I started yesterday’s report on Toronto’s lovely and relaxing 8-2 win over the Angels (ah, how we long for the good old days!) with a silly riff on all of the demons that the Blue Jays needed to exorcize when they got back home for these six games with two basement-dwelling teams. The gist of it was that the mission had been accomplished, demons exorcized, and the angels of goodness had prevailed over the demons, even if the Angels of Anaheim had not.
Well, guess what? They’re ba-a-a-a-ck! Well, some of them, anyway. Okay, one of them: the home team didn’t hit for stink against Los Angeles right-hander Will Shoemaker, in fact hardly hit at all, until after Shoemaker was long gone, and so was the game.
Marco Estrada was the centre of post-game conversation after another less than Marco-ish performance. Estrada, in fact, hasn’t really pitched well since “recovering” from his back strain suffered before the All-Star break. All of the conversation tonight centred around the team’s temporary six-man starting rotation, the extra rest and change in routine that it creates, and whether Estrada in particular was being affected negatively by the new system. Tonight, for example, he had a total of three days of extra rest, since the team has had two off days since his last start. Manager John Gibbons, showing signs of late-season playoff-race stress, probably not for the last time this year, had little patience for questions about Estrada and the rotation.
I won’t spend any more time on it either, because I would like to raise two other possibilities, the first being that Estrada’s back is still bothering him enough to affect his usually uncanny pin-point control. And, by the way, is it just me or did home plate umpire Chad Whitson establish a strike zone little bigger than a postage stamp for both teams? Until someone tells us otherwise, we have to assume that Estrada’s back is all right, but the question lingers as long as there is only silence on the subject emanating from the clubhouse.
The other possibility is that other than being a bit wilder than usual (see comment about strike zone above), maybe Marco Estrada got beat tonight by a combination of bad luck for him and good luck for the hitters. The more I think back on the first couple of innings, the more frustrated I am about how the Angels built their lead.
In the first, Kole Calhoun lofted a lazy high ball to right that Michael Saunders settled under, and then started to scramble back for, as he realized how much more the ball was carrying than he had judged. Luckily he finally got under it near the wall. This was not necessarily an omen of anything. Estrada throws a lot of fly balls. As long as they stay in the park . . . Next off the tee at Glen Abbey were the twosome of Mike Trout and Albert Pujols. Mike Trout stepped up to the tee, er, plate, swung at a ball down around his ankles, and golfed it out of the park. Pujols, impressed with the success of Trout’s stroke, borrowed Trout’s three-iron, and duplicated the shot. Seriously, no self-respecting hitter should ever have swung at either of those pitches. If I were Estrada, I would probably have packed it in right then. I mean, what’s the point? Estrada then sandwiched strikeouts of C.J. Cron and Nick Buss around a two-out single by Andrelton Simmons.
By the way, Pujols’ homer was career number 584 for him, as he passed Mark McGwire to move into tenth place on the all-time career home run list. If you pass a hitter with a big fat asterisk next to his name, do you get an asterisk too? How about a gold star, because you passed him without doping?
Come the second inning, and Angels’ backup catcher Jett Bandy led off. (No, Bandy’s not a candidate for my Great Baseball Names All-Star Team; his name isn’t great, just weird.) He took a defensive swing at an inside pitch, hit the ball well down from the sweet spot so that it made a sound like whacking an over-ripe watermelon, and lifted it over the infield to left for a bloop single. Bandy then advnanced to second on a grounder to Darwin Barney by Kaleb Cowart on which Barney had zero chance to get the lead runner. Estrada then walked Cliff Pennington, which is a good thing and a bad thing. Good, because it set up the double play. Bad, because you don’t want to walk the number nine hitter. Ever. Kole Calhoun hit a double down the right field line, the only ball hit with authority in the whole mess of an inning. Bandy scored and Pennington stopped at third. The Jays decided to walk Trout to pitch to Pujols, a decent idea, since Pujols is brutally slow out of the batter’s box, and an obvious candidate for a double play. But Pujols got most of one and hit a fairly deep sacrifice fly to centre that scored Pennington and moved Calhoun to third. Fair enough, and better than a grand slam. Now it’s four-nothing. Unfortunately, C.J. Cron lofted another bloop single to right to score Calhoun and the Angels had a five-run jump start before the Jays had even hit twice.
Two golf shots in the first. Three runs on a decent double, a legit sac fly, and two sorry little bloopers, and Estrada was basically done, at 52 pitches over two innings, and all there was for him to do was carry on manfully and eat some innings to save the bullpen, which he did with dignity and grace, which is more than I can say I would have been able to do in the circumstances.
Oh yeah, he did give up a sixth run in the fourth inning. Get this: with one out Calhoun walked. Trout bounced one to third that kicked into foul territory as it crossed the bag. Donaldson got to it with a good stab, but his throw with momentum carrying him away from first base had no chance to get the speedy Trout. That was okay, though, because Pujols lofted an easy fly ball to left for the second out. Um, no. Melvin Upton lost it in the lights and it fell in front of him for another bloop single to load the bases, bringing up the cleanup hitter C.J. Cron. Cron knocked in the sixth run against Estrada with a mighty grounder into a force out. Sheesh. 6-0, but Estrada gamely went out and retired the side in the fifth to save another inning for the bullpen. Estrada’s line for the night was five innings, six runs, four real hits, two three-irons, 3 bloopers, and an infield hit (the partridge in the pear tree didn’t make it in from Fresno on time for the game), three walks, four strikeouts, and 94 pitches.
The other side of the coin in any loss is the offence; even if the Angels did squeeze out six runs against Estrada in five innings, there are still games when both teams score a ton of runs, and you can win even if your starter gets rocked. As I said in my introduction, this was not one of those games, as the Hitting Slump Demon managed to escape from its hidey-hole and bedevil the Jays’ hitters once again. Matt Shoemaker pitched very well, don’t get me wrong, you have to have pitched well when you come out of the game with a line of six innings, no runs, three hits, one walk, three strikeouts, and 99 pitches.
But Shoemaker’s stock-in-trade is a split-finger fast ball that sinks like it’s wearing cement booties. The Jays’ hitters just couldn’t pick up the spin and lay off it. He only struck out three, to be sure, but generated just enough ground balls, seven, to get him out of a couple of minimal threats. He only allowed base-runners in three of his six innings, a two-out double to Michael Saunders in the second, a two-out single to Edwin Encarnacion in the sixth, and he let the two leadoff hitters on in the fourth before snuffing out the only encouraging sign of a rising against him. Josh Donaldson singled to right and Edwin walked, followed by the most exciting moment of the night for the Jays, when Russell Martin hit one hard to right, that looked off the bat like it might go. But it stayed in the park for Kole Calhoun, and the only result was Donaldson moving up to third on the catch. But Troy Tulowitzki failed to cash the runner-on-third-one-out situation, going down swinging. Saunders flew out to centre, and that was it.
After Estrada went out, Scott Feldman came in for an inning and a third, after throwing fourteen pitches in the ninth the night before, Aaron Loup followed him with an inning and two thirds, and Brett Cecil finished off the ninth, striking out two but giving up a single to Calhoun.
Jose Valdez, J.C. Ramirez, and Deolis Guerra succeeded Shoemaker on the mound for the Angels, pitching an inning each.
Feldman and Loup each gave up a run, as did Ramirez and Guerra, so the bullpens pitched to a standoff, leaving the game tied, if we could just disregard the Angels’ first six runs off Estrada.
From the Jays’ standpoint, one good thing that came out of the game is that by using Feldman again and Loup, the bullpen mainstays, BenGriNa and Joe Biagini, remain fresh for tomorrow night, and Cecil, having thrown only 12 pitches, would be available for spot duty, though not, please god, against any solidly-built right-handed hitters.
A soaring Jay Happ faces off against a faltering Jared Weaver in tomorrow night’s rubber match. If Happ can’t lead us to a series win against the Angels, we may be in deeper trouble for the moment than I would like to think.
A special thank you goes out to Boston reliever Heath Hembree, who with two outs in the eleventh inning tonight not only dropped the ball at first base to allow Kevin Kiermaier an infield hit, but also threw the ball in the dirt to the plate, allowing Luke Maile to score the winning run for Tampa Bay over the Red Sox. It’s good to know that other contending teams suffer from the whims of capricious fate as well.
Baltimore barely survived a furious Washington rally from a 10-3 deficit to hold off the Nats 10-8, so the Sox and the Jays are still tied, with Baltimore only one game behind.
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