A palpable gloom had settled over Blue Jays Land when the heavens burst in New York tonight. Since arriving in the Bronx for this series with the made-over Yankees, the teams had played sixteen and a half innings. The Yankees had scored six runs in total. The Blue Jays had scored none. What’s more, they’d barely even threatened. In two innings Monday night they had two runners on. Tonight they had two runners on in the fourth inning. That’s it.
The hitting woes the Jays have experienced on a regular basis this year have been akin to the typical behaviour of someone suffering from bipolar disorder. Periods of optimism and hope would build. Oh, they scored nine tonight—the slump’s finally over. Oh, yeah, they’re not hitting all that well yet, but look at the pitching—who needs a ton of runs? Hey, who cares if they strike out a lot—it’s just another out; they won, didn’t they? Then the black dog of depression, as Winston Churchill famously termed it, would rise up, the strikeouts would get even more profuse, the run production would dry up completely, and gloom would return once again to the land.
The very worst moment of this latest, most pervasive, batting slump came as the players were heading for cover in the dugout and the tarp was being rolled out onto the field. Buck Martinez cruelly reminded us that, as the Yankees were leading and the Jays had batted in the top of the fifth, the game was official: if the rain didn’t stop so the game could resume, it would go into the books as a four and a half inning 5-0 Yankee shutout. Not only would we not win a sixth straight series, we would go into the third game of the series on Wednesday still looking for our first run in the Bronx.
Even when he’s throwing the ball well, as he was last night, Michael Pineda has always struck me as being rather vulnerable when he’s on the mound. He fusses. He nibbles. He labours. His pitch count rises. He might go five and two thirds, but hardly ever seven. In short, I’m heartily glad that he pitches for the Yankees, and not for the Blue Jays.
Nevertheless, for five innings tonight he was more than good enough to keep the Jays off the board. Though he gave up four base hits there never seemed to be much of a threat of the Jays cashing in on any of them. Only in the fourth did Toronto get two base hits in the same inning, singles by Edwin Encarnacion and Troy Tulowitzki, the latter coming after two were out, which only moved Edwin to second. The inning popped like a defective balloon when Russell Martin, whose playoff instincts had started to wake him up like a firehouse dog leaping to his feet when the alarm goes off, jumped at the first pitch he saw from Pineda and grounded weakly into a fielder’s choice at second. As the sky darkened in the top of the fifth and the Blue Jays’ faithful fervently prayed for rain, now! Pineda dispatched the visitors on just five pitches, erasing an infield hit by Melvin Upton with a quick double play turned on Upton and Zeke Carrera.
In the meantime, Marco Estrada pitched well enough for the Jays through the first four innings. Oh, it’s true that he yielded solo homers to Didi Gregorius in the first (shockingly, right after Estrada had fanned the first two Yankee batters of the game),
and to rookie catcher Gary Sanchez in the second, also with two outs. These things are par for the course for Estrada, and as long as he limits the damage to two runs, it’s not an insurmountable problem for the Jays’ hitters to fix. Sometimes.
But after Pineda had stifled any thoughts of a rally in the top of the fourth, things got way worse for Estrada, and for his team. As the skies darkened and the air got heavier in the bottom of the fourth, Estrada once again failed to nail down the clean inning. With two outs, second baseman Starlin Castro singled to right, followed by another single to right by designated hitter Brian McCann. This brought Sanchez back to the plate. The very Sanchez who had hit the third home run of his short major league career in his 44th at bat off Estrada in the second inning. This time Estrada didn’t give up “just a solo homer”, but a three-run blast that upped the Yankees lead to 5-0.
After Pineda had qualified himself and his team for the win in the fifth, and the rains started to pour down in sheets, he and the Yankees would have wanted either of two optimal outcomes from this rain delay. First, of course, that it ended the game, in an easy New York win. Or, secondly, they could hope for a delay short enough to allow Pineda to return to the mound. This scenario didn’t look very likely as the rain slanted across the field, and by the time play resumed forty-two minutes later, both starting pitchers had been removed from the game.
Manager John Gibbons must have felt some trepidation handing the ball over to Scott Feldman for the bottom of the fifth. The right-hander acquired from Houston at the trade deadline was the obvious choice for the role, since both of the Jays’ projected long men out of the bullpen, Gavin Floyd and Jesse Chavez, have departed the scene. Yet the veteran Feldman has had some rough outings since joining the team, and there’s been some concern as to whether or not he would regain the form he had shown in the past.
Though he did give up a run in the fifth on yet another two-out uprising, a Chase Headley double followed by a Didi Gregorius single, he went on to do what a middle man is expected to do: stop the bleeding. In the next two innings he gave up only an infield single to Sanchez, who showed he can go short as well as long, while striking out five Yankee batters.
Meanwhile, though we don’t know exactly what went on in the Jays’ clubhouse during the rain delay, and the players claim that it was nothing special, a miraculous transformation had taken place in the Blue Jays’ bats: they suddenly seemed full of hits, big hits, long hits, hits that touched green where before they touched leather.
As we watched the revival of our team’s fortunes over the next four innings, it would not have been inappropriate to recall the words of explorer Howard Carter, as he first trained his flashlight on the contents of King Tut’s tomb in 1922: “I see wonderful things!”
When the Yankees divested themselves of Aroldis Chapman and Anthony Miller while they had significant bargaining value, they realized of course that this would have a short-term effect on the bullpen. While Chapman, Miller, and Dellin Betances, who remains with the team, were not normally utilized before the seventh inning, their presence meant that if a Yankee starter had to give it up a bit early, say, after five innings, they would normally only need one effective appearance to get to the big guys. Now, the whole stretch from starter to closer can be an adventure. Manager Joe Girardi chose Anthony Swarzak to take over for Pineda after the rain delay, and it did not turn out well for the Bombers.
Anthony Swarzak is a 30-year-old right-hander who’s been around a bit, and may be typical of the kinds of pitchers the Yankees will be looking to in order to find some fresh, live arms for their depleted bullpen. It was telling, for example, that they scooped up the lefty Tommy Layne as soon as he was released by the Red Sox. Swarzak was drafted by the Twins, spent about six years with them, and experienced some periods of success at the major league level with them. But the Twins released him in the off-season of 2014, and he signed a minor-league contract with the Indians but was released in June of 2015 . He spent the rest of last season in the Korean League, and the Yankees signed him to a minor-league contract in January of this year. He was called up from Scranton/Wilkes-Barre in early June, and had been used sparingly, but would be expected to see more duty now that the makeover of the Yankee bullpen is under way.
Though Swarzak was unable to maintain Pineda’s dominance over the Jays, and was the first unfortunate to come into the line of fire of the restive Jays’ hitters, he didn’t really deserve his fate. Sure, Devon Travis led off with a double to left. But after that it could have gone better for Swarzak. Josh Donaldson hit a slow roller to third that Chase Headley should have eaten, but he got all heroic on it and heaved the ball miles wide of Mark Texeira at first. Travis scored on the errant throw, and Josh ended up on second. But then Warzak buckled down and caught Edwin Encarnacion looking, then fanned Michael Saunders, who is now racking up Ks at an alarming rate. He was almost home free, with only Troy Tulowitzki to get for the third out. Yeah, well. Tulo swung at an outside pitch and lofted what looked like an ordinary fly ball to right, until it carried, and carried, and cleared the fence for two more runs. The lead still three runs, with two outs and nobody on, Girardi elected to stay with Swarzak to finish off the inning. But Russell Martin finished him off with his second back-to-back following Tulo in three games. You know that Martin is swinging well when he reaches his special place, the centre-field fence. No puny down-the-line jobs for our Russell!
Girardi called in the afore-mentioned Tommy Layne to match up with left-handed-hitting Darryl Ceciliani, and the latter flied out to centre, leaving the Jays two runs behind, and the Yankee fans curiously restless.
After Scott Feldman’s middle inning of keep-it-close work, Girardi turned to Tyler Clippard for the seventh inning, and he set the Jays down in order. I guess it’s a measure of the uncertain nature of the Yankee bullpen that the answer to the question of why he didn’t come in with Clippard right after Pineda, is that Clippard’s for later, and Girardi woudn’t ask him to go two innings when he might need him again tomorrow.
After Feldman finished up his stint in the bottom of the seventh, having turned in three innings of work that were certainly deserving of a win if a win should be on offer,
the Jays returned to the plate to face Adam Warren, who was effective last night in relief of Green, and who is expected to take on a late-inning role with the Yankees now. Although that might require a rethink based on his performance tonight. After five batters, the Jays were in the lead, Warren had given up two home runs, and retired just one batter. Credit must be given to Josh Donaldson for starting things off by working Warren for a 12 pitch walk that must have discombobulated the Yankee reliever, because Encarnacion flayed his second pitch, hitting it out to left in about a milli-second, his 34th this season and the 302nd of his career, to tie the game. Warren got his only out as Saunders popped out to second before Tulo and Martin teamed up again to put the Jays into an unlikely 8-6 lead from which they were never headed. Tulo singled to left, and Martin, eyeing the short porch, hit another one out to finish off Warren and, effectively, the Yankees on the night.
With two of the next three Jays’ hitters left-handed, Girardi called on the lefty Chasen Shreve who came in carrying a great big can of gasoline instead of a fire hose. And with one out and nobody on, he had only himself to blame. He hit the left-handed Ceciliani. He walked the right-handed Melvin Upton. He gave up a single to the left-handed Zeke Carrera to load the bases. All his, mind you. He gave up a one-run single to Devon Travis, bases still loaded. 9-6. He walked Josh Donaldson to force in Upton, leaving the sacks loaded for Edwin. 10-6. That was it for Shreve. There’s nothing sadder for a pitcher in the box score than to have the line “Shreve pitched to 5 batters in the eight”, which means he didn’t get an out. I feel sorry enough for him that I won’t make a joke about Chasen/chastened as I had planned.
Blake Parker, a 31-year-old right-hander whom the Yankees acquired from Seattle this year, came in to pitch still with only the one out and surrounded by Shreve’s mess. He only gave up one hit while retiring the Jays, but he still allowed two more of Shreve’s runners to score, Zeke Carrera on a ball hit to second by Encarnation for a fielder’s choice, and then Travis who scored on Michael Saunders’ double to right that completed the scoring for the day. We went to the bottom of the eighth with a 12-6 lead, and a magical eight runs in the eighth. Good thing it’s not like golf, where an eight is never good (the dreaded snowman!)
Jason Grilli had already been up throwing when the Jays came to bat in the eighth with only a two-run lead, so Gibbons decided it was best to use him since he was already hot, and might not be able to warm up again for tomorrow’s day game. The grizzled Grilli (or is it the grilled Grizzly? I can never remember . . .) added another impressive inning to his record, fanning two and retiring the Yankees on eleven pitches.
There wasn’t a whole lot of appetite for more drama as the game ended quietly in the ninth. Parker showed that he could manage well without inheriting the bases loaded, stranding a two-out Upton single and striking out two. Ryan Tepera, now that he’s had a chance to unpack his overnight bag from Buffalo for once, is becoming quite proficient at the mop-up for the Jays, retiring the side in order and fanning Aaron Judge for a few extra style points to end the game.
At the end of a season, you can always look back and pick out a few games that had special significance to the course of the season, and a few games that were just amazing in one way or another. Tonight’s comeback win after the rain delay is one that we’ll remember for both reasons. As the teams left the field and the tarp came out, it looked for all intents and purposes like Toronto’s streak of series wins, the cornerstone of their good record and position in the standings, was about to end, and in a most feeble sort of way. The comeback win opened back up the possibility of taking this series against the Yankees, which would be a sixth series win in a row. Of course, we’ll also remember it for its Jeckyl-and-Hyde, before-and-after, schizophrenic scenario, one that we may not see the like of again for years.
We’re off to Cleveland after a nice day off, ready to extend the series streak and keep our hold on the division. Wild-card spot, begone!
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