ALCS GAME FIVE, CLEVELAND 3, JAYS 0:
THE KID WAS ALL RIGHT,
THE JAYS, NOT SO MUCH!
Let’s be clear on this right from the start: I had my hopes that the Jays’ offence would suddenly wake up and stomp all over this young Ryan Merritt’s tra-la-la, and that our boys would be off to Cleveland for game six on Friday night, for another go at Josh Tomlin, but I wasn’t really expecting it.
Hoping for a win, sure, but beating up on a rookie pitcher whose utter lack of experience meant he had no business starting an ALCS game? Why would they, when they’ve faced similar circumstances a dozen times before in this maddening season, and have almost always been stymied by the upstart, whoever he might have been?
I can’t think of a worse set of circumstances than Toronto going into a must-win game against a pitcher they had never seen, and carrying the weight of expectation of an entire nation on their backs. Over the last two years this team has on many occasions shown a remarkable ability to rise to the challenge and come through in dire circumstances, but it has also, especially recently, shown a frustrating tendency to come up flat at the worst time.
Thus it was today, as the Jays took the field behind Marco Estrada, hoping to consolidate the gains they made yesterday when they temporarily, anyway, derailed the Cleveland locomotive’s drive to the World Series. Needing a win to extend the season, the team had pushed all the right buttons to turn in a crisp and commanding performance. Could they do it again today? The auguries were all there, to be sure, but sometimes the damned entrails of the damned birds just flat out lie.
Not to belabour the obvious, but giving the ball to Ryan Merritt today in game five of the LCS was the ultimate proof of the chaos into which Cleveland’s starting rotation has descended in the course of this post-season. Having started the LDS short-handed already, they benefitted from great performances from the three established starters they still had, who over the season had in fact been their one, four, and five starters, to sweep the Red Sox. In a five-game series they would have been in immediate difficulty if the Sox had even extended the series to four games.
Then on the eve of the LCS came the unbelievably unlucky/stupid injury to Trevor Bauer’s finger that reduced the team’s starters even further, to Corey Kluber, Josh Tomlin, and Mr. Mangle. The first two pitched well enough in Cleveland to beat a hitting-challenged Jays’ team, despite Manager Terry Francona having to move up Tomlin’s start in place of Bauer. Then came Monday night’s gore fest, when the Jays on home ground couldn’t light up a succession of Cleveland relievers. Tuesday Kluber was mediocre on short rest, and Toronto won handily, and today with Tomlin not ready to go again Francona was left looking under rocks to find a starter.
We may never know if it was dumb luck or if Francona’s crazy like a fox that the lot fell on Ryan Merritt, a twenty-five-year-old left-handed rookie with all of one start, four appearances, and a grand total of 11 innings pitched in the major leagues. Hell, Merritt was drafted in the sixteenth round in 2011, exactly the 488th name to be called in that draft.
But it was neither dumb nor crazy that Merritt’s instructions were: do not throw a fast ball for a strike, and the only time you’re throwing a pitch on the inner half of the plate it’s to hit somebody, and don’t hit anybody. And it was utterly to Merritt’s credit that whatever other merits he may have (sorry, just once, okay?) he sure can follow directions.
Before Merritt even got to the mound he had become the beneficiary of one of those weird and unlucky first-inning runs that seem to have been allowed by the Jays far too many times already this season. Marco Estrada retired the first two hitters on nine pitches, Carlos Santana fouling out to Russell Martin on a full count, and Jason Kipnis hitting a 1-1 fast ball admittedly on the nose but right at Zeke Carrera in left. The fast ball Kipnis hit clocked in at 88, typical velocity for Estrada. The fastest fast ball Merritt threw in the bottom of the inning clocked out at 86 plus. Slower than Estrada. Just sayin’.
But then with two outs Francisco Lindor, who’s both good and lucky, completely mis-timed a curve from Estrada, made bad, late contact with it, and looped a soft little liner over Donaldson into left for a base hit. That brought Mike Napoli to the plate, and, like Kipnis, he hit one on the screws to left. Lucky it stayed in the park as it shot over Carrera’s head and banged high off the wall. The ball came off the wall and right back to Carrera, so fast that Lindor had already been stopped at third. But Carrera tried to bare hand the ball off the wall and it spun out of his hand and bounced away, allowing Lindor to crank it up again and score the first run on Carrera’s error. Jose Ramirez followed with a routine grounder to second for the third out, which made the Cleveland run unearned.
No problem, really, because, well, you know, the rookie on the mound and all . . ..
Thirteen pitches later, the Clevelands were back in the dugout, and the Jays were in deep doo-doo already. Jose Bautista rolled over on a cutter and grounded to short. Josh Donaldson rolled over on a cutter and grounded to second. Just for variation Edwin Encarnacion took a 71.8 mph curve ball for strike three. I think Edwin may still be waiting for that pitch to reach the plate. You can come in now, Edwin. The inning’s over. The game’s over. The season’s over. Worse, you may never hit for us again. Sob.
It really helped the Jays’ cause that Estrada settled down in the second and fanned Lonnie Chisenhall and Tyler Naquin on either side of an easy fly ball to centre by Coco Crisp. 14 pitches in the second looked like he might be able to keep the overall pitch count down to a reasonable, clocking in at 35 for two innings.
It didn’t help the Jays at all that Troy Tulowitzki led off the Jays’ second against Merritt with a short pop fly to right, and that he was followed by not one, but two, called third strikes, on Russell Martin and Melvin Upton. On both hitters Merritt threw a terrible 1-2 change up, to Martin low and way outside, to Upton down the middle but in the dirt. Then he threw his roughly 87 mph fastball for strike three, to Martin up but on the outside corner, to Upton near the bottom of the zone but right down Broadway. What were they expecting on a 2-2 count, another waste changeup? I wish I could get into the minds of these guys to figure out how they’re thinking. Merritt didn’t have to worry about knowing what the Jays’ hitters were thinking; he was already in their heads! Six up, six down, and no hope in sight.
Marco Estrada is a fly-ball pitcher, so he’s going to give up a home run here and there. You just hope that there’s nobody on base when somebody connects. That’s what happened in the third. Carlos Santana lined one into the stands in right with one out and nobody on. After Kipnis flied out to right, Lindor hit another single to left, but was stranded when Estrada caught Mike Napoli looking for his second strikeout of the inning, and fourth of the game.
The Jays were just down 2-0, on the homer and the unearned run, but it might as well have been ten as the clocked ticked and Merritt survived yet another inning. Zeke Carrera led off the home third by putting a charge in one to deep left for Crisp, but it hung up and stayed in the park. Then, more of the same: Kevin Pillar grounded out to Ramirez at third, and Darwin Barney popped out to the shortstop. Three innings, nine up, nine down, 31 pitches. Tick, tick, tick.
Estrada continued to induce soft contact in the Cleveland fourth, popping up Ramirez and Naquin, and fanning Chisenhall again. Oh, except for little Coco Crisp, if you can believe it, who’d been marking time with Oakland as a part-time platoon outfielder until Cleveland acquired him at the trade deadline and turned his world upside down. With two outs Crisp timed a 2-2 changeup and drove it over the wall in right, the second solo home run by a left-handed hitter off Estrada in the game. The Clevelands now held a 3-0 lead, and the sense of desparation in Blue Jay Land was growing stronger by the minute, or by the out, to be more accurate, as their aspirations for 2016 dribbled away in a series of ineffective and feckless plate appearances.
In the bottom of four, Bautista flew out to centre. Donaldson finally broke the ten-out string and the hitless day by lining a single into left centre. Edwin Encarnacion then had an at-bat that could serve as a microcosm for every game the Jays lost this year because of lack of hitting. Merritt threw a cutter, a changeup, and a cutter, all wildly outside the strike zone, running the count to 3-0. Then Edwin took not one, but two waist-high batting-practice fast balls on the outside corner to go to a full count. Then the rookie threw him a changeup in the same location, and he grounded into a double play. Four innings, twelve up, twelve down, 44 pitches. Tick, tick, tick.
Just for a moment there, in the fifth inning, it seemed like the clock stopped ticking. First, Estrada breezed through Cleveland on nine pitches; after five innings his pitch count was 79, low enough to stay around for a while, if his mates could get something going. In the Jays’ half of the fifth, Tulo hit one deep to left field, but like Carrera’s in the third, it stayed in the park. Russell Martin blooped a single into right, and then Terry Francona threw a little surprise at Toronto, immediately popping out of the dugout to yank Merritt. Or was it a surprise? Merritt had done a great job for him, and he really didn’t owe a raw rookie any consideration for leaving him in to qualify for a win. Besides, Francona knows the horses in his stable of relievers very well, and he had a good notion that he had enough fresh ones to take over from here.
He brought Brian Shaw in, to face Melvin Upton, and John Gibbons responded by pinch hitting the left-handed Michael Saunders for the right-handed Upton. On a 1-2 pitch, Shaw made a mistake to Saunders, leaving a cutter up in the zone, right down the middle. Unfortunately for the Jays, Saunders only lined it into centre for a single, instead of hitting it out of the park. Shaw recovered, though, and fanned both Carrera and Pillar, leaving the two runners on, and snuffing what was, basically, Toronto’s last real opportunity to climb back into the game.
Don’t get me wrong. This wasn’t like game two, when we only had one base runner after the third inning in the 2-1 loss. Cleveland only retired the side in order in the seventh, and there was a glimmer of hope wasted in both the eighth and the ninth, but after the fifth Toronto never had more than one base runner per inning.
Shaw stayed in to start the seventh and got Darwin Barney to ground out to short for the first out, then gave up a single to Bautista. Enter Andrew Miller, who threw one pitch to get the last two outs: Donaldson grounded into a double play to erase Bautista. Miller stayed on in the seventh and retired the side on twelve pitches.
He came back out for the eighth to face Dioner Navarro hitting for Saunders. Navarro, who so far had the only Jays’ hit against Miller in the series, did it again, lining a sharp single into left field to give Toronto a leadoff base runner. Now here’s where I get upset with the way John Gibbons runs his team, nice guy, funny guy all very well, but why doesn’t he ever act?
The team is down 3-0 in the eighth inning of an elimination game, and the slowest—by far—guy on the team leads off with a base hit. Your team has devoted a full roster spot to Dalton Pompey, for the sole purpose of pinch-running for a Dioner Navarro in a situation like this. You haven’t had the opportunity or reason to use him yet in the first four games of the series. This is the second-last inning of what may be the last game Toronto plays in the series, unless the team avoids outs and scores runs. When else would you insert Pompey for Navarro??
Surely, with possibly only one inning left in the season, there’s no point in worrying about taking your spare catcher out of the game; you’ve already hobbled your options by inserting him as the designated hitter. And no one is suggesting here that this was a steal situation, when the team needed three runs, not one. The only point is to have someone faster than Navarro (the peanut vendor? Gregg Zaun?) on first so that what happened next would not have happened! Because after Zeke Carrera struck out, Kevin Pillar hit a hard ground ball into the hole between third and short, that Francisco Lindor barely got to, and had absolutely no play on, to first base. A gold-standard infield hit, except . . . Here came Navarro, bless his heart, chugging into second like Tommy the Tugboat. There have to be twenty-two players on the Jays’ LCS roster who would have beaten Lindor’s throw to second. But none of them, specifically Dalton Pompey, was running. Instead of having runners on first and second with one out, we had a runner on first with two outs. A promising rally was now just a blip to be overcome, and Miller did just that, getting Darwin Barney to hit a short fly to left for the third out.
Not to beat a dead manager here, but did anyone else notice that even with two outs it would have been appropriate for Justin Smoak to have hit for Barney? After all, Ryan Goins was still on the bench, and able to take Barney’s place at second for the ninth inning. Sure, Smoak was as likely to strike out against Miller as Barney was to fly out to left, but Smoak had at least a chance of getting hold of one and hitting it a long way.
So—last word on this—here’s my best case scenario: Pompey runs for Navarro, Pillar is on with an infield hit, Smoak hits for Barney, and, miracle of miracles, hits one out to tie the game. That could have happened in my world, but not in Gibbie’s, no sir.
With the help of the one-pitch double play, Andrew Miller kept the Jays off the board for two and a third innings on only 21 pitches. It was no surprise that Terry Francona turned to his closer, Cody Allen, to get the last three outs of the American League season.
First up against Allen was Jose Bautista, who pulled a 3-2 fast ball that Allen threw right down the middle into the left-field corner for a double. One more time the hopes of Jays’ fans everywhere rose from the ashes: in possibly his last at-bat ever for Toronto, Joey Bats had shown the way, and somehow the great sluggers who followed him to the plate would pull this thing out, and send the Series back to Cleveland. But Bautista never strayed from second, and spent his last inning as a Blue Jay (we assume) watching Josh Donaldson strike out, Edwin Encarnacion strike out, and Troy Tulowitzki foul out to the first baseman to end the game, the series, and Toronto’s season.
But it would be completely unfair to end on the note of hitting futility, without addressing the noble souls who took up Marco Estrada’s cause on the mound for Toronto.
Not to skip over Estrada’s efffort today. Repeating a sentiment I’m really sick of, Estrada, of course, pitched well enough to win. He went six innings, gave up two earned runs on five hits, walked none, and struck out seven, on a tidy 92 pitches. It was a microcosm of Estrada’s season that he received so little support from the Jays’ offence. How did he compile the metrics he did this season while having a record of only 9-9? Then in the playoffs he was 1-2, but his ERA was 2.01 over 22.1 innings. I mean, what the hell?
In fact, this is a good time to mention that the Jays lost this ALCS in five games while giving up only twelve runs, an average of 2.4 runs a game. We needn’t really say another word about how and why the Blue Jays didn’t make the World Series this year. Not only Estrada, for whom the team scored zero runs in fourteen innings, but Jay Happ and Marcus Stroman, for whom they scored one and two runs respectively in their starts, are all clearly owed dinner by Aaron Sanchez, who feasted on five runs in the Jays’ only win in the series. Given Sanchez’ relatively impoverished contract status, though, I’d think that Swiss Chalet might be a wise budgetary choice for Aaron’s treat.
So today Brett Cecil followed Estrada and pitched the seventh, retiring the side on thirteen pitches with one strikeout. It’s certainly representative of Cecil’s entire Toronto career that what was probably his last, and a very effective, relief appearance for the Jays (like Bautista and Encarnacion, not to mention Michael Saunders, Cecil is headed for free agency this fall) went largely unnoticed by the fans in the ball park, and, I’m sure, the rest of the country in the Blue Jays’ diaspora.
Joe Biagini also retired the side in order in the eighth while striking out one, and he did Cecil a little better, taking only ten pitches to do it. Though there is absolutely no question which team will remain Biagini’s home for the foreseeable future, we won’t know until well into spring training next year whether this was his last relief appearance for Toronto. The plus side of Biagini transitioning into a starter role would be the addition of another hard thrower with great stuff, a twin peak, so to speak, for Aaron Sanchez, to complement the more refined and versatile skills of Estrada, Happ, Stroman, and Francisco Liriano. The minus side, of course, is that Biagini’s would be the sixth name in a very strong mix, and how does that work itself out? A season starting in Buffalo might be in the offing for big Joe, but how do you keep him down on the farm . . . ?
In some ways Roberto Osuna is like a chess player, who sharpens his skills by solving set problems. The difference is that Osuna sets the problems for himself, and then wiggles out of them. Today was no different when Gibbie sent him out to keep Cleveland in sight before the bottom of the ninth.
This time he gave up a ground-rule double to Francisco Lindor, who finished up a fine series with another productive three-for-four night, though the fluke RBI single in the first still rankles. With Osuna sufficiently aroused by the ringing crack of Lindor’s bat, he managed to keep Mike Napoli in the park, though Napoli did hit the ball right on the nose and drive it on a hard line to Kevin Pillar in deep centre. Credit Pillar with a strong throw in to keep Lindor at second, and thus keep Cleveland from adding a fourth run when Jose Ramirez followed with a ground-out to second which only moved Lindor to third instead of scoring him. Osuna then fanned Lonnie Chisenhall to end the inning on his eleventh pitch.
So Cecil, Biagini, and Osuna threw 34 pitches, gave up one hit, and struck out three in three innings of work. In the five games of the ALCS, Osuna, Biagini, Cecil, and Jason Grilli, the only relievers who worked, threw 12.2 innings, gave up no runs and allowed only one inherited runner to score, on five hits, two walks, and twelve strikeouts.
In short, the Toronto pitching was outstanding in this series. Full credit to the starters who went deep enough in the five games to preserve the relievers, and full credit to the four relievers who were in effect perfect in fulfilling their roles.
As for the bats, back to the woodshed you go, where a nice big chipper is waiting to turn you into garden mulch. The order for new, better bats for next year is already being written up.
Thus the 2016 ALCS: Cleveland is on to the World Series, having won seven of eight post-season games, and being full measure for the ALCS win. The Blue Jays scatter to the winds for the off-season, after winning the Wild Card game, sweeping the Rangers, and being brushed aside by Cleveland. Winning five of nine is normally a good thing, but just wasn’t good enough for our contact-challenged sluggers in this 2016 postseason.
Wait ’til next year! What’s the temperature in Dunedin tomorrow?
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