Long Ball Stories

Stop me if you’ve heard this before.

The Blue Jays were locked in a scoreless pitchers’ duel this afternoon, with the recently-returned-from-the-disabled-list Jay Happ going pitch for pitch against the recently-returned-from-the-disabled-list James Shields of the Chicago White Sox.

Then in the top of the fifth inning Chicago bleeped and blooped its way into, not only a lead for Shields to protect, but a three-run lead at that.

This is where you interrupt me and say, wait, I can’t stand this script any more. I can’t—I won’t—read another word!

And you would be well within your rights to cash in your chips and check out for more cheerful climes and cheerful times.

But today you’d have been wrong. Dead wrong.

Sure the Jays had blown glorious scoring opportunities in the first, when they lost yet another run to a ground-rule double, and the fourth. And sure, by the end of the Chicago fifth, with the score 3-0 for the Chisox, of the seven singles given up by Jay Happ, three of them were of the reach-down-and-hit-it-off-the-end-of-the-bat variety, and two more were ground balls that just snaked past the diving gloves of Toronto infielders, including the single by Jose Abreu that knocked in the second and third runs.

And sure, finally and most maddeningly, for the second day in a row a sacrifice bunt by Melky Cabrera, for god’s sake, figured prominently in the proceedings. Talk about adding insult to injury, to have Melky kill us with the bunt when John Gibbons would have run the bases starkers before giving him the bunt sign when Melky was a Blue Jay.

But then in the bottom of the fifth, down 3-0 to a James Shield who had effectively closed the door on two possible rallies already, Steve Pearce, who had grounded into a double play to erase a Russell Martin walk in the second, lined the first pitch of the inning, a high fast ball on the outside corner, into right field for a base hit. And then a strange play on a ground ball scorched to third by Ryan Goins that should have been yet another double play had the same effect as if Goins had bunted Pearce to second.

It was a low liner to Todd Frazier’s left, and before he could get his glove down it deflected off his heel, but right to shortstop Tim Anderson on one hop. Too late for the force at second, Anderson briskly threw Goins out at first, leaving Pearce in scoring position. And then Kevin Pillar, who was hitting all of .100 with runners in scoring position, softly lofted a 1-0 curve ball into left field, Pearce got a good read on it, and scored without a throw to cut the lead to 3-1. In fact, Toronto was inches away from a second run in the inning as well. Josh Donaldson, up next, hit one to the deepest part of the ball park, where Willy Garcia hauled it in, with Pillar smartly moving up to second on the catch. But Jose Bautista, unlike Jose Abreu in the top of the inning, didn’t quite get his hard-hit grounder up the middle past the shift, and the little rally was over.

I suppose all sports are games of inches, but sometimes it seems that baseball is far more so, especially if you think about the numerous replay reviews we’ve watched in the last two years of close plays at first: which first, ball in glove, foot on bag? Foot on bag, ball in glove? After Jay Happ came out for the top of the sixth and breezed through the meatiest of the meat of the Chicago order, Frazier, Davidson, and Avisail Garcia, on eight pitches, James Shields bid fair to do the same, striking out Kendrys Morales with a called third strike and retiring Justin Smoak on another hard grounder into the shift. But then those inches reared their ugly heads. (Surely, if inches had heads they’d be ugly, wouldn’t they?)

These were the inches by which Troy Tulowitzki’s soft bouncer up the third-base line with two outs stayed fair, as it bounced right into the bag, leaving a bemused Frazier to look on helplessly while Tulo crossed the bag at first without a throw for an infield hit. Tough couple of innings at third for that Frazier guy, who’d had, remember, Goins double-play shot carom off his foot for a virtual sac bunt the inning before.

But there were more inches to come, about six to eight of them, by my guess-timation, and these were the inches by which Russell Martin’s following deep drive to centre first of all cleared Willy Garcia’s outstretched glove, and then managed to bounce off the top of the fence and out for a two-run homer, a tie ball game, and another dramatic late-inning dinger by Toronto’s star catcher and proud Montrealer.

This had all started, remember, with two outs and nobody on. Now, still with two outs and nobody on, and Anthony Swarzak into the game to replace the unlucky and rather angry James Shields on the mound, Steve Pearce came up again. Once again he collected a base hit, this time a single to right on a 2-2 pitch on the outer half of the plate. Which brought Ryan Goins to the plate: Goins, who brought his Mixmaster to the game today to help him stir things up. This time, on a 1-0 pitch, he got a high 95 mph four seamer up in his wheelhouse, on the inside corner, and hit a majstic drive to right centre that split the outfielders and went to the wall. Pearce, running with the hit with two outs, scored easily from first as Chicago misplayed the relays to the plate, and Goins ended up on third with a go-ahead triple.

Goins died there as Pillar grounded out to third, but Jay Happ was able to come out for the top of the seventh at 92 pitches, but now pitching on the lead. He was only an out away from a full seven-inning start, too, when he made the mistake of letting Melky Cabrera come to the plate with nobody on to bunt over. Happ fanned the catcher Kevan Smith leading off, and then retired the second baseman Yolmer Sanchez on a grounder to second, bringing Melky to the plate with two outs and nobody on. Unfettered by strategic concerns, Melky swung away and hit the ball over the head of Steve Pearce in left to the wall, and rolled into second with a double.

With only the one-run lead, John Gibbons decided that Happ had done enough to keep Toronto in the game, and went to the bullpen for Danny Barnes. Keeping in mind the scratchy nature of the run-producing hits given up by Happ, this had to count as a second successful start for the big left-hander: six and two-thirds innings, three runs, eight hits, all of them singles except this last double by Cabrera, no walks, and nine strikeouts over 98 pitches.

Maybe Happ would have retired Tim Anderson to finish off the inning, but a bullpen call is always a good one if it works, and this one worked. It took the now-reliable Barnes just two pitches to get Anderson to hit a can of corn* to centre for the third out.

*A “can of corn” is an old baseball term for an easy fly ball out. It’s a funny one, though: I wouldn’t want to try to catch a tin can of corn dropped over a hundred feet or more from the sky, armed with just a baseball glove!

I’m not quite sure why Chicago manager Rick Renteria decided to leave Swarzak in to start the seventh against the Jays, but he did, and it didn’t work out well. He literally dodged a bullet from Josh Donaldson who led off. Donalson lashed one back up the middle and Swarzak flicked his glove at it from his finish position. He was twice lucky: the ball hit his glove instead of his rump, and hitting his glove deadened the ball so it didn’t bounce very far away, and he was able to take the out at first. Jose Bautista then borrowed a page out of the Chisox’ play book and reached for a low outside pitch, lifting it into centre for a single.

Renteria decided he’d seen enough from Swarzak, and brought in the left-handed Dan Jennings. This would have the effect of turning around both Kendrys Morales and Justin Smoak, who would hit right against him. This is not the first time an opposing manager has done this, and I still don’t get it, considering that both switch hitters have better power numbers hitting right than left.

It didn’t work out too well for Renteria this time, either. Jennings threw two fast balls that were wildly outside, and then was forced to come in with one, and Morales crushed it to left, bouncing it off the facing of the Level of Excellence, targeting Tony Fernandez’ sign, to be exact. Considering the season that Toronto has had, a 6-3 lead looked a lot sweeter than a 4-3 lead.

But the Jays weren’t done yet, keeping in mind there was still only one out. Justin Smoak lined a single to left off Jennings, the lefty having gone oh for two in dealing with the big Toronto switchers. He stayed in to face Tulowitzki, and got a ground ball, but it wasn’t good enough for an inning-ending double play, and went for a fielder’s choice. That ended Jennings’ brief moment on the stage, and Renteria opted for the big right-hander Michael Ynoa to come in and face Russell Martin, now with two outs.

Ynoa didn’t work out that well either, as he walked Martin, bringing Pearce, already two for three on the day, to the plate. With Tulo at second and Martin at first, Pearce powered a 1-0 pitch high into the left-field corner where it hit fair, bounced up to the fence in foul territory, and was touched by an idiot fan who undoubtedly cost Toronto Martin’s run, as he was placed at third on Pearce’s ground rule double that had counted Tulo for the seventh and final Toronto run, a run charged against Jennings. Another lost run to the ground rule double, but this time not from a bounce out.

Ynoa wasn’t quite done yet, though he didn’t give up any more runs. Dwight Smith was sent out to run for Pearce, who could trot off with a good day’s work to his credit. Ynoa

then fell behind Goins 3- 1 before walking him, bringing Pillar to the plate with the bases loaded and two outs.

Pillar bounced one toward right that looked like it had a good chance of going through, but Sanchez got to it on his backhand, and made an awkward flip throw to first which bounced in the dirt and was scooped by Abreu as Pillar crossed the bag. What was I just saying about replays at first? Pillar was called out, but of course manager John Gibbons asked for a review, given the weight of the moment, it being the third out with the bases loaded. It was pretty clear from the replays that Pillar was out, and the review confirmed it fairly quickly, so the game moved on to the eighth with the Jays suddenly holding a 7-3 lead, and Jay Happ in line for the win.

I was surprised, after a very long bottom of the seventh, to see Danny Barnes come back out to pitch for Toronto, since it seemed like Joe Smith time, and Smith hadn’t pitched at all in the first two games of the series, and Barnes, it seems, has appeared in almost every game this season. (Actually, this was Toronto’s sixty-eighth game, and it was Barnes’ thirty-fifth appearance, and by way of comparison, Ryan Tepera, who also seems to be on the mound every time you look, has made thirty appearances.)

In any case Barnes did just fine, facing only four more batters after retiring Anderson to end the top of the seventh and pick up Happ. He fanned Jose Abreu, retired Avisail Garcia on a short fly to right, walked Todd Frazier, and fanned Matt Davidson, quite a tidy bunch of prey to gather into his hunting pouch. He took 24 pitches to navigate the inning, so he just might get a rest Monday night in Texas.

The Sox’ top of the eighth was certainly not without interest to the obvervant fan, though. First there was the Garcia popup to Bautista in right, a ball that Bautista took after calling off Ryan Goins, who had called for it and clearly had it lined up. At the last minute Bautista called for it, Goins dropped away, and then Bautista realized he didn’t actually have it in his sights. Luckily, he stuck his glove out at the last minute and caught the ball rather awkwardly at his waist. What was interesting to see was that after the play was over Bautista clearly communicated to Goins that he had been mistaken in calling the infielder off, and you could see how relieved he was that the ball had been caught.

And then there was Matt Davidson, possibly inventing a whole new play, maybe to be called the Davidson Pretend Base on Balls, to cover a delayed steal of second. Davidson was completely responsible for a major mistake here, but the upshot of the play was that Todd Frazier ended up on second with a very strange stolen base.

On a 2-2 count of a long at bat, Davidson lost track of the count, for which he needs to be fined big time in the White Sox’ kangaroo court*, and thought that ball three, which Barnes threw in the dirt, was ball four. He stepped across the plate, bent over, and started to take off his shin guard. Frazier, on first, either playing along with a set play (please god, no!) or caught up in the same dream world as Davidson, thought it was ball four too, and started leisurely jogging toward second.

Russell Martin, of course, knew exactly what the count was, and when he saw Frazier wandering toward second, he fired to Smoak at first, who turned and threw to second to retire the now panicked Frazier, who was moving more urgently toward the bag. But Smoak’s throw hit the sliding Frazier in the back and bounced away. It took a long time for it to be scored as a stolen base, but there was no real alternative. Natural justice was restored two pitches later when Barnes fanned Davidson on his trademark high hard one.

*It’s a long-standing tradition in major league baseball that teams convene a clubhouse kangaroo court, empowered to find guilt and impose fines and other punishments, to call out mistakes, not errors, that should not be made by major league ball players. Such as: losing track of the count, losing track of the outs, passing a base runner ahead of you, forgetting the batting order, and so on. Some mistakes, of course, cross into game-changing errors. If the player who’s forgotten his place in the order steps into the batter’s box and takes a pitch, he is out for batting out of order. And sometimes a player can commit an error because of a brain cramp.

Not too long ago, an un-named outfielder on an un-named team thought the fly ball he had just caught was the third out. He turned and tossed the ball into the stands, which is now common practice. Then, to his horror, he realized that it was not the third out, and there was at least one base runner enjoying his freedom mightily. You be the umpire: how do you score this one? Worse, how does the player ever go into the clubhouse again?

After the high drama of the Jays’ comeback, and the craziness of the Davidson Play, the end of the game was anticlimactic. Michael Ynoa settled down and dispatched Toronto’s two, three, and four hitters on just thirteen pitches. Perhaps to give him the work after the two losses, John Gibbons brought Roberto Osuna into a non-save situation and he retired the bottom of the Chicago order, also in thirteen pitches, with two strikeouts.

There are 162 games to be played in the major league championship series. Some of them, regardless of the standing of the teams involved, are of little significance. Some are eminently forgettable. Some are over before an out is recorded, and some teeter on the brink for hours, which sometimes feel like days.

But some games are near epic, their scenes and moments to be indelibly etched in our minds. Especially given the desperate need of the Toronto Blue Jays to salvage one of these three games with Chicago, I think this game qualifies as one of the very special ones.

But will it be remembered for the Martin homer, for the Goins triple, or for the Davidson Pretend Walk? Only time will tell.

Like Lucy Ricardo, I have some ‘splainin’ to do.

I only saw the first two innings of today’s game, because of a prior commitment to a reception for a gallery showing of my wife’s paintings. This time it was a cat show, which is to say an exhibition of paintings featuring cats, in support of a cat rescue operation in Brampton.

And no, the cat show did not take place in a cat house. And if I have to explain that to you . . .

So, in the first two innings I got to see Marcus Stroman’s typically brisk and efficient first inning of work, and I saw two of the Chicago White Sox take him deep back-to-back in the top of the second. And I saw Toronto come back within one in the bottom of the second, thanks to a clutch two-out drive by Ryan Goins that bounced over the wall in centre, scoring Kenrys Morales from second, but unfortunately holding Troy Tulowitzki at third because of the ground-rule double, when he would easily have scored on the hit.

By the way, being the home team, it seems we get inordinately burned by the ground rule double rule; is there any hope of softening the warning track to dampen those ridiculous high bounces? Please?

Because of my firm policy of writing only about what I have seen, I’m going to keep this short and confine myself to comments about what I know to have happened, and the trends that they suggest.

Much might be made of three home runs given up by Marcus Stroman, but there has been a long string of top starters in baseball who had a propensity for giving up more than the occasional long ball. The trick is to keep the other guys off the bases and minimize the damage. The three today were solo shots, and they allowed Stroman to stay within the bounds of a quality start: seven innings pitched, three runs, six hits, one walk, five strikeouts, 90 pitches.

And was there any reason to pull Stroman after seven and 90 pitches? Ryan Tepera gave up the add-on run in the eighth; it was unearned, to be sure, but maybe things would have been different . . .

The not-so-invisible elephant in the room for the Blue Jays is their inability to score except via the home run. Okay, they scored two today without a dinger, but that wasn’t enough to win a quality start, was it?

I keep going back to Josh Donaldson’s eerie thought about ground balls being mistakes. It’s obvious to me that there are two cultures on this team around hitting. There’s the Donaldson/Tulowitzki/Bautista (to a lesser extent—he often becomes a different hitter with runners on and two strikes on him) cerebral approach that focusses everything on the question of launch angle.

From my own observations it seems that there is a direct connection between this approach and the propensity of these hitters to take called third strikes. It would seem that the philosophy is that if you don’t hit the home run, or at least the double, whatever else you do is irrelevant, and if you strike out looking it’s all the same. Next time.

I’m not going to bother trying to refute this notion, support for which comes from Donaldson’s famous quotation. It’s interesting, though, that just this evening I was dipping into a very old collection of baseball short stories. Most people who would recognize the name Zane Grey would know him as a writer of rather lame western fiction, dating back to the turn of the twentieth century. Fewer people would know that he also wrote a great deal of baseball fiction, some of it pretty corny, but the very best collected in a book entitled The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories.

What struck me about revisiting these stories is that the traditional kind of baseball that they describe, moving the runner up by hitting ground ball right side, taking the extra base, bunting, playing the hitter to pull, the best hitters spraying the ball to all parts of the field, is the very baseball that the Kansas City Royals of recent years rode to great success. The baseball played by Zane Grey’s minor leaguers seems very fresh, or perhaps the Royals’ style was a real throwback. I should mention that The Redheaded Outfield was published in 1915.

The point is, though, that the style worked. It worked then. It works now. Chicago added on a run today with a suicide squeeze. They also added a run when a play wasn’t made in the field. It was scored by a runner on third who got there by way of a single, a sacrifice bunt by Melky Cabrera, no less, and a tagup on a fly ball to centre. If the runner was still at second, he wouldn’t have scored on the error.

Did they take a lead they never gave up on their three homers? Sure they did. But at the same time the extra runs made it that much harder for a team relying on one or more four-baggers to get back in the game.

The other distinct style in the Jays’ lineup is the more free-swinging, take your chances style, as exemplified by, among the top seven hitters, Kevin Pillar, Kendrys Morales, Justin Smoak and Russell Martin. You can sort out for yourself which among these is more or less likely in a given at-bat to change the approach with two strikes, hit opposite the shift, go with the pitch, even shorten up on the bat from time to time. (And lest anyone didn’t hear Tuck and Babbie going on about it, we could see how much Joey Votto chokes up with two strikes on him.) The one thing that links all these Toronto hitters is that, just from observation, it’s far more likely if they strike out that they strike out swinging, rather than taking a pitch that’s marginal but they don’t like.

All four of the above hitters are most effective hitting straight away, or even a little bit opposite. The Smoak homers to left centre when he’s hitting left. The relatively high number of Morales base hits the opposite way with two strikes on him. The undeniable power of Russell Martin to the opposite alley. While all four of these batters share the likelihood of striking out in a given situation, they’re also far more likely to put the ball in play and “make things happen”.

The quintessential spray hitter with power who makes things happen is Devon Travis, but since he’s on the shelf again there’s no point in including him in the mix here. Nor is there any point in including Darwin Barney, Ryan Goins, Luke Maile or even the injured Zeke Carrera in this discussion, as they all share the need to scramble and give themselves up for the team when needed. Maybe with a guaranteed spot in the order one or more of them would be identified as in either camp, but that’s not possible at the moment.

It’s hard to include Steve Pearce anywhere, because we haven’t seen enough of him to make much of an assessment. Career-wise, with a .252 batting average and over 1700 at bats, he probably falls more into the main group of hitters headed by Pillar, Smoak and Morales.

So, from my perspective the anatomy of a long-term, team-wide batting slump, or perhaps the recipe for it, reads something like this: opposing pitchers taking an intelligent approach to our hitters; in the case of the Blue Jays, showering them with breaking balls, the more the better; cerebral sluggers sticking to their guns and not biting on “junk”, even junk in the strike zone; free swingers sharing a mix of bad luck and frustration over the steady diet of junk.

The corollary of all this, of course, is that in the absence of offensive production, every mistake made by Toronto (two uncharacteristic fielding errors by Josh Donaldson today, for one glaring example among many) is magnified beyond all importance, cranking up the tension on the entire team.

Are we at a point where we should be looking for answers, or at least assigning blame? Are the hitting coaches supporting the Donaldson/Tulowitzki approach, or are they hesitant to challenge it? Have Justin Smoak for sure and Kevin Pillar to a certain extent improved because of, or in the absence of, help from the hitting coaches? It’s interesting that both Smoak and Pillar are repeating narratives of reflection and readjustment they initiated themselves over the winter.

Last year, Toronto limped into the wild card slot in the midst of a major batting slump, pulled out a scintillating win against the Orioles, braced up for Texas and then reverted to recent form in the ALCS against Cleveland. And this was with a starting rotation that was deep, consistent, and firing on all cylinders.

Is it any wonder with the batting slump still the order of the day that the other changes experienced by the Blue Jays as a team have brought them to this tough situation?

More to the point, what, if anything, can be done to address the situation? If we wait for opposing pitchers to start throwing batting-practice fast balls to us, it’s going to be a long, hot, desultory summer.

But we’re not there yet.

Let’s not overthink this here.

In my ongoing crusade to get Ryan Goins more playing time, my first inclination about the disaster that was tonight’s game was to wonder if Goins would have made the plays on the two ground balls to second that started Chicago’s first and second innings tonight.

The thinking would have been that Darwin Barney, in the lineup at second base because the White Sox had left-hander Jose Quintana on the hill, though a very competent defender, is no Ryan Goins, either glove-wise or arm-wise, and maybe if Goins had been in the lineup and got the first outs against speedy White Sox leadoff hitters things would have turned out differently.

But there’s no point in even going there, though I just did. The fact is that Biagini was just really bad tonight, without a clue as to how to find the plate except by throwing batting-practice fast balls to the likes of Jose Abreau, Melky Cabrera, Todd Frazier, Matt Davidson, and Avisail Garcia. In fact, when you look at Chicago’s lineup, and their won-loss record of 29-36 going into tonight’s game, all you can think is how bad their pitching must be.

No, you might as well look at totally crazy, off-the-wall explanations for the start that Biagini had tonight. Like, for example, the death this week at the age of 88 of Adam West, the chestnut-voiced actor who starred as Batman in the original, and originally cheesy, first television series named after the comic-book super-hero.

Among the strangenesses of that first Batman series was the silliness of its wall-climbing scenes, in which Batman and Robin were depicted supposedly climbing the outsides of buildings to get the drop on evil-doers. All they did to film these scenes was to have the two heroes walk forward on a horizontal surface pretending to pull themselves along a rope that had been thrown to the “top” of the building. But they shot the scenes with the camera held rotated ninety degrees, so that they would appear on screen as if they were climbing up.

Another strangeness, and the one that comes to mind while considering tonight’s game, is that the producers of the show came up with the idea of inserting comic-book-illustrations of onomatopoeic words describing the sounds made during battles between B and R and their enemies. Batman would give, say, The Joker, a shot to the head and then they’d show a comic-book illustration of the punch with a huge “BIFF!” or “POW!” or “SOCK!” hanging over the scene.

Maybe the whimsical and otherwise light-hearted Biagini wanted us to be able to insert our own sound-pictures into our account of the game, in honour of Adam West. I know, that’s really stupid, but it’s probably as good as any other explanation of why the Chisox biffed Biagini around on the mound tonight right from the start of the game, and why he never once showed a flash of the aggressive brilliance that has been a trademark of his work since the first outing of his Toronto career.

Alen Hanson is a diminutive Dominican middle infielder who was claimed by Chicago off waivers from Pittsburgh a week ago today (what was Pittsburgh thinking?) Because of injury problems, White Sox Manager Rick Renteria inserted him in the lineup tonight as the centre fielder, his first start ever in centre. The only other thing you need to know about Hanson is that he runs like stink.

So when he hit a slow bouncer out toward Darwin Barney to lead off the game, a bouncer that took a wierd hop at the last minute, you knew that there was going to be trouble in River City. And there was, as he easily beat Barney’s throw to first, and put the Blue Jays in one of their common first-inning dilemmas, leadoff runner on first, a speedster who was going to distract the pitcher while threatening to run, and big bats coming up behind him.

Biagini, obsessed with Hanson at first, couldn’t find the plate with Melky Cabrera up, throwing four balls in the dirt, or nearly so. In the meantime, Hanson stole second, definitely off Biagini’s motion. It was hardly necessary, given the base on balls that Cabrera was getting.

This brought the fearsome Jose Abreu to the plate. No respecter of traditions, he stepped into Biagini’s 3-0 cripple—94.5 mph, just above the knees, centre-cut—and belted it to right field. In a play that encapsulated the hopelessness we would face tonight, Jose Bautista tracked it all the way back to the wall, in the desperate hope that it was catchable. Of course it wasn’t, and by the time Bautista ran down the carom, half-way back to the infield, two runs were in and Abreu was on third.

Damage control was still possible at this point, though it was a narrow line to walk, and Biagini couldn’t manage it. He actually got ahead of Avisail Garcia, who happens to be leading the league in hitting, and induced a sharp grounder to third that forced Abreu to hold while Josh Donaldson threw out Garcia at first. Then the veteran Todd Frazkier leaned into Biagini’s first pitch enough to loft it into right, not too deep, where Bautista was able to set up well for a throw to the plate. He had a chance at Abreu, but his throw was up the line toward third, and Abreu came across with the third run.

Even at this point, you might have thought Biagini was sorting things out, and we might get back into it, Jose Quintana on the mound for them be damned. But with two out and nobody on, poor Joe couldn’t close the deal. Matt Davidson hit a hard liner into the left-field corner for a double. Davidson ended up at second, and there was still room for Biagini to escape at 3-0 and regroup. Especially when shortstop Tim Anderson hit a short bouncer to the pitcher’s right, which he got to; but Biagini rushed the throw to first. The ball sailed over Justin Smoak’s glove, Anderson went to second on what was scored an infield hit plus a throwing error, and Davidson came in with the fourth run. Finally, the catcher Omar Narvaez ended the agony by grounding out to second.

The only thing worse than being down by four before coming to bat is being down by four before coming to bat against Jose Quintana, the White Sox left-hander who has a record of manhandling Toronto, most particularly on our home grounds. Quintana started out with a bang by fanning Kevin Pillar, but then Josh Donaldson raised our hopes with a solid line single through the left side. But if there was a secondary theme for this night, beyond Chicago’s trashing of Joe Biagini, it was the inability of Toronto to get anything serious going against Quintana, who was aided and abetted by a Chicago infield that turned four, count ’em, four double plays. With Donaldson on first and one out, Jose Bautista hit into the first one, a sharp grounder to short that made for an easy twin-killing.

As Toronto took the field for the top of the second, we wondered whether Biagini would find his mojo and give his team a chance to try to hack into Quintana’s lead, as difficult as that may have looked. We didn’t have to wait long for the answer. Four batters later, three more runs were in, Abreu was on second, there was nobody out, and Dominic Leone was on his way in from the bullpen to replace a shattered Joe Biagini.

It started with another scratch hit by another speedster, the second baseman Yolmer Sanchez, who wears cool white-framed glasses that just don’t belong on a baseball field, I can imagine Gregg Zaun thinking, who should talk considering how he dresses. Sanchez’ hit was a near carbon copy of Hanson’s in the first inning: bounce, bounce, bounce out to Barney while Sanchez raced across the bag at first.

This turned the order over and brought Alen Hanson up again. This time he hit it better, off Donaldson’s glove for a legit single, with Sanchez checking in at second. Melky Cabrera, who seemed happy to be back in the friendly confines of his former home, ripped one up the alley in right centre for a double, scoring the two speedsters and upping the tally to 6-0. Jose Abreu followed with a double to centre to score Cabrera, it was 7-0, Avisail Garcia was due up next, and Leone was on his way into the game.

Leone walked Garcia, but then retired the side in order: Todd Frazier lined out to Pearce in left, Matt Davidson fanned, and Tim Anderson fanned.

Faint hope was revived for the Blue Jays’ faithful when Kendrys Morales, who has hit Quintana well, homered to centre on a 1-0 pitch to lead off the bottom of the second, but Quintana then retired Smoak, Tulo, and Russell Martin to restore order.

At the end of two innings there were only two questions remaining to be resolved in this contest: Would Quintana keep the Toronto bats from mounting a comeback? And would the Blue Jays’ relievers keep Chicago more or less in check for the rest of the game without expending too many pitches? (Pitchers, yes, would be expended, lots of them; but how many pitches would each have to throw? Would there be anything left in the tank for Saturday and Sunday?)

The Sox answered Morales’ homer with a run in the top of the third that restored the seven-run lead. Catcher Omar Narvaez led off with a drive down the line in left that may or may not have been misplayed into a double by Stever Pearce, who failed to anticipate and corral a high bounce off the turf. (Anyone out there who thinks Pearce might be the answer to Toronto’s defensive problems in left field needs to be reminded that Pearce has been primarily an infielder for most of his career.) Narvaez moved to third on a groundout by Sanchez, and scored on a single by Hanson.

In the bottom of the third, Pearce led off with a line drive down the foul line in left that cleared the fence for a solo home run. The lead was now 8-2, but once again Quintana retired the side in order after the homer. In the fourth he struck out the side. In the fifth, with two outs, Pearce grounded to the third baseman who threw wildly to first, allowing Pearce to reach second. Darwin Barney followed with a single to left. For whatever reason, six runs down, third base coach Luis Rivera sent Pearce on Barney’s hit, but he was easily out at the plate on a fine throw by Melky Cabrera right to the glove of the catcher Narvaez.

In the sixth, Kevin Pillar doubled to centre leading off. Donaldson walked, but Bautista hit into yet another double play with Pillar moving to third. Morales gave it another ride to centre, but this time it stayed in the park. The lead remained intact.

Quintana went out with a flash of the glove in the seventh, leaving the Jays farther behind than they had been in the third, thanks to a Melky Cabrera home run in the fifth. After Smoak grounded out to second, Quintana walked Tulowitzki, bringing Russell Martin to the plate. Martin had been hitting the ball harder each time out. This time he hit it right on the nose, right up the middle. Quintana threw up his glove, snagged it, shook off his surprise, and threw to first to double off Tulo and end the inning.

So, no, despite having a few opportunities, the Jays were not going to crack Quintana in any meaningful way tonight. Nor did it matter that Sox manager Rick Renteria had to use a second reliever to finish off after Quintana’s seven-inning stint. Jake Petricka came in for the eighth inning, walked Steve Pearce, then got Darwin Barney to hit into a very pretty 3-6-1 double play, in which Jose Abreu ranged far to his right to pick the ground ball and fed Tim Anderson floating nicely across the bag, while Petricka hustled over to take the return throw at first.

Sometimes you gotta just sit back and admire.

But in the ninth, with two outs and up 11-2, Petricka had to be rescued after he gave up a two-run homer to Justin Smoak, which counted Dwight Smith who had come on to replace Pearce in the field. Actually, Renteria left Petricka in after the Smoak homer, but a following single by Tulowitzki was the last straw, and he brought Gregory Infante in to retire Luke Maile, on to catch for Russell Martin, to end the game.

As for the Jays’ pitchers, John Gibbons used everybody but Joe Smith and Roberto Osuna to fill in the eight innings left uncovered by Biagini’s abrupt departure. Besides the run given up by Leone in the third, the only other Toronto reliever to be touched up was Jeff Beliveau, who was victimized by Melky Cabrera’s three-run homer in the fifth. Leone had given his team three innings in his longest outing since joining Toronto, extending to 44 pitches, giving up the one run on two hits while walking one and striking out four.

After Beliveau in the fifth, Jason Grilli, Aaron Loup, Ryan Tepera and Danny Barnes each put in an inning. Only Loup gave up two hits, and none of them, to the relief of John Gibbons, exceeded Danny Barnes’ fifteen pitches. As long as Toronto gets some reasonable distance out of Marcus Stroman on Saturday, Biagini’s unexpectedly short outing won’t have damaged the bullpen too badly.

Nothing hurt but our dignity, Biagini’s feelings, and the drive for .500.

It might have been a little close for comfort, and they still won with the long ball, but Toronto played a much more complete ball game tonight to hold off the Tampa Bay Rays and earn a split in their abbreviated two-game series in Toronto.

For starters, so to speak, Francisco Liriano turned in his best performance since his return from the disabled list, if not the entire season. Let’s get the numbers out of the way first: seven innings, two earned runs, five hits, two walks, nine strikeouts, on 100 pitches. More importantly, his stuff was electric, as it is at his best, and he managed to stay in, or at least close to, the strike zone.

He started out with a rush, with two strikeouts and a foul popup, on only ten pitches. Second inning, he gave up a one-out double to Steven Souza but got Mallex Smith to pop up a bunt attempt, stranded Souza, and racked up another strikeout, with his pitch count only 21 pitches for the first two innings.

But with one out in the third he ran into trouble, which arose from a surprising source. Taylor Featherston hit a grounder up the middle that Ryan Goins got to in plenty of time on his backhand; but he double-clutched getting the ball out of his glove for an error. The Rays’ leadoff hitter tonight, Peter Bourjos, tried to bunt his way on, and fouled off the first pitch from Liriano. Then he took one way outside and one in the dirt. Liriano’s fourth pitch was in the zone, Bourjos swung at it, and mis-hit it so badly that it rolled down the third-base line toward Josh Donaldson, without ever showing any spin that would take it foul. There was nothing for it but to concede first to Bourjos, with Featherston moving up to second.

Leads are often built on a single pitch, and when the hitter is Corey Dickerson, so hot that you have to think Justin Smoak, but forty points higher in batting average, it hardly matters what pitch it is. Liriano’s first pitch to Dickerson wasn’t worth consideration, down and in, except that it was Dickerson up there. He drove the ball into the gap in right-centre where it one-hopped the wall, driving in Featherston and Bourjos, while Dickerson made it to third for a triple and a 2-0 Tampa lead, with only the Bourjos run earned.

Liriano escaped further damage when the Rays put on the contact play and Evan Longoria bounced it to Donaldson who charged hard and easily threw out Dickerson at the plate for the second out. Longoria was stranded when Liriano fanned Logan Morrison for the third out, but thanks to the triple by Dickerson following the Goins error, Liriano found himself in the hole to Tampa Bay.

In the meantime, batter by batter, pitch by pitch, it should have been Tampa starter Jake Odorizzi behind the eight-ball. In the first inning he walked Josh Donaldson and gave up an opposite-field base hit to Kendrys Morales, but was also constantly behind in the count, and was lucky to escape with his skin when Jose Bautista just got under a ripe 3-1 pitch and flew out to centre with Donaldson on first. It took him 26 pitches to get out of the inning. In the second, he continued to fall behind, though he only gave up a two-out ground single up the middle to Dwight Smith, the rookie callup from Buffalo starting in left tonight in the wake of the injury to Zeke Carrera. After two innings he was sitting at 44 pitches.

Once on the lead, the Rays conspired to give half of it back to Toronto as the Jays notched a run without benefit of a base hit, thanks to the continued wildness of Odorizzi, who walked the leadoff hitter Kevin Pillar on a 3-2 pitch over his head, thanks to Pillar’s legs (good) and thanks to Derek Norris’ arm (bad). Pillar stole second while Donaldson was striking out on a 3-2 pitch, and ended up on third when Norris bounced his throw to second. Bautista walked, setting up the double play for Kendrys Morales, who obligingly hit a ground ball, but softly, to second, “raced” down the line and beat the relay cleanly at first while Pillar scored. Smoak popped up to end the inning on Odorizzi’s sixty-sixth pitch.

But the Rays got that one back in the top of the fourth off Liriano, who was starting to look like the hard-luck kid though it could have been a lot worse. Tampa Bay loaded the bases with nobody out and without hitting a ball more than fifteen feet from the plate. Souza walked. Mallex Smith dragged a bunt with him toward first and beat the throw. Daniel Robertson walked on a 3-2 pitch to load the bases. Norris, the catcher, grounded into a force-out at the plate with Donaldson picking up his second assist in as many innings on a play at the plate.

In fact, Mallex Smith made a running mistake and was late off second on the grounder, despite the bases being loaded. Donaldson made it back to third in time to double up Smith, but in looking for another out Russell Martin surveyed the field from right to left, and by the time he got around to third it was too late. Featherston flied out deep to centre to score Smith and move Robertson to third, but Liriano fanned Bourjos to bring the Chinese water torture to an end with the Tampa lead restored to 3-1.

Odorizzi, still walking his own tightrope, gave up line shots to Troy Tulowitzki, to right, and Martin, to the shortstop, then fanned Smith to get out of the fourth on ten pitches.

In the fifth, after Liriano finally had an easier inning, retiring the side in order and by then up to six outs in a row (since he had actually retired the side in order after loading the bases with nobody out in the fourth) the bottom of the Jays’ order started things off so that one of the big boys, Morales, could finish off the wild and wobbly Odorizzi.

Leading off, Ryan Goins was ahead of the Tampa righty 2-1 when he whistled a thigh-high fast ball into centre for a base hit. Jays’ manager John Gibbons woke from his slumber long enough to start Goins on a full count to Pillar, which resulted in Featherston at second failing to come up with the latter’s otherwise easy double-play ball. He took an error on the play while Goins scooted around to third. An over-anxious Donaldson struck out on a very high 3-2 fast ball that was Odorizzi’s last out, and the Jays’ first of the inning, but Bautista calmly stroked a ground ball single up the middle that scored Goins, narrowed the Tampa lead to 3-2, and brought Morales to the plate. Odorizzi quickly fell behing Morales 3-1, and then, on his ninety-ninth pitch in only four and a third inning, threw a splitter, actually a pretty good pitch on the black down and in, that Morales just blasted to the second deck in right, and Liriano and the Jays finally had the lead they’d been flirting with all night.

Odorizzi’s night was done, and Chase Whitley came in to retire the side, but after five innings Toronto was on top to stay, though I hope nobody in the park cashed it in and left early to beat the crowd to the parking lot, because there was lots more excitement to be had.

There’ nothing like a three-run homer to sharpen your focus. Liriano came out for the sixth inning at 76 pitches, threw twelve more, and struck out the side, fanning Souza, Mallex Smith, and Robertson. Back to the plate, the Jays capitalized on their own bit of luck, as Whitley experienced some of what Liriano had faced earlier. Russell Martin, who’s been hitting the ball more sharply each time out (remember this) led off with a line single into left centre, a shot that gave him thoughts of going for two, but he demurred.

Dwight Smith followed with a really high popup that no one on the left side of the diamond actually saw. Apparently, there’s a certain kind of sky you get at a certain time of night at a certain time of year, that . . . well, it all seems kind of spooky, but the fact is no one, incluing even Russell Martin, had a clue where the ball was. The only gesture to be seen was a very early shoulder shrug from the shortstop Robertson, who, as it turned out, was nowhere near the ball any way. Everybody peered into the sky, and nobody moved, and finally the errant pill returned to earth, harmlessly falling to turf in short left-centre field. Luckly for the Jays, Russell Martin made it into second safely after the ball dropped.

Then, with a two-run lead in the sixth, John Gibbons (and/or Ryan Goins) dropped down a sacrifice bunt to move the runners up. Now, why do you move the runners to second and third, besides avoiding the double play? Well, mainly because the next batters, Pillar, who struck out, and Donaldson, who grounded out to end the inning, didn’t deliver the base hit needed to score Martin from second, if he was still at second. But from third he was able to score on the wild pitch that struck out Pillar and also moved Smith to third. So, kudos to the sac bunt and a three-run lead!

One of the nicest sights of the year was seeing Francisco Liriano take to the mound to start the top of the seventh, with a pitch count of only 88. It was even nicer to see him take exactly a dozen more pitches to navigate the seventh, despite giving up a one-out single to Featherston, and in particular to have him finish off the night on his one hundredth pitch, fanning Corey Dickerson, who had knocked in the two runs against him in the third, with a wicked slider up in the zone that darted to the outside black at the last minute. Ka-ching!

In the Jays’ seventh, with Whitley still pitching (interesting that Tampa manager Kevin Cash has used one reliever to go long in both of these games: circumstance, or philosophy?), Bautista led off by hitting a Texas Leaguer to centre. Mallex Smith charged it, backed off at the last minute, and had it deflect off him and away, so Bautista ended up at second with a leadoff double. So what did Toronto do, man on second nobody out? Did they get the ground ball(s) they needed to score the run? Well, they got ground balls, just not the right ones.

They did get the first one they needed, as Kendrys Morales grounded out to second, and Bautista moved to third. Now they needed a ground ball up the middle. Justin Smoak hit it on the ground, hard, but right at the first baseman, and Bautista had to hold his ground. With two outs, of course, they needed a base hit, but got the ground out to short from Troy Tulowitzki that would have scored Bautista, but didn’t because it was the third out.

Sure would have liked to have had that extra run. Joe Smith too. With a three-run lead, of course, it was Joe Smith time, but this time it didn’t go well. To be fair, he’s been great for most of the season, and also to be fair he had to face the meat of a Tampa Bay batting order that is second only to the Yankees in home runs in all of Major League Baseball this season. Even worse, the Rays had to be itching mighty bad after seven innings of Francisco Liriano.

So the veteran Evan Longoria was all over the first-pitch strike from Smith and singled to right. This brought up Logan Morrison, who had struck out twice and popped up head to head against Liriano, and looked pretty bad doing it. This time not so much. He took a called strike, down and away, and then decided it looked pretty good after all. Because the next one, in almost exactly the same place, was last seen sailing over the fence in left centre, and rapping off the back wall of the bullpen. The lead was down to one, there were no outs, and Gibby was going with Joe Smith, come hell or high water.

And high water it was, just enough for the Rays to put together their third run of the inning and actually tie the game, rendering Liriano’s fine work for naught, at least in the win column.

Steven Souza walked. Mallex Smith was caught looking for the first out. The Rays started Souza from first and our favourite Ray, Rasmus, singled to right, sending him to third. Derek Norris, who’d not had a great two games at the plate, hiy a sacrifice fly to centre that scored Souza and tied the game at six. Taylor Featherston hit a comebacker to Smith to end the inning, but the damn Rays had done it again.

But nobody contended with the fact that Russell Martin had been hitting the ball progressively harder in every at bat. Curiously, Kevin Cash brought in Jose Alvarado, a lefty, to try to hold the tie in the bottom of the eighth, despite the fact that the first two batters he would face would be right-handed, with Tulowitzki following Martin. Turns out that only Martin was relevant; Alvarado blew one past Martin down and in at 97, and then he cranked it up to 98 and tried to throw it right by him below the waist and right down the middle. Martin finally got some elevation to go with his hard contact, and the ball soared ten rows deep into the second deck in left centre, to the delight of the delirious fans and Martin’s even more delirious team-mates. Toronto seven, Tampa six, with three outs to go.

The bottom of the order took another shot at an add-on run, as Dwight Smith hit an infield single to second, and with nobody out Goins sacrificed Smith to second, for what must be an all-time Toronto record of two sac bunts by one player in a single game. But Alvarado struck out Kevin Pillar, elected to put on Josh Donaldson as Smith stole third, and then fanned Jose Bautista with high heat.

Thus it was time for Roberto Osuna to close things out, in the best of all pressure cookers, protecting a one-run lead with some big sticks coming up. It was the top of the order, with Peter Bourjos up first. It took six pitches, only one of them called a ball, to have Bourjos called out on strikes on a high pitch that might have had a passing acquaintance with a little piece of the outside corner.

Next up was the ever dangerous Corey Dickerson. The Dickerson-Osuna battle was epic, nine pitches, starting with a high fast ball that Dickerson went after. He laid off pitch two, a called strike low in the zone. With the count 0-2, Osuna tried three times to get him to swing through high outside pitches. At 3-2, it was Dickerson’s turn to fend off tough pitches, inside, outside, almost in the dirt, three fouls. Finally, Dickerson made just enough contact on a low outside slider to bounce it back to Osuna for an easy out.

After that, it was almost an anticlimax that Evan Longoria popped out to second on the sixth pitch of a 1-2 count, to end the possibility of Tampa coming back yet again. Three up, three down, but 21 pitches and all the drama you could ask for.

It took a great start, two clutch homers, a clutch single, some hard running by Kendrys Morales of all people, and a couple of sacrifice bunts, one of which led to a run, for Toronto to gain a split with Tampa Bay in this two-gamer. There’s never an easy game with Tampa, it seems. I’m sure we’re all glad to see them go.

Be careful what you wish for: you could end up carrying an awful load of guilt.

I was about to ask if anyone would rid us of these infernal Rays, when I thought of Thomas á Becket and Henry II. And then I thought of the Orange Trumpkin, Jeff (Forrest Gump, but dumber) Sessions, and James Comey, and I thought, best not tempt the fates.

Still, according to Tuck and Babbie, the all-time season record for Toronto versus Tampa Bay is 106 wins and 70 losses, prior to tonight’s smothering, and it ain’t Toronto what’s clinging to those 106 wins, in case you hadn’t guessed. Maybe there is room for thought of assassination . . .

Toronto had its most experienced, savvy starter, Marco Estrada, on the hill. For whatever reason Tampa manager Kevin Cash swapped his rotation around and inserted young Jacob Fario into the lineup for the veteran left-hander Jake Odorizzi.

What could go wrong with a setup like that? Well, huh! Or in an older vernacular, don’t ask.

Estrada was eminently, embarrassingly hittable, to the tune of six runs and twelve hits over three and a third innings. Faria handled the Toronto lineup like a seasoned pro, leaving after six and a third innings having given up one run on six hits while walking one and fanning eight.

To be depressingly specific, after two innings of giving up four hits, three of them of the incredibly cheesy variety, but keeping the score sheet clean by virtue of a great peg from Russell Martin to Josh Donaldson to throw out Corey Dickinson at third in the first inning, and a quick 6-4-3 double play in the second to escape from a bases-loaded situation, in the third the Rays continued to cheap it up, with three more lucky hits, but they also added some legits, a solo shot by callup shortstop Taylor Featherston (he should go to England; I think there’s a cricket team that needs a batsman with a name like his) and a three-run job by Logan Morrison*, and after the top of three it was Tampa 4, Toronto no score, and Tampa had already racked up ten hits, to Toronto’s one.

*There was also a legit double to right by Colby Rasmus, but it didn’t account for any of the runs, and we don’t like to mention his name anyway, okay? I don’t know why, but even seeing him on TV makes me feel like I need a shower. If you ever need an example of a dirt bag, just dial up Colby.

Despite the double-digit hits, knowing that only about three of them were solidly hit, that the runs had come on homers, and that the lead was only four with a rookie on the mound to protect it, you might have had a little hope, even if the only response by the Jays in the bottom of the third was a lonely base hit by Zeke Carrera.

But the top of the fourth sealed the deal, both for Estrada and his team, and the game basically ended with a dagger blow by Evan Longoria. Estrada started by getting Taylor Featherston on a grounder to third. But then two left-handed hitters in a row, Mallex Smith and Corey Dickerson, reached, Smith up and Dickerson out, and slapped base hits into left field. John Gibbons had read this script already, and wasn’t about to see Estrada let one good hit follow two bads, so Estrada was out and Dominic Leone was in to face Longoria.

Didn’t really matter to Longoria, who hit the double anyway, a soft little humpbacked thing down the left-field line on the first pitch from Leon. Both runners scored on the hit, and now you had a six-run lead after four, and it’s a rare team of birds that can come back from that kind of dead. The Toronto Blue Jays weren’t that team tonight.

Estrada’s early departure meant extra work for the Toronto bullpen, of course, and Gibby had to use four arms to finish the game, pretty well eliminating all four from the possibility of being used in the second game of the series tomorrow night. Two of them, Leone and the somewhat chastened Steve Grilli, were sacrificial lambs, but Gibby also allowed the pitches to pile up on both of the lefties in his ‘pen, Aaron Loup and Jeff Beliveau, rendering them unavailable for Wednesday’s game. Note to self: must decide if Jays are birds or sheep, and stick with decision.

Leone pitched well, after the double by Longoria, though he did need a nice running catch by Kevin Pillar on Steven Souza to strand Longoria in the fourth before pitching a clean fifth. Leone went out having given up two inherited runners but striking out four in an inning and two thirds.

After Leone, newcomer lefty Jeff Beliveau pitched a quick sixth, retiring the side on 14 pitches with two strikeouts, but was victimized for a seventh Tampa run after he walked Evan Longoria leading off the inning. Logan Morrison hit a ridiculously fluky bloop single to right—this was Tampa’s night for flukes; isn’t that some kind of fish?—and Longoria came around to third. It took two tries to score him with a sac fly, as he held third on the first, by Steven Souza, when they chose not to test Bautista’s arm in right, but when Rasmus forced Pillar to make a running, over-the-shoulder catch in deep centre, he was able to walk in with the seventh run.

(Just looked it up. Yes, the fluke is another name for the “summer flounder” which is an Atlantic species. Maybe the Rays could change their name to the Tampa Bay Flukes. Suits their style, and it wouldn’t be the first name change for them. After all, they already dropped the “Devil” from their name, presumably because of right-wing religious fundamentalism in Florida.)

With Tampa up 7-1, it seemed a good time for John Gibbons to get Jason Grilli back into the fray. He hadn’t pitched in ten days since his horrendous 3-homer outing against the Yankees, and clearly needed to be vetted for future work. I’d say he passed the audition. Gave up a leadoff single to Derek Norris that set up one of the prettiest double plays you’ll ever see. Taylor Featherston bounced one back to Grilli who turned and tossed the ball over the bag at second. But Troy Tulowitzki was easily two steps from the base when Grilli let go of the ball. Tulo glided across the bag, took the ball out of the air in stride as he touched the bag, and glided out of the way of Norris coming in to complete the throw to first. It looked for all the world like a quarterback leading his receiver with the ball. Mallex Smith flew out to right for the last out, and Grilli sat down after 18 pitches.

Mission accomplished for Jason Grilli. Maybe the team won’t release him the day after his Father’s Day barbecue apron promotion this Sunday, a cynical thought I’ve been harbouring ever since the Yankee debacle.

Aaron Loup pitched the ninth, and retired the side with a walk to Longoria, but only after Corey Dickerson lost his first pitch of the inning in the second deck in right. Though Loup has show himself to be very effective as a full-inning reliever recently, his situational success against left-handed hitters is still lacking. To say the least. But to be fair, nobody else seems to be getting Dickerson out either.

It’s hard to assess how effective a starter Jacob Faria is going to be for Tampa. He’d had one good outing before tonight, and of course was very steady tonight. But pitching with a solid lead from the third inning is quite a bit different from turning in a quality start in a close, low-scoring game.

It wasn’t like Faria was mowing the Jays down in order. He only retired the side without a runner in the first and fifth innings. After all, since he scattered six hits over six and a third innings, he had to have base runners. But there never seemed to be a threat from Toronto, even when he did have two runners on, via an error and a single in the second, when he ended the inning with a double play, and in the sixth via a walk and a single with one out. In the sixth with two on he fanned Morales and retired Smoak on a deep fly to centre, the only time before the seventh when his mastery of the game was in any way threatened.

The Jays finally broke through in the seventh when they started measuring Faria. Troy Tulowitzki led off with a hard grounder to third on which he was retired. Russell Martin followed with the only extra-base hit off Faria, a liner into left that went for a double. Zeke Carrera delivered Martin with the Jays’ only run on a single to centre. That was enough for manager Scott Servais, and he brought in right-hander Austin Pruitt to get the last two outs and strand Carrera at first.

We later learned that after taking a foul ball off his foot earlier in the game, Carrera played the rest of the game, including knocking in the Jays’ only run, with a broken bone in his foot. So it’s off to the DL for him. At least he’ll have company in the sick bay.

Pruitt came back out for the eighth inning and had an exciting ride of it, but emerged with the 7-1 lead intact. Josh Donaldson led off with a base hit, and then Jose Bautista

hit a drive that seemed headed for the left-field corner. But Colby Rasmus came across and reached up with a stab and snagged it in his glove, a most lucky and inelegant grab, but snag it he did, and with that grab he probably stifled any chance the Jays may have had of a late rally. After Kendrys Morales struck out, Justin Smoak singled to centre with Donaldson going to third, and then Pruitt walked Tulo to load the bases. You can reconstruct for yourself what might have been if Bautista’s shot had gotten past Rasmus. As it was, Russell Martin grounded into an unassisted fielder’s choice at second with the second baseman playing right up the middle in the shift, and the chance was wasted.

Pruitt stayed on for the ninth with the large lead to protect, and the other bullpen arms to spare, and had an easier inning of it, fanning the hobbled Zeke Carrera and getting ground-ball outs from Ryan Goins and Kevin Pillar, to put the Blue Jays out of their misery.

So, a flock of lucky hits by the Rays, the inability of Marco Estrada to avoid hard contact on hits not so lucky, a good pitching performance by Jacob Faria ably seconded by Austin Pruitt, and not a home run in sight for Toronto, all added up to a desultory 7-1 loss that once again turned the Jays away from that .500 level they’ve been trying to reach since the end of April.

We split with the Yankees at home, we split on the road out west, and now we have to beat Jake Odorizzi tomorrow night to split this short home series with Tampa Bay. It ain’t much, but at the moment it’s the best we can do. With our division rivals eating each other alive there’s still hope.

For the first time in 2017 the Jay Happ of 2016 took care of business for Toronto against the Seattle Mariners this afternoon.

It was Happ’s third start after six weeks on the disabled list. Though his two previous starts were positive for the Jays in the sense that he reported himself pain-free after each of them, having thrown 81 pitches on May thirtieth and 98 pitches on June fifth, neither was exactly what you would call an esthetic success.

In the first, against the Cincinnati Reds, he went four innings and gave up two runs, both of them homers. In the second, in Oakland, he went five and a third innings and gave up five runs, all of them scoring on two home runs by Ryon Healy.

Today Jay Happ did not give up any home runs. In fact, taking the mound with a 2-0 lead provided by Kevin Pillar and Josh Donaldson in the top of the first, he did not give up any runs at all. The Jays were never headed after those first two batters in the first, and Happ pitched them to a 4-0 shutout victory to take the rubber game of the three-game series in Blue-Jay-happy Seattle.

He pitched six full innings, gave up no runs, scattered six hits, walked one and struck out eight. The strikeout total is perhaps the best measure that Happ has finally turned the corner on his very troubled start to the 2017 season. After his first two starts in April, he’d only amassed ten strikeouts in total, in his last start before going on the DL and his first two starts since returning.

In a strange sequence of events it took Toronto manager John Gibbons going through almost his entire bullpen to finish off the last three innings of shutout ball, but other than Danny Barnes, who threw twenty pitches in the ninth in manager Gibbons’ vain attempt to avoid using Roberto Osuna, only Ryan Tepera, who pitched the seventh and threw fourteen pitches, was in double digits for pitch count, so with the off day tomorrow the bullpen should be well rested for the start of Tuesday night’s two-gamer with Tampa Bay back in Toronto.

James Paxton was the Mariners’ starter today, and he brought to the fray a fine record of five wins and no losses, with an ERA of 1.69. He also came with an aura of dark overtones for the locals. Because the Toronto Blue Jays have a history with the big left-hander who was born in Richmond, British Columbia, and it’s a strange one.

Toronto originally drafted Paxton out of the University of Kentucky after his junior year, but after negotiations with the Jays didn’t work out he decided to return to Kentucky for his final year of NCAA baseball.

However, an inadvertant blunder in talking with reporters by then Toronto president Paul Beeston not only cost Paxton his senior year at Kentucky but also probably cost the Jays any chance of signing him after a subsequent draft. Asked by reporters what had happened with the negotiations with Paxton, Beeston let it slip that the team had been negotiating with well-known player agent Scott Boras, rather than with Paxton and his family.

Players lose their NCAA eligibility as soon as they sign on with an agent, so after Paxton had turned down the Toronto office, the NCAA announced he was ineligible to play college baseball. Paxton appealed the NCAA decision, even taking the mammoth athletic organization to court, but was unable to overturn the loss of his last year of college baseball. Having fallen betwixt and between, Paxton spent the 2010 spring season pitching in independent ball before being drafted by Seattle, with whom he has progressed slowly through the system, but always with promise. He made his MLB debut with Seattle in 2013, but has yet to spend a full season at the big league level.

And here he was, an imposing figure indeed on the mound, peering in at Kevin Pillar in the top of the first. He went 1-2 on Pillar, then came up and in, on the black, with a fast ball, and Pillar lined it into the left-field corner. For once there wasn’t a fielder stationed there to catch the ball, as he has so often experienced lately, and Pillar ended up at second with a double.

Man on second, nobody down. Sound familiar? What do we do, class? That’s right, ground ball right side, move the runner to third. Very good, class. Oh, but that naughty Josh Donaldson. He just won’t cooperate, will he? Paxton made the mistake of falling behind, throwing two outside and in the dirt. He had to come in with the third one, and what did Josh do? Oh, he hit it right side, all right, but the cheeky fellow didn’t hit it on the ground!

Oh, no, he just belted it over the fence in right centre for a two-run homer, and, as we would later see, all the runs the Blue Jays and Jay Happ and company would need on this beautiful sunny afternoon in downtown Vancouver, er, Seattle. So, more remedial work for young Mr. Donaldson and next time he’ll get that ground ball down when he’s supposed to.

(All kidding aside, the problem with Josh Donalson is, according to his own public statements, if he had struck out rather than homered, it would have been all the same to him whether he struck out trying for his launch angle, or grounded out to second. Then we have to ask: do the runs we get when the homer gets hit outweigh the runs we would have gotten from playing the game the “right way”?)

Understandably a little shaken, having given up only his second homer of the season, and only two batters in, Paxton wobbled a little before settling down to retire the side. He walked Jose Bautista, struck out Kendry Morales for the first out, gave up a line single off the shortstop’s glove to Justin Smoak, and retired Troy Tulowitzki and Darwin Barney to strand Bautista and Smoak.

Smoak’s infield hit created a conundrum for Bautista, and he was lucky to be able to hustle into second lest he turn Smoak’s hit into a fielder’s choice. The base runner’s first responsibility is not to be trapped off base on a line drive caught by an infielder. So when Motter reached for Smoak’s liner Bautista had to freeze just off first. Then when the ball ticked off Motter’s glove, Bautista had to release and make it to second before Motter could recover the ball and deliver it to second for the force.

Though Paxton kept the score at 2-0, his second inning consumed more pitches, thirty, than the first, and at fifty-four for two he wasn’t looking at a complete game here. Once again he had to pitch out of runners in scoring position with less than two outs, this time with the bases loaded, courtesy of the bottom of the Toronto order.

Zeke Carrera, hanging in against the lefty, worked Paxton for a walk. Luke Maile singled sharply to right, with Carrera checking in at second. Kevin Pillar, who obviously didn’t do his Baseball 101 homework, lined out to centre instead of moving the runners up. Which cost Toronto one run and possibly two, since Donaldson followed with a sharp single to left that only loaded the bases instead of scoring at least one. Then Paxton fanned Bautista and retired Morales on a ground ball to third to get out of the inning.

In the third inning Paxton retired the side in order for the only time in his short stint. The fourth inning finished his outing for the night, and was punctuated by Toronto cashing in on base runners this time, before he managed to get the side out. But at 94 pitches and down 4-0, there was little doubt that he’d come back out for the fifth.

Let’s pause and give credit to the Blue Jays for picking up these two additional runs without benefit of a home run. Sadly for Paxton, he started at the bottom of the order again with Carrera and Maile, and this time retired them both. But with two outs, Pillar was again the catalyst, doubling down the line in left for the second time. And for the second time Donaldson delivered him with a single to right. Bautista walked for the second time, moving Donaldson up, and Morales singled home Donaldson with the fourth run before Smoak grounded out to third.

Paxton was finished for the day, and as it turned out, so were the Mariners. Nothing to see here, folks, move right along.

Though that would be ignoring the fact that Jay Happ really did pitch well, despite the fact that he had to deal with base runners every inning through the fourth, and only retired the side in order in the fifth and sixth innings.

In the first inning Seattle got two hits with two outs, as Robbie Cano ran a grounder under the glove of a crossing Tulowitzki for a single to centre, and Nelson Cruz beat out (yes, you read that right) a Baltimore Chop* to third, moving Cano to second. But Happ retired Kyle Seager on a fly ball to right to strand the runners.

*A Baltimore Chop is a ball beat into the grass that comes up in a high bounce and takes long enough to come down that the runner beats the throw to first. For Nelson Cruz to get on with a Baltimore Chop requires one helluva high bounce.

In the second Happ allowed just one base runner, again with two outs, but this time he had to fan Taylor Motter to strand Ben Gamel at third. Gamel was there courtesy of his double to left, and yet another miscue by Zeke Carrera in left which enabled Gamel to reach third on the error.

Happ’s fun and interesting outing continued in the third, when he issued a one-out walk to Mitch Haniger, who had to hold at third on Nelson Cruz’s two-out double, before Happ got Seager again on a grounder to Smoak to end the inning. And Happ cleaned up his own mess in the fourth when he struck out Motter and Guliiermo Heredia after giving up one-out base hits to Mike Zunino and Gamel, who had three hits on the night.

So, lucky (or good) for Happ that he escaped the fifth and sixth on only 26 pitches and was able to hand the game over to the bullpen with only three innings to go.

John Gibbons seemed to be in a more adventurous spirit regarding matchups this afternoon, with the result that as I mentioned he went through five relievers to get the final nine outs.

First he tried his new lefty Jeff Beliveau for a one-on-one with the hot Ben Gamel. Didn’t work too well: Gamel singled to centre, and Gibby brought in Ryan Tepera, who fanned Motter and Dyson, while Gamel stole second during Dyson’s at-bat, and then got Haniger to fly out to right.

Then he tried Aaron Loup to match up with Cano to start the eighth. That didn’t work either: Cano singled past a diving Tulowitzki at short. This brought Joe Smith into the game. Not sure here whether Gibby wanted to avoid using Smith and Osuna, since Loup has been asked to pitch full innings from time to time recently, but if that was the case, it didn’t work, though Toronto got off lightly, as Smith got a double-play ball from Nelson Cruz that didn’t pan out and only resulted in Cruz being out at first. He then got a grounder to first from Seager, and struck out Valencia. On eight pitches. Cano ended up at third, but it was all the same: stranded.

With the four-run lead, Gibby tried to tiptoe past his closer in the ninth by bringing in Danny Barnes, and it almost worked. Barnes got the first two outs, but then walked Taylor Motter, and Jarrod Dyson flared a single over Tulowitzki’s glove at short. This created the save situation, and Barnes was pulled with two outs, two on, and a four-run lead.

I’m curious as to whether there’s some kind of protocol that requires the closer to be brought in just because the save situation has just developed, but I don’t see pulling Barnes at this point. He’s clearly been given higher priority in the bullpen, and he’d earned the opportunity to finish this one off. With two on, the worst case scenario is a three-run homer, nobody on base and two outs. And Osuna has been known to give up the occasional dinger in the ninth. In any case, it was Osuna for the save, and it took him three pitches to finish off Mitch Haniger, but on a hard liner to Bautista in right, so where was the advantage?

Finally, respect must be paid here to Emilio Pagan. Paxton’s departure after four innings left a big hole for Seattle manager Scott Servais to fill, and you might have noticed that the Jays never scored again after Paxton was pulled.

That’s because Pagan, a 26-year-old right-hander who has been up and down between the Mariners and Tacoma in his rookie year, pitching in just his fourth major league game, absolutely stoned the Blue Jays for four innings: no runs, no hits, 1 walk, and five strikeouts. The walk was erased by a double play, so he faced exactly twelve batters, the minimum. I expect he’ll get some more work soon, and not at Tacoma, either.

Dan Altavilla pitched the ninth and finished off Pagan’s work by retiring the side in order. He got some help from Jarrod Dyson who made a diving catch on a hard liner by Luke Maile, then fanned Pillar and Donaldson to complete a string of fifteen batters faced, and fifteen batters retired, for Seattle.

Good thing Toronto got to James Paxton early.

And good thing Jay Happ’s back.

And good thing Josh Donaldson hits to right once in a while. Even if he still can’t get the ground ball right side down with the runner on second and nobody out.

A split on the road pulled out of the fire, and home again, home again, jiggity jig.

Marcus Stroman has quietly established himself as Toronto’s number one starter, in terms of results, in the forced absence of Aaron Sanchez.

While not as spectacular as some of his end-of-season outings after returning from injury in 2015, his recent starts have been consistent and solid, if a little adventurous from time to time. He has kept his team in almost every game he has started.

What has been more than a little different about Stroman this year to me is that there have been less dramatics accompanying the consistent, but less spectacular, outings. I’m not sure if he’s emoting less, or if the opposing teams just aren’t rising to his bait as much as they used to. But there’s more businesslike efficiency to his carriage and attitude than we’d come to expect from him.

Yesterday I mentioned Sam Gaviglio’s effective appearance for Italy in the World Baseball Classic as possibly a final marker in a maturing process he needed to go through before being ready to be a major league pitcher. I also mentioned that Stroman’s fine leadership performance for the U.S. team in the WBC might have had a similar maturing effect on him. The evidence for this seems to grow with every Stroman start.

Tonight Toronto was facing the left-handed Cuban Ariel Miranda, who had already turned in one impressive, if short, outing against the Blue Jays at the TV Dome in mid-May, giving up one earned run on three hits over five innings with three walks and eight strikeouts in a game that Seattle’s bullpen would eventually lose. Why so short? 100 pitchs in five innings, that’s why.

So Miranda started with a rush tonight, fanning Kevin Pillar and Jose Bautista, sandwiched around Josh Donaldson flying out to centre on the first pitch he saw. Nine pitches and have a seat for Mr. Miranda.

Stroman brought his can of Guaranteed Worm Kill* to the mound against the Mariners, retiring the side on two ground balls to second and an easy hopper back to him by Robinson Cano.

*Old baseball expression: “worm-burner”: a ground ball.

Miranda continued to cruise in the second, though his pitch count ballooned . . . from nine in the first to ten in the second. This time it was contact in the air, Kendrys Morales popping up and Justin Smoak flying out to right. Troy Tulowitzki was the first to hit the ball hard off Miranda, but he scorched it down third where Kyle Seager made a fine play diving to the line to cut off a double and throw Tulo out at first.

Then Stroman ran into a spot of the ground-ball-pitcher’s most common enemy, the ground ball that snakes through for a base hit. He didn’t help his own cause, though, when he wild-pitched Nelson Cruz to second after Cruz had led off with the first base hit of the ball game, a grounder up the middle. Here’s a note on Cruz: when he hits safely and the ball stays in the yard, it doesn’t look like a mistake. He doesn’t get cheated out of good swings at the plate.

With Cruz at second, a 2-2 count on the batter and the Toronto defence having left the shift to play straight up, Kyle Seager hit a grounder past a diving Darwin Barney into right for a single that scored Cruz. Stroman fanned Taylor Motter and popped up Jarrod Dyson, but Carlos Ruiz also reached base behind Seager with a line-drive base hit to right field before Stroman fanned Tyler Smith, playing shortstop tonight, to end the inning with the M’s having taken a 1-0 lead. Almost as concerning as the run was that Stroman had to throw 24 pitches to retire the side, putting the length of tonight’s outing at risk right off the bat.

In the top of the third Miranda needed another sparkling play by Mr. Everything over there at third, Kyle Seager, to emerge from a jam caused by Miranda’s own temporary descent into the madness of loss of control. With one out, he walked both Barney and Zeke Carrera on eight straight balls, and then took nine pitches to dispose of Kevin Pillar on a fly ball to centre. Then Josh Donaldson, with the two walks aboard, looked to have singled to left on a hard liner through the left side, but Seager laid out to his left to make a diving catch of a ball that was already past him. The Seattle lead was preserved and the Jays were still looking for their first base hit.

Stroman reverted to form in the bottom of the third, throwing three more worm-burners to the top of the Seattle order.

Then in the top of the fourth the Jays finally got their first hit, and it made up in distance and suddenness for its rarity in this game for the Toronto lineup. Unfortunately for Miranda he had just issued his third walk of the game, to Josh Donaldson, and was facing Toronto’s DH Kendrys Morales, who turned on a 1-1 fast ball up in the zone and caused it to leave the park with some urgency, as if it had a hot date with a comely foul ball, and couldn’t wait to get it on.

The 2-1 Toronto lead stood up for three innings, and it was up to Stroman to hold on while his mates failed to dent Miranda for any insurance runs. He gave up a base runner in each inning, bu nothing further. He hit Seager with a pitch with one out in the Seattle fourth, but then fanned Taylor Motter and Jarrod Dyson to strand Seager. In the fifth it was a two-out wrong-field slap single to left by Ben Gamel, but Cano hit into a fielder’s choice to end the inning. In the sixth it was a two-out Texas Leaguer by Seager, but he died at first when Darwin Barney made a nice grab of a liner by Taylor Motter to end the inning, the only point before the seventh that Seattle could be seen to be putting up any threat at all.

And the pitch count issue for Stroman? You can make up a lot of ground (sorry) when you throw ground balls: after ballooning to 38 after two innings, he went 9/12/8/12 over the next four, so headed into the seventh at a very comfortable 79 pitches.

Meanwhile, after Morales’ homer with nobody out in the third, Miranda faced the minimum of Blue Jays’ batters through six, the only blemish a walk to Donaldson in the sixth that was erased when Bautista hit into a double play. By the end of the sixth, despite his early wildness, Miranda was sitting even with Stroman at 81 pitches for six innings.

Miranda got three batters into the seventh and recorded one out before his night came to an end; were it not for a great play by shortstop Tyler Smith he would have left in much worse shape. Justin Smoak singled to right to lead off, and then Troy Tulowitzki hit one into the hole at short. Smith made a sparkling diving stop and managed to get the ball to Cano at second for the out on Smoak. Miranda then walked Russell Martin, and it was time for manager Scott Servais to call on Tony Zych, who took exactly one pitch to get Barney to ground into a double play to end the inning.

Still clinging to the one-run lead, and with plenty of gas left in the tank, Stroman came out and made the biggest mistake you can make with these Mariners, giving up a base hit to Jarrod Dyson. With Dyson on first and nobody out, you kind of knew that he was going to end up scoring to tie the game. What you didn’t know was how quickly it would happen, and how much the Toronto defence, which has become far too shaky lately, would contribute to the affair.

The first thing that was going to happen was that Dyson would absolutely steal second, which he did, but he ended up scoring without further effort on Seattle’s part. Russell Martin’s throw was right on the bag but short-hopped Tulowitzki, who never touched it. Dyson bounced up and headed for third. Kevin Pillar charged the ball that was rolling towards him and simply over-ran it, allowing Dyson to score standing up. The Mariners had tied the game on a single, a stolen base, and two errors, with Martin charged for the throw and Pillar for missing the catch.

Interestingly, manager John Gibbons chose to leave Stroman in the game, and with the bases clear he retired the side on two more ground balls and a strikeout. So he finished up after seven, apparently with a no-decision, having given up one earned run on six hits with no walks and six strikeouts on 95 pitches.

After such a disappointing ending to his night, it was only poetic justice that Stroman had to wait just four pitches into the Toronto eighth to have his hopes rejuvenated, and from one of the less likely Toronto sources, at that. Tony Zych having thrown only one pitch to get out of the seventh, naturally came back out for the eighth, facing Zeke Carrera leading off. On a 1-2 pitch, Zych made the crucial mistake of throwing a sinker that didn’t, and Carrera hit it hard and straight and deep to right, and the Jays had the lead again and Stroman was suddenly in line for the win.

That was all the Jays would get in the eighth, but the inning had a strange footnote to it. Zych quickly closed the door after Carrera’s homer. Kevin Pillar grounded out softly back to him, and Josh Donaldson struck out on a foul tip. Then as he will do, Jose Bautista worked Zych for a walk on a 3-2 pitch, and then pulled off a particularly cheeky Bautista trick.

Zych, annoyed with himself for issuing the two-out walk, stood off the mound, looking disconsolately at the ground. As Bautista arrived at first, he noticed that both Seattle middle infielders were holding their positions and paying no attention to him, so he suddenly broke for second and went in standing up with no attempt being made on him. Not only did this turn of events cause consternation for Mariners’ manager Scott Servais, whose incredulous look was easy to read on camera, but it created quite a bit of confusion for scorekeepers everywhere, and it wasn’t officially determined that Bautista should be credited with a stolen base until the next day.

‘Twas much ado about nothing, though, as the presumably furious/embarrassed Zych retired Kendrys Morales on a grounder to short.

With the lead restored, it was now officially Joe Smith Time. We don’t have Andrew Miller, and Joe Smith isn’t a beer, but he’s good enough for us. Though a little adventurous sometimes.

Like today, for example, when he initiated proceedings by giving up base hits to Guillermo Heredia and Robbie Cano, bringing Nelson Cruz to the plate with runners at first and second. No problem. Crus hit into a 5-4-3 double play, with Heredia checking in at third with two outs. Er, check that. The Mariners asked for a review of the out call on Cruz at first, and New York overturned it, so, runners at first and third with one out. Once again Boog—not son of—Powell ran for Cruz. And once again Joe Smith did what he does best, and blew Kyle Seager away with a high outside fast ball to get the second out. Taylor Motter then grounded into a fielder’s choice and Heredia died at third, carrying the last hope of a tying run.

Steve Cishek came in to pitch the ninth for Seattle to try and hold the Jays close. That mission went out the window when Justin Smoak, leading off, found an offering from Cishek to his liking, employed that sweet stroke of his, and hit his eighteenth homer of the season to right field.

I was delighted with Smoak’s insurance dinger. I was even more delighted with the comment that followed from Buck Martinez, to whom credit must be given. Obviously alluding to the fact that Smoak had spent five seasons in Seattle with the Mariners, he crowed excitedly, “It’s the return of the Ancient Mariner”. A home run, an insurance run for a win, and a great baseball/literary allusion from the source you’d have least expected it. Sweet!

After the damage was done, Cishek, of course, put the Jays down in order, and it was time to turn things over to Roberto Osuna.

There has been much notice given to how sharp Osuna has been lately, and tonight’s session isn’t likely to bring that talk to a close. He threw eight pitches, striking out Dyson, retiring Valencia on a fly to centre, and striking out Zunino to nail down his fifteenth save in eighteen opportunities.

One more win to go for the split on the road, but it’s gonna be a tough one, with James Paxton on the hill for Seattle. Forget the warm and fuzzies about him being Canadian and all. He’s been killing this year. Absolutely killing.

In the category of “be careful what you wish for” must come the secret desire in Joe Biagini’s heart of hearts to become a regular member of the rotation for the Toronto Blue Jays.

In the continued absence of Aaron Sanchez, Biagini’s wish, if it is indeed his wish (and who can doubt it?) seems to be coming true, to the extent that it is getting increasingly more difficult to imagine him returning to the Toronto bullpen.

Yet with the granting of a wish must come the acceptance of the realities that accompany it. And for Biagini, like most other Toronto starters, the reality is that quality starts are not always rewarded with a mark in the “W” column, and in the case of some pitchers, like, historically, Marco Estrada, handing in a quality start is pretty well a guarantee that a win, either for the pitcher or the team, will not result.

As his starts begin to accumulate, Joe Biagini’s run support from the Blue Jays’ lineup is clearly beginning to fall into a category similar to that of Estrada, rather than, say, that of the Jay Happ of 2016.

In his last three starts, including tonight, which is to say since any meaningful limits on his pitch count as a starter were lifted, he has thrown twenty innings, six against Texas in which he gave up two earned runs, seven against the Yankees, in which he gave up one earned run, and seven tonight against Seattle, in which he gave up three earned runs. Not a win to be had in the lot.

To be fair to the Jays’ lineup, however, it’s not like their failure to support the likes of Biagini and Estrada is countervailed by a huge outpouring of support for Marcus Stroman, Francisco Liriano, or Jay Happ. No, sir, the recent Toronto power outage is an equal opportunity failure, and generally goes right across the board, regardless of who is on the hill.

Tonight, for example, Sam Gaviglio was on the mound for Seattle. Since being called up in early May, the 24-year-old right hander has made six appearances, five of them starts, and he has thrown a total of 27 innings in his first five major league starts, pitching to an ERA of 2.79. I first saw Gaviglio pitch when he played for Italy in this spring’s World Baseball Classic. An incureable romantic, I contrived to watch every Italy game, just for the sake of watching Chris Colabello play for the Italian squad.

Gaviglio had one appearance in the WBC, in game two against Venezuela. It was one of the games involving Italy that turned out to be a hot, wet mess, an 11-10 Venezuela win in ten innings. But Gaviglio was the starter for Italy, and against a Venezuelan lineup that waa loaded for bear (first six batters: Jose Altuve, Martin Prado, Miggy Cabrera, Carlos Gonzalez, Victor Martinez, Salvador Perez, a lineup in which Roughned Odor was used as a pinch-hitter), he went four and two thirds innings, gave up two runs on five hits, walked two and struck out one on 61 pitches. Pretty good job under pressure for somebody with no major league experience to that point.

In fact, like others involved in the WBC, most notably Marcus Stroman, it may have been that the tournament experience was the last bit of polish Gaviglio needed before stepping onto the big stage.

In any case, he started well in the first, getting two quick outs before running into trouble. The trouble was big, but he weathered it, adding to the Toronto narrative of lost opportunities, and the opposing pitchers’ narratives of coming up with the big moment. With two outs he walked Jose Bautista, and then Kendrys Morales ripped one so hard over Danny Valencia’s head at first that it got to the wall in right so quickly that Morales only got a single out of it, with Bautista moving to third. Then Gaviglio loaded the bases by walking Justin Smoak, but Troy Tulowitzki ignored one thigh-high sinker that was called a strike, and rolled over on the second one and grounded into a forceout to end the inning. Tough pitching in a crisis or a struggling batter? The jury’s out on that one.

Unlike many previous experiences, having lost an early chance with an unknown quantity pitcher, Toronto didn’t just roll up like a sow bug and quit trying. They scratched out a run in the second, but it took a big dose of help from, let’s just call it Danny Valencia’s not-so-excellent adventure. Gaviglio walked Russell Martin leading off, and Martin was able to move up right away on a passed ball charged to catcher Mike Zunino, who had just been jinxed by Tuck and Babby talking about what a good defender he is behind the plate.

Zeke Carrera followed with a line drive that deflected off Danny Valencia’s glove at first for an infield hit. Martin had to hold up to see if the liner would be caught, so only made it to third. Ryan Goins followed with a grounder to first that might have gotten Gaviglio out of the inning with a double play, but in his haste to turn and make the play at second, Valencia slipped and made a poor throw to second that nipped Carrera, but there was no chance of turning two, and Martin came in to score for a 1-0 lead. Then Kevin Pillar obliged the Mariners by hitting another double-play ball.

In the third the Jays extended their lead when Jose Bautista homered off Gaviglio with one out and nobody on. The Seattle pitcher had Taylor Motter to thank for keeping Josh Donaldson from scoring ahead of Bautista, as he had made a fine skidding play to his backhand to flag down a grounder in the hole by Donaldson, get up and throw him out.

Meanwhile, Biagini cruised quickly through the first two innings, retiring six in a row with three strikeouts on only 21 pitches. But after Bautista had given him a two-run cushion, Jarrod Dyson, who has become somewhat of a thorn in the side of the Blue Jays, manufactured a run to cut the lead to one. With one out he dumped a Texas Leaguer into centre in front of Pillar, stole second, advanced to third on a wild pitch, and scored on an RBI single by Ben Gamel.

For two teams that carry as much firepower as Toronto and Seattle, it was interesting, even a bit surprising, to see both pitchers hold their opponents scoreless through the middle innings. Biagini, in fact, starting from the third out in the third, retired ten batters in a row, a string finally broken off by Robbie Cano’s leadoff double in the seventh.

Gaviglio was a little more reachable than Biagini, allowing a single runner in each inning, but the Jays were never able to string anything together, wasting Zeke Carrera’s two-out infield hit in the fourth, Josh Donaldson’s one-out single in the fifth, and a leadoff single by Justin Smoak in the sixth, which was erased by Russell Martin hitting into a double play. Gaviglio must have been throwing pixie dust when Troy Tulowitzki was at the plate, because he struck Tulo out looking both leading off the fourth, and after Smoak’s base hit in the sixth. This was after retiring Tulo to end the threat in the first, you’ll recall.

Ryan Goins took a swipe at stirring up two-out trouble in the fourth, after Carrera’s infield hit. Seattle had put the full shift to the right on for Goins, and when he was in the hole, 1-2, he—and everyone else—noticed that they hadn’t modified the shift; it was still showing three infielders on the right side. The fact that he fouled off his attempt to bunt toward the open left side for strike three didn’t obscure that it was a smart attempt to keep the ball rolling, so to speak and turn the lineup over.

The seventh inning changed everything for both teams. Seattle manager Scott Servais decided that Gaviglio had given him all that he could, and he went out having thrown six innings, given up two runs on six hits, but only one earned run, walked three and struck out five on 102 pitches. Right-hander Tyler Cloyd got the call to face Zeke Carrera, whom he fanned looking, and Ryan Goins, who grounded out to short.

But Kevin Pillar, who has been quietly watching his batting average drop despite still hitting the ball hard, ripped a single down the right field line, bringing Josh Donaldson to the plate, and one of the pivotal moments of the game, which turned on a mis-communication between Pillar and third-base coach Luis Rivera though all credit has to be given to the Mariners’ defence, starting with Jarrod Dyson.

With two outs and Pillar on first, he would obviously be off with the hit and would have expected to score on anything hit in the gap. Donaldson hit one in the gap, all right, and Pillar was off. But no one reckoned with the speed and reflexes of Dyson in centre, who chanced everything on a dive to his backhand to try to cut the ball off. He made contact with the ball, it popped slowly away from him, but he had enough momentum in his slide to catch up to it and throw a strike from his knees to Taylor Motter, the primary relay man.

Motter whirled and fired to the plate, where Pillar, who hadn’t picked up Rivera’s stop sign until it was too late, was decisively beaten by the throw, which catcher Mike Zunino had to bring back from the first-base line to tag the desperate Pillar who was diving for the plate. There was no review, and the Toronto lead remained 2-1, with Biagini coming back out for the bottom of the seventh, an attempt to go seven for the second time in a row.

Well, Biagini finished off his seventh inning again, but by the time he was finished the Mariners had taken the lead and he was on the hook for another loss. This time there was little blame to be found, except that some of the excellent Seattle hitters finally measured Biagini. In fact, it was only the accurate arm of Kevin Pillar, now on the other end of an outfield assist, that kept the Mariners’ rally to two runs.

Robbie Cano doubled to centre leading off the inning. Ryan Goins made a fine play on a ground ball up the middle by Nelson Cruz to prevent a base hit, and hold Cano at second, crossing behind the bag and throwing across his body to retire the admittedly labouring Cruz. Then Biagini walked the left-handed Kyle Seager on four pitches, choosing to face Danny Valencia, who has had a spotty record against his old team, instead. It didn’t work, however, as Valencia grounded one through the left side to score Cano. Zeke Carrera yet again overthrew the cutoff man in a vain attempt to throw out Cano, and Seager steamed into third.

With runners on first and third, Biagini made his biggest mistake of the inning, walking the right-handed-hitting catcher Zunino, bringing, you guessed it, Jarrod Dyson to the plate again. Dyson lined a 2-1 pitch into centre, counting Seager from third with the lead run, but Valencia, attempting to follow with the insurance run, was thrown out by a hard-charging Pillar for the second out, with a perfect one-hopper right to Martin’s glove which was waiting for Valencia’s slide. Biagini, with two runners still aboard, finally got Taylor Motter to ground out to third after a seven-pitch at-bat.

Next up for Scott Servais, now that the M’s had the lead, was his best setup man, Nick Vincent. Without boring you with the details, if you look at his game log record, the lines for runs, hits, earned runs, and walks, for nearly the entire season, look like reams of old binary 1/0 computer code, with a lot more zeros than ones. He had a good news/bad news inning, giving up a leadoff single to Bautista, fanning Morales and Smoak, giving up a single to Tulowitzki, and then fanning Russell Martin to end the inning.

With Biagini done for the day, Aaron Loup was called on to face the left-handed Ben Gamel and Guillermo Heredia, and he took care of them, but not in the usual way. Gamel led off with a double to right, and Heredia followed with a sacrifice attempt. It was to the third-base side of the mound, and Loup was on it quickly. Equally importantly, Donaldson at third recognized quickly that Loup would get to it first, and reversed his charge to get back to third in time to take the throw from Loup and lay the tag on Gamel for the first out. Loup then ate up Cano with an inside pitch that the latter grounded to third, too soft for a double play; Donaldson threw out Cano, with Heredia moving up to second.

Discretion was the key here, and John Gibbons decided to save MLB ninety whole seconds and issue the no-pitch intentional pass to Nelson Cruz to set up the force for Kyle Seager. But Seager singled to left, scoring Heredia with the dreaded add-on run and moving Boog Powell, running for Cruz, and not related to the real Boog Powell, to third. That was it for Loup, and Dominic Leone came on to strike out Danny Valencia to strand Powell and Seager.

With the lanky Edwin Diaz back in the saddle as Seattle’s closer, there was one big swing from Zeke Carrera who flied out deep to centre, and a lot of whooshing as Diaz fanned Goins and Pillar to end the game.

Joe Biagini pitched a great game, but Sam Gaviglio and the Seattle bullpen were just that much better on this night, with the mighty Toronto bats failing to solve their hitting woes when they were most needed, and the Jays were now one and three on the road trip, and for them there’s no question that Friday night would be Sleepless in Seattle.

Talk about your pressure situations. Francisco Liriano definitely did not need this.

Coming back fom a stint on the disabled list, in the midst of an inconsistent season-long funk that nobody had anticipated, the last thing Francisco Liriano must have wanted was to be thrust into the role of rotation stopper in a game that had “must win” written all over it, or at least far more than it should have been for so early in the season.

As well, in the wake of Tuesday night’s loss that was marred by disturbing signs of defensive breakdown, today’s game would be played in broad sunlight, creating even more difficult conditions for whoever would be patrolling the worst sun field in baseball.

These days it seems like it wouldn’t be a Toronto game if there weren’t some issue with the opposing starter. He might be a callup; he might be coming off the disabled list; he might be coming out of the bullpen; seldom do you think, oh, yeah, that guy’s their number two, or whatever. The corollary of this, as you well know, is that it’s pretty rare for the Jays to beat up on somebody they’re not familiar with.

And so it was today with Oakland’s starter, Jharel Cotton. He’d had nine starts for Oakland before this afternoon, pitching to an ERA of 5.11 over 55 innings. In a statistical anomaly that hearkens back to baseball’s ancient history, when men were men (lol) and starting pitchers only came out if they were clocked by a liner, Cotton had taken the decision in every one of his starts up to today: nine starts and a won-loss record of 3-6.

In a another curious twist, when Jesse Hahn, Monday’s Oakland starter who came off the DL to start against Toronto, was placed on the disabled list in late May, Cotton was recalled from Triple A to take his place on the roster. Cotton had been sent down in early May partly to sort out some issues he was having, and partly because at the time the Athletics had six healthy starters. (How does that even happen in 2017?)

So Cotton was that typical combination of kind of wild but with great stuff, a combination that sets many hitters back on their heels. He started out not badly, giving up only a walk to Josh Donaldson, but striking out Jose Bautista and popping up Kendrys Morales in the first.

This brought the A’s to the plate in the bottom of the first, and whetted the curiosity of yer humble scribe as to how the Jays’ opponents would manage to score a first inning run this time. It didn’t take too long to find out, nor did it take too long to discover that, day or night, Zeke Carrera or Chris Coghlan, the Jays still have a serious problem in left field.

Rajai Davis continued to torment his former team by hitting a double over the head of Kevin Pillar in centre. Liriano then got serious and fanned both Chad Pinder and Jed Lowrie, but Davis stole third with Lowrie at the plate. Then Khris Davis hit one to the wall in left that stranded Rajai Davis for the third out. Er, no, he hit one to the wall in left that Coghlan didn’t get back for quickly enough, and then mis-timed his jump on. The ball hit the wall within what should have been Coghlan’s reach, and went for a double to score Rajai Davis with the first run for Oakland. Ryon Healy grounded out to end the inning, but the Jays had given up another first-inning run, and their left-field woes were continuing even with a change in personnel.

But right away in the top of the second things looked a little different. Justin Smoak led off, and was quickly 2-0 as Cotton throw one low and outside, and another one wildly high and outside. This forced him to throw a strike, and it was juicy: 92 mph, thigh high, centre cut, and Smoak was all over it, staying with the pitch and hitting it out to left centre for his seventeenth of the season and a 1-0 Toronto lead.

Cotton settled down right away, and fanned both Troy Tulowizki and Russell Martin,

using a wipeout slider for the knockout pitch after throwing everything low and away. He only had Chris Coghlan to go to keep the game close, but he lost concentration again, and walked the number eight hitter on a 3-1 pitch, a walk during which only one of the balls was even close. With Ryan Goins at the plate, he was wild low with his first pitch, but then painted the black twice, freezing Goins on one low and outside, the second up and in. Cotton tried to go low and outside to finish Goins off, but the pitch was up, and Goins, swinging more to protect, hit it late and rifled it through the empty left side for a base hit, with Coghlan stopping at second.

This brought Keven Pillar up to face Cotton for the second time, after pitching coach Curt Young paid a visit to the mound. It’s been a frustrating period for Pillar lately, as he has continued to hit the ball hard, but had little to show for it, and has been watching his average drop from over .300 to below .270. After the visit, Cotton continued to work in and out, getting a called strike inside, and inducing a foul ball outside. Then he missed up and in, and good job he missed Pillar. But Pillar didn’t miss the fourth pitch from Cotton, which was down the middle but marginally low, and drove it into the left-field seats for an extra three-run gift to Liriano, and a 4-1 Toronto lead. Josh Donaldson drew another walk from Cotton, but Jose Bautista flew out to centre to send Liriano back out there with a three-run lead to protect.

Despite walking Trevor Plouffe to lead off the bottom of the second, Liriano retired the next three Oakland batters, fanning Mark Canha and Adam Rosales, and getting catcher Josh Phegley to fly out to right. But Liriano took nineteen pitches to do it, so after two innings his pitch count was already at 41. Cotton retired the Toronto side in order in the top of the third, although Smoak hit the ball hard and deep again to centre, but this time it stayed in the park for an out.

Any hope of Liriano having an easy ride of it on the lead were dampened by an unearned Oakland run in the bottom of the third. It started with, of course, a single to centre by Rajai Davis. Chad Pinder followed with what should have been a double-play ball to Troy Tulowitzki, but Tulo couldn’t come up with it for yet another error by a player who, I repeat, does not seem to have come back healthy and effective from his time on the DL. With Davis on second and Pinder on first and nobody out, all Oakland needed was two fielder’s choices to score Davis with Oakland’s second run. There was chatter from the booth that the second fielder’s choice by Khris Davis, the one that scored Davis, might have been a double-play ball as well, because Ryan Goins had trouble getting a handle on the ball and ate it rather than try to get the gimpy Davis at first. But when I see the replay I see a slow bounder to Tulo that wasn’t a DP candidate no matter who was running down the line.

After an uneventful top of the fourth marked only by Cotton issuing his fourth walk to Russell Martin and then stranding him, Liriano grooved one to Trevor Plouffe in the bottom of the inning, and Oakland was within one of the Toronto lead.

Cotton retired the Toronto side again in the fifth, bringing the leadoff hitter Davis back to the plate for his third kick at Liriano’s can, and another adventure by Chris Coghlan in left. Davis hit one to the wall, a high drive that should have been the first out, that a competent left fielder would need to make a little jump for with his back to the wall. But somehow Coghlan didn’t get back quickly enough to time his jump, and the ball hit the wall next to his upstretched glove. It then took a funny bounce which Kevin Pillar had to retrieve, while Davis easily steamed into third with (to me) a tainted triple.

Chad Pinder immediately delivered Davis with a sacrifice fly, and Toronto’s lead was now gone. Liriano’s adventures in the fifth didn’t end there, as he gave up a base hit to Jed Lowrie that didn’t stick in Pillar’s glove at the end of a dive, and then needed a brilliant double play started by Tulo and turned by Goins to finish off the fifth.

After Smoak singled to lead off the sixth, Cotton retired the side to go out on a high note, with an odd look to his line, suggesting he may have been engaging in four-play this afternoon out there in front of all those people: 6 innings pitched, four runs, four hits, four walks, four strikeouts, on 106 pitches.

John Gibbons didn’t wait for the sixth to pull Liriano: for his first start back from rehab, 92 pitches was enough; it was just too bad that his mates didn’t help him keep the lead. His line was five innings, three earned runs, 6 hits, one walk, and five strikeouts.

Danny Barnes came in for the sixth, and with his arrival the game was officially in the hands of the bullpens. Barnes turned in yet another perfect two-inning bridge with three strikeouts. With the score tied Gibbie turned to a Guy Named Joe for the eighth inning, and he delivered again, fanning two and retiring the side on 17 pitches. Meanwhile ex-pat Canadian John Axford pitched around a walk in the seventh, and ex-pat Aussie ex-Blue Jay Liam Hendriks threw an excellent eighth with two strikeouts on just nine pitches.

Hendriks stayed on to stifle the Jays in the top of the ninth, chalking up two more strikeouts in the process, retiring six hitters in a row on just 19 pitches. Can we trade to get this guy back, at least so we won’t have to face him in an enemy uniform?

John Gibbons changed his strategy for the ninth inning of a tie game and brought in Ryan Tepera rather than Roberto Osuna. Perhaps he had a presentiment that there was more thunder coming from his big bats, and would need Osuna to close, or perhaps his decision reflected his growing confidence in Ryan Tepera, but in any case it was Tepera, not Osuna, who came in and blew off the Athletics on eleven pitches to send the game to the tenth.

Extra innings on enemy turf—been there before in this rocky season. The only thing for it is rack up a bunch of runs and take the “last-bats” right out of the equation. Nice work if you can get it . . .

Manager Bob Melvin tabbed Frankie Montas, a 24-year-old right hander from the Dominican, to start the tenth. In his first season with the Mariners, he’d seen plenty of work out of the bullpen, working 28 innings in 20 appearances, with 30 strikeouts, but 15 walks.

He got in trouble with command on the first at bat; he went 3-0 to Kevin Pillar, worked his way back to 3-2, and then plunked him right in the middle of his averted back. This brought Josh Donaldson to the plate, and Montas settled in and fought him hard, but lost the battle. Donaldson took him to the seventh pitch on 2-2, and Montas threw it right on the black at the bottom of the zone, and Donaldson reached down for it, and just drove it out of the park, plating Pillar ahead of him and giving Toronto the first two of that “bunch of runs” I was talking about.

After a coaching visit to the mound, Montas retired Murderer Three, Bautista, and Murderer Four, Morales, on easy grounders, but he couldn’t get past the whole row, as Justin Smoak, in a pitch sequence similar to that faced by Donaldson, went down and got all of a 2-2, seventh-pitch slider and hit it straight out to centre for a three-run Toronto lead.

Was three enough of a “bunch of runs” for Roberto Osuna to protect? Well, good thing that they didn’t just get one for him: Osuna breezed through Josh Phegley, whom he fanned, and Adam Rosales on a short fly to centre, but—who else?–Rajai Davis doubled to right to keep the M’s alive. He scored on Matt Joyce’s two-out single to right, though if Bautista’s throw hadn’t short-hopped Russell Martin at the last minute, Davis might have been DOA. But it was now 7-5, Joyce was on first with two outs, and there was nothing left for Osuna to do but to fan Jed Lowrie to end the game and secure the save.

So sure, there was lots of pressure on Liriano and his team mates today, but they were up to it. Maybe Liriano couldn’t hold the leave they gave him, but he kept it even, turned it over to an unbelievably effective bullpen, and then just sat and watched and waited to see if there would be an outbreak of bashing. This time, there was.

Now it’s off to Toronto West, aka Seattle, where the home team Blue Jays will host the visiting Mariners. Two out of three in Seattle will give us a split on the trip, which is the least we need.

When you’re not hitting (yet again) the microscope tends to be focussed rather more intently on a team’s defense. The molehill of a couple runs’ deficit can look like Mt. Everest to the team that just can’t buy a base hit when it’s needed.

The most egregious of a number of sketchy fielding plays on display by the Toronto Blue Jays tonight was the circus-clown dive Zeke Carrera made in an attempt to catch or block a catchable line drive off the bat of Ryon Healy. Of course he did neither, the ball went all the way to the wall for a double, and Oakland had its fourth and final run in its 4-1 win, their second in a row over the visiting Blue Jays.

I like Zeke Carrera, as a team member, as a player who maximizes relatively modest offensive abilities, and seems to be able to rise to the occasion when most needed. But let’s face it. Expecting him to manage a flawless fielding performance in one of the worst sun fields in baseball is a bit much. Maybe if Marcus Stroman or Francisco Liriano were throwing a bunch of ground balls he’d be okay, but with Marco Estrada making the hitters put the ball in the air, all bets are off.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: even with Devon Travis on the shelf again, the current Toronto lineup is solid defensively everywhere but left field. Or should be.

Remember the frustrating days of the first half of 2015, before the Reyes-for-Tulowitzki trade, when it seemed that the Blue Jays’s most pressing day-to-day need was for a left-fielder who could catch the ball, not to mention occasionally throw someone out, or at least somewhat regularly hit the cutoff man?

It wasn’t supposed to work out that way. 2015 was supposed to be Dalton Pompey’s year to take over in centre field. With Jose Bautista in right, Pompey in centre, and Kevin Pillar in left, the outfield promised to be swift, sure-handed, and attentive to detail. But then Pompey’s first time around with Toronto crashed and burned as he showed he wasn’t ready to hit at the major league level, and his hitting problems, presumably, bled over into his performance in centre, where he looked less and less sure of himself.

Fixing the hole in centre was easy. John Gibbons moved Pillar over from left, he brought his already-acquired Super Kevin cape with him, and we all know how that turned out.

But the hole that Pompey’s departure for Buffalo created in left was another story indeed. Gibbie tried offensive prowess, putting Danny Valencia, a corner infielder out there, and eventually Chris Colabello after he arrived from Buffalo carrying his sizzling bat. But to the shame of neither, neither was an outfielder, though Colabello reportedly worked very hard at becoming one.

Occasionally Gibby tried defensive skill, and pencilled in Steve Tollesen or the multi-talented Ryan Goins, but neither could produce enough offensively to sustain their position in left, normally a power hitter’s home. As Jose Reyes’ problems at shortstop continued to worsen on both sides of the ball, there was one report that he had been seen working out in left field. I liked the notion of Reyes in left which he could surely handle, and the defensively superior Ryan Goins at short, but it never happened, and the Reyes problem, and the Reyes contract, were eventually resolved in the Tulo trade.

Still, there was left field, and the question on a daily basis of whether the position would throw away more runs than it would produce would remain on the agenda until the trade deadline, when Ben Revere was picked to solve the problem, though there were times when I had my doubts about Revere in the field.

So here we are a third of a way in to 2017 and we’re still fighting the left field problem, Captain Canada Michael Saunders’ one brief shining moment having passed. A look at the Jays’ 25-man roster shows only three outfielders listed. Steve Pearce, pencilled in from the start as more or less the regular left fielder, is on the disabled list. So are Dalton Pompey, who should still be in the picture on promise alone, journeyman slugger Darren Ceciliani, and otherwise-rising phenom Anthony Alford. It’s a bit of a distortion to say the Jays are carrying only three outfielders, because all three of Ryan Goins, now slotted at second because of the current Travis injury, Chris Coghlan, and Darwin Barney, listed as infielders, are all more or less capable of playing left competently, if not contributing much to the offense.

In some ways it’s ironic that the last personnel decision team management apparently made out of spring training was to release Melvin Upton, who was strangely inconsistent in his short Blue Jays’ career, though undeniably a skilled fielder, and keep Ryan Goins. Though who could question that decision now, given the amount of playing time Goins has received because of our—shall we say—rather delicate starting middle infielders?

All of which leaves Ezequiel Carrera ensconced in left most nights these days, whether the opponent’s starter throws from the left side or the right side. For good or for bad, both at the plate and in the field, he’s what we’ve got for the moment, and given the need for an extra bullpen arm, with our starters not going as long as in the past two years, I don’t see that changing any time soon. In fact, I wonder what the decision will be once Steve Pearce is ready to return, whether that will mean going one pitcher short, assuming that the lengthening of Joe Biagini and Jay Happ continues apace, and Aaron Sanchez’ return is on schedule, or whether, say, Chris Coghlan will find himself on the bubble?

And so to the matter at hand. Oakland started Jesse Hahn, a right-hander who was making his first start since returning from two weeks on the disabled list with a triceps strain. Prior to that he had done a decent job in the rotation, with nine starts for an ERA of 3.81, though without a lot of luck in spearheading Oakland wins, showing a won-loss record of 1-4. Opposing him on the hill was the bad-luck kid of the battered Toronto rotation, Marco Estrada.

Toronto started the top of the first as if wanting to suggest that maybe Hahn should have stayed on the DL a bit longer. Kevin Pillar led off and ripped a liner, but right at Mark Canha in left. Josh Donaldson singled to left. Jose Bautista singled to left. Yes, three right-handed batters in a row all pulled the ball effectively against Hahn, who was then rescued by Kendrys Morales slapping the ball out to the shortstop for an easy double play.

Then the Athletics took a 1-0 lead on Estrada in the bottom of the first. Have I said that before? Of course it was the annoying Rajai Davis, who never played as well for us as he has against us, who created the run. Leading off, he lunged for, and just barely fouled off, a low, outside fast ball from Estrada. Then, on 3-2, he basically swept a ball four change-up off the plate and hooked it into left field for a double.

Estrada fanned Chad Pinder while holding Davis at second, and then Jed Lowrie singled to right. It was a hard one-hopper right at Jose Bautista, so hard that even Rajai Davis had to be stopped at third. That brought up the gimpy slugger Khris Davis, whom Estrada caused to mis-hit a fast ball up in the zone after two changeups down and away. Unfortunately, he hit a lazy slice of a foul fly to right that Bautista maybe would have let go if it were later in the game, but you don’t want to give away an out in the first inning even at the expense of a run, so he made the catch but had no chance of throwing out Davis on the sacrifice fly.

For the real baseball newbie out there, yes, a runner can indeed advance on a caught foul ball with less than two outs, just like a caught fair ball. For the slightly more advanced beginner, please do not be shocked to learn that fielders will occasionally let a catchable foul ball drop harmlessly to the earth instead of making the catch and being unable to stop a baserunner from tagging up and scoring. Imagine the home team having a runner at third with less than two outs in an extra-inning game. A left-fielder having to make a long run into foul territory to make a catch would merely hand the game to the home team on a walk-off sacrifice fly: a perfect example of making a spectacular catch being a Pyrrhic victory.

It was a match made in heaven: Rajai Davis always gets on and scores in the first inning against Toronto. Marco Estrada always gives up a run in the first inning. So, 1-0 Oakland, it was inevitable, let’s move on.

Except, here was the first crack in the Toronto defensive veneer. Remember that when Khris Davis hit the sacrifice fly to Bautista in foul territory, Jed Lowrie was on first with his previous hard single to right. Not only did Bautista try in vain to throw out Rajai Davis at the plate, but he also missed the cutoff man with his throw, allowing Lowrie to advance to second. It came to naught, but still. Another base hit would have scored a giveaway run.

After a quick second inning for both pitchers, in which notably there was no further hard contact by the Jays against Hahn, Toronto tried a little flash and hustle in the third inning in an attempt to tie the score, but it didn’t pan out for them. On a 2-2 pitch, Ryan Goins, hitting eighth, reached out and down and rifled a liner into left for a single. Manager John Gibbons decided to try to scratch for a run with the bottom of the order and started Goins on a 1-0 pitch to Luke Maile. It worked as Maile grounded out softly to third, with Goins safely into second. Pillar hit the ball on the nose one again, but once again it was right at somebody, Rajai Davis in centre.

Donaldson, facing the shift with two outs, according to his own theory made a mistake and hit a bounding ball past the pitcher to the left of the bag at second. Third baseman Ryon Healy, playing at short, ranged to his left and hustled the ball to first, but Donaldson, showing no ill effects from his leg injury, easily beat it out. Meanwhile, someone, whether Goins was running on his own or he was sent by third-base coach Yonder Alonso, decided to replicate Eric Hoskins’ famous dash from second against Toronto that scored the winning run for Kansas City in the 2015 ALCS, and steamed for the plate. Yonder Alonso was very alert coming off the bag, fired a strike to catcher Stephen Vogt, and Goins was an easy out. The score remained 1-0 for the Athletics.

Oakland went quickly in the bottom of the third as Estrada settled into his typical early-innings rhythm. By the end of the inning he had retired seven Oakland batters in a row, and had struck out three so far.

The Goins play at the plate seemed to have encouraged Toronto, and they came out for the fourth ready to take advantage of an Oakland error and stir up more trouble for Hahn. Jose Bautista hit a grounder to third leading off but Ryon Healy’s throw was off, with Bautista safe on the error. Kendrys Morales finally beat the shift when his shot to short right deflected off Jed Lowrie’s glove for an “infield” hit. Justin Smoak hit into a fielder’s choice that moved Bautista to third, whence he scored on a single through the open right side by Troy Tulowitzki which tied the game at one.

Amazingly, after an incredible dry spell, this was the second base hit in two innings for Toronto with a runner in scoring position, though it was the first one that actually scored a runner. The inning continued with Zeke Carrera taking one for the team and loading the bases on a hit batsman, but Ryan Goins hit into a double play to end the threat. Little did we know that this was the last real threat the Jays would pose against the Athletics.

Here’s what the Jays managed in the last five innings against Jesse Hahn, who went six innings for the win, Daniel Coulombe and Ryan Madson who shared the seventh and eighth, and Santiago Casilla who closed it out: against Hahn, Kevin Pillar singled with one out in the fifth, but tried to stretch it into a double and was gunned down on a great throw from right fielder Chad Pinder, who certainly gets around. And Justin Smoak walked with two outs and was stranded in the sixth.

Coulombe came on for Hahn and walked Darwin Barney to lead off the seventh, and then fanned Ryan Goins and punched out Luke Maile with a beautiful curve ball before turning it over to Madson who got Pillar to ground into a fielder’s choice. In the eighth Madson started by walking Donaldson, but retired Bautista on a liner to centre, and then fanned Morales and Smoak.

Oakland’s closer Casilla gave up a leadoff single to Troy Tulowitzki in the top of the ninth. Tulo moved to second, the only batter to reach second since the fourth, when the pinch-hitter Chris Coghlan, hitting for Barney, grounded to first. But then, like his predecessors, Casilla opened up a can of Whiff and blew away the last two batters he faced, Goins and Maile, again.

Marco Estrada’s string of consecutive outs carried through the fourth, when it extended to ten, and into the fifth, when he retired Healy leading off, on a short fly ball that had Carrera and Tulowitzki all tied up in the evening sun field until Pillar, with a better angle on it, came in and called them off.

But the string was broken with the next batter as Estrada walked the number eight hitter, the catcher Stephen Vogt, and then gave up a double to Mark Canha. With the game still tied, and no indication that Estrada was tiring, Oakland tried to force matters as well, and sent Vogt to the plate from first. But a quick recovery by Carrera in left and a strong relay by Tulo cut Vogt down for the second out. Canha took third on the throw, however, whence he was able to score on an infield hit by Adam Rosales off the glove of a diving Tulowitzki. The A’s were up 2-1 with a scratchy run that would eventually stand up for the win.

Unfortunately for Estrada and the Jays, while Jesse Hahn and the Oakland bullpen were keeping the Jays from getting anything going, the Athletics managed to push across a couple more runs in the sixth, enough to drive the last nails into the Toronto coffin.

After fanning Chad Pinder for his seventh strikeout, Estrada gave up a single to right to Jed Lowrie. Lowrie came around to score on a double to dead centre by Khris Davis that carried well over Pillar’s head; to be fair to Pillar, by now it seems as if he’s done something wrong when he isn’t able to run one down. Then came the final dagger: after Yonder Alonso fanned for Estrada’s eighth strikeout, Healy hit what appeared to be a catchable liner to left centre that Zeke Carrera got to, but missed catching in a very awkward dive toward centre; it was pretty apparent that he’d lost the ball in the lights. In any case, it rolled to the wall where Pillar had to retrieve it and hustle it in to keep Healy at second. Davis, of course, hobbled leg and all, scored easily with the fourth Oakland run.

Aaron Loup came on to strike out Josh Phegley hitting for Stephen Vogt to strand Davis at second, but given the inability of Toronto to string together some baserunners, it made the rest of the proceedings academic. Dominic Leone retired the A’s in the seventh on eight pitches. Ryan Tepera pitched the eighth and retired the side, walking Lowrie with one out but getting Khris Davis to ground into a double play to finish off the inning.

So some cheapish runs for Oakland, a continued hitting funk for Toronto, and some dicey defensive plays all added up to two in a row for the Athletics over the Jays, putting Toronto into a hole on the road trip, needing to salvage the third game in Oakland tomorrow afternoon and a sweep in Seattle to come home four and two.

Well, one game at a time, and it starts with Francisco Liriano’s return to the rotation.  One game at a time.