Baseball’s a funny game, eh?
Wednesday night in New York it looked like the Jays were riding high to take the series from the league-leading Yankees, despite the havoc the Baby Bombers had wreaked on Mat Latos the night before.
Not only did they have Marcus Stroman going for them in front of his hometown crowd, but he had a 4-0 lead even before throwing a pitch, thanks to a two-out RBI single by Justin Smoak, followed by a two-out, three-run homer off the bat of Steve Pearce. Embarrassment of riches in these mean times!
But we know how that turned out, and it wasn’t pretty. So the Jays found themselves heading for an off-day in sunny Florida, prior to taking on the pesky Tampa Bay Rays inside the abominable tin can of the orange juice dome.
Worse, first up for the Rays in the weekend’s starting rotation would be Chris Archer, and that’s never a good thing.
And it certainly was not a good thing for our heroes on this night.
Archer, who presents on the mound like a cross between Spider- and Plastic Man, was, as usual, all elbows, knees, and spiky dreads, his pitch selection as eclectic and effective as his look. You’d sit on the wipe-out slider, and he’d smoke you with mid-90s on the corners. Guess at heat and you’d fall on your face chasing the breaking ball. Worst of all, I think, if I had to hit against him, would be the preternatural calm on his face as he goes about showing you who’s in charge. Most of the time, he looks like a bored high school kid at morning assembly, all the while playing with the stink bomb he’s about to release.
Tonight this went on for six innings, during which he gave up one run on three hits with no walks while striking out eleven. The three hits? Kevin Pillar led off the game with a bloop single into centre, but after Archer punched out Jose Bautista, Russell Martin grounded into a double play.
The other two hits came in the fifth, after a shaky Francisco Liriano had yielded a 3-0 lead to the Rays. Who knew that in signing Kendrys Morales Toronto had acquired a potent secret weapon against Mr. Archer? Morales’ stats going in against the lean righty were off the charts, and they only got better after tonight. Fanned leading off the second, Morales led off the fifth with a double to left. Justin Smoak crossed up the shift and singled to left to score Morales and cut the Rays’ lead to 3-1. Steve Pearce hit the ball hard to Kiermaier, but Archer struck out Ryan Goins and got Devon Travis to ground out to end the inning.
The lanky righty reasserted himself in the sixth, and could have left seven defenders on the bench because he didn’t need them. He fanned Chris Coghlan, knocked down Pillar’s hard comebacker, jumped on the ball like a cat and threw him out, and then caught Bautista looking.
So Archer came out for the seventh, his dominance absolutely restored, to be the prime figure in what we could call [Manager Kevin] Cash’s Folly. Archer issued his only walk of the game, on a 3-2 count to Russell Martin leading off, bringing guess who, Mr. Morales, to the plate once again.
Chase Whitley was ready to go in the pen. Ball four to Martin was Archer’s pitch number 102. Everybody in the ball park expected to see the hook for Archer. Everybody at home expected to see the hook for Archer. Dozens of Macedonian teen fake news creators paused over their laptops, expecting Kevin Cash to emerge from the dugout. The only person in the entire world who didn’t think Cash was going to yank Archer was Cash, and that surely included Archer himself.
So Archer’s great night ended on pitch number 107, a 3-1 fast ball down and on the inner half that jumped off Morales’ bat and headed for the seats, erasing Archer’s lead, and, for all practical purposes, his night’s work.
Then in came Whitley, to retire the side in order.
Francisco Liriano spent the entire month of April whittling his ERA down from the horrendous 135.00 that he recorded in his first start on April seventh against these same Tampa Bay Rays, when he retired only one batter while giving up five earned runs. Miraculously, by the start of tonight’s game, he had it down to 3.97. He even beat the Rays in Toronto last week, though they pushed him to 99 pitches in only five innings.
But there’s something about Liriano pitching in the Tampa Tin Can. He just couldn’t find the plate again tonight, though he managed to dodge the bullet for three innings. But after three, locked, if you will, in a scoreless tie with Archer, he had managed to strand two hits and three walks while watching his pitch count balloon to 62.
Things came to a head, and Liriano’s shaky start came to an end, after he fanned Rickie Weeks to lead off the fourth. Rookie Daniel Robertson took him deep. Derek Norris lasered one over Pillar’s head and over the fence in centre in about a nanosecond. Pillar might have caught it with a leap at the fence, but he didn’t have a chance to get back in time.
Even at this point, Liriano had a path to staying in the game. Peter Bourjos grounded out to Ryan Goins for the second out, so he was one out from walking off down 2-0, with nobody on base to boot. Then the roof fell in. Tim Beckham singled to left. He hit Kevin Kiermaier on the left hand. He walked Evan Longoria. He walked Steven Souza, forcing in Beckham with the third run. That was it for Liriano. He had thrown 96 pitches in three and two thirds innings. Only 51 of them were strikes.
Manager Gibbons brought Danny Barnes into the game, and in perhaps the key moment of the night, surrounded by Rays, facing Corey Dickinson, Barnes blew the dangerous left-hander away on a high, hard 1-2 pitch to end the uprising.
So the Jays’ bullpen took over the 3-1 deficit, and could only hope to hold on until Archer ran out of gas, or until the struggling Jays’ hitters might, improbably, figure him out.
Except for a number of, um, obvious differences, you couldn’t tell Barnes from Archer while he was in there: the big whiff of Dickerson, two and a third innings pitched, two strikeouts, and only 22 pitches. That, of course, brings us to the seventh, which marked the end of Archer, followed by the Rays retaking the lead in the home half on a cheap run that victimized Dominic Leone, who’d replaced Barnes on the hill for the Jays.
The only mistake Leone was made was giving up a leadoff single to Evan Longoria, hardly a major faux pas for any AL East pitcher. The disaster came next, when Chris Coghlan booted a sure double play ball from Souza. Gibbie opted for the matchup, calling on Aaron Loup to face Dickerson, who beat out a weak topper to short to load the bases. Loup fanned Rickie Weeks for the long-awaited first out, but with the bases loaded the rookie Robertson grounded out to Smoak, who had no chance for a play at the plate, Longoria finally scoring. Derek Norris flied out to right, but Loup left as the pitcher of record, though the unearned run meant Leone would be charged with the loss if the score stood.
But, it didn’t. Tampa’s bullpen blinked, the Jays’ didn’t, the Jays’ hitters raised some dust, and Morales delivered a second thunderous blast for the coup de gràce, and the game was in the bag for Toronto.
Chase Whitley, having settled the Jays’ hash after Morales’ blast knocked Archer out of the game, came back out for the eighth inning, now in gift of a 4-3 Tampa lead, which didn’t last much longer than Whitley not that it was all Whitley’s fault. Devon Travis led off the eighth with a drive to centre that clanked off the glove of Peter Bourjos and was generously scored a double.
Chris Coghlan then took a shot at redeeming the error he’d committed earlier by driving one deep to right centre, where Steven Souza made a near-Pillar quality running catch, with Travis smartly tagging and moving up to third.
The loud out brought Kevin Cash running for relief, and he called in Jumbo Diaz to face the real Kevin Pillar. Diaz quickly got two strikes on Pillar, but served up a slider that got too much of the plate, and the hot-hitting leadoff man ripped it past Longoria into the corner in left for a double that tied the game and took Leone off the hook.
But the surging Jays weren’t going to settle for a tie. Diaz froze Bautista for a called third strike, but walked Russell Martin, bringing Morales back to the plate with two on and two outs. Morales, who is beginning to resemble his predecessor with his flair for the dramatic, then put paid to any Tampa hopes of pulling out a late win with his second home run, and his third, fourth, and fifth RBIs in the last two innings.
In his second curious decision of the night, Kevin Cash brought in the left-handed Justin Marks to turn Justin Smoak around to his preferred right side, and Smoak made no mistake with the first pitch he saw from Marks, hitting it ten rows deep over the left-centre field fence for an 8-4 Toronto lead.
After that it hardly mattered that Marks retired Steve Pearce to end the inning and stranded a walk and a base hit to keep the Jays off the board in the ninth.
What did matter was that the Rays were done. Joe Smith struck out the side on 13 pitches in the bottom of the eighth, and Roberto Osuna set down three in the ninth in a non-save situation on only ten pitches.
Chris Archer kept the Rays in this one through the force of his brilliance, until he was asked to go one hitter too far, and that changed everything.
It also gave Toronto a very promising and much needed boost at the start of their weekend on the delightful Gulf Coast.
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