Okay, folks, so the aggregate run total for the first two games of the Toronto series in Houston with the world-leading (the Dodgers being not of this world) Astros reads Houston, 19, Toronto 11, which when you look at it that way doesn’t even seem so bad on its own.
But the key point here is that, unlike soccer playoffs, aggregate totals don’t count for poop in baseball, and the only takeaway from the Friday and Saturday night affairs in Texas is that both teams emerged with one win and one loss, leaving it all up to Sunday afternoon’s game as to which team will win this series, and, for that matter, the season’s series between the two teams, which is currently knotted at three wins apiece. (Yes, our struggling Jays are tied in the season series with the home-and-chilled-out Astros, who have probably already ordered the plastic sheeting for this fall’s clubhouse celebrations.)
I’m doing a two games for one deal here, for a couple of reasons. The first is that I couldn’t bear to spend even 1200 words, let alone 1500 to 2000, on Friday night’s drubbing of a significant portion of the Toronto pitching staff. The second is that I had to pick up son and family from the airport, arriving at Pearson Saturday evening just at game time, and bring them back to the house for a rather late post-flight-from-Victoria dinner. And, yes, that’s the family with the five-year-old who begs to stay to watch just one more commercial break instead of just one more inning. I have to start working on that boy or his inner Don Draper is going to win out over his inner Kevin Pillar . . .
So I followed the first couple of innings of Saturday’s game with Jerry and Joe in the car, peeked at the middle innings throughout serving and eating of said dinner, and settled in to watch the stirring end of a stirring game attentively, though it was too late to start taking my own notes. So, as per tradition, I’ll only reference what I saw of Saturday’s game.
If the Cesar Valdez Cinderella story ended up in his last start with the clock finishing the midnight bells before he got safely away, this time the pumpkin-carriage blew up right at the curb, raining pumpkin seeds and mice bits all over the poor befuddled prince hurrying out of the ball to catch his girl.
Sorry, that’s a bit much.
But what happened to Valdez wasn’t a bit much. It was way much, as the Astros gave him a couple of hopeful dances in the first three innings before lighting a firecracker and tossing it down the bodice of his ball gown in the fourth.
Houston started Brad Peacock, who’d thrown six shutout innings at the Jays in Toronto on July ninth, albeit giving up five walks along with five hits on his rocky way, and he wasn’t fooling a lot of people tonight, starting with Kendrys Morales for one in the top of the fourth for, who hit a two-run dinger after a walk to Justin Smoak, with the result that he and Valdez were still in the game after three and a half innings, with Houston up by a not-insurmountable 3-2 count.
Valdez had succumbed to the two-out lightning strike in the first inning, giving the Astros a 2-0 jump start after Peacock breezed through the Jays in the top of the first on seven pitches. With Jose Altuve getting the night off Derek Fisher was in the leadoff spot, and he and Alex Bregman grounded out before Josh Reddick singled and the veteran Cuban all-star “rookie” Yuli Gurriel drilled one to left for the lead.
Peacock gave up a walk in the second and an infield hit in the third, getting up to only 36 pitches for three, while Valdez retired Houston in the second in order, and gave up another run in the third on a one-out double by Derek Fisher and a two-out RBI single by Gurriel, again.
But when Morales touched up Peacock in the fourth it cut the Houston lead to one, and it looked like we had a ball game going for us. But then the heavens opened up, or maybe hell rained down, on the visitors, as Houston chased Valdez, cuffed Matt Dermody, and roughed up Mike Bolsinger for a total of nine runs, to turn that ball game that was into a farce.
In fact, when you break down the inning, maybe manager John Gibbons would have been better off leaving Valdez in. Carlos Beltran led off with a single, followed by a walk to Brian McCann. The rookie Trevor White doubled to left, scoring Beltran and moving McCann up to third. With the score now 4-2 Houston, and two runners in scoring position, Valdez fanned Jake Marisnick on his seventieth pitch, which wasn’t really a huge number to get ten outs against the high-octane Astros.
At this point, though, Gibbons elected to yank Valdez and match up Matt Dermody with the left-handed Derek Fisher, who grounded out to second for the second out, scoring McCann with the fifth run. But the problem with matchups, especially in the early/middle innings of a game, is that you’re stuck with a one-hitter guy that you have to leave in, or you start burning your bullpen. So Dermody was left in to face the right-handed Alex Bregman, who has given Toronto fits in the last two years, and he delivered again, hitting a two-run homer, to right yet, to extend the lead to 7-2.
When Dermody gave up a base hit to the next lefty, Josh Reddick, Gibbons finally realized that Dermody had outstayed his usefulness, and brought in Bolsinger with his can of gasoline to throw on the fire and it got really crazy after that, a walk to Gurriel, a three-run homer to Marwin Gonzalez, a double to centre by Beltran, abetted by an ill-conceived dive for his liner by Zeke Carrera, another walk to McCann, a run-scoring single by White, a run-scoring single by Marisnick, and a walk to Fisher before Bregman scared the pants off everybody with a drive to the wall in left that was hauled in by Steve Pearce just short of another three-run dinger.
By the time it was over it was 12-2 Astros, and legions of Jays’ fans everywhere were heading for the medicine chest for industrial-strength Tylenol, or to the liquor cabinet for something quicker.
Yet I would argue that Gibbie would have been better off, certainly no worse, to leave Valdez in to work things out. If Valdez gets the same groundout—I know, there’s no certainty of that—it’s 5-2, Trevor White is on third, and there’s a righty facing Bregman, who had grounded out twice against Valdez already. In the fourth inning, with a depleted bullpen, the manager can’t go to any of his high-leverage guys, and who’s to say that his low-leverage bullpen guys, like Dermody and Bolsinger, are any better than Valdez, who’s done sort of okay so far in the game? Just sayin’.
Anyway, after that mess there’s not too much to say about this one, except to cherry-pick a couple of notable moments from the rest of an un-notable game.
It wasn’t particularly notable that Houston wasn’t finished after the fourth inning massacre. After Aaron Loup skated out of trouble in the fifth, they got to him for two in the sixth. Danny Barnes gave up one in the seventh, and it was almost a moral victory that the forgotten J. P. Howell only gave up a leadoff homer to the bashing rookie Trevor White in the eighth inning, and then retired Houston on three ground balls and eleven pitches.
Brighter news for Toronto came from the fact that they solved Brad Peacock this time. Despite the fact that he extended his record to 10-1, he didn’t exactly cover himself in glory, going six innings but giving up seven runs on nine hits. Besides Morales, Russell Martin lit him up for a solo homer in the fifth, his twelfth, and Ryan Goins took him deep in the sixth with two on, his fifth homer of this strangely productive season, taking his RBI total to 39.
Joe Musgrove, Reymin Goduan, and James Hoyt shut out Toronto over the last three innings, keeping the Jays from mounting a comeback (he wrote, without the slightest trace of irony.)
As I noted at the beginning of this story, there’s no carryover in baseball, and all Toronto needed Saturday evening to shake off the ugly effects of Friday night was a strong seven innings from Marco Estrada, an even stronger two-inning hold by Ryan Tepera, some extra-inning heroics by unsung heroes Ryan Goins and Rob Refsnyder, and an effective close by Roberto Osuna.
Easy, no?
I only picked up the full thread of the game in the bottom of the seventh inning, after the Jays had just scored in the top of the inning on a strange play, as a I saw later from the replays, involving the rookie first baseman White and the catcher McCann. With Pillar on third and nobody out, Jose Bautista hit one to White, who immediately fired it in to McCann, who caught it in front of the plate and threw it back to first to try to retire Bautista, without ever looking behind him to see if he had a chance of tagging out Pillar (he did).
I was aware that Estrada had pitched a decent game thus far, keeping the Jays close and giving them some much needed length after last night’s mess, but as I sat down to watch the situation quickly grew dire. Carlos Beltran singled to right leading off. The tough little Bregman grounded a double into the left-field corner, pushing Beltran up to third. Typically, in the seventh inning this would have been it for manager Gibbons’ starter, but for whatever reason he left Estrada in, and Estrada rewarded his faith with a great finish, getting Brian McCann to foul out to Martin behind the plate, and fanning the rookies J.D. Davis and Trevor White, who had touched up Estrada with a solo homer back in the third.
Solid relief pitching on both sides sent the game into the tenth inning. Chris Devenski took over from starter Charlie Morton in the eighth, and kept the Jays off the board despite walking two. We should mention here a statistical oddity: except for giving up seven Toronto hits, to Estrada’s five, the lines of the two starters were identical, seven innings, three runs, two walks, seven strikeouts.
After Devenski, Ken Giles gave up a base hit in the eighth, but struck out two.
Meanwhile, Ryan Tepera was at his best for Toronto, providing two innings of bridge work, giving up a walk and striking out two on only 23 pitches.
Houston manager A.J. Hinch opted to bring out Francisco Liriano to face his old mates in the top of the tenth, and it didn’t go well for the ex-Jay. Liriano didn’t do that much wrong, mind; he fanned Justin Smoak on a 3-2 pitch for the first out. Manager Gibbons sent Rob Refsnyder up to hit for Zeke Carrera, and Liriano made his big mistake, walking the light-hitting utility man on four pitches.
From what we’ve seen of Refsnyder, he may be light-hitting, but he runs well, and as he was to demonstrate slides even better. With Steve Pearce at the plate, he stole second. Then, after Pearce fanned, with Gibbie out of options to hit for Ryan Goins (except for Marcus Stroman, come to think of it, who could also have come in at second for the bottom of the inning, with Barney moving to shortstop), more specifically out of infield options, since Refsnyder had hit in the DH spot, Goins came to the plate for lefty-on-lefty, against his former team-mate. He went to 1-2 on Liriano, which put him in his magic spot, two outs, two strikes, and a runner in scoring position, and what did he do but single to left, leaving the eun in the magic hand of Rob Refsnyder.
The Goins hit was well-struck. Derek Fisher charged and fired for the plate. It was in time and McCann turned to tag Refsnyder. But only Refsnyder’s hand was there; the rest of his body was sweeping by McCann well into foul territory. But that hand snuck in between McCann’s glove, holding the ball, and his padded knee, and touched the plate without being tagged. The Astros called for a review, but the evidence was clear: Refsnyder had scored, and not been tagged out.
Thanks to Ryan Goins’ magic bat and Rob Refsnyder’s magic hand, the Jays turned a 4-3 lead over to Roberto Osuna and this time he was perfect. He replicated Estrada’s feat of striking out J.D. Davis and Tyler White, and closed out the exciting win with a ground ball to third by Derek Fisher.
So, as I was saying, forget the run totals, and just mark this: going into Sunday’s series finale, this series, and the Toronto-Houston season series, are both dead even, and tomorrow’s game will tell the tale.
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