Funny how much difference a winter makes. Here we were this afternoon, Jays playing for a series split, the Yankees for a win. On the hill for Toronto was the effervescent (to Toronto fans), obnoxious (to everyone else) Marcus Stroman.
Going for the Yankees was Luis Severino, he of the Great Beanball Battle of 2016. You know, the guy who had to take two shots to hit Justin Smoak in retaliation for Jay Happ’s hit on Chase Headley, which had been in retaliation for Severino’s hit on Josh Donaldson. Who didn’t realize that he’d been ejected from the game because a warning had been issued.
So today Stroman and Severino match up, and it seems that history is history, and this game is all about today, especially for the Blue Jays, who have been struggling mightily to overcome a terrible April and reinsert themselves into the early playoff picture. If any game so far this season could be seen as truly crucial, it would be this one, because of the fact of the Yankees’ strong early run, and the Jays’ need to keep them in their sights. Without at least a split—all that was left to them after losing two of the first three to New York—things could be starting to look pretty bleak motivation-wise for the home team.
So there were no concerns about whether Stroman would do something to stir the pot of annoyance against the Yankees, or whether Severino would be able to keep his mind on his primary job, throwing strikes, rather than playing his erstwhile counter-ego, the masked avenger.
It’s a different Marcus Stroman this year. We spent last year wondering which Stroman would show up when his number was called. He had outings that recalled the brilliance of his debut in late 2014, and the even greater brilliance of his performance when he returned from the injury in 2015. Then he’d have outings that were just awful. In the end, his record reflected this see-saw effect, as he ended up 9-10 with a 4.37 ERA.
So far this year he has tended to business in a much more consistent fashion, without ever showing more than stretches of the flint-like brilliance of his best performances, but also without ever really falling into any prolonged stretches of vulnerable mortality that he has also shown in the past. In particular, he has been able to pitch over minor rough spots and still turn in quality starts, for the most part. It’s likely that his solid performance leading the United States to the World Baseball Classic championship helped to mature him, at least on the mound. Whatever the reason, his basic record to date, 6-2 with an ERA of 3.28, reflects the steady leadership he has shown in anchoring a Toronto rotation that has been rocked by injury this season.
Severino, even now only a very young 23-year-old with a big arm and briliant stuff, has had an even more inconsistent start to his big-league career. After the promise he showed in late 2015 when, remember, at the age of 21, he made eleven starts for the Yankees and went five and three with an ERA of 2.89, it was a no-brainer that he’d be an important part of the New York rotation last year from the start of the season.
But he’d struggled so badly at the beginning of the season—no inconsistency there on his part, he was all bad—that he’d first fallen out of the rotation, and second fallen out of the big leagues altogether, spending a couple of months at Triple A, where he earned a trip back to the Bronx in late July but spent most of the rest of the season in the bullpen.
This year, however, he has been a steady performer as a Yankee starter. All eleven appearances have been starts, he’s averaged over six innings a start, and his record on a team that has jumped out in front of a tough division is four and two with an ERA of 2.93.
Given all of this, I had no expectation that either starter was going to mail this one in, and neither disappointed.
Through three, the only base-runner allowed by Severino had been Kevin Pillar, who walked in the first and stole second, and singled in the third with two outs and died at first. The Yankees didn’t have a base-runner until the third, when Chase Headley singled, stole second, and wound up at third where he was stranded.
By the end of three, Stroman had thrown 46 pitches with no walks and four strikeouts, and Severino had thrown 43 pitches with one walk, the Pillar base hit, and three strikeouts.
Then the Yankees picked up a run in the fourth inning on an Aaron Judge single and stolen base followed by a double by Matt Holliday. An unfortunate throwing error was charged to Luke Maile when his throw to second on Judge’s stolen base attempt nicked Judge’s shoe and skipped away, allowing him to advance to third. It didn’t enter into the scoring, however, as Judge would have scored from second in any case on the double.
In the home half of the fourth, Kendrys Morales got the crowd into it with a one-out double, but died there when Justin Smoak flew out to centre for the second out, and Troy Tulowitzki struck out looking, in a curiously lackadaisical at-bat during which he took three called strikes, and a fourth, a hittable ball a little high for a strike but pretty juicy in any case, without ever taking his bat off his shoulder.
As we moved on to the fifth, in which Didi Gregorius wasted a leadoff hit by getting thrown out at second by Luke Maile, it dawned on me that the black hole of a typical Blue Jays’ batting slump was opening up before us. As of the fourth inning today, Toronto had gone thirteen consecutive scoreless innings since the start of Friday night’s shutout. In the fifth inning, despite two Toronto base hits, one of which was erased by a double play, the scoreless streak was stretched to fourteen innings.
In the sixth inning the Yankees milked a base hit by Brett Gardner leading off and a walk to Gary Sanchez for a second run. It’s hard to stop a team from scoring when tbe first two batters get on base, except, it seems, if that team is Toronto. In this case, Aaron Judge made the first out on a fairly deep fly to Pillar in centre on which Gardner, good base-runner that he is, tagged up and advanced to third. From there he was able to score when Matt Holliday grounded one out to Tulowitzky at short and beat out the relay to first, beating the double play that would have nullified the run.
Down 2-0, which in the circumstance was more of a mountain than a molehill, Toronto came up in the sixth inning, looking at extending its runless streak to sixteen innings. Actually, they got to 15.2, courtesy of left-side groundouts from Donaldson and Bautista, before the heavens opened and dropped two precious markers on them to tie the game, thanks to that graceful Angel of Mercy Justin Smoak.
With two down, Kendrys Morales, who shows much more ability to beat the shift by hitting to left than any one of Donaldson, Bautista, or the departed Edwin Encarnacion, slashed a liner to left for a single. On the first pitch from Severino to Smoak, a slider that slid too little and stayed up and out over the plate, Smoak hit it exactly where it was, and it went exactly where he hit it, until it bounced off the facing of the second deck in dead centre field.
Apparently, my shout when Smoak hit that ball was a bit extreme: my wife, in another part of the house, thought some disaster had befallen us.
One thing that’s been somewhat problematic for Marcus Stroman has been an unusually high pitch count per outing, and today was no different. After six innings and 105 pitches it was time to pull the plug, with his line at a tidy two runs, five hits, one walk, and four strikeouts.
Aaron Loup, whom Gibbie seems to be transitioning from matchup lefty to a later full-inning reliever, had one of the most efficient innings in memory, for himself, anyway, disposing of the Yankees in six pitches, with the help of a nifty double play started by Devon Travis.
Aaron Hicks singled to centre on the first pitch of the inning. Didi Gregorius pulled a 1-1 pitch toward Travis at second at a medium bounce that brought Travis near the base path just as Hicks was approaching. Travis was able to tag Hicks in the base line quickly enough to still have time to throw Gregorius out at first. Chase Headley flew out to Bautista in right on an 0-1 pitch. Ain’t it easy sometimes?
It’s a hoary old cliché in baseball that a player who’s just made a good play always seems to lead off the next inning. And so it was that Travis found himself at the plate hitting first against Severino in the seventh. Unfortunately, that put Travis in place to be a hit batsman, as Severino’s 1-2 pitch got away from him, rode up and in, and hit Travis rather scarily on the left wrist, it appeared. Travis was shaken up by it, obviously in discomfort, attended to by the trainers, but stayed in the game and took his base.
With ex-National Leaguer Chris Coghlan at the plate, the Jays’ manager decided to try a little baseball for once, and Coghlan laid down an impeccable sacrifice bunt, which moved Travis to second. But the bunt didn’t pay off. Travis was able to reach third when Luke Maile grounded one up the middle, but he advanced no further when Kevin Pillar ended the inning by flying out to centre.
I have to say here, that, having looked at the Travis hit-by-pitch several times, I’m really troubled by the inability or unwillingness of modern hitters to get the hell out of the way of a dangerous pitch. I used to teach my young players how to fall back and drop if need be to avoid getting hit. Instinctively, too, little baseball players are not quite as eager as the big leaguers to crowd the plate to be able to reach the outside pitch. After looking at it more than once, as I said, I can’t help but feel that Travis didn’t react very well at all to the ball riding in on him.
Having run the bases while obviously showing concern over his hand, it was not surprising that Travis didn’t come out onto the field for the top of the eighth, and he was replaced by Ryan Goins at second.
Being in a tie ball game in the eighth these days means that it’s time for that Guy Named Joe; Smith, that is. And he did not disappoint today. Not at all, baby. Rob Refsnyder led off and was the only Yankee to put the ball in play. He hit a little chopper between Smith and Donaldson at third. A play had to be made quickly, and Smith barehanded it, planted, and fired in time to get Refsnyder at first. Then he fanned Brett Gardner on a 1-2 pitch, and fanned Gary Sanchez on a 1-2 pitch. With ten pitches from Smith and six from Loup, the bullpen had now retired the minimum six hitters on sixteen pitches. What overworked bullpen? (I know, they have to warm up and all, and can’t actually pitch every day. It were a joke, son!)
Tyler Clippard came on in the eighth for Severino, whose efficient line was seven innings pitched, two runs, 6 hits, one walk, and seven strikeouts on 98 pitches.
Like his Blue Jay counterparts, Clippard was the soul of efficiencey, retiring Toronto on just 13 pitches in the eighth. Unfortunately for him, one of those pitches, a mistake four-seamer that was right down the middle at the top of the zone was the 2-2 pitch to Josh Donaldson, who feasted this time, instead of suffering from the famine, and crushed the ball to right centre for a 3-2 Toronto lead. Clippard breezed through the rest of the murderers, Bautista, Morales, and Smoak, but it was too late.
Keeping with the theme of quick is good, Roberto Osuna nailed down the win and his thirteenth save for the Jays by striking out the side, Bronx Murderers all, Judge, Holliday, and Castro, on eleven pitches. Oh, those nasty two-strike sliders! Let’s see, six, ten, eleven, that makes three innings of relief, five strikeouts, one hit erased by a double play, all on twenty-seven pitches. Life is sweet when the bullpen’s clicking!
After such a long scoreless streak, one blowout, one game that was closer than it should have been, one game that should have been closer than it was, what a treat it was to see Toronto gain the series split in a well-played, especially well-pitched game
won with a touch of the dramatic, and sealed with flare and panache by a bullpen riding the crest of success.
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