Man, when we played good ball to win the first two game of this series, I thought all the bad vibes and noxious fumes emenating from the last two home series had been dissipated across the continent along with the jet contrails as the team flew west Wednesday afternoon.
But two good games do not a season make. Nor do they put a definitive end to a bad smell. Just look at what we had in front of us this evening, when the Angels of wherever embarrassed the boys in blue 6-1. Check that sentence: rather, when the boys in blue embarrassed themselves in a 6-1 giveaway to the lowly LA Angels.
We had another good pitching performance wasted. Francisco Liriano is going head to head with R.A. Dickey to be named for the one or two starts left for a number five in the remaining games, and, we should be so fortunate, inclusion on the post-season roster. To keep his claim relevant, he needed a second straight good start following his terrific no decision outing against the Rays in Toronto on the twelfth, a game the Jays eventually won 3-2 on Zeke Carrera’s game-winning pinch-hit homer in the bottom of the eighth. And he certainly filled the bill tonight, matching Dickey’s solid start last night. He went six innings on 94 pitches and gave up four runs, only two of them earned, on six hits, with two walks and four strikeouts. What’s that, you say? Only two of the four runs were earned? What was that all about? Yeah, that’s right, it’s not a typo. Just wait, we’ll get to all the messy details.
Yet again we failed to capitalize on numerous chances against a very mediocre Ricky Nolasco. We’ve heard this before, haven’t we? Maybe we should have a template to report games like this, with blanks, like the “write your own adventure” books for kids. Yeah, that’d be good: Tonight we wasted another fine outing by ___________. Tonight we had base-runners up the ying-yang against some random guy named ___________. Tonight ____________ made a crucial mental error on the bases that killed a promising threat by the Jays’ offence. And so on. Ad nauseum.
Wasted hits, wasted base-runners? Try this on for size: in the first, second, third, sixth, seventh, and eighth, we had a leadoff single aboard. In the fifth it was a leadoff double, but that was by Devon Travis, and for the second time in a week he took off for third on a grounder to short and made the first out at third. Only in the fourth did they make two outs before Justin Smoak drew a walk, but Troy Tulowitzki led off the inning with a blast to the centre-field wall that in 90% of the parks is a home run, but at Angels Stadium it was just an impressive out. And in the ninth, when the game was already sewn up by the Angels, Edwin Encarnacion singled with two outs. So, seven innings out of nine the leadoff hitter had a base hit, and they had at least one base-runner in every inning. And it took them until the bottom of the eighth to score a run, on a sac fly with the bases loaded. A record of some sort for futility?
And it wasn’t as if they were up against Rick Porcello or somebody. Sure, Nolasco had good numbers, six innings, no runs, five hits, two walks, seven strikeouts, but he threw 102 pitches, and there’s the key. He laboured all the way. He had base-runners on in every inning. You can look at that both ways. He was bad because he was sloppy, or he was good because he was pitching out of a jam all night. And watching him work, inning by inning, your feelings were ambivalent, too. This guy’s on the ropes, you thought, he couldn’t last. But then you thought, no he’s not. We couldn’t cash a base-runner to save our butts the way we’re hitting. The gloomy bird on my right shoulder won the day. Nolasco wasn’t on the ropes, and we couldn’t put him away.
Yet again we slopped it up in the field, to the extent that only two (two!) of the six runs off the Jays’ pitchers were earned. And another one, the second run off Liriano, was hardly “earned” by the Angels. They scored in the fifth inning on just a hit and a walk, but Andrelton Simmons, the beneficiary of the leadoff walk, was able to go all the way to third on a wild pitch that Russell Martin couldn’t find, so he was in position to score on a Shane Robinson single, yet without the wild pitch Simmons would have just been on first when Robinson singled, and they both would have died at first and second when Yunel Escobar struck out to end the inning.
In fact, the only legitimate run off Liriano or the bullpen was Albert Pujols’ historic solo homer. He led off the second inning with a short sweet stroke that jumped the ball over the fence in left on a line. Full credit to the illustrious career of Pujols. This was his thirtieth homer of the season. He is only the fourth major league hitter in history to have had fourteen, that’s right, fourteen seasons in which he has hit thirty or more homers. My hat goes off to him, but I wish he’d do it against somebody else!
As for the rest of the legally-credited unearned runs, what a dreary list of sad stories it is.
In the Angels’ sixth, Liriano was still on the hill and the game was still close, the teams separated by the Pujols’ homer and the wild-pitch-assisted run in the fifth. Kole Calhoun led off with a single. Mike Trout hit a slow bouncer right at the usually impeccable-fielding Justin Smoak at first, but Smoak couldn’t come up with it, and it ticked off his glove for an error, allowing Calhoun to reach second with Trout safe at first. Pujols then flied out to right, and Calhoun moved up on the catch. He scored on a ground-out to second by Jefry Marte, which should have been the third out, but was only the second, and Trout moved into scoring position. After stealing third, he easily scored on a soft single to centre that Simmons hit on a pitch that totally handcuffed him. Two runs unearned because Smoak had to get an out on the grounder he missed, but he didn’t.
With Liriano finished, Ryan Tepera came in to pitch the seventh, and saw the Angels’ score two more unearned runs, all for the lack of Josh Donaldson making the easy throw to first with two outs already in the books. On what shoud have been the third out, Donaldson picked up an easy one hopper and fired way wide of first. The ball went out of play, so not only was Escobar safe on the error but he ended up at second. He scored on a double by Calhoun, and Trout scored him with a single to centre.
If the Jays had played decent major-league defence on this night, this game could still be going on, a one-one tie.
So there you have it. A good start wasted. A mediocre starter allowed to get away with it. Uncashed base-runners galore. A defensive mess. All the classic ingredients were there tonight to contribute to what we might refer to as the Blue Jays having been “Tampa-ed” again.
After Nolasco was taken out, Manager Mike Scioscia played match-a-pitcher-to-a-hitter with his huge post-callup bullpen, and the Jays treated them as junior Houdinis in training. He ran through six of them in three innings, which may explain why my bed-time tonight is pushed back even a good bit more than usual for a west coast game.
Oh yes, the Jays did score a run in the eighth, after some strange base-running killed a potentially much bigger rally, on a sacrifice fly by Melvin Upton. The die was already long cast, though, and it was past time for the players to head out and the groundskeepers to start tidying up the messy dugouts for Sunday’s game.
Which we hope will look a little more like professional baseball, on Toronto’s part, anyway.
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