smile that it had come at the TV Dome against the Blue Jays, who can blame him?
Sometimes a pitcher overwhelms you, and you just pack it up and get ready for the next one. After all, winning two out of three all season gives you a winning percentage of .667, even if it is a little harder to keep that pace when you have to win two in a row to make up for a loss. Let’s see if R.A. Dickey can point us in the right direction tomorrow.
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