Artwork courtesy of storyboard artist Ed Chee.
To view more of his work please visit http://www.edwardchee.com
With apologies to the late, great Yogi Berra, who would perhaps not mind the emendation:
It ain’t over till the fat lady sings;
And you ain’t toast till the dinger dings.
Well, Brunhilda’s not on stage yet, but we can hear her trilling scales in her dressing room. And the toast isn’t brown, but the aroma is starting to fill the kitchen . . .
Images, key moments, inconvenient truths: where to begin?
Images: the gnarled hamburger meat that was Trevor Bauer’s pinkie. The blood dripping from the wound, white uniform pants already spotted. Bauer’s face glistening as he left the game, raising his glove to the acknowledgement of a hostile crowd. The ball excruciatingly spinning out of Jose Bautista’s glove, and hitting the wall. Toronto hitters perpetually out at first “on a close play.” The shock on Josh Donaldson’s face as Coco Crisp pulled the horseshoe out of his glove just in time to rob him of immortality. The dazed look of John Gibbons as the Toronto tragedy unfolded in front of him.
Key moments: a leadoff walk to Santana by Stroman. Otero facing down the drama after Bauer’s exit to retire Russell Martin. Napoli finally making contact. Twice. Kipnis going deep on Stroman. Francona going to Allen in the seventh. Napoli advancing on a wild pitch, scoring on a two-out hit by Ramirez. Crisp’s—let’s face it—lucky snag. Zeke Carrera flying around to third to give fleeting hope. Saunders’ wrong-way homer. Miller, dominant to the end.
Inconvenient truths: Three runs in three games. Excellent starting pitching and a near-perfect bullpen dumped at the side of the road by dispirited hitters carrying useless bats. A worse than decimated* pitching staff striking out major league hitters almost at will. The Jays’ only offence provided by the role players at the bottom of the order. Andrew Miller may not be human. The impossibility of hoping for a shutout, every game. The history: of 35 teams that have gone down 3-0 in a seven-game series in major league baseball, only one has ever come back to win, the Red Sox over the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS.
Tonight’s game three of the 2016 ALCS started with a sudden, two-out RBI when Santana scored from first as Jose Bautista tracked Mike Napoli’s drive to the wall, timed his jump, met the ball, but had it escape his glove for a double. The Blue Jays were behind the eight-ball already, with no report yet on whether the hitting shoes had arrived from cold storage. Spoiler alert: they hadn’t.
But the top of the first was quickly overshadowed in the home half by one of the strangest and saddest spectacles that you may ever see in an extremely important professional sporting event. Trevor Bauer had calmly told the workout-day press conference on Sunday that his cut pinkie with its ten stitches was “healed” and wouldn’t bother him in the least.
The rules of major league baseball had a direct bearing on what took place. The relevant rule states:
“The pitcher may not attach anything to either hand, any finger or either wrist (e.g., Band-Aid, tape, Super Glue, bracelet, etc.) The umpire shall determine if such attacment is indeed a foreign substance for the purpose of [the rule], but in no case may the pitcher be allowed to pitch with such attachment to his hand, finger or wrist.”
It wasn’t until Bauer, in full compliance with the above rule, took the mound for his warmup pitches that it was revealed to the world just how bad his injury was. His pinkie was swollen, split along the top of the knuckle, with the split engorged with drying darkened blood. It looked exactly as you would expect a badly mangled finger to look, and in no way “healed”, as he had stated the day before.
Bauer took his warmup pitches and there didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary. When the game started he “ernied” Jose Bautista (caught looking), walked Josh Donaldson, which is not unusual, considering he leads the league in walks. (His 109 walks this season was third in the majors, and second to Mike Trout in the American League.) Edwin Encarnacion flied out to centre. But as the inning continued, the cameras started focusing on Bauer’s pitching hand.
First you noticed the spots on his white uniform pants, and that he was rubbing his finger on his uniform. Then it started dripping. A lot. Almost a steady stream. He walked Troy Tulowitzki on a 3-2 count; Tulo was the last batter he faced. Manager John Gibbons initiated the discussion after strolling laconically up to the plate umpire and crew chief Brian Gorman. He later reported that his video crew had called the dugout to tell him that blood was actually running from the wound.
I can imagine how Gibbie might have approached this: “Say, uh, Brian, ya know he’s bleeding pretty bad from that finger, eh? Well, I was just kind of wonderin’ ya know, isn’t bleedin’ on the ball about the same thing as puttin‘ spit on it? Jus’ sayin’, ya know?” Well, as Gorman, Terry Francona, and the trainers gathered around the distraught pitcher, it became pretty obvious that Bauer couldn’t continue,. The camera focussed on Bauer’s glistening face as he tried to hold back the tears while he walked off the mound. The local crazies in the crowd showed a little respect for once, and gave him a bit of an ovation as he walked off, and he waved his glove in acknowledgement. He had retired two batters, walked two batters, and thrown 21 pitches.
So at least one game before he planned to, Francona was forced to manage a “bullpen” day, and without the luxury of having a fill-in starter go three innings or so. First up was Dan Otero, who managed to come in and calmly work through all the pent-up drama of the moment to induce Russell Martin to ground out to second to end the inning.
Before I leave the subject of Trevor Bauer, nobody seems to have noticed the level of cynicism that was displayed by Cleveland’s management in this business. It did not take a medical genius to know that with this injury that Bauer was not going to be able to pitch in this game. I don’t understand why they even tried, because it was pretty clear that the wound would open as soon as he started throwing. The only thing I can think is that the whole thing was an attempt to disrupt the Jays’ preparation for the game–oh, Bauer’s okay, he’s starting, let’s look at the video one more time. Naming someone else to start off a “bullpen day” would have given the Jays the opportunity to prepare for the pitcher(s) they’d actually see.
After the two losses in Cleveland, in the best of all worlds Marcus Stroman would have mowed through the first inning on eleven pitches or so, with a couple of ground outs and a strikeout. Then the Jays would have cashed some runs after the two walks in their half of the first. However, none of this happened, and the pattern of Cleveland scratching out a lead and the Jays not being able to counter seemed destined almost from the beginning of the game to continue.
Despite eventually giving up four runs, one scoring after Joe Biagini had replaced him in the sixth inning, Stroman pitched well enough to have kept the Jays close, which he did until he gave up the lead run in the sixth inning on a home run to right by Jason Kipnis. The gopher ball has been Stroman’s problem in a number of his starts this year, and it was tonight as well, though both Mike Napoli in the fourth and Kipnis hit theirs with nobody on base. Stroman’s line was 5.1 innings, four runs on only three hits (all for extra bases, the Napoli double in the first and the two homers), three walks and five strikeouts on 94 pitches.
Manager John Gibbons pulled Stroman after he walked Napoli with one out in the sixth. Kipnis had already led off with the home run that gave Cleveland the lead. Unfortunately, Joe Biagini wild-pitched Napoli to second, so he was able to score on a single by Jose Ramirez. Biagini then finished the inning with two fly-ball outs to centre.
No matter how this series turns out, and, at the moment, it is looking pretty grim, not only will the Toronto starters not be to blame, but the bullpen has been spectacular in keeping the Clevelands in check, theoretically giving the Jays’ hitters a chance to battle back in these low-scoring affairs.
Tonight was no different. After Biagini, Jason Grilli started the seventh, and gave up a one-out single to Robert Perez. After recording the second out, Gibbie brought Brett Cecil in match up with the left-handed Kipnis, whom he retired on a fly ball to right. Cecil then pitched the eighth inning, yielding only a leadoff walk to Francisco Lindor. He tightened the screws after that, fanning Napoli and popping up Ramirez to Edwin Encarnacion in foul territory. Then, with Lonnie Chisenhall at the plate, Francona decided to start Lindor, and he was DOA at second on a strong throw from Russell Martin to Troy Tulowitzki for the tag.
Following his controversial (listen to Gregg Zaun on this issue; on second thought, don’t) pattern of using his closer when his team is tied or behind in a close game, manager Gibbons brought Roberto Osuna in to finish off the game. This almost backfired as Osuna got into trouble and then had to really buckle down to keep Cleveland off the board. After Chisenhall flied out to centre, Coco Crisp singled to right, and then Osuna and the Jays caught a big break. Tyler Naquin hit a gapper to right centre that would easily have scored the speedy Crisp, but it took one hard bounce on the turf and skipped over the fence for a ground rule double, sending Crisp back to third.
(Rule alert, for those who aren’t aware of this: when a ground rule double has been hit, the batter is entitled to two bases, but any base-runner is also only entitled to two bases; a runner on first goes to third, a runner on second or third scores. Crisp, on first when the ball was hit, had to stop at third.)
When Osuna went to 3-0 on Roberto Perez, it looked like the “semi-intentional” walk, intended to load the bases to set up the double play. But then he fought back on Perez, throwing three straight 96 mph fast balls, the first high and down Broadway for a called strike, the second at the bottom of the zone that Perez fouled off, and the third up and in, for a swing and miss. With two down Osuna could focus on Carlos Santana, who jumped at a waist-high four-seamer on the outside half, and pulled it on the ground to the second baseman for the third out.
So it’s the same old story, isn’t it? Marcus Stroman pitched well enough to win and the bullpen shut Cleveland down, so what happened? Well, the Jays’ hitters hopes must have really swelled at the prospect of chewing through a half-dozen Cleveland bullpen arms after Bauer’s inevitable first-inning exit. But it didn’t quite work out.
It would seem that the combination of carrying the huge weight of a prolonged batting slump to the plate and facing a different pitcher every time they hit gave the Jays’ offence just as much trouble as a lights-out starter would have. Oh, sure, they weren’t completely shut down. Michael Saunders surprised with an opposite-field home run in the second inning off Dan Otero, and Ryan Goins’ hard grounder up the middle in the fifth scored Zeke Carrera, who had put a little life back in the ball park by leading off with a triple to the gap in right centre off Zach McAllister.
But Francona’s parade of relievers, who threw eight and a third innings, held things together enough for Cleveland’s scratchy four-run output to prevail. The sequence of Otero, Jeff Manship, McAllister, Brian Shaw, Cody Allen, and Andrew Miller ended up with a combined line of eight and a third innings, two runs, seven hits, one walk, and ten strikeouts. It was just what the doctor had ordered, after he tended to Trevor Bauer’s wound.
Even a leadoff single by Dioner Navarro, hitting for Saunders, was easily stranded by Miller, who retired the next three batters for the save. And, yes, that was Miller in for the ninth: Terry Francona used Cody Allen in the seventh, and then brought in Miller to finish off. Just to keep us guessing.
So our backs really are against the wall. Tomorrow afternoon it’s Aaron Sanchez taking the hill for what is clearly the most crucial game of his career. He will be facing Corey Kluber, starting on only three days’ rest, as Francona starts to scramble to cover for his paper-thin starting rotation. But if the Blue Jays can’t produce a base hit when it matters, Francona could throw Pee Wee Herman and Tiny Tim out there, and it would be all the same. Time for some Blue Jays’ hitters to get crackin’.
Remember the Bosox of ought four!
*”Decimated” is one of the most consistently misused words in the lexicon. Everybody but yer humble scribe uses it to mean slaughtered or destroyed in large numbers, but it’s a word with a much more restricted meaning. It stems from the practice in the army of Ancient Rome of taking every tenth man out of the line to be executed, either as an example for the sake of intimidation, or in punishment for a failed attack. (“Decima”–tenth). If you say that the troops were decimated, that means one in ten was lost, and no more. Just sayin’.
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