Long Ball Stories

If the Blue Jays don’t make the playoffs this year, I’ll eat my Jose Bautista shirt.

However, just making the playoffs isn’t the goal. The goal is winning the division. Securing one of the two wild card spots in the playoffs can be a hollow victory, leaving nothing but ashes in the mouth. There is no doubt in my mind that baseball is the worst of all team sports for having to stake your all on a single game. Just throw out the form chart. Teams playing in a sudden-death wild card game are one hot pitcher away from seeing their season hopes go down the drain.

Based on their game-to-game experience, especially in the last two months, it’s easy to see why the Blue Jays are not the best candidates to win a sudden-death game. Even in the course of playing consistently good, winning baseball since the first of July, we can point to a number of games in which the Jays have fallen to a solid pitching performance, usually involving lots of strikeouts.

On the plus side, based on that same record since the first of July, if the Jays continue to play at their present pace, there should be no concerns about winning the AL East crown and avoiding the wild card game. Thus the extra benefit that accompanies a satisfying win like today’s solid nine-two victory over the Astros: the win gave the Jays another series win.

Since the first of July, the Jays have played twelve series and have won nine of them. They haven’t been swept in any of the three series losses, and their only sweep was the mini two-game series in Phoenix against the Diamondbacks. This steady if not spectacular trend has resulted in a record of 24 wins and 13 losses, a winning percentage of .649, high enough if maintained to make it very difficult for either Boston or Baltimore to squeeze past us in the division, especially since that means that our remaining series with those two teams would have been saw-offs, at worst. Maintaining that pace for the remaining 44 games would give us 96 wins, a formidable total in a very competitive horse race, and the key to maintaining that pace is to continue to win series at the same rate, giving us ten or eleven series wins in the fourteen series that remain.

The point, if I may repeat myself one last time, phrasing it a little differently, is that if you avoid extended losing streaks, you don’t need extended winning streaks to maintain an already good record, such as 67-51 after today’s game, and you can assure yourself of a division win, and maybe even a challenge for the home field playoff advantage, an extra perk that the Jays famously conceded to the Royals at the end of the regular season last year, which no doubt played a role in our loss to Kansas City in the ALCS.

The Blue Jays have the one ingredient essential to maintaining their pace to the end of the season, and if you don’t get that I’m talking about the starting rotation, then you haven’t been paying attention. When you have four starters who offer a well-better-than-even chance of securing a win, assuming effective support by the offence, it’s hard to imagine even a short losing streak, beyond a two-gamer, which can happen to anyone, even the Chicago Cubs.

And so it went today. Marcus Stroman pitched well enough to win. The bullpen didn’t allow a run over two and two thirds innings, and, encouraged by the solid pitching, the hitters kept us even in a tight game until the middle innings when they began to solve Astros’ starter Mike Fiers in the course of their third time through the batting order to pull away for a comfortable win.

Stroman put the Astros down in order in the top of the first, a major achievement against this team, with its very potent top end and a marked propensity for scoring runs early. But it was the Jays who broke on top in their half of the inning, as a two-out single by Troy Tulowtzki scored Devon Travis, who had led off the game with a double to left on the first pitch of the game.

In the Astros’ second, the only rocky inning suffered by Stroman, he had only himself to blame for the tying run coming across the plate. He started off in trouble, giving up a single to the fine-stroking shortstop Carlos Correa. Then he hit Marwin Gonzalez on the forearm with a pitch. Gonzalez stayed in the game to run the bases, but did not return to the field in the bottom of the second. He was replaced by the rookie Tyler White at first, a serious loss to the Houston offence.

Stroman looked to be pitching out of his own jam, getting A.J. Reed and Jason Castro to fly out to left. But then he came a-cropper with the speedy rookie Teoscar Hernandez at the plate. Hernandez hit an innocent little hopper between Stroman and Josh Donaldson. Stroman was on it quickly, but tried a Tulo-style leaping turn-and-throw, except that he threw the ball down the right field line. This lapse in judgement allowed Correa to come around and score from first, and put Gonzalez on third and Hernandez on second. It was clear that because of where the ball was hit and Hernandez’ speed, Stroman only had two reasonable choices: to plant properly and throw accurately and maybe get the hitter for the third out, or, more likely, to eat the ball, loading the bases with two outs and keeping Correa on third. In either case, Tony Kemp’s fly ball to left would have ended the threat without a run being scored.

But, like a struggling teenager trying to find his way, Stroman made a bad choice, and paid for it by giving the Astros an unearned run to tie the game.

Each pitcher stranded base-runners in the third, Stroman pitching over a fielding error by Donaldson at third and a two-out single by Correa. Fiers stranded Edwin Encarnacion at first. Edwin had reached on a scary hit batsman which hit his hand, one of those incidents that so often leads to broken bones. In this case, after being checked out, Edwin stayed in the game, and showed later that whatever the pitch did to his hand, it didn’t hinder his ability to mash the ball.

Stroman breezed in the top of the fourth, but Fiers was immediately in trouble, giving up an infield hit to Tulo, who was in the middle of every Jay rising today, and then walking Russell Martin to put runners on first and second with nobody out. Fiers bore down on the bottom of the Jays’ order, fanning Justin Smoak and catching Melvin Upton looking, but once again our side came through with a run-scoring single with two outs, this time from an unlikely source, ninth hitter Darryl Ceciliani, and the Jays were back on top two to one.

Showing a killer instinct that we haven’t seen very much from him this year, Stroman mowed the Astros down again in the fifth, catching both Tony Kemp and Alex Bregman looking at called third strikes. He left the mound on a string of seven consecutive outs,

hoping that sooner or later his mates would give him a bit of breathing space. And they did, amazingly pounding out three runs again after two were out. That must be some sort of record for the 2016 Jays, five runs batted in in five innings, all with two outs. Josh Donaldson grounded to third to lead off. Edwin Encarnacion doubled to left centre, but really had to hustle to beat a quick recovery by the rookie Hernandez in centre. Michael Saunders popped out to Alex Bregman in foul territory for the second out. That brought Tulo to the plate again, and this was really his night to stir the pot. He lined a three-one pitch over the wall in left centre, and the Jays had a 4-1 lead.

Manager A.J. Hinch let Fiers go one more batter, and that was a mistake. Russell Martin, continuing to rise to the occasion in August, went back-to-back with Tulo to right centre, the score was 5-1, and Fiers was done. Tony Sipp came on to get Justin Smoak to line out to Springer on the second pitch for the third out. Considering that three of the runs and two of the hits he gave up were to the last two batters he faced, Fiers line wasn’t all that bad, four and two thirds innings, five runs, seven hits, two walks, seven strikeouts, and 91 pitches. Until Tulo and Martin turned on him, in fact, his outing was every bit the equal of Stroman’s. Maybe they should consider an 85-pitch limit for him.

Helped by Donaldson’s great pick of a ground ball by Altuve leading off, Stroman continued to roll in the sixth, as he struck out A.J. Reed and Tyler White to end the inning, stranding another Carlos Correa base hit in the process. Tony Sipp and Jandel Gustave combined to keep the Jays off the board in their half of the sixth, as Sipp gave up a leadoff single to Melvin Upton, and then promptly picked him off. Ceciliani retired himself on a comebacker to the mound, and Grandel came in to get Devon Travis to fly out to right.

Stroman hit the wall in the seventh, and was unable to reach the new gold standard for starting pitchers, going a full seven. Isn’t it something that the complete game has virtually disappeared in a matter of only twenty years or so? With all the top pitchers in franchise history out today for the pitchers’ do of the fortieth anniversary of the Jays, I heard one nugget that I had to track down: Dave Stieb, who started 412 games in his major league career, completed 103 of them. Incredibly, in 1982, he completed 19 of his 38 starts.

Jason Castro jumped on the second pitch of the inning from Stroman and blasted it over the fence in centre. Perhaps because Joaquin Benoit wasn’t quite ready, Manager John Gibbons let his starter go one more hitter, and Teosca Hernandez flew out to right. So the line for Marcus Stroman was six and a third innings, one earned run (and his own error leading to the second, unearned run), five hits, no walks, eight strikeouts, and 94 pitches.

Benoit came on to offer an Oscar-worthy performance of skating on thin ice without falling through. It was fun, but scary. Tony Kemp singled to centre on the first pitch. George Springer singled to left on the first pitch. Time to summon Russell Martin for a little more of his pennant-race magic. On his first pitch, Alex Bregman lofted a foul ball that was clearly destined to land in the Astros’ dugout. Except that Martin raced over, vaulted his torso over the bar on top of the protective fence in front of the dugout, and stretched his glove to snag the ball. Somehow, as he finished the play, his body rolled over, and he ended up with his back sprawled across the bar. He looked like Dick Fosbury, the inventor of the back-leading high jump technique that came to be known as the Fosbury Flop. But he held on to the ball for the out. Three pitches, two base hits, and a spectacular out. Benoit decided to take his time with the redoubtable Jose Altuve and throw two strikes before Altuve absolutely crushed a line drive right at Josh Donaldson for the third out. Just another day at the office for the veteran Benoit.

Luke Gregerson pitched a solid seventh for the Astros, except that he would like a do-over on the eighth pitch he threw to Edwin Encarnacion that somehow found its way out of the park for number 301 for Edwin, and a 6-2 Blue Jays’ lead.

After the Benoit thrill ride, the Astros never saw another base runner. Jason Grilli retired the side in order in the eighth, saving his strikeout for the third out, so that we could enjoy his famous signature fist pump. When the Jays extended their lead in the bottom of the eighth, the game was beyond the job description of closer Roberto Osuna, and Brett Cecil looked good shutting Houston down in the ninth on nine pitches, with a ground out and two strike outs.

There were three things to note about the Jays’ three-run rally in the bottom of the eighth that extended their lead to 9-2. First, it meant that the Jays could use a mop-up man to finish off the game, rather than one of their high-leverage, late-inning pitchers. Not that Brett Cecil is a throwaway these days, but he needed the work so he got the call. The second thing was that they got to Houston’s closer Michael Feliz for the first time, after he had dominated them in earlier meetings. The third thing was that they scratched away for the runs, which is not their usual style. Melvin Upton drove in a run with an ordinary ground ball single to left. Josh Donaldson worked a bases-loaded walk, and Edwin Encarnacion delivered Upton with that rarest of rare BJ birds, a sacrifice fly.

A good win all the way around. We stay in front of the pack by a hair; as long as we lead the way, we can’t lose the division. Tomorrow it’s off to New York and the new look Yankees. No A-Rod. No Chapman. No Miller. No Beltran. Who are these guys?