There’s a line from the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Gondoliers that comes to mind after today’s game. In its silly plot (trust me, G and S operettas all have silly plots) one of the flower-market girls has to put on a blindfold and is spun around by the other girls and dropped off by chance in front of one of the handsome gondoliers, who will then become her beau. When she takes the blindfold off and sees that he’s the one she’s been pining for, she exclaims, “It’s too much happiness!”
That’s my reaction to today’s walk-off 3-2 Toronto win over the Mariners for the Blue Jays’ fifth straight win, bringing their record back to within four games of .500 after that dismal start in April.
If I had actually seen Lunch Bucket Boy Kevin Pillar’s walk-off homer with two outs and nobody on in the bottom of the ninth off Seattle closer Edwin Diaz, I would probably not just have exclaimed my line, but croaked from excitement afterwards.
But, it was another conflicted day for me. On the weekend of an art-gallery show, Friday night is the opening and Sunday afternoon is the tear-down and pickup, not to mention the awarding of the “People’s Choice” award, voted on by the show’s attendees, and awarded to the painting that receives the most votes. I mentioned the voting in my Friday night game story.
We had to meet someone at the gallery at three, thus the truncated report to follow, which will address only the first part of the game, and then comment briefly on its outcome.
The wait from three to four, when we could take our paintings down and the award would be announced was intermittently filled with chatting with friends from the gallery, snacking, and checking in on the game—yes, the dorky DeWalts were in service again—and it was excruciating. I wouldn’t compare it with the tension of watching the Wild Card Game last October, but there are definite points of similarity.
For some reason the gallery official who was counting the votes did it right in the room where the show was hung, and the process was so-o-o-o slow. But when she was finished, she turned around and said to my wife, “Oh, it’s really nice that you’re still here, because the People’s Choice painting is your ‘Three Little Bums from School’.” Amazingly, both she and I had voted for another painting of hers, so her total could have been higher.
It’s a 36 by 18 (that’s right—go big or go home, just like the “old Blue Jays”) painting based on a photo of our grandson and two of his JK friends, taken from the back, as they hang on a wooden fence waving at a passing fire truck. The title? Oh, it’s a coy adaptation of another G and S thing.
Is there anyone else chronicling the Blue Jays who has a not-so-secret penchant for Gilbert and Sullivan?
So, on to today’s game, which of course was marked by Mothers Day recognition and the return to the hill of Aaron Sanchez.
The opening pitch was thrown to Marco Estrada by his lovely mother, and if you don’t know the story by now, and haven’t seen the family photos published by Steven Brunt, you need to do that. Now. It’s okay. My story will still be here when you’re finished.
Then Sanchez took the mound for the top of the first. And what an exciting return to the fray it was.
Jean Segura (who else?) beat out an infield dribbler to Devon Travis to lead off the game (what else?) On the first pitch to Ben Gamel, the pesky but supremely talented Segura took off for second and appeared to beat, barely, a strong throw from Luke Maile, who, remember, had gunned down Guillermo Heredia on Saturday. The throw was right on the bag, and Ryan Goins’ snap tag hit the back of Segura’s hand as it reached the base. Apparently. And according to umpire Ted Barrett.
But the review overturned the call, based, no doubt, on one of the most stunning video views I have yet seen from the slow-motion close-up cameras. You can clearly see, and it’s posted on MLB.Com on the GameDay wrapup for this game, that Segura’s reaching hand was slightly above the ground as he slid into the bag. You can also clearly see that the tag, slapped onto the back of his hand from above, smacked the palm of his hand firmly into the dirt before his fingertips touched the bag. Out! Wow!
Sanchez proceeded to fan Ben Gamel on a 2-2 pitch after a tough 9-pitch at-bat. He then walked Nelson Cruz, which is a good thing, and retired Kyle Seager on a deep fly to Steve Pearce in left to end the inning. An infield hit, a walk, a strikeout, and 19 pitches for Aaron Sanchez in the first inning. Well, okay then.
The M’s started Ariel Miranda, a left-handed 28-year-old Cuban import, whom none of the Jays had ever seen. He came into the game with a 3-2 record, but an ERA of 5.20.
This was going to be a tricky assignment at best. Nobody comes out of Cuba and makes it to The Show who doesn’t have at least some serious baseball chops, and that certainly includes Mr. Miranda, who of course being left-handed came in at a disadvantage facing the Jays, considering that Jose Bautista is on the march, and a lefty turns both Kendrys Morales and Justin Smoak around to their more potent side.
And Miranda did not disappoint Manager Scott Servais. He threw a lot of pitches, true, going five innings plus a batter, and accumulating 100 pitches including three walks. But the rest was all good: one run, three hits, and eight strikeouts.
The one run that he gave up was the one batter he faced in the sixth, when he walked Jose Bautista. Scott Servais then called in James Pazos, a curious decision. Pazos is a burly, heat-throwing lefty, but another lefty would keep the next two batters, Morales and Smoak, still on the starboard side. It may be a measure of the serious problems Servais has with his pitching staff that he would go to a known quantity, throwing absolutely from the wrong side, instead of risking another call-up coming in. Not to mention that both teams had already gone through a lot of arms in this series.
In any case, Pazos got by Scylla—Morales—by striking him out, but he couldn’t get by Charybdis, Smoak. Now, I am reconstructing here, because I was at the gallery, but I heard the radio call of the Smoak at bat. The Jays were down 1-0—I’ll tell you about that in a minute—with one out and Bautista on first. The broadcaster thought Smoak had hit one to the wall in left centre, and absolutely did not do a home run call. But the hit was a true rope, and it maintained enough elevation, apparently, to carry over the fence when it did not look like it would. One run charged to Miranda, one run to Pazos, and Toronto had the lead.
Aaron Sanchez was good, very good when he had to be, but occasionally struggled with command. There were moments when the broadcasters thought he might be bleeding a bit onto his uniform from his troubled middle finger, but he certainly never went full-tilt Trevor Bauer on the mound. His line: 5 innings pitched, 78 pitches, one unearned run, five hits, two walks, and four strikeouts. The reports after the game were that his finger never bothered him, and from what I saw there may have been some problems with the location of his breaking balls, but certainly not with their crispness or bite.
The unearned run off him was a real ouchy. Veteran catcher Carlos Ruiz, 38 years old and built like a fireplug, five-ten and 215 pounds, topped the ball so slowly to third, Darwin Barney coming in and firing to first, that he may or may not have been safe. First base umpire John Tumpane called him out, but the call was overturned on review.
I won’t tell you who was next up, but Mr. Perpetual Annoyance ripped one into the right-field corner. Bautista made a perfect play off the wall involving a complete spin, and fired the ball dead on line to second, where the batter was hustling for the bag. Safe or not at second, the lumbering Ruiz was not going past third in any eventuality, except the one that happened. The throw hit the sliding runner and bounced back past Devon Travis toward short right field. The batter was safe with an earned double because you can’t anticipate a close call, Ruiz trotted in to score, and Bautista was automatically charged with, on the face of it, a very unfair error, but correct according to the rules, making the run unearned.
The Seattle run in the top of the fifth was the last action I saw live.
Then came the Smoak homer putting the Jays in the lead in the bottom of the sixth, leaving Dominic Leone, who had relieved Sanchez for the sixth, the pitcher of record, giving hime the chance to be the garbage man for a second game in a row. It didn’t take him long to divest himself of that status, as he served up an 0-1 gopher ball to Jarrod Dyson, who was leading off the seventh.
Leone got the next two batters, and then John Gibbons called on Ryan Tepera to replace him. This was one time when Toronto got tremendous mileage out of its relievers. Leone went one and two thirds albeit having given up the tying homer, and Tepera got the last out of the seventh and then finished up. Without having seen it, you just know that Tepera was fabulous. Just check out his line: two and a third innings pitched, two strikeouts, just 23 pitches. That’s it.
Sometimes justice prevails, because Tepera finished off the top of the ninth for Toronto which meant he was the beneficiary of Pillar’s dramatic blast and took the win.
As for Seattle, Scott Servais also got good ‘pen after Pazos gave up the homer to Smoak. Nick Vincent pitched a clean seventh, former Jay Mark Rzepczynski (pronunced “Shep-ynsky”) and Tony Zych (the Polish Cavalry?) kept Toronto off the board in the eighth, with Zych picking up a bit of a mess from the lefty Rzepczynski and cleaning it up.
Then Servais made the very reasonable decision to bring in his young slender closer Edwin Diaz to shut the door on the Blue Jays in the ninth and he did it until he didn’t, grounding out Ryan Goins and Luke Maile before Pillar put the game in the win column for the Jays.
I’ll close with an amusing anecdote from Jerry Howarth. One of the disadvantages of watching the game like a hawk on our new 4K is that I don’t get to hear Jerry’s stories.* When Rzepczynski came on for Seattle, he recalled that when he first came to the Blue Jays Jerry had gone to the Jays’ media rep and said that he was confused, because he couldn’t find Rzepczynski in the media guide to see how to spell his name. The response from the media rep was, “Have you looked under the ‘Rs’?” Jerry recounted his answer: “Why in the world would I do that??”
So, thanks to more solid pitching, only one earned run over nine innings, almost perfect defence (I haven’t mentioned Pillar’s back-to-the-plate catch on Valencia in the fourth, but you should look up the video) and Pillar’s game-ending heroics on the other side of the ball, the Jays have now won five in a row, and climbed within four games of
.500. After their 2-11 start to the season, they have won 15 out of 25. That’s a .600 pace, folks.
*Anyone who suggests muting the TV and listening to the radio crew has never tried it. The radio broadcast is closer to “real time” than the TV transmission. If you’re listening to Jerry et al, you will know that so-and-so struck out before you see the pitch thrown. I hate that. Even the TV transmission that comes through the Rogers OnDemand box is actually a beat slower than the TV transmission coming through the simple, free digital box. We have the former in our sun room, and the latter in the kitchen, and they’re only ten feet away from each other, but I can hear the home run call on TV from the kitchen when the ball hasn’t reached the batter yet. Technically probably explainable, but esthetically terrible.
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