Long Ball Stories

Artwork courtesy of storyboard artist Ed Chee.

View more of his work at http://www.edwardchee.com

“There’s nothing wrong with this team that a nice little winning streak won’t fix”

–Blue Jays’ Manager John Gibbons, in far too many post-game press conferences throughout the 2016 regular season.

Well, how about six straight wins in October? In fact, how about ten straight? Fourteen straight? How about never losing again in 2016? Well, that’s just crazy talk.

But isn’t this starting to feel like a team of destiny? They needed to win their last two games of the season against the Red Sox at Fenway, when the Sox still had something to play for, just to get into the post-season. They needed to win the Wild Card game against Baltimore, and needed to go to the eleventh inning before Ed-wing’s parrot took flight and chased the Orioles out of town. They needed to start fast and finish strong in the ALDS, so that they could rest their weary bones for a few days. They have done everything they needed to do.

Not even the most devoted and optimistic of Toronto baseball fans could have foreseen the achievement of these first six October do-or-die matchups, a streak that came to fruition last night thanks to the courage and talent of Josh Donaldson and Roberto Osuna, both of whom overcame pain and fatigue to rise to the occasion on the most demanding stage in sport, the major league baseball playoffs.

And who among us would ever have guessed the role that the hidden hand of karma might play in the defeat of this very talented but fatally star-crossed band of Rangers from Texas?

Consider that Roughned Odor had supposedly restored his team’s “pride” last May by clocking Jose Bautista in a brawl precipitated by Texas’ need for revenge over the ending of last year’s ALDS. And consider that it was Elvis Andrus, whose defensive meltdown in the infamous seventh inning of game five last year was the real cause of the Rangers’ elimination by the Blue Jays, who earlier tonight seemed to have redeemed himself, with his homer off Aaron Sanchez that cut the Jays’ early lead to one.

Consider, then, that it was this Texas keystone combo, Andrus and Odor, who were sadly at the heart of the messed up play that sent the Rangers home. In the fateful tenth inning it was Andrus who missed the better play on Donaldson at third base (thanks to Gregg Zaun for noticing this) and rushed a poor feed to Odor at second in an ill-advised attempt to pull off an inning-ending double play. And it was Odor who took that feed and unwisely unloaded a bad throw to first baseman Mitch Moreland that allowed Josh Donaldson to race then fly the last five yards home with the series-winning run.

But let us dwell not on the karma, but the courage, because for the Toronto fan, whether watching in Etobicoke, Okotoks, Kelowna, or Iqaluit, this is not a tale of bitter defeat, but of thrilling victory.

First, Josh Donaldson. Josh, who has been playing with a painful hip injury, plus other unspecified injuries, for the latter part of the season. In a quotation that at the same time characterizes the combative and competitive nature of the Jays’ third baseman, and exposes the droll disingenuousness of Manager John Gibbons, Gibbie, when asked what else was bothering Donaldson beside the hip, responded, “I don’t know. He won’t tell me.” Josh, who had suffered through arguably his worst month at the plate of his two-year Blue Jay career in September, not coincidentally the same month that the Jays had swooned to their worst monthly record of the year.

Yes, it was that Josh who went three for five tonight, even though before the tenth his was a curious on-again, off-again performance. It was his awkward, lunging strikeout by Colby Lewis in the first that was sandwiched between Zeke Carrera’s leadoff single and Edwin Encarnacion’s heart-stopping two-run homer that put us on the board and neutralized the small-ball run the Rangers had scored without benefit of a hit in the first off Aaron Sanchez.

Then his ground-rule double in the third scored Carrera, on second with his second solid base hit and a steal. This run crucial because Andrus’ homer in the top of the third off Sanchez, the Rangers’ first hit, had halved the lead Encarnacion had created in the first. Yet, it was hardly vintage Donaldson firepower: he reached for a slider down in the zone and lifted a slicing fly toward the right field line. Nomar Mazara made a valiant sliding effort to get to it as it hit just inside the line and spun away from him, bouncing into the stands. This drove Lewis from the game. Donaldson then scored a fifth run on Edwin’s single to centre that followed off Tony Barnette.

In the fifth Donaldson singled to right, but behind the pitch again, and moved to second when Edwin was walked. He died there when Jose Bautista grounded into a double play. In the seventh, with the Rangers now in the lead, the Jays were best positioned to come back, with their three super-sluggers due up. But Josh was fanned by Keone Kela leading off. Encarnacion and Bautista then weakly elevated pitches from Kela for a quick one-two-three inning for the young fireballer.

But it was in the tenth that Donaldson finally melded his undeniable competitiveness with a real power stroke. The excellent but hard-nosed thirty-year-old rookie Texas reliever Matt Bush had stormed through six straight Jays’ hitters in the eighth and ninth innings, striking out four on only 22 pitches, the loudest contact being a lazy fly ball to left by Darwin Barney. But in the bottom of the tenth, Bush tried to sneak a curve ball past Josh on an 0-1 pitch, down and in but still in the strike zone. Donaldson inside-outed it enough to drive it into right centre. Though the play turned out not to be close, Donaldson stormed into second with a furious dive, with no regard for his hip or other sore spots.

It should be noted with a tip of the cap here that Bush, who took the loss that ended the Rangers’ season, in two and a third innings gave up only the one hit to Donaldson. The Rangers once again elected to put Edwin Encarnacion on to set up the double play and face Jose Bautista instead. The portents were there for a moment of supreme Shakespearean drama: Bush, who had hit Bautista with the pitch back in May that had started the ruckus that ended with The Punch, facing Bautista, who had initiated all the resentment that had festered for the last year, with his death-dealing three-run homer and the subsequent defiant bat flip. Bush won the controntation this time, blowing Bautista away with a 98 mph fast ball on a three-two count. The world, at least the world that lives and dies with baseball, let out its breath with a whoosh.

But it was only the first out, and the last one the Rangers recorded in 2016. Russell Martin, the quintessential composed veteran, was the next challenge for Bush, and if Bush was going to face down Martin, he would do it with his best pitch. He threw eight straight four-seam fast balls to Martin, ranging in speed from 97.3 to 99 mph. Martin fell into the hole at 1-2 while swinging for the fence. Bush missed with two, taking the count to full. Martin fouled off the next two, the second last pitch he saw clocking in at 99. On the eighth pitch of the at-bat, Bush’s 42^nd of the game, the most he has ever thrown for the Rangers this year, Martin managed to make contact and keep the ball in fair territory, the ground ball that the Rangers needed.

But it was a slow hopper to Andrus’ right. Andrus picked it, turned away from third and a possible force on Donaldson, threw the ball to Odor’s feet at second, Odor tried to reach down, pivot and throw as Encarnacion thundered into the bag with a hard but legal slide, his throw pulled Mitch Moreland off the bag at first, the ball dribbled off Moreland’s glove, Josh saw a chance, a really small one, and broke for the plate. Moreland recovered but his throw was off so that Rangers’ catcher Jonathan Lucroy had to go get it and come back. Donaldson dove fearlessly—what injury?—past a lunging Lucroy, swept the plate with his hand, and the festivities began, albeit only tentatively, until the New York review umpires had waved away Rangers’ manager Jeff Bannister’s inevitable but futile appeal, which it turned out was filed only to verify that Donaldson had touched the plate.

Thus the courage of Josh Donaldson on this night. Who could possibly equal what he gave to his team’s victory? Only a preternaturally calm and focussed twenty-one-year-old baseball lifer, a veteran before he was dry behind the ears, a young man who with his family’s approval bet his entire future on the chance of striking lightning and rising from a humble and mundane existence in Mexico to make his fortune in the bright lights of the baseball world. If Josh Donaldson could ignore the pain that had been hobbling him for so much of the last month and rise to the occasion, Roberto Osuna was no less heroic in shrugging off shoulder stiffness to shut down the Rangers, creating the possibility of a decisive tenth for his team.

As we all remember Osuna had been pulled from the Wild Card Game in the tenth inning. He had come in for the ninth in the tie game, and retired Mannie Machado on a comebacker and fanned Mark Trumbo and Matt Wieters. Being in the do-or-die situation, Gibbie sent him back out for the tenth, and he retired Chris Davis on an easy fly to right, but then something was up. Edwin Encarnacion came over and spoke with him, and signalled to the dugout.. The manager with the trainer George Poulis went out and spoke with Osuna. They returned to the dugout with him in tow as Blue Jay World looked on in distress. Luckily for the Jays the survival of their season was placed in the capable hands of Francisco Liriano, who completed Osuna’s task for him and secured the win.

But joy over the team’s advancement to the LDS with Texas was certainly tempered with concern over Osuna’s condition, which was said to involve “shoulder stiffness”. It would be a Pyrrhic victory indeed for Toronto to advance to play Texas stripped of their redoubtable closer, especially in light of the previous loss of Joaquin Benoit.

That the first game of the LDS series with Texas was a blowout was a great boon to worries about the condition not only of Roberto Osuna but the bullpen in general. Jose Bautista’s three-run homer in the ninth that extended the Toronto lead to 10-0 at the time, combined with Marco Estrada’s brilliant eight and a third innings of work, meant that all that was needed from the bullpen was two outs, ably secured by Ryan Tepera on seven pitches.

Friday afternoon’s game was another kettle of fish altogether. And, as the game moved into its later innings and Gibbie, forced to cover for Jay Happ’s abbreviated five-inning start, chewed through his A-list relievers, the question hovered, what would happen if the Rangers closed the 5-1 gap and created a save situation? Was Osuna available? If so, would it be the full-on Osuna, or less, perhaps at risk of further damage?

The eighth inning brought things to a head. Brett Cecil and Jason Grilli had both been used to finish the seventh, as Joe Biagini couldn’t quite complete the two innings that were needed following Happ. After his great work in the Wild Card, Francisco Liriano was the obvious call for the eighth, with the added bonus that as a starter he could easily do two innings again. Except that the back of his head got in the way of a Carlos Gomez screamer through the box which scored Texas’ second run, and the bullpen was down another important arm: obviously Liriano would fall under the concussion protocol, with its automatic processes.

Even though Osuna had been warming up, there was no certainty that he was able to take the ball until he actually came in to the game. A grounder to short by Ian Desmond plated the Rangers’ third run, but Gomez then moved up to second when one of Osuna’s nasty sinkers got away from Russell Martin. This set up an epic confrontation with Carlos Beltran, hitting with Texas’ fourth run at second base. Osuna won that face-off by striking out Beltran. After taking a ball, Beltran fouled off three fast balls and a slider, took a changeup for a ball and a 2-2 count, and then mightily swung and missed at a slider that dropped off the table.

In one of those supreme ironies that so often happen in baseball, Melvin Upton, inserted in left field for defensive purposes in the ninth, misplayed a deep fly by Adrian Beltre into a leadoff double. Upton shied away as he approached the wall, much like Desmond had pulled up on the ball hit by Troy Tulowitzki in game one. So Osuna got to work with the fourth run at second base again. No one else reached base. Dramatically, he fanned Roughned Odor, induced a pop fly from Jonathan Lucroy, and got Mitch Moreland to hit an easy fly to Kevin Pillar in centre to end the game. We worried about Osuna’s condition; yet he threw 31 pitches to get five outs and the save.

Tonight, John Gibbons had to face perhaps the hardest decision of his career as a manager. After the Jays tied the game in the bottom of the sixth on a very tough passed ball charged to Lucroy, Keone Kela had escaped further damage with the help of Nomar Mazara in right field running down Carrera’s drive into the corner. Kela breezed the seventh and then Matt Bush came in and breezed the eighth. In the meantime, after giving up the Moreland double (almost caught by Pillar) that had put Texas temporarily in the lead, Biagini was able to close out the sixth and pitch a clean seventh with two strikeouts. Jason Grilli and Brett Cecil set the Rangers down in order in the eighth.

As is his habit in a tie game, with the zeros mounting on the scoreboard, Gibbie turned to Osuna for the ninth. This wasn’t a tough call. Despite the heavy load two nights before on Friday, he figured on getting one inning out of Osuna, and, as usual, was hoping that the Jays would pull it out in the ninth and relieve him of a harder decision. Osuna’s ninth was perfect, and short: two foul popups and a grounder to second, Osuna covering, on eight pitches.

But the Jays were at the wrong end of the order, and unless they got some effective table-setting from Pillar, Barney, and Carrera, a tenth inning would happen. Bush was too much for Toronto’s eight/nine/one, though, with a strikeout, a short fly to left, and a popup to the shortstop behind second. Bush had retired six in a row on 22 pitches, and now Gibbie was in trouble.

Remaining in his bullpen were Aaron Loup, who’d only be used for a one-out matchup, Danny Barnes, the rookie who’d been added when Liriano went down with the concussion, Ryan Tepera, and Scott Feldman, who seems to have been relegated to long man in a blowout role. The manager could roll the dice with one of the three right-handers for the tenth, and hope they might hold the Rangers. But given the futility of the Jays’s hitters so far against Bush, who would only be replaced by Sam Dyson, there was no telling how many innings they might have to hold.

Or he could lay it all on the line with Osuna, risking all for the sake of keeping the game tied so that the meat of his order could win it in the bottom of the tenth and end the series on the spot. But risking all meant more than this game: if he used Osuna, and the Rangers eventually won, he would have to plan game four’s pitching with not only Osuna but all of his remaining high leverage relievers unavailable.

The manager decided to roll the dice with Osuna, and it paid off in spades. The young bull—when he is shown in closeup taking the sign from the catcher, I’m continually astonished by how his shoulders fill the screen—struck out Jeremy Hoying, who had taken over in right from Mazara. He struck out Carlos Gomez. Ian Desmond flied out to Pillar in centre. Two innings, 22 pitches, 2 strikeouts, and for the second time in two games, in three days’ time, Roberto Osuna had stifled the Rangers beyond one inning of work. If the Blue Jays could pull out the series win right now, the young closer and his mates would benefit from five days of rest before the beginning of the ALCS.

And that’s exactly how it worked out. Josh Donaldson led off the bottom of the tenth with his booming double to right centre, and you know the rest of the story.

I’ve chosen to examine in detail the end of the story, the confluence of karma and courage that brought the Toronto team through to the promised land of the ALCS, and I’ve done so at the expense of the whole rest of the game, so let’s look at the salient points that brought us to the end-game drama.

With all the hype and build-up, it would have been almost too much to ask of Aasron Sanchez that he coolly shut down a Rangers team waiting to break out, and though he battled them all the way, he was, it seemed, over-pumped, too strong, however you want to put it. His fast balls really moved. His breaking balls really moved. When he got into situations where he had to throw a strike, he had to back off so much that he was vulnerable to the long ball. But in the first he walked Carlos Gomez to lead off the game, and Gomez came around to score without benefit of a base hit.

Unlike Sanchez, Colby Lewis pretty well pitched to the projection. That is to say, he pitched two innings and gave up five runs on five hits, two of which were first inning homers. He walked Carrera to lead off the game, struck out Donaldson, and Encarnacion smoked him into the second deck in left in the blink of an eye. He caught Jose Bautista looking, but Russell Martin lined a 1-0 pitch into the bullpen, and the Jays had turned the Texas lead into a two-run deficit.

Sanchez had his only shutdown inning in the second, still hadn’t given up a hit, and had his first strikeout on a vicious curve ball that Mitch Moreland couldn’t touch. Hopes were high for his settling in and pitching a gem, with a two-run lead in the bank.

Lewis matched Sanchez in the bottom of the second and it looked like the pattern was set for a close, low-scoring affair.

At least until Elvis Andrus led off the third with a homer to left, cutting the Jays’ lead to 3-2. But again Sanchez steadied and retired the side in order. It looked all good when Toronto rang up two more in the bottom of the third, and chased Lewis from the game. They combined the Carrera single and stolen base, the Donaldson ground rule double for the first run, and the Encarnacion single to centre off reliever Tony Barnette, who ended up retiring the Jays in order and stranding Edwin at first.

Any bettor would like the odds with Sanchez on the mound and a 5-2 lead after three, but strange things happen in the playoffs, and if things work out according to plan it’s more of a surprise than if they don’t. Sanchez walked Beltran leading off the fourth, got the ground ball from Adrian Beltre to force Beltran at second, but with no chance of a double play. And that brought up Roughned Odor, who after a quiet two and a half games finally found a way to make some noise, and crushed a liner to centre that just kept going. As usual, Pillar turned and raced for the wall, but then just slowed down, shoulders sagging, as it cleared the wall. It was now 5-4, and nerve endings were starting to buzz all over the city. Not to mention that Odor’s shot took a lot of the fervour out of the hearty booing he’d been receiving since the lineups were announced. . . .

As for the home team’s chances of extending the lead, they took quite a dip when Jeff Bannister brought in the soft-tossing Alex Claudio to pitch the fourth. Claudio had been very effective in shutting Toronto down in Game One after they’d jumped out to the big lead. Even after walking Michael Saunders, he got a double-play ball out of Darwin Barney, and only needed eight pitches for the inning.

After Sanchez showed flashes of the brilliance that might have been by fanning Mazara, Gomez, and Desmond, Claudio got one more out before giving up the base hit to Donaldson. Bannister wasn’t giving anyone much rope in this must-win game, so he brought in Jeremy Jeffress, who’s given him some very good outings this year, and who was briefly a Blue Jay. Jeffress walked Encarnacion, but Bautista grounded into a double play, Jeffress throwing only seven pitches to finish off Claudio’s fifth.

Sanchez seemed on a roll when he picked up his fifth and six outs in a row in the top of the sixth, but then he hit the wall, or at least Gibbie thought he had hit the wall. He walked Odor and gave up a hit to Jonathan Lucroy and that was it for his day. The call went out for the reliable Joe Biagini to face the left-handed Mitch Moreland. We might point to trust issues that Gibbie has with certain pitchers. He still had Aaron Loup available for a matchup, and could have gone to Biagini in the seventh if Loup had gotten Moreland out. But Biagini it was, and after fouling off a slider, Moreland got the better of the big rookie, going with a fastball low and away, driving it into left-centre field. Kevin Pillar, pulled around to right, got on his horse, and as we watched him and the ball converge, we hoped, expected, even, another miracle from Superman, and almost got it. But the ball was hit just that much too hard, and too far out of range. It ticked off the end of Pillar’s outstretched glove, Moreland had a double, and Texas had the lead.

But not for long. With one out in the bottom of the sixth, Troy Tulowitzki dropped a fly ball single into right, and that took Jeffress out of the game and brought in Jake Diekman to face Michael Saunders. In turn, Melvin Upton was sent up to hit for Saunders. Upton lashed the first pitch from Diekman into the left-field corner for a double, with Tulo stopping at third. Kevin Pillar was walked intentionally to fill the bases, and Kela came in to face Darwin Barney, whom he popped up in foul territory. But with Zeke Carrera at the plate Kela threw a wild one that ticked off Lucroy’s glove for a rather harshly scored passed ball. Tulo scored and the other runners moved up. Then Mazara made that fine catch on Carrera in right to preserve the tie.

So the Jays benefitted from an overthrown pitch from Keone Kela, still only 23 yet under the spotlight in the LDS for the second year in a row, to tie the score. This led to the bullpen standoff that ended in the tenth with Osuna’s lights-out pitching and Donaldson’s mad dash to the plate, completing the LDS sweep for Toronto.

Even diehard Blue Jays’ fans might have some sympathy for the Rangers as a team, which played so well the entire year yet exited the playoffs in such an ignominious fashion. And it would be hard to gloat over the misfortunes of players like Elvis Andrus, Cole Hamels, and Jonathan Lucroy, who turned in such good seasons only to come up short. Even Roughned Odor might come in for a share of sympathy. Might. A small share. A tiny share, really. Well, maybe not.

But the story of this 2016 ALDS sweep is written largely on the bruised limbs of its true stars, Roberto Osuna and Josh Donaldson. The ALCS begins Friday night in Cleveland, which eliminated Boston Monday evening while we digested our Turkey and reflected on an unbeaten October. In the meantime, let the healing begin!

Artwork courtesy of storyboard artist Ed Chee.

View more of his work at:  http://www.edwardchee.com

Yesterday afternoon we were mesmerized by Marco Estrada’s brilliance. So were the Texas Rangers, and we know how that turned out.

Today Jay Happ, Toronto’s rock (apologies to Toronto’s lacrosse team) mesmerized exactly no one. But at the end of five innings, the Rangers had only one run to their credit, on nine hits (one short of two per inning pitched) and by the end of the game Happ was in position to earn a gutsy playoff “W” for dipsy-doodling out of trouble in each of his first four innings.

Meanwhile, the imposing Yu Darvish, facing Toronto for the first time this season, also exited after five innings, having given up five runs on only five hits.

Fortunately for Happ the Rangers’ nine hits were all of the low and short variety, and none came with runners in scoring position. On the other hand, four of the five hits Darvish gave up were very long, hit very hard, and didn’t come back.

The upshot of Toronto’s four-homer outburst against Yu Darvish, which gave some breathing space to Happ while he extricated himself from jam after jam put up by the Rangers against him is that Toronto returns from the first two games of the division series with an imposing two-nothing record against Texas. The next two games are at the TV Dome Sunday evening at 7:30 and Monday afternoon at 1:00, a perfect time to watch a playoff game while the Big Bird roasts in the oven. (No kiddies, don’t worry, not that Big Bird!)

One week ago today, as we woke with a Blue Jay hangover after David Ortiz had engineered a comeback 5-3 win over Toronto, the way forward was murky and perilous indeed. We could barely hope that the stars would align in such a miraculous way as to salvage our strange and troubling season.

What a Diff’rence a Day Makes was the signature song of the brilliant but little remembered American jazz/rhythm and blues great Dinah Washington. I can hear the plaintive melody of that song as I consider what a difference a week can make in the life of a major-league baseball team, in the lives of its players, and in the lives of its fans.

As an aside, of some interest to sports fans, particularly those with connections to Detroit, like myself, is the fact that Dinah Washington, who, like many blues singers, lived a rather troubled life, was married six times; her last husband, who found her dead in bed in their home in Detroit in December of 1963 with a prescription pill bottle by her side, was Dick “Night Train” Lane, the NFL Hall of Fame defensive back who played for the Los Angeles Rams, the Chicago Cardinals, and the Detroit Lions. Lane was arguably the prototype of the modern defensive back, fast, hard-hitting, and a great open field runner. Lane had begun to serve as her business manager after their marriage earlier in 1963, and the songs of Dinah Washington became the soundtrack of the Lions’ locker room in the five years that Lane played for them.

Last Saturday Jay Happ got a better grip than Eduardo Rodriguez on a wet baseball, keeping the Jays in contention in a game that Boston tied in the bottom of the eighth when Roberto Osuna balked in the tying run, and the Jays won in the top of the ninth by scoring a run without getting a hit.

Last Sunday Aaron Sanchez out-dueled David Price—irony of ironies—and took a no-hitter into the seventh inning and the bullpen managed to cling to a one-run lead as the Jays secured a wild card spot, albeit with a little help from the Atlanta Braves.

After a day of rest, a day when, if the Jays’ players are anything like their fans, no one rested a bit, Toronto scored a thrilling 5-2 victory over the Baltimore Orioles in the American League Wild Card Game, riding Edwin Encarnacion’s three-run game-winning blast in the eleventh inning into a long-awaited rematch with the Texas Rangers, holders of the best record in the American League this year.

Yesterday a five-run outburst in the third inning provided all the runs a brilliant Marco Estrada needed to nail down the first game of the Toronto-Texas ALDS series as the Jays jump-started their title hopes with an easy opening-game win over the Rangers.

Today a quartet of long balls shored up Jay Happ’s gritty, laboured effort to send the Jays off to Toronto with a stranglehold (I should choke—sorry—on that word) on the ALDS, ready to punch their tickets to a meetup with, possibly, the Cleveland Indians, who are likewise leading Boston 2-0 in their series, but heading to Fenway.

How far we’ve come in a week.

Texas and Toronto finished their season series this year way back in May, with the fabled brawl game, the one that included The Punch from Roughned Odor, inflicted on our very own Joey Bats. Yu Darvish made his first start of the season, after missing all of last year and the beginning of this one due to Tommy John surgery, on May 28^th, so memories of Yu for most of the of the Blue Jays would date back to 2014. And it was equally uncharted territory for Darvish facing the Blue Jays.

Just for fun I looked up the last time Darvish faced the Jays. It was in Toronto on July 28, 2014. Here was the Toronto lineup that day:

ss Jose Reyes

lf Melky Cabrera

rf Jose Bautista

dh Dioner Navarro

1b Dan Johnson

cf Colby Rasmus

3b Juan Francisco

c Josh Thole (catching for R.A. Dickey)

2b Muni Kawasaki

Well, that was a different world, wasn’t it? Only three players are still with the organization, and only two of them are on the current playoff roster.

That was fun, but let’s get back to the matter at hand. Darvish briskly dispatched the Jays in the top of the first, Zeke Carrera and Josh Donaldson on easy fly balls to centre, and Edwin on an equally easy ground out to short. Darvish took all of eight pitches to do this, great work, but where were the strikeouts? He was facing three hitters who strike out a lot, and he didn’t fan any of them. By the way, in that game of July 2014, Darvish fanned twelve Jays’ hitters in six and two thirds innings.

Then Jay Happ took the mound against the Rangers, and established the pattern he would follow for the subsequent three innings. Two quick outs, Carlos Gomez on a popup and Ian Desmond struck out, but then Carlos Beltran had an infield single to Donaldson and Adrian Beltre walked (semi-intentional, and not a bad idea, once he

fell behind). Roughned Odor ended the inning by grounding out to Travis at second. One inning and 20 pitches.

In 100 innings this year, Darvish had walked only 31, and given up 12 homers, while striking out 132. In the top of the second he collected one of each, and suddenly the Jays had jumped into a 2-0 lead in this second game of the ALDS. Darvish walked Jose Bautista, then struck out Russell Martin on a 2-2 pitch. Then he went 2 and 0 on Troy Tulowitzki, and Tulo turned on a low four-seamer on the inside corner and rifled it out of the yard to left centre, a lightning first blow for Toronto. Darvish managed to get under the bats of both Michael Saunders and Kevin Pillar, resulting in a popup and an easy fly to end the inning.

The Happ roller-skating show continued in the second. Jonathan Lucroy’s bid for a hit to right was snuffed by a nice sliding catch by Bautista, but then Ryan Rua and Elvis Andrus singled, and the big left-hander had to bear down to strike out Nomar Mazara and Carlos Gomez, both looking, on 93 mph fastballs down and in, which had the Texas bench howling at plate umpire Lance Barksdale.

Darvish got his strikeout pitches working in the third and fourth, punching out two in the third to strand Darwin Barney, whom he had hit with a pitch leading off. In the fourth he gave up a single to Tulo’s suddenly very hot bat, but there were already two away and he fanned Michael Saunders to finish the inning.

For Happ it was déjà vu all over again, as he gave up two singles and no runs in the third, but in the fourth, after getting the first two outs (you know the drill) he gave up the usual two hits to Mazara and Gomez, but this time Ian Desmond followed with a third single, and the Rangers were on the board, the Jays’ slim lead now down to 2-1, with a lot of game yet to play.

Now Darvish was supposed to come in with a shutdown inning, to convince his mates that their target would stay in their sights, and not move on them. But thanks to Kevin Pillar’s quirky approach at the plate, the run they had just scored was neutralized. Pillar swung at a 2-1 pitch so up and so in that if he hadn’t hit it, it might’ve busted his nose. But he swung to protect his nose, and the ball streaked down the line and over the fence in left for a solo homer.

If you surveyed a thousand Blue Jays fans and asked them to name a combination of three players who might plausibly hit solo home runs in the same inning in a playoff game, I’m willing to bet that not one of them would name Pillar. Zeke Carrera, and Edwin Encarnacion, but that’s what happened in the fifth inning of game two of this 2016 ALCS. The funny thing is, none of them were back-to-back. Pillar homered, Darwin Barney popped out to short, Carrera homered, what may have been the most impressive shot of the three, to the power alley in right centre, Josh Donaldson popped out to third, and then Edwin Encarnacion drilled a liner to left that reached the seats might fast. Boring old Jose Bautista grounded out to shortstop, and the assault on Yu Darvish’s fast ball was over.

Needless to say, also over was the first playoff start of Yu Darvish, at 5 innings, 5 runs on only five hits, one walk, five strikeouts, and 84 pitches. Here’s how the Blue Jays started this 2016 ALCS against Texas: they faced the two best pitchers on the Rangers’ staff, Cole Hamels and Yu Darvish. This was their combined line: 8.2 innings, 11 runs, 11 hits, 4 walks, 6 strikeouts, 166 pitches, and 5 home runs. I’m tempted to say “what hitting slump?” but that would be tempting fate . . .

Just to rub it in a little, Jay Happ pitched his only clean inning in the bottom of the fifth, fanning Beltre, Odor driving Pillar to the wall in centre, and Lucroy hitting a lazy fly to right. At 83 pitches, it looked like manager John Gibbons could ask Happ to give him another inning, especially if he could replicate the fifth, but it didn’t work out for them. Ryan Rua rifled a base hit to centre on the first pitch of the inning, and Gibbie came out with the hook.

Happ’s early departure, while it might have been easily foreseen, posed a big problem for Gibbie, since there was no way pf knowing the condition of Roberto Osuna, whether he could pitch at all, and if so for how long. When you’re working your bullpen, you have to work backwards from your closer, and it’s a much bigger puzzle if you’re unsure about the linchpin. And, unlike yesterday, a 5-1 lead is a far cry from the 7-0 lead that Marco Estrada carried all the way to the ninth.

With both starters finished after five, the two bullpens had to cover four innings each. Of course, their goals were the same: Texas needed to keep the Jays off the board so that the game might still be in reach for their hitters, and the Toronto bullpen needed to preserve the lead and close out the game.

The Jays never threatened against Tony Barnette, who pitched the sixth and seventh innings, Matt Bush, who pitched the eighth, and Sam Dyson, the Rangers’ current closer, who pitched the ninth. Barnette gave up one hit in his two innings, Bush yielded one base on balls, and Dyson retired the side in the ninth. If the Jays were going to win this game, their relievers would have to shut the Rangers down.

When Happ was pulled with a runner on first and nobody out, you knew that it would be Joe Biagini first up, as he has consistently had that role in the latter half of the season. In any close game, if a reliever is needed before the seventh, it will be Biagini. Ryan Rua was started by Jeff Bannister, and moved up to second as Elvis Andrus grounded out to second. Mazara popped out to Darwin Barney for the second out, and Gomez grounded out to short for the third out.

Biagini came back out for the seventh, which again is part of the pattern, and given his consistent record, why wouldn’t it be? But Ian Desmond led off with a double, and now he was in trouble: Carlos Beltran moved Desmond to third with a grounder to second, and the Rangers had a runner in scoring position for their best and most reliable hitter, Adrian Beltre. The infield was playing about half-way. If the Rangers made a base-running gaffe, they’d try for Desmond, otherwise they’d trade the run for an out, cutting their lead to three.

Biagini then received a double gift, a slight baserunning hitch by Desmond, and a great instinctive play by Josh Donaldson. Beltre bounced one sharply to Donaldson, who checked Desmond, turned to throw to first, and caught Desmond out of the corner of his eye hesitating before breaking for the plate. That was all the encouragement Donaldson needed. He threw, a little high, to the plate, Martin made a sweep tag, Desmond was called out, and, finally, confirmed out by the appeal process. The lead remained at four, and the Jays’ manager called for Brett Cecil to pitch to Roughned Odor. As when he faced Chris Davis on Tuesday in the Wild Card Game, though, Cecil walked Odor on four pitches, which meant that Gibbie had to bring in Jason Grilli to face Jonathan Lucroy, who popped out to Edwin Encarnacion in foul territory for the third out.

The problem for Gibbie now was that he used Grilli earlier than he had wanted to, and there still were six outs to go. This was the situation for which Francisco Liriano had been sent to the bullpen, and which he handled so well in claiming the win in the Wild Card Game. After Liriano there would only be Osuna, the unknown quantity. After Osuna would be the abyss.

Unlike Tuesday, though, Liriano started out in the hole: Mitch Moreland ripped one just out of Encarnacion’s reach and ended up with a double. Kevin Pillar came up big with a sliding catch of Andrus’ liner to centre, with Moreland holding at second. Liriano walked Robinson Chirinos who was hitting for Mazara, bringing Carlos Gomez to the plate, and bringing us to the crucial point of the game.

Gomez ripped a line drive back up the middle, and for one long moment the question of who would win the game receded into the background. Acting on pure instinct, Liriano turned his back to the ball, and it glanced so hard off the base of his skull or his neck that it next landed safely in centre field. Moreland scored, but all attention was on Liriano, who was visited by the Jays’ manager and trainer. Liriano stayed on his feet, walked off under his own power, and disappeared into the clubhouse. We learned later that Liriano had at least been cleared to travel to back to Toronto, so beyond that we have to wait until there is further medical information released.

This was the moment that Gibbie had hoped to avoid. Osuna had assured him that he was good to go, but the last thing that Gibbie wanted to do was bring him in before the ninth. T.J. Hoying, running for Chirinos, had gone to third on Moreland’s hit. Bannister started Gomez from first, so when Desmond hit a perfect double play ball to Tulo right at the bag at second, Gomez was already there. There was no inning-ending double play, and the third Texas run scored. But in the single most compelling at bat of the game, Osuna faced down the veteran Carlos Beltran. After Osuna missed with his first pitch, Beltran fouled off four in a row, took another ball, and then struck out on a wicked slider right down the middle that dove under his swing out of the bottom of the zone.

It would be nice to be able to say that Osuna had an easy ninth to finish off the save, but no such luck. The Jays made one of their usual save-situation defensive changes, removing Jose Bautista from the game, shifting Zeke Carrera from left to right, and inserting Melvin Upton in left. It must have been karma, then, that caused Osuna to leave a 1-2 slider up in the zone where Adrian Beltre could square it up and drive it to left. The ball was going to carry to the wall over Upton’s head, but he had a good jump on it and seemed like he had a chance to run it down. But strangely, and much like Ian Desmond in centre the night before, Upton pulled up, the ball hit the wall, and caromed back between his legs. Luckily, with Beltre running, it stayed a double, but the collective “here we go again” from Blue Jays’ fans was as heartfelt as it was loud.

Remarkably, though, almost miraculously, Beltre never advanced from second as Osuna showed what stuff he’s made of, as if we didn’t know. He blew a fast ball by Odor—oh irony—on a 3-2 pitch. Jonathan Lucroy popped up to Barney at second, and Mitch Moreland hit a lazy little short fly to centre that Kevin Pillar exuberantly camped under for the third out.

Let’s hand out the honours here—god knows there’s enough to go around! To whatever scout figured out that Darvish is relying too heavily on his heater these days. To the four bashers for being able to put theory into practice. To Jay Happ for dancing on razor blades without getting a scratch. To Joe Biagini and Jason Grilli for short-term rescue work out of the bullpen. For a courageous stand by Roberto Osuna when a lesser man would have held himself out today. For Kevin Pillar, for diving, and sliding, and squaring up a ball up in his eyes. And yes, finally, to John Gibbons, for pulling the right strings at the right times when the team was in a really tight spot.

Last year Texas came to Toronto and won the first two games of the LCS on the road, but never won another. Is that an omen for us, or just an instructive tale to be pored over for its lessons?

Maybe being up 2-0 coming home is bad luck, but I’ll take sending out Aaron Sanchez to try to win the series in game three at home any day. And I’m sure Texas would, too.

Wherever you are, Bud Selig, come back. Our favourite team, having survived the wild card game Tuesday night, played like champs this afternoon under a bright Texas sun. They have the chops of a legitimate contender. All is forgiven.

I have always thought that, while it was obviously a good thing to expand the baseball playoffs, former commissioner Selig’s creation of the sudden-death knockout game to be played by the two wild card teams was an insult to the players and an abomination to the loyal fans who support teams that fight all year to be included among the best.

To me, the cruelty of sweating bullets for a month or more, hanging on every pitch as your favourite team fought to qualify for the playoffs only to have them dismissed in a “one and done” scenario is something that the league has no right inflicting on the fans of the teams that have to play in the game, and especially it has no right to treat the players in such a cavalier fashion.

Just ask the excellent and very tough Baltimore Orioles, who had to watch a whole season of fine play and courageous effort sail into the left-field stands along with the ball that Edwin Encarnacion crushed Tuesday night, with no recourse to tomorrow’s game, and perhaps a rubber game beyond that. It should be best of three, at the very least, for the play-in teams, or they should just go back to the harsh reality of only four teams making the playoffs, or find some other way of adding teams while eliminating the single game play-in.

And yet. We sweated our own bullets over whether the Blue Jays would hold on to their coveted slot, and rejoiced when they did, getting on to the dance floor primarily on their own merits by going into Boston and taking two out of three at Fenway. And yet. We watched every second of Tuesday night’s wild card game with Baltimore. Sometimes with joy, sometimes with excruciating tension, sometimes with the alert observation you’d use watching a train wreck. And yet. When it all shook down, and Edwin’s shot sailed into the stands, it was all good: we had passed the test, made the team, joined the big boys, and stepped on to the dance floor, even though our dancing partner would not exactly be the gal we would want to wake up next to in the morning for the next forty years.  (“Roughned, for the last time, if you don’t shave off that ugly beard, you’re sleeping in the guest room!”)

And here it is. Not that we knew, as the ninth, tenth, eleventh innings approached Tuesday night, that we would come out on top, but it did seem like there was a thing happening with this Blue Jays’ team, a thing that maybe only finally took shape in the last three games of the season at Fenway.

Oh, sure, we lost Friday night. But that was to none other than Big Papi, who hit what turned out to be the last regular season dinger of his career. Then, on Saturday and Sunday, something happened. No, we didn’t ease our batting woes. That would have been too much, maybe, to ask of the baseball gods. Rather, we embraced our lack, seemed to accept the fact that a little offence, a few well-timed hits, combined with brilliant pitching and steady defence, could be the tickets to success. The season-long question, when will the bashing begin, had turned to a new and infinitely more intriguing one, can we actually win without the bashing?

Tuesday night, in the dreaded wild card game, the game we loathed to play but had to win, the mood seemed to grow, a belief was on the rise, that if this team just kept on throwing the ball really well and fielding it flawlessly something good would happen with the bats. The baseball gods may be capricious, but they know good fundamental baseball when they see it. After all, they’re not the “baseball” gods for nothing—they love the game as we do, only for them it’s more, umm, transcendant.

Baseball is a game where it’s hard to apply the concept of momentum. The fact that the game is for all practical purposes controlled by the opposing pitcher, and what and how he throws, and how the hitters react to it can all vary so widely from game to game, suggests that momentum shouldn’t be much of a factor, except maybe in the mind. A team that’s on a roll tends to sustain that roll over a number of games, as the Kansas City Royals did in locking down their World Series win with a great post-season run. And a team that is in a slump tends to become dispirited, which leads to pressing too hard at the plate and in the field, which inevitably leads to extending the slump. Leading to such phenomena as Toronto’s September Swoon.

So did Edwin’s smash Tuesday night get translated into specific on-field achievements this afternoon? There’s no way of knowing that, but it’s obvious as the bill of your baseball cap (you do wear your Blue Jay cap all the time, don’t you?) that the Jays entered today’s game with their heads and their spirits up, ready to take on the whole world, not to mention a simple matter like the best-record-in-the-league Texas Rangers.

These are the playoffs. No need to spend very much time talking about the relative merits of the starting pitchers. Starting for a playoff team eliminates the question marks, the riff-raff, the reclamation projects, the raw rookies, the guys that used to be somebody, from consideration. Your pitching was good enough to make the playoffs and now you’re down to your four best. After all, after pitching brilliantly against Baltimore last week, Francisco Liriano is in the bullpen for the playoffs, not the rotation. And R.A. Dickey, resident philosopher and elder statesman, didn’t even make the playoff roster. ‘Nuff said.

Except I’d like to take the tiniest moment to address comments made the other night by, I believe, Greg Ross, the sports reporter on CBC. He suggested that it was somewhat of a surprise that Marco Estrada would be pitching the first game, and that there was a lot of consternation on Twitter over why the Toronto manager hadn’t gone to Jay Happ or Marcus Stroman. Well, duh, Greg Ross and all the twits on Twitter: It was Estrada’s turn in the rotation pitching on regular rest, as will Happ and Sanchez and Stroman when their turns come up. And more duh, for ignoring the fact that just because Estrada doesn’t throw hard and has a silly-looking retro windup doesn’t mean that he isn’t still one of the premier starters in the league, with a proven track record of throwing shutdown stuff in big games. Like in Texas last year when our backs were to the wall, remember?

So Estrada was a no-brainer, as was the great lefty Cole Hamels, Texas’ number one starter for most of the year during the long period of the absence of Yu Darvish. So the pitchers are set. Let the games begin!

If Hollywood casting were looking for an actor to play a star baseball pitcher they’d jump at the chance of putting Cole Hamels on the silver screen. Tall, lean, ruggedly handsome, throwing from the port side with an elegant motion, he’d really fill the bill. Not so bad as an American League starter, either, coming into today’s game with a 15-5 record and an ERA of 3.32.

He started the game like he’d been typecast by Hollywood as well. Oh, sure, he walked Josh Donaldson, but that was more a tribute to Donaldson’s annoying stubbornness, as he fouled off three good pitches in a row on a 2 and 2 count before drawing balls three and four. Otherwise, it was popups by Devon Travis and Edwin Encarnacion, and an easy fly ball off the bat of the heavily-booed Jose Bautista. The whole thing consumed 16 pitches.

With Marco Estrada, if he strikes out the first batter, especially looking, or if he retires the first batter on the first pitch, you know somethin’s cookin’. So tonight he froze Carlos Gomez leading off on a 2-2 curve ball, popped up Ian Desmond, and popped up Carlos Beltran to end the inning with seven pitches under his belt. Somethin’ was cookin’ all right!

Hamels continued to roll comfortably in the second, giving no hint of the implosion that was lurking just around the bend. After striking out Russell Martin and popping up Troy Tulowitzki, Hamels allowed a testy grounder into the hole that looked to be the Jays’ first hit, but Elvis Andrus ranged far to his left, flagged the ball down in full stride, and launched one, Derek Jeter style, that barely beat Pillar—if it did—to the bag. Manager Gibbons asked for an appeal, and it would seem that it wound up as standing because it was “too close to call” as the rule has it.

Despite giving up his first hit, a grounder to first that Adran Beltre beat out, Estrada continued to feed the Rangers empty peanut hulls. Roughy Odor flied out to right. Major trade deadline acquisition from Milwaukee and catcher Jonathan Lucroy fanned for Estrada’s second strikeout, and Mitch Moreland nearly beat out a deep grounder to Devon Travis in the shift for the third out. Another 15 pitches, so he was “up” to 22 for two. Hamels wasn’t much higher at 29.

Then came to the top of the third, when the Jays would drive a stake through Texas hearts, with a little help from the locals, and never again be headed.

Hamels’ third inning shouldn’t have gotten away from him like it did, but it started ominously enough. Melvin Upton led off and drove the first pitch the wrong way to right, and right to the wall, where Shin-Soo Choo had to bang off the wall to make the catch. Then Hamels walked the number nine hitter Zeke Carrera on a 3-1 pitch. Devon Travis popped out to third for the second out, and Hamels was that close to getting out of it. But, remembering Ernie Harwell, we know that “it all starts with two outs”. Sometimes. This time.

The Rangers bring to this series a mixed heritage in relation to defence. They’ve had an excellent fielding record this season, but never far from their minds is the famous seventh inning of game five last year, which besides being remembered for the blast and the bat flip, also haunts the team and its fans because of their embarrassing defensive breakdown, featuring two unforgiveably bad plays by the shortstop Elvis Andrus and a third error by first baseman Mitch Moreland, all of which preceded and set up Bautista’s decisive homer.

Catcher Jonathan Lucroy was perhaps the most important acquisition the Rangers made this season. He represents a significant upgrade for Texas, both at the plate and behind it, where his defensive skills are considered first rate. But with Carrera on first and two outs, Hamels spiked a changeup to Josh Donaldson that was scored as a wild pitch, but in a game like this should have been blocked. Nevertheless Carrera ended up on second and the complexion of the inning changed.

If there was a hint that Josh Donaldson was coming out of his recent funk on his first at bat when he worked Hamels for the first inning walk, his recovery was no longer in question when, on a 2-2 pitch, he ripped a ball at third baseman Adrian Beltre, who threw his glove up almost in defence as the ball ripped past him and on into the left-field corner. Carrera scored on the hit, which was hit so hard that left fielder Carlos Gomez was able to make it close at second. Donaldson was called safe, and the Rangers’ appeal of the call was not supported.

Edwin Encarnacion hit one hard back to the box that deflected off Hamels toward short, but there was no play on Edwin and Donaldson went to third. He scored on a single into right centre by Jose Bautista in what may have been one of the defining at bats of the game. Hamels was at 2 and 1 on Bautista when he tried three times to slip a fastball by him, and one changeup as well. Bautista fouled off all four pitches, and then timed the inevitable curve ball and stroked it into the wide open, shift-deserted space in short right centre. Donaldson scored, Edwin moved up to second, and Russell Martin came to the plate.

Despite the fact that there were two outs all along, and Hamels was for all this time one punchout away from sitting down, he just couldn’t do it. Russell Martn walked on a 3-1 pitch, and then Troy Tulowitzki reached out on a 2-2 thigh-high fast ball on the outer half, and powered it into right centre, a high and deep drive.

For the second time in the inning, the Texas defence wasn’t able to live up to the task, and this play pinpointed a serious flaw in what otherwise may very well be an excellent lineup. Delino DeShields had won the regular job in centre field last year, and in fact started all five games against Toronto last year in the ALCS. He started the season as the centre field fixture, but over time his failure to produce offensively became an issue for the Rangers.

Meanwhile, in the off season they had signed free agent Ian Desmond, who came from the Washington Nationals. Considering their whole lineup, Desmond was clearly signed as backup insurance, on a one-year $8 million dollar contract. He had spent his entire major league career playing the infield in the National League. No, wait, I lied. He played seven innings in the outfield in 2009, and one third of an inning in 2010. His pluses were solid defensive credentials at shortstop, where Elvis Andrus was obviously a fixture, a decent batting average, save for 2015 with the Nats, and very good speed.

When the Rangers decided that DeShields was not to be their World Series centre fielder in 2016, they looked around, found Desmond, and announced, presto change-o, that Desmond was a centre fielder, and he patrolled there for Texas for most of the season. But one season a centre fielder does not make. Tulo’s ball was high and fading. It eventually hit the fence at a point that would have been easily reachable, if Desmond hadn’t pulled up, shied away from the ball, and played it on the carom. The hit went as a triple which cleared the bases and gave the Jays a 5-0 lead. It also sucked every bit of oxygen out of the stadium in Arlington, and all of the fight out of the Rangers. (Thank providence for small favours—the last thing we need is the Rangers with some fight in them!)

Hamels finally got the third out, and Estrada after a very long and pleasant rest, returned to the hill to record a ground ball, a strikeout, and an easy fly to centre on twelve pitchouts. What you need after a big offensive inning is for your pitcher to come out and shut the other guys down. Well, how about for the next inning, and the next five besides?

Marco Estrada, bolstered by a good cushion for the first time in forever, gave up a single to Elvis Andrus in the sixth. Martin threw him out on a strike-out/throw-out with Shin-Soo Choo going down at the plate. He gave up a single to Carlos Beltran in the seventh, but Adrian Beltre hit into a double play. That’s it, folks.

After the leadoff infield single by Adrian Beltre in the second inning, Marco Estrada faced exactly the minimum number of batters, twenty-one of twenty-one. Marco Estrada has never thrown a complete game in the major leagues. He still hasn’t. Manager John Gibbons, with the lead now stretched to ten (I’ll go over that, but Estrada’s the story here, all the way) sent him out to go for it in the ninth, but on the very first pitch Andrus pounded the ball to centre and raced around to third for a triple. Gibbie let Estrada go one more batter to see if he could get the shutout. When Choo, hitting next, grounded out to first, Andrus scored, and that was it. Estrada left with this line: 8.2 innings pitched, 1 run, 4 hits, no walks, 6 strikeouts, and 98 pitches.

Ryan Tepera came in and got the last two outs on seven pitches to secure, if it needed to be secured at this point, Toronto’s convincing 10-1 win over Texas in game one of the 2016 ALCS.

The Rangers managed to shut down the Jays’ offense eventually, as Rangers’ Manager Jeff Bannister, now concerned about eating innings as much as about trying to win this game, sent Hamels out for the fourth, but he didn’t survive the inning. Melvin Upton led off by jerking one into the stands in left to up the Toronto lead to six. Zeke Carrera flied out to left for the first out. Then the fielding gremlin popped out of his hole and waved his malevolent crooked stick at Texas again. Andrus, to his utter embarrassment, picked up a perfectly routine ground ball and pulled Mitch Moreland off the bag with his throw. Travis then advanced to second on a passed ball by Lucroy, and scored on a single to right centre to give the Jays a seventh run, this one very, very unearned. That was enough for Hamels, who may have to wait years to unsully his playoff pitching record after tonight’s performance. Bannister brought in Alex Claudio, a soft-tossing young lefty, who quickly got the last two outs of the inning for the Rangers, stranding Donaldson at first.

Claudio went on to give Bannister the innings he didn’t get from Hamels. Helped by two double plays, he kept the Jays off the board while giving up two hits and two walks. In fact, his approach tended to be very similar to that of the Jays’ starter, particularly in respect of initiating soft contact and keeping the pitch count down. In his three and two thirds innings, he only threw 35 pitches, 23 of them strikes.

Tony Barnette pitched the eighth and gave up a hit to Zeke Carrera with two outs, but left him at first when Travis popped out to Moreland at first.

Jake Diekman, the rail-thin left-hander, took the hill for the Rangers in the ninth. He had been very effective in last year’s ALCS against Toronto, making four appearances, pitching 6 innings, striking out 5 and giving up only 1 run. This year so far in the playoffs, not so much. Josh Donaldson led off with a single to centre for his fourth hit of the game. Edwin followed with a single to right. Jose Bautista worked Diekman to a 3 and 2 count, and then ended off the action, for all practical purposes, in exactly the way that the Jose-hating, Bautista-booing, Texas crowd didn’t want to see, by ripping a three-run homer to left, pegging the Jays’ lead, at the time, to 10-zip, and who could ever have projected that?

Tension? Bitter rivalry? Scores to settle? All washed away on the wave of a superb pitching performance and robust hitting abetted by some suspect Texas defence.

Game Two features Jay Happ against Yu Darvish, who has pitched well since returning to the team in late May. The Blue Jays have not seen him this season, but he is all that stands in the way of a shocking turnabout, and the possibility of Toronto returning home with a chance to sweep the series behind Aaron Sanchez on Sunday evening.

Who ever would have thought?

The 5-0 lead handed to Estrada was just what he needed to start dealing as only he can, free, easy, and damned frustrating to the Rangers’ hitters.

A note from yer humble scribe: Last night’s game was beautiful indeed, but long. My story on last night’s game is also long. I hope it does justice to the game. Just in case your interest lies one way or the other, I have taken the initiative of dividing it into two parts. If you are primarily interested in what the game was like, read the first part. If you are primarily interested in how it all happened, read the second part. For the best appreciation of a wonderful game, however, take the time to read the whole piece.

The 2016 American League Wild Card Game: What it Was Like:

From about 11:30 p.m. last night henceforward for the rest of my life if anyone asks me why I love the game of baseball as I do, my answer will always and only be, “October fourth, 2016.”

That, my friends, was a baseball game. That, my friends, was the most beautiful baseball game I have ever seen. That, my friends, may have been the most beautiful baseball game ever played.

Strong words, indeed. Strong words coloured by my passion for the Toronto Blue Jays? Maybe so. What if, say, Chris Davis, or Mark Trumbo, had hit the decisive three-run homer in the eleventh inning, and not Edwin Encarnacion? Would I still feel as I do about where last night’s game stands in the pantheon of all-time great baseball games? I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter, because I will never have to make that call, because it was Edwin hitting it out, and we did win the game.

There were so many brilliant plays, so many tense moments, so much sterling pitching, such courageous clutch hitting to write about in Toronto’s five to two wild-card victory over a very tough and deserving team from Baltimore, that I thought I’d start, not with details, but with images.

There was Tulo diving flat out to flag down a sure base hit. And the marvellous trueness of his hurried throw to first.

There was the baseball dropping into the softly leathery well of Kevin Pillar’s outstretched glove, his body airborne behind it.

There was the exultant fist clench of Josh Donaldson at second in the bottom of the ninth, as he thought that, surely, his leadoff double would lead to a swift and happy end.

There was the almost-frenzied exultation from Steve Grilli as he left the mound after his perfect inning.

There were the Baltimore batters who faced Francisco Liriano in the tenth and eleventh, eating out of his hand like so many docile pigeons, futilely beating the ball into the ground.

There was the intense, but so young and so vulnerable, concentration on the face of Marcus Stroman, as he stepped into the hero’s role he so wanted to play.

And there was the shock of disbelief, of how can this happen, that crossed his face when Mark Trumbo’s two-run homer left the yard and put Baltimore into the lead.

There was the joyful acknowledgement of his god having guided his bat as Ezequiel Carrera rounded first, after driving in Michael Saunders with the tying run of the game on an honest and clean base hit to centre field.

There was the abject dejection on the face of Ubaldo Jimenez, so dominant over the Blue Jays just last week, as he watched Edwin’s tater leave the yard.

There was the intricate choreography of Jose Bautista’s return to the dugout after his first-pitch homer in the second, each dance vignette a personal moment between the hitter and his pumped-up mate.

There was the fatherly concern on the beautiful face of Edwin Encarnacion as he called to the dugout to come out and tend to a suddenly injured Roberto Osuna.

There was, of course there was, the restrained exultation of Edwin, the moment he realized that the ball really was going out. No bat flip for Edwin, but an image that surely will endure just as long: one step out of the box, he stops, he turns to pick up the flight of the ball, and he raises both hands high in the air, bat still clutched around the handle by his right hand. At the peak of his salute, the bat falls harmlessly away, no longer needed.

Above all, there was this: Zeke Carrera and his silly parrot-on-a-bracelet. Nothing can ever so clearly illustrate the essence of the baseball player as joyful man playing a boy’s game, as the happy animation of Zeke Carrera, dancing on the field, waving his parrot around, making sure that his talisman didn’t miss a moment.

Truth be told, I don’t think that parrot missed a thing, including the soaking and splashing of bubbly champagne and stinky beer. The parrot came out to the plate for the welcoming celebration, and I never saw Carrera afterward without it waving around on his arm. I sincerely hope that he is getting a thorough and reverent cleaning as we speak, so that he’s presentable for the plane ride to Texas.

Consider this about Zeke Carrera and his parrot. Zeke is a professional baseball player, and an important cog in the Blue Jays’ machine. The recent contributions he has made to the Jays’ razor-thin securing of a wild-card slot rightly earned him a start in tonight’s wild card game. He has gone long when it was needed, laid down the bunt when it was needed, flown to the plate like Superman when needed, made all the plays in the field with grace and aplomb when needed.

This player, this Ezequiel Carrera, is a lunch-bucket guy. He is not a star, by any means. In fact, his spot on the active roster was in question when Melvin Upton arrived from the Padres. But he has contributed, and more than contributed, this entire season, to an extent well beyond his stature as measured either by reputation or salary.

And tonight we saw the quinessential Carrera. Driving in the tying run. Trying to get things going with his second hit of the game. Patrolling left with assurance and style. A true pro, giving what he could to his team’s marvellous effort. But the quintessential Carrera is also a happy child, playing in the biggest sand box of his life, and loving every minute. He is a fan as much as he is a player, his support and adoration for his big brother shining on his face as he celebrates the undeniable triumph of Edwin Encarnacion.

Oh, did I say that there was a baseball game tonight, a sudden-death wild card game, and the Blue Jays won in the eleventh inning on a three-run walkoff blast by Edwin Encarnacion, and that defying all pessimistic projections they are now off on a wing and a prayer and a whoosh of momentum to face down the fearsome Texas Rangers in their Arlington lair?

Well, there’s that, too.

The 2016 American League Wild Card Game: How it Went Down:

Like every sports decision made in this town, the choice of a starting pitcher was fraught beyond all proportion of its significance. In reality, in a single sudden-death game, the choice of a starter isn’t quite so important as you’d think. The wild card roster is a one-off. The manager can place whatever 25 players on it that might have the most immediate impact on this game. If you win, you reset your roster for the ALDS. So if your starter wavers and your manager isn’t a complete dozer, the starter will be gone at the first whiff of trouble. And you’ve got somebody lined up who can go long and take over as if they were starting. You should even have him warmed up as the game starts.

Frankly, I favoured Liriano over Stroman as the starter. I thought the reasons were self-evident and compelling. First, there’s the veteran cool of Liriano, as opposed to the high emotional investment that goes into every Stroman performance. I realize their playoff experience was equal going in, but still, the veteran . . . Then there were the relative merits of their two starts against the O’s last week. Stroman pitched very well, with some bad luck, but Liriano was dominant, and, crucially, dominant against the left-handed power of the Orioles. There was also the small matter of one more day’s rest for Liriano.

As it worked out, the decision was pretty well the right one, but for the very reasons I cited. There’s no way of knowing if Liriano would have pitched as well as Stroman over six innings, but chances are . . . On the other hand, that very veteran cool of Liriano played astonishingly well out of the bullpen late in the game, in a role that Stroman has never really faced with the Jays. So good on John for seeing that Liriano long out of the bullpen was the way to go. Imagine if the game had gone on to Canada Day versus Cleveland proportions, and Liriano were on the hill!

I was more than a little surprised that Orioles’ manager Buck Showalter went with Chris Tillman instead of Ubaldo Jimenez, and for much the same rationale. Recall that my piece on Thursday’s shutout of the Jays by Baltimore was entitled, “If you can’t hit Ubaldo Jimenez . . .” Jimenez had tied the Jays up in knots and left them muttering to themselves. I would have started Jimenez for the psychological advantage alone. Let the Jays’ hitters spend twenty-four hours obsessing over why they didn’t hit him last week, and what hex he had over them. And like Topsy, the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead, when Jimenez is bad he is really bad, and really quickly, so have Tillman hot and the hook ready and take your chances! Added to the mix was the fact that Tillman’s never been a happy camper pitching in Toronto, and the park’s confines have always constituted a major threat to him. Taking it all together, to me it suggests that Buck Showalter’s genius is highly over-rated.

For Toronto fans who cut their milk teeth on back-to-back jacks and other such wonderful offensive phenomena, this business of winning with good pitching, tight defense, just a touch of timely hitting, and a deep and powerful bullpen is a new and wonderful thing. In fact, the last factor, the wipeout bullpen, is so new that we never knew we had it until last night!

From the time Adam Jones stroked Marcus Stroman’s first pitch weakly into short centre field, for three innings the dynamic young right-hander was the best he has ever been. The Jones fly ball, a Hyun Soo Kim groundout, and a Mannie Machado popup took twelve pitches. A Mark Trumbo grounder to short, a lazy Matt Wieters fly to left, and Stroman’s first strikeout, of the strangely hapless and immensely frustrated Chris Davis, took fourteen pitches. A Jonathan Schoop groundout to short, a Michael Bourn caught looking, and a Jay Hardy punchout took nine pitches. Stroman was perfect after three with three strikeouts on only 35 pitches.

Meanwhile, Chris Tillman had equally good results, though with less dominance and control, no more so than on a 3-1 pitch to Jose Bautista leading off the second, which somehow found its way into the 200s in left field, putting the Jays on the board first. One swing from Bautista, and memories of game five against Texas circled the stadium as he circled the bases. Tillman also needed support from right fielder Michael Bourn, who moved over to the line smartly to snag a treacherous opposite-field drive by Troy Tulowitzki. To be fair to Tillman, though, Bautista was the only extra batter he faced in the first three innings, and his count, 41, was nearly as good as Stroman’s.

In the fourth inning Stroman’s nice little perfect game he had going somehow slipped out of cruise control, and the Jays suddenly found themselves on the short end of the 2-1 stick of a Baltimore lead, courtesy of the one real mistake pitch Stroman threw in his entire six innings. First, the free-swinging Adam Jones decided wisely to actually look at what Stroman was throwing before swinging with intent. On a 1-2 pitch he reached across the plate and laid a little line single into right field between Edwin and Travis. Hyun Soo Kim worked Stroman into a full count, and then bounced one to Edwin at first, who took the out himself, Jones moving up.

In what appeared at the time to be the pivotal play of the inning, Mannie Machado, who was so far 0 for 1 with a popup tonight, and who’d done no damage to the Jays in Toronto dating back through last week’s series, hit a looping liner into right centre that seemed destined to drop and score the speedy Jones with the tying run. As Jose Bautista circled over to cut it off and hold Machado to a single, a second fielder, the Superman, Kevin Pillar, raced into the picture, cut in front of Bautista, dove and skidded on his elbows while the ball gently cradled into his glove for the second out. Pillar leapt to his feet and fired the ball in to third to hold Jones at second.

If Stroman could get by Mark Trumbo, the lead would be preserved. But on the first pitch to the major-league home run leader, Trumbo reached down for a low inside fast ball, and golfed it down the line and over the bullpen fence in the left field corner, in an eerie simulacrum of Joe Carter’s series-ending homer in 1993, which landed in about the same spot. In three and two thirds innings, Stroman had given up two hits, but they came together, and one of them was a tater, giving Baltimore a 2-1 lead. Matt Wieters fanned to end the inning, but leaving the hitting-challenged Blue Jays in the hole again.

Unlike Stroman, Tillman’s fourth saw only a base on balls to Jose Bautista, and we went to the fifth inning facing the fact that if we didn’t get this game back to even before the seventh, the back end of the Baltimore bullpen would make a rally difficult in the extreme.

Stroman quickly got the first out in the top of the fifth, fanning poor Chris Davis for the second time, and then the defense came to his rescue again. Jonathan Schoop scalded a one-hopper into the hole between short and third. Reacting instinctively, Tulo laid out in a dive and cleanly backhanded the ball. That was the easy part. He then had to bounce up and throw to first with his weight still going toward third. Astonishingly, the strong throw nipped Schoop by a fraction. Tulo’s play took on greater significance when Michael Bourn followed with a single and stolen base, but Jay Hardy fanned, also for the second time, to strand Bourn at second.

There was something Shakespearean about Chris Tillman’s exit from the game in the Jays’ fifth. Something along the lines of “out too early, but yet too late” comes to mind. Tillman retired Tulo, who led off the inning after making a great play in the field, as the tradition goes, on a short fly to left. Tulo was the last out Tillman recorded. Michael Saunders crossed up everybody, well everybody wearing orange on black, by hitting a fly ball down the left field line, out of the reach of any fielder by miles, and it hopped once into the stands for a double. Kevin Pillar then followed with a much harder liner down the right field line (must have been opposites day) that Bourn got a glove on, but couldn’t catch. Saunders, holding up for a possible catch, was late breaking from second, and coach Luis Rivera wisely held him there while Pillar cruised into second with a double.

With one out, and two effective contacts in a row, in a game like this, you would have thought that Showalter would be ready with a big left-handed strikeout guy, which is what he needed with first open and one out, and what he didn’t really have with Tillman. But he stayed with his starter. Zeke Carrera rose to the occasion yet again and singled to centre to score Saunders, tie the game, and move Pillar to third, where he was also wisely held by Rivera.

Now Showalter came out to get Tillman and bring in Mychal Givens. I admit that I was so caught up in the immediate that I forgot what game we were playing, and was surprised to see Tillman being yanked in a tie game with a pitch count of 74 and the double play in order. But of course he shouldn’t have faced Carrera, and the inability to fan Zeke, who does strike out a lot, in a sense proves that he was past his due date. Mychal Givens, though, was definitely not past his due date, and escaped the inning by throwing one pitch, which Devon Travis obligingly grounded to Mannie Machado at third, who turned it into a rally-killing double play.

Stroman had an easy sixth, retiring the Orioles on three ground balls with only nine pitches, despite giving up an infield hit to Mannie Machado, when his grounder to second behind the bag with Edwin playing so far off the bag in an extreme shift that in effect nobody was able to cover first, though Stroman tried to make it over on time. This sort of anomalous play, so alien to baseball tradition, is going to take some getting used to. In reality it was only a fourth ground ball in the inning, and with two outs came to nothing.

After Givens raced through the heart of the Jays’ order on 13 pitches, striking out both Donaldson and Bautista, we came to the top of the seventh and the new reality of managing in a one-game playoff. After 81 pitches, two runs and four hits, and being in full command save for the Jones/Trumbo outburst in the fourth, Stroman was finished for the night. Perhaps Gibbie had been reading up on the high incidence of first-batter hits on pitchers sent out for “just one more” inning, but he wasn’t going to take a chance on it. Chris Davis, the Knight of the Balky Bat, was due up second, and there was no way Gibbie was going to roll the dice with Stroman against Davis after he’d punched him out twice: Brett Cecil would take Davis, and sensibly Gibbie decided to bring him in to start the inning.

Now, trigger warnings are big deals these days on university campuses and even out in the general public. It seems if someone is going to present something to a group that might be conceivably even remotely traumatic for someone in the group, they have to post a warning, such as, if one were teaching Huckleberry Finn one might be expected to warn victims of child abuse that Huck’s Pap is a pretty mean old sot, and they might want to skip those pages.

For Blue Jays’ fans, bringing Brett Cecil into a close game this year might be the occasion for a sports trigger warning. It could cause us to flash back, for example, all the way to April fifth in Tampa, when Aaron Sanchez pitched a superb seven innings, giving up one run on five hits, walking none and striking out eight. At 91 pitches over seven, Gibbie obviously felt it was time to let the bullpen finish up and protect the 2-1 Jays lead. With the left-handed Kevin Kiermaier up first, the call was to Brett Cecil, who hit Kiermaier with a 1-2 pitch, retired Brandon Guyer on a fly ball, and then gave up the game-winning two-run homer to Logan Forsythe, who was tormenting us even then. Thus was Sanchez’ first superb effort of the year spoiled. Especially in the first half of the year, this scenario was played out far too often, and with far too many relievers beyond just Cecil, who unfortunately became the lightning rod for all the yahoos wanting to weed out the entire bullpen.

Ever since, over the whole year, we Toronto fans have gut-clenched every time a starter has come out of a close game after a good outing, and when it’s been Brett Cecil coming in, fairly or not, it’s been cause for a double clench.

Recently, though, Cecil has done a good job for the Jays, especially in the full inning stint. But tonight, ironically, after retiring the switch-hitter Matt Wieters on a slow roller on which the hard-charging Donaldson made a fine barehanded play, he walked Davis. That brought the manager out, and Joe Biagini in to replace Cecil. Now, sadly for Cecil at the time, Biagini wasn’t the known, trusted quantity in April that he is now. But now, well, how many times this season has he come in and simply stopped whatever was going on, usually with a big strikeout, sometimes with a big play. Tonight it was not one, but two strikeouts, as he disposed of Schoop looking and Bourn swinging on eight pitches.

Little did we know at the end of the seventh that it would be the first of five innings pitched by the Jays’ bullpen, innings that would be scoreless, hitless, and without base-runners, after the one-out walk of Davis in the seventh. Had you asked, say, the June Blue Jay fan if such a stretch was possible, the response would be yeah, that’s a stretch all right—no way!

Here’s the roll of honour: Biagini, the two thirds in the seventh, 8 pitches, two strikeouts. Jason Grilli in the eighth, retired in order, one strikeout, 12 pitches. Roberto Osuna in the ninth, retired in order, two strikeouts, 14 pitches, Osuna in the tenth, one third, five pitches. Here’s the most concerning note of the night: Osuna pulled up sore-armed after the one out in the tenth. Edwin came over to check him, and then called for the trainer. He was pulled, as it turns out, for as they say precautionary reasons, and the later word was that it was nothing serious.

Francisco Liriano, who had been ready for matchup duty for some time, was called in to replace Osuna, and the symmetry of the Jays’ starting assignment was complete. With nobody on base, facing the right-handed Jonathan Schoop and the left-handed Michael Bourn, he said later that he just pretended he was the starting pitcher, and started with two easy ground ball outs on six pitches to end the inning.

Liriano continued his easy domination of the Orioles in the eleventh, inning, inducing his third and fourth consecutive ground balls from Jay Hardy and Adam Jones. His final batter was scheduled to be the dangerous Hyun Soo Kim, but Showalter opted to pinch hit the right-handed Nolan Reimold against the left-handed Liriano. Liriano cared not a whit for the change, and blew Reimold away on three pitches. Little could we imagine then that Reimold’s punchout was the Orioles’ last gasp, and that it ensured that Francisco Liriano would be awarded the win in the 2016 American League Wild Card Game.

The theory was that if this game were close and it got into the bullpens, then the Blue Jays would be toast, or at the very least at a significant disadvantage. Not only did the Orioles have Zach Britton, he of the perfect save record this year, perhaps one of the top three Cy Young candidates in the league this year, but they also had Brad Brach, who made the All-Star team this year as a setup man, Darren O’Day, the intimidating sidearmer, and the left-handed Brian Duensing, their recent pickup from Minnesota, whom the Jays couldn’t solve last week in Toronto.

Well, it will be a matter of discussion for years, but Buck Showalter never used Zach Britton in the game. He didn’t use him in the ninth when the Jays threatened. He didn’t use him in the eleventh, when, having brought in Ubaldo Jimenez to pitch to Devon Travis after Duensing fanned Zeke Carrera, Travis singled to left. He didn’t bring him in when Josh Donaldson singled Travis to third with no one out. He still sat in the bullpen, looking on, as Edwin’s blast sailed into the stands, bringing the game to an end. Let the Hot Stove chatter begin!

Mind you, save for a serious scare in the bottom of the ninth, the relievers Showalter did use did a fine job, right up until the arrival of Jiminez with one in the eleventh. Givens, who is certainly up for bigger things in the future, followed his one-pitch rescue of Tillman in the fifth with a clean sixth and two outs in the seventh before yielding to the left-handed Donnie Hart, brought in to take Michael Saunders out of the game in favour of Melvin Upton. Givens didn’t allow a base-runner in two full innings, struck out three, and threw only 19 pitches.

Hart induced a fly ball to fairly deep left off the bat of Upton, the only batter he faced. This was the play on which an idiot fan in the left field stands made us all look bad by heaving a beer can on the field near Kim as he was settling under the fly ball. At the time of writing, the police are distributing a picture of the miscreant, but he hasn’t been pulled out from the rock he’s hiding under yet. I would have expected neighbouring fans to have assisted stadium staff in identifying the guy on the spot. I would also expect the team to reconsider the sale of beer in cans at the park. We can only hope.

Brad Brach came in for the eighth for the Orioles. With one out, Zeke Carrera had another great at bat that resulted in a ground ball single to right. This brought Devon Travis to the plate. Travis took a shot at bunting for a base hit, not a bad idea with the speedy Carrera on first, but fouled it off. He fouled off another with a full swing, and then . . . grounded into his second consecutive double play.

When Brach came out for the ninth, he survived the best chance Toronto had of putting the game away in regulation. Josh Donaldson led off and worked Brach to 3 and 1 and then pulled a low inside fast ball inside the bag at third and down into the left field corner for a double. As the intense Donaldson reached second, it was clear that he felt that he had set the wheels for a ninth-inning win into motion. Showalter elected to walk Edwin to pitch to Bautista with the double play in order.

Once again, visions of the demons of the recent past arose before us, as Bautista took a 1-2 slider for strike three. Thus was removed the option of scoring the run while making two outs. To score on a sacrifice fly or a deep grounder, Donaldson would have to manufacture a way to get to third. Or Russell Martin would have to get a base hit off side-armer Darren O’Day, who took over from Brach after the strikeout. However, on the first pitch to him, Martin grounded into the Jays’ third double play of the game, and it was off to extra innings.

Having thrown only one pitch to rescue the O’s in the ninth, O’Day returned to the mound for the tenth, and breezed through the Jays in order, retiring Tulo on a foul popup, fanning Justin Smoak hitting for Upton, and getting Pillar to fly out to the centre fielder Jones in right centre.

With Liriano efficiently holding the Orioles down in the eleventh, the Jays returned to the plate hoping to find a way to finish Baltimore off for Liriano. Reimold stayed in the game in left after hitting for Kim, and Showalter brought in Brian Duensing to pitch to Carrera, who must have felt honoured to be the target of a matchup. Not so honoured, though, when Duensing fanned him for the first out. With the only left-handed hitter in the lineup gone, Showalter brought in Ubaldo Jiminez to pitch to the top of the order. Similarly to Francisco Liriano, Jiminez had been assigned to the bullpen after Tillman was chosen for the start. And, like Liriano, he had spent some time in the bullpen this year, but decidedly not because of a traffic jam in the starting rotation. Regardless of matchup considerations, this is the point where it becomes puzzling why Showalter didn’t bring in Britton. Even if he was only used at this point to hold the game at twos, if the Orioles didn’t hold the game at twos their season would be over.

But Jiminez he wanted, Jiminez he got, and he may get awfully tired of explaining why over the course of the off-season. Jiminez, who may or may not have been fully loose when he came in, threw exactly five pitches, but that was enough to send Toronto to Arlington to play the Rangers, and Baltimore home to contemplate their navels over a long and cold winter. Devon Travis took a ball and a strike, and then hit a line drive to left for his first hit of the game. Jiminez’ first pitch to Josh Donaldson was a waist-high fast ball and Donaldson didn’t waste any time hitting it into left field for another base hit. As Travis was rounding second, he could see Nolan Reimold, who had just come into the game, bobble the ball in left, and he boldly broke for third. Reimold’s throw was off line, and Travis was on third with nobody out.

With Edwin Encarnacion at the plate, almost any ball put in play would have a chance of scoring Travis from third and ending the game. Jiminez had but one pitch left to throw. He tried to go inside above the knees with a 91 mph fast ball, but it never got there. Edwin just wanted to make sure that the run scored from third, so he put a good swing on it, and we all know how that turned out.

On reviewing the interminable repeated replays of Edwin’s great moment, it becomes clear that there are two compelling images in view. Edwin completes his swing, starts to take a step toward first, then stops and raises his arms in the air, his bat still held in his right hand, until he lets it drop. The other side of the story is told in the view we have of veteran Orioles catcher Matt Wieters, who, at the very moment Edwin raises his arms, turns to his right, away from the diamond, and starts to walk away.

One exults. The other only wishes to escape. It is always so. But never more so than in Toronto, at 11:33 p.m. on October 4, 2016, in the eleventh inning, when Edwin Encarnacion hit the home run that propelled the Toronto Blue Jays from the 2016 American League Wild Card Game into the American League Division Series against the Texas Rangers.

As we enjoy this wonderful triumph, and look forward to an exciting series with the Rangers, give a thought to the Baltimore Orioles and their loyal fans. They could be going to Texas, and we could be drowning our sorrows in stale beer. There but for the grace of the baseball gods go I.

I have an idea: let’s talk about whether or not the Blue Jays should limit Aaron Sanchez’ innings on the mound this season.

I have an even better idea: let’s never raise that subject again. Note: this means you, idiotic radio call-in guy who no more than two days ago was rambling on about how “fantastic” it would be for the Jays to have Sanchez and Osuna linked in the bullpen for the playoffs.

Now, where were we? Oh, yeah, the playoffs: Hey, we made it!

With Toronto’s spine-tinglingly tight 2-1 season-closing win against the Big Bad Red Sox and their ace David Price this afternoon, the Blue Jays played their way into the top American League Wild Card slot. (Let’s not forget to give a nod to lowly Atlanta for coming up big and sealing Detroit’s fate, as they landed just outside the magic circle.) Toronto will now host Baltimore on Tuesday evening at the TV Dome in the Big Smoke.

Conflicting emotions: Oh, joy! Oh, no! Here’s what I’m going to do at 8:00 Tuesday night while I’m waiting for Marcus Stroman or Francisco Liriano to throw the first pitch to Adam Jones: I’m going to chew two 81-milligram aspirin, and put 911 on speed dial. So far my heart’s been up to every challenge I’ve had to face in life (knock on wood), but a sudden-death (note the eery terminology), one-and-done, winner plays on, loser goes home, wild card play-in game? Best not to take any chances!

Leaving aside the fact that it really would have been nice if we had been sitting on a five-game lead in the division going into game 162 of this long season, it’s hard to imagine a more fitting and perfect climax to regular-season play for 2016 than today’s matchup between Aaron Sanchez and the Toronto Blue Jays, and David Price and the Boston Red Sox.

Love him, tolerate him, or wish him godspeed to anywhere except the home team dugout in Toronto (I don’t include hate him here, because who could really hate the lovable goof?), ya gotta hand it to John Gibbons, ably advised, no doubt, by pitching coach Pete Walker. They could not have handled the rotation any better than to come into this game with Aaron Sanchez on the hill.

The first goal for 2016 for Aaron Sanchez was to determine if he really is a major league top-of-rotation pitcher. Check. The second goal was to ensure to the best of anybody’s ability that his arm would still be strong at the end of the season. Check again. The first two having been accomplished, the third goal was to have him lined up to pitch the most important game of the season. Check, check, and double-check.

Gibbie and Walker utilized the six-man rotation, the off-days, and the judicious skipping or pushing back of certain starts to bring us to this point in the concluding weekend of the season: that Aaron Sanchez, already having established himself as one of the most dominant pitchers in the league, should be available on normal rest to pitch either a wild-card game, game one of a league division series, or, worst case scenario, the last game of the year, if it were needed to cement a playoff spot.

Still needing one win or one Detroit loss to make the Wild Card game, scenario number three, pitch Sanchez in the final game if it is meaningful, came into play. There is an old axiom known to all good kids’ baseball coaches, who play most of their seasons in playoff-type conditions: You have to win the game you’re in. If you make the semi-finals of a tournament, you start your ace there, and let the final play out as it will. It truly is the case of “go big or go home”.

Gibbie went big today, for obvious reasons. So did Manager John Farrell, for perhaps slightly less compelling reasons. The Sox clinched the division last Wednesday. The LDS begins next Thursday. That’s eight days for the manager to align his rotation to get the best possible setup for the playoff round. In the meantime, there was the matter of playing for home field advantage throughout the American League playoffs, a matter of obvious importance to Boston, given the advantages bestowed on the home team by Fenway Park. After yesterday’s games were completed, the Sox still had a chance of securing home field advantage over Cleveland in the first round.

The importance Farrell assigned to this game is seen by his starting lineup, with not one regular missing. It’s also seen in the fact that David Price was on the mound, although with a pitch limitation that Farrell alluded to before the game, without identifying the maximum number. The interesting thing about having Price start this game, so much less significant than game one of the LCS, is that by default the assignment to start the playoff round goes to Rick Porcello, and that’s clearly the way Farrell has planned it. That elicits a big “hmmm” from me, as I think, “so the Red Sox are paying 217 million dollars over seven years to their number two starter??”

For four innings Sanchez and Price traded zeros, but whereas Price managed the Jays, working around base-runners, Sanchez was dominant. Price gave up three hits, walked three, and struck out three, throwing 68 pitches in the process. Sanchez walked one, struck out four, and faced one over the minimum twelve batters, throwing 56 pitches.

The thing to know about lightning strikes is that you just don’t know about lightning strikes. Never know when they’re gonna come, or where they’re gonna hit. So, no, David Price wasn’t throwing a no-hitter like Sanchez was, but as the top of the fifth progressed, he was cruising. Kevin Pillar swung late and hit a short fly to right. Zeke Carrera fanned. With two out, Devon Travis came to the plate. He had been sitting on ten home runs ever since August sixth. But not after this at bat, as a Green Monster shot went for number eleven, and the Jays—and Sanchez—had a one-run lead. Josh Donaldson flew out to left to end the inning.

In the bottom of the fifth Sanchez continued to roll, making up for the slight hiccup of nicking Jackie Bradley with a pitch with two outs by freezing Sandy Leon with one of his signature awesome curves for the third out.

We learned when the Sox came out for the top of the sixth what Price’s limitation was, because he was out of the game, at five innings and 80 pitches. He’d certainly pitched well enough, but very differently from the David Price who pitched for us last year: one run, four hits, three walks, only four strikeouts. The only thing the same was the ridiculous amount of time he took to serve up each pitch.

Heath Hembree threw the sixth for Boston and retired the Jays on 13 pitches while giving up a two-out single to Russell Martin. Robbie Ross pitched the seventh, and managed to strand a one-out double to right by Kevin Pillar while otherwise shutting down the Blue Jays, with the help of Matt Barnes, who got the last out by retiring

Devon Travis on a fly ball to centre.

Meanwhile, Sanchez had another quick inning in the bottom of the sixth, issuing a leadoff walk to Andrew Benintendi, but getting Dustin Pedroia to ground into a double play. Travis Holt flew out to centre, and he was through six with no hits on just 80 pitches.

Sanchez’ no-hitter and shutout bid lasted another two outs into the seventh. Mookie Betts smacked a liner right at Josh Donaldson, and David Ortiz lofted a short fly to centre before Hanley Ramirez wrecked both the no-no and the whitewash with a shot to the foul pole in left.

Boston Manager John Farrell brought in the Sox’ most significant trade deadline bullpen acquisition, Brad Ziegler, for the eighth inning. In three prior appearances against the Jays, he’d been very effective twice, and given up a run in the third. But today Toronto was on a mission, to wrap up that wild card slot. Josh Donaldson started them off with a rush, with a “Fenway single” a hard shot off the wall that might have gone out elsewhere, but rebounded hard enough that Donaldson was held to a single. Edwin Encarnacion drew a walk on a 3-2 count, bringing Jose Bautista to the plate, but Bautista grounded sharply to the third baseman Brock Holt right at the bag, who turned it into a 5-3 double play, erasing Donaldson as Encarnacion moved to second.

That brought Russell Martin to the plate with two outs and Edwin in scoring position. Martin hit a soft grounder, again to Holt at third, and Holt couldn’t make the play on it. Meanwhile, Edwin moved up to third behind him. The biggest lack for the Blue Jays in the last month or so has been the failure to cash runners from third base, either with one out or two. The sac fly, the ground ball up the middle, the two-out base hit, have all been as rare as, as rare as . . . tea party invites in Toronto for Yordana Ventura. (What, you wouldn’t like to have tea with a class guy like that??)

But it’s October, and so far we’re one for October, and looking to make it two for October. Troy Tulowitzki came to the plate and Ziegler’s approach to Tulo was sinkers low and inside. He missed with the first two, way too low and way too inside. The third one he threw low and inside, but in the strike zone. Big mistake. Tulo lined it into centre field, Edwin trotted home, and the Jays had the lead. Only 2-1, and they had to protect it through the eighth and ninth, but still, they had the lead. John Farrell brought in Drew Pomerantz to fan Michael Saunders ending the inning.

At seven innings and 97 pitches, Aaron Sanchez had done his job (one run, two hits, two walks, one hit batsman, and six strikeouts) , and it was time to call to the bullpen and cross some fingers. Gibbie wanted to turn Sandy Leon around, so the first in for the Jays was Brett Cecil. Of course Farrell pinch-hit Chris Young for Leon, and Young hit a single to right. The Jays’ manager left Cecil in for the left-handed-hitting rookie Andrew Benintendi. Good call, because Benintendi tried twice and failed to bunt Young to second, and then took a curve ball low on the inside corner, according to the plate umpire, for strike three. Unfortunately, Young stole second on the pitch.

With Dustin Pedroia and Brock Holt coming up, Joe Biagini came in and extricated his team from the jam. The dangerous Pedroia grounded out to third, while Young had to hold second, and then, in the most crucial at bat of the game to that point, Biagini fanned Holt on a low slider on the outside corner, leaving Young at second.

Pomerantz kept the Jays from adding insurance in the ninth, though he allowed Zeke Carrera to reach base on his own fielding error on a comebacker. But Travis flied out to right and Donaldson lined out to centre, and it was last call for the Bosox, down 2-1. Cue the nail-biting music (again).

After two innings and 26 pitches yesterday for the win, Roberto Osuna was ready to answer the call again. Given the workload for him recently, it shouldn’t be surprising when the young closer doesn’t manage a shutdown inning for the save. More often than not, though, as today, he manages to work out of his own jams, a testament to his sang-froid, so remarkable in a twenty-one-year-old.

Fortunately for Osuna, and for our nerves, he quickly secured the first two outs before wavering. Facing the meat of the order, Osuna got Mookie Betts to ground out to shortstop on a 2-2 pitch. David Ortiz, in his last regular-season at-bat at Fenway (unless he changes his mind and messes everybody up!), dribbled one in front of the plate that Russell Martin pounced on; Ortiz was an easy out at first, and left the field to thunderous adoration on the part of the Sox faithful.

Ah, but then Hanley Ramirez worked a walk on a 3-2 pitch. Zander Bogaerts lined a single to centre, moving Ramirez to second. This brought Jackie Bradley to the plate, Bradley, who has really struggled since the All-Star break. And on an 0-1 pitch he completed his regular season as it had been going, by grounding out to Josh Donaldson to end the game.

Suddenly, the rag-tag September Blue Jays had turned into the tight and taut October Jays, winning two tense one-run games bearding the Red Sox in their own lair. They had secured their spot in Tuesday’s Wild Card Game in Toronto against the Orioles, and they had done it on their own hook.

Suddenly, thanks to good pitching, perfect defence, and just enough timely hitting, Toronto had turned the forecast for October from gloomy and foreboding to sunny and warm. And they would be going into the fearsome sudden-death format on a positive roll, with every hope that the wheels would continue to turn on Tuesday.

Beyond Baltimore await the Texas Rangers, and we know what that means for Toronto!

Let’s all cast our minds back to Opening Day, April third. We’ve gathered with a bunch of our friends and other like-minded fans at our favourite sports bar to watch the Blue Jays open the season in Tampa against the Rays.

Suddenly, a wild-eyed, disheveled, agitated stranger dressed from head to toe in rumpled Jays’ gear rushes up to our table to announce that he has wonderful news from the future. We all look sideways at each other and decide to indulge this fellow. He may well be crazy, but at least his heart’s in the right place. “So, give,” I say to him, “What’s your big news from the future?”

The words rush out of him as he breathlessly informs us that he has just watched game 161 of Toronto’s 2016 schedule, and that the Jays pulled out an incredible ninth-inning victory at Fenway over the American League East champion Boston Red Sox. The thing about this great game, he hastened to add, was that it pretty well assured our favourite team of earning a wild card spot in the playoffs.

Well, this would be funny enough, Boston already having clinched the division, the Jays trying to squeeze into the wild card game, but what he says next is absolutely hysterical: the heroes of this implausible future game were Jay Happ, pitching for his twenty-first win, Kevin Pillar, who drove in three runs, and Ezequiel Carrera, who drove in the winning run in the top of the ninth off Boston closer Craig Kimbrel.

That would have been quite enough for us. This fellow was obviously dotty. But we are gentle folk; one of us calls 911 to report a person having a mental health crisis, and we hope that whoever comes for him will be kind, because he is clearly delusional.

Let’s face it, folks, you couldn’t make this stuff up.

Here we are, game 161 is in the books, we fought off a Red Sox rally and scored the winning run without benefit of a base hit after Roberto Osuna balked in the tying run to come ever so closer to our only hope for post-season success, one of the two American League wild card berths. Jay Happ didn’t get his twenty-first win, but he further cemented his position as, at the very least, one of two number one starters in the Blue Jays’ rotation, and a legitimate candidate for the Cy Young award. This is an outcome that not even the most wildly optimistic Blue Jays’ fanatics would have projected when Happ signed last November. And, yes, Kevin Pillar and Zeke Carrera produced all the runs in this spine-tingler of a game.

You will not have forgotten, of course, that at the conclusion of last night’s play we had the sense that we were teetering on the edge of the precipice, and a three-hundred pound gorilla with massive elbows was heading our way to give us a nudge. It was hard to credit, with two games to play, one of them against David Price, and with the Tigers ready to romp through Atlanta twice more, following the well-worn path of General William Tecumseh Sherman, that it would be possible to achieve our clinch number of three.

And yet, the clinch number is now one; before we scored the winning run tonight we knew that Atlanta had held off the Tigers for a 5-3 victory. Our win over Boston had given us the second of the three components we needed. A night that started in a downpour ended, maybe not with a rainbow, but with a magnificent ray of hope: if we managed somehow to squeeze out a win over Price, we were in. Even if we lost to Price on Sunday, the Tigers would have two games, if needed, in which to lose one and be eliminated.

The pitching matchup for tonight’s game is the matchup that shows exactly why the Jays have an advantage over every other team in the AL East in terms of starting pitching. Although their records don’t reflect it, we all know that the Estrada-Porcello match was a sawoff, and in fact Estrada had the best of Porcello, as the game wasn’t decided until they were both gone, and Estrada left with the lead and a better pitching line, albeit an inning shorter than Porcello’s. And tomorrow, the prestige and hype of David Price notwithstanding, if Aaron Sanchez is at his best, the advantage lies with the Jays. That leaves tonight, and tonight is the proof of the superiority of the Jays’ starters, because there is no comparison between Jay Happ and Eduardo Rodriguez, the left-handed sophomore starting for the Sox.

Rodriguez had a pretty good rookie season with Boston in 2015, throwing 121 innings and going 10-6 with an ERA of 3.85 with, remember, a last-place team. This year, he

has had some injury issues, dealing with a knee problem that delayed the beginning of his season, and then he missed some time in August with a hamstring strain on the other leg. His numbers over the whole season show a drop from last year; he came into this game at 3-7 and 4.68. To be fair, though, like a number of other bottom of the rotation pitchers the Jays have faced this year, he has been consistently better in his recent starts, including eight innings of one-hit shutout ball against Oakland on September fourth.

When I mentioned that the game had started in a downpour, I was not writing symbolically. It really was pouring steadily at game time, and continued for at least the next five or six innings until it finally diminished.

Dizzy Dean, the superb Hall of Fame pitcher of the St. Louis Cardinals, circa 1930s, was not only a great pitcher, but a great wit, if in a folksy, play-dumb kind of way. His fame as a garrulous country tale spinner blossomed when he became a radio play-by-play man for the Cardinals after the end of his baseball career. One of my favourite Dean stories stems from his broadcasting during the second world war. At that time, weather reports were not allowed on American radio broadcasts, for fear that knowledge of weather conditions might be useful to an enemy planning a surprise attack. This ban covered all mention of the weather on all broadcasting.

One night, while covering a game being played in a steady drizzle, Dean just couldn’t help himself. “I ain’t supposed to say what the weather is like”, he announced, “but that ain’t sweat what is runnin’ down the pitcher’s face.”

When Rodriguez took the mound to face the Jays in the top of the first, I guarantee you that it wasn’t sweat what was runnin’ down his face. It wasn’t coming down as hard in the top of the first as it would later, and Rodriguez was able to retire the side in order on 14 pitches with a strikeout of Josh Donaldson, though he went 2-0 on two of the three batters, and 1-0 on Donaldson.

It was only a matter of time before a wet ball would become an issue, and it affected Jay Happ first, as the rain started coming harder. Happ simply has not had control issues this year, but he couldn’t find the plate in the rain and it cost him a two-run deficit on only one hit. After Dustin Pedroia grounded out to second on the first pitch of the game, Happ walked Xander Bogaerts and David Ortiz. Mookie Betts grounded softly to Travis at second. With no chance for a double play, Travis tagged Ortiz in the base path for the fielder’s choice, Bogaerts taking third. Then, pivotally, Happ issued his third walk, to Hanley Ramirez, loading the bases for Chris Young with two outs. Young stroked a single to centre scoring Bogaerts and Betts and the Sox had a two-run lead after one.

Then it was Rodriguez’ turn to try to find the plate with much worse conditions than he had faced in the first inning. It was hard to tell whether it was worse for him in the second than it had been for Happ, but he found it even harder to throw strikes, falling behind the first three hitters he faced and walking them all. Then he struck out Melvin Upton on a 1-2 pitch for the first out, bringing Kevin Pillar to the plate. Pillar went after the first pitch and hit it into centre for a two-run single and the game was tied. Jackie Bradley tried to throw out Troy Tulowitzki at third and his throw was off, allowing Pillar to take second. Unfortunately, Zeke Carrera and Devon Travis both fanned, blowing a great opportunity to take the lead on the Sox.

Despite the miserable conditions, both pitchers managed to keep the score at twos from the bottom of the second inning through the fifth. Happ gave up three hits and a walk over the four innings. Of some note in a game that would be close right to the end, one of the hits Happ gave up was a one-out single to David Ortiz in the fifth inning. Either playing for the winning run early, or just out of a desire not to wreck a rally by having Ortiz gum up the works on the bases, Manager John Farrell decided to run for Ortiz, and inserted Travis Shaw at first base. Unfortunately for Farrell, Happ stranded Shaw at first, and now Ortiz would not come to the plate again in this close game. While not particularly wanting to throw cold water on the warm feelings emanating from the Boston crowd toward their beloved slugger, I would point out here that it’s a mixed bag as to whether you really want a DH who might very well hit a home run for you, but is otherwise seen as a detriment to the team’s prospects.

Rodriguez was even more in control than Happ through five, walking only one and giving up two infield hits, and nothing more. But he had continued to pitch deep into counts, and after five stood at 102 pitches. When he walked Russell Martin leading off the sixth, that was it for Farrell, and he went to his bullpen for the hard-throwing Matt Barnes. It took Barnes just long enough to settle in for the Jays to take the lead. Troy Tulowitzki made the first out, but it was loud, a hard liner hit right at Jackie Bradley in centre. A walk to Michael Saunders moved Martin to second, and for the second time tonight Kevin Pillar came to the plate with a runner in scoring position and delivered the lead run with a single to centre that scored Martin and sent Saunders to third. Then Barnes was able to induce a double-play grounder by Zeke Carrera to end the inning.

Jay Happ sailed through the bottom of the sixth on eight pitches, but that raised his total pitch count to 97 for the game, so he was pretty close to the finish line as well. The interesting thing about Happ’s pitch count is that early on, in the rain, he threw a ton of pitches, but then he settled down to work very efficiently. After two innings he had thrown 52 pitches, but in the four innings from three through six he only threw 45.

Happ started the seventh by getting Christian Vazquez to ground out, but then he walked Dustin Pedroia, who was the last batter he faced. In the absence of Joaquin Benoit, Manager Gibbons now had to dig deeper, and sooner, than he had planned, so he called on Jason Grilli to come in in advance of his normal eighth inning stint. Grilli got a scare when the first batter he faced, Xander Bogaerts, drove Michael Saunders back to the wall in left where he then had to make a perfectly-timed leaping catch. Reprieved, Grilli fanned Travis Shaw, hitting in the DH spot he inherited from the departure of David Ortiz, triggering Grilli’s trademark walkoff rant.

Meanwhile, after Barnes the Red Sox went to demoted starter Joe Kelly, he of the great arm and live stuff, who had never really found his metier in the Boston rotation, but seems much more suited to coming out of the pen and just throwing hard. Farrell got a good two innings’ work out of him tonight, as he set down the six men he faced, striking out four of them, on 24 pitches for the two innings.

Gibbie was in the position of having to try to squeeze three shut-down innings out of only two back-end relievers, so he sent Grilli back out for the eighth, with not great results the second time around, though the veteran righty was met with incredible bad luck right off the bat, so to speak. With the Jays in the shift for the right-handed Mookie Betts, including Edwin well off first, Betts took a high ball one. Grilli sent the second one in high as well, but at the top of the zone. Betts started to swing, thought better of it, and checked. But while his bat was out over the plate, the ball nicked it, and rolled fair, rolled, rolled, right down the first-base line, right past the bag, and right down towards the right-field corner, where Zeke Carrera finally caught up with it, but it went as an easy double for Betts. Grilli then issued maybe a semi-intentional pass to Hanley Ramirez to set up the double play, and it was time for Roberto Osuna to take over, splitting the three-inning duty with Grilli.

Osuna got the best possible result out of Brock Holt who on a 2-1 count grounded into a 4-6-3 double play, with Betts moving on to third. Then came the most bizarre moment, perhaps, of Osuna’s season, and certainly the most bizarre moment of this ball game. Peering in for the sign, for some reason Osuna lifted his rear leg fom the rubber. Home plate umpire Quinn Wolcott immediately called a balk, which brought Betts in with the tying run, to the consternation of Osuna, his entire team, and the throngs of Jays fans watching on. Osuna quickly recovered and disposed of Jackie Bradley on a grounder to first on a 3-2 pitch, with Osuna covering.

On to the ninth we went, once again tied as the tension mounted, at least for Toronto fans, because the Jays still had skin in this game. As for Boston, Cleveland had already defeated Kansas City, securing the home-field advantage over the Sox, so Boston was now playing for dignity, and maybe to establish their hold over the Blue Jays, in case they should meet later in the playoffs.

The Blue Jays had to face Sox closer Craig “Batman” Kimbrel in the ninth, with the bottom of the order due up, Kimbrel in to hold the tie so that the Sox could walk it off in the bottom of the ninth. In his most recent appearances against Toronto, Kimbrel has had some control trouble. This time, it was Michael Saunders taking a leadoff walk on a 3-2 count. Dalton Pompey came in to run for him. Kevin Pillar, with three RBIs already under his belt, laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt to move Pompey to second. Then Kimbrel made his second mistake of the inning, wild-pitching Pompey to third. With the lead runner at third and one out, Zeke Carrera worked the count to full and then inside-outed a lazy fly ball to medium-deep left, where Brock Holt settled under it, ready to throw to the plate. The throw was off line, and Pompey crossed easily with the lead run.

That Roberto Osuna should have balked in the tying run beggars the imagination. That the Jays should have retaken the lead in the ninth without a hit, on a walk, a sacrifice bunt, a wild pitch, and a sacrifice fly, strains credulity even more, but there it is, and it was now in Osuna’s hands to protect the precious gift run.

For only the second time this year, Osuna would pitch two full innings, if he wrapped this one up. You have to go all the way back to May 19^th in Minnesota to find the first time he went two. Tonight the extra work in the eighth didn’t seem to bother him, as he retired the Sox in order in the bottom of the ninth to secure not a save, but a win, thanks to his blown save in the eighth. He took fifteen pitches on top of the eleven he threw in the eighth to get a fly out to left by Aaron Hill, a grounder to second on which Devon Travis made a nice diving stop by Marco Hernandez, and another grounder to second by Dustin Pedroia. You haven’t really stopped the Red Sox cold unless you’ve retired the sparkplug Pedroia some time in the last inning.

So thanks to Jay Happ getting a good handle on the ball (literally), Kevin Pillar hanging in at the plate to drive in three, and Zeke Carrera willing a pitch into left to score Dalton Pompey, and despite Roberto Osuna balking in the tying run in the bottom of the eighth, the Jays now face game 162 of this very long, frustrating, but always interesting season on the very cusp of qualifying for major league baseball’s version of Russian roullette, the league wild card game.

Like I said at the outset, if someone had projected in the spring that this is where we would be, and told us how we would have gotten to this point, we never would have believed it. You can’t make this stuff up.

On August 14^th, I wrote that if the Blue Jays didn’t make the playoffs this year,I’d eat my Jose Bautista shirt. Right after the end of tonight’s game, I started googling recipes for baked, boiled, broiled, sautéd, fried, fricaseed, and or juiced baseball jerseys. They all look pretty unappetizing, but a promise is a promise, right? At the moment, I’m leaning toward a nice camicia parmigiana, from Mama Siciliano’s web site. She has really great reviews.

Speaking of shirts, how tight should our collars be right now? Well, here’s the deal. Arriving in Boston for this final series of the year, Toronto is one game ahead of Baltimore. We hold the first wild card slot. Baltimore holds the second slot. The Tigers are one game behind Baltimore for the second slot, and therefore two games behind us. Going into this weekend, we need any combination of three wins and/or Detroit losses to guarantee a wild card slot. We also need to keep ahead of, or keep pace with, Baltimore in order to host the wild card game.

This doesn’t sound so bad, does it? But consider these facts, and see how you feel about our chances. We have been in the same position, with a “clinch number” against Detroit of three, since we beat the Orioles on Monday night. We have made no progress in that regard. In the two losses to Baltimore, in our own ball yard, we scored exactly two runs. In 13 and a third innings, our starting pitchers gave up only four runs, which beat two runs any day. We are playing in Boston’s home park, the quirkiest in major league baseball, a place where the home field advantage is incalculable. We are facing a team high on itself but still playing for home field advantage in their ALDS with Cleveland. We are facing a team preparing to say farewell (until the playoffs anyway; will it never end?) to its beloved slugger in a weekend-long outpouring of love. Tonight we faced the league’s leading candidate for the Cy Young award. Baltimore is playing in New York, facing a good team that has already been eliminated. Detroit is playing in Atlanta against the Braves, a team in hot contention with two others for worst record in the National League.

How tight should our collars be? Pretty damned tight, I’d say.

In four starts against us this year, Rick Porcello has won three and had one no-decision. He has not given up more than four earned runs in any of these starts. In his two previous starts he has picked up two wins, pitching 15 and a third innings, giving up five earned runs, walking 1, and striking out 16. Do I even have to mention that he’s 22-4 with an ERA of 3.11 going into tonight’s game, and should be the leading contender for the Cy Young Award?

Though he fanned two in the top of the first inning, you can’t say that Porcello started out to dominate Toronto. He gave up a single to left by Josh Donaldson, and walked Jose Bautista. Interestingly, he threw 24 pitches to five batters, not a great start if you’re looking for length.

Marco Estrada drew the start for Toronto. In his last couple of starts, roughly since it was announced that he’s been pitching for most of the year with a herniated disc in his back, he has pitched fourteen innings and given up one earned run. That’s one earned run. That’s an ERA of 0.64.

Estrada also faced five batters in the first inning. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out quite the same for him. He also struck out two, gave up a single and a walk, but he threw a wild pitch which advanced Brock Holt, who had walked, to second, so he was in scoring position when David Ortiz singled him home with the only run scored in the first four innings. Besides the wild pitch, there was one other difference in Estrada’s first inning. While Porcello threw a high 24 pitches, Estrada threw an astronomical 37, with disastrous consequences for his hopes of going deep into the game.

How do you end up throwing 37 pitches to five batters? Well, it’s pretty easy if they foul off 16 pitches, easily enough to have navigated an inning just with the fouled-off pitches. In the next two innings, for example, Estrada threw 13 and 14. When you think about it, batters basically foul off pitches that are strikes, or that are too close to take, especially with two strikes on them. So pitches that are fouled off, after strike two, are wasted efforts that could have produced outs. In effect, by the time Estrada went out for the second inning, he had already thrown an extra inning, or even more.

From the second through the fourth inning, neither pitcher ran up a string of consecutive outs. Porcello gave up three base hits, Estrada two and a walk. At the end of the fourth, the score remained 1-0 for Boston.

Despite his sparkling record, Porcello was the one to blink first as he suddenly fell behind 3-1 in the fifth inning. With Zeke Carrera batting leadoff and Devon Travis hitting ninth, not to mention Kevin Pillar batting eighth, a lot of good pot stirring has gone on lately when the lineup turns over. This time Travis led off with a double down the line in left that somehow missed the seats that jut out behind third (one of the quirks of Fenway I was referring to earlier). Recognizing that job one for the Jays was to get the game back to even, Zeke laid down a bunt that might even have been ordered by manager John Gibbons. It evaded the pitcher for a base hit while Travis went to third. Josh Donaldson tied it up with a sacrifice fly to right, leaving Carrera at first.

Then came the shocker, though after what Jose Bautista’s done in the last ten days or so maybe not so much. Whether intentional or not, Porcello strayed from the general game plan by throwing his first pitch, a two-seam fast ball, low in the zone but on the inside corner. Bautista’s eyes must been as big as saucers as he turned on it and parked it in the seats above the Green Monster in left. Not only had the Jays tied the game, they had a 3-1 lead to hand to Estrada as he came in to pitch the bottom of the fifth, which would turn out to be his last.

His last was a typical Estrada inning, at least when he’s not on a no-hit roll: give up a hit, then deal utter frustration with a runner in scoring position. Dustin Pedroia led off with a double to left. But Brock Holt and Mookie Betts popped up, and Big Papi gave everybody a jolt by driving Bautista to the wall with a hard liner that was impressive, but just a loud out.

Entrusted yet again with heavy responsibility by his manager, and much needed to step up in the absence of the injured Joaquin Benoit, Joe Biagini came in and was asked for two innings to bridge to Jason Grilli in the eighth, an assignment necessitated by Estrada’s early departure. One of the things Biagini has done really well this year is to extract his team from really dicey situations. Tonight was no different, but the pickle was his to begin with, so it was only right for him to have to solve it.

Hanley Ramirez grounded out to short to open the inning, but Xander Bogaerts lined one into the right field corner that rattled around down there long enough that he easily stretched it into a triple. With a runner on third and one out, Biagini was in familiar territory, and he set to work in earnest. He had to face the left-handed Jackie Bradley and the switch-hitting catcher Sandy Leon who would also be hitting left. First of all he dismissed Bradley as brusquely as a teacher dismissing an annoying kid from detention. First-pitch slider for a called strike low in the zone. Four-seam fast ball outside. Slider up in the zone, swing and miss. Nasty slider down and inside off the plate. Swing and miss for the strikeout. Then he had some real fun with Leon. Fast ball in the dirt. Slider in the dirt, off the plate inside, swing and miss. Another fast ball in the dirt. Slider just off the outside corner. Swing and miss. Finally, swing and miss on a low changeup way outside. Bogaerts didn’t have a chance of cashing his one-out triple.

If Biagini had been able to leave it there, it would have been fantastic. But the convergence of intangibles, such as Benoit’s pulled calf muscle and all those foul balls off Estrada in the first, conspired to force Biagini back out for the seventh, and it was a classic case of going to the well once too often.

Sharp-looking young outfielder Andrew Benintendi led off with a double to right. Dustin Pedroia—no, he didn’t immediately plate Benintendi with a base hit—he might as well have, as he showed the benefits of putting the ball in play, any play. Pedroia topped a dribbler just a few feet away from catcher Russell Martin. It would have had the effect of a sacrifice bunt, but turned out worse for the good guys. Martin fielded it and fired a strike—right to the rolled-up tarp behind first, under which it got stuck. Lost, actually. Benintendi scored and Pedroia ended up on second because of the ball going out of play. Now, maybe Pedroia ran inside the line (which is illegal—he’s supposed to use the 45-foot lane marked outside the foul line, to give the catcher a clear throw to first.) And maybe he didn’t. In any case, the umpiring crew, not interested in touching off a riot at Fenway, wouldn’t take another look at it.

Pedroia advanced to third with the tying run and nobody out on a Biagini wild pitch, and you just knew the doom scenario was about to unfold. Holt grounded out to a pulled-in Troy Tulowitzki at short, Pedroia not going on contact. Betts hit a one-strike down-and-in four seamer to centre for a hit that scored Pedroia and finished Biagini’s work for the night.

Gibbie brought in Brett Cecil to do the one thing he must do to earn his keep: dispose of David Ortiz, lefty on lefty. And he didn’t do it. Papi jerked an inside sinker that didn’t sink—call it a stinker, if you will—on a line into the short porch in right, and set off the “Goodbye Papi” hysteria in earnest, as he gave the Sox a lead for the first time in the game, a five-three lead that would stand up for the win.

A word about that short porch and David Ortiz. Everyone knows all about the Green Monster in left, but not that many are aware of the short porch extending out from the Pesky Pole. The foul pole in right is only 302 feet from the plate, and the wall extends at a very shallow angle for ten or fifteen feet before veering outward to a reasonable distance. Just so you know, the Pesky Pole is not called that because it is so annoying to opposing teams to see line drive outs turn into homers, but because of Johnny Pesky, a beloved Red Sox figure, an infielder who was with Boston for ten years, from 1942 to 1952, with three years out for military service. And yes, children, major-league ball players did have holes in their career records caused by their military service during the second world war. Look up Ted Williams’ career stats and think about what the totals would have been if he hadn’t missed three seasons serving as a Marine fighter pilot. In these days of privileged superstars, that sounds almost quaint, doesn’t it?

Anyway, the story goes that Pesky, a line-drive contact hitter, who only hit 17 home runs in his career, hit one of them in a game in 1948 that won it for legendary Sox lefty Mel Parnell by hooking it around the pole and just barely into the stands. Parnell, later a Sox broadcaster, began to call the foul pole “Pesky’s Pole”, and the name has stuck all these years.

If you’re looking for a reason why David Ortiz has lasted so long as basically a one-dimensional player for the Red Sox, you wouldn’t have to look much beyond the existence of the short porch at Fenway, issuing its siren call to Ortiz’ line drives.

The rest of the game was denouement. Ironically, after giving up the homer to Ortiz, Cecil finished off the inning by striking out both Ramirez, looking, and Bogaerts, swinging. Aaron Loup finished off for the Jays in the eighth by getting four ground balls. Three went for outs, the fourth was a checked-swing roller toward a shift-vacated third base by the left-handed hitting Benintendi that went for an infield single.

Down by only two runs, the Jays missed a good opportunity to tie it up in the bottom of the eighth. With one out, Kevin Pillar walked, and a Devon Travis double to left moved him to third. (What was it I just said about the bottom of the order stirring the pot?) But Koji Uehara, who has done well in the setup role for Boston since returning from the DL, summoned some reserve and retired Carrera on a popup, and Donaldson on a grounder to third.

That was their last best chance. Craig Kimbrell came in for the save and once again tried to give away the lead with his failure to throw strikes, but managed to keep his runners from scoring, and earned a shaky 33^rd save out of 35 opportunities. Encarnacion grounded out to third, but then Kimbrel walked Bautista. He got a little closer to the finish line by retiring Martin on a popup. But then he walked Tulo, with Bautista advancing to second on a wild pitch during the at-bat.

Though this game was decided by any number of critical moments, the final turn of the wheel fell to Kimbrell facing Dioner Navarro hitting for Justin Smoak (interesting, this, a switch-hitter hitting for a switch-hitter). Three pitches and it was over. Navarro took a knuckle curve up in the zone for strike one, fouled off a four-seamer at the bottom of the zone, and fanned on a four-seamer that was thigh-high and on the outside corner. The last-ditch “rally” that consisted of not swinging at bad pitches died, and so did the Blue Jays.

So, what’s lower than the nadir? If thursday night’s shutout loss was the nadir of the Jays’ September swoon, whatever do we call this? On its merits it was neither a bad effort nor even a bad loss. Ortiz has hit plenty of decisive home runs in his career, and who says he’s not free to hit one against us? And if the Sox can shorten the start of a guy they can’t hit by fouling off multiple pitches, more power to them.

But, but. This hurt, and the magnitude of the hurt can only be measured within the context of both Baltimore and Detroit winning tonight. We are now a game behind Baltimore, in the second wild card slot, and a half-game ahead of Detroit, which has a makeup game to play if needed. And we’re still in Boston, while Detroit’s in comfy Atlanta, and the Orioles continue to hold mastery over the Yankees.

We cannot now make the playoffs on our own. We have Happ tomorrow and Sanchez on Sunday to take our best shots at beating Boston, but we need an Atlanta win over the Tigers to finish them off.

We can only hope.

If the Blue Jays don’t brace up at Fenway this weekend, it will likely be the end of the line for Manager John Gibbons. I have been at times this season highly critical of Gibbie, and I’m not convinced that he ever was the right fit for this club, even the first time around, but he seems a decent guy in many respects, and I don’t wish him ill.

But if the season ends for Toronto Sunday, and if he is, as many have projected, shown the door, the epitaph on the tombstone of his Toronto managerial career should read, “I’m not worried about the hitting”–John Gibbons, some time in April, 2016. And some time in May. And some time in June. You get the picture.

Tonight, with the division title long since ceded to Boston, with Detroit and even Seattle nipping at the heels of both the Blue Jays and the Orioles for a wild card spot, the series rubber match with Baltimore at the TV Dome approached carrying the air of a Doomsday scenario for both teams, but more particularly for Toronto. For the Blue Jays finish up against the Red Sox, who still have money in the game, namely, the drive for home-field advantage against Cleveland, while the Orioles travel to New York to play the Yankees, who are playing out the string and running auditions of their rookies for next year.

Meanwhile, in a most annoying quirk of the schedulers, the hard-charging Tigers find themselves in nice warm Atlanta, playing the Braves, who may escape tying with Cincinnati and San Diego for the worst record in the National League, but only by virtue of playing (and losing) one fewer game.

In short, for the Blue Jays, finishing the season with three games in Boston, which may have looked like a delightful postscript to a great season when the schedule was released last year, now looks alarmingly like the dock for crossing the River Styx, and the traitorous Boston manager John Farrell, approaching in his rowboat in the guise of Charon, looks ready, nay, eager, to conduct us to the very portals of Hades.

But first there’s the matter of the TV Dome regular season ender with the Orioles, who find themselves in the same boat as the Blue Jays, only less so. I said all along that Boston, not Baltimore, was the real threat to the Blue Jays this season. While I may have been vindicated on the Boston bit, it could be about to hit me with a vengeance that Baltimore has defied my dismissal and hung in there till the end.

If Hyun Soo Kim hadn’t homered off Roberto Osuna last night in the ninth inning to give Baltimore a stunning come-from-behind win, we would be approaching this game in a different light. But Osuna threw the pitch, Kim jerked it, the Baltimore bullpen danced a jig, and here we are.

The pitching matchup should definitely favour Toronto, and in this 2016 season of topsy-turviness, that’s always a bad thing. Marcus Stroman has been getting stronger by the outing since mid-season, and Ubaldo Jiminez is, well, Ubaldo Jiminez. I never did quite get the “bringer of rain” thing, since it’s no virtue to hit the ball high, but if Josh Donaldson is the bringer of rain, then Ubaldo Jimenez is the flinger of popcorn. That’s a pretty bad joke, but the anticipation of facing Jimenez’ soft stuff is no joke indeed.

For a Jays’ lineup that has tied itself in knots lately trying to generate some runs, hitting against Jimenez today turned out to be the worst possible scenario they could have faced. He pitched six and two thirds innings, gave up no runs, on one hit, walked three, and struck out five. What’s more, he took 116 pitches and forever and a day to do it. At least that’s what it felt like while we were waiting for Toronto hitters to make hard contact, which never happened.

The Jays had Jiminez in trouble in the first inning—sort of—and couldn’t generate any runs, and that was basically it for them. Zeke Carrera cheered our hearts by lining a single to left on a 3-2 pitch leading off. (Devon Travis returned to the lineup today, but Gibbie likes the energy that Carrera brings to the top of the order. So do I. So Carrera started in left, and Saunders in right, the latter assignment one that I don’t see, any more than I see Michael Bourn in right. You’re supposed to have an arm in right.) We felt even better when Carrera stole second while Josh Donaldson was drawing a walk. On an 0-1 count Edwin Encarnacion flied out to Michael Bourn, he of the sketchy arm, in right, and Carrera advanced to third. Jose Bautista struck out on three pitches, and Russell Martin at least spent some time at the plate, working the count to 3 and 2 before grounding out to short.

And that was it, folks. Jiminez walked Travis in the third, Carrera bunted him to second, and there he stayed. He walked Edwin Encarnacion in the sixth with two outs, and Bautista made our hearts flutter by getting most of a first-pitch fast ball, but it died on the warning track for the third out. Even when Showalter took him out in the seventh, Jiminez had gotten the first two outs of the inning. Showalter pulled him for a lefty to match up with or take Michael Saunders out of the game. Gibbie countered with Melvin Upton, who, all together now, grounded out to short.

The utterly dispirited Jays mustered one hit in each inning of Brad Brach’s relief turn, but no more. They never threatened. Kevin Pillar led off the eighth with a single, but Travis was caught looking (fourth caught looking for the Jays in the game) and Carrera grounded into a double play. Donaldson was caught looking to lead off the ninth, number five, Edwin stirred the crowd a bit with a line double into the left field corner and advanced to third on a balk, but Bautista fanned and Russell Martin, all together now, grounded out to short to end the game.

Even though he gave up four earned runs, Marcus Stroman pitched well enough to win most games, that is most games in which the hitters remember to bring their bats to the ball park. He had to work his way out of mild trouble in the first, though there wasn’t much concern because most of the contact was soft. Devon Travis came in and made a nice pickup of Adam Jones’ slow roller for the first out. Hyun Soo Kim (Him!) hit an opposite-field single to left. Mannie Machado flied out to right. Mark Trumbo singled to centre, but Matt Wieters broke his bat hitting a soft looper to Travis at second.

Stroman breezed the second but yielded a run in the third. The Orioles were helped by an ill-advised dive in right centre by Michael Saunders that misfired and turned a Jay Hardy single into a double. Was the ball catchable? Maybe by Kevin Pillar. Was the ball blockable? Definitely. Hardy advanced to third on a Jones grounder to first. Our friend Kim conveniently walked, and Mannie Machado hit a deep sacrifice fly to centre that scored Hardy. Trumbo hit a grounder that deflected off Stroman to Travis for the third out.

To break it down and exonerate Stroman: if Hardy’s on first maybe they turn two on Jones’ grounder. Or maybe he advances with Jones out at first. Maybe he advances to third on Machado’s fly ball. But he dies there when Trumbo grounds out. Little things, but a one-run lead for Baltimore.

In the fourth the O’s picked up their second run off Stroman, and this absolutely could have been avoided. Matt Wieters led off the inning by grounding out to first. Remember that, it’s important. Chris Davis and Jonathan Schoop singled, Davis going to third on Schoop’s hit. Michael Bourn hit a hard ground ball right at Josh Donaldson, who picked it cleanly, a perfect double-play ball, because there was one out, remember? But Josh threw high—really high—to second. Schoop was out, but of course there was no relay to first. In the meantime Chris Davis scored on what ended up being a fielder’s choice. Stroman ended the inning by slipping a four-seam fastball up in the zone past J.J. Hardy, but the lead was now 2-0, a huge mountain to climb considering that Jimenez might as well have been throwing his puffballs with a howitzer for all the ability of the Jays’ hitters to make decent contact with them.

Now here’s a thing I want to mention about the scoring rules. They do not allow the scorekeeper to assume the completion of a double play, so because Donaldson made an out on the play there was no error assigned. Likewise, no matter how unfair it seems, with no error assigned the run has to be earned. Sucks.

Thanks to his low pitch count, Stroman stayed around long enough to pick up another couple of earned runs against him. Notice here the irony that with the Jays unable to buy a run whatever the currency, the Orioles on this day were just casually able to throw up a couple of extras, making it even harder for the Jays to come back.

In the seventh inning it looked like Stroman was going to be able to profit from a base-running gaffe by Michael Bourn, until Kim (Him!) messed things up with a two-out RBI single. Bourn had walked and stolen second, but couldn’t move up on a grounder by Hardy to short, then he failed to tag up when Jones hit a deep but catchable fly ball to centre field. But you can depend on good old Kim to mess up your manure wagon just as you’re ready to return to the barn. He pulled a base hit into right to extend the lead to 3-0.

In the eighth they chipped away at Stroman again, and finally pushed him from the game, still only having thrown 97 pitches. With the outfield almost on the warning track, the leadoff batter, Mark Trumbo dumped a soft single into left centre, and never stopped until he had hustled the hit into a double. Once again we saw a double hit with a shattered bat, but this one didn’t bang off the wall, like the hit by Texeira in the Yankee series on the weekend. Matt Wieters knocked Trumbo in with a single to centre, and also, finally, knocked the hard-done-by Stroman out of the game. Wieters had to stay rooted to first as Aaron Loup came in to fan Chris Davis, and then Ryan Tepera came in to blow away Schoop and Bourn.

If there’s one thing you can’t say about this game it’s that the pitching let the team down. Two of the four runs off Stroman were tainted, and Loup and Tepera were bang on to pick him up in their short appearances.

There’s nothing worse than being shut out in a crucial late-season game, except being shut out in a crucial late-inning game by a guy who couldn’t break a pane of glass with a discus. If we by some odd quirk end up facing Baltimore again, may it not be with Jiminez on the mound for them. Maybe our guys would figure him out next time. Probably not.

It’s off to Boston now for the all-David-Ortiz all the time festival, to face a team that’s won the division, is loose, hot, believes in its destiny, and still has home field advantage in their ALDS to settle. Sheesh, wake me when it’s over.

T.S. Eliot might have been a great poet, but he didn’t know beans about baseball. Tonight, after the brilliant promise of last night’s confident disposal of the Orioles, the Blue Jays had to learn the bitter lesson that sometimes the game ends not with a whimper, but a bang.

Though, truth be told, when Toronto had to face Zach Britton down a run in the bottom of the ninth, there was a fair amount of whimpering going on.

By now the September formula for the Blue Jays seems pretty well set in stone: get a great start from whomever, scratch out a couple of runs, blow multiple chances to score lots of runs, turn a slim lead over to the bullpen, and the bullpen closes it out. Or not. And, if not, don’t even think about mounting a comeback.

Francisco Liriano had every reason to be delirious to learn that at what must have been exactly 3:59 p.m. on the August first trade deadline, the Blue Jays had acquired him from the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates, so good these last few years, were going nowhere, while the Jays had been in contention for the American League East lead for almost the entire season. He would be reunited with Russell Martin, with whom he had his best year of his career in 2013. Most of all, he would have a chance to turn around what had become a dreadful season for him. When he came over, his won-loss record was 6-ll, his ERA was 5.46, his opponents’ batting average was .264, and his WHIP was 1.63 (the gold-standard WHIP is 1.00 or less).

Well, his joy upon arriving has been fulfilled in spades, with one small exception. Looking at the same numbers, with Toronto he has gone 2-2 with an ERA of 2.92, and opponents’ batting average of 2.22, and a WHIP of 1.46, but only 1.01 for five appearances in September. So what’s the exception? Despite pitching so well, he has only two wins in 8 quality starts. WHY CAN’T THE BLUE JAYS SCORE RUNS FOR HIM?

Okay, if you haven’t been paying attention very closely, this is a trick question, because lately the Jays aren’t scoring runs for any of their starting pitchers. Yet down the stretch (I wouldn’t call it a stretch run, that’s for sure!), in four September starts he has won one, lost one, and had two no decisions. Arguably, he has been their strongest starter in the last three weeks. Before tonight he had pitched 18.1 innings in three starts after a brief stint in the bullpen, and given up four earned runs. That’s four.

Tonight was the best yet for the veteran lefty. He scattered six hits over 6.1 innings of shutout ball, walking but one and striking out ten. He set the first nine down in order, allowed his first two hits in the fourth inning but struck out the side. He allowed the Orioles to load the bases in the sixth on a single by Jay Hardy, a walk to Jonathan Schoop, and a two-out infield single by Adam Jones to load ’em up, the only time an Oriole runner touched third on him his entire start, but struck out the side, including Chris Davis who took a wicked high curve ball for strike three to end the inning. He gave up two hits to the first three batters in the seventh, and that was when Gibbie pulled the plug on his brilliant night, at 104 pitches.

Brett Cecil had one of his best clutch appearances of the season to close out the seventh, fanning Nolan Reimold and getting Adam Jones to ground out to short, where Troy Tulowitzki made another ho-hum amazing play, gliding to his right, circling the ball, and launching a rocket to first while pivoting in the air. I challenge you to run to your right, leap into the air, and throw back across your body, without having any solid base, like the earth, to plant against. Go ahead, try it.

Chris Tillman, who has been Baltimore’s number one starter this year, going 16-6 with an ERA of 3.84 going into tonight’s game, has been struggling with some injury issues in the second half of the year, with one brief stint on the disabled list, and having more than one start pushed back because he was experiencing arm issues.

After the Jays chipped away with runs in the first and second, both on sacrifice flies, he settled down and pitched a respectable game, not really matching the performance of Liriano, but good enough all the same, and good enough to win with—what else?–a little support. He went five and two thirds innings, gave up 2 runs, one of them unearned, on six hits, while walking three and striking out two, on 92 pitches.

Tillman is more lunch-bucket gritty than lights-out dominant, but it was a good thing for the Jays that they nicked him early, because he was able to work his way out of multiple base-runners for the rest of his stint.

Tillman had only himself to blame for the first Jays’ run. It always strikes me as a bit strange when a pitcher’s record isn’t harmed by an unearned run that derives from his own fielding misadventures. Leading off the game again with Devon Travis still on the shelf, Zeke Carrera hit a weak dribbler between Tillman and Chris Davis at first, and found himself one out later at third ready to score on Edwin Encarnacion’s sacrifice fly. Tillman trotted over, picked up Carrera’s grounder, and, aware of Zeke flying down the line, shovelled it underhand to Davis at first with his momentum going toward the bag. Unfortunately for both pitcher and fielder, the throw hit Davis in the worst possible spot, right in his chest. Joking aside, Davis had his glove stretched out and down, and the throw was harder than either realized, and a little high, and it handcuffed him before he could react.

Carrera was safe on the Davis error (justice here? It was not a good throw.) Then Tillman tried to pick him off and threw the ball away, moving Zeke around to third.

Edwin cashed him with a deep shot to centre that hung up for Adam Jones, and Tillman had handed Toronto one of the most unearned runs ever for the lead.

The Jays’ second run was more honourably earned, if you will, but didn’t count for any more than the tainted first one. Ya takes what ya gets, eh? With one out Troy Tulowitzki ripped a double to left for the Jays’ first hit. Michael Saunders followed with an opposite-field base hit to left, through the massive hole in the shift. Coach Luis Rivera elected to play it safe and hold Tulo at third. Kevin Pillar, who seems to do his best work with his back to the wall, swatted a 1-2 pitch to Mark Trumbo in right for the sacrifice fly that scored Tulo with the Jays’ second run.

Then started the familiar squandering. In the third they wasted a double by Jose Bautista. Carrera led off with a single to centre, then had second base stolen when his somewhat late slide took him beyond the bag and he was tagged out. Josh Donaldson followed with a double to right that would have scored Carrera even from from first, but he was in the dugout, and just not available to do his thing.

In the fourth Tulo led off by smashing a low liner right at Schoop, at shortstop in the shift, but it blasted right through him for a base hit. He was erased when Saunders hit into a double play. In the fifth inning, Tillman was saved by Nolan Reimold’s great sliding catch of a low liner off Encarnacion’s bat for the third out, with Donaldson aboard after forcing Carrera at second.

In the sixth, Tillman’s last, he walked the first two hitters, Bautista and Martin, and then was rescued again by Reimold, who charged in to make a nice grab on Tulo’s testy short fly to left. Bautista, running on instinct, thought the ball was going to drop, and was easily trapped off second for the double play. Not wanting to tempt the fates any longer, manager Buck Showalter came out and got his starter. Lefty Donnie Hart came in to retire Tulo on a popup to Mannie Machado at third.

With Tillman gone after six and Liriano out for Cecil in the top of the seventh, Hart stayed in to face the Jays’ in the bottom of the seventh, and it was time to see if the Jays could cushion their lead, and/or their bullpen could contain the Orioles.

Well, the sad fact is that we didn’t score any more, and after sixteen innings of Jays’ pitchers keeping the ball in the yard against the biggest homer-hitting team in baseball, something was bound to give. Unfortunately, “something” turned out to be Jason Grilli and Roberto Osuna.

Hart stayed on to retire the side in the order for Baltimore in the seventh. Cecil matched up with Chris Davis in the top of the eighth, and fanned the increasingly frustrated slugger with a bowdacious 3-2 curve ball. Then it was Grilli time, but summer’s over, and the only meat that got cooked was the grillmaster himself. He started just fine, getting Mannie Machado to ground out to short on his first pitch. I must say that so far in this series, in contrast with the havoc he has wreaked upon us in the past, Machado has been looking decidedly mortal for a supposed MVP contender.

Then Mark Trumbo strode to the plate, ready to strike the first crack of doom in the Jays’ delicate glass palace. For all his league-leading 46 homers as he stepped to the plate tonight, Trumbo hadn’t hit one out against Toronto. I was starting to think his vaunted power was more urban legend than reality. But no. Wave bye-bye as the ball sails into the 200 level above the Toronto bullpen. Pedro Alvarez followed with a double to centre, but Matt Wieters flied out to Carrera in left, and the Orioles had crept a little closer, and finally gotten on the board.

The Orioles intimidating workhorse Mychal Givens came in to try to shut the Jays down in the eighth, and for once had no idea where his thunderbolts were going. Five batters later, this is where we stood, Donaldson on third hit by pitch, Russell Martin on second, hit by pitch, Tulo on first, with a five-pitch walk. Two outs. Melvin Upton at the plate. Counter-intuitively, Manager Buck Showalter brought in the lefty, Brian Duensing. Four pitches later, the Orioles were headed off the field, while Upton stood in shock at the plate. The aristocratic-looking plate umpire, Lance Barksdale, who dropped by the park to ump while he was waiting to be cast as the lead in yet another Noel Coward play, had apparently had second thoughts about some of what he had taken away from Givens, and decided to recompense the Orioles for their pain by ringing up Upton on a pitch that was laughably low and inside.

Here’s where you see there’s some truth in saying that won-loss records are meaningless. As we were saying yesterday, Kevin Gausman was clearly Baltimore’s second best starter all year, and threw really well right from the beginning of the year, and yet it took six decisions before he got a win, because of lack of run support. You already know from the title, and because the whole world already knows, that the Orioles hit another one out in the top of the ninth to take this one from Toronto. I’ll give the gory details in a moment, but I mention it here because Brian Deunsing, who got one out in the eighth for the Orioles, and benefited from an egregiously bad call to secure that strikeout, only threw four pitches. Yet, because he was still the “pitcher of record” in the top of the ninth, he received credit for the win. Don’t you just love it?

So with no breathing room for the relievers, Roberto Osuna was summoned to try to hold the precarious one-run margin in the top of the ninth. He started out well enough, freezing J.J. Hardy with a 2-2 fast ball for the first out. Then he gave up a single to Jonathan Schoop, who seems to be closing his eyes and hoping when he swings these days. This time the baseball gods were listening. Michael Bourn, who couldn’t crack the Blue Jays’ roster last spring, ran for Schoop. Due up was Nolan Reimold, who figured to be an easy mark for Osuna. First, though, Bourn swiped second. Reimold was called back, and the left-handed-hitting Hyun Soo Kim was sent up to hit for him.

Now Kim, the “rookie” from the Korean League, was hitting .303, with only 5 homers and 20 RBIs. Everybody in the world was worried about him dumping a single to left or rolling one up the middle to score Bourn. And I for one wasn’t surprised at all that he got the count to two and two and then did the famous oriental “bat flick” to foul off three great pitches in a row. Then Osuna threw one in the dirt to go three and two. Then he brought one up, just a little into the zone, but inside. Didn’t Kim go down and get it, and whack it to right, where it carried, and carried, and sailed into the ecstatic Baltimore bullpen for a two-run homer and a Baltimore lead.

Adam Jones followed with a second infield hit to third in the game, and Chris Davis ended the inning by pounding into another one of those shift-produced 4-5-3 double plays, with Donaldson doing the honours at the pivot.

To go back to Eliot, the Baltimore effort tonight ended, not with one bang, but with two, but the Jays’ night certainly came to an end with a whimper, because they had to face Cy Young candidate Zach Britton going for his 47^th save in 47 tries. Britton went through the Jays like a hot knife through butter, as all the Jays could offer were two punchouts and a weak ground ball.

This last home series of the year, which started so well last night, took on a shocking new turn with Baltimore’s last-minute win tonight, and not only the standings, but shirt collars everywhere, are a little tighter as we look to Saturday.

Okay, let’s start with the now undeniable fact that the Red Sox, who lead the Blue Jays by six games with six to play are pretty well home and cooled out for the division championship. They’re not going to lose six straight while we win six to create a playoff for the division, so we have to gear ourselves up for securing a wild card spot and (gulp) playing a good game to go on to an ALDS.

As of today, Toronto and Baltimore hold the wild card spots, with the Jays in front of the Orioles by one game. Lurking two games behind Baltimore’s second wild card position, three games behind us, are the Tigers and the Mariners. We are in a position in which we can materially affect our playoff chances by how this current series with the Orioles, which ends our last home stand of the regular season, plays out. We can’t do anything about Detroit or Seattle except keep an eye on the scoreboard.

The good news, with the division title out of reach and the sudden-death wild-card on the menu, is that if there is a tie between either the Tigers and us, or the Orioles and us, we have already won the season series against Detroit, and only need win one of these last three games with Baltimore to win that season series. This means that we would host the wild card game in case of a tie. (Of course, if there is no tie and we end up with the lower record of the two wild card teams, the play-in game will be on the road.) The bad news with the focus on the wild card game is two-fold. First, with it so close it is possible that a prolonged Blue Jays’ slump could see us miss the playoffs completely (I should bite my tongue). Second, if we do end up with a tie and playing the sudden-death game here, both the Orioles and the Tigers hit a lot of home runs, and the cozy confines of the TV Dome are friendly to sluggers of all stripes.

The arrangement of the Blue Jays’ rotation that resulted in Aaron Sanchez receiving the start tonight in the first game of the Orioles’ series has been perfectly manipulated. He gives us the strongest chance of starting out the series on the right foot, and in the process securing the season series win over Baltimore. He will be ready again on normal rest for the last game of the season in Boston, if we need to win that game to make the playoffs. If we don’t need him next Sunday in Boston, he’s ready for the wild card game with a little extra rest. Moreover, since the most likely (at this moment) wild card scenario would have Baltimore playing here on Tuesday the 4^th of October, and if it is Sanchez taking that start for Toronto, then tonight was an opportunity to lay down a challenge to the Orioles.

The O’s countered with Kevin Gausman, their best and most consistent starter behind their number one Chris Tillman. Gausman’s ERA going into tonight, 3.57, is far more indicative of his work than his won-loss record of 8-11, which was distorted by the fact that though he’s thrown well the entire season, he’d gotten very little run support early on, and been tagged with a series of losses he didn’t deserve. In fact, he’d gone 0-5 from his first start in late April until he finally defeated Tampa Bay on June 25^th for his first win, yet his May and June ERA had hovered just under the 4.20 mark.

But it was Sanchez and the Jays who came out of the blocks first in this one. Sanchez struck out the side in order in the first, and remember that this was Adam Jones, Chris Davis hitting second for some strange reason, and Mannie Machado. Then, two batters in, Gausman found himself in a two-zip hole, as he walked Zeke Carrera, leading off in the absence of the injured Devon Travis, and then gave up Josh Donaldson’s 37^th homer of the year, a decisive blast to left. Gausman settled down quickly, struck out Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista, and retired Russell Martin on a fly ball to left.

In the second inning the two starters reversed roles, in a sense. Sanchez fanned Mark Trumbo for his fourth straight strikeout, then walked Pedro Alvarez, fanned Jonathan Schoop, gave up a single to Matt Wieters that sent Alvarez to third, and then got Michael Bourn to fly out to centre to end the inning, taking 26 pitches to close out the Orioles. Gausman on the other hand retired Troy Tulowitzki on a comebacker and struck out Michael Saunders and Kevin Pillar, taking only ten pitches to finish the inning.

Both teams scored in the third, leaving the Jays ahead 3-1. Sanchez gave up a leadoff double to Jay Hardy, who eventually scored on a two-out single by Mark Trumbo, but before that Troy Tulowitzki saved him from significant further damage with one out when he dove instinctively to his right to snag a vicious liner by Mannie Machado that was headed for the gap in left centre. With one out in the bottom of the fourth, surprise sparkplug Zeke Carrera lined up a 3-1 fast ball (why was he swinging at a 3-1 pitch? Did he have the green light? Interesting.) and hit it out to the opposite field, restoring the Jays’ two-run lead.

While Sanchez continued to hold the Orioles in check, Toronto extended its lead in the fifth, employing a combination of well-executed small ball and a rare Mannie Machado error. Kevin Pillar led off with a single to centre off Gausman, and then Darwin Barney, playing second for Devon Travis, dropped down a perfect sacrifice bunt fielded by the pitcher. Carrera continued to contribute with another opposite-field hit, a single to left. Jays’ third-base coach Luis Rivera gambled on Michael Bourn’s poor arm to send Pillar home. The throw as expected was well off line, and Pillar scored easily while Carrera advanced to second. Gausman walked Josh setting up the double play, and got exactly what he was looking for, a hard smash right at Machado by Edwin Encarnacion, a perfect double play ball. But Machado fired the ball past second and into shallow right field, as Carrera came around to score his third run of the game, and give Toronto a 5-1 lead. Gausman got a second double-play ball from Jose Bautista, and this time his infield turned it to end the inning.

Sanchez came out for the sixth with a secure lead and did what was needed—keep the Orioles off the board and the lead intact. But he did have to lock it down with a couple of baserunners on board. Trumbo led off with a single, and stayed at first until Matt Wieters drew a walk with two outs. The Orioles effort ended with Michael Bourn flying out to Carrera in left. While Sanchez got the outs that he had to get in his six innings of work, this wasn’t his crispest performance, as the Orioles had base-runners in four of the six innings he worked. This, plus the fact that he struck out a season-high ten batters meant that he couldn’t continue past the sixth, with his pitch count at 103. In his six innings of work he gave up the one run and five hits, walked three, and struck out the ten.

Curiously, Gausman reached his sixth-inning end with the same number of pitches, 103. Minus the two dingers and a little short on the strikeouts, Gausman’s performance was about as effective as that of Sanchez. Of course, they really do keep score in this game, and to Gausman’s detriment there is no “minusing” of gopher balls. Sanchez kept the ball in the yard and Gausman didn’t, and that was the ball game, with neither team scoring in the last three innings, and how rare is that at this late point in the season, with bullpen arms pooping out all over the league?

With the Jays’ late-inning bullpen short-handed Joe Biagini blessed them with two innings of shutout ball, giving up only an infield single to Adam Jones in the seventh. The young right-hander benefited from a great play in each of the two innings he worked. Josh Donaldson saved an extra-base hit by Jones with a dive into foul territory to snag the hard grounder that was headed for the left field corner. Jones was safe at first, but it could easily have been a double. In the eighth with two outs Jonathan Schoop lined one towards the gap in right centre but Kevin Pillar raced over and in to make yet another of his patented flying dives to pick the ball off the turf.

In one of the funnier images of the season, Biagini was caught on camera waiting at the edge of the dugout steps to greet Pillar as he came in. Instead of one of the silly choreographed displays, or a vigourous high five, Biagini “leaned in” and gave Pillar one of the most awkward man-hugs you’ve ever seen, the kind where you hug the other guy’s shoulders and thump him on the back like an amiable bear, all the while keeping safe clear air between your lower bodies. We’ve all been there, haven’t we?

Roberto Osuna came in for the non-save—damn Gibbie’s lights, he did it again! Osuna immediately gave up singles to Wieters and Bourn—didja notice that, Gibbie? But he made a crisp play on a soft Jay Hardy comebacker to get a force at second, and then closed the game out by getting Adam Jones to hit into a double play started by Donaldson.

The tension of these late-season games was evident when Chris Davis was rung up by Biagini in the seventh. Incensed at the call by plate umpire Will Little on a fast ball that Davis thought was inside, Davis cut loose and was pitched from the game, as was Buck Showalter when he came out to join the tea party. This is the same Chris Davis who very impressively broke his bat over his knee after striking out here in Toronto(he does it a lot. Striking out, I mean. Not sure about the broken bats.)

Tommy Hunter worked around a single by Darwin Barney, who was erased by a double play, and a walk to Donaldson to hold the Jays at bay in their seventh, and Oliver Drake yielded Tulo’s second opposite-field double of the game in the eighth, but Tulo died at second when Melvin Upton flew out to right.

So after the blip of blowing the lead against the Yankees Monday night and missing the sweep, Sanchez, Donaldson, Carrera and the bullpen did a good job of turning things around. Most importantly, the Jays now lead the season series against Baltimore 10-7, and have secured home-field advantage for a wild-card game if they end up tied with Baltimore at the end of the season.