Long Ball Stories

On one hand, it was a good thing the Blue Jays had a day off to lick their wounds and hit the batting cage to try to shake off the Tampa Torpor that hit them once again this week.

On the other hand, it was a bad thing for the Washington Nationals that the Jays had a day to regroup before taking on the tough Nats, who will be challenging for at least a National League Wild Card slot for the rest of the season.

Against all odds the underperforming Jays laid a three-game whipping on the Nats, thereby poking a stick in the wheels of their playoff pretensions.

Well, maybe not a whipping: the Jays held off Washington Friday night to escape with a 6-5 win that went down to the last pitch. Saturday, Marco Estrada absolutely outpitched the towering talent of Max Scherzer, and Devon Travis crushed his only mistake for a 2-0 team shutout. Sunday it ended up 8-6, as Toronto managed to stay one step ahead, barely, for the whole, exciting, game.

So a 16-11 margin over three games isn’t exactly a “whipping” but the series may have opened a little window on the question of which division is really the strongest in the major leagues. After, all, to turn it around, where would the Jays be if they were in another division, given that they were, as of the sweep in Tampa, a combined 6-19 against Boston, Tampa, and the Yankees?

Leave out the record against those three division rivals and Toronto was 24 and 19 against the rest of the major leagues going into the Washington series. That’s a pretty good go of it, considering that it includes that awful four-game sweep in Oakland. If you add just a 13-12, instead of 6-19, to their record, they’d have been 37-31.

I like inter-league play, though it’s inherently unfair to the American League teams.* The players are different, the pitchers are different, you run into different managerial styles, hell, you even get to see some snazzily different uniforms, with those of the Nats right up at the top of the sartorial rankings.

*It’s unfair that the DH is banned in National League parks. The Senior Circuit teams can easily—happily—adjust to using a DH, but the American League teams, built around having the DH, and with no time to keep pitchers’ bats sharp throughout the season, just for the possibility of an at-bat or two in a game or two, all of these mean that the American League teams are clearly at a disadvantage playing National League rules. And when somebody like Sleepy John Gibbons has to figure out double-switch substitutions and the like, that adds to the disadvantage.

By the way, I referred to the National League as the “Senior Circuit” above. This is common, but ancient, terminology dating back to the days when there was a definite awareness of the fact that the National League had existed for quite some years (25, to be exact, from 1876 to 1901) before the American League was founded. Thus they were often referred to as the “Senior Circuit” and the “Junior Circuit”.

Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, over and above the fact that the Jays swept the Nats on the weekend, this was an exciting series, definitely a cut above your usual three-gamer, and I would certainly attribute this at least partially to the fact that it was inter-league play.

Add to this the fact that the Nats, sigh, used to be the Expos, and there’s another frisson of excitement in the mix. (I forgot, did you? That becausethe Nats are theactual franchise successors of the Expos, all franchise records date back to the founding of the ‘Spos in 1969.)

So, Friday night. It was Aaron Sanchez against Gio Gonzalez.

The Nats scored one in the first and one in the second off Sanchez. In the first he walked Bryce Harper with two outs, Harper stole second, and scored on a base hit by Anthony Rendon. In the second, he gave up another two-out base hit with Juan Soto at third base after a double and a move-em-over ground ball out.

The Jays took the lead in the third in typical Toronto fashion with two dingers. Devon Travis cashed Aledmys Diaz, on with a single. With two outs and nobody on, thanks to a Justin Smoak double-play ball after a walk to Teoscar Hernandez, Yagervis Solarte hit one out to left field.

Sanchez gave up the lead in the fifth on another classic Nats sequence: Trea Turner got a base hit, stole second with two outs, and scored on another Rendon two-out single.

(Sigh.) Where oh where is Toronto’s Anthony Rendon?

Sanchez went out with the game tied after six with a quality start. Gonzalez threw six innings and would have had a Q-start too, if Nats’ manager Dave Martinez hadn’t sent him out for the seventh. He faced two batters. Travis singled and Hernandez hit a ground-rule double.

They both scored off Justin Miller, spoiling Gonzalez’ outing and putting Toronto in front to stay. Justin Smoak plated Travis with a sac fly, and Solarte, hitting from the other side, plated Hernandez with his second homer of the game.

Solartejoined a very small group ofJays’ switch hittersto hit one out from both sides of the plate in the same game.

After Seunghwan Oh retired the side in the seventh and became the pitcher of record thanks to Gonzalez andMartinez, Aaron Loup and John Axford each gave up a run in the eighth to make it close, turning the slim lead over to Ryan Tepera.

Tepera’s ninth was one of those supercharged experiences: great if you survive it, but otherwise don’t even think about it. Wilmer Difo (huh? Named after the distinguished American actor Willem Dafoe?) led off with a single, stole second, and advanced to third on Brian Goodwin’s first-out fly ball to left. Adam Eaton hit the ground ball he needed, but it was too short to second and Difo didn’t try to score. Trea Turner fanned on a 3-2 pitch for the game.

Yippee! I told you inter-league play was exciting!

But as soon as the game was over the Toronto hitters had to start thinking about facing the inimitable Max Scherzer on Saturday afternoon. Yikes!

Max Scherzer came in to Saturday’s game with a record of ten wins and two losses. His ERA was an even 2.00, and in ten of his fifteen starts so far this year he’d struck out ten or more batters. By his record to June sixteenth he was a clear front-runner for the American League Cy Young Award.

Scherzer delivered on all counts. He gave up four hits in six innings, walked one, and struck out, yes, ten Blue Jays. In fact, Scherzer really made only two mistakes in the game, and they came on consecutive batters in the fifth inning.

With one out Scherzer nicked Luke Maile with a pitch, bringing Devon Travis to the plate. Travis fouled off a fast ball low in the zone. Then Scherzer threw him a slider that stayed up, way up, and Travis didn’t miss it.

Scherzer’s big mistake soared majestically into the 200-level seats above the bullpen in left centre, and Toronto was ahead 2-0 in the game.

Those were the only two runs allowed by Max Scherzer, so we have to call it a typical start for Scherzer. Wander Suero picked up Scherzer in the seventh and eighth, and didn’t allow a baserunner while fanning three.

But the real story Saturday was Marco Estrada. Not to mention Danny Barnes, Aaron Loup, and Tyler Clippard, who held Washington hitless over the last two and a third innings, the only baserunner for the Nats a two-out walk by Aaron Loup in the eighth inning to Trea Turner that brought Bryce Harper to the plate with the tying run.

Loup caught Bryce Harper looking for the third out, to turn the 2-0 shutout over to Tyler Clippard, who retired the side in order in the ninth for the save, striking out the rookie phenom Juan Soto on a 2-2 pitch to end the game.

But let’s go back to the biggest part of the story, and that’s Marco Estrada. First of all, there’s the pitching line. Six and two thirds innings, no runs, three hits (bunt single, line single, double by Trea Turner in the fifth), 2 walks, and four strikeouts, on 108 pitches.

Only Michael A. (Anthony, but why must we?) Taylor solved him to any extent, reaching on a bunt single, striking out, and singling to centre, the hit that ended Estrada’s day. Leadoff hitter Adam Eaton never squared up, grounding out twice and flying out once.

Most notably, Bryce Harper, admittedly mired in a slump, was helpless against Estrada. He popped up once in fair territory, once in foul territory, then in the most significant moment of the game, with Turner on second after his two-out double in the sixth, Estrada crossed him up after going changeup, fast ball, change up, fast ball, with a 2-2 fast ball high on the inside corner that completely froze Harper.

It was also interesting if a little cruel to notice how Estrada carved up the vaunted rookie Juan Soto, striking him out and inducing a groundout, Soto totally off balance both times, before he managed to time him enough to fly out to centre.

So the story of this game was not Max Scherzer, but Marco Estrada, and how great was that?

Sam Gaviglio’s start for Toronto on Sunday was, in retrospect, a case study in how life can sometimes impinge on sport, even for professionals at the highest level.

Although he gave up a first-inning single to Designated Jay Tormenter Anthony Rendon, Gaviglio started like gangbusters, striking out three of the first five hitters he faced, and never throwing a ball outside the strike zone until he went from 0-2 to 3-2 on the sixth batter, Michael A. Taylor, before Taylor grounded a single through the left side with one out in the second.

Things quickly went south on Gaviglio. Taylor stole second. Brian Goodwin grounded out to second with Taylor going to third. Wilmer Difo cashed in Taylor with a base hit. Difo stole second. Spencer Kieboom walked. Russell Martin threw the ball away trying to pick off Difo, who went to third on the error. Gaviglio then balked Difo home before getting Trea Turner out with a called third strike.

In the third he gave up a double to that guy Rendon, and then an RBI single to Daniel Murphy. He was saved further damage by the fact that Murphy tried to go to second on Kevin Pillar’s throw to the plate, and Martin atoned for his earlier error by gunning him down for the second out. The hapless Juan Soto struck out for the second time, this time looking, to end the inning.

Gaviglio had a long fourth inning as well, even though he kept the Nats off the board. Taylor (again) led off with a single and eventually stole second and third before dying there when Turner hit into a fielder’s choice retiring Kieboom, who had walked behind Taylor.

John Gibbons wisely, perhaps, decided that was enough for Gaviglio; for his second start in a row he had failed to go very long, even though his line wasn’t that bad: four innings pitched, two earned runs, six hits, two walks, and a run-producing balk on 77 pitches.

But here’s the thing: we didn’t notice at the time, but Gaviglio didn’t stay on the bench for the rest of the game as is the more recent common practice (nobody sends the pitcher “to the showers” any more: they always stay on the bench unless injured.)

We only learned after the game that by the time it was over Gaviglio was already on a plane heading to San Francisco for a connecting flight to Medford, Oregon, in order to join his wife Alaina, who was about to give birth to their first child.

There had to be a lot of conflicting emotions going on when Gaviglio took the mound on Sunday, and it’s no wonder that he produced such mixed results.

He made it home on time, by the way. His daughter Livia was born early Tuesday morning as he was removed from the roster for the three days’ paternity leave granted to players in the collective agreement.

In any case, Tanner Roark, the Washington starter, had an even choppier start than Gaviglio, and he didn’t even have an excuse. The Jays had touched him for three runs early, so when Gaviglio left the game was tied, and Toronto took the lead with a run in the bottom of the fourth, and would never fall behind in what became a back-and-forth affair, with the Jays taking the lead, the Nats tying it up, and the Jays going ahead again.

After Washington took the lead with the two runs off Gaviglio in the second, Randal Grichuk pulled one back with a two-out solo homer in the bottom of the second. Aledmys Diaz followed with a drive to centre that went for a double, but he was stranded there when Devon Travis hit the ball hard, but right to Wilmer Difo at second for the third out.

The Nats extended their lead to 3-1 off Gaviglio in the third, but Toronto came back with two to tie it when Roark totally lost the plate in the bottom of the inning.

With two outs, Solarte singled. Morales singled him to second. Pillar doubled home Solarte with Morales stopping at third. Then Roark walked Martin on a 2-2 pitch. And then Grichuk on a 3-2 pitch to force in Morales to tie the game.

Morales picked up an RBI in the bottom of the fourth, with, if you can believe it, an infield hit. Travis led off with a base hit, Granderson hit into a fielder’s choice. Hernandez was hit by a pitch from Roark. Solarte hit an easy grounder to second that moved the runners up, bringing Morales to the plate. He hit a grounder in the hole at short and beat it out to first while Granderson scored the lead run.

Toronto was ahead 4-3 after four, Gaviglio was off to his wife’s bedside, and Joe Biagini came in to pitch for the Jays in the top of the fifth. Big Joe had a nice clean inning, holding the Nats off the board just long enough for Grichuk to pad the slim margin with a solo homer, his second of the game, off reliever Shawn Kelley, who took over from Roark in the bottom of the fifth.

Neither the two-run lead nor Joe Biagini survived the Washington sixth, though.

Never one to leave well enough alone, John Gibbons thought he might get another inning from Biagini. After all, he was all stretched out as a starter, you know, and all that . . . And besides, Gibbie just likes the guy, ya know?

So after retiring the leadoff hitter Soto, Biagini gave up a single to Taylor (again) who stole second (again) and scored on a double by Goodwin. Difo singled but Goodwin had to stop at third. Finally Gibbie pulled Biagini for Seunghwan Oh, who gave up a single to pinch-hitter Adam Eaton that scored Goodwin, but Difo was out trying to reach third on the hit, cut down by Hernandez. Turner fouled out to Grichuk to end the inning but there it was, tied up again at fives going to the bottom of the sixth.

Tiny Tim Collins (sorry, but you gotta do it: he’s only 5 foot seven and 168 pounds) had finished off the fifth inning for Shawn Kelley, and gave up a leadoff base hit to Hernandez, but Solarte popped out and Morales hit into another double play, and the game went to the seventh still tied.

John Axford took over for Oh. He struck out Harper and retired Rendon (yay!) and Murphy in order.

Justin Miller was next up on the mound for the Nats, and Pillar led off with a base hit and then stole second. Pillar advanced to third on a deep fly to centre by Martin, and scored on a base hit by Grichuk to give the Jays the lead. Grichuk stole second but died there. Toronto was back in front at 6-5.

The Nats tied the game in the top of the eighth, but it took a miracle and some good work by Ryan Tepera to keep Washington to the one run.

Tyler Clippard started the inning and gave up a base hit to Soto, and then wild pitched him to second. Wild ones in the dirt are an occupational hazard with Clippard because of the nasty low breaking stuff he throws.

After fanning Taylor, Clippard gave up an RBI single to Goodwin, than fanned Difo for the second out.

Gibbie elected to go with Tepera to get the last out, and it was an adventure. With Goodwin on first and two outs, the new Toronto closer walked Pedro Severino, and gave up a little dribbler infield hit to Turner to load the bases before Bryce Harper flew out to end the threat.

The Nats brought in old familiar flame-thrower Ryan Madson, and it was clear that the Blue Jays were not interested in going into extra innings on Father’s Day. After Madson fanned Smoak, he gave up back to back homers to Hernandez and Solarte to give Toronto an 8-6 lead.

Tepera cut off any hope of yet another rally by Washington in the ninth. He caught Rendon looking, fanned Murphy, and retired Soto on a fly ball to centre for the save.

Game, Set and Match to Toronto, as they came home from being swept by Tampa to turn around and sweep the Washington Nationals.

Not exactly revenge, but still sweet.

More inter-league play awaited Toronto; after an off-day Monday, the National League East Division leading Atlanta Braves were coming to town for a two-game set.

My son is taking me to the game as a birthday present. It was supposed to be the return of Jose Bautista to Toronto, but after we got the tickets the Braves released Bautista and he was signed by the Mets. When are the Mets coming to town?

If anybody was wondering who that dirty, bedraggled flock of birds was limping back into town Wednesday night looking like they were returning from the jungles of Central America rather than from sunny Florida, why, it was our very own Toronto Blue Jays.

After swaggering out of town on the wings of a rousing four-game sweep of the even more troubled Baltimore Orioles, the Jays had to come face to face with reality: playing the Rays in Tampa Bay is never fun, no how, no way.

I mean, who could have known, after the top of the fourth inning of Monday night’s game, when the Jays had matched the Rays run for run through three, and then taken a 4-3 lead in the top of the fourth on three base hits, that they would only score one more run in the remaining 23 innings of the series?

Even when Tampa took the lead back in the bottom of the fourth with a two-spot of their own, on a two-run homer by rookie Jake Bauers that dispatched erstwhile-ly effective Jays’ spot starter Sam Gaviglio from the game earlier than planned, it didn’t seem like that big a deal. After all, the pitching-starved Rays would be going pitcher by pitcher, inning by inning, as well, and sooner or later our guys would encounter someone they could hit.

But, nope.

Lefty Ryan Yarbrough, who’d given up the four early runs, settled and lasted through six innings, and Diego Castillo, Jonny Venters, and Sergio Romo kept “clean sheets” as they say in European football, infused by World Cup mania as we are at the moment. Castillo gave up a two-out base hit to Hernandez, and Venters walked one for the only Toronto baserunners.

Meanwhile, the Tampa Bay Mosquitos, er Rays, exploited a botched double play ball by John Axford in the seventh to tack on three more runs and kill any hopes the Jays had of mounting a comeback.

On Tuesday, Rays’ manager Kevin Cash, who seems intent on rewriting a hundred years of baseball tradition, declared a “bullpen day” for his pitching staff, which meant using a closer-quality pitcher as an “opener”.

The hitting challenged Jays went down flailing against an array of not-starter but pitcher-who-threw-the-first-two-innings Ryne Stanek, Austin Pruitt, Venters again, Chaz Roe, Jose Alvarado and Romo again. Only Pruitt gave up a fifth-inning run on a couple of hits and a ground-out, that brought Toronto within one at 2-1, but after Pruitt, who have up the run on four hits over two and two-thirds innings, nobody got a hit until Kevin Pillar got a one-out base knock against Romo in the ninth. Pillar died at second after advancing on defensive indifference, and that was the ball game.

Meanwhile, John Gibbons got a reasonably effective outing from inconsistent lefty Jaime Garcia, who pitched a decent-enough five innings, giving up two runs on a third-inning dinger by noted Jays’ killer Wilson Ramos, who ought to be reported to the SPCA.

Garcia had only given up one other hit, a single in the first, and a leadoff walk to Rob Refsnyder (why do these ex-Jay non-entities always come back to haunt us?) before Ramos’ home run. 93 pitches through five should have been enough, a pretty good outing for a scufflin’ lefty.

Problem was, Gibbie, nice guy that he is, sent Garcia back out for the sixth.

Of course, Garcia gave up a leadoff walk to C.J. Cron and a double to rookie Willy Adames that sent Cron to third. Then Gibbie pulled him, for Joe Biagini.

And of course, try as he might, the star-crossed Biagini let both runs score for an obviously insurmountable 4-1 Tampa lead, given that the Toronto T-Ballers weren’t allowed to bring their batting tees to the plate.

It would be nice if a little birdie whispered in Gibbie’s weathered ear that 93 pitches over five and keeping your team in the game is just enough, thank you very much, and furthermore that a nervous guy like Biagini does much better, at least some of the time, if he gets to start an inning when he comes in from the pen.

So, the no-hit Jays lost another one, with a definite assist awarded to John Gibbons for again mishandling his pitching staff.

All that was left to have happen to Toronto was to be shut out completely by a Tampa team of Wilmer Font, who has never failed to fail wherever he has pitched, Matt Andriese, the faux-starter who pitched the middle innings, and Diego Castillo, who got the win when the Rays scratched out a run in the bottom of the ninth off Ryan Tepera.

Tepera, who was pitching his second inning, was the fifth of a line of Toronto pitcherswho had been brilliant, from Jay Happ to Seunghwan Oh to Aaron Loup to Danny Barnes to Tepera, who as a relay had held the Rays to only three hits before the ninth, plus the three walks given up by a somewhat wild Happ, which is what caused him to go only five innings, leaving with an elevated pitch count of 98.

For the second game in a row the Blue Jays were mesmerized by Kevin Cash’s unorthodox pitching assignments. Font in particular seemed to find his new role perfectly suited to him. Though he was constantly in trouble, and it took him 66 pitches, he threw three and a third shutout innings. To give you an idea of Font’s record, he came outof the game with an ERA of 8.48.

Andriese then came in and went three and two thirds innings, threw 50 pitches, and gave up a hit and a walk.

Castillo gave up one hit in his two innings of work, and was the pitcher of record when

the Rays walked the game off in the bottom of the ninth. With Tepera in, the speedster Mallex Smith hit a one-out double, moved to third on a ground ball, and came in to score when Matt Duffy hit a clutch ground-ball single to left to score Smith.

As I said at the outset, nothing good ever happens when the Blue Jays play the Rays in their atrocious home tin orange juice can.

We can only hope that Toronto’s luck will change when the Rays become, as they inevitably must, the new Montreal Expos.

Used to be, it was really something when the Toronto Blue Jays and the Baltimore Orioles got together.

Why, even as recently as the American League Wild Card game in 2016, the only real difference between the teams was the strange failure of Baltimore manager Buck Showalter to use the best closer in baseball in an extra-inning one-and-done affair.

That’s not to say, of course that the beloved and much missed Edwin Encarnacion would not have homered equally as dramatically against Britton as he did against Ubaldo Jimenez, but the fact is that Britton was still in the bullpen when Edwin hit the homer off Jimenez.

Since that magical night, the fortunes of both teams have suffered, but it’s undeniable that the fortunes of the Orioles have suffered more.

Recordwise, they’ve fallen much farther than the Jays, coming in with a terrible record of 18 wins and 42 losses, giving Jays’ fans something to feel grateful for, looking at our own record of 26 and 35.

But on the basis of what we saw here over a long four-game series, three of which were competitive and the fourth a blowout, all Toronto wins, it would seem not so much that the Orioles are significantly worse than the Blue Jays, but they they’ve lost the will to win.

On Thursday, the young right-handed starter David Hess combined with relievers Mychal Givens and Richard Bleier to keep the Jays’ hitters in check for eight innings of one-run, seven-hit ball, as the Toronto offence struggled to shake out of the doldrums they’d fallen into against the Yankees.

Meanwhile, after a very effective six innings by Jaime Garcia, Baltimore had gone deep against Tyler Clippard and John Axford to build a 4-1 lead to turn over to stand-in closer Brad Brach for the bottom of the ninth.

But Brach, who in previous appearances has eaten the Jays’ lunches, could only get one out while the Jays dizzily rallied for three to tie the game. With one out Brach walked Luke Maile. Aledmys Diaz doubled him to third. Randal Grichuk, looking for a fresh start after coming off the disabled list, doubled home Maile and Diaz to bring the home squad to within one.

The slumping Kevin Pillar, who’d been given the night off before pinch-hitting for Curtis Granderson against the lefty Bleier in the eighth inning, wasted no time cashing Grichuk with a solid single to centre to tie the game. At this point manager Buck Showalter had no choice but to pull Brach in favour of ex-Blue Jay Miguel Castro, who promptly threw a double-play ball to Yangervis Solarte to send the game to extras.

Danny Barnes dispatched the meat of Baltimore’s order, Adam Jones, Manny Machado, and Danny Valencia, another ex-Jay, on fourteen pitches, via a popup and two strikeouts, paving the way for Castro to come out for the bottom of the tenth.

Castro was victimized by the hustle of Teoscar Hernandez and a second clutch hit by Diaz to take the loss, though he almost got out of it. Hernandez turned a leadoff single into a double by sheer chutzpahthe likes of which Toronto hasn’t seen since the days of Ricky Henderson.

Castro did everything right after that, almost. When he went to 2-0 on Justin Smoak he was ordered to put him on. Then he fanned Kendrys Morales. And Maile. And went 0-2 on Diaz before the latter stung him with a rip that made it to the wall down the left-field line and was more than sufficient to knock Hernandez in with the walkoff fifth run.

The Orioles, who are supposed to be having serious problems with starting pitching, got another quality start Friday night from Andrew Cashner, who went six innings and gave up three runs, effectively scattering nine Toronto hits.

The problem for Baltimore was that Jay Happ was just that much better. He went seven innings, gave up one unearned run, in the first inning, and only two hits.

Sometimes a quality start isn’t enough, if it comes up against a better quality start.

Both teams scored in the second inning, but the Orioles got a tainted run resulting from a Devon Travis throwing error, while Russell Martin answered with a ripped line drive home run to left in the bottom of the inning off Cashner.

Though the run against Happ was unearned, he had to share some of the blame for walking Danny Valencia leading off, and then Mark Trumbo with one out. But he should have been out of the inning when Trey Mancini hit a double-play ball to Diaz at short. Travis recorded the out at second, but threw the ball away to first, not only blowing the double play but allowing the alert Valencia to come around to score.

Fast forward to the fifth inning, when Happ, who had only given up a bloop single in the third, gave up a two-out double to Craig Gentry, but stranded him there when Joey Rickard flew out to right.

Cashner wasn’t so lucky in his half of the fifth. He gave up a shot too, to Randal Grichuk, but it left the yard for a 2-1 Toronto lead, built on the two solo homers.

Toronto added another run in the sixth off Cashner when Hernandez, Pillar, and Martin linked base hits, with Martin getting the RBI.

After seven innings Happ turned the ball over to Seunghwan Oh, who got two outs in the eighth and was replaced by Ryan Tepera, who began a four-out save by finishing off the eighth for Oh.

The Jays added a run in their seventh off the left-handed Tanner Scott who got the first two outs, then gave up a base hit to Solarte and a triple to Hernandez, who notably whacked one over the head of the right fielder Craig Gentry, yes, the opposite way, to the wall, chasing Solarte home.

In the eighth inning Mike Wright Jr. gave up a hard-hit line-drive home run to the leadoff hitter Kevin Pillar, which set the final score at 5-1 for Toronto. Ryan Tepera retired the side on six pitches in the ninth, with the help of Valencia, who unwisely tried to stretch a leadoff single into a double by testing the arm of Hernandez, whose fine retrieve and throw made it close enough to review at second, but the out call stood. In all Tepera threwonly eight pitches for the four-out save.

Of the four games in this series, this one was the game that any team could have lost, because sometimes you just run into good pitching. Given that the Baltimore run in the first inning was unearned, Happ, Oh, and Tepera threw a shutout at the Orioles. Every team gets shut out once in a while.

Nothing to see here, no markers for long-term trends, let’s move on to Saturday and its lessons.

On Saturday the supposedlypitching-challenged Orioles got their third straight quality start, this time from Kevin Gausman, who pitched into the seventh-inning, and left on the losing end of a 3-2 score, thanks to the leadoff home run he’d given up in the seventh to the suddenly very hot Randal Grichuk.

Prior to that, the Jays had picked up a run in the third on three straight hits leading off the inning, the RBI going to Solarte, but Gausman had stranded the two runners with a fielder’s choice and a double play.

The Jays added a run in the sixth on back-to-back doubles, leading off, to Solarte and Hernandez. Again Gausman staved off further problems, this time by striking out the side to leave Hernandez at second base.

Meanwhile Aaron Sanchez, while still struggling to keep his pitch count down, as evidenced by the four walks he issued, continued to improve his effectiveness, giving up two runs in six and a third innings off six hits.

Unfortunately, the two runs came off Sanchez as he tried to pitch into the seventh, and just ran out of gas. Some consideration should be given to the role played by John Gibbons in leaving Sanchez out there in the seventh. He’d been lucky to get the first out as Kevin Pillar had to dive and just barely secure a snow cone off a liner by Mark Trumbo.

That drive, despite producing an out, should have rung the warning bell for Gibbie, but, no, he left Sanchez in there for two more hitters, Trey Mancini who singled and Chance Sisco who doubled Mancini home with Baltimore’s first run. Danny Barnes came in and gave up a single to Adam Jones that scored Sisco with the tying run, charged to Sanchez.

After Grichuk gave the Jays the lead off Gausman in the bottom of the inning, Joe Biagini and Tyler Clippard gave it up right away in the top of the eighth. It was starting to look like an Alphonse and Gaston routine.

After Aaron Loup came in and got the first out, Biagini faced two batters. He hit Jonathan Schoop on the shoulder with a runaway curve ball, and threw Mark Trumbo’s cheap little comebacker away trying to get the lumbering DH at first. Clippard came in and walked Mancini to load the bases, then fanned Jace Peterson and Sisco. Unfortunately, he also wild-pitched Schoop home to tie the score.

The Orioles scored without a base hit and without hitting the ball out of the infield. Nonetheless, they scored and the game was tied.

It stayed that way until it was the Orioles’ bullpen’s turn to give up the game to the Blue Jays in the tenth inning.

After the Orioles blew a chance to score off John Axford in the ninth, Axford shut them down in the tenth, setting himself up for his first win of the season.

Buck Showalter gave the ball to Mychal Givens for the Jays’ tenth. Toronto has experienced feast and famine with Givens. This time it was feast, with Givens playing the role of attentive waiter.

After he struck out Hernandez, he walked Smoak, and Morales followed with a line single right through the stacked right side of the infield. Pillar hit one hard to deep centre for the second out, and I was concerned that Smoak hadn’t tagged and advanced on the catch.

Not to worry, though, because Givens was determined to hand the game to Toronto and didn’t want them to have to trouble themselves by swinging the bat. He hit Grichuk to load the bases, and then walked Maile on four pitches for the ever-so-exciting walkoff walk.

Toronto 4, Baltimore 3, in ten innings for the second time in three games.

On Sunday Marco Estrada took the ball for Toronto, and Alex Cobb, who has been tough on Toronto in the past, was Buck Showalter’s pick.

It was no contest. The Orioles totally caved and handed the sweep to the Blue Jays just like they handed Saturday’s game to them.

All you have to do is look at the pitching lines. Cobb went three and two thirds and gave up nine runs on 11 hits. He walked one, struck out five, and threw 83 pitches. Marco Estrada threw a tidy six innings. He gave up two runs on four hits, walked one, and struck out nine, on 97 pitches.

Curtis Granderson beat the Orioles all by himself. He went four for five with two doubles and a three-run homer, and chalked up six RBIs.

Toronto responded to Baltimore’s first run in the top of the second with two in the bottom of the inning, both scoring on Granderson’s wrong-way bloop double to left with two outs. Kendrys Morales extended the lead to 3-1 in the third with his long-awaited fifth home run of the season, an opposite-field solo shot.

That set things up for the ring-around-the-rosy Toronto fourth, when they racked up six runs on seven hits, most of them ropes, and one walk. It was a rising that was marked by the Jays’ apparent attempt to knock Cobb out of the game. I mean really knock him out of the game, as Grichuk, Gio Urshela, and Solarte all hit shots right through his kitchen, any one of which could have had a seriously dangerous outcome.

It became apparent as Toronto sent ten batters to the plate (Grichuk went two for two in the inning), six of whom scored, that Showalter was reluctant to use another reliever so early in this game, but finally he had not choice, and Cobb was forced to hand the ball over to Pedro Araujo, who let in Cobb’s last run when Grichuk knocked in Pillar from second.

So all that was left to see, with the Jays holding a 9-1 lead, was how long Estrada could go, and how many relievers Toronto would need to finish off the affair. As we noted, Estrada went six innings, Joe Biagini gave up a run in the seventh, and Tim Mayza finished off with two scoreless innings, giving up only one base hit.

And there you had it, a Toronto sweep over some ghost team with a vague resemblance to the vaunted Orioles of yore. Two extra-inning squeakers, one well-pitched solid win, and a walkover, and all that was left was for the Orioles to slink out of town while the Jays jumped on a plane for sunny Florida, for a series in the atrocious Tin Can Dome.

Gulp.

As for the Orioles, I’m not sure what player capital currently on their big league roster is going to be around and contributing in one or two years’ time.

Chris Davis and Mark Trumbo are clearly finished, and are serious liabilities. Adam Jones, a streaky guy at the best of times, showed none of his previous ability to carry the team during the four games here. While of course Mannie Machado should reap a bountiful harvest when they inevitably trade him next month, Jones might not bring much in return.

Of the lineups the Orioles displayed during the four games, arguably only Trey Mancini and Jonathan Schoop are players that you would expect to see written into the O’s lineup every day for the next couple of years. Joey Rickard might also hang around as a useful—and highly annoying—utility piece.

And it’s not a great sign that both Mancini and Schoop went through town hitting under .230 for the season.

Let’s face it. Any team that turns to the much-travelled Danny Valencia to play third and anchor the middle of the batting order is in more than a little bit of trouble.

And we haven’t said anything yet about the Baltimore pitching staff. Though the bullpen still has the strong presence of Darren O’Day and Brad Brach, not to mention Britton when he’s not on the disabled list, the rest of the relievers have the feeling of being ad-hoc fill-ins. Again, if they’re placing a lot of hope on a Miguel Castro, it says something about where they are.

As for their rotation, well, it doesn’t suck as much as I might have thought, to use an expresssion I’ve never used before in this forum. They had three quality starts in the four games here, a performance which would suggest that the rotation is not actually responsible for the terrible Baltimore record.

What has contributed to their record? Based on what we saw here, they’ve given up, or somehow lost the will to win.

So the Yankees came to town this week and took two of two from the Blue Jays, powered by their superior brawn and superb bullpen.

Ho hum.

But it wasn’t really like that at all, as it turned out, because these two games were great pitchers’ duels between equally effective starting pitchers. Both games were decided late by the greater firepower brought to bear by the swaggering visitors. Not to mention the decisive influence of their impressive bullpen.

Still and all, these games kind of made you think, didn’t they?

Tuesday Night: Andujar Slam Breaks Jays’ Hearts:

Tuesday night was a battle of the wily veterans, Marco Estrada versus C.C. Sabathia. Although Estrada’s pedigree doesn’t have nearly the length of Sabathia’s, he has been arguably the more impactful pitcher in crucial situations in recent seasons.

There are a lot of similarities between the two in their pitching styles, and even in their demeanour on the mound. Sabathia, who used to be a flame-throwing dragon, lost his fast ball years ago and relies on playing the corners. Estrada, who never had a real heater to speak of, uses his meagre power surgically to set up his killer changeup.

The rumpled, sad-sacky look of Sabathia makes it hard to take him seriously as a major league pitcher, whereas Estrada presents the appearance of what would pass for a buttoned-down businessman in professional baseball, neat beard, carefully tucked shirt, pants bloused into stirrups.

Despite the contrast in their appearances, both work quickly from a base of both feet squarely on the mound, and both take the catcher’s sign peeking out from behind their gloves like a little kid spying around a corner.

Typically, even when they’re pitching well, both Sabathia and especially Estrada will give up the occasional shot and will have to pitch out of trouble from time to time, as neither is able to really dominate opposing hitters.

On this night Estrada gave up more solid drives than Sabathia. Giancarlo Stanton, hitting second, pounded one to the wall in right for a double in the first inning, but died at third. Miguel Andujar looped a single off the end of his bat into left with two out in the second, but Estrada fanned Tyler Austin for the third out.

In the fourth inning Greg Bird led off with a ground-rule double to right, but Estrada easily retired the side on a strikeout, a short fly to centre, and a comebacker, and Bird never moved from second.

In the fifth after Andujar lined out, Austin reached on an infield single, but he was erased when he was caught stealing as Gleyber Torres struck out.

In the sixth inning Estrada’s defence rose to the occasion again to keep his shutout intact. Brett Gardner hit a liner the wrong way to left leading off, a ball that took a tricky short hop on Teoscar Hernandez, who managed to stay with the ball and hold Gardner to a single. Then Russell Martin gunned Gardner down at second on a straight steal attempt on which he was initially called safe. The video review, however, god bless its impersonal little heart, showed that Devon Travis had actually caught the ball right on the runner’s side an instant before his outstretched fingers touched the bag.

With Gardner dispatched, Stanton was retired on a fly to right and Bird fanned to end the inning. After six innings of work, Estrada had allowed no runs on five hits with no walks and 6 strikeouts, on 97 pitches. He had allowed two doubles and three singles, but never more than one base hit in an inning, and two of the hitters who reached safely against him were erased attempting to steal.

Sabathia was even better than Estrada, at least through the first five innings. He allowed a line single by Yangervis Solarte in the first inning, and walked Justin Smoak in the fourth, the only Blue Jays to reach base.

More impressive was the fact that he had set down fifteen of seventeen batters he faced on only 59 pitches through five. Estrada, by contrast, who was considerably more efficient than in his recent outings, still stood at 73 after five.

The C.C. beat continued in the bottom of the sixth as Sabathia fanned the leadoff batter Travis. This brought Teoscar Hernandez to the plate. He’d popped out leading off the game for the Jays, and grounded out to short to end the third inning. Sabathia threw three cut fast balls in three different locations to Hernandez, all around 88 miles an hour. The first one was up and out over the plate and Hernandez fouled it off. The second one was a ball, up and in.

The third one was down and in on the inside corner. Hernandez turned on it and launched a high, high fly down the left-field line that soared and soared and soared as Gardner ranged back to the wall near the line and then watched helplessly while it continued to soar into the second deck just inside the line.

Finally, the dam had burst and Toronto was on the board. Sabathia quickly regained control and retired Solarte and Smoak, the latter on a checked-swing strikeout, to take the game into the seventh inning with the Blue Jays leading 1-0.

The decision to remove a successful starting pitcher from a game is almost always the most difficult one a manager has to make, and John Gibbons faced it in the top of the seventh, with Estrada throwing a shutout but up to 97 pitches.

On the one hand, Estrada had never been in trouble in the game, even with runners on second after doubles, and why would the Yankees suddenly start to solve him now? On the other hand, they were into the third time through the order against him, and had seen all he had on this night.

Another consideration is that it’s always better to have a relief pitcher start the inning with a clean slate. If you leave the starter in you risk having to pull him mid-inning, putting the reliever in exactly the situation you would have avoided.

Add to all this the fact that Gibbie is a players’ manager, and first and foremost a manager who gives deference to his veterans. Given a choice, he will almost always give a veteran starter considerable say as to whether he should stay in the game.

And so it was that Marco Estrada came out to start the seventh against the Yankees, now with a 1-0 lead.

The last thing John Gibbons wanted to see was a leadoff base hit, but that’s just what he got; Gary Sanchez lead off with line drive single to centre. Gibbie was now triply damned: to many, he never should have sent Estrada out to start the seventh. To others, he was making a mistake to pull him after just one base hit, only his sixth of the game. And yet, if he left him in and the Yankees rallied . . .

With a guy like Seunghwan Oh, so, so, so-Oh steady Oh, ready to go in the bullpen, Gibbie quickly made the call to bring him in, and oh, what a mistake that turned out to be.

I’m sorry about the Oh puns. I won’t make another, I promise.

Down 1-0, despite the firepower in his lineup, Yankee manager Aaron Boone decided to ask Didi Gregorius to lay down a bunt to move the very slow Sanchez up to second. It worked out fine for Boone, but not as he intended. Trying to foil the bunt, presumably, Oh threw one low and inside, but it was a little too-too, and nicked Gregorius on the foot, giving him a base and moving Sanchez to second.

The dread started to spread through my body as Oh proceeded to go to 3-2 on Aaron Hicks, pitching the switch-hitter away, away, away, finally walking him on another high outside pitch to load the bases with nobody out.

This brought the rookie Miguel Andujar to the plate. Oh tried to get ahead of him by throwing a cutter right down the middle, just above the knees, but it never got there. Andujar hit it square and hit it hard, and all of a sudden it was 4-1 New York as the Yankee runners circled the bases in front of young Andujar.

Oh quickly retired the side on a strikeout, a popup, and an easy fly, but it was too late; far, far too late.

Buoyed up, obviously, by the sudden benificence of the baseball gods, C.C. Sabathia went one inning longer than Marco Estrada. He didn’t escape the seventh unscathed, but at least he didn’t allow a baserunner before Kevin Pillar unloaded on a 1-0 pitch and lofted it into the Jays’ bullpen to cut the New York lead to 4-2. Sabathia ended up giving up two runs on three hits with 1 walk and 6 strikeouts on 89 pitches.

Enter Joe Biagini to start the eighth for Toronto with one goal now that he was back in the bullpen, to keep the deficit at two so that the Jays might have some chance to come back against New York’s bullpen.

Well, that didn’t go so well. Giancarlo Stanton singled to left leading off. Biagini wild-pitched him to second Greg Bird grounded out, with Stanton moving to third. Gary Sanchez struck out for the second out.

With the left-handed Didi Gregorius coming up, John Gibbons called for Aaron Loup for the lefty matchup. Loup, who’s actually more effective against right-handed hitters, walked Gregorius, who promptly stole second.

Now Loup had to face the switch-hitting Aaron Hicks, who put the game out of reach with a three-run homer.

With a 7-2 lead and only six batters to go, the Yankees didn’t really need to use top arms out of the bullpen, but they still brought in David Robertson for the eighth; he pitched a clean inning with a strikeout.

The left-handed Chasen Shreve mopped up the ninth with two strikeouts, and what was once a fine double shutout ended up a game of two homers apiece

Problem was, New York’s two homers counted seven runs, while the Jays’ two only counted two.

It would be up to new rotation member Sam Gaviglio to try to gain a split for Toronto Wednesday night against the veteran Sonny Gray.

Wednesday Night: Twelve Shutout Innings Aren’t Enough:

For Gaviglio this would be his toughest test yet.

Sam Gaviglio had been acquired in the spring in a trade with the Kansas City Royals, and immediately optioned to Buffalo, where he would join the Triple A rotation and serve as a depth piece for Toronto’s rotation.

When the team finally bit the bullet and admitted that Marcus Stroman wasn’t right, Gaviglio was called up from the Bisons on May eleventh, and thrown immediately into the fire. He came out unscathed.

Gaviglio was sent out to pitch the tenth inning of a 3-3 tie at home with the Red Sox. All he did against the tough Sox was throw three innings of shutout ball, allowing only one base hit and striking out three on 44 pitches. For this he was awarded with the win when the Jays walked off on Luke Maile’s homer in the bottom of the twelfth.

He had another relief appearance in the same series against Boston, on the Sunday afternoon, in which he gave up one run in an inning and a third. After a clean seventh inning, he gave up a walk and a base hit in the eighth, and left with one out and a runner on third. The runner scored on a grounder allowed by Tyler Clippard, and that was the only run Gaviglio gave up in two appearances from the bullpen.

Then the decision was made that Joe Biagini wasn’t the answer to the hole left in the rotation by Stroman’s loss, and Gaviglio was given the chance to start.

Since that decision was made, there have been no regrets on the part of the Blue Jays. Gaviglio made three starts in the rotation before Wednesday night’s start against the Yankees. He went five and a third shutout innings against Oakland, gave up three runs in six innings and got the win in Philadelphia, and gave up four runs in six innings to take a loss in Fenway, so he’s provided some steady length that’s been lacking in Toronto’s location.

Starting for the Yankees was the established Sonny Gray, a New York rotation regular, and a once sought-after free agent, but a guy who blows hot and cold, both in general and against the Blue Jays.

Gray definitely blew hot against Toronto this time, and at the same time Sam Gaviglio totally passed his toughest test.

Gaviglio went seven shutout innings, and gave up only three hits and three walks while striking out four. To his credit, the more established Gray was even sharper, going eight shutout innings, giving up two hits and two walks while striking out eight.

Gary Sanchez hit a two-out ground-rule double in the fourth inning, the first hit for either team. Prior to that, only Gaviglio had been in a spot of trouble in the second when he issued his second walk of the inning with two outs, but retired Austin Romine on a fielder’s choice, with a big assist credited to Devon Travis, who flagged down Romine’s one-hop rocket to make the play to Diaz at second.

Both teams had chances in the fifth inning. The Yankees picked up their second and third hits with two outs, a base hit by Gleyber Torres and an infield hit by Brett Gardner, who beat out a dribbler that Gaviglio couldn’t get to in time. Then the Toronto starter made his only real mistake of the game, and wild-pitched the runners to second and third.

This worked out fine, though. Gaviglio had a base open and could be careful with Aaron Judge, walking him on a 3-2 count. Greg Bird ended the threat by meekly grounding out to Justin Smoak at first.

In the bottom of the fifth the lack of speed in the middle of the Toronto lineup cost the Blue Jays a run, at least. Smoak led off the inning by breaking up Gray’s perfect string of twelve outs in a row, driving a solid double into right centre. But Smoak had no chance of scoring on Kendrys Morales’ hard line single to left, charged smartly by Giancarlo Stanton, who was making one of his rare appearances in left field.

Then two terrible things happened. First, Toronto put on the horrid contact play with the lead-footed Smoak at third, and he was an easy out at the plate on Kevin Pillar’s sharp grounder to third. And after Russell Martin walked, Devon Travis did his roll-over-with-ducks-on-the-pond trick and grounded into an easy double play.

After the fifth both starters sailed to the end of their assignments, Gaviglio going seven innings and Gray eight.

Gaviglio faced the minimum in the sixth and seventh innings, striking out two, inducing a groundout, a popup, and two easy fly balls, as the unheralded right-hander continued to mess with the Yankees’ timing. His line for seven shutout innings was no runs on three hits with three walks and four strikeouts on 104 pitches.

Gray walked Granderson with one out in the sixth, but he was immediately erased by a Solarte double-play ball to second. Facing the middle of the order in the seventh, he struck out Hernandez and Smoak, though I would question the strike three call on Smoak, and then got some help from Judge in right, who went back quickly to snag a hard shot by Morales.

In his last inning the Jays went meekly on a Pillar short fly to centre, a called third strike on Martin, and a broken-bat grounder to third by Travis.

The game was then in the hands of the bullpens, from the eighth on for Toronto and from the ninth on for New York.

In the face of the vaunted reputation of the Yankee bullpen, the Jays’ relievers matched them pitch for pitch until the fateful and very unlucky thirteenth inning.

Ryan Tepera retired five straight in the eighth and ninth, gave up a two-out single to Gregorius in the ninth, and then ducked as Martin’s throw gunned Gregorius down trying to steal second. A big assist went to Travis who made a great diving tag on Gregorius, Travis’ second game-saving play of the game.

Tyler Clippard served up a leadoff double to Andujar in the tenth, then retired the next two batters before giving way to the lefty Tim Mayza who matched up with Brett Gardner. The latter sliced a liner to left that Hernandez managed to handle after a bit of adventure for the third out.

John Axford gave himself a rocky ride in the eleventh, though he started out well. He caught Judge looking on a 3-2 pitch after starting out 3 and 0. Hernandez made a magnificent sliding catch heading for the wall to get to Bird’s slicing foul fly to left for the second out. Then it got interesting. Axford walked Stanton, and proceeded to wild pitch him to second. And then to third. But all’s well . . . .. Axford fanned Sanchez on a beauty 2-2 curve ball to leave Stanton on third with the lead run.

Danny Barnes pitched the twelfth, and fanned Gregorius, walked Andujar, and then got AustinRomine (not his brother, Andrew, nor his father, Kevin) to hit into an around-the-horn double play.

The Jays, on the other hand, didn’t get a baserunner until there were two out in the eleventh. Chad Greene retired six in a row in the ninth and tenth on 23 pitches. The erratic Dellin Betances pitched the eleventh and fanned Pillar and got Martin out on a weak liner to left before giving up a sharp base hit to Travis, who stole second before Betances blew Diaz away on a 2-2 heater that touched 100 on the radar gun.

David Robertson fanned two in the twelfth before Hernandez hit him hard with a liner to left that Stanton played a bit casually, showing a sno-cone before securing the catch for the third out.

This brings us to the Yankee thirteenth, to Joe Biagini entering the game, and to the end of our story. It was quick, but not painless.

It started out with rookie star Gleyber Torroes fanning on a 2-2 cut fast ball that looked like a changeup. Then Brett Gardner lined a single to centre. There’s a reason that manager Aaron Boone has the under-the-radar Gardner leading off. He stirs up a lot of trouble on a regular basis, especially against Toronto.

You can’t really blame Biagini for the fact that Aaron Judge went down and got a good 1-2 curve ball and hit it out of the park to straightaway centre. The deadlock was finally broken, and with Gardner on it was a two-run lead, after twelve innings of two-way shutout.

Just for good measure, with two outs Biagini left a changeup in the zone for Giancarlo Stanton, and I swear to whoever that the line drive to left that he hit out left smoke trails behind it. It was out almost before you knew he hit it.

Of course, we finally saw Aroldis Chapman. Kendrys Morales tied into one of his fast balls and drilled it off the wall in right for a double, but that was it for Toronto, and the Yankees had swept the short series, primarily by hitting the ball out when it counted, and especially when it counted for more than a single run.

And yet, they were hardly walkovers, were they?

I was born in Detroit, and lived there until I was 22 years old.

My father regularly took the various remnants of our large brood to one or two ball games a year at Tiger Stadium, preferably for doubleheaders, first to get more value for his ticket bucks, and second to keep us out of our mother’s hair for twice as long.

When I was an early teen, my friends and I would take the city buses to the ballpark and pay $1.25 to sit in the bleachers, always in the sun-drenched upper deck, overlooking the broad expanse of the deepest centre field in the major leagues.

At beyond 440 feet from the plate, the action in the infield was little more than a faint rumour, but we were savvy fans, and had no trouble following the game from that distance. And as we did we enjoyed the atmosphere of a decidedly working-class clientele that regularly and raucously filled the bleachers to near capacity.

As a young parent in 1976 I returned to Tiger Stadium with my first son, who was five. We saw three games to enjoy the thrill of the atmosphere created by the golden season of Mark (the Bird) Fidrych. Three times we watched him pitch, and three times we watched him dominate the opposition and lead his decidedly mediocre team to victory.

The single beautiful season of Mark Fidrych is one of the saddest and sweetest stories not only in Detroit Tiger lore, but in the history of Major League Baseball. Sometime I must give it my attention and record my thoughts and memories of it, since I lived through it in my own small way.

The Blue Jays came on the scene the next year, and all thoughts of the Tigers and Mark Fidrych diappeared. I attended a number of games that year, including the opening game in the snow on April seventh, 1977. I know there are at least a quarter million Torontonians who were in that crowd of 44,000 that day, but I still have them socked away, my ticket stubs from that Opening Day.

One of the games that I attended that year was when the Tigers came to town. I had wondered how I would feel about the Blue Jays playing my beloved Tigers, but it was no contest: after being swept up in all the excitement of Doug Ault and company, the Tigers were just another road team in greys.

I’ve never been to the new ballpark in Detroit, but I’m happy about it for two reasons: first, that it was build in the inner city core, not far from the location of the old Tiger Stadium. Second, that it’s about as pretty a new ballpark as you could find, especially with the view of Detroit’s classic mid-twentieth-century skyline off in the distance beyond the centre-field fence.

Even after all these years, in a place I’ve never been, I still feel a bittersweet hitch in my throat when the camera opens out on the view from behind the plate at the Detroit ballpark. There’s a moment when I actually expect to hear the soothing, mid-Atlantic twang of the late, great Ernie Harwell, excitedly declaring, “Good evening baseball fans! The Detroit Tigers are on the air!”

I am feeling less bittersweet about the fact that according to the best evidence so far, the Tigers’ “bottoming out and rebuilding from the bottom” seems to be taking considerably less time than anticipated, and after one of the worst seasons in franchise history in 2017, the team is rebounding quickly and may in fact be going entirely in the opposite direction from my beloved Blue Jays.

Friday Night: Don’t Blame it on the Pitchers!

On the face of it, the Tigers won Friday night, sending Toronto to its fourth straight loss, because they jumped on Jaime Garcia for four runs in the second inning and chased him from the game.

But that’s only half the story. Four runs isn’t a whole lot to make up, especially in the spacious confines of the Detroit ballpark, where doubles can fall like the spring rains. And Toronto’s bullpen didn’t allow another run until the seventh inning, and only one then.

So it’s as much the case that fill-in starter Blaine Hardy stonewalled Toronto on two runs and three hits for six innings, and the Tiger bullpen, though it wobbled, didn’t fall under pressure from the Jays late in the game.

Instead of stressing Garcia’s failure to survive the second inning, we need to tip our hats to those that followed: Danny Barnes for an inning and a third after picking up Garcia, Joe Biagini for three sparkling innings giving hope for the future, Tyler Clippard, who gave up the solo homer to Nick Castellanos, and John Axford, who fanned two.

Meanwhile, the depleted Tiger lineup, sans Ian Kinsler, J. D. Martinez, and Justin Upton, not to mention Justin Verlander on the other side of the ball, seems to be doing just fine, thank you very much, even if they started out looking like the Boston Red Sox at their flukiest on this night.

Poor Jaime Garcia gave up two runs in the second on the first three batters, the most damanging blow a triple by Jacoby Jones that Kevin Pillar missed with a dive. Jacoby drove in Victor Martinez, on with a flare single to left, and James McCann, who grounded one through the depleted left side of the Toronto infield.

Leonys Martin scored Jones with a groundout to short. Jose Iglesias doubled to left and stole third. He scored on a single by Jeimer Candelario to give the Tigers a 4-0 lead. After the Toronto lefty fanned Tiger rookie second baseman Ronnie Rodriguez for the second out, Nick Castellanos followed with a base hit. John Gibbons decided it was time to pull the dedevilled Garcia, who had only notched five outs while giving up the four runs and leaving two runners on.

But as I said you can’t pin this one wholly on Jaime Garcia. Despite the fact that the Jays’ bullpen did a great job of shutting down the aggressive Tigers’ hitters, they could do nothing with Blaine Hardy, who threw a lot more like a mid-rotation regular than a fill-in starter on a sub-.500 team.

The Jays finally got to Hardy in the top of the sixth, when Teoscar Hernandez plated a leadoff walk to Aledmys Diaz with a deep drive to centre that deflected off centre fielder Leonys Martins glove for a triple. Hernandez would eventually score on a sacrifice fly by Kendrys Morales to cut the Tigers’ lead in half and give the visitors a lift.

When Hardy finished his solid six, he turned it over to a Detroit bullpen that’s had its ups and downs this season (see sub .500 record) but was spot on in support of Harday.

Buck Farmer pitched around two base hits in the seventh, Artie Lewicki mopped up a bit of a mess left by Johnny Barbato, who gave up a hit and a walk in the eighth, and Chad Greene picked up his fourteenth save when Solarte grounded into a fielder’s choice after Hernandez’ two-out single, and the Tigers had drawn first blood in this series between under-achievers.

Saturday Afternoon Heartbreak:

If there’s been a game in this string of sorry losses that hurt just a little more than others it was this one.

Jay Happ was on the mound for Toronto, a signal event that usually suggests that the Jays would have a better than average chance of recording a win. Happ is the only starter who’s been consistent in giving them a chance to win.

And for what seems like the first time in ages the Toronto offence gave Happ not one, but two leads.

But the snake-bitten Jays can’t depend on anything these days, not even Jay Happ.

Happ held Detroit to two runs in the first four innings on 66 pitches, but after Luke Maile and Yangervis Solarte had given him a 4-2 lead with solo homers in the top of the fifth, he gave up two runs to Detroit to tie the game, threw 40 pitches doing it, and was finished for the night after five innings at 106 pitches, only able to keep the slate even for Toronto at 4-4.

You had to think early on that it wasn’t going to be a great day for Happ. After Detroit starter (and former Toronto farmhand Matt Boyd) pitched around a two-out walk to Justin Smoak in the top of the first, Detroit leadoff hitter Jeimer Candelario smoked Happ’s first pitch into the left-field seats for an instant 1-0 Tiger lead.

The Jays nicely reversed the score in the top of the third. Luke Maile doubled to left leading off. With one out Solarte lined one into left centre for a double to score Maile, and Smoak immediately scored Solarte with a single to right. With the slow Smoak on first and the slower Kendrys Morales at the plate, Boyd threw a pitcher’s best friend double play ball to Morales to end the rally.

The Tigers tied it again in the bottom of the third, with a little help from the shamrock bucket. With one out Dixon Machado hit a ball into left centre. Curtis Granderson moved to his left, dove for the ball, got his glove on it, but had it roll out as he hit the ground.

Machado ended up on second, whence he scored on Castellanos’ two-out double to left, and the game was tied again. Needless to say, if the ball sticks in Granderson’s glove, Castellanos’ double is harmless.

After both Boyd and Happ retired the side in the fourth, Maile and Solarte provided their instant lightning to give the Jays a second lead at 4-2 going to the bottom of the fifth.

But Happ couldn’t hold the lead against these tough Tigers. Two walks figured into this being Happ’s last inning, but only the first one, to Jose Iglesias after he struck out the leadoff man Jacoby Jones, figured in the scoring. With Iglesias on first, second baseman Dixon Machado drove one to right centre that just beat the reach of Pillar, and went for a run-scoring double.

Happ got the second out with a big assist to Solarte at third. Candelario hit a shot to the third baseman’s glove side, but Solarte came up with it and threw him out. Castellanos, consistently tough on Toronto pitching over the last few years, singled the opposite way to right to drive in Machado to tie the game.

Happ walked Miguel Cabrera, on an eighth-pitch 3-2 count before Victor Martinez grounded out to second to end the inning. If anything, the meaningless walk to Cabrera was the final straw in preventing Happ from pitching into the sixth.

Matt Boyd trucked on into the sixth and eventually went seven innings for the Tigers, holding them in check for his last two innings of work, giving up only a walk to Luke Maile in the seventh. Louis Coleman pitched a clean eighth to preserve the tie for the Tigers.

Meanwhile, John Axford pitched a sterling two innings to make up for Happ’s short start. He set down six in a row, striking out two on thirty pitches.

Bringing us to the bottom of the eighth and the meltdown of Seunghwan Oh.

Oh got the first out when Castellanos flew out to right field. But then Miggy Cabrera hit a grounder up the middle for a base hit, and was replaced by pinch runner Victor Reyes.

Toronto caught a break when Victor Martinez’ drive to left centre bounced over the fence for a ground-rule double, forcing Reyes to stop at third. Ronny Rodriguez ran for Martinez, so that both of the hard-hitting plug horses were out of the game. Niko Goodrun was walked intentionally to load the bases.

This brought catcher John Hicks to the plate. Hicks hadn’t hit a ball in fair territory all night, going down swinging twice to Happ and once to Axford. But he was okay with Oh. He reached out and poked a soft liner over second that scored the two pinch runners and sent Goodrum to third. Jacoby Jones knocked in the third run with a liner to left for a sacrifice fly.

After Iglesias lofted a base hit to left, moving Hicks up to second, John Gibbons had seen enough of Oh and brought in Tim Mayza, who got Manny Machado to fly out to left on the second pitch and end the misery.

With the wind totally out of their sails, the Jays went meekly in order in the ninth before the slants of Joe Jiminez, who only had to throw 13 pitches to pick up his first save of the year.

Sunday Revival: Once a Week is Better than Nonce a Week (I guess):

After the 4:00 start on Saturday it was a short turnaround on Sunday for the traditional 1:00 afternoon start.

Sunday was a matchup of young bulls, rotation studs of recent years who’ve been struggling in 2018. It was Aaron Sanchez versus Michael Fulmer, and devil take the hindmost.

Which turned out to be Michael Fulmer, who has had significant success against Toronto in the past couple of years.

It took a long time for somebody to blink in this one, though, in a game that was scoreless through the first five innings.

If you looked just at the pitching lines, especially the pitch count, Fulmer was pitching a gem and Sanchez was struggling. Sanchez retired seven in a row before giving up a base hit and a walk in the third, while Fulmer allowed only a walk, immediately erased on a double play.

Yet Fulmer had thrown 25 pitches, and Sanchez 49.

After the fourth inning the discrepancy was even worse. Fulmer retired the side quickly to go to 40 pitches. Sanchez struck out the side and walked a second batter, but by the time he sat down he was up to 71 pitches; he had thrown nearly twice as many pitches as Fulmer, and it was still no score.

The disparity evened up somewhat in the fifth when Sanchez put the Tigers down on 12 pitches, to take him to 83. Prior to this, Fulmer had given up his first hit and faced his first mild problem in the top of the fifth.

In fact, he gave up base hits to both Russell Martin and Devon Travis, but unfortunately for the Jays before Travis’ base hit, he and Martin botched an attempted hit-and-run, and Martin was thrown out at second by Tigers’ catcher James McCann. Fulmer racked up 21 pitches in the inning, leaving him at a still very economical 61 through five.

But efficiency isn’t always the only issue when it comes to pitching, and in the top of the sixth Fulmer made a fatal mistake and Toronto was able to capitalize on it to take a lead they’d never relinquish.

The first two Jays’ hitters, Diaz and Granderson, went down quickly, but then Fulmer went to a full count on Solarte before losing him. The only thing worse, sometimes, than a leadoff walk is a two-out, nobody on walk. Gifted with an unexpected plate appearance, Justin Smoak made the most of it and became the first Blue Jay to reach second base against Michael Fulmer. He also reached third and home after taking a 3-2 pitch deep to right to give Toronto, and the hard-working Sanchez, a 2-0 lead.

It was a lead that Leonys Martin immediately cut in half in the bottom of the sixth with a leadoff home run to right. Sanchez gathered himself after the Martin shot, though, and managed to keep Castellanos in the ball park on a deep fly to right. Then he struck out Cabrera, walked Candelario, and fanned Niko Goodrum to finish six tough innings over which he gave up one run, 2 hits, walked three, and fanned seven on exactly 100 pitches.

An interesting highlight of Sanchez’ sixth inning is that when he struck out the dead-cinch future Hall of Famer Miggy Cabrera, it stretched Cabrera’s record at the plate against Sanchez to 0 for 14.

Michael Fulmer was sent back out for the top of the seventh, but only two batters into the inning, a ground single to centre by Pillar and a walk to Russell Martin, Tigers’ manager Ron Gardenhire turned to the impressively-named Warwick Saupold to take over on the mound.

Alas for the Tigers, Saupold’s name is far more impressive than his performance was, at least on this day, and a tight ball game was about to become a big Toronto lead.

The first batter Saupold faced was Devon Travis, who hit one to the wall in right field, where Nick Castellanos came down from a leaping catch that robbed Travis. Pillar, reading the hit well, tagged up and advanced to third.

Randal Grichuk, hitless since his return from the DL on Friday night, lined a double into the left-field corner which scored Pillar and brought Russell Martin around to third base. Aledmys Diaz hit a liner to right that Castellanos tried to Pillar with a dive, but he’s not Pillar, and it was ruled a trap. Martin scored, and Grichuk moved up to third on the hit.

The Jays were now up 4-1, but weren’t finished yet.

Saupold fanned Granderson for the second out, but Solarte grounded one through the bunched left side to score Grichuk and bring Diaz to third. This brought Smoak back to the plate for the second straight inning, and he juiced another one, a deep drive to centre that bounced over the wall for a ground-rule double, scoring Diaz but forcing Solarte to stop at third.

So Smoak picked up six total bases and three RBIs in two consecutive plate appearances over two innings. The Jays now led 6-1; when Saupold finally fanned Morales the rising was over.

Tyler Clippard took over for Sanchez for the Tigers’ seventh and threw what has become a typical Clipp-ish inning: strikeout, popup, ringing double off left-field wall by Jose Iglesias, strikeout. We just have to breathe a sigh of relief that Iglesias’ launch angle wasn’t just a little higher. (In layman’s terms, which I prefer: thank god he didn’t hit it out.)

Righty Zac Reininger pitched the top of the eighth for Detroit, and he got bit on the butt by a one-out walk followed by a botched double-play ball, and paid a two-run price for his troubles. After Pillar hit a soft liner to second off the end of his bat, Reininger lost the plate and walked Martin on a 3-1 pitch. Travis hit a grounder to short that was tailor-made for an inning-ending double play, but the rookie second baseman Rodriguez dropped the ball, and the Tigers only got the force at second.

This gave Grichuk a shot at the plate, and like Smoak earlier in the game, he made the most of his opportunity. After the line double to left in the seventh, Grichuk hit a liner to right that carried over the fence for two more runs.

Once again, an error can’t be assigned if an out is recorded but an obvious double play isn’t turned because of a bobble, so the runs were earned. No fair on Reininger, but he shouldn’t have walked Martin in the first place.

As for Grichuk, if this Randal Grichuk is the guy we traded Dominic Leone to the Cardinals for, well, welcome to Toronto, Randal, as you duplicate Smoak’s feat with a double, a homer, and three RBIs in consecutive plate appearances in consecutive innings.

With an 8-1 lead it didn’t matter much, with an off-day coming up, that Danny Barnes and Aaron Loup couldn’t put the Tigers away in the bottom of the eighth, and that Ryan Tepera had to come in and get two outs to preserve an 8-4 lead.

After Johnny Barbato dodged some bullets in the top of the ninth, Tepera came back out and finished the five-out stint with panache, on a ground ball and two strikeouts.

What does matter in the big picture is another poor performance by Danny Barnes, who should have been breezing, starting an inning with an 8-1 lead. But, no, he had to walk the leadoff batter Martin, and give up a one-out single to Cabrera, causing John Gibbons to pull the plug quickly.

But Barnes’ ducks were on the pond, and sometimes like Sunday afternoon in Detroit, those ducks have to come home to roost. Good job there weren’t more of them, and that the Jays had built a big lead.

Now we get to see whether our boys can build on this one win when the fearsome Yankees come to town for two, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Honestly, folks, is there some kind of a perverse twist on the Curse of the Babe going on here?

I can accept that Boston has the best record in baseball and Toronto has, well, not played up to hopes/expectations for the last month. I can accept that in the circumstances it’s not surprising that the Red Sox laid an embarrassing drubbing on our boys this past week at home in Boston.

But what I can’t get my head around is how Boston roughed up Toronto over those three games.

Because “roughed up” is hardly the word for it. I can’t ever remember seeing so many bleeders and bloopers and excuse-mes in crucial at-bats in a single series in my life. And every single one of them was in the favour of the hometown boys.

It’s just not bloody fair.

And when you add the number of not-errors-but-mistakes that a Toronto team struggling to cover the defensive array without enough capable hands on deck to the annoying persistence of lucky bounces and contacts by the Red Sox, the Blue Jays never really had a chance in this series.

Not that the Jays’ pitchers, starters or relievers, did a great deal to ward off the crack of doom when the Sox saw the door opened, opportunists that they are.

On paper, Aaron Sanchez had his worst outing of the year, giving up seven runs on nine hits in five innings on Monday night.

But consider how the run swere scored. After retiring Andrew Benintendi in the first, Sanchez gave up base hits to right field to Xander Bogaerts on a 2-2 pitch, and Mitch Moreland on a 2-0 pitch. Then, with the not-so-fast J.D. Martinez at the plate, the Toronto right-hander threw his double-play ball. But Devon Travis made a bad throw to first, not an error but not what was needed, and Martinez was safe with Bogaerts scoring.

Sanchez gave up a walk in the second and a base hit in the third, and had only thrown 45 pitches.

In the top of the fourth a Kendrys Morales base hit cashed in Kevin Pillar’s leadoff double, so Sanchez came out for the bottom of the fourth ready to maintain the 1-1 tie.

Then the roof fell in. Slowly and softly, to be sure, but it still fell in. Eight batters later, five base hits later—only one hit hard—with a passed ball thrown in for good measure, the Red Sox had scored five runs to take a 6-1 lead, insurmountable given the way Toronto’s hitters were letting a rather tentative David Price off the hook. (Since when does Price go away, away, away with every right-handed batter?)

Sanchez was still in the game, coming out for the fifth inning. And why not? Not a bit of it was his fault.

Rafael Devers had led off by slapping a ground ball through the shift-abandoned left side of the infield. Eduardo Nunez followed with another ground ball that went past the notably immobile substitute shortstop Yangervis Solarte for another cheap base hit.

Then the most damaging moment of the inning, especially for a ground-ball pitcher looking to throw a double-play ball: one got past Luke Maile that was judged a passed ball, and the runners moved up, erasing the double play and putting Devers at third with nobody out.

Brock Holt hit a harmless fly ball to left, except that with Devers on third it was a sacrifice fly. Christian Vazquez hit a blooper into left that fell in for a single, with Nunez holding at second. Jackie Bradley Jr. lofted a deep but lazy fly ball to left centre that somehow eluded both Pillar and fledgling left fielder Russell Martin, falling in for a double that scored Nunez with Vazquez stopping at third.

Then Sanchez made a huge mistake and threw a wide one to the left-handed Andrew Benintendi, just what he was looking for, because Benintendi has perfected the Wally-Moon-like skill of slapping fly balls the other way, just far enough and high enough to clear the Green Monster, thus counting three more runs with a homer that went 346 feet . . .

That’s how Boston took a 6-1 lead, and that’s why manager John Gibbons didn’t think it necessary to yank Aaron Sanchez.

Since the game was already out of reach it’s not necessary to spend much time on the run the Red Sox scored off Danny Barnes in the sixth when Barnes walked Bradley Jr and Benintendi hit another moon shot to left, this time falling in near the foul line and going for a triple, as the Sox had Martin running hither and yon in left.

Fast forward to the second inning Saturday, with Marco Estrada on the hill for Toronto.

Boston had already scored two off Estrada in the bottom of the first on balls that were well and truly struck. Xander Bogaerts hit the wall so hard in left that Curtis Granderson, back in the lineup with the righty Rick Porcello throwing for Boston, was able to hold him to a single. Mitch Moreland plated Bogaerts with a double to the right-field corner, and then J.D. Martinez lined a double into the left-field corner that tallied Moreland.

So in the second inning, as if they needed another run, they picked one up once again without a lot of effort to it. With one out, Sandy Leon hit a fly ball to right, out near the track, a truly catchable ball on which Teoscar Hernandez—bless his trying heart—got turned around and misplayed into a double. After Bradley Jr. flew out to centre for the second out, Benintendi hit yet another moon shot off the wall for a double that scored Leon.

When a team’s playing from behind, the most soul-destroying thing that can happen is when they score a run to close the gap, their opponents immediately tack on another run to restore the lead that was.

That’s what happened in the fourth inning. After Justin Smoak drove a Porcello pitch over the right-field wall for Toronto’s first run, cutting the Boston lead to 3-1, Brock Holt hit a dreaded broken-bat bloop single to right with one out, and promptly broke for second. Maile’s throw was right on the bag, and beat Holt’s sliding feet. Should have been a “caught stealing”. But Solarte didn’t handle the throw, and wasn’t able to get the tag on Holt.

Holt was a runner in scoring position with double luck in his pocket: his blooper fell in, and Solarte didn’t convert the caught stealing. There he was, then, on second, ready to score on Bradley Jr’s legitimate line single to right that should have been harmless.

For some reason John Gibbons decided this was it for Estrada at only 63 pitches; yet another Toronto starter failed to go at least five innings. The bullpen had to go to work again, down 4-1 in the game.

Aaron Loup came in and got the last out; he walked Bogaerts on a close 3-2 pitch leading off the fifth, but Moreland hit a comebacker that Loup converted into a double play, and then Loup fanned Martinez. It was the highlight of the day for Toronto.

Joe Biagini came on for the sixth inning, and, like Sanchez the night before, saw things get quickly out of hand without any of his doing. Devers hit a chopper to short, and Solarte couldn’t make the play on the backhand. It went for an infield single. With the runner going, the returning Dustin Pedroia singled to right, Devers cruising into third.

Sandy Leon came up with one tainted double under his belt already. This time he hit a sort of sharp bouncer to Biagini’s left. Biagini made the worst possible choice on it, and tried to snag it. He deflected it towards the first base side, exactly where Devon Travis had been. But Travis had headed up the middle to cut the ball off, and it ended up dribbling into the outfield behind him.

With the defence pulled around to the right in the shift and Martin heading to cover third, Leon saw that there was no one at second and lumbered into an infield double, scoring Devers.

This left Porcello completely in charge with a 5-1 lead, three of which resulted from, shall we say, less than solid hits. So that was it for Saturday’s game. Toronto’s two-run rally in the top of the seventh, that cut the Boston lead to 5-3, was countered by three unanswered Boston runs in the seventh and eighth, leading to a second 8-3 Red Sox victory, giving them a nice little pair to draw to for three of a kind on Wednesday afternoon.

While the starters were still in Wednesday’s game the hex actually was working a bit against the Red Sox, even if they did have a 4-2 lead when both starters were gone.

Surprisingly effective fill-in starter Sam Gaviglio had another good outing for Toronto, holding Boston to two runs for five innings before J.D. Martinez absolutely crushed one in the sixth after a base hit by Benintendi.

Gaviglio had retired six in a row to start the game, five grounders and a strikeout, on 22 pitches. But in the third he gave up a base hit to leadoff hitter Blake Swihart, and a one-out opposite field (where else?) double off the wall by Bradley Jr. that scored Swihart with Toronto’s first run. Then all kinds of weirdness ensued, all of it falling in the Jays’ favour.

Benintendi hit a sharp liner to centre for a base hit. Pillar charged it so well that even the quick Bradley had to hold at third. Then, in typical Red Sox fashion, Benintendi immediately stole second. Or not. Manager John Gibbons called for a video review, despite that all of the first looks made it obvious that he was safe. Except that one that showed the runner’s fingers dangling above the bag when the shortstop Aledmys Diaz tagged his opper body. Call overturned, Benintendi erased for the second out.

With two outs and Bradley on third, the pressure was off. So of course Gaviglio bounced one to the plate that got away from Luke Maile, and Bradley came in to score, evading Gaviglio’s swipe tag on a toss from Maile. Or not. Another unlikely video review. And another unlikely overturn: Bradley’s fingers hadn’t quite reached the plate, either, and the inning was over.

Toronto wasn’t so lucky in the fifth inning when Eduardo Nunez exchanged his bat for a nine-iron and golfed a low strike from Gaviglio into the stratosphere that came down right at the barrier on top of the monster, and was caught by a fan in the first row. Then ensued the age-old question: was the fan hanging over into the field of play when he made the catch? After consultation, it was determined that he was not, and Nunez’ high and soft approach to the elevated green was annointed a home run for a 2-0 Boston lead.

Teoscar Hernandez finally broke the ice against a very effective Rodriguez in the Toronto sixth, powdering his own legitimate shot well and truly over the wall in dead left field after a two-out walk to Gio Urshela, ironically the only one issued by Rodriguez in his six and two-thirds innings of work.

But the tie only lasted until Martinez’ dinger in the bottom of the inning that left Gaviglio on the hook for a possible 4-2 loss, despite turning in another very effective outing for Toronto.

So Toronto scored two runs in a ninth-inning uprising that saw Boston manager Alex Cora try to save Craig Kimbrel. That didn’t work out so well. Brian Johnson started the inning and immediately gave up hard-hit base knocks to Pillar and Solarte, which ended the no-Kimbrel experiment.

The Sox closer came in and walked Smoak to load the bases, and then gave up a vicious line double to right by Kendrys Morales that scored the two runners from second and third. Kimbrel then retired the side in order.

Those two runs should have tied the game, but they just made it close, because the Red Sox curse had returned in the bottom of the eighth, and the Sox’ lead had grown to 6-2, thanks to a misfire on a double-play ball by Jays’ closer Ryan Tepera, and a “double” by Nunez that was exceeded in cheesiness only by Leon’s comebacker to the pitcher for a double in Tuesday night’s game.

It all came down like this, if you want the sordid details.

Bogaerts led off with a clean single to left. Martinez then nubbed one back to Tepera, Martinez, the eternally slow Martinez. Tepera, who had plenty of time to turn two, made a bad throw to second, and no outs were recorded, instead of the gift-wrapped double play Martinez had handed to Tepera. Rafael Devers popped up to short for what should have been the third out.

This brought Eduardo Nunez to the plate, and he came without his nine iron this time. Oh, no, this time he brought a tennis racquet up to the dish. He swung late, not very hard, and hit a line drive, well, a soft little flare that wasn’t very high, just enough to sail . . . ever . . . so . . . slowly over the desperately stretching glove of Justin Smoak, who stretched every sinew of his long body but just couldn’t . . . quite . . . reach it. It fell softly and safely to earth in short right, settling in like a wounded quail. Both runners scored, and Nunez ended up on second.

Thus it was that when Toronto scored two runs in the top of the ninth, they were still two runs short, all because of a bad throw and a dying quail.

The curse of the fens had struck again, and the Red Sox had a sweep.

Was that all Toronto needed, to get out of town?

Playing in the pretty confines of Philadelphia’s cozy ballpark, yet another space named after a greedy financial institution, was all it took to turn the Toronto Turkeys of Thursday afteroon’s embarrassment at home back into a flock of Blue Jays who can fly with the best of them?

Used to be, going into an inter-league series with the Phillies, Toronto’s spring training partners in the Clearwater-Dunedin area, was a tonic for the ERAs and the batting averages, given the woeful state of the perpetually-rebuilding Phils.

Not so much any more. These here Phillies are some ball club. It might be a little early; it wasn’t expected this year, but for all intents and purposes I think we can declare “mission accomplished” on the rebuild of this Philadelphia team.

So what happened when the Blue Jays dragged their sorry feathered rumps into town after a dreadful homestand?

The starters lasted. The relievers relieved, some of them mightily. The hitters hit, just enough. And when they lost one game out of three, it was crisp, clean, and entirely deserved by the Phillies, so who could gainsay them one out of the three?

NAIL-BITIN’ FRIDAY NIGHT

This past weekend was art show weekend at the gallery where my wife shows her paintings. We had an opening at 7:00 Friday evening, and a closing and pickup of paintings at 4:00 Sunday afternoon.

So I had to be creative to follow the game when I couldn’t watch. Luckily I’ve finally entered the twenty-first century, and have had a smart phone for the whole season. Makes life much easier when there are conflicts with the Jays’ games.

I only watched the last part of the game, from the bottom of the seventh on, just in time to join the nervous nellies watching Toronto try to close the deal after some crisp hitting and a great start by Sam Gaviglio vaulted the Jays into a 6-1 lead after five and a half innings.

From the start of the game I got to exercise my nimble fingers (ha!) on my phone by switching between Gameday and the memo pad where I was scoring the game in my usual notetaking style, all the while listening to Ben and Mike call the game on the radio.

I was disappointed, of course, not to have seen Toronto’s hitters jump start the game by delivering three two-out base hits with runners in scoring position to post a three-spot in the top of the first.

But there is something deeply satisfying about hearing a good radio caller narrate a rally for his team. (For, let there be no doubt, the radio broadcasters are fans of the team they work for in ways that the television guys just aren’t allowed to be.)

When Teoscar Hernandez beat out the two-out grounder to third that scored Josh Donaldson with the first Toronto run, the excitement emanating from the radio booth was almost palpable. And then, to have not only Yangervis Solarte but also the slumping Kevin Pillar drive the ball into opposite corners for doubles that scored first Hernandez and then Solarte, was, as they said in a play somewhere, “too much happiness”.

Even better, though, was to listen to the casual narration of Jays’ starter Sam Gaviglio’s easy, and much appreciated, three-groundout, twelve-pitch bottom of the first.

Gaviglio came to the plate with one out in the bottom of the second, and we paused for the curiosity of finding out how another Toronto pitcher might do at the plate in this National League park. Well! Phillies’ starter Zach Eflin through him a fat fast ball up and in for an easy strike three on a 2-2 count, but Gaviglio put a nice swing on it, caught it fat, and sent it on a line to left centre. Left fielder Rhys Hoskins moved to his left and put on an ill-advised leaping dive but the ball sailed past his glove, hit and bounced all the way to the wall, while the surprisingly impassive Gaviglio easily chugged into second.

Unfortunately, he died there, and had to be content to come back out for the second with the lead still 3-0.

Neither the exhilaration over his hit, nor the exertion of running it out, nor the disappointment at not crossing the plate, affected Gaviglio’s pitching, though, as he came out for the home second and recorded two more groundouts for five in a row, followed by a popup. This time he took 14 pitches, for 26 in total after the two innings.

Without actually watching him pitch, it was obvious to me that Gaviglio’s approach had a seriously negative effect on the timing of the Philadelphia hitters.

In the bottom of the third, though, a really strange thing happened. The Toronto righty threw only another 14 pitches for 40 after three, picked up another groundout, his sixth, his first fly ball out to left, and his first strikeout.

But with two out and nobody on, after retiring eight batters in a row, Gaviglio was facing his counterpart, Zach Eflin, who had managed to keep Toronto from extending its lead in the second and third.

If Gaviglio had any thoughts yet of throwing a no-hitter, and if he was thinking of himself as the best hitting pitcher on display this night, Eflin was having none of it. On an 0-1 pitch Gaviglio threw him a sinker that stayed up in the zone, and, like Gaviglio had done to him, Eflin put a good swing on the ball, hit it on the barrell, and away it went, headed irretrievably for the Phillies’ bullpen in right centre field.

3-1 Toronto after three.

Buoyed by his big hit, Eflin came out and shut Toronto down in the fourth. Gaviglio ran into his first trouble in the fourth, other than not missing Eflin’s bat. He walked Rhys Hoskins leading off, fanned Odubrel Herrera, and walked Carlos Santana. Then he got his ground ball mojo back, and Mikael Franco hit into a fielder’s choice, and Nick Williams grounded out to third.

Any semblance of a duel between the starting pitchers came to an end after three batters into the Toronto fifth. Curtis Granderson singled to right and advanced to second on Josh Donaldson’s slow roller to third. That gave Grandy a good vantage point to watch Justin Smoak’s drive to centre on a 1-0 pitch that chased Grandy home before Smoak’s dignified trot followed him across. It was 5-1 for the Blue Jays

Eflin got the second out, but let Toronto off the mat again, with a little unwanted help from his defence. Yangervis Solarte followed Smoak’s homer with a base hit to right, a solid line drive. Solarte moved up on a passed ball, and Kevin Pillar reached on a bad throw by the third baseman Franco that should have been the third out, while Solarte moved up to third, and then scored on a single by Russell Martin off reliever Victor Arano; Phillies’ manager Gabe Kapler had rescued Eflin from further damage after Franco’s error.

So Eflin was out, Gaviglio was still in and pitching with a 6-1 lead. Things were looking good for the visitors, but of course with Toronto it seems like things are never easy these days.

Gaviglio had his best inning in the fifth, fanning the catcher Jorge Alfaro and right fielder Aaron Altherr on six strikes and retiring Pedro Florimon on a first-pitch liner to centre. After five innings he’d thrown only 69 pitches.

But Toronto was to stall at six runs. Arano pitched a good sixth after finishing the fifth for Eflin; Adam Morgan kept the Jays in check in the seventh and eighth, and Tommie Hunter finished off the ninth.

In fact, after Martin’s RBI single in the fifth, the Jays only had one more baserunner the rest of the way. Justin Smoak reached on an infield single in the seventh off Morgan, but was erased in a double play.

Sam Gaviglio came within one batter of the magical six-inning start with only one run allowed, but with two outs in the bottom of the inning Herrera doubled to left and Santana crushed the first pitch he saw from Gaviglio over the right-field fence to cut the lead to 6-3. Gaviglio fanned Franco for the second time to finish his sixth inning; he had given a quality start of six or more innings pitched with three runs or less, a start that was much needed by the bullpen, but 6-3 was a lot less secure than 6-1.

But it was plenty secure for one inning in the capable hands of Seunghwan Oh. Oh threw 21 pitches, and the only pitch that was hit in fair territory was a popup to the shortstop by Florimon for the second out.

Prior to that he’d walked Scott Kingery and fanned Alfaro, and after the popup he fanned Altherr.

Mindful, no doubt, of his two previous meltdowns as closer, manager John Gibbons elected to bring Tyler Clippard in for the eighth inning and leave the closer’s role for Ryan Tepera.

On the scoreboard Clip didn’t do a lot better in the eighth inning than the ninth, as the Phils cut another run off the Jays’ lead, but it wasn’t totally his fault. Cesar Hernandez started the inning with a drive to right that was catchable, except that Teoscar Hernandez, who is still learning the outfielding trade, took a bad route to the ball, and it got by him and hit off the wall for a double.

If Teoscar had caught Cesar’s hit, Cesar wouldn’t have been on second when Rhys Hoskins lined a double into the left-field corner, and Hoskins would have died on second as Clippard ran out the side after Hoskins’ shot with two popups and a strikeout.

In came Tepera to attempt to earn the save, thereby protecting Toronto’s now two-run lead.

Well, it was tense, really tense. I mean “god, I can’t look!” tense. He gave up one more run, and the Phillies were in a position to do even more damage, when he finally shut them down.

Would you believe bases loaded, one out, one run already in on a wild pitch? And would you believe that Tep got out of it? Both the situation he faced, and the fact that he survived, are true, and Toronto won the first game of this interleague series by a razor-thin margin of 6-5.

With one out, the inning started with a hit that barely made it out of the infield. Jorge Alfaro hit a chopper that just snaked through between Solarte and Gio Urshela at short. Pedro Florimon who was 0 for 3 to this point, lined one into right centre and hustled to second while the catcher Alfaro was held at third.

The throats got a little tighter when, with one out and the tying runs in scoring position, Tepera bounced a wild slider past Russell Martin to the backstop. Alfaro scored to make it 6-5 and Florimon moved up to third.

The throats got a lot tighter when Tepera then walked both Aaron Altherr on a 3-1 pitch and Cesar Hernandez on four pitches to load the bases. It was at this point that John Gibbons came out, not to bury Tepera, but to praise him, apparently. He seemed to give his substitute closer a pep talk, and then retreated to the dugout.

Whatever Gibbie said seemed to have worked, because in the most important at bat of the entire game Tepera threw a 2-2 fast ball to the young slugger Rhys Hoskins on the outside black* and plate umpire Joe West rung him up, much to his dismay.

*It’s a tradition for plate umpires to allow pitchers strikes that are thrown “on the black”. If you’ve never seen a home plate up close, you should know that it’s designed rather strangely, in that there is about a two-inch bevel all the way around it. During the game the bevel has a tendency to be covered in dirt so that the players and the umpire can only see the flat part of the plate. When you see umpires sweep off the plate they are usually clearing dirt away from the side bevels so that they can be seen. Whether covered by dirt or not, the bevels are part of the plate and therefore within the strike zone. When an ump gives a pitcher a pitch that he envisions is over the bevel, the pitch is said to be “on the black”.

With two outs the tension eased considerably. And it disappeared when the over-eager Odubel Herrera jumped at the first pitch and hit a hard chopper to second. Solarte had time to back up for a good hop and throw him out to end the game.

So it took Ryan Tepera one run, two hits, two walks, a wild pitch, a strikeout, and 26 pitches to record his first save.

I’m sure he’s hoping that the next one will be a little easier.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON PITCHERS’ DUEL

When you looked at the pitching matchup for Saturday’s game, it looked more like a pitching mis-matchup, with the hot young Philadelphia star Aaron Nola, coming into the game sporting a 6-2 record and a 2.37 ERA.

Facing Nola for Toronto would be Jaime Garcia, coming off a stint on the disabled list for shoulder issues, preceded by some very inconsistent and unproductive starts.

Well, Nola was as advertised. How about walking second batter Josh Donaldson in the first inning, and then not allowing a baserunner until the seventh inning with one out, when he issued his second walk, to Justin Smoak?

Not only did Nola retire 19 of the first 20 batters he faced, he struck out ten of them.

In the end, Nola and manager Greg Kapler found themselves in the same trap as many other managers and fine young pitchers find themselves. He carried a no-hitter into the seventh inning with only the one walk, but the moment the no-hitter was broken, Kapler was out of the dugout to take him out.

Not only did Russell Martin break up the no-hitter with his ground single through the left side, he also drove in the Jays’ first and tying run. More importantly, the hit came on Nola’s 113^th pitch.

Nola—and Kapler—were rapidly reaching a moment when it may have been necessary to take him out even if the no-hitter was still on. The fact that Nola had walked Smoak and Solarte to set up the situation for Martin to tie the game was the last factor in stretching his pitch count. Martin’s hit solved the problem for Kapler and made it easier for him to take Nola out.

I’m waiting to see what the buzz is the first time some young stud is pulled from a no-hit bid in the eighth inning because he’s at 120 pitches. I think that such an event would mark another irrevocable change in the traditions of the game, right up there with the adoption of the defensive shift.

But we started out saying that this game was a surprising pitchers’ duel, so let’s look at the real surprise, the performance of Jaime Garcia.

I keep thinking that Garcia at his best, and we’ve seen some great innings, or even strings of innings, from him this year, not only resembles Marco Estrada physically, but pitches very much as a left-handed version of the slow-throwing changeup specialist.

In his first three innings Garcia gave up two base hits, one in the first by Rhys Hoskins and one in the second by Scott Kingery. Neither was hard hit, and Garcia stranded both of them. He struck out one in the first inning and two in the second, and by the end of three innings, he’d thrown only 41 pitches.

In the fourth, much like Estrada, Garcia’s pitches started to come up, and he retired the side on three fly balls, the first two easy outs, but the third a deep drive by Aaron Altherr, the hardest hit ball so far off Garcia, that Pillar went back to the wall and made a great, if typical Pillar, catch on.

Mikael Franco led off the fifth and followed Altherr’s drive at the end of the fourth with the second straight shot hit off Garcia. But this one, a line drive to left, cleared the fence for the first run of the game, a run that would stand up until Martin broke up Nola’s no-hitter in the seventh with his RBI single.

After the Franco drive, Garcia settled right back down and generated two more groundouts and a strikeout. At the end of the five innings he’d still thrown only 52 pitches. I was going to say that this was something of a minor miracle for Jays’ starters these days, but that would be understating the significance of his feat.

After a brief rain delay in the middle of the sixth, Garcia dismissed the Phillies on two more groundouts—seven to this point—and a popup. Another nine pitches, to 61 for six.

Not only did Garcia have to wait out the rain in the sixth, he had to wait out the Jays’ top of the seventh, when they took a good while scoring the tying run and seeing Nola pulled for the reliever.

Even so, he got the first two outs in the Phillie’s seventh so quickly that when he gave up two base hits with two outs John Gibbons left him in to retire the side and finish seven complete innings. He finished as he started, efficiently: he fanned Santana, retired Altherr on a grounder to third, gave up a base hit by Franco and a bunt single by Kingery, before ending the inning on a weak comebacker by Alfaro. All of this took twelve pitches. That’s twelve pitches.

So, Aaron Nola’s line was six and two thirds innings, one run on one hit with three walks and ten strikeouts, throwing 113 pitches.

Jaime Garcia’s line was seven innings pitched, one run on five hits with no walks and five strikeouts, throwing 73 pitches.

Was that 73 pitches over seven innings? A tad over ten pitches per inning? For Jaime Garcia? Yup!

After all that beautiful pitching, the denouement of the game came off a bit flat.

Seranthony Dominguez, who finished off the seventh for Aaron Nola, gave up a one-out infield hit to Kevin Pillar, who was hitting for Garcia in the eighth, and then threw a double-play ball to Curtis Granderson to end the inning.

Joe Biagini came in to start the Philadelphia eighth inning for Toronto, his first appearance in his new role as definitely a reliever. His first appearance, nay, his first batter, was a rude comeuppance for his aspirations.

Nick Williams hit for Dominguez, and, unlike in his starts, Biagini started him off with a well-placed fast ball for a strike. In fact, he started out all three of the hitters he faced with a strike. Would that he had done so in his starts!

Unfortunately, Williams turned on Biagini’s second pitch and deposited it over the centre-field fence for the run that would be the only thing differentiating these two teams on this day.

Biagini quickly retired Hernandez on a first-pitch fly ball to centre, and Hoskins on a grounder to first. Then John Gibbons put in Aaron Loup to pitch to the left-handed Odubel Herrera. As often happens, Loup plunked the man he was supposed to get, but then retired the switch hitter Carlos Santana to end the inning.

Luis Garcia came in to close out the game for the Phils, and only took ten pitches to finish it off. Donaldson started things off with an infield hit, but Smoak fanned and Teoscar Hernandez grounded into a double play to end the game.

So John Gibbons hit for Jaime Garcia in the seventh inning, but the Jays didn’t take the lead in the inning. The Phillies scored the winning run in the eighth off Garcia’s reliever Biagini.

The question might arise, then, should Gibbie have let Garcia hit for himself and let him start the eighth, since he had only thrown 73 pitches? It’s fun to play with, and we can all have our opinions, but here’s the bottom line: after about 100 years of baseball tradition having set certain things in stone, any manager playing National League rules letting his pitcher hit in the seventh inning in a tie game: just ain’t gonna happen, no way, no how.

So, no point in talking about it. Their relievers didn’t give up a run, our only reliever gave up one, and that’s why we lost this beautiful pitchers’ duel.

RUBBER GAME SUNDAY? GIVE THE BALL TO THE HAPP-STER!

After hanging on through a hair-raising ninth inning on Friday night, and losing a close pitchers’ duel on Saturday, it seemed like some of the elements that had been missing from Toronto’s approach were starting to fall into place.

First of all, their starting pitching was pretty darned good, compared to all recent experience. Sam Gaviglio left with a three-run lead, one out short of a quality start on Friday night, and Jaime Garcia threw arguably one of the team’s best starts of the season Saturday afternoon in a losing effort.

Secondly, effective and productive hitting suddenly showed up for the first five innings Friday night, showing that it really was possible for this Blue Jays’ team to jump out in front when the opportunity was made available to them.

Then they shut down, almost totally blanked from the sixth inning Friday night through the entire game Saturday, with the exception of Russell Martin’s RBI single that broke up Aaron Nola’s no-hitter in the seventh inning.

Finally, they needed effective work from the bullpen, something they didn’t get Friday night, though they did barely cling to a lead that should have been good enough, and something they didn’t get from Joe Biagini on Saturday afternoon when he served up the game-winning home run to Nick Williams, the first batter he faced after coming on in the eighth for Garcia.

So, how about a game in which they put it all together? What would that look like?

Well, first it would look like grabbing an early lead on the Phillies’ starter, rookie Nick Pivetta.

Curtis Granderson had ensured that Toronto wouldn’t be no-hit for a second time this season by a Canadian boy (Pivetta is from Victoria, B.C.. What’s with these B.C. guys making it to the Show as starting pitchers, eh?) Grandy led off the first with a line single to left over the head of the shortstop Scott Kingery, but Pivetta kept the Jays off

the board and stranded him at third after throwing the ball away on a pickoff attempt at first, an error that allowed Granderson to move all the way around.

But in the second it was Pivetta’s wildness to the plate that cost him two runs. After third baseman Mikael Franco took a double away from Kevin Pillar by snatching his hot shot and throwing him out, Pivetta walked the next two batters and then wild-pitched them into scoring position.

Enter Devon Travis, who really needed a pick-me-up at the plate and got it as he lined a double to the wall in left centre to notch the two baserunners and give the Jays a 2-0 lead.

Doubling back to Kevin Pillar for a moment, this would prove to be an incredibly frustrating day for him, as he absolutely tattooed the ball in all four of his plate appearances, and never hit it out of the infield, robbed four times. Anybody out there who thinks that Pillar is into his early-summer reversion didn’t see him swing the bat on Sunday. But, just an 0 for 4.

After the second inning Pivetta settled down nicely and ended up going five innings, giving up just the two runs on four hits, while walking two and striking out seven on a fairly high 86 pitches for five.

Tommie Hunter came on for the Phillies in the top of the sixth, and the Jays once again picked up a crucial solid base hit, an opposite-field double to left with the bases loaded by Dwight Smith Jr. that brought home two more runs, doubling the Toronto lead to 4-0.

That was it for Hunter, as Phillies’ manager Gabe Kapler went to his bullpen, with two outs, first base open, and the eighth hitter, right-handed Devon Travis standing in. He brought in the right-hander Edubray Ramos to face Travis, whom the Phils immediately waved to first on the intentional walk, bringing Happ’s position in the batting order to the plate.

Kapler was trying to force John Gibbons’ hand and pull Happ for a pinch-hitter, but given the effectiveness of Jay Happ on this afternoon (see below) it was no surprise that Gibbie let Happ hit, since he was throwing a two-hit shutout through five innings.

Sadly, there was no further display of Happ’s hitting prowess as we saw against the Mets earlier in the season. Faced with the chance to break open his own game in a significant way, Happ made contact off the reliever Ramos, but skied out to right field to leave the sacks loaded.

The second thing it would look like for Toronto to put it all together would be a second consecutive quality start, and they got just that from the increasingly confident and effective Happ.

Through three innings the big lefty allowed only a second-inning walk to Aaron Altherr. He gave up a walk and a single with one out in the fourth and then fanned Altherr and Williams. With a couple of popups and another strikeout in the fifth he was breezing, on a modest 69 pitches.

But Happ’s defense let him down in the sixth, leading to three Philadelphia runs, making a lot of throats a lot tighter around the ballpark.

With one out, Mikael Franco hit an opposite-field single to right beating the shift, a tactic that we seem to see used an awful lot more by our opponents than by us. Carlos Santana, not the swiftest bunny in the den, hit a little teaser to third that Josh Donaldson barehanded and threw away.

Franco ended up on third and Santana on second, credited with an infield single and advancing on the error. Aaron Altherr grounded one up the middle for a base hit that scored Franco, but Kevin Pillar, hoping to hold Santana at third, overcharged the ball and left it on the grass behind him, allowing Santana to score the second Philly run and Altherr to advance to second.

Nick Williams singled to right to score Altherr, before Scott Kingery popped out to bring the inning to a merciful end. Altherr’s run was unearned because he should not have been on second when Williams came to bat.

After Adam Morgan retired the Jays with a walk left on in the top of the seventh, Happ came back to record two quick outs in the bottom of the inning. John Gibbons decided not to let him face the young right-handed slugger Rhys Hoskins again with the slim lead, and brought in Seunghwan Oh, Happ finishing up with six and two thirds innings, two earned runs, six hits, two walks, and eight strikeouts on 100 pitches.

Needed a quality start to put together a good game? Check.

Oh retired Hoskins on a grounder to third, and then after Luis Garcia put down the Jays in order in the top of the eighth, he came back out for the bottom of the eighth.

The third element needed for a win is good relief work. Oh gave the Jays four outs without allowing a baserunner, striking out two and inducing a popup in the eighth. He only needed fifteen pitches for the four outs.

Gabe Kapler sent Hector Neris out for the top of the ninth to try to hold the Jays within one run. He almost made it, striking out Devon Travis and the pinch-hitter Kendrys Morales. But he couldn’t get by Curtis Granderson, who homered to right on an 0-2 pitch to extend the Toronto lead to 5-3 before Neris fanned Josh Donaldson to finish striking out the side.

If you wanted to add a little sub-element to starting pitching, timely hitting, and shut-down relief as the key factors in a win, it might be the ability to pick up an insurance run. Check that box too.

Ryan Tepera has clearly supplanted Tyler Clippard as the closer in the absence of Roberto Osuna, and he picked up the save for the second time in the series. This time it was significantly easier than Friday night.

Tepera started badly, losing Nick Williams on a 3-2 pitch for a leadoff walk, enough to make the milk curdle in my teacup. But two ground balls to third later and the game was over. Scott Kingery’s grounder was converted into a forceout at second, and then the catcher Jorge Alfaro’s grounder went round the horn for a double play to end the game.

Effective relief pitching as the third element of success? Check, and check.

So we had to go on the road to win a series for the first time in how long?

Fenway Park next. Batten down the hatches!

WEDNESDAY NIGHT PAIN:

Toronto seems to have fallen into a pattern of loss: one good win, in most series, at least one tough loss, and a game of lay-down-and-die.

Tuesday night the Jays scored early on some hard-hit balls, albeit with some help from the Angels, and Jay Happ was masterful. Toronto looked like the team that many of us think it can be, even still, this year: a team that can compete with the best of them.

Wednesday night they looked to be heading for a second fine win over a very imposing Angels’ squad, until Tyler Clippard couldn’t close out the save, and some strange and unlucky baserunning incidents cost the Jays a chance for a comeback walkoff (that shouldn’t have been needed: see: blown saves).

Yesterday afternoon, in Toronto’s second Facebook-only game (boo! hiss!) whomever Josh Gibbons sent out on the field were only a crowd of imposters; they couldn’t possibly have been any of the current Blue Jays.

How do I know this? Because this crowd played like the Toronto Turkeys, and as turkeys are wont to do, they served up an easy series-winning win to the hungrier Angels, who like to feast on the road, it seems.

Words fail me when it comes to trying to describe what we saw in the ninth inning of Wednesday night’s game. But, I’ll try, though though first by setting the scene.

It started like a pitchers’ duel, and for the first three innings it looked like Aaron Sanchez might be coming a little closer to the pitcher we used to know. After three he’d scattered two walks and a hit, and his pitch count was a little better, though the third inning showed some regression, as he threw 17, 14, and then 21 pitches.

Tyler Skaggs, on the other hand, was pristine through eight hitters, and then was rocked by two shots in the third, an opposite-field line homer over the fence in right by, of all people, Devon Travis, followed by a liner into the gap in left centre for a double by Teoscar Hernandez. Unfortunately for the Jays, the drives came with two outs, and Hernandez was stranded.

There was good and bad for the Jays in the middle innings. They added a run in the fourth on a solo homer by Yangervis Solarte, and another in the fifth when Solarte knocked in his second run of the game, plating Josh Donaldson, on second with a two-out double. Solarte grounded a single up the middle for the RBI.

Also good was the fact that Sanchez kept the Angels off the board through the fourth and fifth. Not so good was that he emptied the tank doing it, throwing 21 pitches in the fourth and 24 in the fifth for a total of 97 and out after five.

Once again it was walks and deep counts that did Sanchez in. He yielded his second walk in the fourth inning, and walked the bases loaded in the fifth for a total of five walks in the game.

It’s great to throw a two-hit shutout. Not so great if it’s only over five innings, you give up five walks and throw 97 pitches. Not to mention another four inning night for the bullpen. On this night, the last point would be the key.

John Axford took over in the sixth, and had no luck at all. He gave up three hits, a snaky ground single up the middle by Andrelton Simmons, a decent line drive to right by Zack Cozart, and a terribly fluky wrong-way bloop single down the left field line by Martin Maldonado, which was surrounded by Blue Jays, none of whom could corral it, primarily because left-fielder Curtis Granderson was playing deep and around to centre.

Maldonado’s lucky bleeder counted Simmons, but there’s karma in baseball sometimes, because Maldonado would get payback for his luck at the end of the inning.

John Gibbons pulled Axford and brought in Seunghwan Oh, who managed to keep the Angels from scoring any more, but was the beneficiary of some of the oddest plays you’d ever see.

So, Oh’s pitching to Kole Calhoun with Cozart on second and Maldonado on first. Calhoun hits a tough liner to Granderson’s glove side in left. Grandy races over, slides, makes the catch, almost. An out call was made before the ball appeared falling free. Cozart, who had gone back to second to tag, suddenly was forced to third. Grandy threw from a prone position to third in time to record the out on Cozart.

Now Maldonado’s on second and Calhoun’s on first with one out. Oh fans Ian Kinsler for the second out, bringing, wouldn’t you know it, Mike Trout to the plate.

And of course Mike Trout’s going to get the two-out base knock to score Maldonado and keep the inning going. Except that someone forgot to tell Maldy and Calhoun to run like hell.

After the Angels lost one runner at third to Granderson’s alert play, Calhoun tried to go first to third on a single to left, but was out on a close play that was reviewed, with the out call standing. Meanwhile Maldonado lollygagged around the bases, figuring nobody was going to get him out anywhere, and he was a good several strides from the plate when Calhoun was called out at third.

Um, you have to cross the plate before the out is recorded at a base, or, guess what? It doesn’t count! So the score remained 3-1 for Toronto going to the home half of the sixth.

And if you think that was enough weirdness on the bases for one game, you don’t know about the bottom of the ninth yet.

In the meantime we had a textbook lesson in the difference between two bullpens. Phillies’ rookie manager Gabe Kapler ran out Jim Johnson, who threw two innings, the sixth and the seventh, on 25 pitches, and his only problem was solved by a brilliant play by his shortstop Simmons. The last batter Johnson faced in the seventh was Donaldson, who smoked a no-doubt double to the alley in left centre, a screaming low liner that was destined for the wall, until Simmons leapt out of nowhere, leapt higher than he had any business leaping, and snagged it for the third out.

On the other hand, Toronto, which had used Axford and Oh in the sixth inning, used Danny Barnes, Aaron Loup, and Ryan Tepera for one out each in the seventh. If you are counting, that’s five relievers for two innings, though Tepera was game for another inning, and brilliant in the bargain, getting an easy fly, an easy grounder, and a strikeout, and throwing only 15 pitches in total for the three outs.

Justin Anderson worked the bottom of the eighth for the Angels and gave up a walk to Kevin Pillar, but stranded him there.

Here’s where you question things in retrospect. With Roberto Osuna still out of the picture, John Gibbons seems committed to Tyler Clippard to close, despite having given up the grand slam against Oakland in Toronto in his second last appearance.

Yet, there was another option: Tepera had only thrown 15 pitches, and is as capable of going two innings as anybody. Why not burn him for the next game and try to win this one with him?

Just a thought. Like I said, in retrospect, of course.

To be fair to Clippard, one little missed play meant that he could have been two outs and nobody on in his save opportunity. He fanned Kinsler, who so far is not hitting for the Angels like he hit for the Tigers, for the first out. Then he walked Mike Trout, which might not have been a bad move. Then Trout tried to steal second, and Russell Martin threw him out.

Except . . .

Except that Devon Travis didn’t catch the ball, a bullet, low, thrown right over the bag, the perfect throw that hits the glove just as the foot hits the glove . . . and Travis missed it, and there was one out and Trout on second.

Clippard lost it. He walked Justin Upton. He walked Albert Pujols to load the bases, bringing Shohei Ohtani, who’d done nothing so far in the two games, to the plate. What happened next, though, wasn’t Clippard’s fault. He threw a changeup way inside that had Ohtani swinging in self-defense. He hit the ball anyway, completely sawed off his bat, and muscled, almost willed, the ball into centre field for a base hit that scored Trout and Upton to tie the game, and sent Michael Hermosillo, running for Pujols, to third.

Ohtani stole second, setting up the winning two runs to race across the plate on a ground ball single up the middle by Andrelton Simmons. It was, shockingly, now 5-3 Angels, and for the second time in less than a week, Tyler Clippard had given up four runs in the ninth on a blown save.

When you look at it, though, not one ball in the inning was hit hard, and if Travis makes the tag on Trout, I don’t think we’re looking at a Blue Jays’ loss here at all.

Ah, but the Jays, down two, still had to hit in the ninth, and therein lies another story of strange baserunning that may have cost Toronto a game Clippard’s wildness had already put in jeopardy for them.

The Jays started with a rush that stirred your soul. Dwight Smith Jr. hit for Gio Urshela and lined a single into right field. Granderson hit a drive to right that Calhoun gambled on. He dove for it, missed it, and Grandy was at second with a double, with Smith stopping at third.

I had some thought that Smith should have been waved, which could even have let Grandy go all the way to third.

But, no, the tying runs were at second and third with nobody out.

Then a strange thing happened. Kendrys Morales was sent up to hit for Devon Travis. Not so strange that he was pinch-hitting, but this left the Jays severely compromised as to infielders if the game went to extra innings. (We later learned that the plan was to put Morales, the new jack-of-all-trades, at third, presumably sliding the weak-armed Donaldson to short.)

Morales crushed one, and watched it go before starting his home run trot. But the baserunners, Granderson and Smith, played it carefully; they were in no danger. If it was a homer, the game was over. If Calhoun flagged the ball down at the fence, they’d be ready to tag and move up, with Smith scoring. If it stayed in the park and hit the fence, they’d score easily.

But it didn’t happen that way. Calhoun didn’t catch the ball, and Trout picked it up very quickly off the wall. The jogging Morales had to stop at first, Smith scored, but Grandy was held at third as the throw from Trout came rocketing in to the relay man.

On that ball hit that way, there is probably a 99% chance that Morales has a double and Grandy scores the tying run. But this was apparently the one percent, and it didn’t go our way.

Teoscar Hernandez then hit a medium fly to right, where Calhoun, who also has a cannon, was lining up for the catch. Of course Coach Luis Rivera sent Grandy, but the throw was up and catchable on the third base side, and Grandy was DOA. Morales finally moved up to second on the throw to the plate, but this only had the effect of opening up a base for Donaldson to be waved aboard, bringing Justin Smoak to the plate.

The Angels’ reliever, Mr. Herkity Jerkity himself, Blake Parker (how does this guy not get called for a balk on every pitch??) finally managed to fan Smoak to end a game that was extremely difficult for our side to have lost.

THURSDAY ENNUI

I don’t think I’ve ever felt more like Camus’ l’étranger than while I was watching Thursday afternoon’s game on the damnable FaceBook platform.

How soon it was after the opening inning that I just didn’t give a damn, and thought it was all just merde!

If the Jays were flat on Thursday afternoon after the Wednesday disaster, how much flatter were we observers who had to watch these non-events unfold?

First off, Nick Tropeano, who doesn’t throw much of anything but strikes, completely muffled the Blue Jays on the mound for the Angels. Dwight Smith Jr hit his first major league home run for Toronto, a solo shot in the sixth inning.

That’s it, folks, that’s all. Tropeano went seven and a third innings, gave up the one run on four hits with one walk and six strikeouts on 92 pitches. By the time he left the game the Angels were leading 5-1, and would pick up three more runs, one in the eighth and two in the ninth, so it hardly mattered that the Jays only had one hit from Noé Ramirez and José Alvarez the rest of the way.

With the day game after the night game, this was a rest day for some of the Blue Jays, a day for somewhat of an alternative lineup. Josh Donaldson was the DH with Yangervis Solarte at third. Kendrys Morales got the start at first, Luke Maile was behind the plate, and Smith Jr. in left instead of Curtis Granderson, despite the fact that Tropeano is a righty.

Devon Travis and Gio Urshela formed the keystone combination. Though both are the nominal starters at their positions at the moment, neither is contributing offensively, and both are hitting below .200.

So, with Tropeano throwing good strikes, it was a lineup that couldn’t offer much threat against the Angels.

Marco Estrada had the start for Toronto. In his recent starts the real Estrada has been really close to breaking out, and with each start you wonder if this is the one when he’ll go eight shutout innings on three hits.

Well, Thursday’s wasn’t that start.

He pitched around the obligatory first-inning walk to Mike Trout followed by the obligatory Trout stolen base to retire the side on 17 pitches.

But in the second inning Estrada started off by walking Shohei Ohtani on four pitches after a first-pitch strike. Then he went to 3-1 on Andrelton Simmons, had to come in with a fast ball and Simmons whacked a ground-rule double to left, with Ohtani stopping at third. Both scored on a single to left by Martin Maldonado, and it was 2-0 with nobody out in the second, another one of those lightning lapses Estrada has experienced this year.

In the third inning with one out the Angels struck again, Justin Upton hitting a ground-rule double, immediately cashed by a single by Pujols. Estrada was lucky to escape without further damage, as the very slow Pujols only reached third on Ohtani’s following double, and tried to score on a comebacker to Estrada, who threw him out at the plate.

All of this takes pitches, though, and by the end of the third inning Estrada was up to 59, and after Sanchez’ inability to go five innings the night before, it was becoming clear that the bullpen was not going to get much rest in this game either.

After a quiet fourth inning, Estrada gave up a leadoff homer to Trout in the fifth, and didn’t survive the inning, being pulled after four and a third innings and 88 pitches.

At this point, you could hope for two things. You could hope for the diminished lineup of Toronto to start working over Tropeano, and you could hope that the exhausted Toronto bullpen might come through with another brilliant performance for four and two thirds innings while the hitters tried to solve a pretty tough pitcher.

Well, this was a day when neither of these things was going to happen. I’ve already covered the fact that Tropeano and the two Los Angeles’ relievers never lifted their feet from the throats of Toronto’s hitters, to use a terrible metaphor.

Nor were the relievers up to it. Aaron Loup pitched a tidy one and two thirds innings following Estrada, but John Axford gave up a run in the seventh, extending the deficit to 5-1.

The recently-recalled Deck McGuire came in for the eighth inning and walked the first two batters he faced. He did a good job to hold the damage to one run after that, with the help of some more strange Angels’ baserunning that resulted in another tag play at the plate.

With the over-use of the Toronto bullpen over recent games, John Gibbons sent McGuire out again for the ninth, and this time the Angels nicked him for two more runs, as they put Toronto even further behind in their rear-view mirror.

What Toronto needed to win this series was some effective work at the plate and a good start of at least six innings, preferably seven, from Marco Estrada. They got neither, and the issue of which team was going to win the series was never in doubt.

With this dismal homestand behind them, the Jays packed their bags and slunk out of town, carrying with them the hope that they might be able to regroup away from an increasingly tense atmosphere at home in the Dome in Toronto.

When Kevin Pillar almost lined into a double play five batters into last night’s game against the Angels, threatening to cut short a promising start, my Spidey sense was alerted to the possibility that it was going to happen again, this awful melange of bad luck and poor play by the Blue Jays.

Then, with two outs, runners on first and second, and the uber-slumping Russell Martin at the plate, the worm finally turned.

Martin scorched one to right. It was headed for the alley, but still definitely within range for an ordinary right fielder.

But Chris Young, a well-travelled veteran valued more for his bat than his glove, was on patrol for LA in right. He took a bad route to the ball, but almost managed to cut if off, only to have it deflect off his glove and bounce away.

Smoak and Donaldson both scored, and Martin ended up at second.

This sort of thing is only supposed to happen in favour of the other team, not in favour of the Blue Jays, according to the lights of recent weeks.

And with the even more uber-slumping Kendrys Morales at the plate with Martin on second and two outs, that worm not only turned again, but put on a white robe, stood up on his tail, and spun like a Turkish dervish.

Angels’ starter Garrett Richards, no doubt steamed, got an early visit from his pitching coach to settle himself down. Morales stepped in, took a curve for a called strike, and then laid off two low and inside balls. Apparently, Richards didn’t get the memo about low and away breaking balls to Morales. Then he threw a hanging slider right in the sweet spot, and for the first time since the beginning of the month, Morales didn’t miss it.

He massacred it into the right-field seats, and the Toronto lead was 5-0. In a truly ironic twist after the terrible performance in the field on Sunday, four of the five runs off Richards were unearned.

The question then became how would Jay Happ respond? He had run through the fearsome top of the Angels’ order, Ian Kinsler, Mike Trout, and Justin Upton, on eleven pitches, striking out Kinsler to lead off the game.

The answer to that question was he’d do pretty damn well, and after the top of the second you felt you were in for a good ride with Happ:

Albert Pujols hit a soft bouncer to Justin Smoak at first with Happ covering on the first pitch. Shohei Ohtani, the Angels’ designated hitter and premier pitcher, walked on a 3-2 count in his first TV Dome at-bat, but Andrelton Simmons grounded into a fast (had to be, with Ohtani and Simmons running) around-the-horn double play. Two innings, twenty pitches, is that a sigh of relief?

Once Happ settled into his rhythm, the story line would become how far could he go, and could the bullpen hold off the Angels once he was finished? Oh, for the days of the complete game start!

In the third Happ gave up his first base hit, a one-out ground ball by Chris Young that sneaked through the left side of the infield, and nearly doubled his pitch count, but it was still below 40 for three at 38.

The Angels chipped two runs off the Toronto lead in the fourth, despite only one solid hit off Happ, who made the primary error of walking the leadoff batter, who happened to be Mike Trout.

Of course he came around to third on the one good hit, a line single to right by Upton. And thence he was able to score on Albert Pujols’ exceedingly cheesy popup single that drew a crowd in left centre, but a crowd that had been playing too deeply for such a lollipop.

Upton, who moved to second on Pujols’ blooper, moved to third on Ohtani’s fielder’s choice, and scored on Simmons’ high chopper to Donaldson, on which the Toronto third sacker had no play at the plate and had to play it on to first to get Simmons.

Happ had had enough of that nonsensethough. Ten pitches to retire the side in the fifth, twelve pitches in the sixth, and twenty in the seventh, his last, only because all three hitters worked him deep into the count, Ohtani with a strikeout, Simmons with a walk, and then Cozart with another double play started by Donaldson

So Happ finished seven innings, gave up two runs on three hits with three walks and a relatively low five strikeouts over 99 pitches.

Richards, meanwhile, threw much better than the score, obviously, given the four unearned runs. But he needed some luck to keep the Jays from adding to their lead.

He gave up just one base hit in the second and third, but then had to work his way out of trouble in the fourth, when he walked Martin leading off and gave up a base hit to Morales off Kinsler’s glove that moved Martin to third with nobody out.

But Martin was caught out in a botched contact play on Gio Urshela’s grounder to thirth that resulted in a one-person rundown by catcher Martin Maldonado, Travis fanned, and Grandy flew out to right, leaving Morales at second.

In the fifth Garrett faced the Jays down after Donaldson reached third leading off with a double to the same alley as in the first inning, and moving up on a Garrett wild pitch.

But none of Smoak, Hernandez, and Pillar could do the job and it remained 5-2 as Garrett wrapped his night up at 92 pitches and turned his game over to the Angels’ bullpen.

But Toronto remained stalled at five runs. Noé Ramirez retired six in a row in the sixth and seventh, striking out three on only 25 pitches, and Cam Bedrosian issued a leadoff walk to Justin Smoak in the eighth, threw a double-play ball to Teoscar Hernandez, and got a fly ball from Kevin Pillar, all on eleven pitches.

The Angels had crawled a run closer in their eighth off Ryan Tepera. They cashed in a leadoff double by Martín Maldonado; he moved to third on a grounder to first by Kole Calhoun and scored on a sacrifice fly to right by the veteran Ian Kinsler. Sometimes this game seems so easy: leadoff double, ground out, sac fly, run.

Los Angeles certainly had things lined up for a comeback in the ninth with Justin Upton, Shohei Ohtani and Albert Pujols set to face Tyler Clippard, standing in once again for the missing Roberto Osuna.

But it was easy-peasy for Clippard to earn his second save. He fanned Upton, retired Pujols on a fly ball to centre, and popped up Ohtani, who went hitless in his Toronto debut, on only ten pitches.

The nay-sayers might natter about Toronto only scoring when runs are handed to them, as in last night’s five unearned markers, but you have to put the ball in play for the other team to make an error,

The fact is, the Jays not only put the ball in play, they hit it hard. Donaldson, Hernandez, Pillar with his liner to third, and Martin all smoked the ball. Good things happen when you square it up a few times.

And good things happen when you can send Jay Happ to the mound, especially with a cushion like that. Five runs in the first? Happ the starter? Put it in the books, baby, and let’s move a little closer to .500 tonight.

TUESDAY BEAT DOWN UNDER THE STORM CLOUDS:

In my last piece I made a bad joke about the weather forecast for the two-game series between the Blue Jays and the New York Mets Tuesday and Wednesday. I mentioned that the Mets’ ballyard is in Flushing, and that it was supposed to be wet.

Sorry about that. I should bite my tongue. Or my keyboarding fingers. Or something.

Tuesday evening’s game was delayed over an hour and a half, and during the delay there was great scepticism as to whether it would even be played.

Wednesday afternoon’s game started right on schedule because, well, because the league told the umpires to start it no matter what the weather. And they did. And all the while it “poured down rain” as my late mother-in-law used to say.

There’s an old story about the Hall of Fame pitcher Dizzy Dean, who went on to have a long and fruitful career as a radio broadcaster for the St. Louis Cardinals. During the Second World War security restrictions forbade the broadcasters from mentioning the weather during the game. But one time Dizzy couldn’t resist, and came out with this: “We ain’t supposed to say what the weather is, but that ain’t sweat what is runnin’ down the pitcher’s face.”

And I can confirm that Wednesday afternoon it wasn’t sweat running down the pitchers’ faces, and every other part of their physiognomies as well.

But luckily for the scheduling pooh-bahs of MLB the clouds stopped bleeding Tuesday night and the game finally started. Maybe the schedulers were happy, but not our heroes, no sir!

Despite the fact that the Mets’ heralded starter Noah Syndergaard, aka Thor, was more of a snore, at least on the mound, the Jays were, once again, unable to achieve much against frankly mediocre pitching.

At the same time, the supposedly light-hitting Mets didn’t seem to care who was serving them up for Toronto. Whoever it was, they liked his stuff, and the whole crowd, Thor right up in the front row, had a great time knocking it all over the park. For the whole game.

One in the second, five in the fourth, three in the fifth, and, for good measure, three more in the eighth, what fun they had, these lousy Mets’ hitters.

They had so much fun that it’s easy to forget that after three innings Toronto was actually ahead 2-1.

Syndergaard started by striking out the side in the top of the first. Looked as advertised so far. Jaime Garcia held the Mets off the board in the bottom of the first, but gave up a base hit, a stolen base, and a walk in the process.

In the second inning Syndergaard looked significantly less intimidating. Teoscar Hernandez leff off with a sharp single to left to break the strikeout string at three. But he was stranded on the bases, along with Russell Martin, who drew a two-out walk, when the big Viking fanned Richard Urena to end the inning.

The Mets capitalized on two, no, make that three, Toronto mistakes to take a one-run lead in the bottom of the second. The first mistake was that Jays’ starter Jaime Garcia walked the newly-arrived Mets’ catcher Devin Mesoraco, who came to New York from Cincinnati in return for the disgruntled Matt Harvey, whose days in the Big Apple were never very happy. Mesoraco looks like a pretty good fit for a team that was looking for any kind of a catcher at all. That he’s pretty good is a distinct bonus.

Anyway, walking the leadoff man is bad. Grooving a fast ball to a pitcher who can hit some is bad. Syndergaard hit a fast ball up and in down the left-field line, and Mesoraco, the catcher, lumbered all the way around to score because Teoscar Hernandez, who got to the ball quickly, made a terrible weak throw to the cutoff man for mistake three.

For some reason probably having to do with pointy-headed analytics, Mets’ manager Mickey Callaway bats his pitcher eighth, not ninth. I thought it was just because Thor isn’t such a bad hitter, but he did it with Zack Wheeler Wednesday night too.

Hitting ninth, the shortstop Amed Rosario, who can also hit some, hit a hard grounder to Urena at short for the second out, with Syndergaard holding second. So it’s not a given that Mesoraco would have scored subsequently even if the Hernandez throw had been accurate. Defensive positioning, pitch selection, approach at the plate all could have changed drastically if Rosario had been facing one out, runners at second and third. Conclusion: maybe Hernandez gave the Mets a run, and maybe they would have scored it anyway. In any case, the scorer didn’t give Hernandez an error for allowing Mesoraco to advance.

You might have expected the mighty Syndergaard to come out and dominate like in the first inning after knocking in the lead run, but it was just the opposite. He faltered, and the Jays put up two runs to take the lead back.

They even did it with a two-out base knock, a rare accomplishment that could have led to great things, but instead ended up being the only highlight for Toronto in a long and dreary night.

After plate umpire Bill Welke rather cruelly punched out Jaime Garcia on a pitch that was low and away, Curtis Granderson roused the crowd of sentimental New Yorkers who remember his happy years with the Mets by lining a single solidly into right. But when Josh Donaldson popped out with a massive swing for the second out, it looked like Grandy was going to die at first.

Then it got interesting. With Justin Smoak at the plate Granderson stole second. When Smoak grounded a single up the middle Granderson was stopped at third. Maybe rattled, Syndergaard nicked Teoscar Hernandez’ shirt to load the bases, prompting a coaching visit to the mound.

The time out didn’t help much because Syndergaard went 2-0 on Yangervis Solarte, and then threw ball three, a sinker low and away, but Solarte reached down and knocked a grounder into centre to score both Granderson and Smoak. Kevin Pillar ended the rally by flying out to right, but it was a nice little moment, if fleeting and forgotten.

We had a little while to savour the fact that we were in the lead in a close ball game. Garcia came out and fanned two and flew out the third to centre on just twelve pitches. Syndergaard also rallied to retire the side with two strikeouts in the top of the fourth, leading us to the bottom of the fourth.

Little did we know that this game was going to blow up in the face of Jaime Garcia and the Blue Jays.

Even after Jay Bruce hit a fluky opposite-field pop ground-rule double to lead off the inning there was no reason to suspect anything was up.

Mesoraco worked a walk on a 3-2 count for the second time against Garcia, and former Blue Jay Jose Reyes hit a soft single into centre to load the bases, bringing Thor back to the plate carrying his thunder-stick. This time he hit a sacrifice fly to centre; thus far he had driven in both Mets’ runs, in a tie ball game.

Then the floodgates broke. Rosario hit one off the top of the fence for a double that they had to review to see if it was a homer. It wasn’t; Mesoraco scored and Reyes stopped at third, giving the Mets the 3-2 lead.

Pete Walker visited Garcia, and it helped for the moment, as Brandon Nimmo went after the first pitch and popped up to third. But that was the last gasp for Garcia; he couldn’t get the third out.

Juan Lagares doubled to right to score Rosario and and Reyes, and Garcia was done at four and two thirds innings. Just to make it neat, Jake Petricka gave up a double to Asdrubal Cabrera to score Lagares and finish Garcia off at 6 runs allowed.

With one out in the top of the fifth, the Jays last gasp died on a hard shot by Hernandez that ended up in an easy double play to neutralize Donaldson’s double to the wall in left centre and Smoak’s subsequent walk. By the time Thor had finished off Hernandez he had reached 103 pitches and he was finished for the night, having dodged a few bullets but leaving with a 6-2 lead.

He needn’t have worried about getting the W. His mates bushwhacked Petricka, once again with two outs, for three more runs.

Deck McGuire, who’s been in the minors since the Jays drafted him in 2010, finally made his Toronto debut after coming back to the franchise from a brief stint with Cincinnati during which he made his first six appearances in the majors last year.

McGuire did a pretty good job mopping up for the Jays, pitching three and a third innings and holding the Mets off the board until he ran out of gas in the ninth and was tattooed for three more runs. He also distinguished himself by rapping a hard line single into left in the eighth inning when John Gibbons let him bat for himself in the eighth because he wanted him to finish the game on the mound, to save the exhausted bullpen stalwarts from having to put in more work.

WEDNESDAY RAKIN’ IN THE RAIN:

I have to take a moment to recognize two milestones that occurred on May sixteenth of this year. 118 years ago my mother, Loretta Marie Remski, was born in Detroit, Michigan. She died at the age of 78 in 1978. She was not a baseball fan, but she was a kind, generous, and nurturing mother to all of her ten children. Also on May sixteenth we celebrated the second birthday of our second grandson, O, a happy, intelligent, interesting little boy who has a lot of his great grand-mother in him, and whom she would have loved as much as we do.

I watched and annotated the first five innings of Wednesday’s game as usual, then listened to the rest of it, except for the ninth inning, as we slowly made our way across town for the after-school birthday celebration for O.

Wednesday was a day when no baseball game ever should have been played. If it had been started before the rain, and it rained like that, they would have stopped it. But you can blame this one on the greed of the officials of major league baseball. They have crammed the schedule so full of paying dates that it’s sometimes nearly impossible to make up a rained-out game. The fact that a game is an inter-league game makes it even more difficult, because there’s far less chance of the game being made up “in passing” so to speak.

All that being said, and I hope nobody coming out of that mess ended up getting hurt, I’m sure as hell glad they played that game, because it turns out that a little slick on the bat and a little slick on the ball makes the Toronto hitters much, much better.

After laying over and playing dead on Tuesday night under the threat of rain, the Blue Jays came back Wednesday afternoon in what counts in baseball as a torrential downpour, and turned the tables on New York, giving them a fearful beating and winding up winning 12 to 1, with unheralded Richard Urena administering the coup de gràcewith a three-run homer in the top of the ninth.

Meanwhile, Jay Happ pitched the performance of the month for Toronto. Hell, it seems like the performance of the century, when you think about it. All he did with a ball he couldn’t even grip properly was throw a two-hit shutout for seven innings with no walks and ten strikeouts, on 101 pitches.

I won’t say too much about Jay Happ and the Mets’ at-bats through the rest of this piece just because there’s little to say. Just keep in mind that while the Jays were piling up runs and putting in long innings at the bat, Happ was just toodling along, sitting the Mets hitters down equally effectively whether he had a long wait or a short wait between innings. Consider his performance to be like an anti-virus programme quietly running in the background, doing its thing, while other, flashier things, were going on in the foreground.

There was really no early hint about the way this game was going to turn out. Justin Smoak hit a two-out solo homer off Mets’ starter Zack Wheeler in the first inning, but that run stood up as the only score for the first three innings.

There wasn’t that much to choose from between Happ and Wheeler through those first three. Other than Smoak’s dinger, they basically went pitch for pitch. The only hard-hit ball off Happ came from the bat of Michael Conforto in the second, a drive to the base of the wall in centre that Kevin Pillar ran down and caught as he slid awkwardly into the wall.

In the third inning we saw the phenomenon of both pitchers striking out the side. After three Wheeler had thrown 41 pitches and Happ 43.

The Jays extended their lead in the top of the fourth when Teoscar Hernandez jacked one down the line and out to left to chase home Josh Donaldson’s leadoff walk. Kevin Pillar and Luke Maile picked up two-out base hits before Wheeler fanned Gio Urshela to end the inning.

In the bottom of the fourth Wilmer Flores hit a double to left centre that was the only hard-hit ball off Happ, and made him the only Mets’ batter to reach second base, but Happ induced a little grounder to second by Conforto, and fanned the rookie Phillip Evans to strand Flores.

In the fifth the Jays chased Wheeler, who must have reached the end of his usefuleness in the fourth, because he gave up three more runs in the fifth without getting an out.

Wheeler went to 3-1 and then walked Jay Happ leading off. Nothing makes a National League manager madder than his pitcher walking the other pitcher, especially leading off. Granderson doubled to the wall in right centre with Happ going to third. Donaldson ripped one up the middle to score Happ and move Grandy to third. Smoak hit one to dead centre over the head of Juan Lagares and Donaldson chased Grandy home with the fifth and sixth runs. Wheeler walked Hernandez, and manager Mickey Callaway called it a day for Wheeler with Toronto up 6-0.

Robert Gsellman came in and shut down Toronto to strand Smoak and Hernandez, but it was only a holding action.

A.J. Ramos came in to pitch the sixth inning for New York, and maybe Callaway shoulda stuck with Gsellman, because Ramos started by serving up a ground ball single to right by, you got it, Jay Happ, leading off, and the inning went downhill from there. Grandy doubled Happ to third for the second inning in a row; Donaldson scored him on a sacrifice fly that also moved Grandy to third. Smoak walked. Hernandez knocked in Grandy with a base hit, Smoak advancing to second. Solarte hit into a fielder’s choice after a video review requested by the Mets, with Smoak going to third. Pillar knocked Smoak in with a base hit to centre.

Finally, Jacob Rhame was brought in to pop up Luke Maile for the third out, but it was 9-0, and with Happ going two more innings it was all over.

Let’s just pause on one moment before moving ahead to the ninth. With one out in the seventh and Rhame still on the mound for New York, Jay Happ’s spot in the order came up again. Of course he hit, because he was going to pitch at least another inning, saving on a relief pitcher, and besides, why not, with a 9-0 lead? So with one out Happ came to the plate, swung at the first pitch, and lined a single to centre field, giving him two base hits and a walk in four plate appearances. Much searching of record books ensued, to try to find another two-hit game by a Toronto pitcher.

So in the ninth inning, with lefty Buddy Bauman on the mound for the Mets in his second inning of work, Maile led off with his second hit of the game. He looked destined to be stranded as Bauman retired Urshela on a deep drive to centre on which Lagares made a brave if foolhardy spectacular catch, crashing into the wall, and Morales on a fly ball to left. But Richard Urena, who is capable of such doings though we tend to forget that, ripped a line drive into the seats in left for a final insult to the Mets, giving the Jays the same number of runs as the Mets scored in Tuesday’s game.

For however it matters, Danny Barnes served up a solo homer to Brandon Nimmo in the bottom of the ninth to break the Jays’ shutout, after Aaron Loup had pitched a clean eighth.

So the Jays scored a split in the two-game series with the Mets, and even won the runs-scored battle by a slim 14-13 margin. All played under either threatening or weeping clouds, a not-quite-wasted short visit by the Blue Jays to the Big Apple.