There wasn’t a pre-season prognosticator who would have put the Toronto Blue Jays on the same page as the Minnesota Twins as possible playoff contenders. I might’ve, mind you, but then I’m a little less than objective.
It would have been more than a little surprising, then, if they could have foreseen that a 15-12 Blue Jays’ team would arrive in the Twin Cities for a three-game series at the beginning of May with a Twins team struggling along at 9 and 14.
And all of baseballdom must register shock if not horror that a Minnesota team managed by the great Paul Molitor would make such a shoddy showing of it in losing to the visitors last night in the first game of the series, the last game of the April schedule.
To be fair to Minnesota, the team is playing more rookies than any playoff-hopeful team should. Injuries to slugging third baseman Miguel Sano and non-pareil centre-fielder Byron Buxton would obviously be hard to cover for any team. And then they were hit with the 80-game suspension of their starting shortstop, Gregory Polanco under the doping protocol.
But of course no team is immune from the injury bug; after all the Jays themselves are playing without the entire left side of their all-star, playoff-contender infield, having to cover the absence of both Josh Donaldson and Troy Tulowitzki. And yet, look at the records.
Even the pitching matchup was reflective of the differing fortunes of the two teams. Aaron Sanchez, who had a completely lost year in 2017 because of blister problems, is gradually returning to the form he showed in 2016 when he was the American League ERA champion.
Lance Lynn, starting for the Twins, was a late off-season free agent signing (as who wasn’t?) after pitching exclusively for the St. Louis Cardinals throughout his career. He was, in fact, one of the most prominent of the second-tier free-agent pitchers, i.e. anyone not named Jake Arrieta or Yu Darvish.
Lynn was an important piece in the Cardinals’ rotation from his first full year of 2012 through 2017. He had a career record in the National League of 72 wins and 47 losses, throwing to an ERA of 3.50, and never pitching less than 175 and a third innings in the five years he was in the rotation.
But Lynn has not made a good transition to the American League. In four starts he has only thrown 18 and two thirds innings, walking 18 and fanning 22. He entered last night’s game with a record of 0-2 and an ERA of 7.70.
Before we go with the game, though, I have to fill you in on the latest roster moves. As i mentioned at the end of my piece on the three-game Texas series at the TV Dome, Randal Grichuk sprained his knee when he made that crucial catch in the first inning of Sunday’s game. He’s been put on the DL, with a projected 3-weeks’ timeline, and because the Jays still have four outfielders contributing significantly without Grichuk, they decided to shore up their thin infield corps by recalling Gift Ngoepe from Buffalo.
It’s quite notable that it was Ngoepe who was recalled, and that Devon Travis was left in Buffalo to work out his hitting problems. This latest move belies the claim that the main reason Travis was sent down was in order to add a much-needed reliever at the end of the home stand.
You wouldn’t have known Lynn’s been struggling by the way he started out last night. He caught Curtis Granderson looking (with some help from home plate umpire Adam Hamari) Then he got ground balls from Teoscar Hernandez and Justin Smoak and finished with only 8 pitches.
Aaron Sanchez in turn had 2 outs in three pitches, with Brian Dozier lining the first pitch right at Lourdes Gurriel Jr. at second, and Joe Mauer grounding sharply back to Sanchez on the second pitch he saw. Eddie Rosario was positively eclectic in his approach, taking three pitches to fly out to left.
So Lynn at 8 pitches and Sanchez at 6 for 14 in total, it looked like it was going to ba pretty quick night.
But whereas my game notes for the first inning take up only two lines, the second inning runs to 9 lines as the Jays scored 2 to take the lead and the Twins loaded the bases on Sanchez with two outs before he retired the side without allowing a run.
The first Toronto run was delivered by Gurriel Jr in what has been billed as possibly the shortest RBI single in major league history. What it was, however, was a terrible mental mistake/misjudgement by Twins’ catcher Mitch Garver.
Here’s how it all came down. Yanvergis Solarte, who seems to be in the middle of every Toronto rally these days, led off with a hard ground ball that beat the shift into right centre for a base hit. Kevin Pillar followed with a line drive into right centre that split the outfielders. He ended up at second with Solarte stopping at third.
In a strange but impressive stat, Pillar’s double was his eighth straight extra-base hit. In other words, his last eight hits have been for extra bases.
After Russell Martin struck out on a 3-2 pitch for the first out, Lynn went to a 3-0 count on Kendrys Morales, and then the Twins chose to put him on, since first base was open. This brought Gurriel Jr. to the plate.
Gurriel was up there looking to put the ball in play. He fouled off a cutter on the outside corner for strike one, and then swung over a low fast ball, He topping it so it rolled, agonizingly slowly, up the third base line, mostly in foul territory but always touching the line. The catcher Garver came out from behind the plate, bent over the ball and watched it, planning to kill it, I suppose, as soon as it lost contact with the line. But it never did, and he finally picked it up.
Problem was, he was way too late. Solarte, forced from third, had roared down the line and was already out of Garver’s reach when the catcher picked up the ball. Gurriel of course was already out of sight down the line to first.
What was he thinking? What was the advantage of having the ball go foul, giving Gurriel another hack, as opposed to picking it up for an easy first out and preventing a run?
It’s an image that will stick: Garver bending over the ball, studying it intently as it perversely clung to the slightest contact with the foul line, and Solarte racing past him to the plate.
Lynn managed to regroup and fan Aledmys Diaz, bringing Granderson back to the plate for the second time. After Granderson worked the count to 3-2, Lynn missed badly with a fast ball low and outside, forcing in Pillar with the second run. He dodged a much bigger bullet when Hernandez made solid contact with two outs, but hit it to the deepest part of the park where Max Kepler flagged it down.
As much as the Toronto rotation is supposed to be a strong point, it’s never easy with these guys. We’ve seldom seen a shutdown inning after a rally, and Aaron Sanchez had to struggle to keep the Twins off the board in their half of the second.
He started well. Eduardo Escobar and Kepler both grounded out to second, for five consecutive outs at the top of the lineup. Then either he let up or the Twins buckled down. Robbie Grossman singled up the middle. Logan Morrison managed to stick the front of his jersey out far enough to flag down an inside pitch and claim a base. Mitch Garver, needing to make up for his mistake behind the plate, lined a hard single into left to load the bases; it was hit too hard to score Grossman from second.
After Russell Martin made a trip out to the mound to give Sanchez a breather, Ehire Adrianza, the Twins’ rookie shortstop, grounded one out to Diaz near the bag at second for an easy forceout to end the inning.
With a lot of help from Lance Lynn the Jays loaded the bases again in the top of the third on a base hit by Solarte and walks to Martin and Morales, but the threat died when Lynn struck out Gurriel Jr. on a foul tip. Sanchez walked Joe Mauer in the bottom of the inning and faced hard contact from Rosario and Escobar but avoided further damage.
What was telling, and a harbinger of what was to come, was that after three innings Lynn’s pitch total was 60, and Sanchez’ was 38.
The fate of Lance Lynn on this night was decided in the top of the fourth, when Toronto added 3 runs to its lead. With one out Granderson drew a walk. Hernandez hit a bullet over Grossman’s head to the wall in right. It’s a measure of Hernandez’ power that this ball was hit so hard to the opposite field. Granderson moved to third on the double, and then Mitch Garver let his pitcher down again, allowing Granderson to score and Hernandez to move up on a passed ball.
The next two runs were the responsibility of the pitcher Lynn, who thought it was okay to throw Justin Smoak a 1-2 waist-high fast ball on the inside corner. Smoak gave it a real ride to right centre; there was no doubt from the crack of the bat that it was gone.
From this point the narrative of the game became the Twins’ futile effort to catch up, which they sabotaged by their own mistakes. In their fourth Teoscar Hernandez kind of circled around Max Kepler’s leadoff drive to right, and it banged off the wall hard enough to let Kepler get to third with a triple. Kepler made a mistake not tagging up in time on Grossman’s lineout to right, but scored anyway on Morrison’s ground out to second.
Russ Martin’s blast to left when he swung away on a 3-0 pitch in the top of the fifth inning restored the five-run lead, but Lynn managed to limp through the inning to finish off his day with six runs allowed on seven hits with a damaging five walks on 99 pitches.
If there’s an indication of how Sanchez isn’t quite “there” yet, it’s the fact that again in the fifth inning he got two outs, and then found trouble. He seems to be lacking the instinct to finish well. After fanning Brian Dozier and retiring Mauer on a grounder he deflected to Gurriel, he suddenly bloomed to 3-1 on Eddie Rosario before losing him. The only thing worse than a leadoff walk, sometimes, is a two-out walk. Escobar stepped in and powdered one to dead centre, and the score was now 6-3 after five.
In the Twins’ sixth, after Trevor Hildenberger kept the Jays off the bases with only six pitches, the Twins clawed back a fourth run off Sanchez in his last inning, eliminating his quality start. Robbie Grossman lined a double into left field, moved to third on a groundout, and scored on a groundout, and Sanchez left the game to the hardworking Toronto bullpen to protect only a two-run lead.
With Lynn already gone and Sanchez gone now, the game was in the hands of the bullpens. It was an even fight. Aaron Loup let Joe Mauer on with a leadoff single in the seventh, and Danny Barnes came in to give up a run-scoring double to Max Kepler.
The score remained a tight 6-5, in a game the Jays had thought was salted away, until the top of the ninth, when the Twins made two errors, one of which led to a valuable insurance run for Toronto.
Facing the right-handed Ryan Pressly, Justin Smoak lofted a fly ball the wrong way into the left field corner. Eddie Rosario drifted over for it, caught up with it only to flub away an easy catch as Smoak steamed (sort of) into second base. Yanvergis Solarte grounded a single up the middle that allowed Smoak to score.
The inning and the torture for Ryan Pressly, and manager Paul Molitor, weren’t over. Kevin Pillar hit into what should have been a double play started by shortstop Ehire Adrianza. But Brian Dozier at second fumbled away the feed from Adrianza and both Solarte and Pillar were safe.
Pressly dodged further problems because Max Kepler made a fine diving catch coming in on a sinking liner by Russell Martin. He then ended the rising by fanning Kendrys Morales.
The Twins made it close in the ninth and made Roberto Osuna work for his seventh save in eight opportunities. With one out Rosario singled to centre, and with two outs Kepler doubled into the right-field corner, but Rosario had to be stopped at third, bringing Robbie Grossman to the plate. Grossman hit an easy fly ball to centre that Pillar camped under for the third out, and an escape by a relieved Osuna and his team-mates.
It’s hard to imagine how the proud professional Paul Molitor must feel about watching a performance like this. It was a game that in some ways Toronto was ready to give away, but the Twins seemed to want it even less, even as they closed the gap at the end.
First blood in Minnesota goes to the Blue Jays.
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