This weekend’s Toronto series with the visiting Texas Rangers had all the makings of a Shakespearean tragedy. There was Marcus Stroman, the tainted hero, stained with hubris. There was a tragicomic interlude where no one could do anything right, but the heroes stumbled more than the villains. .
Then, just when this tragic farce was about to play out to its final, inevitable act, the gods descended from the sky, in true deus ex machina fashion, and placed Jay Happ on the mound in the brilliant circle of Sunday sunlight. Happ, the anointed one, ledhis band of ragamuffin wanderers back, if not to the Promised Land, at least to its surburban portals, where eternal life is a few degrees better than Outside in the Dark, where Chaos reigneth over all who have abandoned hope of a Wild Card slot.
We did not have to wait long for Stroman to stumble on Friday night. In fact, I’m surprised he didn’t trip over the foul line and come a-cropper before the first pitch. Unlike his last start when he threw five innings of good ball before melting down in the sixth, the crashcame immediately.
He got a ground ball to short from Delino DeShields but DeShields beat it out. He went 3-2 on Shin-Soo Choo and lost him. Jurickson Profar tried to bunt the runners up, failed, and then advanced them anyway with a slow roller to shortstop. Nomar Mazara knocked them in with a ground single up the middle and Joey Gallo extended on a pitch away and belted one over the fence in left-centre.
5 batters, 3 hits, a walk, and it was 4-0, and not only had Toronto not come to bat, but Texas only had one out and Stroman was well on his way to a thirty-pitch inning.
I guess the only thing worse than watching your team play catchup for the whole game is being on the team that’s trying to catch up.
Actually, it wasn’t quite so bad through those early innings. Lefty Mike Minor wasn’t nearly as effective against the Toronto lineup as he had been in Texas on April seventh, when he’d given up one run on two hits over six innings with seven strikeouts.
In fact, he started out: Steve Pearce caught looking, Teoscar Hernandez double to right centre, Justin Smoak flare single to right scoring Hernandez. Then he fanned Yanvergis Solarte for the second out, but Kevin Pillar doubled to centre on a ball that hitoff DeShields’glove, and, were it not for a bad decision by either Smoak or third-base coach Luis Rivera, or both, the Jays could still be batting in that theoretical inning-that-goes-on-forever.
Because Smoak got himself thrown out at the plate, trying to score from first on Pillar’s hit. It wasn’t close.
Still, they’d scored on Minor and he’dshown that he wasn’t going to be dominant like the last time.
It’s kinda too bad that they didn’t put a “2” up on the scoreboard for innings before Stroman took the mound for the first, because he was pretty damn sharp two through five. In fact, he struck out two in the first after Gallo’s homer, and the first two in the second. More impressively, he gave up only a 2-out double to Mazara in the fourth, and a leadoff single to second baseman Drew Robinson in the fifth, both of whomdied on the bases. In all, after the Gallo homer he retired 14 of the 16 batters he faced.
Meanwhile, Toronto had managed to tie the game by the end of the third inning, and with Stroman sailing along things looked considerably brighter than they had at around 7:20 in the evening.
Minor’s wildness contributed materially to 2 Jays’ runs in the second. Russ Martin had led off with a booming double to left centre, a welcome site to Toronto slump-watchers. Then he rashly took off for third on a Minor pitch in the dirt.
(Insert here, for those who don’t know it: age-old baseball wisdom decrees never to make the first or last out of an inning at third base.)
Martin was initially called out, and after a video review it was determined that he had gotten his hand to the bag safely. Whew.
It looked like he was going to die there as Kendrys Morales fanned on a curve ball in the dirt, and Devon Travis grounded out to third. But Minor hit Aledmys Diaz with a pitch to prolong the inning and bring Steve Pearce to the plate. Pearce doubled into the left-field corner and the initial Texas bulge was reduced to one run after two innings.
Toronto tied the score in a home half of the third that was an absolute Gong Show for both teams. Smoak singled to left off the glove of shortstop Jurickson Profar. Solarte singled to centre off Drew Robinson’s glove at second. Smoak tried to go first to third on the hit and was thrown out easily by DeShields. Never make the first out or the last out . . .
Then Kevin Pillar lofted a bloop single to left that Joey Gallo over-charged so that the ball bounced over his head off the turf and went for a triple scoring Solarte from first.
But Pillar died at third and we didn’t know at the time that the Jays’ chances in this game had died with him, with only three innings in the book.
Stroman’s effectiveness came to a crashing halt in the Texas sixth. Mazara singled to right. Gallo singled to centre, though Pillar nearly came up with the sinker on a dive. Then Texas manager Jeff Bannister elected to bunt with rookie third baseman Isiah Kiner-Falefa at the plate. The rook got it down, rookie Ronald Guzman singled them both in, and both Stroman at five a third and the Blue Jays were done.
Tyler Clippard finished the sixth for Stroman, Aaron Loup pitched a perfect seventh, and John Axford saved the Jays’ bullpen a pitching appearance by closing out the eighth and ninth.
Meanwhile, Minor finished with a flourish, retiring Toronto in the sixth on six pitches, two groundouts and a lineout. Kevin Jepsen, Alex Claudio, and Chris Martin delivered a 6-4 lead to Keone Kela, who closed out the ninth for the save on only 5 pitches.
The Blue Jays entered this series hoping to regain some momentum after the disappointing week against the Yankees and Red Sox, but being beat up in the first inning of the first game against the West Division cellar-dwelling Texas Rangers was just not how you turn the ship around.
Bartolo Colon is a recurring dream. An infuriating, portly, grinning, extremely annoying recurring dream. I will not include any age insults because at my age that’s just not very appropriate. Besides, I realized recently that at 44 he’s still two and a half years younger than my oldest son.
Last year he started against Toronto three times, once for Atlanta where he was in the same rotation as R.A. Dickey (and Atlanta was supposed to be rebuilding via a youth movement at the time . . .) and twice for Minnesota after the Twins acquired him as a trade-deadline acquisition. On May 15th for Atlanta he went five innings and gave up three runs on seven hits, but got the win. On August 25th for Minnesota he went six and two thirds and gave up one run while scattering nine hits for the win. On September 15thhe took the loss but went six innings again, giving up four runs on only five hits.
After three straight losses and six of their last eight, Colon was not exactly the person Toronto wanted to see taking the hill for Texas in the second game of the series, Colon with his below-90 fast ball, his wicked control, and his even more wicked grin whenever he does good, like snagging a rocketing liner off the bat of Kevin Pillar before he was even out of the batter’s box, for the last out in the sixth inning, on his 81st pitch Saturday afternoon.
The left-handed Jaime Garcia got the assignment against Colon. Garcia has been about what you would expect as a fifth starter for Toronto so far this season, which is to say that he’s not exactly the pitcher who was eagerly sought as a trade-deadline addition by not one, but two, contending teams in 2017. Dizzyingly, he was traded from the Braves to the Twins on July 24th , and from the Twins to the Yankees on July 31st.
Garcia has been infected by the Toronto 2018 starting pitching virus, which makes its victims susceptible to extreme gopher-ball-itis. So while he has pitched a number of outstanding individual innings, and had some good runs in his starts, he has also been taken deep seven times in 26 and two thirds innings.
Bartolo Colon went through four innings like a man who knew how to conserve his energy. He faced one over the minimum, a double by Curtis Granderson leading off the fourth, while throwing only 47 pitches.
Garcia, on the other hand, fiddled and flustered his way through to exactly twice as many pitches in the same number of innings, giving up five runs along the way, two on a second-inning home run by Jurickson Profar, and another following on a back-to-back solo shot by Robinson Chirinos.
Any real hope the Jays may have had of either breaking down Colon or breaking through against the Texas bullpen was blunted in the Texas fourth when Garcia’s wildness and the Texas aggressiveness on the bases gave the Rangers two extra runs that they cashed as the result of a really unfortunate outfield mistake by the rookie left fielder Teoscar Hernandez.
Shin-Soo Choo was at the plate with two outs and Rangers on second and third. Ryan Rua had forced Profar, who’d reached on a leadoff walk. Rua advanced on a stolen base/wild pitch combo while Garcia was walking DeShields, who also stole second, bringing Choo to the plate.
Choo lofted an easy fly ball to centre. Pillar, moving to his right, waved his hands that he had it. But Hernandez, coming over from left, must have missed Pillar’s call, and kept coming. Sensing Hernandez’ approach, Pillar pulled off the ball at the last minute, and it hit off his glove, going for a double that scored both runners and boosted the Texas lead to 5-0.
Garcia finished off with three ground-ball outs in the fifth, and Toronto finally got on the board in the bottom of the inning on a leadoff home run to left by Pillar, and then threatened to break through for more against Colon. But the latter, who’d quickly gotten two outs after Pillar’s knock before giving up a line single to Luke Maile and an infield single to Diaz, ended the rising when he got Curtis Granderson to fly out to short left.
As often happens when a team that’s behind starts to show signs of coming back, Toronto took a dagger to the heart when Seung-Hwan Oh, who came in for Garcia for the sixth, was rocked by a second solo homer by Chirinos with one out to restore the Texas lead at 5, 6-1.
Leading off the bottom of the sixth against Colon, Hernandez crushed one to right centre field. For at least the second time this season, the ball got lost in the lights of the field-level scoreboard as it descended. The fielders knew it was still in play, but the ump couldn’t tell because of the glare from the lights. By the time the ball was retrieved off the wall Hernandez was in to third with a triple.
Toronto scored Hernandez on a ground-out up the middle by Solarte, but couldn’t mount another concerted effort against Colon despite Lourdes Gurriel Jr.’s first major-league homer leading off the seventh.
So after seven innings the mirthful Colon was finished, leaving with a 6-3 lead, having been touched up for three long flies, but never facing a coherent rally in the game.
It became increasingly apparent that Toronto would need a strong starting performance on Sunday as the bullpen was fast being depleted. Oh, who usually pitches in the seventh inning, had to take the sixth, Tepera pitched an effective seventh, Axford heroically came back for the eighth after two innings on Friday night, and then, ironically John Gibbons needed to give some work to his closer, because Roberto Osuna hadn’t been needed since Tuesday against Boston, when he’d suffered his first blown save of the year.
Nevertheless, the overworked bullpen had shut down Texas since the Chirinos homer off Oh in the sixth, until the rested Osuna came in and gave up a one-out double to DeShields, an RBI single to Choo, and a following single from Kiner-Falefa before retiring the side.
Kevin Pillar usefully forced the Texas manager to bring in his closer by hitting his second homer of the game off Kevin Jepsen, but Kela came in and closed the game out without further problems.
It was looking bleak for Toronto after Saturday’s loss, the fourth in a row and seventh in nine games, and particularly alarming was the fact that other than Osuna almost everyone in the bullpen had worked more than once in the last two games. Something had to give on Sunday.
What gave was pretty big: the Jays announced before the game that they’d optioned Devon Travis to Buffalo and called up Carlos Ramirez to reinforce the bullpen. This guaranteed that both Teoscar Hernandez and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. were here to stay with the team for a while.
Because of Marcus Stroman’s arm troubles in spring training, Jay Happ was kind of an accidental Opening Day starter for Toronto, but by now, after five starts, he has established that his status as the number one starter is no accident.
And who could be better to send tothe mound than Jay Happ to try to stop the bleeding and turn Toronto’s April around as it was lurching to an end?
With a little help from Randal Grichuk, Happ showed from the start that he wasn’t go to let any little mistakes bring him down. Delino DeShields started the game with a tough chance on the ground for shortstop Aledmys Diaz. DeShields made it to first for an infield single, but Diaz made an ill-advised throw for an error and DeShields made it to second.
Happ buckled down and fanned the pesky Shin-Soo Choo on a checked swing, bringing the double-named, Hawaiian-raised Isiah Kiner-Falefa to the plate. Isiah, to save a mouthful, hit a 3-2 pitch on a looping liner into right centre that looked sure to drop for a hit.
But Grichuk, who can contribute even when he’s not hitting, closed fast on the ball, and dove in andto his right on his backhand. The ball entered his glove but as he hit the ground it rolled out and he desperately tried to corral it to his chest. Agonizingly, it bounced around off various body parts before he secured it; the replays clearly showed that it never touched the ground.
Even better, DeShields never for a minute thought the ball would be caught. He stood forlornly off third and watched Grichuk throw the ball to second from one knee to double him upand end the inning.
Texas left-hander Martin Perez quickly dispatched Toronto in the bottom of the first on 11 pitches, despite walking Teoscar Hernandez, who was erased when Justin Smoak hit into a double-play.
Happ had an interesting second inning in which he struck out the side, increasing his total to 4 strikeouts over two innings, but he also gave up a very definite and very loud solo home run to the Rangers’ stout young third sacker, Renato Nunez. Not to mention a base hit to Jurickson Profar, before notching his third whiff of the inning, courtesy of the dangerous (to Toronto, if not anyone else) Robinson Chirinos.
But this was a game in which, after the first inning, the Jays constantly had Perez in trouble. They put up two runs in the second and one each in the third and fourth innings to quicklyovercome the early Texas lead.
Cleanup hitter Yanvergis Solarte, leading off the second, belted a 2-0 pitchdeep over the left-centre field fence to erase the Texas advantage with one stroke. Kevin Pillar worked a walk off Perez on a 3-2 pitch. Russell Martin hit the first pitch he saw hard back up the middle. It caromed off Perez’ knee to third and Martin beat it out for an infield hit.
This brought Lourdes Gurriel Jr. to the plate amidst much fanfare. Gurriel, who seems to do everything correctly, shot it on the ground to the right side. Unfortunately the Rangers were positioned perfectly. Isiah picked itand went to second for the force on Martin, with Pillar going to third.
Grichukcame upfor his first at-bat in the game. Before I proceed to describe how next he helped his team to win, let me tell you something we now know with the benefit of hindsight. We learned Tuesday that Grichuk had sprained a knee making that catch in the first inning. He played the rest of the game with that knee sprain. Everything he contributed to Toronto’s win Sunday should be viewed in light of that. Now he’s off to the DL with a projection of three weeks’ recovery time.
Regardless of his condition Grichuk fledout to left, deep enough to allow Pillar to score the Jays’ second run.
I just want to point out here that the lead the Blue Jays took in thesecondinning of Sunday’s game was the first lead they held in a game dating back to the fifth inning of the third game of the Red Sox series.
Toronto picked up a single run in the third when Hernandez went deep the opposite way to right on Perez, and another in the fourth on Pillar’s leadoff homer to left, his third home run in two games. They lost a glorious opportunity to put the game away early when Perez walked Martin and Gurriel Jr. after the Pillar shot, and Grichuk followed with a hard ground single to left past Nunez at third to load the bases with nobody out.
But Perez fanned the slumping Diaz for the first out, and then Steve Pearce lined into a double play over the bag at second to let the Rangers’ starter off the hook. It was the last pitch Perez threw, though, because the Texas manager went to his bullpen for the fifith inning.
Tony Barnette stopped the string of runs for Toronto in the fifth, though he did have to work around a one-out hit batsman of Smoak, striking out two Jays in the process.
In the meantime the Rangers could do little with Happ, who was seriously on his game.
Ryan Rua reached with a base hit leading off in the third, stole second, and moved to third on a groundout, but died there. Happ retired the side in the fourth and fifth innings, elevating his strikeout count to eight for five innings, on his way to nine in seven innings pitched.
In the sixth inning Happ’s string of consecutive outs was broken off at nine by a Delino DeShields leadoff double into the left-field corner. Happ responded by inducing three ground balls from Texas. DeShields moved to third on the first and scored on the second, a grounder to short by Isiah. This cut the lead to 4-2 for Toronto, but that’s as close as it would get.
The Jays responded in their half of the sixth with another run, this one totally unearned. Russell Martin reached on a fielding error by Nunez at third. Gurriel Jr. stroked a long single into centre that was played well by Mazara to hold the hitter to a single while Martin advanced to third.
Randal Grichuk put the ball in play again with a runner in scoring position, hitting a ground ball to second that scored Martin from third. The play went as a fielder’s choice to Profar covering second, but Profar threw the ball away on what should have been a double play, allowing Grichuk to reach base. Again, Grichuk was hustling down the line on that sprained knee.
Barnette promptly picked Grichuk off first, and Rua ended the inning for him with a spectacular sliding catch into the wall in foul territory in left that retired Diaz. The Jays asked for a review, but the out call on the field was upheld.
In the Texas seventh, on just eight pitches, Happ finished the job that Toronto really needed from him. He retired the side in order and rung up Joey Gallo for his ninth strikeout, and sat down with a 5-2 lead.
The Jays sealed the deal in their half of the seventh. After Barnette had pitched two effective innings, Jeff Bannister sent him out for a third, and it was too much of a stretch for him. He walked Pearce and gave up a double to Hernandez that sent Pearce to third.
Bannister pulled him for Jake Diekman, and Justin Smoak hit his first pitch deep to left for a sacrifice fly scoring Pearce, and on which Hernandez alertly advanced to third. When Solarte looped a single to left Hernandez trotted home with the final run of the day, making the score 7-2 Toronto. Both of the seventh-inning runs were charged to Barnette, who deserved better.
Lefty Matt Moore finished up for Texas in the eighth inning, inducing a double-play ball from Diaz, whose hitting woes worsened Sunday, to erase a one-out infield hit to short by Grichuk. Let’s pause on that for a minute. Grichuk hurt himself making a great catch and starting a double play in the first inning. He then produced a sacrifice fly, a solid base hit, a run-producing ground ball, and beat out a hit to short. On a bum knee.
While Randal Grichuk recovers from his knee strain, let’s not write this guy off yet. He contributed a gritty performance on Sunday, after enduring an incredibly long and frustrating batting slump.
For the Blue Jays, Ryan Tepera had made quick work of Texas in its eighth inning by striking out two and throwing only ten pitches, and Aaron Loup threw a scoreless ninth despite a one-out double to left by Isiah. Loup struck out Joey Gallo to end it, adding to his recent string of impressive innings.
So Jay Happ did what an ace does: he stopped the bleeding for Toronto. Not only did he stop the bleeding, but he did it briskly, confidently, and emphatically.
Until we hear otherwise in terms of the future performances of the other four members of Toronto’s rotation, Jay Happ has firmly cemented himself in position as Toronto’s number one starting pitcher.
In fact, despite his age of 35, it’s looking more and more like it would be a huge mistake not to resign Happ, who is a free agent at the end of the year. He’s strong, fit, works hard, and is a good role model for the two budding stars Stroman and Sanchez.
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