There are truisms in the world of baseball that go back to its very beginnings. They’re ingrained in the psyche of every kid and every erstwhile kid who plays or has ever played the game. These truisms have echoed across ball diamonds throughout the baseball-playing world, from the earliest levels of machine-pitched rookie ball to the highest levels of professional baseball.
What coach anywhere can claim never to have shouted such proverbial chestnuts as “it all starts with two”, and “make him pitch to you”, and “ya gotta protect, now”, and the like? One of the hoariest of all is “you can’t hit it if you don’t swing”, meaning, “get the bat off your shoulder, dummy!”
You’d think that we’d be beyond shouting such obvious bromides while watching our Toronto Blue Jays, but there I was last night. It was the bottom of the ninth, with the Jays down 2-0 to Baltimore in the series clincher, Russell Martin on first base with a one-out single, and I was screaming at the screen, at Josh Donaldson, to be precise, to get the god-damn bat off his god-damn shoulder.
Look, there should be some kind of pact here between the player and the fan. I’ve watched, and written about, almost every inning of every game the Jays have played this season, and almost all of last year as well. I’ve voted my thirty-five times for Josh Donaldson to be the All-Star third baseman. Doesn’t he owe it to me—to us—to stop playing umpire and swing at the ball?
It’s not like he got jobbed by plate umpire Chad Whitson; the pitch was right down the middle, according to PitchCast, low but in the second grid above the black. And it was a fast ball, not a breaking ball. That’s important to note: if you’re thinking breaking ball you can be frozen by a fast ball, even a batting-practice fast ball. Just ask all the hitters Marto Estrada has struck out on 90 MPH fast balls. But, as they say, if you’re thinking fast ball, you (should) have the time to adjust to a breaking ball. And what’s a Brad Brach going to do, going for the save, but throw cheese?* He threw four pitches to Donaldson, three four-seam fast balls, and one cut fast ball.
*Do not ask me why a pitcher who’s throwing hard ones is said to be throwing “cheese”, because I don’t know. He just is.
Another truism of the diamond is that you have to be ready to swing with two strikes on you, because you don’t want to be rung up on a pitch that was “too close to take”. And if you’re not ready to swing, the umpire will surely school you on the eternal truth of the two-strike pitch that’s “too close to take”.
Donaldson was not alone in this matter of taking called third strikes. He just stands out because, first, it was the bottom of the ninth and we were down to the short strokes. And, second, because Donaldson has put himself front and centre in this controversy over launch angles and ground balls always being mistakes.
Indeed, Jose Bautista in the first inning, Kendrys Morales in the second, and Zeke Carrera in the eighth, comitted the same cardinal sin in crucial at-bats, as the Toronto hitters continued their string of futility against run-of-the-mill opposing pitchers.
Bautista is supposed to stir the pot when he leads off. But there he was, watching a lovely, slow, tantalizing curve ball bend over the plate. Look fast ball, adjust to the curve, right? They’d just gotten through saying that Ubaldo Jimenez doesn’t throw his curve very much, and there it was. Strike three, sit down, how’s that for stirring the pot?
In the second inning, admittedly with one out and nobody on, that is, a low leverage situation, though there’s always some leverage for a slugger, especially when there’s no score in the early going, Kendrys Morales looked at three called strikes. They were all up and in, a curve ball, a two-seamer and a four-seamer. The two-seamer was way inside but called a strike, so Morales should have been ready for the four-seamer that was in the zone, in the same plane, that followed. But, no.
In the eighth inning, Jimenez went 2-0 on Zeke Carrera with pitches that weren’t close. Then he threw a low strike, and another wild one. From 3-1, Carrera took two more called strikes, the last one down but in. Never moved the bat off his shoulder. The thing about Carrera’s at-bat is that it came with one out and nobody on, but was followed by Kevin Pillar’s double to the wall in right centre that surely would have scored Carrera, if he were on base, but he wasn’t.
What’s the big deal about all of this? Just that Jay Happ pitched a really good game, and held the Orioles to two scratch runs, one in the third and one in the sixth, and in the meantime, contrary to all expectations, Ubaldo Jimenez pitched a great game against Toronto, and gave up only two hits, both doubles, one by Ryan Goins in the third with two outs, and the one by Pillar in the eighth with two outs, and only walked one.
The point being that if they were being stifled by a good pitching performance, which they were, but their own pitcher was keeping them close, the last thing they needed to do was to help Jimenez along by making four of his eight strikeouts easy by looking at strike three, when none of the pitches involved was even remotely in question.
Now I realize that we’re looking at a chicken-and-egg scenario here: Jimenez was pitching well; did that extend to the Jays’ hitters being so messed up that he could slip an easy one by them once in a while, or not? Or did they make him look better by looking for pitches instead of reacting to them? Another truism as old as the game is “see ball, hit ball”, and if you’re overthinking, this one gets kicked under the bus fairly quickly.
Oh, the game. Not much point in talking about the Jays’ offence, because there was none. Bautista lined out to centre to end the inning after Goins’ third-inning opposite-field double. Ironically, Goins popped out after Pillar’s eighth inning double. And then there was Donaldson looking at strike three with one out and Martin on first in the bottom of the ninth. There was one last glimmer of hope: Justin Smoak made the hearts flutter by putting a really good swing on a Brach splitter low in the zone and driving it hard to right centre field, but without the elevation needed to clear the fence, so that it eventually fell into the glove of Adam Jones, crossing quickly from centre, for the final out of the game.
As for Happ, he stranded a hit in the first and in the second, but gave up two leading off the third, the first of which eventually scored on a sacrifice fly by Jonathan Schoop. He threw a clean fourth, stranded a walk in the fifth, and got into mild trouble in the sixth, which would have been worse if Jonathan Schoop hadn’t tried to stretch a leadoff single into a double and gotten himself thrown out by Carrera from left. Jones followed with a single, moved up on a wild pitch, and scored the second run on Caleb Joseph’s single to right.
With 84 pitches in the books for Happ, manager John Gibbons saw fit to send him out for the seventh. First up was shortstop Ruben Tejada who hit one high and deep to right centre field, a shot which seemed destined for the seats, or at least extra bases. But Kevin Pillar had a bead on it, timed his grab and crash perfectly, and held onto the ball as the right field scoreboard uneremoniously bounced his willing body back onto the turf. When Rickard singled to left immediately after the Pillar catch, it signalled the end for Happ, who tallied six and a third innings, gave up two runs on eight hits with two walks and two strikeouts on 92 pitches. I don’t think anyone doubts that Jay Happ is fully recovered from the arm trouble that had put him on the DL.
Dominic Leone finished the seventh and pitched the eighth without further damage, though he benefitted from a nice charging, sliding Zeke Carrera catch of a line drive off the bat of Schoop to escape the seventh. Ryan Tepera pitched a clean ninth, so the two relievers between them retired eight batters in a row while not allowing a base runner, another stellar performance by Toronto relievers.
So there you have it: Ubaldo Jiminez pitched great, Jay Happ almost pitched great, the Orioles converted a couple of chances to score their runs, and with the help of Toronto’s hitters Jiminez barely gave them a chance to answer. This all culminated in a dispiriting 2-0 loss to Baltimore, which took the series two games to one, and now leads the season series nine games to three.
If Toronto has any hope of closing the gap in the internecine warfare of the AL East, it has to do better than losing two out of three to Baltimore, and equalling the Orioles’ measly run production of five for the three games. Pathetic, but a little more pathetic on our end.
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