For any sensible person, that is to say, someone who does not think that the New Year should be ushered in with a splitting headache while frantically deleting photos that shouldn’t have been posted and watching faux-students playing faux-amateur football representing big faux-academic institutions, Labour Day is the true beginning of the new year.
On Labour Day, Canadians return from vacation or their cottage rental, swim in the outdoor pool one last time, start looking around for something nice to do in the fall during their dwindling free time. Young Canadians organize their backpacks, sharpen their pencils, charge their laptops, hack the parental controls on their I-Phones, rip holes in their new jeans, frantically read Cole’s Notes on all their summer reading list books, all in anticipation of the first day of school.
The heat and humidity break (most years, anyway), the air is cooler and crisper, the morning light brighter and clearer, and there’s a spring in our step as we set out on new adventures or return recharged to our regular routines.
In France, where summer holidays are clearly delineated by the month of August on the calendar, as any Canadian visitor knows who drives miles out of their way to eat at that special new restaurant only to find it closed and deserted “pour les vacances”, they even have a name for the first week of September, “la rentrée” , the return to normal, to routine, to the bustle of life.
In short, about this time of year, change is in the air.
But not, it seems, for our beloved but oh so frustrating Toronto Blue Jays. Having escaped Tampa Bay with one win out of three and their pride barely intact, they took the field under a surprisingly bright sun, given the proximity of Hurricane Hermine, of a holiday Monday, eager to do better for themselves against a foe and in a venue where in recent times they have achieved a lot of success. Surely they would get a jump on this three-game series, and not start out in a hole again.
But it was just not to be. R.A. Dickey, whose recent outings have been very respectable despite the relative lack of results in the win column, would once again come a-cropper in the grandchild of the fabled House that Ruth Built, a venue that has of late been very friendly to his team, but decidedly inhospitable to his own pitching efforts.
Masahiro Tanaka, who continues not to impress me as a big-game pitcher despite his undeniably good stats, once again fussed and bothered like a pokey old grandpa and wandered haltingly through a Toronto lineup that at every moment threatened to expose his inadequacy, but that he knew he was fortified against by the protection of the baseball gods and, to be frank, blind luck.
It’s long been a cliché in sports that teams create their own luck. In the case of the current play of the Blue Jays that seems to be more than a little true. Despite being in every game and having every opportunity, they have done little to advance their cause at the plate, in the field, or on the base paths. Their pitchers have done the best they could to keep their fingers in the dike, but there’s only so many fingers for a lot of holes and a whole lot of water on the other side. Needless to say, the luck has not followed for them.
Tanaka started the game by not fooling anyone. Facing a lineup curiously devoid of three major bats, Troy Tulowitzki, Russell Martin, and Dioner Navarro all at the same time (at least partly caused by Dickey’s start and the concomitant need to have Josh Thole behind the plate), he served up a ringing double on an 0-2 pitch to the leadoff hitter Devon Travis, moved to the top of the order to compensate for some of the missing bats (I’ll leave Manager John Gibbons to explain that one to you, but he won’t), and then Jose Bautista ripped one past Chase Headley at third to score Travis, also on an 0-2 pitch—Tanaka hadn’t thrown a pitch outside the strike zone, and was down by a run already.
But here was the first instance of blind luck, not to mention the perversity of the planners of the Big Apple, that came into play. One of the architectural quirks of the original Yankee stadium was a strangely protruding bank of seats that jutted out almost to the foul line behind third, and then fell away again, creating a blind corner in left field. Not being ones to ignore tradition, no matter how stupid, the designers of the new ball yard thought it necessary to preserve this weird anomaly in the new ball park. So what happens is that a ball ripped past the third baseman often doesn’t make it into the left-field corner, into rattle-around territory, but caroms sharply off that stupid wall and back into the playing field. Yankee left-fielders, knowing this, will charge a ball that’s headed for the corner, rather than go into the corner to cut it off. Brett Gardner is a master at this move.
Thus Gardner raced in, judged the bounce, and hustled the ball into second to keep Bautista to a single, negating what should have been back-to-back doubles. After Jacoby Ellsbury flagged down a testy little looping liner by Josh Donaldson, Edwin Encarnacion slashed a hard line single into left centre that shoulda scored Bautista, but no, Jose was only at first, not second, and only made it to third, where he died. Michael Saunders followed with a bouncer to first, first baseman Tyler Austin came to the plate, and Bautista, running on contact, unaccountably stopped then started again and was easy prey for a tag play. With two out and two on, Kevin Pillar grounded out to first. An inexplicable TOOBLAN from a veteran, combined with a bad-luck bounce, ended up holding the Jays to their recent standard of scoring a run in the first but having bigger things escape them.
The Jays’ lost run in the first would have been a lot easier to swallow were it not for a bit of a problem, shall we say, that R. A. Dickey ran into in the Yankee half of the first. His first pitch to Brett Gardner was a knuckleball in for a strike. I always feel better when he throws a strike with it on the first pitch. But the next two pitches, also strikes, were something else again. Gardner lined the second knuckler into centre for a single. Jacoby Ellsbury jacked the third one into the short porch in right, and the 1-0 lead was overcome after three pitches.
About that famous short porch: it’s another architectural anomaly from the original Yankee Stadium that they just had to retain in the new structure, and why not? Isn’t it just thrilling to see how many hitters with warning-track power can chalk up homers on ordinary medium fly balls into the right-field corner? Sure, these oddities favour both teams equally, but the Yanks play 81 games here, so they get the advantage through their whole home schedule, plus the advantage of being able to adjust to them.
After the Ellsbury homer, hot rookie Gary Sanchez lined a single to right, still with nobody out, but Chase Headley, hitting fourth, grounded into a double play and Didi Gregorius flied out to centre, and it was two to one after one.
The Jays completely wasted an opportunity to tie the game in the second, as Melvin Upton led off with a ground rule double to right. This brought Josh Thole to the plate, and raised one of those existential crises that really seem to trouble Manager John Gibbons’ soul. Thole’s in the lineup because he can, for the most part, block Dickey’s knucklers. Playing once a week, it’s okay to ask him to absorb a bit of punishment to save Russell Martin from absorbing a lot. And being on the field means he has to hit. All understood. And my sense is that Thole has a good swing, and sometimes exhibits a good eye. But he’s just a guy who hits .159 and that’s not going to change without a massive increase in at-bats, and that’s not going to happen.
But Gibbie looks at the situation, and his player-loving little heart says, “aw, poor guy, he hardly ever gets a chance to knock in a run. I can’t take that away from him in the second inning. Maybe later if we need it.” But we needed it then didn’t we, to get the game back to even after the rocking of Dickey? Thole can bunt—he spent years with the Mets, so he knows how to do it. But, no, swing away, guy, give it a shot. And Thole popped out to the second baseman on the first pitch. Darwin Barney fanned for the second out, with Upton still at second, but Barney’s a vet who can go the other way. Maybe he changes his approach with Upton at third. And then Aaron Judge swoops his giant self in and launches an improbable swan dive to catch Devon Travis’ soft liner to right to end the inning. Bad decision by Gibbie. Bad luck for Travis. No tie game.
No first inning jitters any more for Dickey, he only needed ten pitches for the second. Starlin Castro flied out to left, and Austin Romine and the Giant Judge both fanned. Sometimes it’s almost amusing to see newbies try to make contact with Dickey for the first time.
In the Jays’ half of the third, Tanaka luck again came to the fore. With one out he walked Josh Donaldson, his first walk in his first start in September, which equals the total number of walks he issued in all of August, so there’s that about Tanaka. After Edwin popped out to second, Michael Saunders once again stroked a base hit through the shift-vacated left side of the infield, Donaldson stopping at second. Chase Headley then saved Tanaka’s sushi with a sparkling grab of a hard-hit ball by Kevin Pillar that he turned into an inning-ending fielder’s choice. More luck.
But the Yankees, well, they don’t need no luck. They’ve got Jacoby Ellsbury. Leading off in the bottom of the third was one of their fine prospects not named Gary Sanchez, Tyler Austin, today playing first for Mark Texeira. It’s a real sign of the Yankees’ turnover that Texeira, in his last days as a Yankee, is reduced to being the defensive caddy for a rookie hitting .205. But that doesn’t mean he can’t hit, oh, no. Austin, facing Dickey for the first time, wasn’t too fussy about what the knuckler was doing, and hit a double to left on a 2-1 pitch. Brett Gardner popped out, bringing Ellsbury back to the plate, where he singled in Austin with the third run. So in the realm of the mano a mano, the score was Jacoby Ellsbury 3, R.A. Dickey 0. After striking out Gary Sanchez, Dickey, incredulous at the indignity of it, was called for a balk by first-base umpire Mark Wegner. But Ellsbury was stranded at second when Headley popped out to second.
After three it was 3-1 for the Yankees, and Dickey had actually pitched as well as Tanaka, with a lower pitch count, the only difference being the first-inning gopher ball to Ellsbury, and Tanaka’s luck. The luck held in the top of the fourth, when Upton again led off with a base hit, only to be caught stealing by a very quick release and a strong, accurate throw to second by the rookie Sanchez. It’s not often that Upton gets a good jump but is thrown out by four feet. That little business taken care of, Thole, on another popup to second, and Darwin Barney on a grounder to second were quickly retired to end the inning.
Still essentially matching baserunners and pitches with Tanaka, Dickey was again walking the tightrope in the bottom of the fourth, but unfortunately, with two on, a base hit by Starlin Castro and a walk to Austin Romine, and two outs, bookend strikeouts of Gregorius and Judge, he had to face the unconscious who gives a damn Tyler Austin, who smacked another double to left, picking up two RBIs and extending the Yankees’ lead to 5-1. Dickey struck out Brett Gardner to end an inning in which he struck out the side, but Gibbie was unwilling to let the bleeding go on, and decided that Dickey had seen enough of the Yankees.
In the last two games in Tampa, the Jays had yielded early leads, only to have their bullpen close the door completely on the Rays and give their hitters a chance to get back in it. The first time it didn’t happen, the second time it did. With at least four innings to go, could they do it again, and in the meantime could they finally rough up Tanaka, or jump on his successors?
Well, yes, the bullpen was aces again, and yes, they did mount a challenge as Tanaka exited the game, but they couldn’t quite capitalize on enough chances to do anything other than make it close.
After his first disastrous outing from the bullpen, Francisco Liriano needed a confidence-builder, and with Dickey only going four, the Jays needed some innings. Both got what they were looking for. How about two innings, one base hit, a tainted infield single by who else, Ellsbury, who reached when the ball slipped out of Travis’ hand, yet again, and generously not counted as an error, and three strikeouts? The only blemish on Liriano’s performance came after the game, when we found out that he hadn’t gone out for a third inning because his back had stiffened up. Brett Cecil followed with an encouraging clean inning, and Joaquin Benoit finished up with his now-traditional one-walk but striking out the side.
As for the Jays’ offence, Tanaka drew on his personal bank of good luck again, accompanied by Jose Bautista’s second baserunning blunder, to survive another threat by Toronto in the fifth. After Travis grounded out, he walked Bautista, second walk of the new month for Tanaka, what’s the world coming to, then ducked a bullet as Donaldson hit a screamer right at Headley for the second out. This brought Encarnacion to the plate, and there arose again the spectre of the home-team-friendly box seats behind third.
Edwin hit another shot past Headley, and again hit the billiard rail and caromed right to Gardner who was perfectly positioned. Not only was Encarnacion held to a single, but Bautista, with the play right in front of him all the way, ran into the out at third by about a half a mile to end the inning. Never make the first or third out at third? Check. TOOBLAN number two? Check. Once again, we didn’t capitalize on baserunners, and once again our own sloppiness was the decisive factor.
Tanaka took on a second wind after that, and set the Jays down in order in the sixth, with two strikeouts. After Liriano’s second clean inning, we came to the seventh, which would be Tanaka’s last, going in with 98 pitches. The top of the seventh was the kind of inning that, in the American League, you only see after the September first callups. The Jays used three pinch-hitters, and the Yankees used four pitchers. When it was all said and done, Tanaka was of course gone but still in line for the win, the Jays had closed the lead to five-three, but the scoring was closed out for the night, whether the Blue Jays could admit it or not.
Tanaka walked Thole leading off. Dioner Navarro, hitting for Darwin Barney, hit a deep fly to right that the giant Aaron Judge reached up and plucked from the top of the wall. That was enough for Manager Joe Girardi, and he brought in Jonathan Holder, who got the second out on a short fly to right, and then the fun began. Holder walked Bautista and Donaldson to load the bases, and was replaced by Ben Heller, who gave up a single to right by Encarnacion to drive in two runs. Finally Tommy Layne came in and retired Martin on a little bloop to Castro at second. The Jays had closed the gap to two, but that was as close as they would come.
The Yankees bullpen was up to matching the success of the Jays’ relievers, and didn’t allow a base-runner in the eighth and ninth. Tyler Clippard struck out one and threw 14 pitches, while Dellin Betances struck out two on only ten pitches for the save. Andrew Miller? Aroldis Chapman? Who?
Well, here we are, Tampa Bay redux. We have to win tomorrow night to avoid the sweep. So far, we’re absolutely not out of it, but if we don’t start putting together good at bats, fielding the ball, and running the bases well, we soon will be.
Leave a Reply