Just to create some distance from a strange and disturbing game, one that laid bare the dark underbelly of baseball culture, I’d like to start with a reflection on the creation of baseball expressions.
In the title of this post I’ve used an expression that, according to Mr. Google (Ms Google?) does not exist in the baseball lexicon. However, the term “pinged off” was used very widely in youth baseball in the Toronto area some twenty years ago to refer to a batter being hit with a pitched ball, as in “that guy just pinged me off, man!”
The question becomes, now that I have used this term in this post, will it eventually show up in Google searches? Have I created a recognized baseball expression by committing it to print on the web? This is somewhat akin to the old “if a tree falls in the forest” conundrum, isn’t it?
Now to the question at hand. Pinging off, and getting pinged off, were the central facts of tonight’s troubling 7-5 Yankees’ win over the Blue Jays, a win that prevented a Toronto sweep of New York, a win that stalled the Jays’ drive to wrap up a wild card berth, and a win that cost Toronto for an unspecified period of time the services of two valuable members of the team, Joaquin Benoit and Devon Travis.
We can blame this whole mess on Masahiro Tanaka’s wonky arm. Tanaka was pulled from his scheduled start in the series, which was good news for the Blue Jays. Not only did this affect the matchup in the first game of the series, when Tanaka was supposed to pitch, but it threw the Yankee rotation askew for the rest of the series as well.
The upshot of all this was that Luis Severino was given the start tonight against Jay Happ. And therein lay the source of all that transpired. Is history deterministic? Can we say without a doubt that if Tanaka had pitched Friday night than all this mess wouldn’t have happened? Of course not; it’s just a supposition, but it’s a good one that I think is confirmed by the course of events.
Luis Severino was expected to be a mainstay of the Yankees’ rotation this year, based on his fine performance over the latter part of 2015, when he went 5 and 3 with a 2.89 ERA, starting eleven times for New York in the midst, you will recall, of the Yankees’ ultimately unsuccessful pennant-contending run. But from the beginning of this season he just couldn’t recover what he’d done right, and pitched himself out of the rotation, and by mid-May back to Triple A, where he compiled a very impressive record over two months which earned him a trip back to the Bronx in late July.
But he came back to the bullpen, not the rotation. In 13 appearances before tonight, only two of them had been starts, the rest in relief, where he’s done very well indeed in the middle relief role that demoted starters so often assume. So when Manager Joe Girardi looked for someone from the bullpen to take the start in what Girardi referred to as a “bullpen day”, Severino was the obvious choice.
Jay Happ was Toronto’s starter tonight, and if you wanted a bigger contrast between starting pitchers in terms of their 2016 season experiences, you couldn’t find a gap more gaping than that between Severino and Jay Happ. First of all, Happ is a seasoned veteran in mid-career, whereas Severino, for want of a better expression, is a callow youth of 22. Then there’s the little matter of their comparative performances this year. Happ has been a model of consistency, a veteran rock in the middle of the Jays’ rotation, and all the better for being left-handed. His 20-4 record and ERA of 3.28 say it all. It was a pretty strong bet that if Toronto didn’t emerge the winner tonight, it wouldn’t be because the Yankees beat up on Jay Happ. And of course we didn’t win, and it was despite, not because of, Happ’s fine outing on the hill.
Severino pretty well scotched (hmm—is that an okay expression these days?) any notion of giving Girardi the four or five good innings that he really needed by coming out wild as a March hare in the first inning. The only thing he really did right was getting leadoff man Devon Travis to fly out to centre on a full count. Next he hit Josh Donaldson on the elbow pad. (Remember this.) Then he gave up a single to centre to Edwin Encarnacion, Josh taking third. Then he walked Jose Bautista to load the bases. Then he walked Russell Martin to hand the Jays the first run of the game. Finally, still with the bases loaded, he settled down enough to get Troy Tulowitzki to fly out and to catch Michael Saunders looking at a 97 mph four-seamer for strike three.
Happ for his part had to try to pitch over a massive error by Russell Martin in the top of the first. (I’m not sure about that word “massive”, given its use recently by Orange Feather Duster on His Head Guy.) After three disheartening losses, facing a good lefty, the left-handed leadoff hitter Brett Gardner tried to stir things up by laying down a good bunt that was Martin’s ball. Plainly put, it was already a base hit when Martin got to it, but he tried to throw Gardner out anyway, and sent the ball into the right field corner, and Gardner to third, instead. With the help of a base-running gaffe by Gardner, Happ almost avoided the run being scored, as Gardner froze on Jacoby Ellsbury’s ground ball to short that should have scored him, but then he shook himself loose and scored on the second grounder to short, by Gary Sanchez. Billie Butler hit a short fly to centre to end the inning.
So, the walked-in run by Severino having tied the game, Happ returned to the mound for the second, but with a distinct purpose in mind. You will recall that in the throes of their early-September slump, the Jays had held a players-only meeting to sort things out. Numerous reports have it that among the topics discussed at that meeting was the concern raised by some of the hitters that the opposing pitchers were getting away with pitching too tight, and that the Toronto pitchers needed to step up and do their bit.
Veteran that he is, Jay Happ wasn’t about to let down his team-mates, particularly their leader, Donaldson. Chase Headley had the bad luck of being the leadoff man in the inning. After missing with a pitch behind Headley in the dirt, Happ recalibrated his sights and tried again. This time he drilled Headley in the leg. Both benches cleared, with much shouting and hoo-ha-ing and scuffling around. Home plate umpire Todd Tichenor issued official warnings to both benches, and play proceeded.
I have to insert here that the issuing of warnings for throwing at hitters is a system badly in need of revision. What happens is that if the home plate umpire senses that a beanball war is about to break out, he issues warnings to both teams. The substance of the warning is that the next pitcher who in the judgment of the plate umpire has thrown deliberately at a batter will be ejected from the game, along with his manager. This doesn’t work, for two reasons. First, if a team goes into a game with intent, for example when the Texas Rangers decided that they would pay Jose Bautista back for the bat flip in a particular game with a particular pitcher, that pitcher in effect got one free shot at the hitter, because warnings won’t be issued until someone has been thrown at. So Yordano Ventura hit Bautista and received no punishment, but when the warning was given, the Jays could only retaliate at risk of ejection. If you look at tonight’s game, it’s a simple matter of keeping score: New York hit two Toronto batters; Toronto only had the “chance” to hit one. The second reason it doesn’t work is because umpires are inconsistent, even cowardly, at enforcing the warning once given.
So (to jump ahead to the bottom of the second for a moment) when Severino made Justin Smoak dance on the first pitch of the bottom of the second, everyone in the park knew that he had done it on purpose. Warnings having been issued, Severino should have been tossed immediately. But no, Tichenor held back, ensuring that, assuming the pitcher was as stupid as Severino appears to be, someone would be thrown at again. Not appreciating that he’d been let off the hook, Severino took better aim and hit Smoak in the thigh, was immediately ejected, and then all hell broke loose, exactly what the umps didn’t want.
The benches cleared again, this time with a lot more urgency and a lot more anger, and a general melee ensued, during which, the story has it, Smoak gained a measure of revenge by blacking Tyler Austin’s eye. When the dust had cleared not only was Severino gone, but so was Joe Girardi, his bench coach Rob Thomson, and his pitching coach Larry Rothschild. There is no truth to the rumour that the Yankees’ bat boy took over handling the team.
Definitely more seriously, as things settled down Jays’ sterling reliever Joaquin Benoit was seen being helped off the field with a very bad limp. We later learned that he had pulled a calf muscle, and wouldn’t be available to the team until deep in the playoffs, if they should survive that long. And we didn’t know it until his next plate appearance—he didn’t either, until he swung a bat in earnest, but Devon Travis also did something to his shoulder, and had to be pulled from the game. He is listed day to day, the x-rays, thankfully, showing nothing wrong.
As an odd footnote to the whole affair, it really does seem that Severino is more than a little clueless. When all was said and done and the fuss all over with, there he was, standing in front of the dugout, ready to go, for all the world as if he thought that he was actually going to go back out to the mound. But hopin’ sometimes ain’t enough, so I guess when he saw Jonathan Holder take the mound, it must finally have dawned on him that he really was out of the game.
There was, in fact, a ball game that had started and was waiting to be played. We’ve established so far that there was another stupid brawl precipitated by beanballs, that the umps as always mishandled the whole thing egregiously, that feelings and some body parts were hurt, that the Yankees were without their starter, who was no great shakes anyway, and that each team had scored a run. Let’s proceed from there.
For his part, Jay Happ, who had “wasted” two pitches in the second inning on Headley, retired the rest of the Yankees on four pitches, with Mark Texeira hitting into a double play to erase Headley, and Didi Gregorius hitting a weak fly ball to right. Holder matched Happ and cooly put things back in order for the Yankees, stranding Smoak at first and getting Pillar, Travis, and Donaldson on balls in the air on just five pitches. Though it should be said that the balls it by Pillar and Donaldson were deep drives, and Holder was lucky they stayed in the park.
Happ settled in to roll on from the third through seventh innings. He stranded a two-out infield hit followed by a walk in the third, a two-out infield hit in the fourth, and a leadoff single in the seventh. Three hits, two of which didn’t leave the infield, and one walk, on 85 pitches. Gibbie was quite willing to have him start the eighth, but in the meantime the Jays had taken a 3-1 lead on the pick-a-pitcher, any pitcher, Yankees hurlers, a lead Happ was still protecting going into the eighth.
After Holder’s quick second inning, he retired Edwin on a short fly to centre to lead off the third, but that was the last out he recorded. Bautista shot a single the other way against the shift. Russell Martin walked. Troy Tulowitzki doubled to centre to score Bautista, Martin stopping at third. A single, a walk, a double, and a run, and Holder was out, yielding to the hard-throwing left-hander James Pazos, who didn’t win his matchup with Michael Saunders. Saunders hit a single through the shift to right to score Martin and move Tulo to third. Pazos then got Justin Smoak to hit into a double play, but the Jays had the 3-1 lead they carried to the eighth inning.
The Yankees kept it close up to the eighth while cycling through Kirby Yates, Richard Bleier, and Adam Warren. The only runners the Jays mustered were two two-out walks issued by Yates in the fourth. By the time we got to the eighth, it was clear that Toronto was going to have to guard a slim lead right to the end.
As is typical, Happ started the eighth, and even got the first out, but then hit the wall and had to yield to the bullpen, meanwhile giving up an unearned run to make it a one-run ballgame. I said Happ got the first out, but it was loud. Starlin Castro, hitting for Ronald Torreyes, hit a rocket to right that looked like it had the legs, but Bautista went back to the wall for it. Brett Gardner hit a cheap double to left, dribbling an easy grounder down into the corner, while the third baseman played shortstop. (When I do it, it’s smart. When you do it, it’s cheap.) Jacoby Ellsbury hit a short single to centre. Gardner stopped at third, but then came on to score when Pillar fumbled the ball off the turf, which also allowed Ellsbury to reach second. This made the second run off Happ unearned. It also ended Happ’s excellent outing.
Joe Biagini came in to retire Gary Sanchez on a liner to right, with Ellsbury strangely staying at second, and then Brett Cecil came in to retire the pinch-hitter Brian McCann on a grounder to short.
And so we went to the ninth with a 3-2 lead, and it was time to circle the wagons. But the times are out of joint these days, and you already know from the title of this post that the Yankees won 7-5, so let’s look at how this came to be.
First of all, having blown the save but survived for the win yesterday, and gotten his 35th save on Saturday, throwing 37 pitches between the two outings, Roberto Osuna was out of commission tonight, so Gibbie’s hope of surviving the eighth without using Jason Grilli worked, and he was available for the save opportunity.
Grilli retired Chase Headley for the first out, but it was an omen, as Edwin had to make a nice pick of a rocket down the line to beat Headley to the bag. This brought Mark Texeira to the plate for the final at bat in Toronto of his illustrious career. It didn’t take him long to put his own special mark on his farewell party. He clobbered Grillie’s first pitch, a 93-plus four-seam fast ball, over the Yankees’ bullpen and into the despondent right-field crowd. So long, Tex, glad to see you go.
If it had just stopped there, a tie in the ninth at home isn’t such a bad thing, even though the whole city felt badly for Happ losing his 21st win, and for Grilli showing that even miracle workers can have a bad day at the office. But it didn’t end there.
Gregorius singled to left, and that brought the rookie Aaron Hicks to the plate. Hicks had been overmatched the whole series, showing that Gary Sanchez he isn’t. Hell, in this series even Gary Sanchez wasn’t Gary Sanchez. But shockingly he finally tied into one and deposited it in the right field seats for a 5-3 Yankee lead. When utility infielder Donovan Solano followed with a double to left Gibbie finally saw the light and rescued Grilli from further embarrassment.
Danny Barnes came in and walked Brett Gardner before giving up a single to Ellsbury that plated Solano with Grilli’s fourth run and sent Gardner to third. Kevin Pillar tried singlehandedly to keep the damage to a three-run deficit, but couldn’t quite pull it off. With Ellsbury running on the pitch, Gary Sanchez hit a sinking liner into right centre. Pillar came in hard, dove, and came up with the ball, one of his trademark great catches. Ellsbury was trapped well off first, and Pillar tried to double him up to end the inning, but Justin Smoak couldn’t squeeze the one-hopper from Pillar, Ellsbury was back safe, and the whole play became a simple sac fly as Gardner came in with the seventh run. Barnes struck out Brian McCann to stop the bleeding, and the dispirited Jays came in to face Dellin Betances. It wasn’t a save situation, but Joe Girardi wasn’t taking any chances.
Well, maybe he was, because once again the big New York closer couldn’t find the plate against Toronto, and things got very interesting again, very quickly, even without a whole lot of offensive input from the Jays’ hitters.
Betances started off by walking Smoak on four pitches. On an 0-1 count Pillar laid down a decent, but not great, bunt, trying for a base hit—nobody sacrifice bunts down four in the bottom of the ninth. Betances got to it, and fumbled it around, Pillar reaching on the error. Then he wild-pitched the two runners he put on base to second and third. Then he walked Darwin Barney, in for the sore-shouldered Travis, on a 3-1 pitch. That was enough of Betances for the Yankees. He pitched to three batters and put them all on. He threw three strikes, including the one Pillar bunted.
Tommy Layne came in to face Josh Donaldson with the bases loaded, nobody out, and a four-run lead. In some other world where the Blue Jays carry off their own small share of dramatic moments, Donaldson hits one out or clears the bases with a double. But in the 2016 world of the no-clutch Jays, Donaldson flied out to short right for the first out, with the tortoise-like Justin Smoak rightly held at third.
Layne walked Encarnacion, to cut the lead to three. Dalton Pompey was sent in to run for him, to deliver a third run on a double. Again, bases loaded, one out, but Carrera, who had run earlier for Bautista up, not Jose. Gibbie turned to Dioner Navarro to hit for Zeke. Call for the thunder and lightning. Nope. Just a weird blooper to right that Aaron Hicks almost catches despite being positioned somewhere in the middle of the Yankee bullpen. The runners have to hold up, and only Pillar scores. In fact, the Yankees almost force Pompey at second. Seven-five. Russell Martin up. Cue the thunder . . . oh, forget it. Darrell Ceciliani was sent in to run for Navarro. Martin hit a squibber back to Layne, who got the easy force at the plate for the second out. Tulo. Would there be drama? Only whether Brett Gardner would catch Tulo’s sliced pop foul to short left that almost reached the seats. He did, sliding on his glutes, nice catch, and the game, the terrible, awful, no good, very bad game, was over.
The Blue Jays were an inning away from an uplifting four-game sweep over the Yankees that would have given them great momentum for facing the Orioles in the last home series of the regular season. But the Texeira homer off Grilli in the ninth stilled the momentum and started Toronto down a dark and dreary road.
If we do in fact survive securing a wild card slot, and making it into a division series, I fear that the magic, which has not been there for the entire season, will remain missing in action, no matter the desparate longing of the multitudes of Torontonians.
Tomorrow night it’s Aaron Sanchez versus the Orioles. Will it be a great precursor to a wild card win, or the beginning of the end for the puzzling 2016 Blue Jays?
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