Long Ball Stories

Here are three situations that mattered, a lot, to the outcome of tonight’s opener of the Jays’ three-game series in the Oakland Coliseum, the playing surface of which has now been re-christened, as spiffy new signage announces, “Rickey Henderson Field”:

Oakland starter Sean Manaea walked Kevin Pillar leading off the first inning. Josh Donaldson promptly delivered Pillar with the game’s first run by hitting a double into the left field corner. At the end of the inning, Donaldson was still standing on second base.

In the second inning, Troy Tulowitzki led off with a double to left. At the end of the inning, Tulowitzki was still standing on second base.

In the fifth inning Zeke Carrera led off by drawing a walk from Manaea. Pillar delivered him with a double to left, then moved to third when Josh Donaldson grounded out to shortstop Chad Pinder, using the old Little League trick of delaying his break to third until he saw that Pinder’s throw was actually on the way to first, betting that he could beat a return throw to third from the first baseman, which he did. Pillar was then thrown out at the plate by a mile when Jose Bautista grounded out sharply to third baseman Trevor Plouffe when the Jays had the “contact” play on.

Baseball is a game of tradition, as you might have noticed. The traditions that you see followed and honoured in the course of a major league baseball game are only the tip of the iceberg. Tradition runs through almost everything that is done and everything that happens around baseball.

Take batting practice—BP—for example. You might think that players go in the cage for BP and just focus on improving their swing mechanics so that they can get more, and better, base hits. Well, they do. But that’s not all they do. A properly-run batting practice will have the player practice certain specific skills, as well as generally honing his stroke to make better and more frequent contact.

It will differ from coach to coach, but generally all well-run batting practices would expect the player to work on “situational hitting” before swinging away. Situational hitting may include practicing any number of things, but in particular should include bunting, divided into sacrifice bunting, itself sub-divided into towards third and towards first, and bunting for a base hit. Then there are the situations where the goal is to advance the runner. “Runner on second, nobody out” is a situation that calls for the hitter to hit the ball on the ground to the right side of the infield to advance the runner to third, whether the hit is a base hit or not. Needless to say, given the variety of ways that a runner can score from third base with one out, the chances of scoring the run in that situation increase exponentially. “Runner on third less than two outs” is a situation that calls for either an outfield fly ball for a sacrifice fly, or a ground ball back through the box and continuing up the middle, depending on where the ball is pitched. Again it doesn’t matter whether it’s a base hit or not.

Depending on time, the expectation would be that the hitter in the cage would try several repetitions of each of these types of situational hitting before swinging away.

Yes, friends and neighbours, practicing hitting a ground ball to the right side of the infield to move a runner on second over to third with less than two outs is a thing, and it has been a thing in major league baseball for well over a hundred years.

You might have read a newspaper story that quotes Josh Donaldson, among others, talking about his approach to hitting and how it is very different from the traditional. The article, noting that Donaldson has tweeted “Just say NO . . . to groundballs”, and which you can read at:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sports/wp/2017/06/06/the-dark-side-of-launch-angle-how-some-fly-ball-hitters-could-be-doing-more-damage-than-good/?utm_term=.bb74468a3f85

cites Donaldson as having “stated flatly that any ball he hits on the ground, even one that goes for a base hit, was an accident.”

How does this new approach to hitting, as best exemplified, apparently, by our very own scufflin’ Huckleberry Donaldson, accord with the traditional practice of a situational hitting approach? The obvious answer is that it doesn’t.

When it works, the pursuit of an improved “launch angle” off the bat results in a thing of beauty, a majestic home run that plates one or more runs with one swing of the bat. However, when it doesn’t work, it results in mistimed contact and an easy out, or a strikeout and an even easier out.

Why does all of this matter? Because, friends and neighbours, it’s a lot easier, if less glamorous, to apply situational hitting successfully in a game situation than it is to hit a home run, and without needing to reach into the cupboard and “open up a can of instant runs”, as the great Ernie Harwell used to say, it almost always results in a run.

If you note the score of tonight’s Toronto loss to Oakland, 5-3, and go back to the three instances I noted at the beginning of my story, leaving all other events in the game aside, and successfully apply situational hitting, the 5-3 loss turns into a 6-5 win for Toronto.

Sure, this is a simplistic view of the very complex thing that is a nine-inning ball game, but even if you leave aside the question of winning and losing, and just talk about Toronto’s run total tonight, you still come up with six Toronto runs, which is exactly twice as many as they actually scored. Give me any game the team has lost, and give me double the number of runs that the team actually soored, and let’s recalibrate and see how many additional wins we have.

In the three instances cited above, here’s what followed the arrival of the afore-mentioned batter at second base:

In the first inning, Jose Bautista grounded out to the left side, and Donaldson had to hold. (It’s the first out that’s crucial with a runner on second: if you move him to third and there’s only one out, he can score on either a sacrifice fly or a ground ball in the middle of the diamond that gets past the pitcher, i. e., he can score on the second out.) Then Manaea struck out Kendrys Morales and Justin Smoak. By the way, if the pitcher strikes out the side to strand that runner on second, that’s great for the pitcher. But the secondary question becomes, what was the approach of the hitters who struck out?

In the second inning, Manaea struck out Russell Martin, who admittedly was rung up by plate umpire Gerry Davis on a marginal call, and Darwin Barney before Zeke Carrera hit the ball hard on the ground to the right side, but only to make the third out.

In the fifth inning, as I mentioned above, Pillar made it to third on the first out, but only because of cheeky base-running, not because Donaldson played it correctly at the plate. That brought the runner-on-third-with-one-out scenario into play, which requires the batter either to elevate the ball to the outfield, which should be an easy task for a Jose Bautista, or not to pull the ball on the ground. If the batter pulls the ball to either corner where the baseman is playing in, the defence has a better shot at cutting down the run. And if the hitting team happens to put on the contact play (don’t get me started on that one!) and the batter pulls it, hard, like Bautista did, the runner is such a dead duck that he rightly doesn’t even slide, like Pillar didn’t, because why get hurt or hurt the catcher when you’re out anyway?

Oh, was there a baseball game tonight? Sure there was, and in the game, Jay Happ’s second start since coming off the disabled list, he put in five and a third innings and pitched, let’s face it, only middlin’ well, though he would have gotten off better if he hadn’t thrown a gopher ball to Ryon Healy in the second inning after walking Khris Davis and giving up a bad-bounce base hit to Yonder Alonso. That one shot made up three of the five earned runs given up by Happ. And, if you want to play that game, the other two earned runs came on another walk to Khris Davis and another homer to exactly the same spot by Healy in the fourth.

So Happ’s line against the rest of the A’s showed a two-hit shutout, but don’t even ask about his line against Healy. To be fair, Happ’s not quite back to 2016 levels, as he only struck out four while walking three, and laboured to 98 pitches. On the positive side, the fact that he managed 98 pitches would suggest that his arm is recovering nicely.

Once again the Jays’ bullpen was called on to do a little extra, and once again Danny Barnes was the first in, after Happ gave up a one-out double to Yonder Alonso in the sixth. Once again Barnes left the base-runner on, and once again he pitched an easy seventh, finishing up with five outs in a row, three on popups and one on a strikeout, in only seventeen pitches. In this season of shorter starts from Toronto’s rotation, Danny Barnes has become the indispensable man out of the bullpen, with his ability to throw a complete shutdown, and do it for two innings. In this case, besides picking up Happ as needed, he took it right to the eighth, so that even with a moderately shorter start from Happ manager John Gibbons only needed two pitchers out of the ‘pen.

Coming in for the eighth was newcomer Jeff Beliveau, called up from Buffalo to replace the struggling J.P. Howell, who was placed on the ten-day list with arm trouble following the Sunday game in Toronto. Belliveau is a thirty-year-old left-handed pitcher signed as a free agent last December by Toronto to provide depth for the pitching staff at Buffalo. He had one active year with Tampa Bay in 2014, spent most of 2015 and 2016 in the minors, and has been used extensively out of the bullpen in Buffalo this spring, making seventeen appearances including one start, totalling thirty-two innings with 43 strikeouts and an ERA of 3.09.

Despite giving up a leadoff double to Chad Pinter, Belliveau had a solid outing, retiring Jed Lowrie on a fly ball to right, Matt Joyce on a grounder to first which moved Pinder to third, and then Yonder Alonso on a groundout to shortstop. Fifteen pitches, one hit, three outs, two of them ground balls: not a bad debut; Belliveau could become a valuable bullpen piece for Toronto, especially now that Aaron Loup appears to be moving away from the lefty matchup role.

Left out of this whole discussion so far has been the start turned in by Sean Manaea, the left-hander who has been one of the few solid starters for Oakland this year. His line was pretty sharp: six innings, two runs on four hits with seven strikeouts and three walks, the walks notable because he’d only given up two walks over nineteen innings in his three previous starts, and the walks tonight helped elevate his pitch count which limited him to the six innings on 111 pitches.

Since I’ve already said my piece about Toronto not being able to take advantage of three opportunities of runners on second with nobody out, it should be obvious that Manaea, despite his line, was teetering on the edge most of the game. Two of the wasted Toronto opportunities, in the first and the fifth, actually came after the Jays had already scored, but by the time they picked up their second run in the fifth, Healy had already hit his copy-cat shot off Happ, and the Oakland lead was secure at 5-2.

Manaea, in fact, only retired the side in order once in the whole game, and that was in his last inning of work, the sixth, when he required only eleven pitches to set the visitors down. The next two Oakland pitchers represented old home week of a sort for the Blue Jays. First up was John Axford, the Canadian born in Simcoe, Ontario, who navigated the eighth despite giving up a one-out single to Zeke Carrera. Axford was a bit lucky, as Donaldson made the third out on a hard line smash to Trevor Plouffe at third, which stranded Kevin Pillar, who had replaced Carrera by hitting into a fielder’s choice.

In the eighth it was Liam Hendricks, who had done a good job of re-establishing his value during his good 2015 season in the Toronto bullpen, when he’d racked up 64 innings with 71 strikeouts in 58 appearances in a role in which he was greatly depended upon. Hendricks was generous to his former team-mates, but not enough to cough up the lead. Justin Smoak took him deep for number fifteen for Smoak. Bizarrely, his shot followed almost the same line and trajectory as Healy’s two homers. Trevor Plouffe helped Hendricks out by snagging a vicious liner off Bautista’s bat leading off, and Troy Tulowitzki followed Smoak’s homer with a single, but Hendricks fanned Russell Martin to end the inning.

Oakland closer Santiago Casilla wrapped things up for the A’s and secured the win for Manaea with two strikeouts, despite issuing a walk to Zeke Carrera.

We can have all the debate we want about home runs versus traditional baseball strategy, pitting Earl Weaver’s “my idea of strategy is two walks and a three-run homer” against, say, Tony LaRussa’s tactical brilliance, but the fact is that the homer hitter lives or dies by the blast, and if he’s obsessed with launch angle and the perfect pitch to drive, he’s going to strike out an awful lot when he doesn’t get it all. When it comes to accepting “all or nothing” from a power hitter with a runner on second and nobody out, as opposed to moving him over in the old-fashioned way, I know where I stand.

It’s nice to score three or four runs in an inning, but they don’t add up to any more than scoring a run an inning for three or four innings. It’s that simple.

Funny how much difference a winter makes. Here we were this afternoon, Jays playing for a series split, the Yankees for a win. On the hill for Toronto was the effervescent (to Toronto fans), obnoxious (to everyone else) Marcus Stroman.

Going for the Yankees was Luis Severino, he of the Great Beanball Battle of 2016. You know, the guy who had to take two shots to hit Justin Smoak in retaliation for Jay Happ’s hit on Chase Headley, which had been in retaliation for Severino’s hit on Josh Donaldson. Who didn’t realize that he’d been ejected from the game because a warning had been issued.

So today Stroman and Severino match up, and it seems that history is history, and this game is all about today, especially for the Blue Jays, who have been struggling mightily to overcome a terrible April and reinsert themselves into the early playoff picture. If any game so far this season could be seen as truly crucial, it would be this one, because of the fact of the Yankees’ strong early run, and the Jays’ need to keep them in their sights. Without at least a split—all that was left to them after losing two of the first three to New York—things could be starting to look pretty bleak motivation-wise for the home team.

So there were no concerns about whether Stroman would do something to stir the pot of annoyance against the Yankees, or whether Severino would be able to keep his mind on his primary job, throwing strikes, rather than playing his erstwhile counter-ego, the masked avenger.

It’s a different Marcus Stroman this year. We spent last year wondering which Stroman would show up when his number was called. He had outings that recalled the brilliance of his debut in late 2014, and the even greater brilliance of his performance when he returned from the injury in 2015. Then he’d have outings that were just awful. In the end, his record reflected this see-saw effect, as he ended up 9-10 with a 4.37 ERA.

So far this year he has tended to business in a much more consistent fashion, without ever showing more than stretches of the flint-like brilliance of his best performances, but also without ever really falling into any prolonged stretches of vulnerable mortality that he has also shown in the past. In particular, he has been able to pitch over minor rough spots and still turn in quality starts, for the most part. It’s likely that his solid performance leading the United States to the World Baseball Classic championship helped to mature him, at least on the mound. Whatever the reason, his basic record to date, 6-2 with an ERA of 3.28, reflects the steady leadership he has shown in anchoring a Toronto rotation that has been rocked by injury this season.

Severino, even now only a very young 23-year-old with a big arm and briliant stuff, has had an even more inconsistent start to his big-league career. After the promise he showed in late 2015 when, remember, at the age of 21, he made eleven starts for the Yankees and went five and three with an ERA of 2.89, it was a no-brainer that he’d be an important part of the New York rotation last year from the start of the season.

But he’d struggled so badly at the beginning of the season—no inconsistency there on his part, he was all bad—that he’d first fallen out of the rotation, and second fallen out of the big leagues altogether, spending a couple of months at Triple A, where he earned a trip back to the Bronx in late July but spent most of the rest of the season in the bullpen.

This year, however, he has been a steady performer as a Yankee starter. All eleven appearances have been starts, he’s averaged over six innings a start, and his record on a team that has jumped out in front of a tough division is four and two with an ERA of 2.93.

Given all of this, I had no expectation that either starter was going to mail this one in, and neither disappointed.

Through three, the only base-runner allowed by Severino had been Kevin Pillar, who walked in the first and stole second, and singled in the third with two outs and died at first. The Yankees didn’t have a base-runner until the third, when Chase Headley singled, stole second, and wound up at third where he was stranded.

By the end of three, Stroman had thrown 46 pitches with no walks and four strikeouts, and Severino had thrown 43 pitches with one walk, the Pillar base hit, and three strikeouts.

Then the Yankees picked up a run in the fourth inning on an Aaron Judge single and stolen base followed by a double by Matt Holliday. An unfortunate throwing error was charged to Luke Maile when his throw to second on Judge’s stolen base attempt nicked Judge’s shoe and skipped away, allowing him to advance to third. It didn’t enter into the scoring, however, as Judge would have scored from second in any case on the double.

In the home half of the fourth, Kendrys Morales got the crowd into it with a one-out double, but died there when Justin Smoak flew out to centre for the second out, and Troy Tulowitzki struck out looking, in a curiously lackadaisical at-bat during which he took three called strikes, and a fourth, a hittable ball a little high for a strike but pretty juicy in any case, without ever taking his bat off his shoulder.

As we moved on to the fifth, in which Didi Gregorius wasted a leadoff hit by getting thrown out at second by Luke Maile, it dawned on me that the black hole of a typical Blue Jays’ batting slump was opening up before us. As of the fourth inning today, Toronto had gone thirteen consecutive scoreless innings since the start of Friday night’s shutout. In the fifth inning, despite two Toronto base hits, one of which was erased by a double play, the scoreless streak was stretched to fourteen innings.

In the sixth inning the Yankees milked a base hit by Brett Gardner leading off and a walk to Gary Sanchez for a second run. It’s hard to stop a team from scoring when tbe first two batters get on base, except, it seems, if that team is Toronto. In this case, Aaron Judge made the first out on a fairly deep fly to Pillar in centre on which Gardner, good base-runner that he is, tagged up and advanced to third. From there he was able to score when Matt Holliday grounded one out to Tulowitzky at short and beat out the relay to first, beating the double play that would have nullified the run.

Down 2-0, which in the circumstance was more of a mountain than a molehill, Toronto came up in the sixth inning, looking at extending its runless streak to sixteen innings. Actually, they got to 15.2, courtesy of left-side groundouts from Donaldson and Bautista, before the heavens opened and dropped two precious markers on them to tie the game, thanks to that graceful Angel of Mercy Justin Smoak.

With two down, Kendrys Morales, who shows much more ability to beat the shift by hitting to left than any one of Donaldson, Bautista, or the departed Edwin Encarnacion, slashed a liner to left for a single. On the first pitch from Severino to Smoak, a slider that slid too little and stayed up and out over the plate, Smoak hit it exactly where it was, and it went exactly where he hit it, until it bounced off the facing of the second deck in dead centre field.

Apparently, my shout when Smoak hit that ball was a bit extreme: my wife, in another part of the house, thought some disaster had befallen us.

One thing that’s been somewhat problematic for Marcus Stroman has been an unusually high pitch count per outing, and today was no different. After six innings and 105 pitches it was time to pull the plug, with his line at a tidy two runs, five hits, one walk, and four strikeouts.

Aaron Loup, whom Gibbie seems to be transitioning from matchup lefty to a later full-inning reliever, had one of the most efficient innings in memory, for himself, anyway, disposing of the Yankees in six pitches, with the help of a nifty double play started by Devon Travis.

Aaron Hicks singled to centre on the first pitch of the inning. Didi Gregorius pulled a 1-1 pitch toward Travis at second at a medium bounce that brought Travis near the base path just as Hicks was approaching. Travis was able to tag Hicks in the base line quickly enough to still have time to throw Gregorius out at first. Chase Headley flew out to Bautista in right on an 0-1 pitch. Ain’t it easy sometimes?

It’s a hoary old cliché in baseball that a player who’s just made a good play always seems to lead off the next inning. And so it was that Travis found himself at the plate hitting first against Severino in the seventh. Unfortunately, that put Travis in place to be a hit batsman, as Severino’s 1-2 pitch got away from him, rode up and in, and hit Travis rather scarily on the left wrist, it appeared. Travis was shaken up by it, obviously in discomfort, attended to by the trainers, but stayed in the game and took his base.

With ex-National Leaguer Chris Coghlan at the plate, the Jays’ manager decided to try a little baseball for once, and Coghlan laid down an impeccable sacrifice bunt, which moved Travis to second. But the bunt didn’t pay off. Travis was able to reach third when Luke Maile grounded one up the middle, but he advanced no further when Kevin Pillar ended the inning by flying out to centre.

I have to say here, that, having looked at the Travis hit-by-pitch several times, I’m really troubled by the inability or unwillingness of modern hitters to get the hell out of the way of a dangerous pitch. I used to teach my young players how to fall back and drop if need be to avoid getting hit. Instinctively, too, little baseball players are not quite as eager as the big leaguers to crowd the plate to be able to reach the outside pitch. After looking at it more than once, as I said, I can’t help but feel that Travis didn’t react very well at all to the ball riding in on him.

Having run the bases while obviously showing concern over his hand, it was not surprising that Travis didn’t come out onto the field for the top of the eighth, and he was replaced by Ryan Goins at second.

Being in a tie ball game in the eighth these days means that it’s time for that Guy Named Joe; Smith, that is. And he did not disappoint today. Not at all, baby. Rob Refsnyder led off and was the only Yankee to put the ball in play. He hit a little chopper between Smith and Donaldson at third. A play had to be made quickly, and Smith barehanded it, planted, and fired in time to get Refsnyder at first. Then he fanned Brett Gardner on a 1-2 pitch, and fanned Gary Sanchez on a 1-2 pitch. With ten pitches from Smith and six from Loup, the bullpen had now retired the minimum six hitters on sixteen pitches. What overworked bullpen? (I know, they have to warm up and all, and can’t actually pitch every day. It were a joke, son!)

Tyler Clippard came on in the eighth for Severino, whose efficient line was seven innings pitched, two runs, 6 hits, one walk, and seven strikeouts on 98 pitches.

Like his Blue Jay counterparts, Clippard was the soul of efficiencey, retiring Toronto on just 13 pitches in the eighth. Unfortunately for him, one of those pitches, a mistake four-seamer that was right down the middle at the top of the zone was the 2-2 pitch to Josh Donaldson, who feasted this time, instead of suffering from the famine, and crushed the ball to right centre for a 3-2 Toronto lead. Clippard breezed through the rest of the murderers, Bautista, Morales, and Smoak, but it was too late.

Keeping with the theme of quick is good, Roberto Osuna nailed down the win and his thirteenth save for the Jays by striking out the side, Bronx Murderers all, Judge, Holliday, and Castro, on eleven pitches. Oh, those nasty two-strike sliders! Let’s see, six, ten, eleven, that makes three innings of relief, five strikeouts, one hit erased by a double play, all on twenty-seven pitches. Life is sweet when the bullpen’s clicking!

After such a long scoreless streak, one blowout, one game that was closer than it should have been, one game that should have been closer than it was, what a treat it was to see Toronto gain the series split in a well-played, especially well-pitched game

won with a touch of the dramatic, and sealed with flare and panache by a bullpen riding the crest of success.

It was a battle of the young guys today, Jason Montgomery, 24, versus Joe Biagini, 27, but going on 15, because who’s younger at heart than Joe Biagini?

For Biagini, tonight was the night, the biggest night of his transition to starter. The limits would be off, the pitch count forgotten, at least up to the first hundred, and he could go as far as his talent and skill could take him.

Fun fact: in this day and age when 100 pitches is the magic number, time to pull the pitcher or at the very next baserunner, in the 1968 World Series between the Tigers and the Cardinals, Bob Gibson and Mickey Lolich each started three games. Each completed three games, 27 innings. We don’t have the pitch counts readily available, but Lolich pitched game seven for the Tigers on two days’ rest after a complete game and threw another complete game to win the Series. Surprise your friends: Bob Gibson was not the MVP of the 1968 World Series. Mickey Lolich was.

Jason Montgomery, the Yankees’ starter, has flown under the radar compared to the other young giants on the team, Sanchez, Hicks, Judge, maybe because doing a steady job in the rotation isn’t as spectacular as pounding the ball out of the park. Yet the big lefty, and he is big, six foot six and 225 pounds has been one of the few consistent spots, along with Luis Severino and Michael fuss-budget Pineda, in the Yankees’ rotation.

Since Joe Girardi first handed him the ball on April twelfth against Tampa Bay for his major league debut, Montgomery had made eight more starts for the Yankees, and totalled fifty and a third innings over the nine starts prior to today’s game, pitching to an ERA of 4.11. He has provided a steady left-handed presence for the Yankees that at his age and experience may not have come as a total surprise to Yankees’ management, but has definitely exceeded whatever expectations they might have had for him for 2017.

So the young starters worked through the first two innings without any problems, Biagini on 29 pitches and Montgomery on 32. Biagini walked Aaron Judge, again not necessarily a pitching mistake, in the first, the only baserunner he allowed. Montgomery’s path was a little rockier. In the first inning Judge had to make a nice diving catch on a Texas Leaguer by Kevin Pillar, and Josh Donaldson got most of one and hit it deep to Aaron Hicks in centre. In the second Montgomery skated even closer to the edge, walking Justin Smoak and Troy Tulowitzki , followed by Devon Travis hitting one to the warning track in left. Darwin Barney popped out to short to strand the walks.

The third inning defined the outcome of the game, in terms of both starters and the final score. Biagini, who seems to be becoming the victim of a trend, was nicked for two cheap unearned runs, while Montgomery benefitted from a really fine defensive play by Chase Headley at third that reduced Toronto’s chances of coming right back to make it a game.

After Biagini fanned catcher Austin Romine to start the inning, Rob Refsnyder hit an easy grounder to short. Tulo just bobbled the play, fumbling it a couple of times so that he couldn’t make a throw. With Gardner batting, Refsnyder stole second, and then was able to advance to third on Gardner’s deep fly to centre. So, without benefit of a hit, the Yankees had a runner on third with one out, carrying an unearned run. Which scored when Aaron Hicks hit a flukey blooper down the line in right that went for a double. Then the Judge delivered Hicks with a booming double to centre that just went off Pillar’s glove as he raced back for the wall. The second run was also unearned, because the inning should have ended on Gardner’s fly to centre.

When Montgomery dodged the bullet meant for him in the bottom of the third, a through-narrative could be predicted: this would be a night for the Yankee pitcher, and not the Toronto pitcher. Luke Maile led off for Toronto and hit a hard smash down the third base line. Chase Headley made a valiant dive toward the line for the ball, and partially deflected it into foul territory. Maile had an infield hit, but Headley had definitely saved a leadoff double. So when Pillar followed with his own opposite-field base hit to right, Maile would have scored, instead of advancing to second as he did.

This would have cut the lead to 2-1, put Toronto on the board against Montgomery, and may very well have changed the approach of the Toronto Murderer’s Row of Donaldson, Bautista, and Kendrys Morales. As it was, though, Donaldson fouled out to the catcher, and the three and four hitters both went down on strikes, leaving Maile and Pillar on the bases, and Jason Montgomery pumped, no doubt.

Both pitchers posted goose eggs for the middle three innings. Biagini, in fact, starting from the last out in the third, retired ten in a row, with three strikeouts. Montgomery, pitching on the slim lead, was only a little less effective, giving up a single to Maile and a walk to Donaldson in the fifth before retiring the side on Bautista’s fielder’s choice to third.

Biagini came back out for the seventh, marking his longest and best outing so far as a starter, but hit a bit more bad luck that cost him his only earned run of the game, and ran the Yankee lead to 3-0. Starlin Castro led off with the bloopiest of bloop doubles you’d ever see. The Jays were in the usual configuration of the shift for the right-handed Castro, that is to say the infield was shifted toward left, but the outfield was more or less straight up. I still don’t get it.

Anyway, Castro got a piece of the ball and hit a high popup down the line in left that had a lot of spin on it. Darwin Barney, playing left tonight with the left-handed Montgomery on the mound for the Yankees, had a long run for it, and couldn’t get under it in time. When it hit the turf, it bounced high with so much spin on it that it bounced back over Barney’s head, and Castro made an easy if cheap two-bagger out of it. Then didn’t Didi Gregorius, hitting from the other side, hit almost exactly the same ball, to the same location, but with left-handed spin on it. It hit just inside the foul line and spun away from Barney into foul territory almost to the wall. Castro scored, Gregorius ended up on second, and Barney must have been wondering when the game of go fetch might end.

Biagini got three ground balls to get out of the inning, one of which resulted in Gregorius trying to advance to third on a ball to short and being tagged out by Donaldson with an asssist to Tulowitzki.

Half-way through the seventh, both pitchers were done. If you looked at their lines, you’d see that Biagini had slightly the better of the numbers, and Montgomery had slightly the better of the good fortune. Biagini went seven innings, gave up one earned run on four hits with one walk and six strikeouts on exactly 100 pitches. Montgomery, who would not come out for the Jays’ seventh, went six innings, gave up no runs on three hits, walked three and struck out five on 103 pitches.

Well done, young fellas, and I hope you enjoyed your shakes at the milk bar after the game.

Adam Warren picked up Montgomery in the seventh and pitched around a walk to Zeke Carrera who hit for Barney and also stole a base. Tyler Clippard took over in the eighth and retired the Bash Boys in the two/three/four slots on 13 pitches, and then Dellin Betances threw 13 pitches to retire Toronto in the ninth, despite walking Tulowitzki. Betances came in despite the Yankees’ seven-run lead, presumably because he needed the work, not having been used yet in this series.

Wait a minute. Seven-run lead? Didn’t Biagini only give up three, only one earned? Seven runs?

Well, try this one on for size: Jason Grilli came in to pitch the eighth for Toronto and the Yankees hit Four. Solo. Home. Runs. Off. Him. Gardner hit one out leading off. Hicks hit one hard but right at Carrera in left. Judge was called out on strikes. Then the parade. Holliday hit one out. Castro hit one out. Gregorius hit one out.

It was horrible. I felt like I was watching Jason Grilli’s career swirl down the drain and wash away to the sea. This was beyond any concern about the game being out of reach. Three runs is usually plenty enough for the Yankees’ bullpen, so the runs were probably superfluous. And it wasn’t like John Gibbons was going to waste another arm to finish it off, though in the end he did have mercy and brought J.P. Howell in to get the last out, a redemption of sorts for Howell after yesterday’s disastrous stint to be able to retire Headley on a grounder to Smoak on only three pitches.

Though it would be very sad to see, I would not be at all surprised if Jason Grilli has thrown his last pitch for Toronto. With Joe Smith firmly ensconced as the setup man, the heady days of 2016’s BenGriNa are long over, and life, and baseball, move on.

Just to wrap it up, Danny Barnes came on for Howell and chewed through the Yankees on eight pitches. Barn door open. Nothing left of the horse except a pile of what horses always leave behind.

It’s Marcus Stroman versus Luis (“Do I get two shots at him if I miss the first one?”) Severino tomorrow. Apparently, Severino has been colouring inside the lines this year, so it’ll be a tough matchup for Toronto to split the series.

Oh, the pressure was terrible.

The Yankees had scored a wipeout win in game one of the series and we had to get that game back. Michael Pineda was pitching for New York and he’s had a good year so far, but usually struggles at the TV Dome. And tonight marked the return of Francisco Liriano to the mound after a stint on the disabled list.

Like I said, the pressure was terrible. And that’s just me.

One batter into the game, the pressure, on Liriano and on the Blue Jays was not theoretical, not something airy and vague, but real and immediate. The one thing that Liriano and his mates absolutely did not need after last night’s embarrassing walkover was leadoff batter Brett Gardiner standing on third base courtesy of a three-base error by left-fielder Zeke Carrera.

Back in April Greg Wisniewski published a fascinating article on Baseball Prospectus Toronto, “Coming Up Short: Ezequiel Carrera’s Hidden Problem”, that you can read here: ,http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2016/04/27/coming-up-short-ezequiel-carreras-hidden-problem/ The article was based on an interview with Carrera, in which he told how he had realized from studying videos of his own play in the outfield that he had often over-run balls and missed them by reaching too far, not slowing down at the right moment, and so on, and he had determined that he’d been being misguided by a perception that his glove arm, or more accurately his reach, wasn’t as long as it actually was, and he would regularly sense that he was still going to come up short when he had in fact already reached the right spot to make contact with the ball. He revealed, in fact, that he had often been teased as a child by the other kids for having short arms, and this had created an on-going body-image misperception that actually interfered with his fielding as I’ve described. If you looked back over videos of bad Carrera plays in the outfield you would see that almost all of them were caused by his over-running the ball.

Watching the replay of Gardner’s admittedly tricky slice into the left-field corner, that somehow made contact with Carrera’s back side because he had over-run the ball, suggested immediately to me that he had run into that old problem again. In any case, Gardner was on third, Zeke was sheepishly in the doghouse, to mix up my animals a little, and Liriano was in the deep doo-doo, only six pitches into the game.

Ah, but this was the post-disabled-list, new and improved Francisco Liriano, the guy we saw when he arrived from Pittsburgh last year, and his help-mate and support, Russell Martin, wasn’t even behind the plate, still sitting out with that vaguely-descibed muscle strain problem. (Not that it matters these days, as well as Luke Maile has been doing behind the dish.)

All Liriano had to do was retire Gary Sanchez, Aaron Judge, and Matt Holliday to strand Gardner at third. So Sanchez hit a hard chopper to third. Josh Donaldson, playing maybe half-way, gloved it smartly to his left, glanced Gardner back to third, and fired out Sanchez.

Up to the plate strode the imposing figure of Aaron Judge. (I pledge to you all hear and now that I will never use the line “Here come de judge!” to refer to Aaron Judge.) If pitchers around the league are learning anything about Aaron Judge, it’s not to throw him fastballs, and generally not to throw him anything above his shoelaces, unless it’s really high, and really fast. The PitchCast chart for Liriano’s strikeout of Aaron Judge makes it look like Liriano was trying to extinguish a particularly annoying bunch of ants that was threatening his picnic. Only Liriano’s first pitch, called a ball by plate umpire Adrian Johnson, a low and outside four-seamer, might have been on the black. Everything else was headed for the dirt, with Liriano trusting that his catcher would catch or block them all. Judge laid off the second one, a changeup for a ball, but then he couldn’t resist, and starting swinging. He swung over a fast ball, a chageup, and one of Liriano’s finest, a slider. Judge was out, and Gardner still on third, now with two outs.

On a 1-2 pitch, Matt Holliday got under an inside pitch and hit a lazy fly ball to left. The happiest person in the ball park, beside Francisco Liriano, must have been Zeke Carrera as he settled under the can of corn for the third out, while Gardner trotted down the line, abandoned by his mates, his run stranded by the Jays’ starter.

So what other writer do you know could tease 773 words out of the top of the first inning of a ball game. Well, you know what? I’m proud of it. I’ll wear it. I own it. That half inning might have been the entire ball game.

Because, by god, whether it was inspired by Liriano’s tough stand or not, what happened in the bottom of the first, after the miracle of the top half of the inning, put Toronto completely in charge of this game, a position which they never relinquished.

After Kevin Pillar led off against Pineda by pounding one up the middle that Starlin Castro fielded in the shift to throw him out, Donaldson came up, took one pitch for a ball, and crushed the next one to left for a 1-0 Jays’ lead. His shot looked like it was going to be solo lightning in a bottle when Jose Bautista skied weakly to left for the second out, but then the fussin’ and fiddlin’ Michael Pineda that we’ve all come to know and love (not!) became obsessed with pitching Kendrys Morales low and away. After he managed to throw one low in the zone for a 1-1 count, he threw three in the dirt and turned his attention to Justin Smoak with two on and two out.

After throwing his fourth straignt in the dirt for ball one to Smoak, Pineda gave up and threw a strike, any strike, a four-seamer in the zone, which was exactly what Smoak was looking for, and suddenly Pineda and the Yankees were down 3-0 after one.

Now it wasn’t like Liriano settled down and just blew the lights out after the first inning. He had more moments in the second and third, moments, in fact, to rival the first, if you like that sort of thing. In the second he had to strike out Didi Gregorius and induce Chase Headley to fly out to left after Double-or-Nothing Aaron Hicks hit a one-out double to right centre.

The third was fun, and had a different flavour all its own. Chris Carter, hitting ninth, started things off with a ground-rule double to centre. When Liriano walked Gardner, it was a cue for the “oh, no-o-o” groans to start. Gary Sanchez then hit one right on the nose on a line at Devon Travis. Luckily for the Yankees, both runners avoided wandering off into what could very possibly have been a Toronto triple play.

So, two outs, runners on first and second, Aaron Judge at the plate: walking him: a good thing, or a bad thing, with Matt Holliday looming on deck with his menacing veteran National League vibe going for him. In this case, a good thing, because Holliday hit into a fine and sharp around-the-horn double play initiated by a good Donaldson grab, and ended by a great Smoak scoop. Still 3-0. Whaddaya think of that?

The Blue Jays were so excited by the sharp play they had just pulled off that they added a run in the bottom of the inning by playing good old-fashioned baseball. Bautista worked Pineda for a 3-2 walk after being behind 1-2. Then, if you can believe it, they started Bautista with Morales at the plate. this opened a seam in the New York shift deployed against Morales. The cleanup hitter hit the seam with precision, and Bautista sailed around to third, a perfect hit-and-run. The new-model Justin Smoak came up looking for a pitch to drive and got it, going fairly deep to centre field, plenty enough to plate Bautista with a sacrifice fly, and Liriano had a lovely add-on run to work with.

Seemingly heartened by that taste of pretty baseball, Liriano set the Yankees down in order on only six pitches in the fourth inning, and turned it back to the offence. With some help from the sloppy Pineda, theystretched the lead once more. Luke Maile, who is showing a penchant for the key base hit despite his low average, led off with a single to centre. Aaron Hicks, showing off his athleticism, made a nice sliding catch on a sinking liner by Kevin Pillar, which actually averted a big inning for Toronto. Josh Donaldson made the second out with a fly ball to centre, bringing Bautista back to the plate, and this time he was on the back end of a surprising first-to-third dash by Maile, who’s pretty agile for a catcher, when he singled to right. This left Maile in position to score on a wild pitch by Pineda, and Liriano’s cushion was up to five.

This was even more of a tonic for the Venezuelan lefty, who merely came out in the fifth and struck out the side, Chase Headley, Chris Carter, and Brett Gardner, on fifteen pitches. On the other hand, Pineda had another rocky inning, though this time he managed to keep Toronto off the board. Justin Smoak, continuing to make effective contact however he can, dropped a Texas Leaguer into left. Troy Tulowitzki followed with a single to centre. Devon Travis blunted the threat by bouncing into a double play with Smoak going to third. But Pineda still walked Zeke Carrera before fanning Luke Maile, who can’t do everything, to end the inning.

Liriano’s fun night on his return to the mound ended quickly in the sixth, with a couple of not-so-fun at-bats that caused John Gibbons to call for reinforcements for Liriano.

Gary Sanchez singled to centre leading off, and somebody—is that you hiding back there young Mr. Liriano?—finally grooved a fast ball to Aaron Judge, and he judiciously pounded it over the fence in right field to cut the Toronto lead to 5-2. Cue the laconic Gibbie march to the mound, and the call to the bullpen for Danny Barnes.

For only the fifth time in eighteen appearances this year, Barnes came in with gas, rather than heat, to throw on the fire. He walked Matt Holliday on a 3-2 pitch, and then free swinger Starlin Castro didn’t wait around for any old balls and strikes, but lined the first one over the fence in right centre to tighten the noose to 5-4. For some reason Barnes didn’t have his strikeout mojo working, and he was a bit lucky that he threw several right-at-ems. Hicks lined out to right. Gregorius singled to right. Headley flew out to left. Chris Carter flew out to right to end the inning.

For once Toronto was in the position to push the ante up on its opponent, with the Yankees having closed the gap. Joe Girardi decided not to risk more foolishness from Pineda, and brought in Johnathon Holder to try to keep the Jays close. Holder, a big (what else?) young righty didn’t quite do the job, retiring three but giving up Donaldson’s second homer of the night, a solo shot to left that gave the Jays a little breathing room.

Aaron Loup started the seventh for Toronto and did his matchup job, striking out Brett Gardner on four pitches, then yielding to Ryan Tepera to pitch to the next four right-handed batters. If he were a hitter he’d have done really well, “batting” .500; but that means he fanned Gary Sanchez for the second out, and Starlin Castro for the third, but in the meantime walked Aaron Judge, and gave up a double over Kevin Pillar’s head to Matt Holliday. Judge, who may look somewhat like an ostrich, runs more like a gazelle, and scored from first with two outs, to cut the Toronto lead once again to one. (Actually, that’s not a great line, because as I recall ostriches run pretty damned fast as well.)

How many times have we been in this boat:? Time for somebody else to suffer. As soon as the Yankees cut the lead to one, they gave the run back to us, via an error by Chris Carter at first that allowed Justin Smoak to reach leading off. It was a curious play, actually. The Yankees were in the usual extreme switch for Smoak, with Castro playing a deep rover in right centre. Smoak hit a medium-speed grounder out to Castro. The latter had a long throw to first, it was a little off the mark, and Carter was charged with an error for not keeping contact with the bag. There comes a point when the placement of the second baseman, no matter how accurate it might be to the hitting charts, means he is being asked to make throws that are well beyond the comfort zone of any previous experience.

In this case it could be argued that the shift was responsible for the unearned run. Tulo followed Smoak with a double to left, bringing Smoak around to third whence he scored on another—can you believe it—sacrifice fly, this time delivered by Travis.

With the 7-5 lead, Joe Smith came in for the eighth. After giving up a leadoff single to Aaron Hicks, who never gives up, Smith kept the ball between himself and the catcher by striking out Gregorius, retiring Headley on a comebacker, and taking Carter’s soft liner himself. This guy Smith is making a name for himself.

After Chasen Shreve breezed through the Toronto ninth, Roberto Osuna did the same for the Blue Jays, finishing the game off with an electric strikeout of Aaron Judge on three pitches, Judge reaching to foul the first two off as Osuna climbed the ladder to the clincher, a 95 mph fast ball on the upper outside corner. The only difference between Shreve’s ninth and Osuna’s ninth, besides the fact that Osuna threw eight pitfhes to Shreve’s sixteen, is that Osuna got an “S” for his efforts.

So Francisco Liriano returns to the mound, performs a Houdini act for three innings and then cruises for two, Josh Donaldson hits two homers, Justin Smoak hits a two-run dinger for the early lead, and Toronto goes wire-to-wire for the win that ties the series.

Sure, the Yankees have a big lead in aggregate runs, but this ain’t soccer, eh?

A question we never asked: what if Marco Estrada came out to pitch and forgot to bring his good changeup?

Today, we found out. All pitchers will have a bad outing from time to time. The difference between a power pitcher and a finesse pitcher is that when a power pitcher has a bad day, he comes out and can’t find the plate, is all over the place, and it’s very easy for the manager to put it down to control problems and pull the plug, because you can’t sit there and watch him miss the strike zone all day.

But with the finesse pitcher who is having a bad day, the problem is usually location within the strike zone, which means that he’s still hitting the strike zone, but not where he wants to, or without the same kind of spin that he usually has. In the case of the finesse pitcher having a bad day, the results can be pretty ugly. In fact, only a masochist would seek out a broadcast of the “Blue Jays in 30” to go over the highlights of tonight’s game.

On the second pitch of the game, Brett Gardner doubled to right. Because of Marco Estrada’s recent tendency to give up one booming hit in the first inning and then settle down, it was easy enough to mutter imprecations and move on. It was easy to ignore the pop in Gary Sanchez’ bat when he lined out to Kevin Pillar in centre for the first out, which moved Gardner to third. Doesn’t he always throw fly balls, sometimes to hard contact?

It was less easy to ignore the single that Aaron Judge hit through the left side to count Gardner with the first run, though, of course Judge is a beast at the plate, it was only one run, a DP ball will finish it off, and all that.

Not so easy to ignore that Darwin Barney, spelling Devon Travis at second because of a “sore” Travis knee, maybe played a possible double-play ball off the bat of Matt Holiday into a single into no-man’s-land that let Judge storm around to third. Sometimes you need stellar defence to help a pitcher settle down, and it doesn’t help if you don’t get it.

A little more worrisome still was the four-pitch walk to Starlin Castro, though somehow I always feel like there’s hardly any difference between first and third and one out and bases loaded and one out. It’s easy to rationalize while the storm clouds gather. We breathed a little easier when Estrada struck out Didi Gregorius on what was actually a very good Estrada changeup.

But then switch-hitter Aaron Hicks, swinging port-side like Gardner, showed us the difference between two on and the bases loaded: when somebody hits a bases-loaded double, an extra run scores, and even though number eight hitter Chase Headley and the Yankees were retired on a short fly to centre, Toronto was down 4-0 before ever swinging a bat in this early-season “crucial” series. And curiously, for Estrada, the ball never left the yard.

As the Jays came up for the first time, the question was whether this was going to be one of “those” games, with runs scoring willy-nilly on both sides, or whether it was essentially over already. But when C.C. Sabathia came out and went groundout-strikeout-strikeout on Kevin Pillar, Josh Donaldson, and Jose Bautista, all on thirtees pitches, we kind of had the answer.

Oh, and that thing about the ball not even leaving the yard? That didn’t last very long for Estrada. Despite the fact that he emulated Sabathia in going groundout-strikeout-strikeout in the second inning, with two outs already in the bag the ball finally did leave the park, courtesy of the bat of Gary Sanchez, and Aaron Judge reached base again, this time on a base on balls.

As Toronto led off the bottom of the second, the question about one of “those” games arose briefly, but wasn’t sustainable against the crafty slants of the portly, aging lefty Sabathia. Kendrys Morales got a base hit. Justin Smoak got a base hit. With those two on base, the Jays weren’t going to run themselves into a rally, so it was up to the lineup to keep putting the ball safely in play. But Troy Tulowitzki flew out to right, Darwin Barney hit a short fly to centre, and Zele Carrera struck out. Morales and Smoak never budged off first and second.

You can always hope, of course, but sometimes it’s just a bunch of wasted emotion. This was one of the days when we should have put the hope away early. It would have been easier.

But then there was the third that made us hold on a little. Estrada got Starlin Castro and Didi Gregorius on popups and Chase Headley on a grounder to Smoak, even though Aaron Hicks had a two-out single. Only fourteen pitches, too. Now, if we could only solve Sabathia. And after two outs, a glimmer: a solid double by Donaldson to right. Unfortunately, Jose Bautista followed by driving Headley to the track in left, but still, they hit the ball hard, Josh and Jose, didn’t they?

There’s nothing worse when you’re going on faint hope to see the other team go in the opposite direction before you can even get untracked. In the fourth inning the Yankees pushed the lead to seven on a home run by Gary Sanchez after a single by Headley. Let it be noted here that plate umpire Gabe Morales had stiffed Estrada on a called third strike on Sanchez—look at pitch four on the chart if you don’t believe me. Now maybe if these were the first Yankee runs you might go all ballistic about this, but when it’s New York’s sixth and seventh it’s another story.

After the Sanchez homer Estrada fanned Aaron Judge, an event worthy of its own special line in the box score in a just world, and then gave up a single to Headley, the last batter Estrada faced.

John Gibbons brought in Leonel Campos—remember him?–to pick up Estrada, and he got a ground ball for the last out.

Just in case you haven’t figured it out, yes the Jays designated Mike Bolsinger for assignment, and brought Campos back up for a one-day guest appearance, since he’ll be going back to Buffalo after the game to make room for Francisco Liriano, who’s finished his rehab stint and will start tomorrow night.

It’s interesting that this shuffling of pitchers between Triple A and the majors, while it’s always gone on, and despite that it seems more common these days with the advent of the ten-day disabled list, still has its advantages both for the team and the individual pitcher. Whoever picks up Mike Bolsinger has a body of recent work to look at on his resumé for reference. When, not if, Toronto recalls Dominic Leone they will know exactly what they are getting, and he will come up knowing he can do his job. And so with Campos, the 29-year-old Venezuelan who had appeared in 25 games over three seasons with the Padres prior to being picked up by the Jays off waivers last November.

Gibbie got a nice night’s work out of Campos, and this outing just adds another name to the list of possible replacement pieces that the team’s management knows can be relied on.

After Campos finished off the fourth for Estrada, he retired the side in order in the fifth

and fanned Hicks and Headley. In the sixth he walked Cris Carter leading off and then fanned Gardner and Sanchez before getting Judge to hit into a fielder’s choice. In the seventh, he got three straight ground balls and should have been out of the game with a final clean inning, except that with two outs Darwin Barney failed to handle Didi Gregorius’ grounder to second, and the error opened the gates to two unearned runs that reached on the only two base hits he allowed.

Yet after weeks of starters averaging less than six innings a game, overtaxing a bullpen that has been shortened by John Gibbons’ lack of confidence in J. P. Howell and the transition of Joe Biagini to the rotation, Campos’ contribution was huge tonight, and his line was pretty darn good as well: three innings pitched, two unearned runs, two hits, one walk, four strikeouts, and a wild pitch that didn’t figure in the scoring, on 48 pitches. He’ll go back to Buffalo all right, but with an open ticket to return to Toronto at the next opportunity. In the meantime, that’s not a bad Buffalo bullpen with Leone and Campos in the back end.

Gibbie had to go back to the ‘pen before the end of the seventh, because he had to look at pitch count for Campos after the inning was prolonged. Now down 9-0, it was an opportunity to give the ball to J.P. Howell and see what he might do.

Howell quickly finished the seventh and then encouragingly pitched a tidy eighth, retiring the top of the order on eleven pitches, striking out Sanchez, who may have hit a homer today but went down on strikes for the second time here, and Judge, who also went down for the second time. I might mention that for all his talent, Aaron Judge can still look as foolish as the next guy chasing a breaking ball with two strikes on him.

After Howell had picked up Campos in the seventh, the Jays finally got on the board in the bottom of the seventh, as C.C. Sabathia’s fine outing was winding down. After Kendrys Morales broke the shutout with a leadoff homer, Manager Joe Girardi gave the veteran lefty one more batter, and he benefitted from a terrible call from plate umpire Morales to catch Justin Smoak looking. Again, you can look it up: the pitch was one full grid square outside. Morales must have had an early dinner reservation after the game.

Chad Green came on to finish up for the Yankees, and with the lead they were sitting on, he could be pretty sure that he was going to carry it home for the Yanks, unless somebody nailed him with a line drive. Green finished off Troy Tulowitzki and Darwin Barney on seven pitches, then came back out for the eighth to face Zeke Carrera, who homered off him to put the score at 9-2. Luke Maile singled to left, and Kevin Pillar stirred some hearts by hitting it hard, but right at centre-fielder Aaron Hicks, and then Josh Donaldson grounded into a double play.

So Howell came back out for the top of the ninth, hoping to finish off a good audition for further work. But he ran into trouble of his own, and to his great frustration had to be rescued himself by Ryan Tepera, a move John Gibbons surely did not want to make.

Matt Holiday led off with a single, and then Howell fanned Ronald Torreyes, who had been inserted at second for Starlin Castro at the start of the eighth. Didi Gregorius singled Holliday to second, bringing Aaron Hicks to the plate. With all the attention that the other Aaron has been getting, this Aaron has been flying a bit under the radar. But with Jacoby Ellsbury out under the concussion protocol, Hicks is getting a chance in the sun and he’s taking full advantage. It was his double to left, plating both Holliday and Gregorius, that finished off Howell, and brought him into the dugout exploding with frustration.

Tepera gave up a single to Headley which finished Howell’s record with three earned runs before retiring the side. But there have to be consequences for a bullpen that has to heat up a major late-inning arm and use him for ten pitches to finish off the ninth in a blowout. Somewhere off stage the sound of an axe chunking into a tree is heard.

The television cameras were quite fascinated to observe J.P. Howell’s mini-tantrum in the dugout, an intrusion that I would prefer they not make. But the focus on Howell in the dugout gave us an interesting insight into the Jose Bautista that you don’t normally see. After stomping around for a while, and looking for innocuous things like paper cups to crush and fire against the back wall, Howell finally sat down and dropped his head into his hands, the picture of misery. Bautista came over, stood near him, and just put his hand on Howell’s shoulder and left it there for a moment before moving away. But then the camera caught him coming back to Howell, twice, and just resting that hand on that shoulder for a moment before walking off. It was an intimate moment of a kind you don’t expect to see in the midst of a sports engagement.

Chad Green gave the rest of the Yankee bullpen a break by finishing off neatly, with the added flourish of striking out Morales and Smoak to end Toronto’s misery, and any hopeful dream of sweeping the Yankees, and radically altering the landscape of the American League East in one dizzying weekend.

Now the best they can do is three out of four, and that starts tomorrow night with Francisco Liriano returning to the hill.

But first, for Leonel Campos, not good-bye, but see you soon.

The life of a pitcher on the bubble in major league baseball is not an easy one.

Consider the situation of Mike Bolsinger as John Gibbons gave him the ball for today’s start against the Cincinnati Reds. A veteran major leaguer with limited service yet out of options, Bolsinger has to stay with Toronto on the 25-man roster, clear waivers and be reassigned to Buffalo to await another inevitable callup to Toronto, and eventually end up in the same situation he is now, or be claimed off waivers by any other team, even and especially including the Cincinnati team he faced today, and signed to a major-league contract.

The reason he is in this situation is that having been brought up from Buffalo to fill in in the absence of up to three Toronto starters, he can’t just be sent back there, because of what I’ve just outlined. Jay Happ has already returned to the rotation, and Francisco Liriano is returning for a start Friday night against the Yankees, which will require someone—Bolsinger—to be removed from the active roster, since with only Aaron Sanchez still out for an indeterminate amount of time, the Sanchez spot would appear to be reasonably well-covered by Joe Biagini.

Thus he was in the position I’ve suggested in my title, of hearing, after the game, even if he went seven good innings, something to the effect of, “Great job, Mike! Here’s your hat. What’s your hurry?”

On the other hand, this is a year of great opportunity for journeyman starting pitchers, given the absolutely incredible attrition of rotation members in the major leagues this year. Look at Seattle, which was missing four starters when we played them on the road. And one team that could be taking a good look at Bolsinger was right in front of him today. The Reds have had to fill in with Lisalverto Bonilla and Asher Wojie in the first two games of this series, and only today were able to start Tim Adleman, who was actually projected to be a rotation member. Would I claim Mike Bolsinger off waivers for the Reds and put him in the rotation? In a minute.

I have to interject a note of extreme petty jealousy here. I’m not proud of it, I would like it not to be, but there it is. I cannot disavow it. I have to own it. Unbeknownst to me until just a few minutes ago, my grand-daughter was actually in attendance at this week-day May game, games for which the Jays sell lots of packages to schools. She was there. (Spoiler alert): She saw Joey Votto hit a home town homer. She saw Luke Maile hit a home run to tie the game. She saw Devon Travis hit a home run to win the game. She was there. I was not. I am bereft. Who was there to explain the fine points to her?

Now (sob!) back to the game.

It might have looked like the Jays were at a disadvantage this afternoon in trying to win their eighth of nine games, since they were the ones starting a fill-in instead of their opponents, who actually had a rotation member on the hill for once.

And yet, after one inning it was clear that Toronto was in the driver’s seat, and had the Cincinnati Reds right where they wanted them: sitting on a 2-1 lead against the home team. After all, hadn’t the Reds jumped out into a lead in the first inning of each of the first two games of this series, only to have Toronto end up on the long end of the score?

Things looked pretty good for Bolsinger to start the first inning, as he managed to keep Billy Hamilton off the bases, striking him out with high heat after fighting back from a 3-0 count. Even the ensuing base hit he gave up to Zack Cozart was a good thing, because his blast off the wall in left was hit so hard and handled so well by Chris Coghlan, playing left today, Cozart was held to a single, keeping the double play in order.

As I’ve already noted, though, limiting Cozart to a walk or a single instead of an extra-base hit is a good thing, but only keeping in mind that it does result in Joey Votto coming to the plate with a man on. This time it wasn’t a good thing, because the confident Votto turned on a good curve ball from Bolsinger, down and in but a strike, and drilled it to centre. The Reds had an instant two-run lead, and Bolsie had to limit the damage. He fanned Adam Duvall, and retired Eugenio Suarez on a sharp grounder to third on which super-sub third baseman Russell Martin made an even sharper backhand grab, ending with a strong throw to retire Suarez.

These days it seems like a little incentive is a positive influence on the Jays. How else do you explain a Toronto team that would go to work down 2-0 in the first and immediately get a run back with a combination of a single, a hit-and-run single, and a sacrifice fly by the cleanup hitter?

With Kevin Pillar finally getting a night off, maybe to try to shake up the batting slump he’s in, Devon Travis led off, and grounded out to first. Zeke Carrera singled to right, and broke for second as Jose Bautista rifled a single to left, which still allowed Carrera to make it to third. First-inning hit and run? No way, Jose! Kendrys Morales picked out a nice driveable 2-0 pitch to loft deep enough to left to score Carrera, and Toronto was on the board and Bolsinger down only 2-1.

As he often does, however, Bolsinger walked, so to speak, right back into trouble, issuing passes to Scott Schebler and Scooter Genette to lead off the inning. It almost seems like Bolsie’s not comfortable if he’s not surrounded by friendly opponents. This time he got the ground ball from Tucker Barnhart and his infield turned a double play, with Schebler going to third. But then with two down Jose Peraza hit a ground-rule double to right centre, and Schebler trotted in, restoring the two-run Cinci lead before Billy Hamilton popped out to end the inning.

In the bottom of the second a rare mental lapse by Russell Martin cost Toronto a chance to cut the Reds’ lead back to one again. Martin had led off with a solid single to left, but after Adleman walked Chris Coghlan, Martin carelessly got himself picked off second for the first out of the inning. Since Ryan Goins drew another walk from Adleman after the pass to Coghlan, Martin would have been on third with nobody out when Luke Maile muscled a solid fly to centre that would easily have gone as a sacrifice fly, but Martin was back on the bench by then.

Bolsie walked Cozart leading off the third, like I’ve been saying, a move that I generally like because I’d rather he not beat you with the homer. In the first inning he got burned by letting Cozart on when Votto followed with the homer. This time no problem, as the Toronto righty got the Toronto native on a weak fly to left, and retired Duvall and Suarez in quick succession. Adleman returned the favour after Zeke Carrera’s leadoff single, and both pitchers rolled on through the fourth without a baserunner.

Bolsinger continued to roll through the fifth, racking up nine outs in a row, and even picking up a couple of strikeouts to run his total to six on the game, by fanning Peraza and Cozart, wrapped around a Hamilton roundup. Who is this guy, and do we need to rethink the roster plan?

Adleman matched Bolsinger out for out and strikeout for strikeout. Almost. With two outs in the bottom of the fifth, Ryan Goins, playing shortstop for Troy Tulowitzki in John Gibbons’ alternate-world plan of resting Donaldson and Tulo and giving Maile the game behind the dish, threw a nasty little monkey wrench into Adleman’s works and testified to his manager’s genius by dropping a perfectly-executed bunt toward third on a 2-1 pitch and was on with a base hit.

With two outs and nobody on this might have seemed a rather quixotic notion, especially with the number nine hitter Maile coming to the plate. But then the other coin dropped on Gibbie’s intuitive chops as the otherwise-light-hitting Maile jerked one hard into the seats in left. Suddenly, just when you were lulled to a fitful sleep by a couple of effective if not spectacular pitching performances, the game was all tied up.

After that, Bolsie even got to come out to start the sixth, his longest outing for the Jays thus far. But his streak of outs was rudely cut off by home plate umpire Carlos Torres at nine when the latter didn’t give him a 3-2 pitch high on the black (check it out for yourself) against Votto leading off the inning. He struck out Duvall for the second time on the night, but Suarez followed with a single, and that was enough for Gibbie, who decided to call it a night (a season?) on Mike Bolsinger.

Faced with the lefties Schebler and Gennett, Gibbie brought Aaron Loup in from the pen, and burnished his little “Genius” star a bit more when Loup fanned both to end the inning. Adleman ended his outing with a flourish by retiring the side in his half of the fifth, adding a KO of Russell Martin to finish off his night with his fifth strikeout.

Jason Grilli came on in the seventh for Toronto and contributed some patented Jason-Grilli-type dramatics to the scene. Oh, he got Tucker Barnhart easily enough on a grounder to second. But then Jose Peraza, the little pest, bunted his way on, no doubt thinking, “take that, Ryan Goins!” Then he stole second, which put him one up on Goins. But unfortunately for the Reds, there was no Luke Maile lurking in the shadows to drive him home. Billy Hamilton slapped a late, lazy fly to left, and then Grilli did what Grilli does best, fanned Zach Cozart with high heat. Actually, what Grilli does best is the fist pump afterwards, but as we have learned this season, he has to earn it first. This time it was a yes.

Came the Jays’ seventh, the end of the line for Tim Adleman, and the arrival of Wandy Peralta, who must have been a short-order cook in a previous life, because he sure knows how to make a hash of things.

Peralta started off not badly, putting pinch-hitter Kevin Pillar, hitting for Chris Coghlan in the hole at 0-1 before Pillar grounded out to short. He quickly jumped ahead of Goins 1-2, before going off the tracks and burying three straight balls for the walk. Luke Maile wasn’t able to find lightning in a bottle twice and flew out to centre. Then when Devon Travis stood in at the plate, Peralta became strangely concerned with Goins at first, and threw over there three times before throwing a pitch to Travis. As if Goins were going to steal, which would have been silly in the circustance. Even in terms of keeping Goins close to shorten his jump with two outs, the preoccupation with throwing over didn’t make sense because it was obvious that Goins didn’t have much of a lead.

The Travis at bat went like this: three throws to first, two balls, two fouls, for a 2-2 count. Another pickoff attempt (number four). Two more foul balls, then pickoff attempt number five. Suitably wound up now, Peralta did just what he didn’t want to do, and handed Goins second base by uncorking one that went over everybody’s head and actually bounced over the screen into the seats behind the plate. Then Travis fouled off pitch number eight. Finally, as so often happens in an at-bat like this, number nine was an “oh here, hit it somewhere” pitch. It was at the top of the zone, and on the inner half, and where Travis hit it was high and deep to straitaway left, and we had to wait to see if it would clear the fence. It did.

The lead brought Joe Smith in for Toronto for the top of the eighth, and he was at his best, taking fifteen pitches to strike out Votto and Suarez, and get Duvall to fly out to centre.

Drew Storen, if you can believe it, pitched the bottom of the eighth for Cincinnati, and pitched like it was 2016 and he was a Blue Jay . . .. in an alternative universe, where he actually fulfilled the optimism the Toronto management had for him when they traded Ben Revere to the Nationals for him. Really, striking out Bautista and Morales before getting Smoak to line out to first in foul territory. What’s up with that?

The Reds’ ninth brought the game to a close with some of the highest drama we’ve seen this year. It was Roberto Osuna’s game to close, of course, and not a good one for him at all. With every pitch the pile of little bits of fingernails grew at my feet.

On the first one Scott Schebler narrowed the lead to one with his sixteenth homer of the season to right field. Scooter Gennett struck out. But Tucker Barnhart, of all people, got his first hit of the series, a base hit to centre. With Patrick Kivlehan at first running for Barnhart and the Jays in a moderate shift to right with the lefty Peraza up, Osuna got what he needed, a game-ending double-play ball to Ryan Goins, stationed right behind the bag at second. But Goins, whom I just called for to take over short full time while the Jays trade Troy Tulowitzki, came up on the ball. It deflected off his glove for an error with Kivlehan reaching third.

The only thing I can say other than that shit happens is that Goins may have been rushing because Peraza’s speed in the past three games had gotten into the heads of the Jays, and Goins was rushing the play.

With that same speed, Peraza stole second to eliminate the next (we should be so lucky) double play. Unfazed or not, Osuna saved the game, the day, the series sweep, and Goins’ face by buckling down and fanning Billy Hamilton and the—need I say it?–dangerous Zack Cozart.

Today’s win and the sweep over Cincinnati brought Toronto to within one game of .500, and set them up for the big four-game home series with the league-leading Yankees starting Thursday night. It’s early for a crucial series, but you can’t call it anything else.

Meanwhile, journeyman Mike Bolsinger, nice guy who gives good effort, was packing his things and waiting for the inevitable phone call. But if the Jays can figure out how to do it, especially if another starter goes down, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of the curve-balling righty in a Toronto uniform this year.

The big news of the day, of course, is the return of Jay Happ to the hill for the Blue Jays after his stint on the disabled list.

The bigger news regarding Happ is that he really was a good deal better than he looked, as of three batters into the game. After Billy Hamilton flew out to right to lead off the game, Zack Cozart and local boy Joey Votto hit back-to-back shots out of the deepest part of the park.

After last night’s embarrassing laugher, part of me was thinking that it was too bad we couldn’t bank some of those extra runs. After the two Cincinnati homers, the part of me that wasn’t totally alarmed about Jay Happ’s immediate baseball future was thinking that turnabout’s fair play and all that, and that tonight we were in for a thumping. But Happ, despite also walking Eugenio Suarez, the third baseman, finished the inning at 22 pitches, and only down 2-0.

In the meantime, we didn’t really have to save any power from last night. We still had some left for tonight.

The Reds’ starter was former Blue Jays’ prospect Asher Wojchiechowski, who in one of those neat turns of irony was the Toronto prospect traded to the Houston Astros in 2012 in exchange for his opponent on the mound tonight, Jay Happ.

And let’s be clear on this from the start: I have no intention of typing Asher’s last name ever again, so I’m going to call him Wojie, okay? With a “-ski” on the end of my own name, I can hardly be accused of giving short shrift to people with Eastern European names, but enough is enough, eh? (‘Course, the fact that my own “-ski” name is very short is highly likely thanks to some lazy nineteenth-century U.S. immigration officer at Ellis Island who didn’t want to write down my forebear’s real last name, so who am I to say anything about anything anyway?)

Wojie’s another one of those big guys, about the size of a tight end, and also another one of those pitchers who’s spent a long time getting ready for the show. He was drafted by the Jays in 2010 out of The Citadel, the southern military academy best know as the alma mater of President Frank Underwood of House of Cards fame. Interesting that a university’s main reference point is to a fictional character. Ah, the influence of Netflix!

After the trade Wojie worked his way up in the Astro organization until he made the team and was inserted briefly into their starting rotation in 2015, but that did not go well and it ended in the dreaded Designated for Assignment in May of that year. He had short stints with Arizona and Miami before signing a minor-league contract with Cincinnati on April twentieth. Since his callup he’d had a good long relief stint in his debut against the Rockies, picking up his first MLB win, and one briefer outing. Tonight was his first start with the Reds, and his first start since 2015.

It’s easy to imagine what he must have felt like taking the mound in the bottom of the first against the team that drafted him, in their raucous home digs, the night after their prodigious offensive display against his new team-mates.

And yet, as is often the case with the Jays when they don’t know whom they’re facing, he had a good run through the order the first time, though he needed a bit of luck in the bottom of the second after an easy first, in which he threw only nine pitches and retired Kevin Pillar on a jam-shot grounder to first, Josh Donaldson on a fly ball to centre, and then got a big assist from Scott Schebler in right, who made a great sliding catch going into the wall to catch a twisting foul fly off the bat of Jose Bautista.

He needed a much bigger assist from Joey Votto at first to keep the slate clean in the second. Kendrys Morales led off with a line shot right into one of the few open spaces in the shift in right centre. Justin Smoak, hitting into the same shift, hit an even harder shot down the line. But Votto, playing deep but a bit off the line, snagged it in a dive that carried him into foul territory, but he still had plenty of time to double Morales off first. Wojie recovered enough from the cannonade to fan Russell Martin.

In the third the tall righty got another assist from right fielder Patrick Kivlehan, who made a fine running catch on Troy Tulowitzki leading off. Wojie finishing retiring the order on a flare by Devon Travis to right, and a strikeout of Zeke Carrera. 35 pitches, nine batters up, nine batters down. Not bad for a kid getting his big chance, eh?

As for Happ, he kept the ball in the infield in the second inning, picked up his second strikeout, and retired the side in an efficient eleven pitches. It was good to see Donaldson make a very agile play on a tough grounder on which he had to make a spin move to make the throw to first to retire Kivlehan. Maybe the play was an indication that now he really is ready to go full tilt in the field.

But it took the Toronto lefty 34 pitches to negotiate the third inning, and though he kept the deficit at two, I was really surprised that he actually came out for the fourth inning, because I thought he had blown his reserve in the third.

Happ retired the pesky Hamilton on a sliced liner to left leading off the inning, but then he walked Zack Cozart. From what we’ve seen of Cozart so far, walking him is always a good option, except that it brings Joey Votto to the plate. But this time Votto grounded out to Smoak at first. Cozart moved up to second, but there were two outs. Then Adam Duvall bounced one into the hole between Donaldson and Tulo and beat it out while Cozart, off with the hit with two outs, moved up to third. Then Happ walked Eugenio Suarez to load the bases and bring up Scott Schebler who happens to be leading the National League in homers. Cue a great reflex play by Tulo at short to glove Schebler’s hard one-hopper and throw him out at first. Good job that the Jays weren’t in an extreme shift for Schebler, because the ball would have gone through for two runs.

Not only did Happ come back out for the fourth, but he breezed it, including his second and third strikeouts on 14 pitches, to end up with four innings pitched, two runs on 3 hits, 2 walks, and 3 strikeouts on 81 pitches. Then he got to sit back, relax, and watch his mates rough up Wojie in the fourth and take him off the hook for the loss. Happ wouldn’t get the win, of course, but he had to be satisfied with his first time out.

Second time through against Toronto just wasn’t the same for Wojie. He let one get away from him on an 0-1 pitch to Pillar and it hit him on the forearm, luckily without apparent serious harm to the batter. After the smooth ride he had in the first three innings, it’s not hard to imagine that the Reds’ starter was pretty shaken up by hitting Pillar. On a 2-1 pitch he threw a batting practice fast ball up and in to Josh Donaldson, and just like that the score was tied, and some lucky fan on the fifth level in left ended up with one hell of a souvenir. Yes, I said fifth level, I surely did. It’s a good thing the stadium was in the way, or some poor guy in an office in the factory district up Spadina would have been sweeping shattered glass of his desk.

Next Jose Bautista stepped in, and, thanks, Yogi, it was déjà vu all over again. 2-1 pitch, up and in, goodbye, back to back, this time to centre. Happ’s deficit was erased, and the big boys had pounded Toronto into the lead. It was almost three in a row, as Kendrys Morales drove Scott Schebler back to the fence for a leaping catch for the first out. Justin Smoak dribbled the ball fair in front of the plate and the catcher Mesoraco threw him out for the second out.

But Wojie had one last mistake to make, well, two, but only one counted on the scoreboard. With two out and nobody on, and just one run down, he had the chance to get out of the inning, and even to pitch into the fifth, and hold on long enough for his team to retake the lead. Maybe he was tired, maybe he was shell-shocked, but he had one more pitch to leave up in the zone, one more cripple that Russell Martin drove over the fence in left centre to extend the Toronto lead to two.

Just like that, it had been nine up, nine down, albeit with a little help, and then three big, booming home runs, the lead was gone, and after two more batters, so was Wojie. The other mistake? He lost control of another one up and in, and hit Tulowitzki. Back in the bad old days you would have assumed that this was done as a reaction to the way he had been roughed up, but nobody thought anything other than that he was a marginal, and very shaken up, pitcher who didn’t know where he was throwing the ball. Though he did fan Devon Travis on a 1-2 pitch to end the inning.

So, strangely, after four innings both teams had to turn to a new cast of characters. Neither manager’s choice suggested that he thought the game was out of reach. John Gibbons went to the very impressive Danny Barnes for the fifth. And Barnes struck out the side, putting away both Billy Hamilton and Joey Votto with his trademark high heat. Unfortunately, between these two signature events, Barnes grooved one to Zack Cozart, and the newly-mintd 4-2 Toronto lead had become 4-3.

By the time Barnes had finished the two innings he was able to donate to the cause of picking up Jay Happ, he had totted up two more strikeouts, a walk, and a foul popup, so that five of the six outs he threw were via the strikeout. In the circumstances, I think we can forgive the dinger.

In the meantime, Reds’ manager Bryan Price called on one of his relievers usually employed later in the game, Michael Lorenzen, a long, lean 25-year-old who has thrown 22 innings for Cincinnati this year with 26 strikeouts and an ERA of 3.18.

Lorenzen kept the Jays at bay with aplomb for three full innings, long enough for the Reds to tie the game in the seventh. He struck out the side in the fifth while giving up s single to Donaldson, gave up two one-out walks in the sixth, but erased one of them by throwing an inning-ending double play, and pitched over another walk in the seventh.

Meantime, Ryan Tepera came on in the seventh and gave up his first run as a reliever since April twenty-seventh, spanning 13 appearances, and it was the aggressive baserunning of the Reds that helped them chalk up the tying run. Number nine hitter second baseman Jose Peraza led off with a single to left. Then he broke for second, and Russell Martin’s throw barely ticked off the glove of Troy Tulowitzki covering the bag. The error was charged to Martin, but I thought that the throw was catchable, and the replay suggested that if caught the throw might have nipped Peraza, but it didn’t, and he ended up at third.

Billy Hamilton kept the suspense to a minimum by singling home Peraza with the tying run. That was all the Reds got, but it was only thanks to a bad decision by Hamilton and a great catch by Zeke Carrera in left that the damage was limited to one run.

After Hamilton drove in Peraza he stole second as well. Then Tepera walked Cozart, so of course here came Joey Votto to the plate again. Here’s where Hamilton, presumably running on his own, made a really bad choice and took off for third, with the left-handed power hitter Votto at the plate. Not only did Russell Martin have a clearer shot at him with Votto hitting the other way, but to take a risk here with Votto at the plate and Adam Duvall and Scott Schebler following flies in the face of all common sense.

Of course as usual hubris lost out and in a close play Hamilton was DOA at third for only the first out of the inning. Cozart, curiously, who must not have checked his e-mail, stayed at first while Hamilton was heading for third. He got to second anyway as Votto walked setting the stage for the key defensive play of the game. Adam Duvall scorched a liner into left centre on which Carrera raced laterally into the gap, launched himself into a flat dive, and just barely flagged the ball down for the second out. If he misses that ball, Toronto needs Morales’ subsequent homer to tie the game, not take the lead. Tepera’s strikeout of Eugenio Suarez to end the inning was rather anticlimatic, but the Reds had tied the game nonetheless.

After Lorenzen finished his stint, John Gibbons brought Aaron Loup in to start the eighth by matching up with the lefty Schebler. Just as Babby or Tuck (can’t remember which, so we’ll just amalgamate here) was saying, “You know, Loup’s numbers are actually much better against right-handed batters”, Schebler hit a double to right centre. So Loup was one and done, and Joe Smith came in to deal with the fallout.

Smith has been great coming in for a clean start to the eighth, but this time he had that little present of Schebler at second waiting for him. The next thing you knew there were two outs and Schebler hadn’t moved up as Smith fanned Devin Mesoraco and retired Patrick Kevlihan on a liner to first. Then things got dicey, as the lineup moved on to the pesky speed guys, Peraza followed by Hamilton.

Peraza hit a tough grounder to the left side that signalled that Tulo was back full tilt in the field again. He had to dive to keep the ball in the infield and keep Schebler from scoring, and he did, though Peraza was safely across with a hit. With Hamilton at the plate, the Jays let Peraza steal second in order to keep the infield positions where they needed them. But Hamilton then hit a harmless fly to centre, and a Guy Named Joe had done his job.

Blake Wood, another more seasoned member of the Cinci bullpen was brought in for the eighth inning and it didn’t take the heart of the Toronto order long to hang the collar on him for a loss. A single by Bautista brought Morales to the plate, and a good swing by Morales on a high 1-0 fast ball sent the ball over the fence in right centre and put Toronto into the driver’s seat.

After Morales’ shot, Wood efficiently tidied up the barn and locked the door for the Reds, but that horse was gone, baby.

And so it was Osuna time, and perhaps in anticipation of another round of the Knock-Knock Game because Russell Martin was behind the plate, Osuna was as neat and tidy as Wood had been, but without the dramatic precursor, and secured his tenth save in thirteen chances with three up, three down on eleven pitches.

So, after seventeen runs on Monday against Cincinnati, the Jays’ production was significantly curtailed tonight, but whether you measured tonight’s by runs scored or combined distance the four homers travelled, it was enough, in the end, to outscore a Cininnati team that for the second night in a row was unable to put up significant numbers against a hard-working Toronto pitching staff.

With a series win already in the books, looking ahead to tomorrow afternoon’s affair, the Blue Jays should have just enough time in the morning to check out the supplies in the broom closet.

Whatever were they thinking?

Hmm, I thought to myself. It was a happy little “hmm”. Kind of like when Winnie the Pooh is stung by a bee and thinks, “Ouch! Hmm, honey bee. Mmm, honey!”

I had just checked out the record of tonight’s starting pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds for game one of this Blue Jays’ three-game home interleague series. Lisalverto Bonilla. Interesting name, that. What’s he got? Oh, so far: 0-2, 6.17 ERA. Hmm. Tell me more. So I looked him up, checked out the always-handy career stats and game logs. Oh, dear.

He had three decent starts for Texas in 2014, and this spring is his first time back in the majors since. After a couple relief appearances, he’d had three starts for Cincinnati: May thirteenth at San Francisco he went 8 innings, gave up three runs on six hits; May nineteenth against Colorado he went 5 and a third, gave up six runs on eight hits; May twenty-fourth against Cleveland he went 5 innings, gave up three runs on six hits. Not too bad for a fill-in guy, two decent starts, one bad one. But: thirteen walks, only ten strikeouts, and four homers in eighteen-plus innings as a starter, two per game.

So, feast or famine? You never know with our guys, do you?

The auguries weren’t great in the first inning. Billy Hamilton, the speedy Reds’ centre fielder, leadoff hitter, and base stealer, essentially stole a run on the Jays after Marcus Stroman committed a mental mistake on a fundamental baseball play, so the Jays were down 1-0 before even getting to see what Mr. Bonilla was all about.

Hamilton bunted his way on with a good one back to Stroman on the first pitch of the game. Then he stole second while Stroman fanned Zach Cozart, tonight’s Cincinnati DH. Then Stroman picked him off with one of his patented hesitation, I see you, I got you, moves. But then he goofed. When a pitcher has a runner picked off, we used to teach in Mosquito ball (ages nine and ten), there should only be one throw. The pitcher runs at the runner, who freezes and then has to go somewhere. Whichever direction he goes, the pitcher times his toss and bang, he’s out. But Stroman forgot his training, and threw to Josh Donaldson at third from the mound while Hamilton scampered back to second. The problem is that when you play it like that, the runner has time to get back to the base safely while the defense is making two relatively long throws. It was an ouch moment for Stroman and the Jays.

So then Hamilton tried to steal third while Joey Votto was swinging away. Donaldson saved Stroman’s carcass for the moment. Breaking for the bag to cover a throw on Hamilton, the third baseman had to stop as Hamilton went by him, reverse and backhand the grounder that Votto had hit behind where he was running. Somehow he made the grab and threw Votto out at first, leaving Hamilton finally at third, but with two outs. With this play Donaldson looked like the circus strong man of old. But Adam Duvall picked up Hamilton with a clutch two-out base hit, and Stroman got to wear his mistake. Plus, it took him 27 pitches and numerous throws over to get out of the inning.

Now down 1-0, it was time for Lisalverto Bonilla to confront the formidable Toronto lineup. Well, that was quick if sloppy on both sides. Kevin Pillar lofted an easy fly to centre on a 3-1 pitch. Donaldson took a four-pitch walk. Jose Bautista forced him at second, and Kendrys Morales pounded one at the rover, but it went down as a simple

4-3 groundout to end the inning. Sixteen pitches, and nobody took advantage of the initial wildness of Bonilla.

Stroman settled right in and retired the side easily in order in the second. Just don’t ask Kevin Pillar how easy it was. At least not until his bruises heal. Scott Schebler is a tank of a guy who patrols right field more like a wide receiver than a tank, and happened to be leading these homer-heavy Reds with fifteen coming into tonight’s game. Schebler got one up in his wheelhouse from Stroman and hit it straight over Pillar’s head. Pillar went into his jackrabbit mode and raced back, knowing, he said later, that he was going to have to hit the wall to make the catch. He hit the wall and made the catch, somehow hanging onto it while he bounced back off the wall like a bean bag. He landed on his feet and finished off with a stylish back-pedal trot that surely masked big pain.

After the Pillar catch, Stroman saved his fielders more grief by fanning catcher Devin Mesoraco and second baseman Scooter Gennett.

It was time for Toronto to go to work on Bonilla and that 1-0 deficit.

It only took two hitters for the Blue Jays to spring in front, a lead they never relinquished. The new-fangled Justin Smoak cut down his swing on 3-2 to hit a single to centre. Russell Martin was up next and he fouled off a fast ball up and out in the zone, but put a good hit on the second pitch, a changeup in the same place. It looked like a moderately threatening fly ball to right, but it just kept going, and Martin trotted home behind Smoak. Devon Travis took a flyer at hitting one out to right as well with one out, but Schebler backed into the wall for a leaping catch. Bonilla walked Zeke Carrera, but Pillar grounded out to end the inning.

Stroman, finding his groove, retired the side again in the top of the third, making a nice play on a comebacker by shortstop Jose Peraza for the first out when the ball ricocheted off his foot and he had to pounce on it and throw.

Came the bottom of the third, and last call for both Bonilla and the Reds. It was an early night indeed. Channelling Winston Churchill, if the top of the third was the end of the beginning, the bottom of the third was the beginning of the end for Cincinnati.

After Josh Donaldson led off by beating out an infield single to third, Bonilla’s propensity for wildness came into play and finished him off. He wild-pitched Donaldson to second, walked Bautista, and then Morales to load the bases. Justin Smoak scorched one down the first base line, and were it not for a gritty dive into foul territory by local boy Joey Votto he would have had a double and counted two. As it was, it was a three-unassisted out that scored Donaldson with the third Toronto run. Bonilla then reloaded the bases by walking Martin on four pitches, bringing Troy Tulowitzki to the plate.

And Reds’ manager Bryan Price to the mound to take the ball from Bonilla, after two and a third innings, three runs, and three hits, but five walks, a wild pitch, and three left on for Robert Stephenson, a big young right-hander who started a few games for the Reds last year but has been used largely in middle relief so far this year. He also hadn’t pitched in eight days, which made him a candidate to eat some innings for the Reds. It also may have left him a little rusty. After Tulo disdained a low outside strike, Stephenson came in with a second four-seamer, up and in, and he might as well have kissed it goodbye before it left his hand, because Tulo crushed it for a grand slam and the Jays were ahead 7-1.

Devon Travis followed with a single to extend his hit streak to thirteen, and Zeke Carrera singled him to second before Stephenson got Pillar to ground into a double play.

From this point on, the game became a matter of endurance. For the Reds, it was a question of the endurance of the two poor guys on the hill who were tasked with taking punishment for the rest of the game. For the Jays it was a question of the endurance of their hitters who had to keep trudging to the plate and running to first and rounding the bases; god, it was tiring. And for the ball boys it was a matter of keeping up the supply of unbruised baseballs for the umpires.

Kidding aside, there were three story lines to follow once the game was 7-1 and unofficially out of hand. First and foremost, lest it be forgotten, Marcus Stroman settled in and delivered a strong performance again. And he was followed by more efficiency from a bullpen that has logged a ton of innings. Second, of course, were the booming bats. Tribute must be paid. Finally, a word or two on the unsung heroes of baseball, the guys who have to go long and suck it up for the team when they’re getting shellacked.

By the end of the third inning, the only dark cloud hanging over Toronto’s head(s) was the pitch count by Stroman. Thanks to the long first, he was up to 55 pitches. Stroman has not breezed this year, nor has he been dominant. He has been resilient, however, and has managed to work out of a lot more jams for himself, sometimes very efficiently.

In the fourth inning he gave up two-out singles to Eugenio Suarez and Scott Schebler before getting Devin Mesoraco to hit into a fielder’s choice. He expended another 18 pitches to accomplish this, taking him to 73, and another inning like this would be his last. Understand here that with the Jays’ lead up to 10-1 by the end of the fourth, the issue here was not worry about the Reds mounting a comeback on Stroman, but the need to limit the number of innings the bullpen would have to work.

But despite the fact that he hit Scooter Gennett to lead off the fifth, and gave up a solo homer to Adam Duvall in he sixth, he worked through the two innings in a total of 24 pitches, limiting the bullpen exposure to three innings of work. Typically, he was helped out by a double play after the hit batsman in the fifth, as Jose Peraza lined out to Justin Smoak who easily doubled Gennett off first.

One of the supreme ironies of life in the major leagues is that a younger players, or one with less MLB experience, can be faced with the fact that regardless of the service he’s provided, can become the odd man out when roster changes have to be made. No one would dispute the value that Dominic Leone has provided to the Toronto bullpen. Tonight he added to his lustrous record by pitching the seventh and eighth innings, giving up one walk, facing only seven batters and needing only 19 pitches to do it.

Leone has pitched 24 and two thirds innings in 21 appearances. He has struck out 25 batters, and has an ERA of 4.01, largely in the role of first man in when the starter comes up short, for example in the sixth inning. You cannot over-value his worth to Toronto’s hard-working bullpen this spring.

Yet, Jay Happ is coming off the disabled list to make a start tomorrow night and the team needs to make room for him on the active roster. Leone has “options” left, which means that for the entire year he can be sent back and forth between the Blue Jays and Buffalo as many times as the Jays want without ever being exposed to waivers or needing to be released. You will recall that Ryan Tepera experienced this last year. Despite his fine work, Leone is the least valuable member of the bullpen who can be optioned, ranking behind Danny Barnes and Joe Biagini in that regard. The other possibility of making room for Happ would be to cut J.P. Howell, a free agent signee. But the Jays invested three million in Howell, and it’s too early to give up on him, since they’re on the hook for his salary. He’s also a lefty, a rare bird these days.

So, we will learn tomorrow sometime that Dominic Leone is off to Buffalo, and if Toronto needs him in the sixth inning again tomorrow night, since he only threw 19 pitches tonight, too bad, he’s not on the roster.

Speaking of Howell, John Gibbons figured that with a fifteen-run lead, it would be a good time to air out his arm, so he was brought on to mop up for Toronto in the top of the ninth. He was fine, giving up a single to Scott Schebler, striking out Eugenio Suarez, and benefitting from two sharp and proficient plays on ground balls by sub third baseman Russell Martin. 22 pitches, and Cincinnati’s misery was done.

Now let’s turn to that fifteen-run lead. When last we checked, Tulo had cleared the bases in the third to put Toronto ahead 7-1. In the fourth Bautista nearly missed clearing the wall in left with a shot that went for a double. Stephenson issued a walk to Morales, and then coughed up a three-run homer to centre by Justin Smoak. Russell Martin followed with a single to left, but made an odd decision to try to stretch it into a double, and paid for his hubris by being easily thrown out by Adam Duvall.

Hubris? Smoak just extended the lead to 10-1 in only the fourth inning. There is a strong sentiment in baseball against “piling on”, and generally a team with a big lead will start to play “station to station” ball, i.e., doing nothing aggressive on the bases, playing it one base at a time. This style would have suggested to Martin to check in at first and be happy with that. In station-to-station ball, you obviously take the sure double; otherwise the game would be a farce. But trying to stretch a possible double . . . As I said, he paid for it, so fair enough.

The Toronto fifth inning was a hot sticky mess for Cincinnati, a mess they brought on themselves. Devon Travis led off with—what else—a double, and Zeke Carrera hit one to right so hard off the wall that Travis had to stop at third and Carrera held up with a single. Then Reds’ pitcher Robert Stephenson balked Travis home and Carrera to second. Then it got worse. The official scoring has it that Kevin Pillar reached on a fielder’s choice to the shortstop. What happened was that Carrera wandered off second with the ball in front of him, got caught in a rundown, but then got tangled up with third baseman Eugenio Suarez, who was called for obstruction (second time in a Jays’ game in what? Ten days?) Carrera was awarded third while Pillar took second.

Donaldson plated the second run of the inning with a grounder to shortstop, with Pillar holding second. Bautista advanced him to third with an infield hit and he scored on another single by Morales. With the score now 13-1, manager Brian Price finally pulled the beleaguered Stephenson and put in Jake Buchanan—little did he know—who gave up a single to Martin to load the bases, but then retired the side without further damage.

After a good sixth inning for Buchanan, in which he only gave up a base hit to Carrera, Buchanan ran into trouble of his own in the seventh, and the Jays extended their lead to 15-2 with an RBI double by Martin and an RBI single by Travis.

Buchanan added to his own woes in the eighth when a walk and a hit batter contributed to yet another two-run uprising by Torono, upping the ante to its final total of 17 runs on 23 hits. Ryan Goins knocked in one run with an opposite-field single to left with the bases loaded, and then Devon Travis knocked in the other with an opposite-field single to right with the bases loaded. Notice here only one run scoring on each bases-loaded hit. Station-to-station baseball.

So that’s about how you score 17 runs in a ball game.

Out of a sense of compassion, however, the story doesn’t end there, because we need to say a word or two about those unsung heroes of the baseball world, the pitchers who get to “suck it up” and “take one for the team” during a blowout, so that the bullpen won’t be totally destroyed for the next game.

In this case there were only two hapless souls, Robert Stephenson who relieved the starter Bonilla, and Jake Buchanan who mopped up after Stephenson. In many ways it’s a minor miracle that Reds’ manager Bryan Price was able to get away with using only two relief pitchers in this game, considering that the starter only lasted two and a third innings, and that the two relievers were peppered with twenty hits, ten off each, in the course of their work.

Major league managers and pitching coaches have to take the long view. It’s a gruelling season, with by far the most regular-season games in professional sports, and the daily grind of an average of six games a week is unrelenting. Coaching staffs always have to deploy their pitchers with one eye on the game they’re in, and one eye on the road ahead. That’s why, whenever a starting pitcher has a short outing, whether because of injury or because of being shelled, the first thing to come to mind is the need for “innings” from the bullpen. Most relievers are trained to go all out for one inning, but you have to have a couple of guys who can go two or even three if need be.

If a start is cut short because of injury, the manager is going to deploy the bullpen to try to keep the game close as long as he can. He not only wants “innings”, but good “innings”. But if the starter is bombed and has to be pulled early, the next game, and the next, come into play. In this case, the manager just wants “innings”, good, bad, or indifferent: here’s the ball, he says, it’s yours until your arm starts to hurt. If it damages your ERA I’m sorry, but it’s a team sport.

That’s why you have to tip your cap to the Robert Stephensons and the Jake Buchanans of the baseball world. When it became obvious that Bonilla had to come out, the game was still only 3-1 Toronto, but with one out and the bases loaded it was teetering on the edge, and fell over into blowout territory with Stephenson’s second pitch to Tulo. Still, teams have come back from 7-1 down, but when Smoak hit the three-run homer in the fourth off Stephenson, that was it. Stephenson was then condemned not only to finish the inning but to go as long as he could in the next.

That’s why he ended up with a line of 2 innings, 7 runs, 6 earned, 10 hits, 1 walk, and no strikeouts on 55 pitches.

And that’s why, when Bryan Price handed the ball to Jake Buchanan with one out in the bottom of the fifth he would have said something to the effect of “if you can get us to the end of this game, you’re it; if you don’t see anybody warming up it’s because there won’t be.”

And so Buchanan, in his first appearance with the Reds since being called up from their Triple A team, ended up going 3 and two thirds innings, giving up 4 runs on 10 hits with a walk and a strikeout on 61 pitches. To be fair to Price, Buchanan, who hasn’t had more than a cup of coffee in the big leagues since 2014, his first season in the majors, had been used exclusively as a starter in Triple A, and was averaging over five innings per start over eight starts this spring.

Still, it’s easy to imagine the poignancy behind the laconic statement in the play-by-play account of the game that Buchanan received a “Coaching visit to the mound” in the eighth inning, with two outs, runners on second and third, the score 17 to 2 Toronto, and Zeke Carrera, who’d gone four for four to that point in the game, coming to bat. Oh, and a bad matchup for the right-handed Buchanan.

The coach was actually the manager, Bryan Price, and there was no one up in the Cincinnati bullpen.

I have little doubt that Price’s message to Buchanan was something to the effect of, “Son, when this is over, I’m going to buy you a nice big steak, and a nice bottle of wine, because I owe you big time.”

And baseball fans everywhere owe it big time to that last guy in the bullpen, the one who sometimes has to suck it up.

One of the great old hippie sayings of the late sixties that ended up on the walls of many first apartments in one form of artistic presentation or another was “Life is What Happens when You’re Doing Other Things”.

Well, sometimes baseball happens when you’re doing other things. Like today, for example. This is a busY time of year for my wife and me because it’s end-of-year performance time for our grand-daughter, and we do almost all of the shepherding and accompanying duties related to her dance class.

Plus my wife’s god-daughter, whose cute new one-bedroom condo we hadn’t seen, just “adopted” a Bengal kitten, who judging by her photos might be a sweetheart, but might also be quite the wild little thing. She’s been named Hazel, and yes, Hurricane Hazel comes readily to mind.

So, today our grand-daughter was delivered to us at 12:30 and had to be dropped at the studio for rehearsal from one to three. I was able to listen to Jerry Howarth and company after we dropped her off, but only while we were driving to visit god-daughter and new kitten, not too far away. The radio signal faded, of course, as soon as we entered the parking garage, and I wasn’t able to check in again on Jerry until after our visit and we were pulling out of the parking garage.

This is what I like about Jerry Howarth and radio baseball broadcasters in general: when we picked up the signal again, he was reading out all of the scores from Saturday’s games and was asking if anyone recognized what stood out about the totality of the Saturday scores. It turned out to be that for the first time in baseball history, dating back to the 1860s, on a day when at least 16 games were played, no team scored more than six runs. Then he added another fun fact: in all of the sixteen games played on Saturday the twenty-seventh, not one (successful) sacrifice bunt was laid down. Hmph.

Aside: Hurricane Hazel’s pretty cute, but could still turn out kind of wild and woolly. The jury’s out at the moment.

We had to stop by the house for a minute before going back to the dance studio, just long enough for me to see Josh Donaldson being charged with an error on a backhand short hop that kicked off his glove off the bat of Mike Napoli. Buck and Tabbie were all “oh that’s a tough error to give on a ball like that”, but it was a quick-pick reflex play that a healthy Donaldson makes maybe eight times out of ten.

So we picked up the grand-daughter and, fortified with an ice-cream treat, headed toward the far reaches of Scarborough to take her home. Gammie drove while I continued the reading of A Connecticut Yankee. I had the radio on low so that if something big happened, I’d hear Jerry shouting. Alas, as the game wound to an end, there was no shouting, and the sound died to a sad drone as Tulo grounded into a forceout to end the game and the Jays’ win streak.

There was more shouting to be had in the reading of the Twain, anyway. Man, that’s good stuff.

I did watch a “Blue Jays in 30” broadcast, and what I saw was that Joe Biagini’s stuff was electric. What I also saw was that Andrew Cashner also put in fine effort, and he was full measure in suppressing a Jays’ offense that has been becoming more and more explosive in recent days.

What I learn from the box score is that Cashner’s seven innings, 1 run, five hits, two walks, two strikeouts on 97 pitches speaks for itself. What I also see is that Biagini’s start today was also a solid quality start by a rotation regular, as he went six innings, gave up two runs on seven hits, walked one and struck out seven on 95 pitches. Worthy of a win, but Cashner was better on this day.

I read an interview comment from Devon Travis from after the game. He said that every time an opposing hitter crossed his path he’d ask, “Who the hell is that guy?” ‘Nuff said.

What am I thinking about these Toronto Blue Jays on this quiet Sunday evening when we’re finally back home from all of our driving around and cat-visiting and Twain-reading?

First, that it will be hard to put Joe Biagini back in the bullpen. This could be a moot point, since they’re taking a long-term approach to Aaron Sanchez, which simply keeps the door open for Biagini. But if one of Francisco Liriano and Jay Happ doesn’t come back full bore, there’s another possibility for him, and then, god forbid, the team could lose one of the healthy ones that are still going. So I think Biagini will be starting for some time, which is a good thing, just in terms of his own arm, so that his new regimen as a starter won’t have to be altered again to become a bullpen piece.

Second, that if Devon Travis continues anywhere near his present tear, I will concede that his offensive upside clearly outweighs the occasional defensive or baserunning lapse. In addition, baserunning lapses can be trained away, and we don’t know if in fact the defensive lapses haven’t been related to offensive worries; will he play better in the field if he’s feeling good about his offensive contribution?

Third, that Toronto is a much stronger team defensively with Ryan Goins on the field, and he is at his very best at shortstop. Yes, this means that Goins should be in the lineup regularly at shortstop, and yes, this means that there is a huge problem for the Jays surrounding Troy Tulowitzki. Obviously, the raising of this point requires strong argument and solid reasons for it to be expressed.

Let’s look at Goins first. Understand that at no time will I make reference to analytical data. I don’t believe that you need analytics to support what is in plain sight if you’re watching closely. You could compare the game Goins played in the field yesterday with any game in which Tulowitzki had a significant number of chances since he arrived in Toronto, and Goins’ superior reflexes, instincts, and, yes, arm strength, would be clear. A comparison of Goins’ game Saturday and Tulo’s Friday night would be unfair, obviously, because it was Tulo’s first game back, but even in that regard, the performance of Tulo in the field on Friday, not to mention that of Josh Donaldson, raises serious questions about the Jays’ decision to activate them for the beginning of the home stand, when they may not have been ready to play up to capacity in the field.

When you consider the Tulo side of the equation, of course, the issue is the difference in offensive production. This comparison is without doubt skewed by factors on both sides. In the case of Goins, he has never had the opportunity to be in the lineup on a daily basis for more than a month or so at a time. So we can’t know what he would do if installed as a regular and allowed to develop. One might point for comparison to the way that Kevin Pillar forced his way into the centre field position on the defensive imperative and then, on the evidence of the first two months of this season, has matured as a more patient and effective hitter with regular at-bats.

What we have seen from Goins is a certain flare for the dramatic at the plate. For his average his RBI total is disporportionately high (.213, 20 RBIs), and he has had a number of clutch hits with runners in scoring position including one walk-off. Just to dip into the data a little, apparently two of his homers have ranked among the longest hit in the league this season.

Tulo, of course, has a proven track record, and there is no question that he offers more of an offensive upside than Goins at this stage in the latter’s career. However, let’s consider first that Tulo has lost a lot of time to injury since his arrival in Toronto. In 2015 he missed 34 regular season games with Toronto and had only 163 at bats. He had 463 at bats in 2016, but still missed 31 games. And of course he’s only appeared in 19 of the Jays’ 51 games this year. Unfair to comment on his injury record? Maybe, but didn’t we value Cal Ripkin’s durability? Don’t we marvel at the bumps and bruises Kevin Pillar accumulates over the course of a season without missing time? It’s often said that at 36 Jose Bautista has a young body; is it possible that at 32 Tulo has an old body?

Then there’s the production itself. Again, the comparison is tough, because Tulo spent more than nine seasons hitting at Skunky Beer Field in Denver, with its bandbox proportions and thin air, a venue that may have cost Canadian superstar Larry Walker his shot at the Hall of Fame, because it been considered that too much of his career was spent there. But what other division in baseball has as many hitter-friendly parks as the AL East, where the Jays play 76 games, and which is the most hitter-friendly of all? Shouldn’t hitting in the American League East have compensated for leaving Denver?

Actually, when you look at the numbers, the real comparison for Tulo is between a cluster of early years in Colorado, and his record since, rather than the comparison between Colorado and Toronto. Leaving 2008 and 2012 aside, two years hampered by injuries, in which he only appeared in 101 games in 2008 and 47 in 2012, he had seasons of 24 homers/99 ribbies, 32/92, 27/95, 30/105, and 25/82. His next three seasons, including the split 2015 between Colorado and Toronto, show 21/52, a very strange split in 2014, 17 and 70 in 2015, and last year 24/79, his highest home run total since 2013, but again, curiously, a relatively low RBI total. Similarly, in five of the six years before the trade to Toronto his batting average was over .300, but in 2015 after he came to Toronto it was only .239, and in his first full season in the hitter-friendly AL East it was only .254, his lowest non-injury-season batting average by 26 points under the combined .280 he hit in his trade year of 2015.

So to me we have the picture of a hitter in decline, who perhaps misses being almost the sole centre of attention on what was for years a mediocre team. If Ryan Goins can even remotely approximate Tulo’s recent (emphasis on “recent”, because Tulo himself shows no evidence of returning to his former levels) hitting numbers, then his defensive upside should be a decisive factor.

Some might raise the question of leadership. Fair enough. Sure, Tulo functions as the “captain” of the infield, but the shortstop usually does. Otherwise, team-mates attest to his work ethic and quiet leadership, which I’m sure are invaluable but can’t be assessed by an outsider. And which Ryan Goins would not even think of trying to emulate at this stage in his career. But he would have no need to step in fully to Tulo’s role right away, or ever. This team has plenty of leaders, from Bautista to Donaldson to Martin to Stroman to Grilli. And regardless of the rocky spots he’s gotten into a couple of times, if leading by example is what you’re looking for, then I would say that Kevin Pillar has taken some very strong steps in that direction.

But what to do with Troy Tulowitzki? That should be the easy part: Mark Schapiro and Ross Atkins did not bring him to Toronto, and should not feel responsible for whether he continues to be the best fit. I would play him fairly regularly for a couple of weeks to give him a chance to round into form and show that he’s healthy, and then I’d start looking for a trade.

If the Blue Jays are serious about making the post-season this year despite their bad start, a Troy Tulowitzki on the bargaining table would go a long way toward resolving whichever of Toronto’s injury issues seems more pressing by, say, the end of June, a possible hole in the starting rotation, or the inability of a Zeke Carrera/recovering Steve Pearce to provide consistent numbers from left field, which as a position has underperformed for the last three years, excluding Michael Saunders out-of-body-experience during the first half of last year. *

After that, Go-go takes over short, and watch the team go-go with him!

*I was curious because I hadn’t heard how Saunders is doing with the Phillies so I looked him up. Captain Canada’s doing okay, but wouldn’t have been any improvement over our left-field contingent this year. He’s hitting only .220, with six homers and 19 RBIs. By comparison, Pearce and Carrera have seven homers and 22 RBIs and are hitting a combined .253. Better news is seen in that he’s appeared in 49 games, so he’s stayed healthy, and surprisingly, playing exclusively right field, he’s had four outfield assists and only one error. Play on, Captain C, we still love ya!

It was a really close call. Gobbie’s reputation as a baseball savant almost sailed over the fence with the gopher ball that Marco Estrada served up to Shin-Soo Choo on the first pitch of today’s game.

Saturdays we have our grand-daughter all day. She’s almost ten, in grade four. It’s universally accepted by elementary school teachers that grade fours are the sweetest kids in the school. They sure are.

We take her to dance class in the morning, hang out around the house, do some gardening. We save the Saturday funnies for her to read. My wife’s helping her make a quilt for the baby of a friend of her mum’s. It was her idea. We play chess sometimes, and at the moment I’m reading to her, Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. I’d forgotten how funny it is. She likes fantasy and legend, so it’s perfect.

Gobbie?? When she was born, her grandmother’s intent was that we would be “Grammie” and “Grampie”. But she began to verbalize before she could pronounce very well, so “Grammie” became the rather charming “Gammie”, and, well, I turned out to be “Gobbie”. I wear it. It’s my own, and our five-year-old grandson, her cousin, has adopted it, so when I’m not Coach Dave, or yer humble scribe, it’s Gobbie, thank you very much.

I still chronicle the game, though, even with her here. We watch together, until she gets bored. But she likes the Jays, because they’re “her people”. She’s half Central American, and loves that we have lots of Hispanic players. She was sad that Edwin and his parrot left. We made a sign for Edwin for a game two years ago, and they put us on the Jumbotron. Twice. It was a nice sign. I still have it.

Today was Doors Open Toronto, and after dance class we made a quick trip to Montgomery’s Inn to see an art exhibit of work by a long-forgotten woman artist, Clara Harris, who painted landscapes in the Etobicoke area a century ago. There were photographs of what the places look like now that she painted back then. My grand-daughter was especially taken with the creaky old elevator at the Inn. The paintings too.

So we hurried to get home in time to eat lunch and catch the ball game. I’m trying to teach her a little bit each game. With Marco Estrada—another Hispanic guy—pitching, I wanted to have her watch the first inning to see how he fools the hitters with his soft stuff. Like I said, she likes wizardry.

Luckily, though, we didn’t catch the first pitch. The screen came on just as Shin-Soo Choo was rounding the bases after hitting it out. Well, that would have been embarrassing. It’ll teach me not to over-sell something.

After the Chin-shot that Estrada took, the game settled into what everyone expected, a pitching duel between him and the Rangers’ Yu Darvish. These two pitchers couldn’t be more different, yet more alike. Darvish is tall, imposing, and commanding on the hill. Estrada is compact, peeks over his glove like a sneaky little kid, and delivers the ball with a motion, as I’ve mentioned before, that looks like he’s afraid the baseball might break something. In addition, Darvish can summon up 96-97 when he wants to while Estrada’s amazingly effective “heater” has about two mph on R.A. Dickey’s “fast” ball, which puts Estrada’s at around 89 at best.

On the other hand, they are both complete pitchers with a full repertoire of effective pitches, which they employ with skill and guile that hitters find worse than frustrating. To watch Darvish go away, away, away to a power hitter, and then come in just enough to get one off the end of the bat to the second baseman is completely akin to Estrada throwing change after change until the hitter has slowed down his trigger to the point that the “heater” is by him before he knows it.

I’ve written before about Estrada’s need to throw his last warmup pitch before the batter steps in, not after, but there it went again. And, inevitably, it was followed by the real Marco Estrada’s first inning: Elvis Andrus frozen by a wicked curve ball that ended up down and away on the outside corner. Nomar Mazara walked on a 3-2 pitch, just as well, better than a dinger. Robinson Chirinos fanned on a 1-2 changeup, and Roughned Odor fanned on what else, a full count changeup, to the raucous delight of the assembled multitude.

Yu Darvish had his own adventurous first batter, when he came up and in on a 1-1 pitch to Kevin Pillar, and dinged him on the arm. Purpose pitch? Probably. Darvish lives on the outside corner, and it serves his purpose to push the hitters off the plate a bit. After Devon Travis hit a looper out to left for the first out, Pillar got a measure of revenge by swiping second after Darvish threw over a number of times, but languished there when Jose Bautista flew out to centre and Kendrys Morales struck out to end the inning.

After the first inning, the mirror imaging of the two craftsmen was almost perfect, right up to the fifth. They even got in trouble in the same inning, the fourth, in the same way, with the same conclusion.

With two outs in the top of the fourth, Odor slapped a flare the opposite way to left for a single, and Ryan Rua followed with a double, but Odor, who sometimes seems not to be quite all there on the field, didn’t get a good jump on the two-out hit, and had to be held at third, where he got to watch Estrada punch out Joey Gallo to end the inning.

The Jays came out in the bottom of the inning loaded for bear, and didn’t wait around for two outs. Bautista made the first one, but it was a hard liner to centre. Morales followed with a double down the line in right, another example of the extreme infield shift to the right on the Smoaks and the Morales, while the outfield plays straight up. Lots of room down in that corner if the ball beats the first baseman. Darvish fanned Smoak, but Russell Martin, smarting from being hit by Darvish in the second—you should have seen the death stare Darvish got—singled to right. Like Odor, Morales had to be stopped at third, because, first, Choo in right was playing in and, second, well, Morales running, right? So, like Odor, Morales had a perfect vantage point to watch Darvish fan Zeke Carrera to end the inning.

By the way, the Martin hit batsman in the second was the only base runner allowed by either pitcher in the second and third innings.

After the busy fourth, Estrada retired the side in order in the fifth, to complete fifteen outs of shutout ball after the Choo homer. He also racked up his last two strikeouts of the game, taking him to eight after five.

Darvish got the first out in the bottom of the fifth, when Ryan Goins grounded out to shortstop. Oh, I didn’t mention that Josh Donaldson and Troy Tulowitzki were being held out of today’s day game after last night’s game presumably to ease their re-entry into the every day lineup. As a consequence, Luke Maile was catching Estrada, Russell Martin was at third, and Goins at short.

With one out, Darvish went 3-0 before he walked Maile, the number nine hitter, on a 3-1 fast ball that he just buried. Then on a 1-1 pitch to Kevin Pillar, he threw a slider that uncharacteristically stayed up in the zone, and Pillar drove it to the deepest part of the park. Jared Hoying went back on the ball, and out-Pillared Pillar to take it over his head before crashing into the wall. As he bounced off he alertly flipped the ball to Delino DeShields to keep Maile at first before collapsing in a heap.

Hoying was eventually able to stay in the game, and Devon Travis stepped up to hit a single to centre with Maile coming around to third. This brought Jose Bautista to the plate for the pivotal at bat of the game. Which hardly lasted a blink of an eye. Darvish again left a slider up in the zone and Bautista got all of it. It’s been remarkable how similar a number of Bautista’s recent shots have been, whether they went for homers, doubles, or outs.

The Jays weren’t ready to quit, so Darvish still had some work to do. After walking Morales, he gave up a ground-rule double the opposite way to Justin Smoak, with Morales forced to stop at third. The Rangers sort of chose to pitch to Zeke Carrera by being careful about how to pitch to Martin, bringing Carrera to the plate with the bases loaded. The rising ended there as Darvish blew Carrera away with high heat.

But the damage was done, and suddenly, unexpectedly, Estrada and the Jays were in charge, with a two-run lead, and four innings to go to protect it. And protect it they would, with Estrada going one more inning, the bullpen providing three more innings of sterling scoreless relief, and Ryan Goins providing all the defence that any team would need.

In the Rangers’ sixth, Estrada would finish up midst a couple of the strangest plays you’d ever see, both involving Goins, who in fact would be involved in all three outs. First Elvis Andrus popped out to Goins.

Then Nomar Mazara did, too. Er, no he didn’t. Er, yes he did. He popped up, Goins settled under it, caught it, and then shockingly dropped it. It was one of those cases where he might have been transferring the ball when he dropped it, or not, but second base umpire Andy Fletcher signalled safe. Goins correctly picked the ball up and tossed it to Devon Travis at second, the base ahead of Mazara. Travis looked over at first and there was Mazara, gathering all kinds of wool about four steps off the bag. He whipped the ball to Smoak, Smoak tagged Mazara, and it should have been a case of “no harm, no foul”, but Mazara had reached first safely, so Goins was tagged with an error.

Robinson Chirinos then singled to centre, complicating matters immensely, and creating a “moment” as they say, because who was coming to the plate representing the tying run? None other than Roughned Odor. After his three-run homer in the ninth last night, best not to poke the bear, or take his current season-long slump (.209, 7 homers, 23 rbi) for granted. Of course the Jays were in their usual shift, so when Odor topped the ball softly past Estrada’s right side as he fell away to his left, out to Goins near second, it looked like a sure infield hit, and more trouble for the Jays.

But the trouble was all Odor’s, because about three steps out of the box, he must have tried too hard to accelerate, and his right foot slipped as he dug in. He staggered awkwardly forward and planted on both hands before he sprang up, then realized he was dead meat as Goins got to the ball and threw to first for the out. Remember the bat flip? It was worth the price of admission to see Odor grab his helmet, spike it into the ground, and watch it bounce away. Nice high bounce it was, too.

Manager Gibbons had Aaron Loup start the seventh inning, presumably targeting the left-handed power-hitter Joey Gallo, who was hitting second in the inning. As is so often the case, Loup struck out the righty Ryan Rua leading off, but then gave up a Texas Leaguer to Gallo. Not to worry. Gibbie went back to the pen for Ryan Tepera, who got Mike Napoli, pinch hitting for Jared Hoying, to hit into a double play to end the inning, courtesy of Ryan Goins and company.

The DP, as they say, was one for the ages. Napoli slashed the ball hard past Goins on his glove side. Except that Goins somehow got his glove on the ball on the backhand. When the ball hit his glove, ball and glove were behind Goins’ right hip and he was on his knees, basically facing third base. Yet he flipped back across his body to nip Chirinos at second, and Travis unloaded in a hurry to first, where Smoak had to stretch far into right field to record the out at first. Ryan Tepera was happy.

Gibbie gave Joe Smith a chance to redeem himself in the eighth after last night’s ninth-inning homer given up to Odor. This time he struck out DeShields and Choo, and had Andrus struck out on a foul tip, but didn’t get the call from plate umpire Hunter Wendelstedt. Of course, Andrus doubled to right centre after the non-call, but Smith retired Mazara on a grounder to Travis to strand Andrus at second.

Roberto Osuna came on for the save in the ninth, and Goins had yet one more spectacular play up his sleeve. Once again it involved Odor. With one out, he chopped the ball into the turf past Estrada toward Travis, who was playing out in right field in the rover position. When a pull hitter hits weakly into the shift and it gets past the pitcher, there’s trouble in River City, my friend. It’s not a whole in the infield there, more like the Black Lagoon. But Goins reacted instantly, racing toward first as he ball hopped slowly toward Travis, on whom Goins was converging from Travis’ right. Goins got to the ball before Travis, picked it and flipped it, hard on a line with his glove toward Smoak. Odor was called out, and the call was upheld after review. Osuna then fanned Rua for the save. Cue the Knock-Knock Game, with Martin having gone behind the plate after Maile was hit for in the eighth inning.

As for the Jays, Texas effectively shut them down after Bautista’s blast. Darvish was done after the sixth, in which he easily retired the Jays despite Andrus’ error on a Luke Maile ground ball allowing him to reach with one out. The big, stoic Darvish deserved better than the “L”, given that the only costly mistakes he made were the gopher ball to Bautista and the walk to Maile that preceded it and came around to score.

Old friend Sam Dyson had a quick seventh before running into trouble in the eighth, and needing help from Tony Barnette to keep the Toronto lead at two. After that easy seventh Dyson fanned Russell Martin leading off the eighth, but a bunt single by Zeke Carrera threw him off the rails, and he followed by walking Ryan Goins.

Then the wheels started turning like it was 1955 all over again. John Gibbons announced the lefty Chris Coghlan hitting for Maile. Jeff Bannister brought in Alex Claudio, a lefty, to pitch to Coghlan, and Gibbie counter-countered with Darwin Barney, who hit an infield single to Odor at second to load the bases. Then Bannister brought in Tony Barnette, who closed things down in a trice (well, if eleven pitches is a trice) by fanning Pillar and Travis.

And that was it: Jose Bautista and Marco Estrada three, Yu Darvish one, multiple assists to Ryan Goins, and a save to Roberto Osuna all added up to the Jays’ fifth win in a row, which brought them to within three games of .500. Onward and upward, say I!