The answer to my title question is pretty obvious, when you look at the scores. But an equally valid question would be, how many other games already played in Toronto’s 2017 April schedule are just like these two?
The answer? Five of the first seven, making the grand total after these last two, seven of the first nine. One loss to the Rays by a 7-2 score was desultory and foregone. But even the game in which Francisco Liriano had his first inning meltdown ended up only a two-run loss when the two teams went on to score 18 between them, and the Jays even briefly held the lead.
So, as we all know, if you added, say, two timely base hits to every single one of these games, including the last two, the Jays could be eight and one, rather than one and eight.
Now, how easy is it to finish these sentences?
One: Marcus Stroman pitched a complete game and gave up two runs on seven hits
but . . .
Two: After Francisco Liriano’s first start his ERA was 135.00, but after his second start it was 9.00 because in the second start he went six and two thirds innings and gave up two runs on five hits while fanning ten, but . . .
Answer: Pretty darn easy. Like almost every other game so far this season, what follows the “but” is that the Jays lineup struck out too many times, wasted the few scoring opportunities they had, and generally approached their plate appearances as if the opposing pitchers were Cy Young candidates.
If you were a betting man, you would have bet on a Blue Jays’ win Wednesday against the Brewers, if only because it was Marcus Stroman’s turn to take the hill. In the last two games that he pitched that really counted, Stroman took a no-hitter into the seventh inning of the championship game of the World Baseball Classic, leading the U.S. team to a somewhat surprising WBC championship, and earning for himself the tournament MVP trophy. Then, of course, he went six and a third innings, giving up one run on six hits, and benefitting from the Kendrys Morales grand slam, to pitch Toronto to its first, and, for god’s sake, only win so far this season.
And Stroman came through in spades Wednesday night, pitching nine innings, a complete game, and, as mentioned, yielding only two runs on seven hits against the Milwaukee Brewers in Toronto’s second home game of the season. But in the absence of barely any opportunity of scoring runs, Stroman’s sterling effort wasn’t enough. True, he didn’t pitch a shutout, worse luck his, but even if he had he would have left after nine innings locked in a scoreless tie.
Doubles by Domingo Santana and Keon Broxton in the second inning brought in the first run for Milwaukee, and the score remained 1-0 through five innings, before Johnathan Villar led off the sixth with a solo home run to centre field. Long-ago Jays’ prospect Eric Thames, who reinvented himself in the Korean Baseball League as a slugger before being signed by the Brewers this year, followed with a double to centre, but Stroman then induced three ground-ball outs to reassert his control of the game.
Other than the two innings in which he gave up runs, Stroman never had more than one baserunner an inning and scattered the other three hits. He extracted himself from his only other spot of trouble in the third when he picked Villar off second, after giving up a leadoff single to him, and having him advance on a passed ball by Russell Martin.
The Brewers started Chase Anderson, a journeyman right-hander in his fourth major league season, having played two years with the Diamondbacks before joining the Brewers last year. He’s developed into a decent mid-rotation guy, with a career record of 25-24 and an ERA of 4.15. Cy Young? Nah.
But you wouldn’t know it from the way the Blue Jays attacked, er, failed to attack, him. Anderson gave up three hits and walked two over seven innings. Only twice in the game, both against Anderson, did the Jays have somebody in scoring position, in the fourth and seventh innings.
In the fourth with one out Jose Bautista reached on a single to left, the Jays’ first hit, and then Anderson walked Josh Donaldson. Kendrys Morales ripped the ball, but right to second with Milwaukee in the shift, as the runners moved up. Milwaukee manager Craig Counsel ordered Troy Tulowitzki “walked”, i.e., waved to first without benefit of standing at the plate. This brought Russell Martin, hitless in his first 19 at bats for the year, to the plate. Martin, who would have no luck at all if not for bad luck, took a called third strike from plate umpire Jerry Layne on a 1-2 curve ball that was so far outside that the strike zone had to send it a letter to make contact with it.
Martin himself was the only other Toronto batter to reach second, when he doubled to right centre off Anderson with two outs in the seventh. Though he had finally broken his zero for 20 streak, he was stranded there when Steve Pearce, struggling almost as badly as Martin, flew out to centre.
Kevin Pillar reached on a single against Corey Knebel in the eighth, but was erased on a double play, and closer Naftali Feliz walked Donaldson in the ninth only to have Morales line one hard off Feliz that the pitcher was able to turn into a game-ending double play.
While the Jays search for their bats, maybe Stroman should be looking for another team?
As the Brewers left town, it was up to Toronto to try to regroup and start to reverse the terrible one and seven record they had posted so far in 2017. With Baltimore coming to town, it wouldn’t be easy.
Questions surrounded the Jays’ starter against Baltimore last night, Francisco Liriano. Before coming to the Jays last summer, Liriano had been bedevilled by control problems in Pittsburgh. But after arriving in Toronto, his command tightened up as if by magic once he was reunited with his old Pirates’ battery mate, Russell Martin.
But in Liriano’s first start of the year against Tampa Bay on April seventh, he shocked everyone by turning in the worst and shortest outing of his career, one third of an inning, in which he gave up five runs on three hits with four walks and a homer on his ledger. Noted by all was the fact that Manager John Gibbons had chosen this particular game to give backup catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia his first start of the season, replacing Russell Martin behind the dish. It’s hard to know if that was a factor in his performance, as his control was so bad that a double-sized strike zone wouldn’t have helped him, but still, who knows?
So last night would be his first appearance since that debacle, with, to be sure, Martin doing the catching. Would he struggle with his command? Would Martin have an effect? Was he indeed going to be the pitcher that Toronto expected to see in the rotation this year?
Well, all of that was clarified pretty quickly. In the top of the first, the left-hander fanned Craig Gentry. Then he fanned Adam Jones. Then he induced Manny Machado to pop up to shortstop. All three right-handed batters, by the way. And on 13 pitches, no less.
“Francisco’s back and there’s gonna be trouble” we sang.
Kevin Gausman took the hill for Baltimore in the bottom of the first, and easily retired
Zeke Carrera, Jose Bautista, and Josh Donaldson, on only eleven pitches.
And it was “game on” for yet another pitchers’ duel.
Through the fourth Liriano allowed only two baserunners. Jonathan Schoop doubled to left with one out in the third and died on the bases, and Machado walked with one out in the fourth and died there. After the two in the first, Liriano racked up five more strikeouts for seven through four innings, and threw a reasonable 53 pitches. It was fun to track and record Liriano’s evolving ERA as the scoreless innings mounted. Starting, as mentioned at the outset, at a mind-boggling 135.00 ERA, by the end of the fourth it was down to a relatively modest 10.38.
Meanwhile, except for having only one strikeout over four innings, Gausman basically matched Liriano, holding the Jays off the board with the same number of pitches, 53. He did need a little more help from his friends, though, not to mention a failure to execute by Toronto. In the second Troy Tulowitzki picked up the Jays’ first hit with a single to right, but then the Baltimore infield pulled off a nifty double play to erase Tulo and Russell Martin. Martin hit the ball up the middle on the ground, and J.J. Hardy ranged far to his left to glove it. He only had time to flip it with his glove to Schoop at second, who made a great pivot to get the out at first.
Then in the third, the Jays turned in what has become a trademark play for them over the course of the last season plus. Kevin Pillar led off with a double to right, and Darwin Barney, hitting behind him, failed to advance him to third by lining out to the left fielder. Pillar did advance smartly on a ground ball to short by Devon Travis, but on third now with two outs, he was stranded when Zeke Carrera grounded out to second.
Gausman escaped serious trouble in the fourth with the help of an unbelievably bad review call of a play at first base. With one out Donaldson hit a slow bouncer to Machado, and appeared to have beaten the throw, though he was called out. The replays showed him clearly reaching the front of the bag before the ball hit Chris Davis’ glove. But the review apparently determined that he hadn’t actually touched the bag with his toe, and the out stood. When Kendrys Morales walked, the lost baserunner took on added significance, but Gausman tied up Tulo on two strikes for his only strikeout in the first four innings, and it was enough to keep the Jays at bay.
When you’re not hitting and not scoring, it doesn’t take much of a rally to take the game out of your hands. Liriano got into his first spot of real trouble in the fifth, and it cost him two runs. In the middle of a game at the TV Dome, two runs down shouldn’t look like much, but to the 2017 Jays’ hitters it may as well have been Everest in front of them.
The O’s strung three hits together for a run to lead off the inning, but lost a runner at the plate which didn’t quite take the wind out of them. Wellington Castillo led off with a single, and moved to second on Trey Mancini’s single. Schoop’s double to centre scored Castillo, but a good relay from Pillar in centre to Tulowitzki to the plate nailed Mancini, with Schoop holding at second. Unfortunately, Jay Hardy immediately delivered him with a single to left for a second run. Hardy died at first, but the damage, slight but crucial for our boys, was done.
The game settled back into the rhythm of the pitchers’ duel again. Gausman stranded a Darwin Barney single in the bottom of the fifth, and Liriano returned to form in the top of the sixth, retiring the side in order and racking up Chris Davis for his eighth strikeout of the game.
The Jays scored their only run in the bottom of the sixth, which was also the last run of a game that would end up 2-1 Baltimore, but I think they would have traded the run for another shutout to avert what happened in the inning.
Remember how Donaldson, going all out, should have been safe on the grounder to Machado in the fourth? Well, with one out in the sixth, Jose Bautista doubled to left centre, and Donaldson immediately cashed him in with a booming opposite-field two-bagger to right. But after he rounded first, he pulled up lame, and crow-hopped safely into second before being removed from the game with yet another injury to his right calf.
Saltalamacchia was sent in to run for him and to take over as DH, but he died on third after Kendrys Morales was walked and a deep fly to centre by Tulo let him advance to third with two outs before Russell Martin was retired on an infield popup.
With the scoring over for the day, Liriano who was pulled with two outs in the sixth after walking Mancini on four pitches, Joe Biagini, and Joe Smith kept the Orioles off the board while amassing seven more strikeouts, the last two outs Liriano got in the sixth, two strikeouts out of four outs pitched by Biagini, and three by Smith to put the O’s down in order in the ninth. In all, including Liriano’s ten Ks, 15 Baltimore batters were retired on strikes in the game.
Sadly, the Jays could muster little against Darren O’Day in the seventh and Brad Brach in the eighth, before coming out to face their old familiar friend Zach Britton in the ninth.
We should mention that for the third time already in as many outings against Toronto this year, Britton managed to get the save, but also for the third time in a row he was hardly lights-out, and yet again had to get that last out with the game very much on the line. Tonight, after retiring Morales, Britton gave up a base hit to Tulo, walked Martin, then bounced one past the catcher Castillo to allow the tying and winning runs to move into position with only one out.
Kevin Pillar then bounced out to the shortstop Hardy. The Jays did not have the contact play on, so Tulo held third. It was endlessly discussed after the game whether in the midst of a slump you should take a chance and send the runner with the hit, but it’s immaterial, because they didn’t, and it became irrelevant when Steve Pearce flew out to centre to end the game. He threw 18 pitches, and was on the precipice again, but Britton still scored his third save of the year for Baltimore against Toronto.
It’s a baseball truism that good pitching beats good hitting, but it’s also true that if good pitching doesn’t get at least a little run support, then all those strikeouts and circles on the scoreboard don’t count for anything, and the last two Toronto games are absolute proof of that.
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