One of the eternal verities of the Toronto Blue Jays, if you can call the period since their competitive breakout in the second half of 2015 an eternity, is that if Marco Estrada doesn’t give you a good chance to win when he starts, there’s a reason for it.
Last night the Blue Jays were in Baltimore for the finale of a three game series, and the players had the scent of a sweep in their nostrils. Estrada was on the hill for Toronto, looking to extend the sharpness that had seen him go from 3 earned runs in 7 innings against the Yankees to 1 earned run in six innings against the Texas Rangers in his first two starts of the season.
On the other hand the Orioles had Kevin Gausman going for them, the enigmatic former phenom who has spent his major league career blowing hot and cold for Baltimore. Gausman had had a terrible start to his year, with an ERA of 8.00 in two abbreviated starts of 5 and 4 innings against the Twins and the Yankees. Even more favourable for Toronto was that Gausman has not had a lot of success against the Jays in his career.
Prospects looked good for the Jays in the top of the first when they showed off one of their new skills developed for 2018, the ability to deliver a runner in scoring position with two outs. They had combined a leadoff single by Curtis Granderson and a two-out walk to Steve Pearce to set up Justin Smoak, who had reached on a forceout of Granderson, to come home on Kevin Pillar’s line single up the middle.
But Gausman retired 10 of 11 batters after Pillar’s hit, allowing only a 2-out double by Yanvergis Solarte in the third, showing near complete command while pitching Baltimore into the fifth inning.
Meanwhile, it looked from the start like Estrada was full value for turning in an even better performance than his last outing in Texas. He retired the first eight batters he faced before giving up a walk to Chance Sisco on a 3-2 pitch in the third, turning the lineup over to Trey Mancini, who fanned on—what else?—a 1-2 changeup to strand Sisco at first.
It was a vintage Estrada performance for those first nine outs, 4 strikeouts, 4 balls in the air, and only 1 groundout.
But from his first pitch of the fourth inning, it was a different Estrada on the mound. Manny Machado hit a booming double to left centre on the first pitch. Jonathan Schoop took Estrada to 3-2 before lining a double into left-field to deliver Machado with the tying run. Estrada recovered a little by fanning Adam Jones, who’d had a terrible series against Toronto, on 3 pitches.
But then Pedro Alvarez, who always seems to go deep in the count, walked on a 3-2 fast ball that was supposed to be a high tempter but got away from Estrada for ball 4. Then Chris Davis, whose only impressive moment so far in this series was shattering his bat over his knee after striking out Monday night, finally delivered with a line single to right that scored Schoop and gave Baltimore the lead, with Alvarez coming around to third.
After a brief visit from pitching coach Pete Walker, Estrada settled down and got two typical fly-ball outs to end the inning. But the first, off the bat of Tim Beckham, was deep enough to score Alvarez from third on the sacrifice fly, extending the Oriole lead to 3-1. The Jays avoided further damage when Randal Grichuk made a superb catch in foul territory on his knees after a long run on a looping ball down the line off the bat of Craig Gentry. Tuck that memory away for a moment.
Encouragingly, Toronto came right back with a run in the top of the fifth to cut the gap to one. Luke Maile, subbing in for Russell Martin’s rest night, continued his hard contact by hitting a hard one up the middle leading off. Gausman seemed to recover, retiring Gift Ngoepe (playing second to rest the slumping Devon Travis) on a soft fly to centre and fanning Granderson after a tough at bat.
But then Gausman lost it and issued his second walk of the night, 4 straight balls to Pearce. This brought Solarte to the plate for only the Jays’ second at bat with a run in scoring position in the game. Once again there were two outs, and once again the Toronto hitter delivered, Solarte flaring a single the opposite way to left field on which Maile, running on contact with two outs, scored easily. Gausman dodged further damage when Pearce hit a first-pitch frozen rope right at the third baseman Beckham.
Things weren’t looking too bad for Toronto as the game moved to the bottom of the fifth. It was only a 1-run deficit, and if Estrada could get his mojo back, at 73 pitches he might give them another two innings.
But Estrada wasn’t getting his mojo back this night, no-how, no way. Sisco, the number nine hitter, hit a drive to centre that Pillar couldn’t quite catch up with that went for a double. Estrada quickly jumped up 0-2 on Mancini before ballooning to a full count and losing him.
This brought Machado to the plate for the pivotal moment, or rather many moments, of the game. With runners on first and second and nobody out, Machado lofted a ball almost identical to Gentry’s in the fourth inning, a twisting looper down the line. Grichuk had a more difficult play this time, as he was playing the right-handed Machado to pull to left, and a foul ball to right by a right-handed batter is naturally slicing away from the fielder.
But Grichuk made another miraculous effort, caught up with the ball in a dive toward the line, and just missed the catch as the ball ticked off his glove and landed foul. Despite Estrada not getting the out, at least it was only a foul ball.
Or was it? There were the Orioles checking their video monitor; after a look they decided to ask for a review, claiming that Grichuk’s glove was actually in fair territory when the ball hit. Oh no, here we go again: not only did it have to be determined whether the ball was fair or foul, but if it was fair, where to place the baserunners?
Then commenced one very long delay while the play was reviewed in New York. I know that most review delays seem long, but this one was ridiculously long. Estrada stood on the mound. Then he threw a couple of pitches, but not too seriously, after the number he had already thrown. Then he sat down on the pitching rubber.
After this long delay, the crew chief started to take his headset off. And then he put it back on. What now? There could only be one answer: the ball had been ruled fair, and now they were discussing the placement of the runners.
Tick, tick, tick. God, it was long. But finally there was a decision: fair ball, base hit, runners to advance one base each, bases loaded for Jonathan Schoop.
Unless Toronto pulled off a home-to-first double play, Schoop had to be Estrada’s last batter, and he was. There was no double play in the works for Estrada, though. Schoop singled hard to centre, Sisco came in to score, Mancini had to stop at third, and Estrada headed for the showers. (I know pitchers don’t usually head for the showers when they come out of the game any more, but it’s still a good baseball expression.)
Down 4-2 and facing a whole lot worse, Danny Barnes came in and pulled off a minor miracle to keep Estrada’s left-behind flock of Oriole baserunners from scoring. He fanned Adam Jones on a 2-2 slider. He fanned Pedro Alvarez on a 2-2 79 mph changeup. Then he grooved one to Chris Davis, who creamed it to the deepest part of the park where Kevin Pillar hauled it in for the third route.
I’ve said these New Jays are feisty, and they are. Down 4-2, Pillar and Grichuk went down quickly to Gausman’s slants in the top of the sixth, but Aledmys Diaz crushed a 1-0 fast ball on the inside corner and it got out of the yard in a big hurry to narrow the gap to one. Maybe rattled, Gausman walked Luke Maile on a 3-2 pitch, but fanned Gift Ngoepe to end the inning.
Big John Axford came in to pitch for Toronto in the bottom of the sixth and was the victim of some serious bad luck that cost the Jays another run and restored the 2-run Baltimore lead.
First off, Tim Beckham hit a high chopper off the plate toward short. By the time it came down, Diaz had no chance on the speedy Beckham. No problem. Craig Gentry hit a hard one-hop shot to Ngoepe at second, a perfect double play ball. Except that Ngoepe dropped it, and had to go to first with it to retire Gentry. No double play and a runner in scoring position for Sisco, who has a knack for hitting in the clutch, it seems. Sisco hit a seeing-eye grounder on poor contact through the left side of the infield to score Beckham. Axford then seriously sawed off Mancini, who managed to poke the ball into right for another hit. Cheesed off, probably, Axford bore down and retired Machado on a short fly to Grichuk and punched out Schoop on a 2-2 slider in the dirt.
So after six innings it was 5-3 Baltimore, Marco Estrada was long gone, Kevin Gausman was out of the game, and it now became a question of whether or not the Orioles’ bullpen could hold onto the lead for three innings and withstand what has become the Jays’ usual late-inning uprising.
It did, and the uprising didn’t rise this time.
In fact, the O’s relievers were nearly perfect. Richard Bleier retired the side in order in the seventh, O’Day did the same on 18 pitches in the eighth, and closer Brad Brach took the save, though he gave up a 1-out single to the hot-hitting Luke Maile that raised Maile’s average in part-time work to .400 on 6 for 15.
With Maile on, Brach retired pinch-hitter Devon Travis, hitting for Ngoepe, on a liner to left, and then Granderson grounded out to end the game.
A note on Travis pinch-hitting for Ngoepe: many eyebrows were raised that it was Travis, mired in a slump at .086, bringing his lumber up to the plate instead of the “resting” Josh Donaldson, a much more likely suspect to knot the game up with one swing of the bat.
As for Toronto’s bullpen, Seung Hwan Oh had another less than stellar outing in the seventh inning, though he was able to marshall his resources to keep the Orioles off the board. After Jones fanned (third time in the game), Alvarez smacked a double to right centre and then Chris Davis slapped one through the vacant left side of the infield for a base hit with Alvarez stopping at third.
But then Oh stiffened and popped up Beckham and froze Gentry on an 0-2 fastball to strand the runners at first and third.
Tyler Clippard threw an easy and effective eighth, getting lazy flies from Sisco and Mancini, and then fanning Machado, all in 13 pitches.
So no series sweep yet, but a third series win in a row, a level of success not a lot of fans would have expected at this point in the season, especially with the number of players who are still performing less than optimally, or, worse, dealing with injuries.
As for injuries, it’s somewhat concerning that Donaldson was not used as the obvious pinch-hitter and we haven’t yet seen evidence of the strong arm we all know he possesses.
More concerning than Donaldson at the moment is that it came out after the game that Estrada had “felt something” in his back in the fourth inning, which explained his sudden drop in effectiveness. We can now add him to the list of important parts of this team to worry about.
Even so, take away the last run Estrada allowed, if Barnes had been brought in to face Schoop in the fifth, and the unlucky run scored off Axford in the sixth, and the Orioles and the Jays could still be playing, god forbid.
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