Well, if you’re a glass half-full kinda person, you wake up today thinking, “Wow, 4 and 3, what a great start to the season! Maybe we’re on to something after all!”
But if you’re a glass half-empty type, you’re all about, “No-o-o, we lost a one-run game when we went 3 for 10 with runners in scoring position, the bullpen blew it, and I don’t get what the umps did in the fifth inning. How are we not leaving for Texas 5 and 2?”
Looking at it objectively, splitting the season-opening series with maybe the strongest team in baseball and winning your next series is what baseball is all about, the grind of 162 games, and the realistic goal of winning about five and a half out of every ten, because that’s about the best you can hope for, year in and year out, and most years it’ll get you into the playoffs.
But it’s undeniable that sometimes a team misses the playoffs by just one game, so, of course, every game counts. Yer humble scribe has never been one to buy the “Oh, it’s early yet, things will sort themselves out” line. That’s just fine for the Grapefruit League, but once the bell rings for real, the unattainable goal has to be to win them all.
Since close games can always be looked at as winnable games, it’s only natural to focus on the factors that might have contributed to a one-run loss. Equally, it’s always important to look at the good side of things, as in what went right.
So let’s start with some of what went right for Toronto in last night’s 4-3 loss to Toronto, in which Jose Abreu plastered a Ryan Tepera mistake in the top of the eighth inning to provide the winning run for the young, aggressive, rebuilding Chicago White Sox.
First of all, it seems that there’s no concern over any blister issue with Aaron Sanchez. He threw 6 innings, gave up 3 runs on 5 hits, walked 2, and fanned 7, on 98 pitches. A little caveat here, though: nobody mentioned it on the broadcast, but the camera did catch him studying his fingertips on the bench at one point.
Even so, his stuff was, as usual, very good, even if he struggled a bit with location, though I’ll have more to say about this in the “what went wrong” part of this piece.
Second, the defence behind Sanchez and the relievers was stellar. The infield pulled off four double plays. An around-the-horn number started by a rather weak throw from Josh Donaldson at third erased the leadoff Sanchez walk to Yoan Moncada in the first.
The other three DPs, curiously, were all started by Devon Travis and turned skillfully by the obviously gifted Gift Ngoepe (sorry!) The first came in the very weird Chicago fifth inning, and ended the never-ending bases-loaded saga that we’ll return to a bit later.
The second, in the next inning, ended a threat started by Donaldson missing a tough chance in short right field that allowed Nicky DelMonico to reach. The Donaldson error was followed by The Duke, Welington Castillo’s, only base hit of the night, a ground single to left that brought the swift DelMonico around to third. Aaron Sanchez then got the dangerous, bespectacled Yolmer Sanchez to hit one to Travis to get out of the pickle.
The last DP rescued Tepera from even worse damage in the eighth inning. After Abreu hit the game-winning homer, Tepera hit Matt Davidson on the wrist on an 0-2 pitch. Unfortunately, Davidson had to come out, replaced by the pinch-runner Leury Garcia, who was erased at the front end of the Travis-Ngoepe-Smoak twin-killing that victimized the very fast DelMonico.
The third good thing that came out of the game was that apart from Tepera, the two other relievers were solid. Seung Hwan Oh, after giving up a one-out liner to Adam Engel that just escaped Ngoepe’s impressive leap, calmly fanned Moncada and Avisail Garcia, utilizing well-set-up high fast balls to get both Sox hitters to chase.
Aaron Loup finished up in the ninth, for the ssecond night in a row. This time the veteran left-hander was tasked with holding the Sox’ lead to one run, and he managed it like the pro he has become, using the same high heat to dispatch Yolmer Sanchez and Tim Anderson before getting Engel on a soft fly to left to end the inning on 14 pitches.
It’s a very interesting commentary that in the age of Aroldis Chapman and the triple-digit fast ball, both Oh and Loup were able to use location and skillful setups to notch strikeouts with fast balls that clocked, in the case of Oh, at 90 and 91, and Loup at 89 and 92.
Another good thing to note was that, though they didn’t do much against the young Sox starter Carson Fulmer until the sixth inning, when manager Rick Renteria wisely pulled the the plug on him after Donaldson and Smoak led off with solid shots for base hits, the bats came alive against the Chicago bullpen, even if it didn’t show up in the score sheet. Both Donaldson and Smoak would eventually score on solid base hits by Steve Pearce and Kendrys Morales (second hit and second ribbie in two nights) against the lefty slants of Aaron Bummer.
Donaldson in the seventh, Smoak and Pearce in the eighth, and Morales again in the ninth all squared up the ball nicely and hit it hard with no results to show for their efforts. Even Ngoepe, earlier, hit one of the hardest shots off Fulmer, a drive to the track in dead centre in the fifth.
Then there are the negatives to consider, starting with the abysmal 3 for 10 with runners in scoring position. Sure, Toronto has done worse—way worse—in this category, but last night’s dip was not in character with what they had displayed during the four-game winning streak. Particularly frustrating was the sixth inning, when they tied it up after the crazy Sox fifth, but could have done much more. Both Randal Grichuk, who struck out, and Russ Martin, who grounded to third on a play that saw Smoak tagged out at the plate, failed to get the ball out of the infield when the Jays had runners on second and third with nobody, then one, out. And though Pillar hit the ball hard on the ground with Martin on third and Morales on second, he hit it right at shortstop Tim Anderson to end the inning.
Allied to the failure to produce with runners in scoring position is the fact that Toronto’s lineup is not producing consistently up and down the order. Though Donaldson, Smoak, Granderson, Pillar, and Pearce and Maile in limited appearances, not to mention Aledmys Diaz and Yangervis Solarte, who sat this one out, have all started rapping the ball hard and effectively, they are distributed throughout a lineup that has, so far, some serious black holes in it. At the end of last night’s action, Travis was hitting .050, Grichuk .087, Martin .133, and Morales .143. Even Ngoepe, hitting an even hundred and not on the roster for his bat, isn’t at the bottom of this list of sputterers.
At least Jose Bautista was putting a jolt in a few last year when he was hitting south of .200. Seriously, though, I know it’s early but this crew really has to start putting the head on the ball a little better, especially with ducks on the pond.
Somebody on the coaching staff should be a little concerned, too, with Aaron Sanchez. Though his blister problem seems to be resolved, there was some evidence that the time he missed last year, the frustration that he faced, might have gotten into his head.
I didn’t make note of when this happened, but I think it was the beginning of Sanchez’ problems in that crazy fifth inning. He thought he had struck out Castillo on a 3-2 pitch, a high fast ball. He must have started mouthing off at plate umpire Greg Gibson, who, to his credit, chose not to confront Sanchez but warned Russell Martin to settle him down. This resulted quickly enough in a mound visit from John Gibbons, which should have resolved the issue.
But Sanchez gave up a base hit to Yolmer Sanchez, before striking out Anderson after the latter had fouled off a couple of 1-2 pitches. Then it got worse, as he hit Adam Engel with a pitch to load the bases.
This brought up Yoan Moncada, and a play that in my opinion, even with replay review, the umpires got wrong. He hit a towering drive to left that almost carried out. Granderson went back to the fence and leapt. With only one out, none of the runners left their bases, waiting to see if the ball would be caught. The ball hit Granderson’s glove, hit the wall, and popped up so that Granderson could catch it as he fell.
The original call was that Moncada was out on a catch, but the video replay clearly showed the ball hit the wall before Granderson secured it, so Moncada couldn’t be out. Now, here’s the problem: The Duke returned to third base and stayed on the bag. Both of the following runners were forced to do the same as a result.
So, if the ball was not caught and was in play, with the bases loaded all runners were forced to move to the next base. Granderson hustled the ball in to Ngoepe, who relayed it to Donaldson standing on third, who then tagged Castillo who was on the bag. That should have meant that the runner on second, Sanchez, was out. In fact, if they had thrown the ball home to third to second, with all of the runners standing there, it would have been a triple play. But in any case, Sanchez should have been out, and I believe Castillo would also have been out if Donaldson had had the presence of mind to tag him before stepping on the bag, because The Duke was forced and third base was no longer his.
But after a long delay of video review and then discussions with John Gibbons, it was decided to “award” Moncada first base, which was rightfully his anyway, and move all the runners up one base, which meant that Castillo scored. Hmmph. I say wrong-o. It would have been more equitable in the circumstances to find some justification for declaring “no play” and bringing Moncada back to the plate.
So maybe it’s not so surprising if Sanchez was rattled enough to plug Avisail Garcia to force in a second run, for a 3-1 Chicago lead, before getting Jose Abreu to hit into that double play.
Separating out the issues, first there should be some concern about Sanchez’ composure, because it seemed to let him down in the inning.
Second, though, I think that the umps, and the review team in New York, screwed up royally with their resolution of a confusing play, and I have the feeling that this could become a case of the proportions of Merkle’s Boner. And if you don’t know about Merkle’s Boner you need to look it up, because it established back in 1908 that the runner is absolutely required to finish his route to the next base when forced.
Appeal and replay of game anybody? I’m not holding my breath.
So, sadly, when the Jays scored 2 in the bottom of the sixth it only tied the game, and when Abreu hit his dinger it won the game for Chicago, when it might only have made the score 3-2 for Toronto.
Well, hold on to the good here: we’re off to Texas with 4 wins in our first 7 games, and that’s a good thing.
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