When you start the season one and nine, any win will do, but this one was especially sweet.
It would have been great no matter how it happened. Whether it was a blowout, or a slop-fest, or one of those crazy sluggers’ games that end up 15-12, it would have been great.
But sweet? None of those would be called sweet by me. I would reserve sweetness for coming out on top in a classic, tight, well-played, well-pitched ball game that ends in the freeze-frame of sudden death.
I confess. Kendrys Morales’ winning blow in the bottom of the ninth came so quickly and unexpectedly that I missed it. I had run into the kitchen between innings to do something inane and unnecessary, and when I got back to the television, Morales was dancing around the bases with his happy teammates massed at the plate waiting to greet him.
Missing the actual moment might have put a damper on my elation, but after it was over it didn’t matter. The long-awaited second win of the season, the much anticipated harbinger of better days to come, had arrived, and that was all that mattered.
Does anyone else feel the same mixed emotions as me when waiting for Marco Estrada to take the mound? No matter how many times I feel the awe of watching him mesmerize fearsome sluggers deep into the game, the fact that he seems to do it with smoke and mirrors never changes the premonition I get before he throws his first pitch that this time that will be the day that the house of cards will fall and he’ll be exposed as the meek and unimposing imposter that we all secretly fear he is.
But it never happens, does it? Barring the rare day when the ball carries well and a couple of his fly balls go a bit too far—and when you look at the record you realize it doesn’t happen all that often—Marco Estrada always keeps his team in the game, and always induces head-shaking, embarrassing frustration on the part of the batters he’s just set down.
Estrada is also well nigh unto unflappable, as for example in the first inning of yesterday’s game. Having a bit of trouble locating, he went to 3-1 on leadoff batter Seth Smith, who went and got a low fast ball on the outer half and drove it over Kevin Pillar’s head in centre for a double. It looked like it was going to be another Pillar Special, but the ball just kept carrying. Leadoff batter on second is never a good thing, especially for the other team.
But Estrada fanned Adam Jones, walked Mannie Machado, retired Chris Davis on a fly ball to centre, and fanned Mark Trumbo. It took him 20 pitches to do it, but when the inning was over Smith was still at second, undelivered.
The Orioles who, luckily for the rest of the division, are a little thin on starting pitching, what with the injury to number one Chris Tillman, tabbed Alec Asher to start against Toronto. A 26-year-old right-hander with a limited career record of 2-8 and an ERA of 5.88 spread over two seasons of spot duty with the Phillies, Asher was making his first start for Baltimore.
Most teams are happy to be facing a fill-in starter, but not the Blue Jays, of course. Oh, no, not the Blue Jays. Recent history is rife with examples of the Toronto bats being stifled by a who-dat pitcher, and given their hitting struggles to date this year, why would this day be any different?
And it wasn’t. For six innings Asher went pitch-for-pitch with Estrada in a scoreless duel. Starting from the first inning, the few chances Toronto had, died a-glimmering. Kevin Pillar led off the first with a single, was sac-bunted to second by Zeke Carrera hitting second (yes, folks, that’s right. Manager John Gibbons put on a sacrifice bunt in the first inning, to be executed by an old-timey number two hitter, surely a sign of desperate times), advanced to third on an Asher wild pitch, but died there when Asher struck out Jose Bautista and got Kendrys Morales on a popup in foul territory to Machado, the two outs sandwiched around a walk to Troy Tulowitzki.
And so it went. Asher was even a bit more effective than Estrada, retiring the side in the second with two strikeouts, and in the third with a little fielding help and some luck. Both Ryan Goins and Pillar hit the ball hard, but right at somebody, and then Machado made a great diving grab to his right to rob Carrera of a hit down the line.
In the meantime, Estrada stranded a bunt single by Hyun Soo Kim in the second, and a single by Jones and another walk to Machado in the third.
The fourth went quickly, the O’s in order, Estrada aided by a sterling play by Ryan Goins at second, who went to his left and to his knees to corral an apparent single by Kim and throw him out at first. Asher gave up a leadoff single to Bautista, got another popup off the bat of Morales, and watched as his infield turned an around-the-horn double play on Tulowitzki’s hard grounder to third.
Ryan Flaherty was nicked by Estrada leading off the fifth, but died there, and was the only base runner either pitcher allowed in the fifth or sixth. Estrada benefited from a long Zeke Carrera run to get under an opposite field flare down the line by Smith, and Asher was picked up the redoubtable Machado who dove into foul territory to snag a shot by Kevin Pillar, and throw him out at first.
Estrada escaped a jam in the seventh to finish up his scoreless outing. With one out, Jonathan Schoop doubled over Carrera’s head in left centre. Estrada eased the pressure by fanning Ryan Flaherty, but then to make things interesting he wild-pitched Schoop to third and walked Smith, bringing the redoubtable Adam Jones to the plate, for one of those do-or-die moments. But Estrada’s last four pitches in a brilliant 109-pitch outing resulted in—what else—a 2-1 popup by Jones to Troy Tulowitzki at short. Besides the seven-inning shutout, Estrada had given up four hits and three walks while striking out eight.
As if to tantalize their valiant starter with thoughts of a win, Toronto finally took a 1-0 lead in their half of the seventh. Asher contributed to his own demise by hitting Jose Bautista on an 0-1 pitch. After Morales hit one on the screws right at Jones in centre, Tulo singled up the middle, and that was it for Asher, whose very respectable line read six and a third innings, one run (Bautista would eventually score), only three hits, one walk, and five strikeouts on 93 pitches.
Buck Showalter brought in lefty Donnie Hart to turn Justin Smoak around to the right side (has Showalter not been doing his homework?), and Hart got lucky as Smoak hit a bomb, but to dead centre where Jones hauled it in for the second out. Then Manager John Gibbons inserted the right-handed Darwin Barney for the left-handed Chris Coghlan, Showalter didn’t counter (“Barney? Give me a break,” he must have thought.) But Barney rewarded Gibbons’ confidence and gave Showalter a little slap upside the head by lining a single to centre that scored Bautista with the lead run. Hart caught Jarrod Saltalamacchia looking for the third out, but there it stood, that lonely figure one on the board, and Estrada could but sit back and hope for a “W”.
His chances looked pretty good through the eighth inning. Joe Biagini came in for the Jays and gave up a little squibber of an infield hit to third by Machado, which brought Chris Davis to the plate. Eschewing the lefty matchup, Gibbons stuck with Biagini, and was rewarded beyond all measure. Davis hit one hard on the ground between first and second that resulted in a 4-6-3 double playthat could have been choreographed by Diaghilev for the ballets Rouses. Goins gloved the ball, his momentum throwing him into a 360 pirouette to make a perfect throw to second, where Tulo, coming from the right field side of the bag (because of the shift, you see) took the throw, executed his own forced pirouette, and threw a strike to first to double up the thankfully ponderous Davis. After that display, Mark Trumbo’s ground out to Tulo to end the inning was barely an afterthought.
The Jays just missed a two-out chance to improve their lead in the bottom of the eighth when, with Zeke Carrera on first with a two-out, wrong-way bloop single to left, Showalter brought in right-hander Tyler Wilson to face the struggling Bautista. Bautista almost made up for two weeks of misery by hitting a juicy 3-1 fast ball right down the middle as far as he could and not leave the park, another easy play in deep centre for Jones.
For the first time this season, it was “Osuna for the save” time, and, but for some very bad luck, it would have ended here. What else can it be but luck when the other team scores a run on one infield hit, with no walks, wild pitches, or passed balls? Here’s how it went down: Wellington Castillo hit one sharply back to Osuna, and it deflected off his leg toward third, trickling so slowly toward Barney that it wasn’t possible to make a play even on the slow-of-foot Baltimore catcher. Showing far more initiative than he did with Zach Britton in the Wild Card game last year, Manager Showalter wisely ran the fleet Craig Gentry for Castillo. Mindful that it was Salty, and not Russell Martin behind the plate, Gentry immediately stole second, and then advanced daringly to third on a fly to deep left by Hyun Soo Kim. All that was left was for Schoop to loft a decent fly ball to centre for the sacrifice, and the deed was done. To the drooping spirits of the Blue Jays, not least to the sagging shoulders of Roberto Osuna, it mattered little that plate umpire Jim Reynolds rang up Ryan Flaherty for the third out.
So it was back to the drawing board for Toronto in the bottom of the ninth, and back to the well once more for Tyler Wilson, who, remember, had dodged a bullet in the eighth inning. This time Showalter evades the blame, because Zach Britton was not only not available because he had thrown a total of 39 pitches in the last two nights to eke out his fourth and fifth saves of the year, but also because, as we only learned this morning, there was a reason for his struggles against the Jays. He has been placed on the ten-day disabled list with a sore elbow. Not surprising, considering his lack of dominance so far this year.
So, Wilson to the mound, Kendrys Morales to the plate, and yer humble scribe, as mentioned, to the kitchen. (It wasn’t like that, of course. I had gone to the kitchen during the commercial break, and didn’t get back in time.) In my absence, poor Mr. Wilson tried a first-pitch “get-me-over” curve on Morales, but he hung it like the harvest moon, and by the time I got back to the TV, Morales was rounding first. He wasn’t walking the parrot, but he seemed to be singing something. If I had to guess, I’d guess it would have been, “Just one look, and I swung so hard, hard, hard . . .”
Of course the delirium, not only in the ball park but in the heart of yer humble scribe, was all out of proportion to the event, which merely meant that our boys were now two and nine, rather than one and ten, but still, you can hardly blame us, can you?
So, this afternoon, as the Easter Bunny pitter-patters off to wherever s/he stays when not hiding chocolate (who makes these things up, anyway?) Toronto and Baltimore go at it one more time, in a rematch between Jay Happ and Dylan Bundy, with the Jays’ first series split of the season at stake.
How low have our expectations fallen, my friends. Still, a split would be good, no?
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