For a starting pitcher in the visitor’s dugout, there’s only one thing that could be better than seeing your leadoff hitter belt the first pitch of the game into the left-field seats.
That’s when the numbers three and four hitters get base hits ahead of your DH, who blasts a three-run dinger to the opposite field power alley, giving you a 4-0 lead before you’ve even thrown a pitch.
That’s the hand that Jaime Garcia, this year’s addition to Toronto’s starting rotation, found himself holding yesterday afternoon in Arlington. With the well-respected veteran left-hander Cole Hamels on the mound for Texas, Steve Pearce stepped into the box, waved off the traditional take of the first pitch of the game, and jerked it right down the line into the left-field seats.
Pearce’s shot was a carbon copy of the one he hit off lefty Mike Minor in the sixth inning of Saturday night’s loss to the Rangers, and showed that he was loving the fact that Texas’ string of 3 straight left-handed starters had given him three straight starts as the right-handed-hitting half of Toronto’s left-field platoon.
After Josh Donaldson lost another round of his favourite game of “let’s play umpire” and walked away in a funk, rung up by plate umpire Jim Reynolds, Justin Smoak, who’s mashing without smashing for the most part, lined a beauty up the middle for a base hit. Then Yangervis Solarte, getting the start at second while Devon Travis was rested, went with the pitch and rapped one over the glove of the leaping Roughneck Odor for another base hit, Smoak prudently checking in at second.
This brought Kendrys Morales to the plate. Hamels, who used to throw in the mid-90s, is now down to around 90 mph on his fast ball. So when he throws a four-seamer, like he did on a 2-2 pitch to Morales, it’s best that it not be waist-high on the outside corner. Morales couldn’t have been given a better opportunity to break his 0 for the season home-run record, and he didn’t waste it, rifling the ball over the wall in right centre, chasing, if you can describe Morales’ jogging like that, Smoak and Solarte home with the fourth run of the inning.
One of the cardinal rules for starting pitchers in baseball is don’t let the other guys get off the mat when your guys give you a lead. No doubt Garcia had every intention of shutting the Rangers down in the bottom of the first, but he hadn’t reckoned with the hotness (at the plate, dummies!) of Shin-Soo Choo and Elvis Andrus.
Choo cemented his position in the first ranks of Toronto tormenters by stroking one into the opposite alley for a double leading off.
Then came a really weird interlude provided by a really weird dude, Odor. I forgot to mention in yesterday’s piece Odor’s Saturday night weirdness, which consisted of mocking Marcus Stroman’s hesitiation pitch by lifting his leg ridiculously and jumping toward the mound as he took a first inning pitch. Then, he faced Stroman and grabbed his crotch like a male stripper. Weird? You betcha.
So tonight it was baseball strangeness from Odor, but a form of strangeness later explained by Joe Siddall, the Jays’ broadcast analyst and a former big league catcher. With a runner on second, nobody out, and his team down 4-0, Odor showed bunt on the first pitch. Wait, what? You’re going to play to score this run like it’s an extra-inning game? Second pitch, he did it again, and actually dragged one fair down the line to first, where Justin Smoak picked it up and tagged him while Choo advanced to third.
It turns out that the play, which pretty obviously did not come from the bench, was, according to Siddall, designed not to advance the team’s agenda, but Odor’s own. His average had plunged from .271 to .204 from 2016 to 2017, and he’s only hitting just over .200 so far this year. So here’s the thing: Odor’s bunt was intended to avoid hurting his batting average. If he was safe at first, he got a base hit. If he made an out, it would be a sacrifice and no at-bat. I’m wondering what kind of reception Odor got in the dugout for such a selfish play.
Andrus knocked Choo in from third, but then Garcia got his fly-ball mojo working and retired Adrian Beltre and Joey Gallo on easy flies to left and centre to end the inning and strand Andrus at first.
Well, that’s a lot of words to cover just one inning, but, you know what? Even though Toronto needed a fifth run to secure the win, everything was in place for the game to proceed in that direction. It was like that corny book that nobody I know ever read, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarden, by the loathesomely cliché-ridden Robert Fulghum. Everything we needed to know about this game came in the first inning.
Hamels continued to weave in and out of trouble, pitching around a fumbled grounder by Andrus in the second. In the third he gave up the eventual winning run when Kevin Pillar hit a hot shot that deflected off him for an infield hit after Hamels had gone single-walk-single on Smoak, Solarte, Morales to load the bases with one out. Hamels was saved from further damage when the slump-cursed Grichuk hit into a double play.
The Texas lefty got through the fourth and fifth with only a base on balls against him, before running out of luck and gas in the sixth, when the rest of the ceiling left up after the first-inning barrage finally came crashing down.
It started with Andrus’ second error, a bad throw on a grounder by Pillar, so the last two runs were unearned. With one out, the veteran balked Pillar to second, the second balk call in two games, both by experienced starters, a bit of an oddity. With two outs, Luke Maile, subbed in for Russell Martin’s Sunday of rest, came up, hoping to continue swinging with the authority he’d shown so far. And voilá! A ringing opposite field line double to right that scored Pillar and chased Hamels, who was still responsible for Maile at second.
Maile scored when Curtis Granderson looped a two-out single to centre off reliever Chris Martin to complete Hamels’ record at 7 runs, 5 earned, over five and a third innings, and finished Toronto’s scoring for the day.
Meanwhile, Jaime Garcia had gotten two quick outs in the second, then gave up a double to Ryan Rua and walked the rookie centre-fielder Carlos Tocci, but struck out our old friend Shin-Soo Choo for the third out.
Then he pitched a clean third, gave up a walk in the fourth, and then a clean fifth, all the while totting up five strikeouts, a tidy sum coming in useful situations for a guy who’s supposed to nibble and induce weak contact.
After getting through five innings with only the 1 run, 3 hits, and a couple of walks on 81 pitches, Garcia ran into the wall in the sixth, or rather into one of Joey Gallo’s infrequent good contacts, and so finished the night at 5 and a third innings and three runs on 96 pitches, leaving with a comfortable lead.
With the bases empty and one out, Tyler Clippard came in and walked the catcher Chirinos before retiring Profar on an easy fly to left and then fanning Rua to end the inning.
From a manager’s perspective, the only dark spot in the proceedings so far was that John Gibbons had to use a reliever in the fifth inning, meaning that he would have to use at least one extra pitcher to close out the Rangers.
And speaking of the Rangers, with Hamels out of the game, after Martin had given up Hamels’ last run on the Granderson base hit, their bullpen closed the door on Toronto.
I don’t whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing for Toronto, but it’s certainly a fun thing that the ageless Bartolo Colon has caught on with Texas, and is quite happy to be giving the Rangers some innings in a sort of middle relief role. It’s always entertaining to watch Colon pitch, but I’m not sure how entertained the Jays were, watching him throw 2 effective innings, striking out 4 batters and retiring 6 of 7 Toronto hitters he faced. Only Yangervis Solarte managed to touch him for a single in the seventh.
Alex Claudio, a thin, crafty left-hander, finished up for Texas, and retired the side in order, getting a double-play ball off Smoak to erase an infield hit by Donaldson, a play to short on which Andrus again showed off a less than optimal arm.
With Toronto playing on the lead, of more concern to us, of is how the Jays’ bullpen would manag to protect the lead against the rebuilding but feisty Rangers. After Clippard finished the sixth for Garcia, Aaron Loup came in to start the seventh.
If there’s a question right now in the Toronto bullpen, it would be Aaron Loup. He didn’t work out yesterday either, but this time he had a bit of bad luck. Rookie Carlos Tocci, looking for his first major-league hit, fought off a 1-2 pitch and willed it into centre-field for a hit and a ceremonial tossing-the-ball-out-of-play. In the lefty-lefty matchup, Choo chopped one to Donaldson at first, and we all held our breath as his throw to second was a little off, but Aledmys Diaz stretched for it at the bag for the force out. This brought Loup’s second lefty to the plate, Odor. Odor took ball one, swung wildly at a ridiculously low and outside pitch, and when Loup went back there again, Odor lunged for it, caught it with the end of his bat, and poked an absolutely cheap double into left field where no one was.
So the unlucky Loup exited with runners on second and third and one out, leaving the mess for Ryan Tepera, who’s always ready, it seems, for a good dust-up. And this time he was facing the meat of the order, Andrus, Beltre, and Gallo.
He started off by walking, perhaps wisely, the hot Andrus to load the bases and make it all just a bit more piquant, shall we say. Ah, but then he set to work and fanned Beltre on a full count, and popped Gallo out to Luke Maile behind the plate on an 0-2 pitch.
The sequence of relievers was not working well for John Gibbons, who usually likes to be neat and thrifty with his bullpen. When Garcia couldn’t finish the sixth, he had to use Clippard early. When Loup couldn’t finish the seventh, he had to use Tepera early.
But if Gibbie is going to send any reliever back out for a second inning, it’s Tepera, who’s a horse and seems to relish the challenge. After 14 pitches to get out of the second, he might have had enough left in the tank to go a quick eighth, but, alas, no. Gibbie’s hand was forced again when he went 3-2 on Chirinos before walking him, and 3-2 on Profar before fanning him. He was now at 26 pitches all thrown all out, and you’d start seeing diminishing returns at that point.
So it was back to the pen for the preternaturally calm Seung Hwan Oh. Surely he could wrap this baby up, at least as far as the eighth was concerned. Well, no. Rangers’ manager Jeff Banister sent Nomar Mazara up to hit for Ryan Rua, and Mazara singled to right, moving Choo up to second. Then Drew Robinson hit for Tocci, but sent up an infield fly for the second out. Back to the top of the order for Choo, who delivered Chirinos with a single to centre and sent Mazara to third.
You can imagine how annoyed Gibbie was as he came out of the dugout to yank Oh and bring in Roberto Osuna, for a 4-out save attempt, something that usually doesn’t end well. Save? Oh, yeah. Choo’s RBI cut the Toronto lead to 7-4, and that made it a save situation.
Osuna made it interesting by throwing one inside to Odor, which the latter somehow contrived to get his shirt in front of, and earned yet another cheap base for himself. That filled the bases for Andrus, which didn’t look good for the good guys, but the non-plussed Osuna fooled him into a checked-swing tapper back to himself for the third out.
After the drama of the eighth, the Rangers ninth was pure anticlimax. Osuna took 9 pitches to retire Beltre on a ground-out, Gallo on an admittedly deep opposite field fly to left, and, the icing on the cake, to fan Chirinos to seal the deal for his fourth save of the young season.
Well begun’s half done and all that, but after a few dicey moments towards the end, the Boys in Blue held on for the win, for their second series win in a row, and a record of 6 wins in their first ten games. 2017’s record for ten games? 1-9.
Back to the East tonight for the first of three with the Orioles.
Bird Fight!
Leave a Reply