Well, that didn’t turn out very well!
It looked like we should have had everything going for us tonight in Baltimore. First, there was momentum. We had won four straight, including the first game of this series, while Baltimore had lost four of their last six, including two big blowouts by the Yankees on the weekend in New York. Then, there were the starting pitchers, Jay Happ, who has been strong all season, going against Ubaldo Jimenez, who has barely been able to keep his spot in the Orioles’ rotation this year, and whose lunch the Jays ate big time earlier in the season. And then there was Josh Donaldson, who’d hit four homers in his last two games, and could be going on a tear that could carry the team on his back.
Even once the game got going and we realized that the pitching assumptions weren’t panning out, it still looked okay, because we had the formula, right? So, if Happ wasn’t at his best, as long as he held the Orioles fairly close we could strike back when a relatively sharp Jimenez started to tire, as long as it didn’t get too close to Brach/Britton time, which shows up on the baseball clock at about exactly the same as Grilli/Osuna time. And when Michael Saunders struck against Jimenez in the seventh to tie it up, didn’t we have our own dynamic duo all rested up after they layed out Monday night?
So, what could go wrong? Well, here’s what could go wrong. After the Saunders homer tied it up in the top of the seventh, the Happ/Joe Biagini combo shut the O’s down in the bottom of the inning, nullifying a Steve Pearce hit-batsman by Biagini. Brad Brach stranded a two-out single to centre by Donaldson in the top of the eighth, and this brought us to the home half, and Jason Grilli’s turn to do what he’s been doing, pitch his fifteenth runless inning in a row. Like Benoit the night before, he had to face the meat of the Baltimore order. Like Benoit the night before, he made short work of them, Mark Trumbo popping out in foul ground to Devon Travis, and Chris Davis fanning. But then, like he’s done before, Grilli lost a little concentration and walked Jonathan Schoop on a three-one count, bringing Matt Wieters to the plate. This was one batter more than Grilli needed to face. On his very first pitch, a fast ball on the inner half of the plate, Wieters got all of it, and deposited it among the delirious strollers on the terrace above the scoreboard in right.
The last thing you want to do is let the Orioles get a couple runs up on you in the bottom of the eighth, because you’ve only got three outs to get them back, and you have to go through Zach Britton to do it. So far this year, not a single team has done so; Britton has 39 saves in 39 save opportunities. Just in case you think this year is a one-off for Britton, his record for 2014-present is 112 saves out of 120 save opportunities. Many commentators are suggesting that Britton should be in the Cy Young conversation this year, and I think that’s a legitimate position. If he were to get it, it should be as much for his recent body of work as for what he’s done just this year.
Tonight it was no different for the Jays against Britton in the ninth inning. Oh, Darwin Barney hitting for Michael Saunders muscled a bloop single into centre, and even took second while the Baltimore infielders ignored him, but Britton did what he does, got three ground ball outs for that 39th consecutive save in 2016, and the Jays now had to look at Wednesday’s game for their first series win of the season at Camden Yards.
As much as I’ve already doomed Baltimore to drop out of the race, and as much as it might seem from their recent play that it is already happening, that doesn’t mean that it’s ever easy to go into Baltimore and win a game, let alone a series. After two games, the current series has shown nothing to dispel that fact of life. Anyone, like yer humble scribe, who expected last night’s efficient win, a good pitching performance by starter and bullpen combined with timely hitting, to set a pattern for the next two games is living in a fool’s paradise. (I know mine is a fool’s paradise, but it’s my own, and I like it here!)
So, Baltimore’s resorting to Ubaldo Jiminez tonight was a sign of hopeless desperation, was it? Well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. His first two innings suggested that he was teetering on the brink, and one hard-hit ball at the right time would push him over like a house of cards. He survived walking two of the first three hitters he faced in the first by getting Russell Martin to hit into a double play. In the second, after Troy Tulowitzki made the first out by lining hard to centre fielder Nolan Reimold, playing in the absence of injured perennial Blue Jay tormenter Adam Jones, Michael Saunders hit a double to right. Saunders owns Jimenez so completely that he makes him don a collar so he can take his pet pitcher for a walk when Jimenez is in town. Melvin Upton grounded out to third for the second out, but the plucky Kevin Pillar looped a single into centre to score Saunders with the game’s first run.
But the dismantling of Ubaldo Jimenez was not going to happen tonight. After Pillar’s RBI hit, Jimenez retired thirteen batters in a row, with only Pillar breaking the string with his second hit, a single to left with one out in the fifth, before being erased on a double-play ball to Devon Travis. Only in his last inning did a fading Jimenez get into trouble for the second time in the game, and it resulted in a tie game. Russell Martin led off the inning with a solid single to left. After Tulo flew out to centre, Michael Saunders came to the plate to face his favourite pitcher. Three-time Manager of the Year Buck Showalter, who resembles the Knight of the Gloomy Countenance, quixotically elected to allow his starter to pitch to Saunders when he could have gone to the bullpen for anyone who would have a better chance against Saunders. Of course Saunders took him out with a powerful shot to right, and the game was tied at three.
Though he let him get one more out, that was it for Jimenez. Showalter brought in Brad Brach to get the third out, which he did by fanning Pillar. Even Plucky Players like Pillar have to make an out some time. Though they didn’t know it, that was also it for the Jays’ offence. Brach stayed in for the eighth and gave up a meaningless two-out base hit to Donaldson, and then as noted Britton finished it off, giving up another meaningless two-out base hit to Barney in the ninth.
So though Jimenez didn’t get the win, it was largely through his efforts that the score was tied going into the bottom of the eighth, setting the stage for Wieter’s game-winning heroics.
Meanwhile, Jay Happ survived another scuffly sort of start, holding the Orioles to three runs in six and a third innings of work. The measure of Happ’s struggles tonight, minimal as they may have been, was that he walked two while striking out only three, and took 102 pitches to navigate through 19 outs. Though he allowed base runners in every inning but the sixth, plus retiring the only batter he faced in the seventh, the Orioles only got to him in their half of the fifth, when they finally cancelled the one-run lead created by Donaldson’s homer in the second, a lead that Happ had nursed ever since.
But in the fifth, after Reimold fouled out to Edwin Encarnacion to lead off, Steve Pearce, who owns Happ in much the same way that Saunders owns Jiminez, hit a shot over the fence in left to tie the game. Maybe Pearce and Saunders should get together when the O’s are in town and take their pet pitchers for a walk together! Following a walk to Pedro Alvarez, the second one Happ issued tonight, he had to face Mannie Machado, who had been relatively quiet in the series thus far. But beware a sleeping Machado, who woke up just long enough to hit a boomer into the Oriole’s bullpen in left for the 100th home run of his career, and a three-one Baltimore lead, which would hold until Saunders tied it in the seventh with his own two-run blast.
A gopher ball off Grilli in the eighth, Britton’s dominance in the ninth, and the series is tied at one apiece. Sanchez goes against Yovani Gallardo in the tie-breaker tomorrow night.
I never said they’d win them all, did I?
A note about today’s headline: The old journalistic principle is that “dog bites man” is not a story, but “man bites dog” is a story. I’ve been playing around with Jason Grilli’s name and his veteran status since he arrived, with such silliness as trying to decide if he’s the “grizzled Grilli” or the “grilled Grizzly”. So, it’s not a story if Jason Grilli barbecues a hot dog. But if the hot dog barbecues Grilli? That’s a story. And “Wiener Wieters”? A justifiable play on Matt Wieters’ name: any Baltimore player is just a wiener to Blue Jays’ fans, but especially one who beats them with a late-inning tater. So shoot me. I can take the pun-ishment.
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