That Marco Estrada, he’s such a funny guy. He’s always got to have us over on whether he’s got it or not.
Look, he’s a fly-ball pitcher, though his strikeout totals are climbing with his age, quite an impressive accomplishment. So naturally when he looks in at somebody like a Nelson Cruz, early in the game, when his precision instruments, location, change of speed, and more location, aren’t quite precise yet, you can imagine that somebody like, say, a Cruz, might hit a fly ball that’s a bit, erm, prodigious in the scale of your ordinary fly balls.
So naturally when Cruz, casually reaching down in the zone with his mighty thunderstick and pounding a too-easy fast ball high and deep over the centre-field fence on a 1-2 pitch in the first inning, you weren’t all that surprised. You know that thunderstick bit is a metaphor, right? Nobody wields a thunderstick any more.
The problem, though, was that doggone Jean Segura, standing out there on second, just waiting to trot around in front of Cruz; the inevitable bomb cost Estrada two runs, not one, and there we were, down 2-zip in the top of the first again.
Let’s talk about this Segura guy for a minute. When I scored some good seats for my wife and adult son and me for a game at the Cable Dome last August, the Diamondbacks were in town with their eerie camo road uniforms, like the commandos come to town.
Now, I admit I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the National League. Like our parliamentarians in Ottawa, who only ever refer to the other chamber (Commons or Senate) in terms such as “that other place”, I usually think of the National League as “that other place”, though when I catch a glimpse of an NL game once in a while I do find myself becoming a little wistful over the manifestation of “real baseball”, i.e., sans the designated hitter.
So to my shame I had never heard of Jean Segura. He was just some chap playing shortstop for Arizona against the Jays. But, and I promise this is true, a couple innings in, after two at-bats, some baserunning, and some sharp play in the field, I turned to my family members and said, “Damn, that Segura guy is one hell of a ball player. Where has he been all my life?”
And of course it was with mixed feelings that I heard about his trade to the Mariners in the off-season. On the one hand, I’d get to see him a little more often, but on the other hand he’d be plying his trade against my home town team.
So it wasn’t the Cruz homer that upset me, not at all. It was the casual way that Segura put the wheels in motion, waiting forever until he got what he wanted, and then making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Leading off, he’s up 2 and 1 on Estrada, and then he fouls one off for 2-2. Then he fouls off three more, three of Estrada’s best. Over here, down there, up here, no matter. A casual wave and another one spoiled. Finally he got one to his liking, and lifted an ordinary little single into short left centre.
But the cheeky Segura was having none of it. He was going for two all the way. When Kevin Pillar had to reach up to grab a tricky high bounce off the turf, the way was clear and he was in to second with a flourish. Later on in the game when Pillar was on second they had a little chat, and you just know Pillar was saying that Segura wouldn’t get away with that one again.
Well, look, Segura came in hitting .364 and came out hitting .369. Estrada only gave up two more hits after the first—we’ll get to that in a minute—and one of them was another double to Segura. Let’s just be thankful that this Seattle lineup isn’t filled up with Jean Seguras, as if a talent like that could be cloned.
So, like I said, Estrada sometimes needs a bit of a warmup. Maybe when he’s throwing his last pitches on the mound before the game starts, he should have one of his team-mates stand in at the plate and pound one into the stands, just to get it out of the way.
It’s not like Estrada was home free after Cruz pulled the trigger, either. Left-handed-hitting Kyle Seager came up next and pulled the ball into a natural deep second-base position, where, in the logic of the shift, tonight’s third baseman, Chris Coghlan, was stationed. The ball was hit hard, I’ll give you that, but Coghlan had a pretty good reaction with his glove, and the ball kind of clanked off it into right centre for what was definitely a single, but a ball that might have been catchable with a good grab.
A little aside here on the Jays’ infield situation as I see it with both Donaldson and Tulowitzki sidelined. They’ve got four players covering three positions, three of them flexible, and Travis only at second when he’s in the lineup. Now, Ryan Goins is non pareil wherever he plays, and Darwin Barney is pretty reliable, though the sidearm flip from third makes me a bit nervous. If you read my reports, you will know that I’m not convinced that Travis is up to making either the tough plays or the crucial ones. And Coghlan—here’s my point—who’s made 12 starts at third and one at second, and been subbed in 4 times at third, has 4 errors in 28 chances, a not great fielding percentage of .857. I like Coghlan’s hustle, I like his look; he’s all scrappy little infielder. But I’m not convinced he can handle the hot corner. In fact, if you look at his record, he’s spent most of his career in the outfield, overwhelmingly in left.
No error for Coghlan tonight, but I think Estrada lost an out on Seager’s hit. With Seager on first our old friend Danny Valencia mis-hit one of Estrada’s funny ones, and hit a short fly to left for Steve Pearce for the second out. Then Pearce had to get on his horse and go back hard to his glove side to haul down a wicked shot by Taylor Motter in a good running catch, even if it looked a little awkward and improvised. (Hey, I just noticed that Taylor Motter is just one letter off from the Taylor, Mottel in Fiddler on the Roof. Is this a thing, or not?)
Marco Estrada threw 27 pitches in the first inning. Three went for base hits. One left the ball yard, counting two runs. He struck out Ben Gamel, and gave up a really loud out to Motter.
This is what he did in the next five innings: he threw 80 pitches. Gave up no more runs. Yielded one more hit, Segura’s second double in the third, but you already know about Segura. Walked three, and yes his control was a little snaky tonight. But fanned seven more. Best of all, he hung on just long enough, and a bit more, for his hitters finally to solve rookie Chase De Jong, putting up a big five-spot in the fifth so that when he exited after six he had a 6-2 lead, and what a king he must have felt with riches like those!
Just to finish the story line of the Toronto pitching, the bullpen did another fine job of holding the fort for Estrada. Aaron Loup, interestingly, pitched the whole seventh, facing righty/lefty/righty/lefty, retiring catcher Tuffy Gosewysch and the two lefties, Jarrod Dyson and Ben Gamel, while perhaps wisely walking our friend Mr. Segura.
Jason Grilli looked much better this time out in pitching the eighth, though he did give up a leadoff double to right by Nelson Cruz that Zeke Carrera would have corralled but for banging into the wall and having it go off his glove.
As I used to say about Big Papi last year with the Red Sox, the thing about these aging crushers is that if they don’t hit it out and you need runs, they kind of hold you back, unless they produce the RBIs themselves. If the game had been closer at that point, now 7-2 for the Jays, I have no doubt that Manager Scott Servais would have run for Cruz, but behind by five his faint hope would have been that Cruz might come to the plate again in a rally.
But here he was on second base with nobody out. Kyle Seager flew out to Pillar in centre, but there was no thought of advancing. Danny Valencia shot a liner to left for a single, and here was Cruz jogging into third. I’m not saying he was dogging it, it’s just that it was a foregone conclusion that he wasn’t going to be sent. Motter then shot another liner to centre, his second loud out of the game, and Cruz stayed rooted at third while Pillar fired the ball in to the plate from medium depth. And there he stayed while Grilli fanned Mike Freeman, the second baseman, for a boffo finish to the inning.
Now, who was that warming up for the Jays in the ninth? Leonel Campos? What? Wasn’t he up for a cuppa in April? What’s he doing here now?
At this point I have a confession to make. Sometimes I turn Buck and Tabby off. For the whole game. A, I don’t need them, most of the time. B, their inanities are really distracting. C, my wife, who kindly indulges my passion for the Jays, is a lot more appreciative of a silent ball game than one “narrated” by our intrepid TV guys.
If something’s going on that I don’t get, I turn the sound up, otherwise, maybe not. It never occurred to me that the camera was spending a lot of time on Francisco Liriano tonight, until I turned it up to find out what Campos was doing there, only to learn that Liriano had been put on the DL just before game time, and Campos brought up from Buffalo.
Well, that explains why Liriano has been struggling so much. And it sure clarifies the Mike Bolsinger situation. After his good first fill-in start, he ain’t going nowhere folks, because we need him in the rotation, right now.
So, back to Campos. With a five-run lead, Manager Gibbons could afford to check out Campos and see what he has. And the short answer is “a lot”. He popped up catcher Tuffy Gowewysch on the first pitch, fanned Jarrod Dyson with Luke Maile making a really nice snag of the foul tip, and got Jean Segura to ground out to short. On 8 pitches. Sign this kid up!
The Mariners, who have four—count ’em, four—starters on the disabled list started former Jays’ prospect Chad De Jong tonight. This kind of thing always makes me a little nervous. Last year’s version of the Blue Jays made a big hash out of chances to go up against rookies or call-up pitchers. Cleveland’s Ryan Merritt, anyone? They might miss an early chance to put up numbers, but sooner or later they’d look like they were facing the reincarnation of old Cy himself.
So after the Cruz homer spotted the Mariners a two-run jump start, young Mr. De Jong came out and found it a little difficult, shall we say, to find the plate. Okay, a lot difficult. He was like the little girl with the curl right in the middle of her forehead. When his pitches were good, they were very good—check out that curve ball, you curve-ball sucker Torontos—but when they were bad, oh, my!
Kevin Pillar didn’t wait around but took a swipe at the second pitch from De Jong and smacked one toward Segura that took a wicked short hop and handcuffed him for an infield hit. Zeke Carrera went to three and two on two called strikes and three wild ones before dumping a Texas Leaguer, again, into left. Pillar, who had been set in motion on the pitch, made it around to third. Jose Bautista passed on three hairy balls before lashing the first one in the zone, but right at Kyle Seager at third.
Sticking with that hitter’s count theme, Justin Smoak went to three and one before lofting a soft liner over Segura’s head in short right field—of course he was in the shift—to score Pillar and cut the Mariners’ lead to one. Then De Jong caught a break as Steve Pearce turned a 1-0 pitch into an around-the-horn double play.
After rhe first the expected happened, and the Jays settled in to admiring De Jong’s mixture of breaking balls, so much so that they forgot that they needed to put a little pressure on the rookie before he ran out of gas. He faced only two over the minimum from the second into the fifth, stranding an infield single in the second and a walk in the fourth while retiring 11 of 13 batters he faced.
So there was no sense that much was amiss when he issued his second walk of the night to Kevin Pillar, with two outs already in the fifth. But in a classic example of the old expression “It all starts with two” (outs, that is), Zeke Carrera followed with a base hit to left about which there was nothing Texas-ish, or even Oklahoma-esque. Then De Jong’s troubles really started. He threw four straight bad ones to Bautista, maybe sort of intentional, maybe not. This brought up Justin Smoak with the bases loaded and nobody out. Smoak didn’t waste any time at all before knocking the first pitch from De Jong back up the middle into centre for two runs, a Blue Jays’ 3-2 lead, and all 3 RBIs for Smoak.
Next came Steve Pearce to the plate, in another one of those “oh, no!” moments for yer ever-gloomy humble scribe. But this time he didn’t disappoint, and hammered a 1-2 pitch into the centre-field seats for a three-run homer and a 6-2 Toronto lead.
Manager Scott Servais let De Jong finish up, what with his severely depleted pitching staff, and he got Ryan Goins to ground out to first to end the inning. So if De Jong could just have gotten that third out in the fifth, he would have had a tidy 2-1 lead, but his line ended up 5 innings pitched, 6 runs, 7 hits, 3 walks, and 1 strikeout, on 88 pitches.
This time the rest, they say, was denouement. You already know that the Jays’ bullpen was wipeout after Estrada finished up, and Seattle’s was almost as good. Zac Curtis pitched the sixth and retired the side with one strikeout after hitting Chris Coghlan frighteningly on the hand.
Then Seattle brought in Sam Gaviglio, a big, tall right-hander to make his major league debut. Gaviglio is not without high-stakes experience, though, having made a couple of appearances for Italy during the latter team’s rather exciting run at this spring’s World Baseball Classic.
Gaviglio had himself a mighty nice debut: two innings pitched, one hit, one run, no walks, and four strikeouts on 30 pitches. He fanned Zeke Carrera, the first batter he faced in the seventh, making a nice moment for tossing the keepsake ball out of play. Oh, the one hit and the run? Couldn’t blame Gaviglio for that one. In an odd display of bad ball hitting, Justin Smoak went after a high (shoulder-high) hard one on the outside corner and blasted it over the centre-field fence. Oh, well. Tant pis.
So, in the immortal words of Tony Soprano, whaddaya gonna do? Oh, yeah, that was when somebody got whacked. No one getting whacked here these days. Toronto’s pitchers made one mistake in nine innings. Young Mr. De Jong hung on by his fingernails until he couldn’t any more, the Jays’ surging hitters caught up with him, and we’re looking at another nice, solid win, against a good team that’s really suffering at the moment.
Tomorrow night it’s Joe Biagini, and I can’t wait.
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