Tuesday it was all about “Doubleheader! Let’s take two!”
Last night it was all about “Get out the brooms!” And who better to be facing for a series sweep than the woefully underpowered and short-armed Kansas City Royals?
It’s not often that things work out just the way you’d imagined it, but last night’s 15-5 Toronto walloping of the Royals was one of those times.
Oh, it was close for a goodly while all right, resembling a real ball game between two real major league teams. But, unfortunately for the Royals, a real major league team has a real major league bullpen, and the Kansas City relief corps is just not up to snuff.
The matchup of starting pitchers wouldn’t have suggested a game that would end up in a blowout for either team. Jay Happ, on the hill for Toronto, has a proven track record over the last several years with the Boys in Blue, though he’s admittedly fought his control and burgeoning pitch counts somewhat in the early going this year.
Kansas City manager Ned Yost finally dispatched a right-hander to the mound last night, in the person of Ian Kennedy, a veteran with a long record as a mid-rotation starter. Kennedy had one 5-inning start against the Jays in the dog days of September last year, and only gave up 2 runs on 3 hits, but he’d gone six innings in each of his first two starts this spring against strong opposition, Cleveland and Los Angeles, and gave up only one run in total.
After Happ mowed down the Royals in the top of the first, the Jays broke on top with a run off Kennedy in their first ups. Flavour du jour Teoscar Hernandez whacked one off the glove of Mike Moustakas at third for a base hit, and then raced around to score as right fielder Jorge Soler obligingly air-mailed his throw over the cutoff man on Justin Smoak’s double into the right-field corner. Kennedy quickly finished the inning to strand Smoak.
Both pitchers standed a base hit in the second, Soler with a single to left for KC, and, annoyingly, a leadoff double down the opposite line by Pillar, whom the Jays failed to bring around.
The Royals jumped ahead in the top of the third when Moustakas delivered a clutch two-out double that scored Soler, who reached on a leadoff single, and the speedy Merrifield, whom Happ walked with two outs in the key at-bat of the inning, which gave Moose a chance to take his hacks.
But the lead didn’t last long. In the immortal words of Ernie Harwell, the late, beloved lifetime radio broadcaster of the Detroit Tigers, Toronto opened up a can of instant runs, and before you knew it had taken the lead, never to fall behind again in the game.
Kennedy walked Curtis Granderson to lead off the third, bringing Hernandez to the plate for his second at-bat. Flavour du jour? How about etoile du jour? Kennedy made the mistake of falling behind 2-1, so he had to come in with a fast ball. But not up and out over the plate, for pete’s sake! Hernandez crushed it to centre, exit velocity of 111 mph and a distance of 426 feet, into the front row of the second deck in dead centre.
Toronto wasn’t finished, though, because after Kennedy fanned Smoak, Yangervis Solarte was all over a 3-0 cripple from Kennedy and crushed it to right-centre, almost as convincingly as Hernandez’ shot.
After Kennedy walked Russell Martin Pillar reached on a muffed double play ball when the toss from Merrifield to Escobar covering the bag rolled out of his glove without lingering long enough for the out. Kennedy got out of the jam, but the rising had cost him the lead and 32 pitches, making it problematic that he would get past five innings, bringing the dreadful Royals’ bullpen into play early again.
Happ gave up a walk and a hit batter in the fourth, both coming to naught, and Kennedy pitched around a single by Granderson, taking us to the fifth with the Jays still up 4-2.
But Kansas City had some instant runs in their kit bag too. Happ gave up a base hit to leadoff man Jon Jay and biff! Merrifield hit one out to centre to tie the game. Happ had no further troubles, though a fielding error by his shortstop Aledmys Diaz with two outs cost him a few extra pitches, and it looked like he might be done after five innings and 92 pitches, with the game tied.
The thing about this Toronto team is that it doesn’t take kindly to ill-treatment by upstarts, and hitting a game-tying homer off Jay Happ was definitely ill-treatment.
With some crucial help from Royals’ left-fielder Paolo Orlando, which left Ian Kennedy kind of undressed in public on the mound, the Jays countered with 2 runs of their own in the bottom of the inning. This pushed Kennedy to the 106-pitch level that would mark the end of his day.
As usual, it started out with a walk, the erstwhile free-swinging Solarte waiting out a 3-2 count. After the slumping Russell Martin struck out, Pillar lined a single to left, with Solarte checking in at second. Then came Orlando’s folly, which may have been caused by the notorious bank of lights making it hard to play left field in the dome. Grichuk hit one of the hardest shots of this day of hard shots, a liner right at Orlando’s glove, but it went “Clank!” for an error that allowed Solarte to score, though Pillar could only move up to second because, of course, it was an obvious out.
Now with one out and the lead run in, Diaz popped out to first in foul territory.
Gift Ngoepe was due up next, but our local candidate for Manager of the Year had the wheels turning big time: obvious time for a pinch-hitter, even if it was only the sixth inning. Granderson and the switch hitters were already in the lineup, so his only choice was another righty. Who would it be? Pearce or Travis?
But OMG, who was this striding to the plate packing his potent lumber? None other than recent hero and noted backup catcher Luke Maile! What? The backup catcher coming into the game to hit in the sixth inning, even if he is on a hot streak? Is he serious?
Well, he was, and so was Maile, who delivered once again, a hard grounder through the left side that scored Pillar with the second run of the inning, upping the lead to 6-4 for the good guys. Granderson flew out to end the inning, and Kennedy was done, and so were the Royals, but they didn’t know it yet.
The big question now was, what would Gibbie do with his defensive array. Of course, the key to all of this is that Russell Martin is a valid major league infielder, who has played 31 games at third and even 4 at second in his career. And loves to play the infield. So it was Martin to third, Solarte to second replacing Ngoepe, and of course Maile behind the plate. Well, lookee that: even if Maile gets hurt catching, Martin’s still in the lineup. Is our sleepy-time manager smart, or what?
The next surprise was who was coming out of the dugout to pitch the sixth inning, with renewed vigour and a 2-run lead? None other than Mr. Jay Happ. Not only did he come back out but he buzzed through Orlando, Escobar, and Butera on only 7 pitches, to finish with six full innings on 99 pitches and in line for the win if the bullpen could hold off the Royals for him.
But first there was the matter of Kevin McCarthy, one of the Royals’ bullpen flamethrowers of Tuesday (as in pouring gas on the fire, not throwing 100 mph) who had to navigate the Toronto sixth, which he did, giving up Hernandez’ third hit of the night, a single to left, and walking Smoak to lead off before retiring Solarte on a fly ball and the side on a Martin double-play grounder.
Danny Barnes held the lead in the top of the seventh with another good inning of work, retiring the side in order on 14 pitches, and applauding Pillar’s good over-the-shoulder running catch of a deep drive by Mike Moustakas.
McCarthy came out again for the bottom of the seventh, and that was Ned Yost’s first mistake. His second one was to pull McCarthy in the middle of the frame and go to Brad Keller, another of the found-ins from Tuesday night’s Kansas City bullpen mess. Together they contrived to give up another 3 runs, putting the game on ice for Toronto.
After Pillar led off lining out to Merrifield at second, episode number ten zillion of the ongoing phenomenon of “make a good play in the field, lead off next inning”, McCarthy nicked Grichuk with a pitch. Maile lined yet another base hit into the left-field corner, and hustled it into a double while Grichuk stopped at third. Granderson walked on a wild pitch low and outside on 3 and 1 that allowed Grichuk to score, with Maile moving up to third.
Just as an aside, does any other team in baseball have two catchers who run the bases as well as Martin and Maile?
Exit McCarthy and enter Keller, who promptly gave up a drive to the alley in left-centre to Hernandez, who turned it into a triple while Maile and Granderson scored. Justin Smoak lined out to left for the third out, but it was 9-4 for the Blue Jays.
And in case you weren’t counting, Hernandez now had a homer, triple, and 2 singles, with possibly another at bat to come. He needed only a double to hit for the cycle, the very rare batting feat of hitting at least one each of all four base hits in a single game.
With the game safely out of reach of the Royals, this raised lots of silly speculation from silly broadcasters as to what might happen in his last at bat: if he hit an ordinary single would he try to stretch it to a double anyway? If he hit an obvious triple, would he stop at second? Of course, one had the luxury of thinking about these things only because it was unlikely that the game would be on the line if he came to the plate again.
Meanwhile there were still two innings to be played. Aaron Loup came on to pitch the eighth and got two outs, but gave up a solo homer to Jorge Soler to make it 9-5, and then gave up a following infield hit to Orlando on which Solarte, now at second, almost made a great play, going up the middle to flag the ball down and throwing off-balance just a fraction too late to catch Orlando, who can fly.
Gibbie decided he’d seen enough and brought in Ryan Tepera to secure the third out on a deep fly ball that Pillar tracked down in centre to retire Escobar.
Came the bottom of the eighth and next up for Ned Yost was Justin Grimm. Grimm had something to prove to his manager after walking the only 3 batters he faced Tuesday in game two of the doubleheader, when he started the process of throwing Danny Duffy’s fine effort under the bus.
Well, Grimm still has something to show manager Yost, because this time it was even worse. Solarte singled. Martin worked an 8-pitch walk. Pillar doubled down the line again to score Solarte. After Grichuk struck out, Diaz lofted a bloop single to centre to score Martin. Maile worked a 7-pitch walk. Granderson capped off the game and the series by hitting a hanging curve ball the opposite way to left, a fly ball that carried and carried into the seats for a grand slam and a final count of six runs in the inning, all earned off Grimm in a third of an inning, and 15 runs on the game.
Lefty Brian Flynn finished up by retiring Hernandez and Smoak. And Hernandez’ cycle attempt? Oh, he struck out, later said he was trying too hard.
Toronto lefty Tim Mayza finished up the ninth and allowed a couple of baserunners but kept a clean score sheet, as they say in soccer.
So a series sweep, finally. 31 runs in 28 innings against 12 given up. It was really nice of Kansas City’s bullpen to throw batting practice for us before our all-important 7-game stretch against the Yankees and the Red Sox.
On a roll and on to the Bronx!
You may have noticed I haven’t mentioned the Facebook Watch experience for yesterday’s game. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. Worst game experience of my fandom. Not another word about it.
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