The last time the Blue Jays stood on the field at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, they were standing around bereft, forlornly watching the Royals celebrate their second straight American League pennant.
So it had to be with mixed feelings that the buoyant Jays, riding the crest of a mid-season wave of fine play that has brought them into a perpetual tie with the Baltimore Orioles in their division, ventured onto the field to warm up for tonight’s game against the Royals. There is no doubt whatsoever that the memories are painful, the wounds still tender, when the players think back on that night. This is what we feel just as their supporters. How much deeper it must be for them.
But this is 2016, isn’t it? Quite a few things have changed, haven’t they? For one thing a significant number of the current Blue Jays can only relate to the institutional memory of last October. Eleven players on the roster that arrived in Kansas City for this weekend series were not even on the team then, a surprisingly big turnover for a team in the middle of what they now annoyingly call the “window of opportunity”. For another thing, the Royals just aren’t the Royals any more. Between injuries and losses to free agency, three of tonight’s starters, a large turnover for a franchise that has been relatively stable in recent years, were not regulars last year, and the pitching staff has experienced a far more significant turnover. No more really needs be said about the difference between last year and this year than this: after tonight’s exciting four-three Blue Jays’ win, Toronto’s record for the season stands at 63-47, while Kansas City’s stands at 51-58.
I hope this isn’t us next year after we win the Series this year!
Tonight marked the Toronto debut of Francisco Liriano, the much heralded trade-deadline arrival Toronto acquired from Pittsburgh, along with a couple of good prospects, in exchange for Drew Hutchinson. Hopes were high that Liriano, who has been struggling with his control for much of the season to date, would experience a turnaround pitching for his new team, in particular to Russell Martin, with whom he had worked very well, in Pittsburgh.
The Royals started thirty-year-old veteran right-hander Dillon Gee. I confess that my response to seeing his name in the lineup (I’m sorry for this) was “Dillon Gee, who he?” Well there’s a simple reason I knew nothing about him. Until he signed as a free agent this year with the Royals, his entire career has been spent in the Mets organization, where he had a number of stretches during which he was a regular member of the rotation. If you want to have something to remember Dillon Gee for, it’s that he Wally Pipp’d to Noah Syndergaard last May when he went on the DL with a groin strain. He wasn’t getting that job back, and so opted for free agency at the end of the year and signed a minor league deal with the Royals last December. All you have to do is review the Royals’ DL list for pitchers, to see how Dillon Gee went from Triple A starter to Kansas City starter over the course of this season.
When you look at Gee’s record with the Royals this year, it’s a middling sort, quite suitable for a middling, or worse, team, three wins and five losses with an ERA of 4.66. And middling was how he pitched against the Jays tonight, though he didn’t waste any time giving up a one-run Toronto lead. On the fourth pitch of the game against new leadoff batter Devon Travis, Travis yanked one into the seats in left, much to the surprise, I think, of those assembled in the stadium, but not to the ranks of Jay watchers. Travis’ homer was followed by a flurry of baserunners whom the Jays couldn’t deliver, and so Gee walked off the mound behind only one-nothing. He would have to settle down a lot to carry on against the Jays, though, as he needed to retire Russell Martin on a fly to right to leave the bases loaded, after filling them up on a single to Jose Bautista, a walk to Josh Donaldson, and a hit-by-pitch of Troy Tulowitzki again, for god’s sake!
The early returns were pretty good on Liriano, as he gave up only an unearned run to tie the game in the bottom of the first when leadoff batter Alcides Escobar reached second on a rare throwing error by Darwin Barney, covering third tonight to give Josh Donaldson a break by DH-ing. Liriano made his only mistake of the inning to the rookie third baseman Cheslor Cuthbert, the next batter, who singled up the middle and sent Escobar around to third. The best possible outcome for a first and third with nobody out, of course, is a combination of strikeouts and popouts, barring an egregious TOOBLAN by the guy on third. (To refresh your memory, TOOBLAN is a term created by the more irreverent young analyticists to describe a baserunning mistake. It’s an acronym for “thrown out on the bases like a nincompoop”.
Liriano didn’t get that, but he got the next best thing, a classic 6-4-3 double play offered up by Lorenzo Cain which allowed Escobar to score and erased Cuthbert. Eric Hosmer grounded out to third, and Liriano escaped with only one unearned run, pitching in a tie game.
Gee settled down enough to get the side out in order in the second, and Liriano finished Kansas City off equally quickly, despite giving up a leadoff single to Salvador Perez. But in the third Gee made the mistake of walking Donaldson and Edwin Encarnacion after getting Bautista to line out to left. This brought Michael Saunders to the plate, and once again he showed his ability to go the other way by doubling to left, scoring Josh and sending Edwin to third. Tulo, thankfully unscathed after the first inning hit batsman, grounded out short to first . Edwin skillfully read the play and scored without a throw, giving the visitors a two-run lead on Gee, who hopefully learned the Kansas City pitchers’ playbook lesson number one: don’t walk Blue Jays!
In the fourth he got away with a leadoff walk that was immediately erased when Darwin Barney lined into an unassisted double play to Eric Hosmer at first. In the bottom of the fourth Liriano showed major signs of cracking, but still escaped the inning with the two-run lead intact. He was within a pitch of retiring the side in order when Kendrys Morales singled, on an 0-2 pitch, and then replicated the feat with Salvador Perez, before finally coaxing a foul fly to left out of Alex Gordon to end the inning.
By now completely settled, Gee breezed through the fifth and sixth, yielding only a leadoff single to Michael Saunders that went for nothing. Finishing his outing, Gee had retired nine of the last ten batters he faced, resulting in a line of six innings, 3 runs, 4 hits, 2 walks, and two strikeouts on 87 pitches, not a bad night’s work at all.
On the other hand, Liriano, who had started so strongly, wasn’t as lucky in the fifth as he had been in the fourth. He fell behind Paulo Orlando two and nothing leading off, and paid for it by giving up a homer to left, to cut the lead to one. He got the next two hitters, though going three and one on Raul Mondesi before inducing a comebacker for the first out. Then Alcides Escobar flew out to centre. But again, with two outs, he faltered and walked Cheslor Cuthbert on a three and one pitch, then gave up a triple to centre by Lorenzo Cain. Manager John Gibbons left Liriano in for the lefty matchup with Eric Hosmer, and it paid off, as he went down swinging.
At 72 pitches, there was no reason not to send Liriano back out for the sixth, and he survived his last inning with the tie intact, but followed a similar pattern, two outs, a walk, a hit, this time a stolen base thrown in, so that he had to retire Mondesi on a fly out to left with runners on second and third. But at 93 pitches and obviously flagging as each inning progressed, he was done for the night. He certainly pitched better than his recent outings for the Pirates, but he was also certainly not dominant, giving up two earned runs on seven hits with two walks and five strikeouts, and an alarming tendency to bunch baserunners and not finish off clean innings.
Following the pattern of the whole Houston series, the bullpens matched up pretty well for the seventh and eighth, and it looked like we could be headed for extra innings again. Scott Feldman and Brett Cecil retired the Royals in order, Cecil especially sharp, using only nine pitches to get two groundouts and a strikeout.
Funky-throwing Peter Moylan, who uses sort of a faux-sidearm that turns into an overhand motion (it sounds weird, you really have to see it), like Cecil only used 9 pitches and ended the seventh by fanning Jose Bautista. Joakim Soria survived a rocky eighth by fanning Russell Martin to strand singles by Josh Donaldson and Troy Tulowitzki.
With Kelvin Herrera, who’s taken over the Royals’ closer role from the injured Wad Davis, taking the top of the ninth, it looked good for the Royals to have a shot at a walk-off in the bottom. After Herrera struck out Melvin Upton on six pitches and got Darwin Barney to ground out to short on the first pitch, a walk-off shot looked even better, but Devon Travis rose to the occasion against a very tough relief pitcher and hit a near carbon copy of his first-inning shot into the left field seats to give the Jays a four-three lead. It was only the third homer given up by Herrera in 49.2 innings this year.
With Roberto Osuna off the list tonight to rest his arm, manager Gibbons called on the veteran Joakim Benoit for the save. Through no fault of his own, it was dicey indeed, but he finished it off in style, fanning Alcides Escobar to strand a Jarrod Dyson pinch-hit single at first. But in Dyson’s base hit, there lies a story.
After Alex Gordon flied out to left leading off, the speedy Paulo Orlando hit a routine grounder to Barney at third. Almost inconceivably, Barney threw the ball away again, as in the first inning, allowing Orlando to reach second. Already in scoring position with one out and the top of the order coming up, and a left-handed batter at the plate, Orlando bizarrely broke for third with the pitch. Russell Martin unloaded very quickly, but short-hopped the bag with his throw. Barney, though, made up for his throwing errors in spades with an outstanding catch and swipe-tag, scooping the ball to his left and swinging the glove around, and into Orlando’s feet as he reached for the bag. The Royals didn’t even appeal, a rarity in its own right these days. Then came the irony of Dyson, hitting for Raul Mondesi, hitting a soft line single to left that assuredly would have scored Orlando from second, with his blazing speed. But Orlando was on the bench pondering the mysteries of the world, yet another TOOBLAN chalked up for our guys. Are you listening, Jake Marisnick? Heartened by the turnaround in defensive support, Benoit proceeded to fan Alcides Escobar to secure his first save of the season, and his first save for the Blue Jays.
A very satisfying win it was for the Jays. Travis with his first and last inning heroics. Liriano paying the first dividend on the six-man rotation. The Jays’ bullpen once more keeping the game level. An alternative closer stepping up. The result, their fourth win in five starts, and their fourth close win in a row, a great contrast from their results earlier in the season. With the Orioles winning again tonight, the dead heat in the AL East continues, with the Red Sox lagging just off the pace. Tomorrow night it’s Aaron Sanchez on an extra day’s rest against left-handed Danny Duffy, who has finally become the starter the Royals have been waiting for.
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