The Blue Jays had lots of little demons to exorcise as they took the field tonight for the opener of a three-game set with the struggling Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, to give the Halos their rightful but altogether too wordy moniker.
First there was the Hitting Slump Demon, a nasty big hulk with an insidious little buddy sitting on his shoulder, the Too Many Strikeouts Demon. Then there was the mischievous Let’s Play Tricks on Dickey Demon, who puts it into the heads of the Jays batters to take whiffle bats to the plate when R.A. is on the mound. And then there’s the Can’t Win a Close One Demon, who chants endless loops of “Just wait, you’re gonna lose!” every time we take a one-run lead into the later innings of a game. And don’t forget the big, fat, lazy Complacency Demon, who quietly goes from locker to locker before the game whispering “Relax, these guys can’t beat the Little Sisters of the Poor” every time we start a series with a bottom feeder.
I don’t know why everybody disses the Little Sisters of the Poor. I seem to remember that the middle of their batting order was packed with some pretty tough sluggers. Which is a joke somewhat akin to one of my favourite Early Wynn stories. For those of you who don’t remember it, or weren’t even around then, the folksy Hall of Fame pitcher was Tom Cheek’s original broadcast partner for the Blue Jays, and surely qualifies as the top starter on my Great Baseball Names All-Star team. Wynn, who was very old school when it came to how the game was to be played, was once asked if it was true that he would knock his mother down with a pitch if she dug in too close to the plate against him. Wynn’s solemn answer was, “Mother was a hell of a hitter.”
Now, where was I? Oh yes, exorcising the demons. Seriously, the Jays had to be feeling pretty anxious, not to say snake-bit, after a six-game road trip during which arguably they should have gone 6 and 0, losing a 1-0 shutout to the Yankees, and coughing up two one-run losses to Cleveland when the Tribe overcame one-run deficits in their last at-bats. And it was indeed worrisome that Dickey was on the mound, and that the opposition was provided by the stumbling Angels, who had already lost eleven straight road games.
It’s not that I don’t have any confidence in R.A. Dickey’s starts for the Blue Jays. After watching him toil valiantly game after game to keep his team close, I just don’t have a lot of confidence in the ability of the Jays’ hitters to provide him with much in the way of run support. The aura of confidence emanating from the team when Dickey starts seems pretty wispy and unsubstantial, ready to be blown away at the first solo homer given up by the knuckle baller.
And after the playoff atmosphere in Cleveland, where every inning was charged with electricity, it had to be hard to get up for the Angels, despite the fact that a team that’s struggling and in a season-long funk has to jump up and bite somebody once in a while, and why not tonight?
Why not tonight, indeed. I’ll tell you why not: Dickey made one mistake all night, a gopher ball to career minor leaguer Nick Buss, who hit his first MLB dinger off him—imagine telling that one to your grandkids—and his successors on the mound, Joe Biagini and Scott Feldman, kept everything well in hand after he departed. Also why not is that though the Angels started a lefty, which has meant trouble for the Jays lately, that lefty was Tyler Skaggs, and though he managed to dodge a pretty big bullet in the first inning, he just couldn’t throw enough strikes to keep the Jays off the bases.
And finally why not is that Manager John Gibbons took a swipe at conventional thinking last night and put both of his catchers—his only catchers—in the lineup at the same time. Unwilling to have Russell Martin try to catch Dickey, in place of Dickey’s personal backstop Josh Thole, but unwilling to interrupt the incredible hot streak Martin has been on at the plate recently, he inserted Martin in the batting order at DH. Gibbons not only got away with the risk, but it paid off big time, as the stocky Montrealer went three for three, knocked in two runs, and had a walk, reaching base four times in the game.
As to why it was a risk for Gibbie to have both catchers in the starting lineup, it’s because if you have to insert your DH in the game defensively, you lose your DH and your pitchers have to hit. And since catchers are far more vulnerable to injury, the likelihood that Martin might have to suit up in the game to replace Thole was high enough to be a risk. But Thole stayed healthy, caught well, even plated a run with a sacrifice fly, and Martin led the offence, so risk averted, good call by the manager.
Two other lineup changes made by the manager for tonight’s game helped the Jays’ cause, and also contributed to the sense that with their return to the friendly confines of the TV Dome, the Blue Jays looked to have had a minor makeover of the team that had been struggling on the road. The news came out that Devon Travis had received a cortisone shot in the third knuckle of his right hand to help with a “minor” injury—could this maybe have been the source of his defensive struggles lately?–and so Darwin Barney was inserted as both leadoff batter and second baseman in Travis’ absence. And, to the delight of his legions of fans, Kevin Pillar returned to the lineup exactly on schedule, recovery process be damned, to resume giving more than his all to the Toronto cause. Both contributed to the Toronto run production that supported Dickey tonight.
Dickey retired the Angels in order in the top of the first, though it took him 12 pitches alone to get Mike Trout on a deep fly to centre. Barney celebrated his leadoff assignment by taking two called strikes, and then lacing the ball to left centre, where it short-hopped the wall, and he cruised into second. For all his lack of size, Barney has a compact swing and seems to hit the ball really hard when he makes contact. Both the first-inning double and the single he hit in the sixth were hard shots, no-doubters, that both jumped out of the infield. Josh Donaldson grounded out second to first to move Barney to third, and after Skaggs walked Edwin Encarnacion, Russell Martin delivered once again, a ground single through the right side to score Barney. Skaggs evaded further damage as Troy Tulowitzki popped out on the infield fly rule, and Melvin Upton fanned to end the inning.
No doubt surprised by the early run, Dickey came out for the second and promptly paid it back, with interest, in the only rocky inning he had tonight. The Angels worked over Tulo first before whacking Dickey. C.J. Cron led off by hitting a grounder to short that forced Tulo to rush his throw, and it tailed off into the dirt to his right. Encarnacion stayed on the bag and stretched for it as long as he could, before coming off the bag towards the plate to scoop the short hop, and then swiping behind him to tag Cron who was trying to dance past. An outstanding example of how a first baseman can pick up his fielder with his scooping ability. Then Andrelton Simmons hit one to Tulo’s left that took a bad skip at the last minute and bounced off the heel of his glove, Simmons is fast, and Tulo had to pick it cleanly the first time to get him out, so he reached with an infield single.
This brought up Nick Buss, a 29-year-old farmhand who started in the Dodgers organization and had a cup of coffee in the big leagues with them in 2013. Since then he’d bounced around a couple of farm systems until the Angels brought him up from Triple A on August thirteenth of this year. Before tonight, he’d had only 19 at bats with the Dodgers, and thirty this year with the Angels. But against Dickey, after taking a knuckler for a ball, and fanning on one, he’d seen enough, and smacked the next one into the right field seats for a 2-1 LA lead. Not content with that for a night’s work, Buss would later extend the Angels’ life with one out in the ninth by bunting his way on against Scott Feldman, and then stealing second base, to boot.
Dickey gave up two more hits in the inning, to third baseman Kaleb Cowart and old Blue Jay buddy Cliff Pennington, before getting out of the inning. But, early as it was in the game, this would be Los Angeles’ last shot at any kind of a threat. Once the Jays retook the lead, they, and Dickey and Biagini and Feldman, were never headed.
Skaggs managed to protect the lead for one inning, retiring the bottom of the order, but after Dickey walked Trout and erased him with a Pujols double play ball in the top of the third, Skaggs came out in the bottom of the inning utterly unable to find the plate, and allowed the Jays to retake the lead without doing very much at all. Boosting his pitch count from 38 to 72 in one go, he walked Barney and Donaldson, gave up a bloop single to short left centre by Encarnacion to load the bases, and walked Martin to force in Barney with the tying run. He managed to get Tulo to ground into a double play, with Donaldson coming in for the second run of the inning and the lead. Skaggs got Melvin Upton to ground out to end the inning, but it was too late for the Angels.
The bloop by Encarnacion that loaded the bases maybe should have been caught. Buss, perhaps still thinking about his first MLB homer, came in late and dove but could only trap it, while Mike Trout, who looked like he could have taken charge, held back as if he were thinking, “give the kid a chance to be a hero”. I only mention this because in the late innings I felt that Trout badly mistracked Martin’s ball that went for a double, and I’m wondering why an MVP candidate is looking diffident and awkward in the field.
In the fourth, after Dickey once again stranded a single, Kevin Pillar, who was greeted on his return to the lineup like a conquering emperor by his legions of adoring, Superman-sign waving fans, led off the Jays’ fourth with a bullet down third that went for a double, and then made his way around to score in approved Kansas City small-ball fashion, moving to third on a Michael Saunders groundout, and scoring on a deep sacrifice fly off the bat of Thole. Skaggs wasn’t finished yet, but he was slowly expiring by way of the Death of a Thousand Cuts. Jays, 4-2 after four.
From this point until he was pulled by manager Gibbons with two out in the seventh after walking Cliff Pennington, Dickey allowed only a harmless single by Andrelton Simmons in the sixth. After the Pennington walk, Gibbie decided that Dickey was done, and called on Joe Biagini to face leadoff hitter Kole Calhoun, who was quickly retired on a comebacker to the mound. Although I’m never sorry to see Biagini in the game, I have to confess that Gibbie’s penchant for yanking a starter because of one base-runner when he has a decent lead annoys me no end. Besides that it delays the game, it just seems like such an insult that somebody like R.A. Dickey can’t be expected to pitch over a two-out walk just because it’s the seventh inning, despite having by now a 6-2 lead,on top of which he had only thrown 94 pitches, on an extra day’s rest.
Biagini continued in the eighth, and gave up a leadoff single to Mike Trout, but that was just a trick by Biagini, to let the superstar get on and then steal second, just so the crafty young righty could pick him off. This is not the first pickoff at second for Biagini, who seems to have the knack for outwaiting the base-runner and getting him to break for third prematurely.
Scott Feldman came on for the ninth, with the Jays’ lead now five, finally managed to retire Simmons, and then gave up the bunt single and stolen base to Nick Buss. Buss got to third, but died there as Carlos Perez grounded out to short to end the game. A definite plus for the Blue Jays was having enough of a lead to be able to keep BenGriNa in their seats for an extra night’s rest. A rested three-headed closer is an effective three-headed closer.
As for the Jay’s hitters, they finally convinced LA manager Mike Scioscia to yank Tyler Skaggs in the fifth. Like Gibbie, Scioscia, also a former catcher, seems particularly intolerant of the base on balls. Whatever limit of walks Skaggs had approached in his last inning was one short of the limit of his manager’s patience. As soon as he walked Josh Donaldson leading off, he was finished.
Right hander Mike Morin came in to pitch to Edwin, and rather ironically walked him, although the Angels did close the books on Skaggs by throwing out a steal attempt by Donaldson. Starting with Edwin, then, it was a clean slate for Morin. In short order we’d added two runs to our lead. Martin singled Edwin to second, then Tulo scored him and moved Martin to third on a double to left. In what must be a franchise record, Upton launched a sacrifice fly to left to score Martin, marking the second successful sac fly in the game for the Blue Jays.
A.J. Achter mopped up for the Halos, yielding four hits and a walk over three innings, but only one run on a solo homer to right by Michael Saunders, who ended a bit of a power drought by finally hitting his twenty-first, which was almost as long coming as his twentieth had been. It was off Achter that Martin hit the double to centre in the eighth that I thought Trout misplayed. He broke back to his left, and ended up having the ball go over his left shoulder, that is, he should have broken to his right. Does he play centre like this all the time?
By the way, Achter’s name reminds me that there’s another pitcher who should be added to the staff of the Great Baseball Names All-Star Team: Bob Duliba, who had a modest career from 1959 to 1967, ending up with the (then) Kansas City A’s. It’s not his name but his nickname that qualifies, and you need to know some German colloquialisms to get this one, but Duliba was given the nickname “Ach”. That’s right, “Ach Duliba”. Guess you had to be there.
So our boys chased all those little demons back into their hidey-holes, at least for one night, and it’s a good thing, because the O’s and the Sox both won tonight as well, so the status, as they say, is quo. May the demons not venture out tomorrow night, lest they be smited by the magical slants of Marco Estrada. Actually, I hope they do try to come out. I just love a good smiting.
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