In reflecting on Wednesday night’s loss to the Padres, I spent some time discussing what we talk about when we talk about losing. The underlying theme of my musings was that everything is relative, and losses have to be taken in context. So, to be sure, do wins, like the exciting 6-5 nail-biter tonight over the Orioles. When you lose, keep calm and carry on, as the sweatshirts say. When you win, keep calm and carry on.
Baltimore and Toronto came into tonight’s game from very different directions. The Jays had an off day Thursday. When you have a day off, it’s not just a waiting time, though we fans all get restless anticipating the first pitch of the next game. Things happen while you’re not playing, both at home and around the division. At home, the off day gives the whole rotation an extra day’s rest; more importantly, it gives the bullpen a little breathing space. For position players and pitchers alike, sore knees get some rest and maybe some therapy. Bumps and bruises start to heal. You catch up on sleep. Meanwhile, your place in the standings can improve without your lifting a finger. Like on Thursday night, when both Baltimore and Boston lost, leaving us one and a half games behind Baltimore and a game ahead of Boston.
Tonight it was almost unfair that the rested Blue Jays got to play on their home grounds against a Baltimore team that had finished a series at home against Colorado Wednesday evening, flown to Minneapolis for a makeup game against the Twins Thursday evening, and then on to Toronto for the weekend series. So the cards were stacked against the Orioles, who had to be more than a little road-weary, but do we really care? Not a bit. Not at all, in fact.
Marco Estrada was not only able to enjoy the off-day like his team-mates, but also went to the mound tonight the beneficiary of Manager John Gibbons’ decision to push his scheduled start against the Padres on Wednesday back to tonight against the Orioles. Besides providing another two days’ rest for Estrada’s ailing back, the decision to hold him back had the added bonus of lining up our three strongest starters for the weekend series with the Orioles.
Well, we saw that from the team’s perspective, and from that of R.A. Dickey, it’s questionable whether the change in rotation turned out well, leading as it did to the 8-4 loss to the Padres that prevented the Jays from sweeping the San Diego series. But of course we’ll never really know whether giving Dickey the start Wednesday was the fatal flaw in the plan, or whether it was just a night when the fates had already chalked up an “L” in the ledger against the Toronto team.
As for Estrada himself, the jury will have to remain out on that. Yes, he got the win. Yes, he went six innings, in fact turned in a quality start, since one of the four runs scored against him by the Orioles was unearned. And yes, he got some really big outs with some really big pitches. But he would be the first to admit that it wasn’t a vintage Estrada performance, and he struggled again, particularly with location, a good deal more than his norm for the season so far.
Estrada’s mound opponent for the Orioles today was Kevin Gausman, the young right-hander who was drafted by Baltimore in 2012, and made his MLB debut in 2013. Gausman has been up and down in the Orioles’ system since 2013, with more appearances logged at the big league level each year, but he has essentially served an apprenticeship in an Oriole uniform. In terms of effectiveness he would have to be considered the number three starter in the Baltimore rotation, though his basic numbers are an odd mix of a 2-7 won-lost combined with a decent 3.77 ERA going into today’s start. But he was also coming off a fine seven innings of 4-hit shutout ball against Cleveland the week before.
Estrada looked to have come all the way back when he made Adam Jones look foolish, and feel pretty angry into the bargain, catching him looking on a 1-2 cutter leading off the game. Then Hyun-Soo Kim, facing the extreme shift, calmly bunted toward a vacant third with about as much subterfuge as a National League pitcher laying down a sacrifice. He could have stopped to sign autographs on the way to first, and there still wouldn’t have been a throw. Understandably, Estrada threw four straight balls to Manny Machado before getting Chris Davis to ground out to first, which moved the runners up. Then Mark Trumbo, who hasn’t even remotely padded his prodigious power numbers against the Jays this year, finally did some damage by pounding a ball to centre that even Kevin Pillar knew was over his head. Suddenly, Estrada was down 2-0, and the crowd sat in stunned silence, wondering if the great anticipation for this weekend showdown was about to turn to ashes in the mouth. But Estrada made short work of catcher Matt Wieters, fanning him with a changeup on three pitches, to end the inning.
So Gausman, staked to a two-run lead without throwing a pitch, faced Jose Bautista leading off the bottom of the first. Bautista as you may have noticed, hadn’t gotten untracked at the plate at all since his return from the DL. This mini-slump has added to the angst of Blue Jays’ fans who have been stressing over every rumour, silly or not, swirling aroung Bautista and the trade deadline. But after taking a first-pitch fastball for a strike, Bautista turned on Gausman’s second pitch and jacked it over the wall in left, halving the Baltimore lead after just two pitches. The inning then became a round of Odd Man In for the Jays. Josh Donaldson hit an easy fly to centre. Number three hitter Edwin Encarnacion roped one to left to tie the game. Michael Saunders grounded out meekly to second, and then Troy Tulowitzki stayed with a slider that was dropping to the bottom of the zone, and hit the team’s third solo homer of the inning.
Obviously shaken, as who wouldn’t be, Gausman walked Russell Martin on four pitches before pulling it together for the moment to fan Justin Smoak. But just like that the Orioles’ early two-run lead was erased, and Estrada headed back to work in much better shape than he had left it after the first inning. Though he gave up a single to Pedro Alvarez with one out, he got through the second inning without allowing a run. On the third out, Darwin Barney made a terrific play to nail Adam Jones, who can still run, at first. Jones had hit a slow roller towards the hole between first and second created by the shift, but Barney raced over and in, covering an amazing amount of ground, to scoop the ball with his glove, and shovel it to first without transferring it to his throwing hand. Barney never seems to make a game appearance in which he doesn’t do something significant to help his team’s cause.
In the home half of the second he contributed again, calmly bunting Kevin Pillar, who had walked leading off, into scoring position. But Gausman then fanned both Bautista and Josh Donaldson to end the inning, despite the fact that he had wild-pitched Pillar to third during the Donaldson at-bat. Ominously, though, for a team that needs its starters to go six innings to bring its triple closer crowd of Brad Brach, Darren O’Day, and Zach Britton into play, Gausman had already thrown 45 pitches through two innings.
On the bright side, though, after stranding Pillar at third, he watched his team-mates even the score in the top of the third inning, without benefit of a base hit, but as a consequence of one of the more bizarre extreme-shift plays we have seen yet this year. With one out, Estrada walked Manny Machado, which in most cases isn’t a bad idea. Especially since Chris Davis then hit a ground ball to first for the second out. But the assist went to Donaldson, playing in a normal second-base position in the shift. Machado hit second with no intention of stopping: the third baseman was behind him, and he was as close to third as shortstop Troy Tulowitzki standing still while Machad had a full head of steam. Russell Martin alertly rushed to third, his responsibility, and the throw from Justin Smoak at first actually beat Machado to the bag, but Martin misplayed it for an error, and the ball trickled toward the plate as Machado roared in with the tying run.
The thing about the shifts being used now is that they create scenarios that have never been envisioned in the development of the hundreds of defensive drills that focus on players’ backing-up responsibilities. On this play, Estrada had to move toward the right side ground ball, which was well out of his reach, and then duck under Smoak’s throw to third. He then correctly improvised covering the plate, but when Martin mishandled the throw from Smoak a second time there was no chance of getting Machado at home. Even Martin can’t really be faulted on the play; normally when a catcher has to cover third it’s because the two left-side infielders are chasing a ball somewhere down the line that got away at third, so he’s facing the direction the ball should be coming from as he runs down the line toward third. In this case, the ball would be coming to him over his right shoulder, unless he had so much time that he could straddle the base and face first. Pretty unlikely, and not surprising that the awkward position would result in an error.
After the bombing in the first, Gausman might have grasped the new life he’d been given by the baseball gods, but he didn’t have the stuff for it today. Immediately after the Orioles tied it at three, the Jays picked him apart in their half of the inning, took the lead at 6-3, and were never headed, though the O’s would make it close. Gausman was skewered by his own leadoff walk, and a costly error by his catcher, Matt Wieters. There must have been a sale on catchers’ errors yesterday.
He opened the inning by walking Encarnacion, and Michael Saunders followed with a really short squib in front of the plate. When Wieters got to it, he hurried his throw, which would have been too late anyway, and fired it down the line into the right-field corner. Saunders was given an infield single, and he ended up on second and Encarnacion on third, with nobody out. Troy Tulowitzki plated Edwin on a grounder to second, moving Saunders to third, a baseball fundamental that our boys have finally started to execute regularly. Russell Martin delivered Saunders with a single to right for the second run, and then advanced to second on a Gausman wild pitch. Smoak moved him to third with a ground ball to second. (This is still a positive at-bat even if you make the second out doing it.) Kevin Pillar singled Martin home with the third run, and Gausman then struck out Darwin Barney to end his night down 6-3, having thrown 79 pitches in only three innings.
The Orioles got one back off Estrada in the fourth on a single, a double, and a run-scoring ground-out to make it 6-4, and there it stood, until the eighth. Vance Worley, occasional starter for Baltimore, came on in the fourth and laid down his calling card to claim a spot in the shaky Baltimore rotation by pitching an extremely effective four innings, shutting the Jays down on one hit and one walk while fanning two.
The thing about the Orioles’ starter going out with the team behind after three innings, is that if their opponents’ starter could manage six innings and turn the lead over to the bullpen at that point, the later inning guys for the other team—us—would be ready to go at the usual time. To his credit, Estrada steadied himself, and, counting the RBI groundout in the fourth, retired the last eight batters he faced, leaving with a line of six innings pitched, three earned runs, five hits, two walks, and six strikeouts on 99 pitches.
Though the Jays were shut down after the third inning, with Brad Brach pitching a clean eighth against them, it was the new 7-8-9 combo of the Blue Jays that held the game in their capable hands, which they did, Joaquin Benoit allowing two baserunners but benefitting from a double play in the seventh, Jason Grilli giving up an opposite-field lead off home run to Manny Machado, which can happen to anyone, in the eighth, and Roberto Osuna giving up a double to J.J. Hardy with two out in the ninth that set hearts aquaking in TO, before securing the save, number 22 out of 24.
Speaking of our new late-inning trio, I just noticed something kind of cool. Jason Grilli is 39 years old. Joaquin Benoit just turned 39 this past week, on the twenty-sixth. Roberto Osuna, as we all know, is only 21. If you add up their ages, you get 99. Shoudn’t we create some kind of a nickname for them that incorporates 99? If we wanted to be political, they could be the 99 Per Cent. If we wanted to be just stupid
they could be the 99 Bottles of Beer. That’s it for me; any other suggestions out there? I’m happy to provide the idea, if somebody else can Don Draper it for us.
Today the home boys rode a startling display of first-inning power, some timely and professional at bats in the third, and effective enough pitching to cling to an exciting 6-5 win over a Baltimore team that seems to be in trouble whenever the starting pitcher isn’t named Chris Tillman. Tomorrow’s starter isn’t Tillman either, but Yovani Gallardo, and he’s up against the currently very imposing Jay Happ for our side, so we shall see.
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