After the Chicago White Sox scored 18 runs in their first two games in the spacious surroundings of Kansas City’s home grounds, blasting 7 home runs in the process, who would have thought that you could have a game score the likes of:
TORONTO 4, WELLINGTON CASTILLO 2, CHICAGO WHITE SOX 0?
And after the four big games with the Yankees, it was time for Toronto to trot out its fifth starter, Jaime Garcia, their off-season acquisition from the “slightly discounted, a little too close to his best before date”, shelf.
The prospects were for a game with big bashing on both sides, in the case of the White Sox because we didn’t expect really great things from Garcia, and in the case of the Blue Jays because we were facing the young Reynaldo Lopez, a fairly unknown entity with a pretty light track record in major league baseball, only 19 appearances, 14 starts, and 13 decisions.
Well, just goes to show that you shouldn’t anticipate too much from a ball game.
Garcia was very good, the bullpen was very good, and the Sox only garnered six hits in the game. The only reason they were on the board at all was because they had acquired Wellington Castillo, the former Baltimore catcher who has a remarkable penchant for hitting home runs in Toronto. He hit one off Garcia in the fourth and Seung Hwan Oh in the seventh. Fortunately, they were both solo shots.
Other than Castillo, or “The Duke”, as I call him, Chicago only garnered three harmless singles off Garcia, and a one-out double off Ryan Tepera in the eighth inning by Jose Abreu, whom Tepera stranded at second.
Oh, and Lopez? He pitched even better than Garcia. He didn’t allow a safety until Curtis Granderson picked up an infield hit leading off the fifth. It was a scorer’s decision that could have gone either way as Tim Anderson got to the left-handed Granderson’s hot shot on the backhand with time to make the play, but the ball deflected off his glove. Lucky for the official scorer that Lopez didn’t go on to pitch a one-hitter, because he’d have had some ‘splaining to do.
Lopez didn’t throw a one-hitter, obviously, but he was damn good, 6 innings, 1 run, 2 hits, 2 walks, and six strikeouts on 100 pitches. Besides Granderson’s scratch hit, he was only touched up by Josh Donaldson, in the sixth, when he was visibly flagging. Aledmys Diaz had led off the inning with a one-hop rocket to third that Yolmer picked cleanly to throw him out.
Lopez rallied to fan the slumping Devon Travis, who exited tonight’s game with an average of .063, but he threw a too-fat 2-2 fast ball to Donaldson that the Toronto DH was able to extend his arms on and drove out of the park the opposite way, down the right field line. This tied the score at ones after The Duke had dinged Garcia in the fourth.
There’s always something with Donaldson. Guess he has to step up his cheeky game now that Jose Bautista isn’t around any more to annoy opposing teams. This time there was to me some blame on both sides. Veteran Chicago coach Daryl Boston apparently keeps a referee’s whistle at hand, and blows it whenever his defence makes a good play. Oh well, everybody’s gotta have a thing, I guess.
Anyway, he had used it after one of Donaldson’s earlier at-bats, and our prickly superstar apparently took umbrage, because after doing his usual “praise god” uplifted arms thing crossing the plate (like god has any time to help Josh Donaldson hit home runs with all the other crap going on in the world) he turned to the Chicago bench, put his hand to his mouth, and mimicked blowing a whistle back at Boston. Twice.
Boston, to his credit, thought the whole thing was rather funny, and had a good chuckle over it.
So this was a 1-1 game after six innings, with both starters having been congratulated for a job well done and the game turned over to the respective bullpens. Based on the Toronto ‘pen’s performance in the Yankee series, you had to like our chances.
But fiirst there was The Duke to contend with, who just happened to be leading off in the seventh against Oh, who had been stellar in his first two outings against New York. Oh tried to be cute with a couple of sliders in the dirt, but Oh no, The Duke wasn’t having any of it. He’d have a nice 2-0 fast ball, just right about here, so that he could hammer it over the left-field fence, again, if you please. Welcome to the Duke show at the TV Dome, Mr. Oh.
After Castillo’s blast put the Sox in front 2-1, Oh wobbled his way through a 23-pitch inning featuring a walk to Leury Garcia and Yolmer Sanchez’ second hit batsman of the game. But he got through it without further damage, and that’s a good thing, because despite his not-so-stellar work, it lined him up for a garbage win.
Crusty Chicago manager Rick Renteria called on former National Leaguer Luis Avilan, a lefty who came over to Chicago from the Dodgers. Avilan was brought in to turn around Yangervis Solarte, and pitch to Curtis Granderson, or get John Gibbons to hit for Granderson. Solarte hit 60 points lower against lefties last year, and hit only two of his 18 home runs from the right side. The move to a lefty worked against Solarte, as he hit a broken-bat dying quail liner to short for the first out.
Now it was John Gibbons’ move: stay with Granderson, or put in Steve Pearce. Apparently because it was still a bit early, the seventh inning, he decided to stay with Granderson, and it worked well. The veteran used all of his wiles to pull off a 10-pitch walk, and that was all for Avilan.
Next in was the righty Danny Farquhar, to face Randal Grichuk and then Russell Martin. After Pillar and Smoak had carried the team on the weekend, it seemed like it was time for some of the slumping regulars to step up. Donaldson had already hit one out, and with one on and behind by one run in the game, now was the perfect time for somebody else to do some damage. Grichuk shouted in frustration as he missed his pitch and flew out to right for the second out, bringing Martin to the plate.
Farquhar threw a fast ball for a rather notably low called strike, and then he threw two changeups in the dirt. Martin took the first one and swung through the second, to fall to a 1-2 count. Farquhar decided it was time for a fast ball. So did Martin. No doubt Farquhar did not want to throw it in Martin’s wheelhouse, but there it was, and there it went. I knew it was gone from the crack. My wife said, “how did you know?” “When it sounds like that and looks that off the bat, you just know”, said I, smugly. It went out to left and the Jays were up 3-2.
This was their third straight late-inning strike. But it was a slim lead and they needed the bullpen to hold it. No more Oh-nos from anybody, even if it was The Duke at the plate!
Despite giving up the hustle double to Abreu as mentioned above, Ryan Tepera once again bridged effectively to the Jays’ closer. He handled Matt Davidson and The Duke exactly the same way, burying a breaking ball on the 2-2 pitch for the punch-out. Buck Martinez, who’s becoming a bit of a prophet, said to Pat Tabler just before Tepera’s final pitch to The Duke, “but Castillo hasn’t seen a breaking ball yet.” So of course he finished off with “now he has!”
Like I said, tonight was the night for the other guys to step up. Despite contributing to the rally against the Yankees on Sunday with a double, Aledmys Diaz hadn’t done much at the plate so far.
So it was good for him and too bad for Danny Farquhar that the latter stayed in the game for the eighth, and chose to start Diaz off with a fast ball down the middle. But Diaz was sitting on it, hit a shot that bore a resemblance to Martin’s the inning before.
Now down 4-2, Farquhar retired Travis and Donaldson for the first two outs, and then gave way to Aaron Bummer (his real name), a lefty. Again, Renteria was looking to turn around both Smoak and Solarte, and neutralize Granderson. It worked, sort of, as Smoak reached on an error by Sanchez at third on a pretty easy chance. Then Solarte walked, to give way to the matchup Renteria was looking for, and Granderson put a charge in one to left, but it fell shy of the wall for the third out.
Having rested on Sunday like a good boy, Roberto Osuna was well-primed to rack up his second save of the year. In only 8 pitches he retired Anderson on a foul fly to right, Leury Garcia on a sharp one-hopper to third that Solarte picked nicely and fired across, and Sanchez, whom he overwhelmed with 98 mph high heat for a nice game-ending touch.
On Sunday the Blue Jays rebounded from their slow start to secure a split with the Yankees and reach the .500 mark for the first time since the end of 2016. Tonight, thanks to Jaime Garcia. another fine bullpen performance, and some big swings from three of the slow starters, they extended the win streak to three straight, and popped their heads above .500 also of course for the first time since 2016.
Hope our boys like the smell of the air up on those heights!
Jay Happ is next up tomorrow night as the rotation turns over for the first time.
First time through, seems like it was a little more than a qualified success, wouldn’t you say?
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