The next best thing to your team playing meaningul games in September is playing games that are meaningful for the other team. Especially if that other team is the Baltimore Orioles, ‘cuz we don’t like them birds so much here in Tranna.
The three game series with Baltimore that ended the Blue Jays’ brief home stand couldn’t have been tighter. If you’d dropped a piece of paper between the two teams any time during the series it would never have reached the ground. Scores of 4-3, 3-2, and 2-1 are all you need to know about how close this series was.
The fact that Toronto came out on the long end of the first two scores was gravy for the Jays’ disappointed fans, who, if they can’t watch playoff baseball themselves, are very happy to see that the Baltimore fans won’t have the pleasure either.
In an interesting sort of symmetry, Toronto benefitted from some shaky Baltimore defence to take a lead that they never relinquished in game one of the series, then returned the favour with a sloppy first inning in game three to set up the Orioles’ only win. The middle game was sharp, cleanly-played, and flat-out exciting, especially if you were rooting for the home side.
The Monday night matchup, Marco Estrada against Ubaldo Jimenez, was rife with possiblities. Would Estrada continue his resurgence as his career arc moves again toward free agency? Would Jimenez stone the Jays, as he has from time to time, or be stoned by them, as he also has from time to time, most notably in that electric moment when he dished up the Edwin Encarnacion dinger in last year’s wild card game?
Estrada managed to avoid the first inning wildness that has plagued him occasionally this year, retiring the Orioles on fifteen pitches in the first inning. In a harbinger of things to come, he caught Manny Machado looking for his first strikeout, and Machado was not at all pleased with the call by plate umpire Chris Segal on a 3-2 pitch that appeared to be right on the black at the bottom of the zone, the ninth pitch of his at bat.
From the bottom of the first on it almost seemed like the Orioles were playing with lumps in their throats and looking over their shoulders. For a team that had to create a chance to win every game the rest of the way in order to close the gap on a playoff spot, this was not the way they needed to comport themselves.
Their starter Jimenez struggled in the bottom of the first, loading the bases after retiring the first two batters. He walked Josh Donaldson, back in the lineup from his recent illness, gave up an opposite-field hit to Kendrys Morales, and an infield hit to Machado at third, before fanning Miguel Montero to leave the bases loaded, on his twenty-ninth pitch of the inning.
The tension for Baltimore built in the top of the second. Adam Jones fouled out to Jose Bautista in right, and then Trey Mancini picked up Baltimore’s first hit, a Texas Leaguer to centre. But Estrada frustrated both big sluggers, Chris Davis and Mark Trumbo, by striking them out looking. Neither was pleased with Segal’s calls as Estrada racked up his second and third called third strikes.
With the game still scoreless, the fuming Orioles, in particular Trumbo, took the field for the bottom of the second. More trouble found Trumbo in right, as leadoff hitter Teoscar Hernandez hit a high, short fly down the right field line. Circumstances coincided to create an outfielder’s nightmare for Trumbo. The twilight sky was bright and deceptive. Hernandez’ right-handed swing had imparted terrific out-spin to the ball.
First Trumbo lost it in the sky, and it fell untouched about ten feet behind him, in fair territory. It took a terrific turf bounce into foul territory, and a second one toward the seats, as Trumbo desparately gave chase. The second bounce hit the railing in front of the first row of seats just as Trumbo arrived to try to corral it. But it must have still been spinning, because it popped right out of Trumbo’s hands, and into the seats, much to the amusement of the Toronto fans.
Meanwhile, Hernandez had easily motored around to third, where he would stay, despite the Orioles’ unfounded protest that it should have been a ground-rule double. In fact, it was ruled a double in play, and Hernandez was allowed third base on the error on Trumbo, for causing a live ball to go out of play.
But wait, it got better. Adam Jones, who had not been personally offended by the plate umpire, was the next to make a damaging mistake in the outfield. After Ryan Goins efficiently scored Hernandez with a hard ground-ball up the middle, Darwin Barney stepped up and lined an even harder shot up the alley in right centre that one-hopped the wall and dropped at the feet of Jones, who picked it up. Barney, expecting the ball to be coming in, rounded second, looked out to centre, and realized that Jones had dropped the ball on the warning track for another outfield error, an unheard of second one in the same inning for the usually slick-fielding Orioles.
Barney took off again for third, and would have made it easily, except that he started his head-first slide about six feet too soon. Luckily for Barney, the relay went to the plate as he frantically swam/crawled along the infield dirt to finally clap his hand on the base between Manny Machado’s brilliant orange shoes. Jones and Trumbo should be thankful for Barney’s comical dive, because the enduring image of this game became, not either of their errors, but the sheepish grin on Barney’s face as he gratefully clutched the bag.
Barney scored immediately on a hustle double to right by Richard Ureňa, and the Jays had a 2-0 lead they would never relinquish. Because Hernandez would have scored in any case on Barney’s double, and likewise Barney on Ureňa’s double, both runs off Jiminez were earned.
The 2-0 Toronto lead after two innings put the Orioles into catch-up mode, and they never did, in particular because Estrada was brilliant, if short, and the Blue Jays’ bullpen was good enough over the last four innings.
Buck Showalter’s funk over the Baltimore hitters and Chris Segal’s strike zone only got deeper. Two more called third strikes in the third for Estrada, and another one to end the fourth, after the O’s had clawed back one run on a Machado double and a Jones single.
The Jays got that one back in the bottom of the fourth on a very long, very quick Ryan Goins solo jack to the 200 level in right.
A day late and a dollar short, Baltimore closed it to one again when Trumbo made up for his earlier woes with a leadoff homer against Estrada, who then finished his night by getting three ground-ball outs, a rather strange ending for the fly-ball/popup/strikeout pitcher.
An oddly familiar figure, the lanky Miguel Castro—remember him?—took over for Jiminez in the top of the sixth. Castro had been the other youthful golden boy beside Roberto Osuna in the Jays’ bullpen out of spring training in 2015. But Castro, originally having won the closer’s spot over Osuna, didn’t pan out. For the Toronto bullpen, the rest was history as Osuna took over the job, and Castro went on to the Rockies as part of the package in the Tulowitzki trade.
After suffering and overcoming some injury problems, Castro has resurfaced in Baltimore, and has been making a case for being part of the mix there next year. They’re even talking about trying him out as a starter. God knows the Orioles need starters.
Castro had some bad luck in his initial appearance against his original team, giving up a run without the ball reaching the outfield safely. He didn’t help himself by hitting Miguel Montero with a pitch leading off. Montero moved up to second on an infield hit by Hernandez. Both runners were advanced by Ryan Goins, again effectively using his at bat to ground out to first. Another infield single by Barney, deflecting off Castro, scored Montero with the fourth Toronto run.
Again Baltimore cut the lead to one in the top of the seventh, despite John Gibbon’s attempt to keep them off the board with his bullpen-by-committee. Danny Barnes, who had pitched a clean sixth for Estrada, walked Trey Mancini to lead off. Matt Dermody came in and caught Chris Davis looking, again, in an successful matchup situation. Then Tom Koehler got Mark Trumbo to ground out to third, but Mancini was able to advance to second. He scored when Caleb Joseph bounced a single up the middle. 4-3 Toronto.
And that’s where it stayed. Castro pitched a clean seventh to run his strikeout total to three, and Brad Brach a clean eighth to keep Toronto from picking up an insurance run, providing some nice one-run tension for the Jays at the end of the game.
Carlos Ramirez added to his sparkling ERA of 0.00 with a quick and clean eighth inning, aided by a third-out dive to his knees glove-side by Barney at third to cut off a shot by Jonathan Schoop.
And in the absence of Osuna, off on paternal leave (who knew?) Dominic Leone was elected to serve as closer, and he wrapped it up, after yielding a leadoff single to Adam Jones, and seeing him advance to second on a Mancini right-side grounder, by striking out the hapless Davis and the hapless (despite his homer) Trumbo to end the game. This time, at least they both swung at strike three.
So, one less chance for Baltimore to close the gap on its competition. Would the Jays be able to thwart their ambitions behind Joe Biagini on Tuesday night?
Well, that was a story of a different colour!
If Baltimore’s defensive sloppiness (tightness?) contributed significantly to their falling behind on Monday night, and not being able to climb out, this was a briskly played game, with neither team giving anything away, until the very end, when Toronto ripped the win from the very grasp of the desperate Orioles.
Joe Biagini has followed a strange path of alternating good starts and bad starts, and this was a good one indeed, eight innings, two runs on six hits, and only 88 pitches. This, after not being able to get out of the fourth inning in his last start in Boston. But Dylan Bundy, who had been very effective against the Jays back in April, going thirteen innings in two starts, giving up only one earned run on nine hits in total, was equal to the task, if a little shorter and only a little less efficient. Bundy went six full innings, and gave up only one run on five hits, walking one and striking out eight, on 89 pitches.
In short, this was a pitchers’ battle, and a fine one it was. Biagini had the better of it in the early going, breezing through three innings on only 26 pitches, despite giving up a leadoff hit to Adam Jones in the second and a two-out hit to Tim Beckham in the third.
Bundy stranded a leadoff single by Richard Ureňa in the first, then had to dig a little deeper in the second, but pulled it off admirably. Kendrys Morales, relishing the chance to hit from the right side against the portsider Bundy, drilled one into the gap in left centre for a leadoff double, then was able to move up to third safely when Bundy bobbled Kevin Pillar’s comebacker, and had only one option, to take the out at first. Ah, but then he pulled out his wicked slider and fanned Teoscar Hernandez and Ryan Goins, while Morales waited patiently at third before going back to his seat in the dugout.
Bundy wasn’t so fortunate in the third, though, as Toronto started to make serious contact on him. Luke Maile lined a leadoff single to centre. Then the warning track gods gave Bundy a hand by keeping both Ureňa’s and Josh Donaldson’s deep drives in the park. But his luck failed him with Justin Smoak, who went the opposite way on Bundy and ripped a double to right centre over Joey Rickard’s head that pinged off the DQ sign and away from the fallen Rickard. Maile, running from first with two outs, was able to come all the way around and score. Bundy then froze Jose Bautista with a wicked curve ball, but the Jays had the lead.
The middle innings zipped by, Biagini finishing the sixth on only 61 pitches. The only batter to reach on him was Chris Davis, who singled to lead off the fourth. Bundy retired seven in a row starting with the Bautista punchout in the third, but again was lucky that a couple of deep drives, by Morales and Pillar, stayed in the park to be caught.
Bundy’s stint was marked by reliance on his strikeout repertoire, as he fanned two in the fifth and two in the sixth, his last inning, the latter two after allowing Donalson to reach on a leadoff Texas Leaguer, and walking Smoak.
So Bundy left after a fine start, deserving more, though the Orioles did immediately take him off the hook for the loss in the seventh with their first run off Biagini.
Biagini allowed Trey Mancini to reach with a one-out double to the left field corner, only their fourth hit off him, but it was hardly his fault that the Orioles managed to bring him around to score the tying run. The big righthander blew away big Chris Davis on high heat that the lefty slugger couldn’t handle and couldn’t lay off. That brought up the second Baltimore Bopper, Trumbo, who didn’t exactly bop, but managed to lift a low strike over the infield that fell perfectly equidistantly between an onrushing Pillar and a retreating Goins, who was waving that he wasn’t going to get it either. Mancini came around on the hit to score and the game was tied.
Mychal Givens came in and settled Toronto’s hash quickly in the bottom of the seventh with two strikeouts and a popup on only eleven pitches. Givens effctively quashed any hope of the arrival of the walk-a-palooza that he sometimes puts on against the Jays.
You were kind of holding your breath when John Gibbons sent Joe Biagini back out for the eighth inning. Even after only 79 pitches, eight innings seemed a stretch. But Biagini was up to it, more or less, allowing only one batter to reach while retiring the side. Unfortunately, the one batter who reached was shortstop Tim Beckham who reached them all He put a confident swing on a tempting pitch and hit the big fly that sailed over the left-centre field fence for the home run that gave the Orioles the lead, and left Biagini finishing off the inning responsible for the loss.
The first indication that this game was not quite decided yet came in the bottom of the eighth, when the home town boys got to Brad Brach, for only the second time all year. The first was on June twenty-seventh in Toronto when he gave up a solo home run to Troy Tulowitzki with two out in the bottom of the ninth, a shot which didn’t mar Brach’s save, as he had gone into the ninth with a 3-0 lead. Get this: that was the only run Brach gave up against the Jays in twelve appearances, including this one.
Now wait a minute: if Toronto didn’t score against Brach in this eighth, how did they “get to him”? Well, first of all Richard Ureňa led off with a single to left centre, and made the rookie mistake of trying to stretch it when his team was down a run in a late inning. Trey Mancini shot him down at second and presumably taught him a lesson. But don’t worry, Ureňa’s night wasn’t done yet.
Then, Brach walked Donaldson, only the third walk he’d given up to Toronto in those twelve appearances. The walk was followed by Justin Smoak lining a single to right into the teeth of the shift, hit so hard that Donaldson had to stop at second. Zeke Carrera came in to run for Smoak, but before Kendrys Morales could stride to the plate, Buck Showalter was out of the dugout to call on his closer, Zach Britton.
And that’s why I say that Toronto “got to” Brad Brach: for the first time in twelve appearances he did not finish an inning that he started, and even though Britton fanned Morales to strand Brach’s runners, it still marked a significant milepost for Toronto that Brach wasn’t able to finish his inning. And keep in mind that if Ureňa had just checked in at first and not tried for second, the game would have been tied on Smoak’s hit.
John Gibbons played it just right in the top of the ninth, sending out Tom Koehler in relief of Biagini. Koehler retired the first two batters, Jones and Mancini, and then out popped Gibbons to bring in the lefty Tim Mayza to face the lefty Chris “All or Nothing” Davis. The move paid off for Gibbons as Davis went down swinging, and it paid off for Mayza because he was now the pitcher of record though with Britton returning to the mound for the final three outs, no one really made note of that.
If there’s anything more amazing than the fact that it was Zach Britton who not only blew the save in this game, but took the loss, while only getting one out, it was that of the five batters who faced down Britton and won the game for Toronto, not one was named Bautista, Smoak, Donaldson, or Morales. Rather, it was the supporting cast that did the job, Pillar, Hernandez, Barney, Maile, and finally, improbably, Richard Ureňa.
Pillar opened the inning by drawing a walk on a 3-1 pitch. On a 2-2 pitch, the Jays sent Pillar on the hit-and-run, and Teoscar Hernandez lined a single into right, with Pillar ending up at third. Barney, hitting for Goins, grounded into a fielder’s choice thereby replacing Hernandez on first, while Pillar was held at third. Then Luke Maile swung at the first offering from Britton and ripped a vicious shot to the left of Mannie Machado at third. Machado dove for the ball but couldn’t come up with it. He tipped it with his glove towards Tim Beckham. Maile was safe on the infield hit, and Pillar scored the tying run, with Barney checking in at second.
Then came Ureňa. With the count 1-1, Britton threw him a high fast ball on the inside corner. Britton may have been unlucky to have blown the game for Baltimore, but he was extremely lucky that the wicked line drive Ureňa hit back up the middle for the game-winning hit didn’t take his head off.
So there it was, the bottom of the Toronto batting order against the great Zach Britton, and Britton didn’t have a chance.
Maybe it didn’t really matter that Buck Showalter never used Britton in the Wild Card game last year, eh?
So as Wednesday’s final game of the series approached, the question was whether or not the Orioles could regroup to salvage at least one game, having handed one win to Toronto, and having had a second one stolen from them by the feisty non-contenders from Toronto.
As I mentioned in my lead, there was as much symmetry in this series as you can get in an odd-numbered sequence of events. The Orioles handed the first game to the Blue Jays, the second game was a hard-fought tooth-and-nail thriller, and the Jays handed the third game to Baltimore, so that they could avoid being swept by the cellar-dwelling Torontos.
Even more oddly, the Toronto breakdown in game three, like the O’s breakdown in game one, came early, and the rest of the game represented the playing out of a fait accompli.
If anyone could be justified in bringing suit against his mates for non-support, it would be Marcus Stroman on this Wednesday night. He pitched six innings, gave up six hits, walked three, and struck out seven. Oh, did I leave out the runs? Well, yeah, two of them, both unearned, in the first inning.
Not that Kevin Gausman didn’t deserve to win too: seven innings, 1 earned run, six hits, one walk, six strikeouts. But still, all things being equal, he should have left the game down 1-0, and it would have stayed that way until the last out.
It was passing strange indeed that the player who wrecked Marcus Stroman’s night was none other than third baseman Josh Donaldson, who seemed to have taken a bag of pre-game jitters onto the field with him for the top of the first.
Tim Beckham started off by hitting a Marcus-Stroman special on the first pitch, two hops, bounce, bounce, right to Donaldson. The latter glided in, picked the easy hop, took a step to line up his throw, took another step while he seemed to be counting the stitches with his fingertips, and then unloaded an awful, wild throw that left Justin Smoak with zero chance of staying on the bag for the out.
Instead of one pitch, one out, it was one pitch, runner on first who never should have been there. Stroman quickly set to work to eradicate the problem: he fanned Manny Machado with a wicked slider away in the dirt, and grounded out Jonathan Schoop to third on the second pitch, with Beckham moving up to third.
But wait, let’s revisit the Schoop at bat. He hit the ball hard on the ground at Donaldson. It was a pick-it-or-die kind of hit: pick it and double up Jones, or knock it down and miss the dp. On a ball we’ve seen Donaldson handle dozens of times, this time he knocked it down, and with Beckham in to second, he had no choice but to take the out at first. Though you can’t assume a double play, that was the inning right there, and on it went.
And it went on with Adam Jones, good ol’ Adam Jones, at the plate. Stroman didn’t get a call he wanted on the first pitch, which was low and away. Then he missed way outside. On 2-0, he came inside with a four-seamer that Jones liked, and he hit it hard to left. It might have been catchable with a good jump, but Teoscar Hernandez didn’t get a good jump. It looked like he lost it for a moment. It went for a double, Beckham scored, of course, and it was 1-0 Baltimore, with Jones on second.
As if that weren’t bad enough, Trey Mancini then launched one that carried to the wall in centre, unfortunately for Toronto it was a catchable ball that hit the wall just to Kevin Pillar’s right, well within reach if he’d gotten his usual jump on it. It bounced far enough away from him that Mancini, having knocked in Jones, went all the way to third for a very suspect triple.
Stroman managed to knuckle down and fan Mark Trumbo to leave Mancini on third, but Stroman and the Jays were down two unearned runs before they’d even lifted a bat against Kevin Gausman.
It didn’t much matter when they did lift their bats against Gausman; he sailed through his seven innings against Toronto.
Well, not quite sailed, but enough good innings to keep the Jays in his rear-view mirror. His worst inning was the third, when they broke through for a run on a leadoff double to right by Hernandez, who was sacrificed to third by Ryan Goins, and plated by a bloop double by Richard Ureňa. But the story of this game was that Toronto never really capitalized on their chances against Gausman. With one out, Donaldson moved Ureňa to third with an infield hit, but Gausman sawed off Smoak, who hit into a double play.
Toronto had runners at second and third with one out in the fourth after two singles and a mishandled ball by Mancini in left that let the trailing runner, Pillar, take second. But Russell Martin, back on the roster at last, and Hernandez put the ball in the air for easy and unproductive outs.
Pillar fanned behind a two-out double by Morales in the sixth, and Goins grounded into a double-play after a one-out walk to Hernandez.
And that was it for Gausman. They created a few chances; he was equal to them.
And the Baltimore bullpen was aces on this night, Darren O’Day retiring the side in order in the eighth with three strikeouts, and Zach Britton throwing a double-play ball, only his sixth pitch, to Pillar who grounded into the game-ending twin-killing in the ninth. Thus Britton redeemed himself for his shocking loss the night before.
As for Stroman, he danced through and around the Orioles from the second through the sixth in typical Stromanesque fashion, a walk here, a hit there, a little bases-loaded jam in the fourth, nothing he wasn’t able to handle without the help of a double play or two. The number says it all, two unearned runs in six innings.
The Jays’ bullpen was perfect again, keeping the team close through the latter innings, in case their bats might come alive.
Carlos Ramirez extended his scoreless streak in the seventh. The Orioles never put a ball in fair territory off him. He took fourteen pitches to fan two with very effective breaking balls, give up a walk, and retire the side on a foul popup to first.
Dom Leone gave up a weird double to right by Adam Jones, who used his bat like a cue-stick leading off the eighth. He then retired the next two hitters, fanning Mancini and getting Mark Trumbo on a fly ball to right on which Jones advanced to third. Matt Dermody came in to match up with Chris Davis, who hit a line drive toward right on the first pitch, a shot that Ryan Goins snatched out of the air at the last minute. This saved the Jays from giving up an insurance run that the Orioles in the end wouldn’t have needed anyway.
Ryan Tepera pitched a clean ninth inning, leaving it up to Toronto versus Britton, and we know how that turned out.
So on the whole it was a good series, exciting if flawed, which put Baltimore a little deeper in the whole in regard to making the playoffs. Whether being the agents, perhaps, of Baltimore’s demise is enough satisfaction for Blue Jays’ fans to savour over the winter as they try to put the bitter disappointment of the past season behind them, is a question that they’ll have to answer in the silence of their darkened post-season rooms.
In the meantime, there’s still some pretty interesting baseball to be played, though.
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