In some ways the community of professional baseball pitchers resembles a confraternity of monks. Like monks, they preserve arcane knowledge about their craft and share it among their confreres. Like monks, they pass it on to younger adherents who are deemed worthy of receiving the knowledge, that is to say, they’ve made the pitching staff of a major league baseball team. Like monks, they lead a disciplined lifestyle centred around a daily routine that must be adhered to if they hope to achieve the double nirvana of an ERA below 3.00 and a WHIP below 1.1.
And like monks, the old masters and the young disciples both have their roles to play in contributing to the cause, in this case the cause of inscribing a “W” in the ledger of their team’s season.
Tonight, one of the oldest of the old masters, R.A. Dickey, was given the start for the Blue Jays in the second game of their four-game set with the Houston Astros at the Orange Juice Bowl, Texas branch. Presumably, we all know the details of Dickey’s years-long slog through the margins of professional baseball while he first came to grips with the fact that he had little future as a mediocre “normal” pitcher, realized that he had a knack for the knuckleball, and then spent five more years developing it to the point where he could (mostly) depend on it. All told, it took Dickey fourteen years of wandering in the wilderness between being drafted by the Tigers in 1996, and his breakout year as a quality starting pitcher with the Mets in 2010.
There is something mythic about Dickey’s story, which is why one of his starts lends itself to philosophical reflections on the nature of the game and its players, such as my opening comparison of pitchers to members of a monastic order. His personality also contributes to the story-making qualities he brings to the game. He is the wise and grizzled elder statesman, who’s seen it all, done it all, achieved the heights, and plumbed the depths. He is the most approachable of stars, who never makes an excuse and never lays blame. As much as I dislike the phrase, R.A. Dickey is the epitome of “it is what it is”.
Be that as it may, R.A. Dickey is holding down an important spot in the starting rotation of a team that has serious aspirations of post-season glory, and he is well-paid to do what he does, so as we all know here in Toronto, the citadel of the second-guesser, he is under intense scrutiny, not to mention intense pressure, every time he takes the mound.
And never more so than tonight, when Manager John Gibbons handed him the game ball and told him, in effect, “Here, this is yours. Hang on to it for as long as you can, and then a little longer. And, by the way, if you can keep us close, that would be good too.”
To be fair to Gibbie, the team, especially its pitching staff, was in dire straits, and Dickey would have known better than anyone how important it was for him to go deep and to pitch well. Not only had the team lost its last two games, thereby slipping back from Saturday night’s temporary occupation of first place, but the two games had put a tremendous strain on the Blue Jays’ pitching staff. Twelve innings on Sunday afternoon and fourteen more on Monday night had required the participation of nine different pitchers, three of whom pitched in both games. You will recall that last night Dickey had even dispatched himself to the bullpen in case he was needed, at the possible expense of tonight’s start. Had the two starters, Aaron Sanchez and Marcus Stroman, not thrown seven innings each, it would have been even worse. Even with reinforcements from Buffalo on hand for tonight’s game, the number of available arms was pitifully small.
So R.A. Dickey accepted his assignment, took the ball, and threw the hell out of it. Not like Aaron Sanchez, of course, but in his own inscrutable, unflappable, R.A. Dickey sort of way. On a night when Dickey was pitching against two young bucks for Houston, whose combined age of 45 is only four more than Dickey’s forty-one, he had to keep the Astros off the board, because the Blue Jays weren’t exactly chewing up the opposition. And for six innings he did, before finally giving up a two-out run-scoring single in the seventh inning, his last. Dickey’s line tonight was 7 innings, one earned run, six hits, no walks, and five strikeouts, on 107 pitches. Besides the fact that he didn’t walk anyone, the most notable stats for Dickey were zero wild pitches, zero passed balls, and zero home runs. Any time R.A. Dickey chalks up goose eggs in those three categories, you can bet you’re still in the ball game.
I said that this wasn’t a Sanchez-type performance, but it was more like Sanchez than it was like Dickey (leaving aside, of course, the 20 mph average difference in velocity between the two pitchers). After Jose Altuve pulled a dirty trick on him with two outs in the first by bunting away from the shift for a base hit (has he no shame, do that to an old guy like Dickey?), and Carlos Correa singled to right to send Altuve to third, Colby Rasmus ended the inning by grounding out to Edwin Encarnacion at first.
Apart from the seventh, that was the only time the Astros had two runners on base at the same time. Dickey stranded a single by Correa in the fourth, and Altuve in the sixth (do those two guys get all the hits for the Astros?), and that was it. In the seventh, though, he did give up one hard hit ball to Carlos Gomez, a double to left with one out. After striking out the rookie A.J. Reed, he gave up a single to Evan Gattis, his first hit in the series, which scored the Astros’ only run.
What I haven’t mentioned yet, is that Dickey departed with a 2-1 lead, as the knuckleballer had nursed a two-run lead from the fourth. The advantage for the Jays stemmed from the fine distinction between our hitters and theirs in directional hitting, that took advantage of the curious layout of the Astros’ home park. Lance McCullers, who started for Houston, gave up only two deep drives on the night. Unfortunately for him, both Jose Bautista in the third and Edwin Encarnacion in the fourth managed to get around quickly enough to pull hard drives to left, which cleared the very short left field wall. Houston only hit two balls with potential as well, but Gomez’ double in the seventh never had the elevation to go out, and Colby Rasmus’ very deep fly to centre in the fourth was unfortunately sent to the wrong part of the ball park, Houston’s place where home runs go to die.
Other than the two four-baggers off McCullers, the Astros’ young pitchers kept the Jays from threatening further damage the entire night. I don’t know who their guru is, but they seem to be learning their craft very well indeed. When McCullers had to leave the game with two outs in the fifth because of forearm tightness, he had only given up the two runs on seven hits, with one walk and five strikeouts. With his early departure, the Jays’ hitters must have been salivating at the prospect of facing Joe Musgrove, a Toronto draftee who found himself in the Houston organization as part of the package the Jays gave up to acquire Jay Happ, the first time around. It would be his major league debut, and after having been stifled for fourteen innings the night before, and needing to pad Dickey’s lead if they could, it looked like time to break out of the chains imposed by the Houston staff.
However, unbeknownst to them, they were about to be Devenskied again, for the second night in a row. Oh, Musgrove wasn’t perfect like Chris Devenski, and he didn’t strike out seven batters in a row like Devenski, but he did give up only one hit and one walk over four and a third innings, and though they were not consecutive, he struck out not seven, but eight Blue Jays’ hitters, not to mention retiring the first ten major league batters he faced. The eight strikeouts set a rather arcane record for the Houston franchise: it was the most strikeouts by a relief pitcher in his major league debut.
As we mentioned at the outset, Manager John Gibbons’ choices to follow Dickey were extremely limited. He took the risk of sending callup Danny Barnes out to fill the setup role in the bottom of the eighth in his major league debut. With the carnage wreaked on both bullpens by the fourteen innings played the night before, it just seemed like the kind of night when rookies would get a chance to shine. The 26-year-old Barnes was being asked to protect the precarious one-run lead while negotiating the top of the Houston order.
Barnes came through with flying colours. George Springer popped up to shortstop, Alex Bregman fanned for Barnes’ first major league strikeout, then Jose Altuve lined a sharp single to left. Welcome to the show, Danny! But Barnes ended the inning with his second strikeout, fanning the cleanup hitter, Carlos Correa. For Barnes it was mission accomplished, on seventeen pitches, twelve for strikes, and the Jays still clung to the lead.
After the Jays put their first two runners on base against Musgrove in the ninth, but failed to create a cushion for themselves, it was time for Jason Grilli to come in for the save, standing in for the over-worked Roberto Osuna. He finishes in a breeze: grounder to short, strikeout, grounder to short.
So we trade two-one wins with the Astros, but it’s nice to win this one with a whole-game closeout, especially when we’re not hitting and striking out a lot.
To go back to my beginning, it was one old master for the win, and another old master, the 39-year-old Grilli, for the save, with Danny Barnes in between making a great bridge between the two. Call it a rookie sandwich, Barnes the meat between two wrinkled, grizzled old veterans. I hope the masters invited the young disciple to break fast with them after the game: perhaps some rusks, a sip of coconut water, and enlightening discourse about the zen of the strike zone. The young adherent has made a good start. May he progress well under the guidance of the old masters.
Tonight we broke an eight-game losing streak. Estrada gets the ball tomorrow night: will he guarantee us the split? Will the Blue Jays strike out less than ten times? Will we score a run in some way other than a solo home run? If we win, does it matter how? Sorry, Grantland Rice, but this is pro ball, and it doesn’t. The One Great Scorer has taken a powder, and the bottom line is the only line.
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