The most depressing thing about watching yesterday’s game two of the ALCS was not that the Jays’ hitters fell like tenpins before the unhittable darts of Andrew Miller, but that I constantly needed to write “g6-3” (ground out to shortstop) in my notes. It doesn’t matter if they can’t hit Andrew Miller, because he can’t pitch every out in the series. It does matter if they can’t figure out a way to stop rolling over on off-speed pitches and hitting easy ground balls to the Cleveland infield.
Francisco Lindor is reputed to be a great defensive shortstop, in addition to his obvious relish at hitting in clutch situations. But so far he hasn’t had to flash his superior glove at all, as our heroes have hit easy grounder after easy grounder right at him.
The worst thing that could have happened to the Toronto Blue Jays in the 2016 ALCS was for their offence to go in the tank again.
Well, it happened in Cleveland this weekend, and all we can do is hope that it’s over, and the bats will venture out of their bat cave when they realize they’re back in the friendly confines of the TV Dome.
Jeff Blair wrote truly on Sportsnet.ca this morning that what the Jays’ hitters need to do is forget about trying to solve Andrew Miller, and focus totally on attacking any Cleveland pitchers not named Andrew Miller, because it’s their failure to create any runs against two run-of-the-mill starters that has made them vulnerable to the overwhelming left-handed slants of Mr. Miller. Hear, hear, Mr. Blair!
If we don’t create conditions which make it unlikely that Cleveland manager Terry Francona brings in Miller, we will be looking at a short, untimely end to this long-awaited opportunity. But if we do put up some runs early against our opponents’ starters, I know this seems obvious, the series is eminently winnable.
Because the Clevelands aren’t exactly tearing the cover off the ball against the Toronto starters either. In fact, consider the combined lines of Corey Kluber and Josh Tomlin, versus Marco Estrada and Jay Happ. Kluber and Tomlin: 12 innings pitched, 1 run, 9 hits, 4 walks, 12 strikeouts. Estrada and Happ: 13 innings pitched, 4 runs, 10 hits, 2 walks, 10 strikeouts. What stands out here is that the only appreciable difference in the performance of the starting pitchers is that ours have given up four runs, theirs only one. In fact, they’ve also given up four walks to only two free passes by our guys, which should have been a boost to our production, but wasn’t.
Marco Estrada and Jay Happ are both fly-ball hitters. As such, they are both somewhat more susceptible to the home-run ball than, say, Aaron Sanchez. If you had asked me, going in, if I’d accept, sight unseen as it were, that is, without knowing what our offence would produce, one solo shot off Jay Happ, and one two-run shot off Marco Estrada, I would jump at the chance, especially if you told me that these two dingers would produce 75 per cent of the runs scored by Cleveland in these first two games of the series.
Toronto’s first inning performance against Josh Tomlin really set the tone for the entire game. Unlike Friday night’s game, when Corey Kluber had to work himself out of a serious jam right away against aggressive Toronto hitters, today the Jays opened the game with three easy ground-ball outs, two to second and one to short.
Tomlin, who got the start thanks to the bloody doins’ at the Bauer Drone Service repair facility on Thursday night, is one of those relatively soft-tossing junk-ball pitchers, the kind whose stock-in-trade is the 58-foot curve ball that good hitters just ignore. Unless they’re in a funk. What’s more, he regularly starts out ahead of the hitters by throwing a batting-practice fast ball right down the middle on his first pitch, a pitch that he should get away with exactly once. To exactly one hitter. But what actually happens to that lame-duck first-pitch fast ball? Either the Jays’ hitters take it, or they lunge at it like a cat after a bird, though less gracefully, and over-eagerly beat it into the ground. Right at somebody.
You’d think that this is an LCS for which both teams had to qualify by showing how they could swing the bat with just one hand. The two offensively-challenged teams produced the three runs scored in the game by the end of the third inning, and after that the hitters were so ineffective that the pitchers for both teams must have been laughing behind their gloves in the dugout between innings. Well, the Cleveland pitchers, anyway.
After Toronto’s meek first inning against Tomlin, Russell Martin did manage to single with two out in the second (another ground ball, let it be noted, that ran up the middle), but he was stranded at first when Michael Saunders was ernied by Tomlin. (“Ernied”: out on a called third strike, in honour of Ernie Harwell, who always said that the batter took the strikeout pitch standing “like a house by the side of the road”.)
Jay Happ had given up his first hit in the opening inning when Francisco Lindor lofted one over Troy Tulowitzki’s head into left on a pitch that broke his bat. However, there were two outs already, and Happ fanned Mike Napoli to retire the side. But in the second, Carlos Santana, leading off, and not carrying a guitar to the plate, did not break his bat on a 1-1 two-seamer that was down and in, and barely lined it over the wall in left for a 1-0 Cleveland lead. A strikeout and two ground outs followed to retire the side.
In the top of the third came the only glimmer of hope we’ve had at the plate in two games. After Kevin Pillar—guess what—grounded out to third, Darwin Barney hit a—guess what—ground ball single to left. When John Gibbons sends a runner with one out you know he’s getting desperate. Gibbie sent Barney with Zeke Carrera hitting, so you get the picture of the manager’s state of mind. Carrera hit a—guess what—ground ball to short, Barney made it to second and Lindor made the out at first. This brought Josh Donaldson to the plate. Donaldson took a four-seamer (87 mph—Tomlin sounds like Estrada) and then reached out and drove a waist-high cutter on the outside corner on a—surprise—line drive into right field and hustled into second as Carrera scored to tie the game. That little rising was more than enough work for the Jays’ lumber on this day; they immediately went back to sleep. Edwin Encarnacion raised some hope by taking a walk on a 3-2 pitch, but the slumping Jose Bautista fanned to strand Donaldson and Encarnacion.
In the top of the third Cleveland “rallied” to take a 2-1 lead and settle the whole affair right then and there. They utilized a walk, a stolen base, a wild pitch, and one legitimate two-out base hit by Lindor to plate the only run that mattered. Happ walked catcher Roberto Perez leading off. Rajai Davis hit a double-play ball to Tulo at short, but, Davis being Davis, he beat the throw to first for a fielder’s choice. Replacing Perez at first with Davis: not good.
The one part of Jay Happ’s game that is problematic is that for a left-handed pitcher he gives his catcher little help if a runner might be going. You could see at home with the angle they were showing how Davis took a one-way lead, and practically pointed to second to signal his intention, while Happ studied him, and then just continued his delivery to the plate. Davis could have walked there. It may not have mattered because Happ wild pitched him to third, so he would have been on second anyway when Lindor hit the RBI single. But, still.
Once again Happ retired Napoli, who did not have a good day, to strand Lindor, but that gigantic, terrifying “2” was up there for all to see, and the countdown was already starting to “Miller time”. (I wonder how Andrew Miller feels about having his name mixed in with the slogan for a really awful, pissy beer?) With three innings in the books, and the way Francona has been bringing Miller in willy-nilly regardless of the inning, Toronto at this point might have been looking at only two more innings to get to Tomlin.
They actually had two and two thirds innings of Tomlin left, but it didn’t really matter. At all. They could no more hit Tomlin than they can Miller. After he walked Encarnacion in the third, Tomlin retired nine in a row, five by strikeout. When he walked Bautista with two outs in the sixth, Francona pulled the plug and brought in, not Miller, but the right-handed Brian Shaw, to face Tulo and possibly Martin. Shaw got Tulo to hit a comebacker to end the inning.
In the seventh Shaw yielded to Miller, who threw two innings on 24 pitches, striking out five of the six batters he faced. Then Cody Allen breezed the ninth, adding two more punchouts on 13 pitches. So, in case you’re not keeping track, from the time Donaldson knocked in the then-tying run until the end of the game, the walk to Bautista produced the only base-runner the Jays had. Tomlin, Shaw, and Miller faced one over the minimum to retire nineteen batters.
The only thing wrong with Jay Happ’s outing, besides the fact that Toronto was unable to provide him any support at all, is that, like his appearance in game two of the LDS, he did let the pitches accumulate, and though he could have gone one more inning, John Gibbons decided to pull him after five innings and 94 pitches. At two runs, four hits, one walk and four strikeouts, he had nothing to be ashamed of.
After the long break since the last game of the LDS, Gibbie took the opportunity to give two of his three major bullpen arms some work, to make sure that they hadn’t gotten too rusty, and, not incidentally, to keep Cleveland from adding to its lead. Joe Biagini pitched the sixth and seventh, gave up one walk and struck out two on 29 pitches. Roberto Osuna retired the side on 13 pitches in the ninth.
So the Blue Jays leave Cleveland with nothing to show for it, and back in the doldrums at the plate. There are three games in Toronto, and we have to win two of the three to stay alive. We need the bats to warm up, the pitchers to stay hot, and the damned Cleveland skunks to stay on the other side of the border. How about calling the border services, to enforce no cross-border hexing? We need to do something, eh?
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