Okay, let me get this off my chest right away: the Toronto infield doesn’t work with Darwin Barney at shortstop and Rob Refsnyder at second.
A fifth-inning mishandling of what should have been a double play cost Marco Estrada extra outs and extra pitches, and led inexorably to two tainted Tampa Bay runs that turned out to be the difference in the ball game tonight.
Don’t get me wrong here. This isn’t a knock on either player. Barney of course has a Gold Glove in his back pocket from his time with the Cubs, but it was won at second base, not shortstop. He’s got the quickness, the arm, and the range to play shortstop, but I’m not sure if he’s got enough games under his belt there to tend to his own knitting plus carry along/make up for the shortcomings of Refsnyder, who’s basically just learning the position, and has been thrust into a spot that to be fair maybe he’s not ready for.
If you look at Refsnyder’s fielding record you can see the problem. He appeared in 58 games for the Yankees last year, but in only eight did he spend some time at second base. He had sixteen chances and made two errors. Before the Jays picked him up, he had time at second in only two of the twenty games in which he appeared this year, taking two chances and making one error..
It wasn’t like what happened in the fifth inning spoiled a no-hitter or anything like that. The Rays went into the inning up 4-1, courtesy of a two-run home run by Lucas Duda off Marco Estrada in the third inning, a Wilson Ramos solo homer in the fourth, followed by a Corey Dickinson RBI single that drove in Adeiny Hechaverria, on second with a fluke bloop double to right. And the two walks that forced in the runs in the sixth weren’t Estrada’s only walks in his short outing; he’d already walked one in the second and one in the third that didn’t enter into the scoring.
But of course when you look at the final score of Tampa 6, Toronto 4, it stands out glaringly that the runs that came across in the fifth inning were the decisive runs in the game, and that’s why we have to focus on the botched double play that kept Estrada on the mound too long, and led to the forced-in runs that extended the Rays’ lead to 6-1 before Donaldson’s blast in the bottom of the fifth cut it to 6-4.
Since he’d already given up the seven hits and four runs, it wasn’t too much of a surprise that Logan Morrison and Steven Souza led off the fifth with base hits, leaving Estrada dangling by a thread. But it looked like the thread would be enough to save him when Mallex Smith lined softly to Refsnyder at second while Morrison took one step too many toward third. Barney was on the bag, Morrison was a dead duck, and Refsnyder ten feet from Barney with the ball. But he double-clutched before letting it go, and Barney, his momentum toward Refsnyder and coming off the bag, had closed the distance to Refsnyder and the throw handcuffed him. He succeeded in holding on to it briefly before it got away from him as he left the base and Morrison finally tiptoed back in.
The initial ruling by base umpire Eric Cooper was that Barney had control of the ball long enough while on the bag to record the out on Morrison, but the Rays asked for a review, and the review overturned the call and restored Morrison to second, with Souza still on first. The next terrible thing that happened was that Ramos lofted an easy fly to medium centre, with the runners on and holding. But uncharacteristically Kevin Pillar lost it in the twilight sky and it dropped for a single to load the bases. Estrada then went on to walk Hechaverria and Daniel Robertson to force in the two runs and end Estrada’s day.
Now, let’s replay the inning and look at the possible alternative results.
If they make the double play, and Pillar doesn’t lose the ball, the inning would have been over with Souza on first and Estrada, even though not at his best, would have pitched on, with a pitch count in the mid-70s.
It’s a more theoretical question if they make the double play and Pillar still loses the ball. Then it would have been Souza on second and Ramos on first. With the two walks that followed, only one would have scored, and Matt Dermody, who came in for Estrada, would have left the second run at third with the Dickerson short fly to left and the Duda comebacker. A scorer’s note here: both runs were earned because no error was given on the missed double play; the scorer cannot assume a double play, and if one out is recorded and no runner advances an extra base, no error can be ascribed to a fielder.
But the question that has to be considered and is harder to answer definitively is, how does Estrada pitch to Hechaverria and Robertson if he’s got the two outs and two on: in other words, what was the effect on his composure of the messed-up twin-killing?
A final word on this: nobody can blame Rob Refsnyder for this situation. He just doesn’t have the innings at second to be sure of himself there. As a converted outfielder, the thing that I think would be most difficult would be that the player is inserted into the close and tense maelstrom of infield play with runners on base, a far different environment from patrolling the outfield. Conclusion: Rob Refsnyder might be a useful utility piece, but it should be as a corner outfielder or first baseman, pinch hitter (he’s reputed to wield a better stick than we’ve seen,) or a pinch runner, (he is quick), but not as a second baseman. Now that the Jays have Nori Aoki and Zeke Carrera as outfielders, both hitting left, maybe that carves out a niche for him hitting right.
To give him his due, though, we can’t ignore the fact that Estrada would have started the game in a hole again, were it not for a beautiful, leaping grab by Refsnyder of a liner off the bat of the leadoff hitter Dickinson that looked destined to go all the way to the wall in right centre in the bottom of the first inning.
The Blue Jays weren’t going to run up a big number against the Rays’ lefty beanpole Blake Snell. You can just disregard his 0-6 record this year, it just wasn’t relevant against a team that’s always had trouble with him.
Toronto picked up a run off him in the second inning, but it was more than a little bit tainted. Steve Pearce was on first with a one-out single, and Kevin Pillar blooped one into short right centre that drew both centre fielder Mallex Smith and right fielder Steven Souza. Neither could get to it as it fell safely, but Souza cut in front of Smith to take it on the hop but it bounced over his head, hit the turf still spinning, and skipped under Smith’s glove. All of this silliness took enough time that Pearce came around and score, with Pillar to second with a double. Pillar died at second, but the Jays had a lead on Snell, briefly.
Lucas Duda took care of the lead three batters into the top of the third. Daniel Robertson singled, Corey Dickinson struck out, and Duda hit a blast to right that made it 2-1 Rays. Estrada then gave up a double to Logan Morrison after Evan Longoria flew out, and walked Souza behind Longoria before Smith flew out to leave runners at first and second.
In the fourth Ramos hit a rope to left to make it 3-1, and then the flukey Hechaverria double was cashed in by a single by Dickerson and the Tampa lead was solidified at 4-1 before that messy fifth.
In the meantime, besides the Pearce-Pillar combo for the Toronto run, Snell allowed only two other runners, a walk to Donaldson in the third, and a single to Pillar in the fourth, before he came out for the fifth inning newly fortified with a five-run lead. Mike Ohlman, tonight serving as the backup catcher to the backup catcher Raffie Lopez (I could go on, but I won’t) made the first out, a loud one, with a deep fly to left. Barney singled to centre for the Jays’ fourth hit, and Bautista followed with the fifth, a double to right that pushed Barney to third.
Then, in the most promising moment of the game, Donaldson crushed another one, this time to right centre, to bring Toronto within a tantalizing two runs of Tampa Bay, where they would stay until the Rays’ bullpen closed it out.
Snell finished off six innings, pitching over Refsnyder reaching base on a catcher’s interference call against Ramos in the sixth. He’d given up four runs on seven hits, walked one and struck out four on 108 pitches. Except for the gopher ball* to Donaldson, it was a pretty solid outing for Snell.
*”Gopher ball”? That’s easy, a hit that “goes fer four” eh?
Steve Cishek pitched the seventh, and failed to pick up a little bouncer by Donaldson that went for a one-out infield hit. But then Justin Smoak hit a one-hop bullet to the second baseman Robertson who started an easy double play. Toronto went down meekly on ten pitches by Tommy Hunter in the eighth, and twelve by Tampa closer Alex Colomé in the ninth, and the Rays had tied the series at one win apiece.
As for the Toronto bullpen, after Matt Dermody rescued Estrada in the fifth inning, manager John Gibbons sent him out for the sixth inning, and he retired Longoria on a ground ball, but walked the lefty Morrison whom he was supposed to retire, so Gibbie handed the ball over to Danny Barnes, who made things more interesting for himself by giving up a double to Souza that moved Morrison to third before retiring the last two batters on weak contact.
In the seventh Barnes easily pitched over a throwing error by Barney at short which was at first called as having nipped Robertson in a bang-bang play at first, but then was overturned on appeal.
The call went out to Ryan Tepera to pitch the eighth, in the hope that the Jays might stir things up in the bottom of the eighth, bringing Roberto Osuna into play. Tepera had another clean, efficient inning, dispatching the Rays on 13 pitches, though he walked off the field applauding his centre fielder Pillar for ranging to the wall in deep left centre and reaching up over his shoulder to haul down a drive by Souza.
It’s an axiom in baseball that he who thrives and surprises in the spring will inevitably join the big club before the end of the year. In the absence of meaningful work for the closer, today was the day for Tim Mayza, a rangy (six three, 225) twenty-five-year-old left-hander, who had impressed in spring training, to make his major league debut. After Florida, Mayza started at New Hampshire in Double A, and then was promoted to Bufallo, where he made eleven relief appearances, and went 1-1 with an 0.93 ERA, good enough to get a look-see in Toronto.
It didn’t take Mayza very long to get his first strikeout in the show, either, as he gunned down the first batter he faced, Peter Bourjos, with a 1-2 killer slider. Nor did it take long to give up his first base hit, because he went 3-1 on Wilson Ramos, up next, and Ramos grounded one up the middle for a base hit. Next he got Adeiny Hechaverria to ground into a fielder’s choice, but Daniel Robertson doubled to left before Corey Dickinson lined out softly again, this time with no drama, to short, to end Mayza’s debut. Lots of interesting experiences in those 23 pitches.
So, there you go. Muck up a double play and sometimes the whole ball game can be wrapped up in that muff. If they make that play, they could still be playing since, as we all know, “there’s no time clock in baseball”. (Except for the silly pitcher’s clock that absolutely does not speed up the “pace of play”.)
Oh, and a message for Gibbie: do not platoon Ryan Goins. How many of his key RBIs have been off left-handed pitchers? And what offensive “advantage” gained by hitting Refsnyder against lefties could ever outweigh Goins’ play at shortstop, or Barney’s at second? Case closed.
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