Long Ball Stories

Sometimes, you just have to tip your cap.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter if it’s your team that took it on the chin. That it’s your team that’s struggling against all odds in the face of an incredible string of injuries to get back in the divisional race. That it’s your team that’s desperate to close the gap with the team that has become its fiercest rival, to turn the page on losing five close games to them, out of seven already played this year.

Sometimes it almost doesn’t matter that a wave of exultation was turned into the ashes of gloom in a matter of minutes.

Sometimes, you just have to tip your cap.

Once again in Baltimore, for the second night in a row, it was the seemingly benign presence of Welington Castillo, benign presence belied by an explosive and timely bat, that destroyed the chances of victory for a Toronto Blue Jays team that has found victory so very hard to come by in this puzzling and frustrating season.

Leaving aside everything else for the moment, it all came down to this, the seventh inning. Just two moments, in fact, in the seventh inning. One for the visitors. One for the home team.

After six innings, reasonably enough, Baltimore manager Buck Showalter had decided that his starter, Kevin Gausman, was, shall we say, gassed. Though he had only given up two runs, he’d been touched by the Jays for ten hits and a walk, and already thrown 110 pitches. He was in line for the win, as the scoreboard read Baltimore 4,Toronto 2 at the moment. With the rookie Anthony Alford at the plate hitting for Ryan Goins, the left-handed Richard Bleier, in to neutralize Ryan Goins and perhaps looking ahead to Zeke Carrera coming up third, went to 3-2, and struck Alford out on the seventh pitch.

He should have been nearly out of the inning on the next batter, but for a breakdown of the Orioles’ usually sterling defense. Kevin Pillar grounded an easy one to Jay Hardy at short, but Hardy threw low to first; the one-hop seemed to bounce right back out of the middle of first sacker Chris Davis’ glove, and Pillar was safely aboard. Because the throw was bounced, the error was given to Hardy on the throw, but this one was on Chris Davis. The throw was in time, the hop was true, and I’m sure even he would say this was a throw he picks cleanly 99 times out of a hundred.

Bleier finished off his brief outing by walking the man he was supposed to get, Zeke Carrera, on a 3-1 pitch. Meanwhile, concentrating on Carrera, Bleier was perfunctory in checking Pillar, Pillar picked up on it, and easily stole second with a great jump. Thus the walk to Carrera filled an empty base.

Up to bat came Jose Bautista. Into the game came Mychal Givens, Showalter’s stocky, flame-throwing righty, whom Showalter uses almost exclusively in the tightest late-inning situation. In fact, were it not for the existence of Brad Brach in the current absence of Zach Britton, I would suspect that Givens would become the Orioles closer.

In any case, it was an epic confrontation, right-handed power against right-handed power. Bautista disdained the first pitch, a low strike call by plate umpire Tom Woodring. He spoiled the second. He refused to chase the third and fourth, both outside, one high, one low. Then Givens made a mistake and served up what Bautista was looking for, an inner half, thigh-high fast ball.

He turned on the pitch and jerked it. You just knew it was gone. Sound, trajectory off bat, obviously pulled, the only question was whether he hit it hard enough to avoid the hooking action that wanted to pull it foul. He did. The swing and the contact were remarkably similar to the swing and contact of his last home run, on the seventeenth at Atlanta.

Having trailed since the third inning on a scratched-out first inning run, a solo homer by Mannie Machado in the third, and a two-run shot by Mark Trumbo in the fourth, up to the point of Bautista’s home run, Toronto manager John Gibbons elected to leave Dominic Leone in the game to begin the hold job. Leone had come on in the sixth to bail Toronto out of a jam when he relieved starter Mike Bolsinger. Leone had gone 3-0 on Seth Smith and then the Jays elected to pass him to load the bases for Adam Jones, a risky move that paid off when Leone got Jones to hit into an inning-ending double play

So why not leave Leone in to start the next inning? Sure. Toronto showed an interesting array in the field behind Leone. Alford stayed in the game in right, Bautista was returned to his long-ago stomping grounds at third, and Barney slid over to short for the departed Goins.

Leone did his job and retired Machado on a grounder to short, but Aaron Loup didn’t do his, sort of, allowing Chris Davis to reach on yet another opposite-field base hit from an Oriole slugger. In came Danny Barnes to pitch to Mark Trumbo. Barnes got the ground ball he needed, maybe, to end the inning, a sharply-hit ball to short. But it deflected off Barney’s glove into short centre field for another base hit.

Now think back to Alford being struck out in the top of the inning by Bleier wihle hitting for Goins. Sure, it’s easy to say that Goins could have struck out just as easily as Alford, and we know that Barney is a solid fielder, but the Trumbo ball was an either/or: a base hit, or you make the pick and it’s a pretty easy double play with Trumbo truckin’ down the line. I just don’t get hitting for your best infield defender leading off the inning when you’re down 4-2. Maybe later in the inning, with ducks on the pond, but not leading off. In a close game you have to protect on both sides of the ball, and Goins is your best protector, not Barney.

Oh well, just Castillo at the plate. Law of averages, right? He’s not going to do it again. So why the sick feeling in the pit of my gut when he settles into the box? Oh, that’s why. After getting a called strike one, Barnes went to his trademark high hard one and Castillo swung through it for strike two. He went right back to it and this time the unlikely hero was ready and the ball was flying out of the yard to centre. Bautista’s homer had been neutralized, and the Baltimore bullpen had a two-run lead to protect.

No matter who’s injured out of the Baltimore ‘pen, you don’t want to hand the Oriole relievers a two-run lead to protect for only two innings, and this night was not any different. The Jays never had a baserunner in the eighth or ninth, as Darren O’Day atoned for his sloppy outing the night before with a nine-pitch eighth, and closer Brad Brach only took twelve pitches to earn his ninth save. Of the six hitters faced by the Baltimore relievers, only Zeke Carrera hit the ball with any authority, driving Seth Smith back to the wall in right off Brach to end the game.

The Orioles, sitting on the lead, gave Cesar Valdez, newly arrived to take Aaron Sanchez’ spot on the roster, a chance to sample a tough middle of a lineup, and he handled it okay in the bottom of the eighth. He got Seth Smith on a weak wrong-field fly out to left, walked Adam Jones, popped up Manny Machaco, and finished his inning by getting Chris Davis to pull one high and foul into the right field corner, where Anthony Alford ran it down with a nice effort for the third out.

My sense of Alford, who will surely be sent back soon, so that he can play every day in Double A, is that he has a lot of physical skills, in particular speed, and he absolutely looks comfortable playing a major league corner outfield position. As for his bat, he did hit the one ball hard Friday night, and showed lightning speed down the line, creating close plays out of routine ground balls.

So let’s go back and take a little closer look at how we got to that crucial seventh inning.

Kevin Gausman was on the hill for Baltimore, and for a guy who was promoted to number one in the rotation when Chris Tillman started the season on the disabled list, he hasn’t exactly been inspiring, going into tonight’s game with a 2-3 record and an ERA of 7.19.

His first inning didn’t inspire either, as he needed 22 pitches, a double play, and a strikeout of Justin Smoak to hold the Jays to one run in the first. In the second the Orioles turned another double play to erase Russell Martin’s one-out single.

Oh, news flash, I did write “Russell Martin” just now, didn’t I? Yes, he was reactivated before the game and started behind the plate. And his hit in his first at bat was no fluke, a hard liner into left off Gausman. Mike Ohlmann, by the way, was designated for assignment, poor guy. It’s a stage on the way to being released, made likely by the Jays’ resigning Jarrod Saltalamacchia to a minor-leage contract. I’m not sure if I’d let Ohlman, who’s still a prospect, go in favour of Salty, who seems to be playing out the string at this stage, unless Ross Atkins knows something we don’t know.

Back to Gausman, however. He had to fan Kendrys Morales in the third with Goins and Bautista at first and third after base hits. He escaped possible damage in the fourth when Martin, swinging the bat freely in his return, lined very hard into an inning-ending one-hopper double play that erased Devon Travis, on board with a one-out single, after Smoak had led off by driving Hyung-Soo Kim right back to the wall in left with his left-handed stroak off Gausman. In the fifth he had to strand Darwin Barney at third and Kevin Pillar at first with base hits by striking out Bautista.

In the sixth the hard contact on Gausman finally paid off in a run when with one out Smoak hit one out to the deepest part of the park. Then, when Travis followed with a ringing double to right, the Oriole starter needed a little help from his friend behind the plate to limit the damage. The plate umpire Woodring rang up Martin on a ninth pitch in almost exactly the same spot, only a little more off the paint, than the sixth pitch that he’d called a ball. I hate to keep harping on ball and strike calls, but if MLB is going to insist on publishing the PitchCast of every at-bat, dicy ball and strike calls are going to become more and more of a problem.

In any case, Martin was out, but truly furious—he should go for a drink and bellyache session with Joe Smith, after what happened to him in last night’s game—Barney popped out to second, and Travis died at second.

So that’s how Kevin Gausman got through six complete, managing to come up with the big K, mostly, to squirm out of his own situation. Still, that’s how you get to 110 pitches while giving up ten hits but only two runs. Three of his five strikeouts ended innings with runners in scoring position, he got the help of two double plays to end innings, and, maybe this was the key, for all of his deep counts, he only walked one.

Pretty clearly that was the difference between Gausman’s outing and Mike Bolsinger’s five and a third. Bolsinger only gave up six hits, but unfortunately for him two of them were of the very long variety. He gave up a solo homer to Machado in the third, and the two-run job to Trumbo in the fifth, which followed one of his five walks. The walks ate into his pitch count, and kept the rhythm of the game slow, with lots of base runners on both sides. The Toronto starter ended up throwing 102 pitches.

With Aaron Sanchez back on the DL, Bolsinger will clearly be kept around to fill a spot in the rotation. He’s put in some hard innings to earn that trust, and I admire his pluck, but he really hasn’t show enough to give the coaching staff much thought to his future with the organization. He’s a curve ball and control pitcher who’s walked 11 batters in 15 and two thirds innings in his three starts, not to mention the bizarre three hit batsmen in his start in Atlanta. Like I said, I like the guy’s grit, and he’s also come up big against some tough hitters in clutch situations, but with an ERA sitting at 6.32 . . .

After all this Toronto fan-boy type navel-gazing, it’s really most appropriate to wind ourselves back around to the beginning of this piece, and end where it started: All hail to the new Duke of Welington! He may not be the Sultan of Swat, because there was only one of those, but to the Toronto Blue Jays at least, One-ell Welington Castillo is the Duke of Destruction.