The most enduring trait of Jays’ manager John Gibbons is his steadfastness, which can be seen in his approach to baseball strategy as well as in his handling of his players.
When it comes to strategy, for a lot of fans an appropriate synonym for steadfastness is stubbornness, as in: “Why does he have to get hit with a two-by-four before he calls for a bunt?” And it’s not such a great attribute, unless you think baseball is always and only about the three-run homer.
But when it comes to his players, that same steadfastness, which manifests itself as loyalty and consistency, is a positive thing. I have no doubt that his players appreciate his willingness to stick with them through thick and thin, and I would think that most fans, if they thought about it at all, would realize that slapping the panic button every other day is not a good management technique.
But there comes a time when a change in approach becomes inevitable, and it seems that Gibbons and his players had reached that point following the depressing spectacle of Tuesday night’s desultory 6-1 loss to the Rangers. I know that a certain segment of the fan base, including all the “Bobs from Barrie” out there who call in to the talk shows, had reached that point long ago, but then none of them are actually responsible for the management, care and nurturing of twenty-five plus professional baseball players. (In fact, I’d be surprised if most of the “Bobs from Barrie” can manage to keep themselves clean and get themselves dressed and fed every day, but that’s another rant for another day.)
So there was little surprise when the lineups came out for tonight’s game three of Toronto’s series with the Texas Rangers in Arlington that it had a radically different, if not exactly new, look. First, there were the omissions: Kevin Pillar was not only not leading off, he wasn’t in the lineup at all, replaced by the rookie Dwight Smith in centre and batting second. Troy Tulowitzki was sitting out in favour of Ryan Goins playing shortstop with Darwin Barney being inserted at second to replace Goins. Luke Maile was behind the plate, although this change was probably the least significant, given that Maile has to spell Russell Martin from time to time anyway, and with three night games followed by a day game in Texas it was inevitable that Martin would sit at least one of the last two games there.
Though I’m not convinced that the beginning of Pillar’s batting slide can be directly traced to his brief, unfortunate suspension, it was clear that his new, improved approach at the plate was not being applied as consistently as it had been. And while it’s unfair to make much out of one mistake in the field by a double-plus defender, the fact is that his misjudgement of the drive by Jonathan Lucroy in the first inning of last night’s game, which was a key point in Toronto’s first-inning meltdown, may have been an indication that his batting woes could be starting to carry over into the field. In any case, the irony of his sitting tonight is that at the plate last night he hit the ball really hard three times with nothing to show for it, though what most people remember is his epic strikeout in the seventh inning with the bases loaded that killed the only chance of a rally the Jays had in the game.
The absence of Tulowitzki from the lineup was a change that was less obviously demanded, or at least less loudly expressed, but to me was a move that had been crying to be made almost since Tulo came back from the DL; he hasn’t hit very much; he’s been particularly ineffective with runners on base, and he’s been far less than aggressive in the field. Tulo’s a pro with a proven track record, so to me the only conclusions could be either that he’s suffering from a relatively early decline in skills, or that he’s still playing hurt.
So the revamped order had Jose Bautista leading off, followed by Smith, with Josh Donaldson hitting third, Justin Smoak hitting fourth, and Kendrys Morales fifth. With the defensive changes in place, Steve Pearce moved up to sixth and Goins up to seventh against the right-hander Tyson Ross, followed by Barney and Maile.
Now we get into chicken-and-egg stuff: did the revamped lineup cause the six-run outburst in the top of the first, or was Tyson Ross so bad on the hill for Texas that something like this would have happened no matter what lineup changes had been made? Not being a bandwagon-jumping type, I’m not weighing in on that one. Like ol’ Sergeant Joe Friday of TV yore, all I want to do is just give you “the facts, ma’am”.
Here are the facts of the first inning: leading off, Bautista walked on a 3-2 pitch. All of the balls were really balls, including a trio up in the eyeballs. Then Tyson Ross started worrying about the Jays starting Bautista, or giving him the green light to run. So of course he threw over and spiked the ball in the dirt, letting Bautista move up to second anyway. Then, as the clouds separated in the skies and choruses of angels’ voices were heard singing their hosannas, Dwight Smith came up and grounded out to first, moving Bautista to third with the first out. Josh Donaldson wasted the opportunity created by Smith by looking at a called third strike, but Justin Smoak singled to centre to score Bautista. Kendrys Morales grounded a single to centre that was so much into no-man’s land that Smoak was able to come around to third.
Steve Pearce doubled to left to score Smoak and bring Morales around to third. Ryan Goins doubled to left centre, splitting the drawn in outfielders—will they ever learn to stop playing him shallow—plating Morales and Pearce for the third and fourth runs. Finally, Darwin Barney yanked one down the left-field line that you and I and the fence post all thought would hook foul but didn’t, and just cleared the fence in the corner for the final two runs. Luke Maile ended the carnage by lining out to Mike Napoli at first.
Okay then, six runs should be about enough to cover off if Joe Biagini has another bad start, we caught ourselves thinking. And when he walked Shin-Soo Choo on a 3-2 pitch leading off the bottom of the first, we thought, “oh boy!” But Barney made a nice sliding stop on Elvis Andrus and threw him out at first, moving Choo up, and Nomar Mazara moved him along to third with another ground ball to Barney, and then Adrian Beltre swung late and hit a soft liner to Bautista in right for the third out.
A different Tyson Ross came out for the second, though he was wearing the same number, and put down the Jays in order on twelve pitches. Biagini dispatched the Rangers in nine pitches, and it looked like we were settling in to a quiet pitchers’ duel, but with Toronto way ahead.
In fact, though, Smoak was the catalyst for a seventh run in the third inning, as he hit a deep drive off the wall in right on which Choo played too close to the wall, allowing another sloppy bounce back away from the fielders. The Rangers were lucky that it was Smoak running; anyone else would have made a triple out of it. And what’s with the outfield environs in Arlington that make it so hard to play in them? Pearce singled to left through the shift with Smoak moving to third, and Goins picked up his third RBI with a ground ball out to second. (Yay! Situational hitting!)
7-0 after three, even better, but that Joe Biagini, he’s such a nice guy. Can’t stand too much prosperity, can he? Joey Gallo stroked one the wrong way up the alley in left centre for a leadoff double. He had to hold second while Delino DeShields grounded out to Donaldson in front of him. Then Choo more than atoned for his mistake on the Smoak double and got two runs back for the Rangers by hitting a homer to right to cut the Jays’ lead to 7-2. Biagini had to strand an additional two-out base hit by Mazara, as Beltre ended the inning by grounding into a fielder’s choice.
After three, we were sitting pretty at 7-2, but with these guys in 2017, you never really know, do you?
In the top of the fourth Texas manager Jeff Bannister decided that the second-inning Tyson Ross wasn’t coming back any time soon, after 3 innings pitched with seven runs on seven hits, and called on Ernesto Frieri to come in and try to eat some innings. Another recent arrival, as it seems every team is stocked with guys who just arrived from someplace else, Frieri had been recalled from Triple A and put in one previous appearance, throwing two thirds of an inning against Seattle on June eighteenth.
His job tonight was carried out with aplomb, and whatever caused the Jays’ offence to explode in the first inning was effectively squelched by Frieri’s perfomance. For the record, he threw three scoreless innings and gave up two hits and a walk while striking out two. Toronto basically went into a circle the wagons pattern, and we had to wait and see whether they could protect their lead.
Certainly compared with his last performance Biagini did a decent job of keeping the lid on the Rangers. He lasted into the sixth inning, which was appreciated by the Toronto relief crew, and ended up giving up four runs on seven hits with one walk while striking out five. Whether he needed to be pulled at five and two thirds innings and 90 pitches is questionable, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
After giving up the two-run shot to Choo in the third inning, Biagini had a shutdown fourth, with two strikeouts and a popup. In the fifth he ran into trouble right off the bat, the bat of Joey Gallo leading off that is, who hit an opposite-field drive that took Steve Pearce back to the wall in left, and really it was Pearce who ran into trouble. Later stating that when he checked his position relative to the wall he lost track of the ball momentarily, he tried to reach it blindly, and crashed into the wall as the ball hit hard and caromed hard back toward the infield. Gallo circled the bases for an easy inside-the-park homer, while Pearce was obviously hurt in left, another blow for a team that has suffered more than its fair share this season, especially since Pearce had brought a very hot bat back into the lineup after his recent stint on the DL.
Biagini had a struggle to get out of the fifth without yielding any more runs to Texas. Dwight Smith in centre made a fine diving catch on a liner by Delino DeShields for the first out. Choo bunted his way on, Andrus singled him to second, but then Biagini stiffened and fanned Mazara and retired Beltre on a grounder to second, an interesting play that went in the books as a simple 4-3 ground-out to second, but was a little more than that. First, the grounder bounced close enough to Biagini that he had a swipe at it but didn’t touch it, and it bounced out over second. Darwin Barney, who had been holding Choo at second, released with the pitch to the plate and retreated to his position. Then he had to come back behind second to field the ball. He went for the closest play, the force at second on Andrus, but Andrus beat him to the bag. Because Barney knew it was Beltre, he had the time to step off the bag, set, and fire to first to get Beltre. Funny, but it worked for the third out.
In the sixth, though, after Frieri finished off his fine stint with a clean sixth against the Jays, manager John Gibbons obviously had Biagini on a very short leash. How else to explain that he was knocked out of the game by a cheap Texas Leaguer to centre off the bat of Mike Napoli, which came with two outs, after Biagini had fanned Odor and retired Jonathan Lucroy on a grounder to short, on a total of eleven pitches. As it turned out, there’s room to second-guess Gibby on this one.
He brought in Aaron Loup for the matchup with Joey Gallo, and again Loup failed to get his man, as Gallo doubled to right, with Bautista getting the ball in quickly enough to hold Napoli at third. It’s more than ironic that the more effective Loup has become in full inning assignments, the less effective he has been in situational matchups.
In any case, that was enough for Loup, and Danny Barnes came in to face DeShields, who hit a grounder to left that scored Napoli and Gallo, and led to a replay review. Josh Donaldson had cut the throw to the plate from Dwight Smith, ominously into the game for the shaken-up Steve Pearce, and had DeShields trapped off first. DeShields was originally called out, but the review overturned the call and he was on first with two outs.
With Choo batting DeShields stole second off Barnes, but then Barnes fanned Choo to end the threat, with the score now 7-5 for Toronto.
And that’s how the game ended, with both bullpens finishing without further damage, Texas using Dario Alvarez, Tanner Scheppers, and Keone Kela to navigate the seventh, eight, and ninth. Meanwhile, Barnes pitched the seventh after finishing the sixth, Tepera turned in a clean eighth as he settles nicely into the setup role, and Osuna pitched around a two-out walk to Choo and used fourteen pitches to record his eightheenth straight save after three missed opportunities at the beginning of the season.
So Toronto managed to hold on to the lead it had accumulated in the first and third innings, and emerge with a victory which gives them the chance tomorrow afternoon to take the series, three games to one, and get to that elusive .500 plateau for the first time this season.
Did all the fuss about the lineup changes really matter? Who knows? Maybe the players in the starting lineup approached the plate with renewed vigour in the first inning, and this, combined with Tyson Ross’ inability to throw strikes, let them pile up the lead.
But then the same revamped lineup went on to clinch a win without every really threatening much more damage, so which is the truer picture? Tomorrow afternoon’s game might provide the answer to that, with the return of Troy Tulowitzki to shortstop and the installation of Kevin Pillar into the bottom power slot of sixth, with the movement of Russell Martin to second in the order.
It should be mentioned, of course, that Pillar didn’t sit out the whole game, as Smith had to shift to left when Pearce was removed in the sixth inning, and Pillar went back into centre. Ironically, in his one at bat in the eighth inning he singled to centre, advanced to second on a balk by Dario Alvarez, and then stole third, putting himself in scoring position with two outs. Barney walked behind him and then stole second, while Luke Maile lined out to third to end the inning. And if there were any consideration of giving Pillar a second day off, Pearce’s collision with the wall in left put paid to that notion. The team will be lucky if he doesn’t go back on the DL.
And so it goes . . .
Leave a Reply