Wherever you are, Bud Selig, come back. Our favourite team, having survived the wild card game Tuesday night, played like champs this afternoon under a bright Texas sun. They have the chops of a legitimate contender. All is forgiven.
I have always thought that, while it was obviously a good thing to expand the baseball playoffs, former commissioner Selig’s creation of the sudden-death knockout game to be played by the two wild card teams was an insult to the players and an abomination to the loyal fans who support teams that fight all year to be included among the best.
To me, the cruelty of sweating bullets for a month or more, hanging on every pitch as your favourite team fought to qualify for the playoffs only to have them dismissed in a “one and done” scenario is something that the league has no right inflicting on the fans of the teams that have to play in the game, and especially it has no right to treat the players in such a cavalier fashion.
Just ask the excellent and very tough Baltimore Orioles, who had to watch a whole season of fine play and courageous effort sail into the left-field stands along with the ball that Edwin Encarnacion crushed Tuesday night, with no recourse to tomorrow’s game, and perhaps a rubber game beyond that. It should be best of three, at the very least, for the play-in teams, or they should just go back to the harsh reality of only four teams making the playoffs, or find some other way of adding teams while eliminating the single game play-in.
And yet. We sweated our own bullets over whether the Blue Jays would hold on to their coveted slot, and rejoiced when they did, getting on to the dance floor primarily on their own merits by going into Boston and taking two out of three at Fenway. And yet. We watched every second of Tuesday night’s wild card game with Baltimore. Sometimes with joy, sometimes with excruciating tension, sometimes with the alert observation you’d use watching a train wreck. And yet. When it all shook down, and Edwin’s shot sailed into the stands, it was all good: we had passed the test, made the team, joined the big boys, and stepped on to the dance floor, even though our dancing partner would not exactly be the gal we would want to wake up next to in the morning for the next forty years. (“Roughned, for the last time, if you don’t shave off that ugly beard, you’re sleeping in the guest room!”)
And here it is. Not that we knew, as the ninth, tenth, eleventh innings approached Tuesday night, that we would come out on top, but it did seem like there was a thing happening with this Blue Jays’ team, a thing that maybe only finally took shape in the last three games of the season at Fenway.
Oh, sure, we lost Friday night. But that was to none other than Big Papi, who hit what turned out to be the last regular season dinger of his career. Then, on Saturday and Sunday, something happened. No, we didn’t ease our batting woes. That would have been too much, maybe, to ask of the baseball gods. Rather, we embraced our lack, seemed to accept the fact that a little offence, a few well-timed hits, combined with brilliant pitching and steady defence, could be the tickets to success. The season-long question, when will the bashing begin, had turned to a new and infinitely more intriguing one, can we actually win without the bashing?
Tuesday night, in the dreaded wild card game, the game we loathed to play but had to win, the mood seemed to grow, a belief was on the rise, that if this team just kept on throwing the ball really well and fielding it flawlessly something good would happen with the bats. The baseball gods may be capricious, but they know good fundamental baseball when they see it. After all, they’re not the “baseball” gods for nothing—they love the game as we do, only for them it’s more, umm, transcendant.
Baseball is a game where it’s hard to apply the concept of momentum. The fact that the game is for all practical purposes controlled by the opposing pitcher, and what and how he throws, and how the hitters react to it can all vary so widely from game to game, suggests that momentum shouldn’t be much of a factor, except maybe in the mind. A team that’s on a roll tends to sustain that roll over a number of games, as the Kansas City Royals did in locking down their World Series win with a great post-season run. And a team that is in a slump tends to become dispirited, which leads to pressing too hard at the plate and in the field, which inevitably leads to extending the slump. Leading to such phenomena as Toronto’s September Swoon.
So did Edwin’s smash Tuesday night get translated into specific on-field achievements this afternoon? There’s no way of knowing that, but it’s obvious as the bill of your baseball cap (you do wear your Blue Jay cap all the time, don’t you?) that the Jays entered today’s game with their heads and their spirits up, ready to take on the whole world, not to mention a simple matter like the best-record-in-the-league Texas Rangers.
These are the playoffs. No need to spend very much time talking about the relative merits of the starting pitchers. Starting for a playoff team eliminates the question marks, the riff-raff, the reclamation projects, the raw rookies, the guys that used to be somebody, from consideration. Your pitching was good enough to make the playoffs and now you’re down to your four best. After all, after pitching brilliantly against Baltimore last week, Francisco Liriano is in the bullpen for the playoffs, not the rotation. And R.A. Dickey, resident philosopher and elder statesman, didn’t even make the playoff roster. ‘Nuff said.
Except I’d like to take the tiniest moment to address comments made the other night by, I believe, Greg Ross, the sports reporter on CBC. He suggested that it was somewhat of a surprise that Marco Estrada would be pitching the first game, and that there was a lot of consternation on Twitter over why the Toronto manager hadn’t gone to Jay Happ or Marcus Stroman. Well, duh, Greg Ross and all the twits on Twitter: It was Estrada’s turn in the rotation pitching on regular rest, as will Happ and Sanchez and Stroman when their turns come up. And more duh, for ignoring the fact that just because Estrada doesn’t throw hard and has a silly-looking retro windup doesn’t mean that he isn’t still one of the premier starters in the league, with a proven track record of throwing shutdown stuff in big games. Like in Texas last year when our backs were to the wall, remember?
So Estrada was a no-brainer, as was the great lefty Cole Hamels, Texas’ number one starter for most of the year during the long period of the absence of Yu Darvish. So the pitchers are set. Let the games begin!
If Hollywood casting were looking for an actor to play a star baseball pitcher they’d jump at the chance of putting Cole Hamels on the silver screen. Tall, lean, ruggedly handsome, throwing from the port side with an elegant motion, he’d really fill the bill. Not so bad as an American League starter, either, coming into today’s game with a 15-5 record and an ERA of 3.32.
He started the game like he’d been typecast by Hollywood as well. Oh, sure, he walked Josh Donaldson, but that was more a tribute to Donaldson’s annoying stubbornness, as he fouled off three good pitches in a row on a 2 and 2 count before drawing balls three and four. Otherwise, it was popups by Devon Travis and Edwin Encarnacion, and an easy fly ball off the bat of the heavily-booed Jose Bautista. The whole thing consumed 16 pitches.
With Marco Estrada, if he strikes out the first batter, especially looking, or if he retires the first batter on the first pitch, you know somethin’s cookin’. So tonight he froze Carlos Gomez leading off on a 2-2 curve ball, popped up Ian Desmond, and popped up Carlos Beltran to end the inning with seven pitches under his belt. Somethin’ was cookin’ all right!
Hamels continued to roll comfortably in the second, giving no hint of the implosion that was lurking just around the bend. After striking out Russell Martin and popping up Troy Tulowitzki, Hamels allowed a testy grounder into the hole that looked to be the Jays’ first hit, but Elvis Andrus ranged far to his left, flagged the ball down in full stride, and launched one, Derek Jeter style, that barely beat Pillar—if it did—to the bag. Manager Gibbons asked for an appeal, and it would seem that it wound up as standing because it was “too close to call” as the rule has it.
Despite giving up his first hit, a grounder to first that Adran Beltre beat out, Estrada continued to feed the Rangers empty peanut hulls. Roughy Odor flied out to right. Major trade deadline acquisition from Milwaukee and catcher Jonathan Lucroy fanned for Estrada’s second strikeout, and Mitch Moreland nearly beat out a deep grounder to Devon Travis in the shift for the third out. Another 15 pitches, so he was “up” to 22 for two. Hamels wasn’t much higher at 29.
Then came to the top of the third, when the Jays would drive a stake through Texas hearts, with a little help from the locals, and never again be headed.
Hamels’ third inning shouldn’t have gotten away from him like it did, but it started ominously enough. Melvin Upton led off and drove the first pitch the wrong way to right, and right to the wall, where Shin-Soo Choo had to bang off the wall to make the catch. Then Hamels walked the number nine hitter Zeke Carrera on a 3-1 pitch. Devon Travis popped out to third for the second out, and Hamels was that close to getting out of it. But, remembering Ernie Harwell, we know that “it all starts with two outs”. Sometimes. This time.
The Rangers bring to this series a mixed heritage in relation to defence. They’ve had an excellent fielding record this season, but never far from their minds is the famous seventh inning of game five last year, which besides being remembered for the blast and the bat flip, also haunts the team and its fans because of their embarrassing defensive breakdown, featuring two unforgiveably bad plays by the shortstop Elvis Andrus and a third error by first baseman Mitch Moreland, all of which preceded and set up Bautista’s decisive homer.
Catcher Jonathan Lucroy was perhaps the most important acquisition the Rangers made this season. He represents a significant upgrade for Texas, both at the plate and behind it, where his defensive skills are considered first rate. But with Carrera on first and two outs, Hamels spiked a changeup to Josh Donaldson that was scored as a wild pitch, but in a game like this should have been blocked. Nevertheless Carrera ended up on second and the complexion of the inning changed.
If there was a hint that Josh Donaldson was coming out of his recent funk on his first at bat when he worked Hamels for the first inning walk, his recovery was no longer in question when, on a 2-2 pitch, he ripped a ball at third baseman Adrian Beltre, who threw his glove up almost in defence as the ball ripped past him and on into the left-field corner. Carrera scored on the hit, which was hit so hard that left fielder Carlos Gomez was able to make it close at second. Donaldson was called safe, and the Rangers’ appeal of the call was not supported.
Edwin Encarnacion hit one hard back to the box that deflected off Hamels toward short, but there was no play on Edwin and Donaldson went to third. He scored on a single into right centre by Jose Bautista in what may have been one of the defining at bats of the game. Hamels was at 2 and 1 on Bautista when he tried three times to slip a fastball by him, and one changeup as well. Bautista fouled off all four pitches, and then timed the inevitable curve ball and stroked it into the wide open, shift-deserted space in short right centre. Donaldson scored, Edwin moved up to second, and Russell Martin came to the plate.
Despite the fact that there were two outs all along, and Hamels was for all this time one punchout away from sitting down, he just couldn’t do it. Russell Martn walked on a 3-1 pitch, and then Troy Tulowitzki reached out on a 2-2 thigh-high fast ball on the outer half, and powered it into right centre, a high and deep drive.
For the second time in the inning, the Texas defence wasn’t able to live up to the task, and this play pinpointed a serious flaw in what otherwise may very well be an excellent lineup. Delino DeShields had won the regular job in centre field last year, and in fact started all five games against Toronto last year in the ALCS. He started the season as the centre field fixture, but over time his failure to produce offensively became an issue for the Rangers.
Meanwhile, in the off season they had signed free agent Ian Desmond, who came from the Washington Nationals. Considering their whole lineup, Desmond was clearly signed as backup insurance, on a one-year $8 million dollar contract. He had spent his entire major league career playing the infield in the National League. No, wait, I lied. He played seven innings in the outfield in 2009, and one third of an inning in 2010. His pluses were solid defensive credentials at shortstop, where Elvis Andrus was obviously a fixture, a decent batting average, save for 2015 with the Nats, and very good speed.
When the Rangers decided that DeShields was not to be their World Series centre fielder in 2016, they looked around, found Desmond, and announced, presto change-o, that Desmond was a centre fielder, and he patrolled there for Texas for most of the season. But one season a centre fielder does not make. Tulo’s ball was high and fading. It eventually hit the fence at a point that would have been easily reachable, if Desmond hadn’t pulled up, shied away from the ball, and played it on the carom. The hit went as a triple which cleared the bases and gave the Jays a 5-0 lead. It also sucked every bit of oxygen out of the stadium in Arlington, and all of the fight out of the Rangers. (Thank providence for small favours—the last thing we need is the Rangers with some fight in them!)
Hamels finally got the third out, and Estrada after a very long and pleasant rest, returned to the hill to record a ground ball, a strikeout, and an easy fly to centre on twelve pitchouts. What you need after a big offensive inning is for your pitcher to come out and shut the other guys down. Well, how about for the next inning, and the next five besides?
Marco Estrada, bolstered by a good cushion for the first time in forever, gave up a single to Elvis Andrus in the sixth. Martin threw him out on a strike-out/throw-out with Shin-Soo Choo going down at the plate. He gave up a single to Carlos Beltran in the seventh, but Adrian Beltre hit into a double play. That’s it, folks.
After the leadoff infield single by Adrian Beltre in the second inning, Marco Estrada faced exactly the minimum number of batters, twenty-one of twenty-one. Marco Estrada has never thrown a complete game in the major leagues. He still hasn’t. Manager John Gibbons, with the lead now stretched to ten (I’ll go over that, but Estrada’s the story here, all the way) sent him out to go for it in the ninth, but on the very first pitch Andrus pounded the ball to centre and raced around to third for a triple. Gibbie let Estrada go one more batter to see if he could get the shutout. When Choo, hitting next, grounded out to first, Andrus scored, and that was it. Estrada left with this line: 8.2 innings pitched, 1 run, 4 hits, no walks, 6 strikeouts, and 98 pitches.
Ryan Tepera came in and got the last two outs on seven pitches to secure, if it needed to be secured at this point, Toronto’s convincing 10-1 win over Texas in game one of the 2016 ALCS.
The Rangers managed to shut down the Jays’ offense eventually, as Rangers’ Manager Jeff Bannister, now concerned about eating innings as much as about trying to win this game, sent Hamels out for the fourth, but he didn’t survive the inning. Melvin Upton led off by jerking one into the stands in left to up the Toronto lead to six. Zeke Carrera flied out to left for the first out. Then the fielding gremlin popped out of his hole and waved his malevolent crooked stick at Texas again. Andrus, to his utter embarrassment, picked up a perfectly routine ground ball and pulled Mitch Moreland off the bag with his throw. Travis then advanced to second on a passed ball by Lucroy, and scored on a single to right centre to give the Jays a seventh run, this one very, very unearned. That was enough for Hamels, who may have to wait years to unsully his playoff pitching record after tonight’s performance. Bannister brought in Alex Claudio, a soft-tossing young lefty, who quickly got the last two outs of the inning for the Rangers, stranding Donaldson at first.
Claudio went on to give Bannister the innings he didn’t get from Hamels. Helped by two double plays, he kept the Jays off the board while giving up two hits and two walks. In fact, his approach tended to be very similar to that of the Jays’ starter, particularly in respect of initiating soft contact and keeping the pitch count down. In his three and two thirds innings, he only threw 35 pitches, 23 of them strikes.
Tony Barnette pitched the eighth and gave up a hit to Zeke Carrera with two outs, but left him at first when Travis popped out to Moreland at first.
Jake Diekman, the rail-thin left-hander, took the hill for the Rangers in the ninth. He had been very effective in last year’s ALCS against Toronto, making four appearances, pitching 6 innings, striking out 5 and giving up only 1 run. This year so far in the playoffs, not so much. Josh Donaldson led off with a single to centre for his fourth hit of the game. Edwin followed with a single to right. Jose Bautista worked Diekman to a 3 and 2 count, and then ended off the action, for all practical purposes, in exactly the way that the Jose-hating, Bautista-booing, Texas crowd didn’t want to see, by ripping a three-run homer to left, pegging the Jays’ lead, at the time, to 10-zip, and who could ever have projected that?
Tension? Bitter rivalry? Scores to settle? All washed away on the wave of a superb pitching performance and robust hitting abetted by some suspect Texas defence.
Game Two features Jay Happ against Yu Darvish, who has pitched well since returning to the team in late May. The Blue Jays have not seen him this season, but he is all that stands in the way of a shocking turnabout, and the possibility of Toronto returning home with a chance to sweep the series behind Aaron Sanchez on Sunday evening.
Who ever would have thought?
The 5-0 lead handed to Estrada was just what he needed to start dealing as only he can, free, easy, and damned frustrating to the Rangers’ hitters.
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