R.A. Dickey is a consummate team player. He takes pride in his profession. Not just in the pitching, but in all the little things that make up a complete ball player. With his National League background he can handle a bat and run the bases, even as a pinch-runner. He fields his position superbly. On the mound he is tenacious and resilient as he battles the vagaries of maintaining mastery over a pitch that sometimes just will not be tamed.
Dickey marches along contributing 200-plus innings a year without injury issues, and he never complains, even though he seldom gets the run support that other members of the rotation regularly get. Even under the extreme provocation of Manager John Gibbons’ strange decision to remove him from Game Four of the 2015 ALDS when he had a 7-1 lead and was one out from qualifying for a playoff victory, his only response after the game was to say that the manager is in charge of the team, and his job is to do what the manager deems necessary to secure the win.
This is why it was so gratifying to see such a team effort expended tonight by the Blue Jays to support their senior starter on a night when he struggled mightily from the very first batter of the game, and could easily have gone down to defeat, even by means of a blowout. But the Jays’ hitters made sure that Dickey never trailed in the game, their defence came up big behind him and his successors on the hill, and the bullpen did a great job to hold the Rays in check for the rest of the game, yielding only a meaningless solo home run to Tampa Bay’s designated Toronto nemesis, Logan Forsythe by closer Roberto Osuna in the ninth inning to close the gap to 7-5.
Dickey’s mound opponent tonight was Jake Odorizzi, which posed a particular challenge for a lineup that has really struggled to score runs recently. Odorizzi, who came into the game a respectable 6-5 with a 3.70 ERA for a team that is twenty games below .500, had had a recent string of excellent starts, in fact going scoreless for 20.2 innings in his last three starts before Toronto. But just as Dickey’s struggles tonight came right off the bat, so to speak, with a 34-pitch first inning in which he somehow managed to keep the Rays off the score sheet, the Blue Jays’ ended the suspense about Odorizzi’s scoreless streak right away in the first inning as well.
Dickey’s first inning was a strange one, though not unfamiliar for the knuckleballer. He achieved the three outs via a foul popup to Edwin Encarnacion at first, and two strikeouts. There wasn’t a ball hit in anger the entire inning. Yet Dickey needed a strikeout to strand the bases loaded for the Rays, while the sense of impending doom hung over the field, though not necessarily over Dickey, who remains inflappable regardless.
Logan Forsythe, who always plays well against Toronto, led off the game with an infield hit back to Dickey. Kevin Kiermaier fouled out. Forsythe moved to second on a wild pitch. Evan Longoria walked. Brad Miller watched a called third strike. With the oddly-named Mikie Mahtook at the plate (note to prospective ballplayers’ parents: don’t call your kid “Mikie”. Please.), a Josh Thole passed ball moved the runners up. Sigh. Mahtook walked to load the bases. Left-fielder Nick Franklin fanned to put the inning to a merciful rest after 34 pitches.
The thing that I love about R.A. Dickey is his insouciance. No matter what happens, batter to batter, you have the impression that his response is always, “It’s ok, I’ve got this.” And most of the time he does.
The above-named Mr. M. Mahtook pretty well guaranteed the immediate end of Jake Odorizzi’s scoreless streak on the first play of the game for the Jays. Devon Travis hit a sharp liner to right. Mahtook charged to his left and launched himself into a hopeless dive when he should have kept to his feet and cut the ball off. No Kevin Pillar he, the ball went all the way to the wall, as Travis went mtored to third for a standup “triple”. This was Travis’ first major league triple, and it deserves a big asterisk. Jose Bautista immediately drove Mahtook to the wall to take his deep fly, and Travis jogged home. Just to make sure that the streak stayed broken, Edwin Encarnacion pounded a one-strike pitch over the wall in left centre for his 299th career home run. Odorizzi, probably unsettled by the end of his brush with immortality, walked Michael Saunders and Troy Tulowitzki before Darrell Ceciliani obligingly went down swinging for the third out.
Both pitchers settled down and the game rolled on to the fourth inning, Dickey retiring six in a row, and Odorizzi giving up a harmless single in both the second and third.
In the top of the fourth the Rays broke off Dickey’s string and hit some ropes, combining three doubles to score two runs and tie it up. Dickey was looking at a pretty short night by this point, as he was up to 76 pitches after four innings.
But the Jays retook the lead in their half of the fourth after Odorizzi had ostensibly secured the third out with two runners on base. He didn’t help himself by hitting Josh Thole with one out, then Devon Travis got a base hit but Jose Bautista made the second out by popping out to the first baseman in foul territory. Odorizzi struck out Josh Donaldson, but the ball went right through catcher Bobbie Wilson’s wicket and all the way to the backstop. Donaldson reached first without a throw, and the bases were loaded for Edwin Encarnacion, who singled to left to score Thole and Travis and give us a 4-2 lead.
But this was not Dickey’s night for stretching it out, as the curse of the knuckleballer cost him his chance for a win. With one out and Logan Forsythe on first with a single, Dickey hit Evan Longoria with a pitch, then a passed ball by Josh Thole moved the runners up, and both would score on Brad Miller’s double to right. With the game tied 4-4, and Dickey at 89 pitches, Manager John Gibbons pulled the plug on the plucky senior, and brought in Joe Biagini, who got the two outs needed to end the inning on six pitches. So Dickey’s line was 4.1 innings, 4 runs, 6 hits, 3 walks, and 3 strikeouts.
Odorizzi breezed through the bottom of the fifth, and Biagini came back for the sixth, which he survived without allowing a run thanks to a spectacular effort by Travis and Donaldson to erase a baserunner at third. Steven Souza led off with a double to centre, and Tim Beckham did his job, hitting a ground ball to second to move Souza to third. Except Travis alertly scooped the hard one-hopper, looked to third, and fired it over. Donaldson, five feet off the bag, caught the throw right on Souza as he passed by, and held onto the ball for the out. This was both a physical turning point and a psychological one for both teams. For the Rays to have taken a lead the inning after tying the game would have been devastating for the Blue Jays. For the Rays it ended a promising rally, because with Beckham now on first, Biagini capitalized on the cut-down baserunner by getting Bobbie Wilson to bounce into a double play to end the inning.
In the bottom of the sixth, Odorizzi followed his starting counterpart to the showers. Except that pitchers never “go to the showers” any more, but stay in the dugout to support their team. This might not be the best thing physically for pitchers to do for themselves, but it does wonders for team morale. After striking out Josh Thole, Odorizzi was touched up by base hits by Travis and Bautista, and the Bautista’s single brought his night to an end, after 5.1 innings, 4 runs, 8 hits, 3 walks and 4 strikeouts, spread out over 107 pitches. Brad Boxberger came in to retire the Jays without scoring, which removed both starters from the possibility of securing a win on the night.
With the game essentially even as it moved to the seventh, there was little sense that the turning points of the game were imminent, and that all would be decided by the time the inning was over. For the Jays, it was an heroic stand by the veteran Joaquin Benoit, whose sub-rosa acquisition is looking more and more like one of the best player moves the Jays have made this year, right up there with the theft of Jason Grilli from the Braves. As he has a number of times already, Benoit started out in trouble, and then braced up to strand the runners, with a little bad baserunning assistance by Logan Forsythe, who had led off with a walk, and then moved to third on a double to right by Kevin Kiermaier. Benoit fanned the veteran Blue Jay nemesis Evan Longoria for the crucial first out, and then got cleanup hitter Brad Miller to loft a medium-deep fly ball to right, which should have scored Forsythe easily, except that he hesitated before going back to the bag, and had to hold up. Possibly he was wary of challenging the arm of Bautista that in reality is no longer in evidence. Reprieved, Benoit got Mahtook to fly out to centre to keep the score level.
Manager Kevin Cash called on lefty Xavier Cedeno, who had success against the Jays earlier in the year, to hold the fort. Ten pitches later, eight of them balls, he was gone, and Dylan Floro came in to face the two-on, nobody-out, situation. Floro walked Russell Martin to load the bases, but then started to work his way out of trouble. He struck out Melvin Upton. Then he got Justin Smoak to ground the ball back to him, a perfect opportunity to go for the home-to-first double play to get out of the inning. He got the force on Michael Saunders at the plate, but in making the out Saunders made the key play of the game by sliding legally, straight into the plate, and straight into making incidental contact with catcher Bobbie Wilson’s feet, throwing him off balance and keeping him from turning the double play. Devon Travis lined a hard single to centre to score Tulo with the eventual winning run, leaving the bases loaded for Jose Bautista, who doubled to the gap in left centre to plate two insurance runs.
The rest was denouement. In for the close after Grilli pitched the eighth, Roberto Osuna gave up an inconsequential home run to Logan Forsythe to close the gap, but it was also Tampa’s last gasp and the Jays were home with a 7-5 win, their fourth in a row and fifth in their last six.
So this was a night on which R.A. Dickey did not do the job, but he had plenty of help, both at the plate and in the field, to see his rocky start turned into a solid win for the home team. On to Tuesday, and Marco Estrada’s opportunity to see what it’s like to pitch with an extra day’s rest.
A troubling footnote to today’s activities is that we received the news that Kevin Pillar’s daring style of play has finally caused him to come a cropper: he tore a ligament in his left thumb while sliding into second head-first for a stolen base on Sunday. He has been placed on the fifteen-day disabled list, and Darren Ceciliani has been called up from Buffalo. The injury comes at a time when Pillar’s value to the bottom of the batting order has never been clearer, and it is to be hoped that he will come back soon, and regain his form soon. If he doesn’t, it sure won’t be for lack of effort.
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