Three things we learned from today’s eleven-inning loss to the Tigers which gave the Detroiters a series win over Toronto:
Marco Estrada’s problems are nowhere close to being resolved as his season from hell continues unabated.
Toronto can play over a bad performance by a starting pitcher and remain in the game.
If you have to run six relievers out there, it’s unrealistic to think that all of them will put up goose eggs, especially if they have to pitch eight and a third innings.
Oh, and we learned that the Blue Jays can hit two homers in the top of the first and put up a three-spot, and still lose the game. In fact, lose the lead in the bottom of the first, as Estrada started the game with both feet in the fire in the first inning again.
The pitching matchup should have been listed as question mark versus question mark. In the immortal words of I-don’t-know-who, Anibal Sanchez of the Tigers “used to be somebody”. Sanchez was a regular and reliable rotation starter for the Tigers for several years, going 26-19 with an ERA under 4.00 from his arrival in Detroit in 2012 through 2014. In 2015 he went 10-10 but his ERA went up to almost 5.00, and last year he went 7-13 with an ERA of almost 6.00, and fell out of the rotation. This spring, after two months in the Tigers’ bullpen, he apparently opted to go to Triple A and try to work out his kinks as a starter.
Today would be his fifth start since returning to the team and the rotation, and he hasn’t done badly so far, going six innings in three of his first four starts, after pitching five innings in the first one, and only giving up three runs once, and never more than five hits. On the other hand, he’s had a history of not faring so well against Toronto, so at best it was an open question of how well he’d do today.
And then there was Marco Estrada taking the hill for Toronto, and what need we say about Marco Estrada in 2017? Nothing, really, all we could do was join manager John Gibbons and cross our fingers. Really hard.
Sanchez started quickly, getting the first two outs, though Jose Bautista started the game by lining the ball really hard right at third baseman Nick Castellanos before Zeke Carrera popped out to the shortstop. Five pitches, two outs. So far, so good. But then Josh Donaldson lined a single to right centre, which in the immortal words of Tuck and Babby means he had a “good approach” at the plate. Guess if he lined a single to left, his pull field, it would be a “bad approach”. Well, okay, then.
Justin Smoak, whose approach has been great all year, went the opposited way to left centre on a 2-0 pitch, and suddenly the Jays had a 2-0 lead after the two quick outs. Then Sanchez was burned again on a 1-0 pitch that Kendrys Morales hit out to right centre field. As he continued his curious hold-it-back at-bats, Troy Tulowitzki struck out looking for the third out, but there they were, a big three on the board for Toronto in Fenway.
Alas, in a trice Marco Estrada was in trouble in the bottom of the first. He walked the leadoff hitter Ian Kinsler on a 3-1 pitch. Kinsler stole second. Nick Castellanos hit one to Josh Donaldson at third that Donaldson had no real play on. Kinsler advanced to third on Donaldson’s throw to first. Justin Upton doubled to left for the first Tiger run and brought Castellanos around to third. A sacrifice fly by Miguel Cabrera scored Castellanos but also moved Upton up to third, and he scored on a sacrifice fly by J.D. Martinez. The mess continued for Estrada as he walked Victor Martinez before taking eleven pitches to strike out Alex Presley.
33 pitches after Toronto had jumped out into the lead, the game was tied. Not only that, but you just knew that Estrada’s goose was cooked. It wasn’t the walks, and it wasn’t the Tigers’ efficiency in cashing in their chances, it was the pitch count that would do him in.
Not to mention that the Jays’ hitters fell right back into their old pattern: they could have had Sanchez teetering on the edge in the second, but the double play ball did them in again as Bautista’s grounder to third snuffed out consecutive one-out base hits by Kevin Pillar and Ryan Goins. In the third and fourth Sanchez locked in and retired six out of seven, allowing only a harmless single to Troy Tulowitzki in the fourth. By the end of the fourth his pitch count had levelled at a very reasonable 60.
Estrada followed the bad-inning/good-inning pattern established in recent starts by breezing the second in only eight pitches before wobbling again in the third. He kept the Tigers off the board, but it took 29 pitches to do it, and he was into the seventies in pitch count before it was done. It could have been another quick inning, with Montero and Tulowitzki wiping out Tulowitzki’s fielding error on Justin Upton by cutting his stolen base attempt down for the second out, but a single by Cabrera and a walk to J. D. Martinez extended the inning, and the pitch count, again.
In the fourth Estrada was betrayed, to a greater or lesser extent, by his outfield defense. This allowed the Tigers to take the lead, and led to his being pulled from the game because of his pitch count before finishing the fourth. Alex Presley led off by lifting a lazy fly ball into right centre, but for some reason Kevin Pillar and JosemBautista couldn’t sort it out and it fell between them for a tainted double. Then James McCann hit one to the fence in left. Zeke Carrera tracked it to the fence, timed his jump, made contact with it, and then we all watched helplessly as it rolled out of his glove and fell for another double, scoring Presley. Estrada faced three more batters. He struck out both Iglesias and Kinsler on three pitches each, and looked good to go on to the fifth, albeit with a pitch count reaching 90, but a walk to Castellanos on a 3-1 pitch was enough for John Gibbons with Miggy Cabrera coming to the plate, and Estrada made another early exit.
With Estrada’s early exit it became another bullpen night for the Blue Jays. Ryan Tepera finished the fourth for Estrada and handled the fifth inning. Joe Biagini pitched the sixth and seventh, and managed the tricky feat of retiring the Tigers in the sixth on just six pitches, despite the leadoff hitter reaching on a booted grounder by Kendrys Morales at first. Biagini’s seventh was a rockier ride, but two perfectly-placed ground balls saved him. Kinsler singled to lead off, and Biagini wild-pitched him to second while walking Castellanos. But Upton grounded one right to the bag at third for an easy force play, and then Cabrera grounded one up the middle to Tulowitzki at the bag for an easy double play.
By then Anibal Sanchez was gone, and so was the Tiger lead, which had flown over the left-field fence in the fifth along with a vicious line-drive homer off the bat of Bautista, which plated Ryan Goins, who had led off with a sharp single to centre. Sanchez exited after six, down 5-4, having given up the most runs in his five starts, but if it weren’t for the gopher ball, it would have been his most effective, with no walks and three strikeouts to go along with six other scattered hits over six innings and 96 pitches.
So now it was just a question of whether the Toronto bullpen could protect the slim lead and turn it over to Roberto Osuna. After Biagini’s seventh, it was Danny Barnes’ turn in the eighth, and the answer to the big question wasn’t long in coming. On the 0-1 pitch to leadoff hitter J. D. Martinez, Barnes left a fat one over the plate and Martinez lofted a deep drive to right. Originally it was played off the top of the wall and went as a double, but the Tigers asked for a review and it was ruled that it had cleared the home run standard according to the ground rules.
Barnes finished the eighth and got two outs in the ninth before yielding to Osuna, who finished the ninth and pitched the tenth, working around a one-out walk and stolen base by J. D. Martinez, before turning it over to Jeff Beliveau to start the eleventh.
Meanwhile, an effective combination of Daniel Stumpf, Alex Wilson, Bruce Rondon, Justin Wilson, Shane Greene, and Warwick Saupold was maneuvred in and out of the game by manager Brad Ausmus to keep the Jays in check through the eleventh.
Of course, when you’re playing extras on the road, every inning the game lasts adds to the sense of impending doom, and every little thing, like a leadoff walk by Beliveau to Alex Avila in the eleventh, assumes huge proportions. This time, as Iglesias sacrificed Avila to second, the proportions looked about right. John Gibbons brought Lucas Harrell in to try to stem the tide.
He would’ve done, too, were it not for an egregious error on a routine ground ball by Donaldson at third. Harrell retired Kinsler on a liner to first for the second out, and then Donaldson booted Castellanos’ grounder that would have been the third run. Harrell walked Upton, and then Cabrera, to end the game. Not only did it end on a walk-off walk, the worst way possible, but the run was unearned, as well.
A flat ending, then, to a series that the Jays should have taken, despite the 11-1 shellacking they took on Saturday, from a team that’s even deeper in the dumps than they are.
Not a great way to get out of Detroit, heading for Boston and four games with the division-leading Red Sox. Yoicks!
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