Long Ball Stories

Just to create some distance from a strange and disturbing game, one that laid bare the dark underbelly of baseball culture, I’d like to start with a reflection on the creation of baseball expressions.

In the title of this post I’ve used an expression that, according to Mr. Google (Ms Google?) does not exist in the baseball lexicon. However, the term “pinged off” was used very widely in youth baseball in the Toronto area some twenty years ago to refer to a batter being hit with a pitched ball, as in “that guy just pinged me off, man!”

The question becomes, now that I have used this term in this post, will it eventually show up in Google searches? Have I created a recognized baseball expression by committing it to print on the web? This is somewhat akin to the old “if a tree falls in the forest” conundrum, isn’t it?

Now to the question at hand. Pinging off, and getting pinged off, were the central facts of tonight’s troubling 7-5 Yankees’ win over the Blue Jays, a win that prevented a Toronto sweep of New York, a win that stalled the Jays’ drive to wrap up a wild card berth, and a win that cost Toronto for an unspecified period of time the services of two valuable members of the team, Joaquin Benoit and Devon Travis.

We can blame this whole mess on Masahiro Tanaka’s wonky arm. Tanaka was pulled from his scheduled start in the series, which was good news for the Blue Jays. Not only did this affect the matchup in the first game of the series, when Tanaka was supposed to pitch, but it threw the Yankee rotation askew for the rest of the series as well.

The upshot of all this was that Luis Severino was given the start tonight against Jay Happ. And therein lay the source of all that transpired. Is history deterministic? Can we say without a doubt that if Tanaka had pitched Friday night than all this mess wouldn’t have happened? Of course not; it’s just a supposition, but it’s a good one that I think is confirmed by the course of events.

Luis Severino was expected to be a mainstay of the Yankees’ rotation this year, based on his fine performance over the latter part of 2015, when he went 5 and 3 with a 2.89 ERA, starting eleven times for New York in the midst, you will recall, of the Yankees’ ultimately unsuccessful pennant-contending run. But from the beginning of this season he just couldn’t recover what he’d done right, and pitched himself out of the rotation, and by mid-May back to Triple A, where he compiled a very impressive record over two months which earned him a trip back to the Bronx in late July.

But he came back to the bullpen, not the rotation. In 13 appearances before tonight, only two of them had been starts, the rest in relief, where he’s done very well indeed in the middle relief role that demoted starters so often assume. So when Manager Joe Girardi looked for someone from the bullpen to take the start in what Girardi referred to as a “bullpen day”, Severino was the obvious choice.

Jay Happ was Toronto’s starter tonight, and if you wanted a bigger contrast between starting pitchers in terms of their 2016 season experiences, you couldn’t find a gap more gaping than that between Severino and Jay Happ. First of all, Happ is a seasoned veteran in mid-career, whereas Severino, for want of a better expression, is a callow youth of 22. Then there’s the little matter of their comparative performances this year. Happ has been a model of consistency, a veteran rock in the middle of the Jays’ rotation, and all the better for being left-handed. His 20-4 record and ERA of 3.28 say it all. It was a pretty strong bet that if Toronto didn’t emerge the winner tonight, it wouldn’t be because the Yankees beat up on Jay Happ. And of course we didn’t win, and it was despite, not because of, Happ’s fine outing on the hill.

Severino pretty well scotched (hmm—is that an okay expression these days?) any notion of giving Girardi the four or five good innings that he really needed by coming out wild as a March hare in the first inning. The only thing he really did right was getting leadoff man Devon Travis to fly out to centre on a full count. Next he hit Josh Donaldson on the elbow pad. (Remember this.) Then he gave up a single to centre to Edwin Encarnacion, Josh taking third. Then he walked Jose Bautista to load the bases. Then he walked Russell Martin to hand the Jays the first run of the game. Finally, still with the bases loaded, he settled down enough to get Troy Tulowitzki to fly out and to catch Michael Saunders looking at a 97 mph four-seamer for strike three.

Happ for his part had to try to pitch over a massive error by Russell Martin in the top of the first. (I’m not sure about that word “massive”, given its use recently by Orange Feather Duster on His Head Guy.) After three disheartening losses, facing a good lefty, the left-handed leadoff hitter Brett Gardner tried to stir things up by laying down a good bunt that was Martin’s ball. Plainly put, it was already a base hit when Martin got to it, but he tried to throw Gardner out anyway, and sent the ball into the right field corner, and Gardner to third, instead. With the help of a base-running gaffe by Gardner, Happ almost avoided the run being scored, as Gardner froze on Jacoby Ellsbury’s ground ball to short that should have scored him, but then he shook himself loose and scored on the second grounder to short, by Gary Sanchez. Billie Butler hit a short fly to centre to end the inning.

So, the walked-in run by Severino having tied the game, Happ returned to the mound for the second, but with a distinct purpose in mind. You will recall that in the throes of their early-September slump, the Jays had held a players-only meeting to sort things out. Numerous reports have it that among the topics discussed at that meeting was the concern raised by some of the hitters that the opposing pitchers were getting away with pitching too tight, and that the Toronto pitchers needed to step up and do their bit.

Veteran that he is, Jay Happ wasn’t about to let down his team-mates, particularly their leader, Donaldson. Chase Headley had the bad luck of being the leadoff man in the inning. After missing with a pitch behind Headley in the dirt, Happ recalibrated his sights and tried again. This time he drilled Headley in the leg. Both benches cleared, with much shouting and hoo-ha-ing and scuffling around. Home plate umpire Todd Tichenor issued official warnings to both benches, and play proceeded.

I have to insert here that the issuing of warnings for throwing at hitters is a system badly in need of revision. What happens is that if the home plate umpire senses that a beanball war is about to break out, he issues warnings to both teams. The substance of the warning is that the next pitcher who in the judgment of the plate umpire has thrown deliberately at a batter will be ejected from the game, along with his manager. This doesn’t work, for two reasons. First, if a team goes into a game with intent, for example when the Texas Rangers decided that they would pay Jose Bautista back for the bat flip in a particular game with a particular pitcher, that pitcher in effect got one free shot at the hitter, because warnings won’t be issued until someone has been thrown at. So Yordano Ventura hit Bautista and received no punishment, but when the warning was given, the Jays could only retaliate at risk of ejection. If you look at tonight’s game, it’s a simple matter of keeping score: New York hit two Toronto batters; Toronto only had the “chance” to hit one. The second reason it doesn’t work is because umpires are inconsistent, even cowardly, at enforcing the warning once given.

So (to jump ahead to the bottom of the second for a moment) when Severino made Justin Smoak dance on the first pitch of the bottom of the second, everyone in the park knew that he had done it on purpose. Warnings having been issued, Severino should have been tossed immediately. But no, Tichenor held back, ensuring that, assuming the pitcher was as stupid as Severino appears to be, someone would be thrown at again. Not appreciating that he’d been let off the hook, Severino took better aim and hit Smoak in the thigh, was immediately ejected, and then all hell broke loose, exactly what the umps didn’t want.

The benches cleared again, this time with a lot more urgency and a lot more anger, and a general melee ensued, during which, the story has it, Smoak gained a measure of revenge by blacking Tyler Austin’s eye. When the dust had cleared not only was Severino gone, but so was Joe Girardi, his bench coach Rob Thomson, and his pitching coach Larry Rothschild. There is no truth to the rumour that the Yankees’ bat boy took over handling the team.

Definitely more seriously, as things settled down Jays’ sterling reliever Joaquin Benoit was seen being helped off the field with a very bad limp. We later learned that he had pulled a calf muscle, and wouldn’t be available to the team until deep in the playoffs, if they should survive that long. And we didn’t know it until his next plate appearance—he didn’t either, until he swung a bat in earnest, but Devon Travis also did something to his shoulder, and had to be pulled from the game. He is listed day to day, the x-rays, thankfully, showing nothing wrong.

As an odd footnote to the whole affair, it really does seem that Severino is more than a little clueless. When all was said and done and the fuss all over with, there he was, standing in front of the dugout, ready to go, for all the world as if he thought that he was actually going to go back out to the mound. But hopin’ sometimes ain’t enough, so I guess when he saw Jonathan Holder take the mound, it must finally have dawned on him that he really was out of the game.

There was, in fact, a ball game that had started and was waiting to be played. We’ve established so far that there was another stupid brawl precipitated by beanballs, that the umps as always mishandled the whole thing egregiously, that feelings and some body parts were hurt, that the Yankees were without their starter, who was no great shakes anyway, and that each team had scored a run. Let’s proceed from there.

For his part, Jay Happ, who had “wasted” two pitches in the second inning on Headley, retired the rest of the Yankees on four pitches, with Mark Texeira hitting into a double play to erase Headley, and Didi Gregorius hitting a weak fly ball to right. Holder matched Happ and cooly put things back in order for the Yankees, stranding Smoak at first and getting Pillar, Travis, and Donaldson on balls in the air on just five pitches. Though it should be said that the balls it by Pillar and Donaldson were deep drives, and Holder was lucky they stayed in the park.

Happ settled in to roll on from the third through seventh innings. He stranded a two-out infield hit followed by a walk in the third, a two-out infield hit in the fourth, and a leadoff single in the seventh. Three hits, two of which didn’t leave the infield, and one walk, on 85 pitches. Gibbie was quite willing to have him start the eighth, but in the meantime the Jays had taken a 3-1 lead on the pick-a-pitcher, any pitcher, Yankees hurlers, a lead Happ was still protecting going into the eighth.

After Holder’s quick second inning, he retired Edwin on a short fly to centre to lead off the third, but that was the last out he recorded. Bautista shot a single the other way against the shift. Russell Martin walked. Troy Tulowitzki doubled to centre to score Bautista, Martin stopping at third. A single, a walk, a double, and a run, and Holder was out, yielding to the hard-throwing left-hander James Pazos, who didn’t win his matchup with Michael Saunders. Saunders hit a single through the shift to right to score Martin and move Tulo to third. Pazos then got Justin Smoak to hit into a double play, but the Jays had the 3-1 lead they carried to the eighth inning.

The Yankees kept it close up to the eighth while cycling through Kirby Yates, Richard Bleier, and Adam Warren. The only runners the Jays mustered were two two-out walks issued by Yates in the fourth. By the time we got to the eighth, it was clear that Toronto was going to have to guard a slim lead right to the end.

As is typical, Happ started the eighth, and even got the first out, but then hit the wall and had to yield to the bullpen, meanwhile giving up an unearned run to make it a one-run ballgame. I said Happ got the first out, but it was loud. Starlin Castro, hitting for Ronald Torreyes, hit a rocket to right that looked like it had the legs, but Bautista went back to the wall for it. Brett Gardner hit a cheap double to left, dribbling an easy grounder down into the corner, while the third baseman played shortstop. (When I do it, it’s smart. When you do it, it’s cheap.) Jacoby Ellsbury hit a short single to centre. Gardner stopped at third, but then came on to score when Pillar fumbled the ball off the turf, which also allowed Ellsbury to reach second. This made the second run off Happ unearned. It also ended Happ’s excellent outing.

Joe Biagini came in to retire Gary Sanchez on a liner to right, with Ellsbury strangely staying at second, and then Brett Cecil came in to retire the pinch-hitter Brian McCann on a grounder to short.

And so we went to the ninth with a 3-2 lead, and it was time to circle the wagons. But the times are out of joint these days, and you already know from the title of this post that the Yankees won 7-5, so let’s look at how this came to be.

First of all, having blown the save but survived for the win yesterday, and gotten his 35^th save on Saturday, throwing 37 pitches between the two outings, Roberto Osuna was out of commission tonight, so Gibbie’s hope of surviving the eighth without using Jason Grilli worked, and he was available for the save opportunity.

Grilli retired Chase Headley for the first out, but it was an omen, as Edwin had to make a nice pick of a rocket down the line to beat Headley to the bag. This brought Mark Texeira to the plate for the final at bat in Toronto of his illustrious career. It didn’t take him long to put his own special mark on his farewell party. He clobbered Grillie’s first pitch, a 93-plus four-seam fast ball, over the Yankees’ bullpen and into the despondent right-field crowd. So long, Tex, glad to see you go.

If it had just stopped there, a tie in the ninth at home isn’t such a bad thing, even though the whole city felt badly for Happ losing his 21^st win, and for Grilli showing that even miracle workers can have a bad day at the office. But it didn’t end there.

Gregorius singled to left, and that brought the rookie Aaron Hicks to the plate. Hicks had been overmatched the whole series, showing that Gary Sanchez he isn’t. Hell, in this series even Gary Sanchez wasn’t Gary Sanchez. But shockingly he finally tied into one and deposited it in the right field seats for a 5-3 Yankee lead. When utility infielder Donovan Solano followed with a double to left Gibbie finally saw the light and rescued Grilli from further embarrassment.

Danny Barnes came in and walked Brett Gardner before giving up a single to Ellsbury that plated Solano with Grilli’s fourth run and sent Gardner to third. Kevin Pillar tried singlehandedly to keep the damage to a three-run deficit, but couldn’t quite pull it off. With Ellsbury running on the pitch, Gary Sanchez hit a sinking liner into right centre. Pillar came in hard, dove, and came up with the ball, one of his trademark great catches. Ellsbury was trapped well off first, and Pillar tried to double him up to end the inning, but Justin Smoak couldn’t squeeze the one-hopper from Pillar, Ellsbury was back safe, and the whole play became a simple sac fly as Gardner came in with the seventh run. Barnes struck out Brian McCann to stop the bleeding, and the dispirited Jays came in to face Dellin Betances. It wasn’t a save situation, but Joe Girardi wasn’t taking any chances.

Well, maybe he was, because once again the big New York closer couldn’t find the plate against Toronto, and things got very interesting again, very quickly, even without a whole lot of offensive input from the Jays’ hitters.

Betances started off by walking Smoak on four pitches. On an 0-1 count Pillar laid down a decent, but not great, bunt, trying for a base hit—nobody sacrifice bunts down four in the bottom of the ninth. Betances got to it, and fumbled it around, Pillar reaching on the error. Then he wild-pitched the two runners he put on base to second and third. Then he walked Darwin Barney, in for the sore-shouldered Travis, on a 3-1 pitch. That was enough of Betances for the Yankees. He pitched to three batters and put them all on. He threw three strikes, including the one Pillar bunted.

Tommy Layne came in to face Josh Donaldson with the bases loaded, nobody out, and a four-run lead. In some other world where the Blue Jays carry off their own small share of dramatic moments, Donaldson hits one out or clears the bases with a double. But in the 2016 world of the no-clutch Jays, Donaldson flied out to short right for the first out, with the tortoise-like Justin Smoak rightly held at third.

Layne walked Encarnacion, to cut the lead to three. Dalton Pompey was sent in to run for him, to deliver a third run on a double. Again, bases loaded, one out, but Carrera, who had run earlier for Bautista up, not Jose. Gibbie turned to Dioner Navarro to hit for Zeke. Call for the thunder and lightning. Nope. Just a weird blooper to right that Aaron Hicks almost catches despite being positioned somewhere in the middle of the Yankee bullpen. The runners have to hold up, and only Pillar scores. In fact, the Yankees almost force Pompey at second. Seven-five. Russell Martin up. Cue the thunder . . . oh, forget it. Darrell Ceciliani was sent in to run for Navarro. Martin hit a squibber back to Layne, who got the easy force at the plate for the second out. Tulo. Would there be drama? Only whether Brett Gardner would catch Tulo’s sliced pop foul to short left that almost reached the seats. He did, sliding on his glutes, nice catch, and the game, the terrible, awful, no good, very bad game, was over.

The Blue Jays were an inning away from an uplifting four-game sweep over the Yankees that would have given them great momentum for facing the Orioles in the last home series of the regular season. But the Texeira homer off Grilli in the ninth stilled the momentum and started Toronto down a dark and dreary road.

If we do in fact survive securing a wild card slot, and making it into a division series, I fear that the magic, which has not been there for the entire season, will remain missing in action, no matter the desparate longing of the multitudes of Torontonians.

Tomorrow night it’s Aaron Sanchez versus the Orioles. Will it be a great precursor to a wild card win, or the beginning of the end for the puzzling 2016 Blue Jays?

Let’s pretend we’re on a game show, one of those shows where the contestant gets to pick one of three doors and gets to have whatever is hidden behind the door chosen. We’re going to put surprises from tonight’s game behind each door, and you get to pick and see if you got your fave.

Behind one door is the Marco Estrada surprise. In the two starts he has made since it was revealed that he has been pitching for most of the season with a herniated disk in his back, this is what he has done: he’s had one win and one no decision. He’s pitched seven innings in both games. He’s given up a total of five hits in the fourteen innings. He’s given up one earned run in fourteen innings. He’s walked five and struck out fifteen in fourteen innings.

Behind another door is the Kevin Pillar/Zeke Carrera Bunt Extravaganza. For the second time in three games I get to write about the Blue Jays bunting. Is that fun, or what?

Behind another door is Edwin Encarnacion’s surprise walk-off hit, which did not leave the infield.

Now, it just occurred to me that my posts are not interactive (who knew?), and you can’t actually choose which surprise for me to write about. So I guess I have to choose for you, don’t I? And since all ball games are straightforward narratives, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, I choose to start with Marco Estrada because, well, he was the starter, right?

Last Monday in Seattle, Estrada set a Blue Jays’ record by striking out the first five batters of the game, and went on to fan one more, for six of the first nine he faced. Tonight he didn’t have his strikeout mojo going quite as well, but that worked out just fine because he was able to cut down on his pitch count. In the first inning he popped up Brett Gardner to shortstop. He popped up Jacoby Ellsbury to second. He fanned Gary Sanchez on a cutter up in the zone on a 1-2 pitch. It maybe be that the Jays are on to something with Sanchez and the high hard ones. (Well, with Estrada “hard” is always relative, isn’t it? Who else has a really effective 88 mile-an-hour fast ball?)

This game wasn’t the lights-out through the first five innings affair that the Seattle one was, though, and Estrada had quite a trial in the second inning. Once he passed that one he was “good to go”, and retired fourteen batters in a row, which took him all the way to the top of the seventh, when Didi Gregorius shocked everyone out of their wits by hitting a leadoff homer to tie the game at one.

Let’s go back to the second, though. In his first at bat, Gregorius, hitting cleanup tonight, popped out to Josh Donaldson, giving Estrada three popups in his first four batters. Then Mark Texeira, winding down his career with the Yankees, performed a feat that we may never see again. Estrada started Tex off with a cutter taken for a strike. Since the pitch worked, he tried it again, on the inner half, and absolutely sawed off Texeira, the handle still in his hand, the bat head off on its own adventure. But the ball—get this, now, it’s the truth—rocketed to right on a line over the head of Michael Saunders, and hit the wall for a double. Never before. Probably never again.

A little stunned, perhaps, Estrada walked Brian McCann on a 3-2 count, and gave up a soft flare of a base hit to left by Chase Headley to load the bases. Now that the Yankees had his attention, Estrada set to work. He fanned rookie right fielder Mason Williams on four pitches. Then on a 1-2 pitch he threw his famous changeup to Ronald Torreyes, who popped out to Donaldson at third. Estrada might not have had his strikeout mojo tonight, but he sure had his popup mojo. Torreyes was his fifth popup in the first two innings.

After the second, Estrada was masterful through six innings. Fourteen batters in a row, as I mentioned, and only 39 pitches to navigate the third through sixth. Unfortunately, he ran into trouble in the top of the seventh, trouble named Didi (I wonder how Derek Jeter feels about being replaced by a guy named Didi? Actually, the Yankees should dump Starlin Castro at second and find a second baseman named Dick, so their double-play combination would be Dick and Didi. And if you get that one, you really know your early sixties R and B!)

It seems like in these days of rigid pitch-count control, when the Trump Border Wall of the game is the end of the seventh inning—you shall not pass to the eighth—it’s a common phenomenon that a pitcher who’s had a good outing struggles in his last full inning. Another one is that if your starter does breeze the seventh, and the manager decides to extend him, it is written in stone that the leadoff hitter in the eighth will get a base hit, if not a home run. There’s something dangerous about being almost back to the barn.

So as Marco Estrada came out for the seventh with a pitch count of only seventy two, visions of a complete game festooned with sugar plums danced in our heads. But then, on an innocuous 1-1 pitch, Gregorius took it over the fence in right centre to tie the game. (We’ll get to the Jays’ run in a minute, just be patient. Marco Estrada is the story here, and we need to usher him out with some respect.)

Now, if Marco had just shut down the side after that, on another, say dozen pitches, Manager John Gibbons might have sent him out for the eighth, to try to get him a W.

But after he struck out Texeira on a 3-2 pitch, Brian McCann singled to right. Eric Young ran for Texeira and stole second while Chase Headley was striking out for the second out. Then Estrada walked Mason Williams on a 3-2 pitch, before finally fanning Ronald Torreyes to end the inning. No further damage, but the inning had cost Estrada 31 pitches, and dreams of a complete game died a-glimmering.

The Yankees started Michael Pineda, who pitched much better than his record of 6-11 and a 4.89 ERA coming into today’s game. Pineda has had a funny September. In four previous starts this month he has only gone four innings twice, four and two thirds once, and into the sixth, five and a third, only once. He’s given up 18 hits but only four earned runs in his 18 September innings. So why the short starts? The problem with Michael, the poor boy, is that he just works too hard. He struggles to find his spot. He pitches from behind. He fidgets and fusses while the pitch count climbs. 87 in four complete. 82 in four complete. Only 77 in four and two thirds—must have gotten a good night’s sleep before that one.

Tonight’s performance by Pineda was another pea from the same old pod. In five and two-thirds innings he gave up one run on three hits with three walks and two strikeouts, and threw 97 pitches. Watching the game was like interval training. We sprinted through Estrada’s innings, and then walked, stretching it out, through Pineda’s.

All that being said, Toronto didn’t do much damage to him. The Jays wasted a one-out double by Josh Donaldson in the first, followed an out later by a walk to Jose Bautista, and then only two more Jays’ hitters touched base before the sixth, Pineda’s last inning.

The way he’s been going the last few games, if you had to pick one guy who’d hit one out for the only run of a six-inning 1-0 pitcher’s duel, it would have to be Bautista. After Edwin Encarnacion led off the inning by grounding out to short, Pineda started Bautista out on a slider, low and away. Then he threw him three straight fast balls at 93 mph, the first one a high strike, the second low and away, and the third thigh-high, inner half of plate. Uh-oh. Bye bye. Bautista didn’t miss it, and for the fourth game in a row he had a crucial RBI, and the Jays a 1-0 lead, which held until the seventh when Gregorius matched Jose’s heroics.

By the seventh, though, Pineda was gone, his string of good innings broken in the sixth. The sixth started with a walk to Travis, but Donaldson hit into a double play that should have eased things for the Yankee starter. But Edwin blooped a single into right, moved around to third on first a wild pitch and then a passed ball. Pineda walked Bautista, and his start was over, at 97 pitches, as Manager Joe Girardi brought in Adam Warren, who got Russell Martin to ground out to end the inning.

After Gregorius tied it up in the top of the seventh, the Jays immediately set to work to try to untie it in their half of the inning with some textbook baseball that unfortunately didn’t pan out in the end. Troy Tulowitzki led off with a first-pitch single to centre. Michael Saunders, who had grounded out to third-baseman Chase Headley behind the bag at second in the shift, smartly took advantage of the same positioning to poke one through the open left side into left for another hit. Kevin Pillar followed with a nice sacrifice bunt that pulled the pitcher toward first, and the runners moved up. (Did I just write ‘sacrifice bunt” again??) But unfortunately the textbook couldn’t turn Carrera and Travis into contact hitters against Adam Warren. He fanned them both, and the inning was at an end.

In the top of the eighth Brett Gardner also attacked the shift against Joaquin Benoit, and bounced one past the non-existent third baseman, a ball that just kept rolling while Gardner steamed into second. But like the Jays’ efforts in the seventh, it went for naught as Benoit fanned Gary Sanchez and the ubiquitous Didi to keep the game at ones.

Comes the bottom of the eighth and a quick display of bold base-running by Donaldson that enabled the Jays to take the lead. Having no other choices, the other big guys being gone, Girardi brought in Dellin Betances to take yet another shot at shutting down the Jays. And yet again he didn’t do it. Josh Donaldson worked him for a walk on a three-two count to lead off. Then Betances’ leisurely delivery and focus on the batter Encarnacion handed Donaldson an easy if surprising stolen base. Edwin followed by grounding the ball to the left of Gregorius at short, and Josh, sensing the shortstop’s momentum going the other way, broke for third and didn’t draw a throw. He was on third with one out and who else but Mr. Clutch, Jose Bautista, at the plate. Bautista worked the count to three and two, then lined one cleanly up the middle to score Donaldson with the lead run.

Betances settled down to strike out Russell Martin and Tulo, but not before some messy defence by the Yankees created a further scoring opportunity that went for naught. Gibbie put Dalton Pompey in to run for Gibbons, and he promptly got picked off, breaking too early for second before the pitcher committed to the plate. Betances threw behind Pompey to Texeira, Pompey dashed straight on for second, and Texeira had a little trouble getting the ball out of his glove, and presto, change-o, Pompey’s pickoff had turned into a stolen base. But then the strikeouts ended it and we went to the ninth with Roberto Osuna coming in to protect the one-run lead and make a winner out of Benoit.

Osuna ended up with a blown save on the worst imaginable luck as the Yankees scored two runs to take the lead and threaten to ruin a nice, close Blue Jays’ win. Mark Texeira was down 0 and 2 leading off, laid off on a four-seamer that was low and inside, and then muscled off a high and inside four-seamer and singled to centre. Rob Refsnyder was sent in to run for Texiera, and Billie Butler hit a two-strike broken bat blooper to left for a single, Refsnyder stopping at second. Donovan Solano came in to run for Butler. Chase Headley hit a come-backer to Osuna, but there was no chance for a play at third, and the Yankees had runners at second and third with one out. Mason Williams then scored Refsnyder with yet another two-strike hit, this one opposite field, and the game was tied with Solano at third and still only one out. On two strikes, Torreyes hit a sacrifice fly to Pillar in centre, and the Yankees had the lead. Four contacts with two strikes. Two sawed-off base hits. Two cheap runs on good pitches. Gardner popped out to third, but the Yankees had the lead and it was gut-check time for the home team.

There has been a lot of discussion in recent weeks about the “lack of production” from the bottom of the Jays’ batting order—as if the top was producing all that much—but I wrote some time ago that there have been a number of times when the chemistry of gritty at bats and speed on the bases emanating from Kevin Pillar, Melvin Upton, Zeke Carrera, and, when he’s in there, Darwin Barney has led to good things, and the team’s rally in the bottom of the ninth to pull out the game was the best example thus far.

Free-swinging Melvin Upton led off and promptly whiffed on the first two fast balls from Betances, who was still in the game. After fouling one off, he patiently watched Betances miss with four in a row. Upton was on first, Betances out of the game, and Tyler Clippard in. Clippard went up 0 and 2 on Pillar as Pillar fouled off two bunt attempts (am I actually saying this? It’s not a figment?) Then Pillar took a ball, fouled off two more, the second with Upton going on the pitch, and finally rifled a grounder through the open right side of the infield, as Upton raced around to third.

This brought Zeke Carrera to the plate, fast runners on the corners and nobody out, and one of the most dramatic plays of the season was about to unfold. On the first pitch from Clippard, without warning, and without a sign, as we learned later from Gibbie in his post-game, Carrera pushed a bunt up the first-base line. Upton, who didn’t know it was coming, broke for the plate as soon as he saw the ball was down, making it a safety squeeze. Clippard was closest to the ball, and he unwisely tried to whack it toward catcher Gary Sanchez when it was already too late to make a play on Upton with the tying run. Unfortunately for the Yankee reliever, he hadn’t passed glove-whacking 101, and his foolhardy attempt sailed past Sanchez, allowing Pillar to reach third and Carrera second on the error.

Clippard then fanned Devon Travis on a 1-2 fast ball, the first and only out of the inning. With Donaldson due up and first base open, the intentional walk to Josh was a given, bringing Edwin Encarnacion to the plate with the bases loaded and one out. With Edwin, you had three possibilities: he’d drive in the run, one way or another; he’d strike out with a mighty wind; he’d hit into a double play. Big Eddie didn’t waste any time, smoking a grounder up the middle that the second baseman Torreyes made a valiant effort on, diving on the backhand to keep it in the infield, but there was no chance for an out anywhere, Pillar waltzed in from third, and the game was over.

The “little” guys set the table with zest and panache, and one of the big guys served up the main course, chef’s surprise, a really big walk-off win.

That makes three straight over the shell-shocked Yankees, Toronto’s September swoon seems to be over, and the Jays just keep on truckin’ not conceding a thing to anyone.

Say what you will about Jose Bautista, there is no denying that he has a finely-tuned flair for the dramatic.

Wednesday afternoon in Seattle, in the top of the ninth inning, with the Mariners clinging to a 1-0 lead after a scorching pitchers’ duel between Felix Hernandez and Aaron Sanchez, the distance around the bases for the Toronto Blue Jays might as well have been 720 feet instead of 360, for all the hope the team had of scoring the tying run.

The skinny young flame-thrower Edwin Diaz, who had assumed the closer’s role in Seattle in mid-season, and had already racked up 16 saves in 17 opportunities, stood on the mound bathed in bright, early-fall sunlight. Unfortunately, the circle of sunlight was not big enough to reach home plate. A line of deep shadow crossed the infield half-way between the mound and the plate. The batter would see the ball clearly out of the pitcher’s hand, but about half-way to the plate it would disappear. If the batter were very lucky, and had very acute eyesight, he might have picked up the flight of the ball a split-second after it had disappeared, and an instant before it was on him at the plate.

If the batter were neither blessed with hyper-vision nor Irish luck he’d never see the ball again. Edwin Encarnacion led off the inning for Toronto, and struck out swinging on a 3-2 count. On a 1-0 pitch Diaz had thrown a mid-80s slider and Edwin had swung over it and missed. He stepped out of the box, took his right hand off the bat, and raised it, palm up, to his shoulder level in a one-handed shrug. Everyone in the park knew that he was saying that he hadn’t seen the ball at all. He did manage to foul one off before striking out.

Next up, Bautista quickly fell behind one and two, but then, somehow, fouled off the next two pitches, the first one a 99 mph fast ball. Diaz threw ball two, and then threw a 98 mph two-seam fast ball, and Jose Bautista hit it out of the park down the left field line. Watching the flight of the ball to see that it stayed fair, he side-skipped down the base line until he was sure that it was out, and then broke into his home run trot. Another piece had been added to the puzzle of Jose Bautista, embellishing the image of the mythical bat-flipper of the Toronto Blue Jays. The stakes weren’t as high, not quite, but they were high enough, as anybody who has been following the Jays this year knows full well.

Last night in the seventh inning he was just an ordinary hero. With his team clinging to a slim 2-0 lead, and the pressure to win growing by the game, if not the inning, Francisco Liriano’s brilliant starting effort had come to an end and, as always, you never knew with the bullpen.

With Blue Jays on second and third and one out Manager Joe Girardi decided to walk Edwin Encarnation to load the bases and create a double-play situation. And, not incidentally, to pitch to Jose Bautista instead. Bautista hits into a lot of double plays, primarily because he always hits the ball hard, and if it’s right at an infielder, well, there’s not much you can do about it. Jose’s a smart ballplayer. He wouldn’t take it as an insult that the Yankees walked Edwin to pitch to him. But he would feel a little better about it after he ripped a ball past the third baseman and down into the left-field corner, driving in two runs, increasing the Jays’ lead to 4-0, and allowing a whole gang of Blue Jays’ fans across the country to relax and breathe. Just a little.

And today? Well, in case you didn’t see the game, we’ll just keep that our little secret for the time being, okay?

Looking over his last few starts, I think it’s safe to say that we can put the “where’s the Marcus Stroman we expected to see?” question away for good, at least for this year, because the answer now is “right here, doing his thing”. In the month of September, he has had four starts before today. On the face of it, since he went 0-4 in those four starts, you might wonder how he’s back to the Stroman we expected. But remember, wins and losses don’t mean anything, until they do, as in Jay Happ, Rick Porcello . . .

But in those four losses he pitched 23 innings, gave up 23 hits, 8 walks, and 8 earned runs, for a WHIP of 1.30. In other words, he’s pitched like a perfectly decent starting pitcher in the American League, and if you want an explanation for his won-loss record, it’s not hard to find, is it? You could win a World Series with a shortened Blue Jays’ rotation of starters who’ve lost more games than they’ve won in September. But you would need a few hits along the way.

C.C. Sabathia, like Felix Hernandez, is a very different pitcher from the one who spent the bulk of his career as a dominant number one starter. However, unlike Hernandez, who has continued to pitch effectively and coninued to be respected as the ace on his staff, Sabathia has fallen on leaner times. His career arc hit its low point last season when, on the day after the end of the regular season, he announced that he was going into rehab for alcohol abuse. The severity and urgency of the problem was highlighted by the fact that the Yankees were about to play the Houston Astros in the Wild Card game the very next day, and by his action Sabathia was withdrawing from the team’s playoff roster.

Through the winter and early spring Sabathia did a number of media interviews in which he discussed the success of his rehab, how it had been the only option left for him, and how he was returning to the Yankees with a new lease on life. In the best of all baseball worlds, this good news story would have ended with him having a great season and restoring his baseball reputation before the world.

Sadly, this hasn’t happened, as his year has been mediocre at best. He entered tonight’s game with a season record of 8-12, with an okay ERA of 4.19, and a run of September starts marked by fairly low innings pitched and very high pitch counts. Always a work horse, entering tonight’s likely second-last start of the season, he has only pitched a total of 165.1 innings, this from a pitcher who had reeled off six consecutive 200-plus seasons, including a high of 253 in 2008, before struggling with injuries in 2014 and the other problems last year.

All that having been said, Stroman pitched one of his best games of the year, throwing seven innings of shutout ball on just one hit and three walks, striking out five and ending at 97 pitches. Removed from a scoreless tie with a one-hitter going, it took all of Uncle Gibbie’s arm-around-his-shoulder consoling to explain to Stroman why he wasn’t going back out for the eighth inning.

Sabathia, meanwhile, went nearly pitch for pitch with Stroman, also finishing seven innings, no runs, four hits, three walks, two strikeouts, and 93 pitches. After quick three-up, three-down first innings—Stroman retiring Gardner and Ellsbury on six pitches, and Sabathia erasing a Donaldson single with a double-play ball from Edwin Encarnacion, it was game on.

Both pitchers benefited from double plays in the second inning. The Jays pulled off their second 3-5-3 double play in two nights, with Donaldson making the pivot very efficiently again. Sabathia survived a lead-off double by Jose Bautista, as he continued his solid hitting, and two walks, lucky that Tulo hit into the dp in between all this. CC also committed a cardinal error which could have come back to bite him big time. Frustrated with the strike zone while pitching to Russell Martin, he made an obvious gesture of frustration aimed at home plate umpire Dan Bellino.

Baseball tradition is very strict on this point. Players are allowed to say almost anything to a plate umpire about his strike zone, but they can’t use expressive body language, so that everyone in the park can see what’s going on. This is called “showing up” the umpire, and must not be done. For example, catchers are talking to the plate umpire all the time—where was that pitch—is that the limit of your zone on the outside—can you please appeal the checked swing—and so on. But woe betide the catcher who stands up and faces the umpire, or turns his head to look at him while he’s speaking. And the woe will come in the guise of a suddenly tighter strike zone for the catcher’s pitcher. It goes without saying that the pitcher can’t be gesturing to the ump from sixty feet away.

(Sixty feet, six inches, to be precise, and extensive preliminary research—at least ten minutes’ worth—has not been able to uncover a reason for a change to that specific distance, made in 1893, and measured from the front of the pitcher’s “plate”, which we now call the pitcher’s rubber, to the exact intersection of the first and third base foul lines. Since the pitching distance was lengthened considerably by this change, it’s likely that the rules committee of the day was stacked with .220 hitters.)

Stroman walked Brett Gardner to lead off the fourth, and he advanced to second on a passed ball, but died there, as the Toronto starter fanned Jacoby Ellsbury and then Gary Sanchez, Sanchez on a high hard one, as the smoking hot catcher seems to be cooling off with the fall air in Toronto, and retired Didi Gregorius on an easy fly to left. Gregorius, by the way, who has had a great season and is finally starting to fill Derek Jeter’s shoes, may be running out of gas, as he seems to be making a weak, late contact so far in this series.

Sabathia pitched over two hits again in the Jays’ fourth, one of them a landmark for Edwin Encarnacion. His single to centre was his 153^rd base hit of the year, a career mark for him; his record should be extended a fair ways further, since he has ten games to go in the season. As season hit totals go, this isn’t all that great shakes, but Edwin’s never been a .300 hitter, or even very close to it. The fact that this is his highest hit total for a season, though, is just another piece of the very solid portfolio Edwin is putting together for the market in the fall.

The fifth, sixth, and seventh innings passed quickly and quietly as the two starters showed what it means to be in command, both of their stuff and of the game situation. The bullpens, then, would tell the story.

Jason Grilli started the eighth for Toronto and quickly retired the first two batters, Aaron Hicks grounding out to Donaldson at third, and Brian McCann looking at a called third strike. Then the game got really tense, really quickly. No Yankee hitter had touched third base for seven and two thirds innings, but Ronald Torreyes changed that with a triple to the wall in right centre. Manager Joe Girardi inserted Billie Butler to hit for Tyler Austin, and Grilli earned another hold, and another chance to do his frenzied walk-off, by fanning Butler on a four-seamer at the end of a tough seven-pitch at bat.

Tyler Clippard came in to pitch the bottom of the eighth for the Yankees and it looked like we might be settling in for a long night. Both Kevin Pillar and Devon Travis grounded out to Torreyes at third. But then Josh Donaldson stepped up to the plate, and stepped up, period, prolonging the inning with a single to left. A Clippard wild pitch moved Josh to second, opening up first for Edwin to receive a five-pitch walk, as Clippard stayed away from him. This brought Jose Bautista to the plate.

You could just imagine Jose coming to the plate thinking “This shit is really getting old.” With the season he’s had, you can understand why opposing teams would prefer pitching to Jose rather than Edwin, but still, is is crunch time, and it is Jose. Result? Clippard’s 2-0 pitch landed in the left-field seats and the Jays had a sudden 3-zip lead. This time Bautista didn’t feed the haters, taking a normal trot around the bases.

Roberto Osuna came in for the save, and retired Donovan Solano, the Yankees’ second baseman, on a grounder to short, gave up a lame opposite-field single to Gardner, and then finished off the night with easy fly balls by Ellsbury and Sanchez. Osuna, who shows no signs of slowing down, recorded his 35^th save in 38 opportunities.

The Yankees had been shut out 2-0 by Tampa’s Blake Snell, Chase Whitley, and Alex Colome on Thursday night, so they have now been shut out in three straight games, as things have come to a pretty pass indeed for the fabled Bronx Bombers. In ten days, the Yankees have faded from lurking in the rear-view mirror to pulled off on the shoulder with their hood up and steam rising from the rad.

So home again to Toronto for the last ten games of the season, seven here, and the final big three games in Boston next weekend. It was a winning road trip, though we needed it to be more. The Red Sox, more aptly called the Red Tail Lights as they pull away in the distance, sit in first by five games. We hold the first Wild Card slot by one game over Detroit, who are charging hard, and a game and a half over Baltimore, who are fading fast after the Sox beat up on them at Camden this week.

We face the Yankees, whose playoff hopes became a lot fainter this week after being swept by the Red Sox and winning two of three from Tampa Bay. They come in to Toronto looking to turn around that recent two and four record. On the other hand, let us recall that the Yankees initiated the recent slide of the Blue Jays by sweeping their series at Yankee Stadium at the beginning of September.

But the Yankees arrived with their pitching somewhat in disarray after the announcement on Thursday that Masahiro Tanaka would miss his scheduled start in the series against the Jays. Meanwhile, now that it has been determined that Francisco Liriano will be slotted in to the fifth starter’s spot for Toronto, the Jays are looking at a set rotation right to the end of the season. It’s organized so that Aaron Sanchez will get a regularly-scheduled start against Baltimore Tuesday night, and then be available for a crucial game in Boston on the last weekend, or a start in a wild card game.

It’s one thing to have your pitchers all lined up, but it’s another thing to have them perform up to expectations. In that regard there doesn’t seem to be much reason for concern. If there was one part of Toronto’s game that did not fail to live up to its assignment during the west coast swing it was the pitching, starters and relievers both. With the ongoing hitting woes suffered by the Blue Jays, the pitching has been the team’s only salvation, and the reason that it’s even in the running for the playoffs.

While Manager Joe Girardi’s decision to start Brian Mitchell tonight in the series opener might have the air of a stopgap measure, it’s not exactly a bad move, given Mitchell’s last start against Toronto. Against the Jays in New York on September seventh Mitchell was just one in a string of starts against the Jays by pitchers just returning after major time on the DL, pitchers auditioning for spots in next year’s rotation, pitchers promoted from the bullpen for a spot start, most of whom utterly stymied the tepid bats of the Jays’ sluggers. He went five innings for the win, shutting out Toronto on four hits with two walks, on only 80 pitches. I would think by now that the Jays’ hitters have learned to stop salivating when they know they’re facing a pitcher not named Tanaka or Tillman or Porcello.

Francisco Liriano has been a revelation for the Jays since coming over right (that’s literally right at 4:00) at the trade deadline. He had been scuffling badly in Pittsburgh this year, and the hope on the part of Toronto’s management was that a change of scenery and a reunion with his favourite catcher Russell Martin might turn things around for the lefty, and what a bonus if they did, to have two solid left-handers in the team’s rotation. Though he’s suffered somewhat from lack of run support, and has had the odd patch where he’s laboured with an elevated pitch count, he’s been 2-2 with an ERA of 3.35 over 43 innings with 42 strikeouts since his arrival.

Tonight after surviving a rocky first inning was as good as Liriano has been in his short time with Toronto, utilizing a nasty slider and some well-set-up fast balls to keep the Yankees well in check. He retired the side in the second, fourth, and fifth innings, and gave up only a leadoff single to hot rookie Gary Sanchez in the sixth, before retiring the next three batters to close out six innings of 3-hit shutout ball, with two walks and six strikeouts over 100 pitches.

Liriano started the game well by getting Brett Gardner to ground out to second, and fanning Jacoby Ellsbury on a really nasty 1-2 slider. But then he suffered from the two-out yips, which seem to be becoming much more common these days, and not just for the Blue Jays’ pitchers. In fact, I’d like to see the analytics geeks make themselves useful and look into this. Is it indeed a relatively new phenomenon, this business of pitchers cruising through the first two outs and then running into difficulty? The follow-up question would be why this might be so, and it’s a question that could lead us into some interesting considerations about the mental and emotional makeup of the modern-day pitcher.

Well, anyway, after two quick outs on only 8 pitches, Liriano and Zeke Carrera in left were smoked by Sanchez, the rookie phenom who munched his way through the Toronto pitching staff the first time around like a Toronto squirrel feasting on telephone cable. The hot-hitting youngster roped one over Carrera’s head that bounced out for a ground-rule double. Liriano then walked both newly-arrived Billie Butler and Didi Gregorius, before dramatically fanning Chase Headley on a slider low in the zone, after he’d buried one on the 0-2 pitch. Heart-pumping stuff, but the big worry was those 28 pitches he needed to get out of the first.

Liriano retired the side on 18 pitches in the second inning, but had a spot of trouble in the third, thanks (or no thanks) to a surprising fielding error by shortstop Troy Tulowitzki on an easy grounder by Brett Gardner leading off the third. Tulo went down for the ball, started to come up with it, but then left it behind on the dirt. Probably in a state of shock at Tulo’s gaffe, Liriano gave up a single to centre to Ellsbury and a deep fly to centre by Sanchez that let Gardner take third with only one out. But Liriano quickly regained control, fanning Billie Butler and inducing a popup to second by Gregorius.

After surviving the third with a pitch count of 60, Liriano only allowed the single to Sanchez in the sixth, rolling through his last three innings by retiring nine out of ten batters on only 35 pitches.

We’ll never know if Brian Mitchell would have been able to replicate his earlier start against the Jays, because he was victimized by Butler, playing first for only the third time, who booted a one-out grounder by Josh Donaldson, allowing Donaldson to reach in the first inning. Edwin Encarnacion shot one to right against the shift for a single, with Josh moving up to second. When Mitchell struck out Jose Bautista for the second out, it looked like he had a shot at getting out of the inning unscathed.

But then he walked Russell Martin to load the bases, bringing Tulo to the plate. Visions of a bases-loaded, two-outs situation in the first inning going a-glimmer yet again, I anticipated another disappointing strikeout, especially after Tulo took a called strike on the first pitch from Mitchell. But, lo and behold, the intense shortstop hit the next pitch into left field for a two-out, two-run single, the Jays had broken on top, and we could marvel at how nice it is to get a base hit with the sacks drunk. I probably haven’t used that expression before, but it’s common parlance in baseball dugouts. If the bases are loaded they’re “drunk”, like the guy down at the end of the bar is loaded.

The Jays bid fair to put Mitchell out of the game and the game out of reach in the second, but their hopes were stymied when Jose Bautista grounded into an inning-ending double play, and they were only able to add one run to their lead. It was a promising start as second baseman Ronald Torreyes couldn’t make a play on Kevin Pillar’s testy grounder, and it went for an infield single. Zeke Carrera followed with a single to right, and once again the bottom of the order had set up the stand and mixed the lemonade for the big boys. Devon Travis, or in fact Manager John Gibbons pulling the strings, surprised everybody in the park by dropping down a perfect sacrifice bunt to move the runners up. Mitchell proceeded to walk Donaldson to load the bases, and Edwin Encarnacion to force in a run before Bautista rapped into the double play that ended the inning and kept Mitchell in the game, though his team now faced a three-run deficit.

After the first two innings, Mitchell settled in and looked like the Brian Mitchell of old. Can you even say “of old” of a guy in just his fourth major league start? He gave up a leadoff single to Russell Martin in the third, but then threw a double-play ball to Tulo. He gave up Kevin Pillar’s second hit to lead off the fourth, but he held the ball long enough to see Pillar break early for second, and Pillar was out in a rundown, another base-running gaffe for the Jays . . . He pitched a clean fifth, and stranded a two-out walk to Michael Saunders in the sixth. He finished with a quality start, six innings, three runs but only one earned, thanks to Butler’s error in the first, walked four, and struck out two while throwing a reasonable 93 pitches.

The reliable Joaquin Benoit pitched a good seventh, initiating another appearance of BenGriNa, and gave up a leadoff walk to Aaron Hicks, but then inducing the pinch-hitter Brian McCann, hitting for catcher Austin Romine, to bounce into the odd-sounding 3-5-3 double play. An odd-sounding play, but one that should become more common. With both Travis and Tulo on the right side of the bag in the strong shift for McCann, Donaldson, alone on the left side, was stationed roughly at the shortstop’s normal position, and obviously best positioned to take the throw from Encarnacion and make the pivot back to Edwin. While he didn’t emulate the grace of a less-muscled middle infielder, Josh handled the job with emphasis and aplomb: Now I cross the bag, and now I get out of the way, and now I plant and throw. You could almost see him counting off the steps in his head. Well done, but good job it was McCann running from the plate.

Not that he would necessarily have used them when he was down three-zip in the seventh, but Joe Girardi must have been muttering to himself about the loss of Andrew Miller and Aroldis Chapman as he contemplated his next mound move. It’s gotta be tough when management says to an intense and competitive manager, “Look, we’re going to shop two-thirds of our high-leverage back-end bullpen, but you just keep managing like you’re in a pennant race.”

Girardi’s finger pointed to Blake Parker, he of the twitchy come-to-set-position mannerisms. This was not a good choice, though what could Girardi do? At least Parker seems to have learned to bring his palsied fit to a full stop before coming to the plate with runners on base, which he had, instantly. Zeke Carrera led off with a cheeky bunt single to third, and, yes, this is the second appearance of the word “bunt” in this post—what wonders the world holds for those who have faith! Gibbie then started Zeke on a 3-2 count to Travis (more wonders!) and Travis singled to centre, Zeke taking third. Josh flew out to right, too shallow to score Carrera, but he drew a throw from Aaron Hicks anyway that skipped away from McCann, allowing Travis to take second.

Girardi sensibly chose to walk Edwin to load the bases, hoping for an inning-ending grounder, which Bautista frequently offers, but this time he didn’t oblige, and rattled one past Headley at third and into the corner, Carrera and Travis scoring and Edwin coming around to third on the double. Parker walked Martin, loading the bases again, but Tulo promptly unloaded them with his second bases-loaded single, for 4 RBIs on the night, and a now comfy 7-0 Blue Jay lead. That was enough for Girardi, who brought in lefty James Pazos to face Michael Saunders, who was lifted for Melvin Upton, who singled to centre to load the bases yet again, but Kevin Pillar bounced into the first-to-home force out and Pazos fanned Zeke Carrera to put an end to the Jays’ bases-drunk bacchanalia.

With the expanded lead, Jason Grilli and Roberto Osuna got to relax, and Brett Cecil, who has been quietly building a more respectable CV of late, and Danny Barnes finished up, each pitching a clean inning with one strikeout.

Instead of sticking with Pazos, who’d only thrown 12 pitches, Girardi brought in Ben Heller, which resulted in another couple of runs as the Jays for once were the team to pile on. Travis led off with a double to left, and Donaldson followed with his 36^th jack of the year. With that out of the way, Heller retired Edwin on a comebacker to the mound and fanned Martin and Ryan Goins hitting for Tulo to close things out. There was one sketchy moment when Heller smacked Jose Bautista with a high hard one, eliciting a classic Bautista scowl, but the guy’s a rookie, and we’re sure he didn’t mean it, right?

So it was a good start all the way around for this four-gamer with the Yankees. Three two-RBI base hits with the bases loaded, a Donaldson dinger, and shutout pitching from Francisco Liriano, Joaquin Benoit, Brett Cecil, and Danny Barnes. Who could ask for anything more? We can’t do anything about Boston, but we can win every game that’s left, and go from there.

Tomorrow afternoon it’s a 4:00 baseball network game, Marcus Stroman against C.C. Sabathia. Like King Felix, Sabathia is now relying on a variety of breaking balls rather than flame-throwing. Marcus Stroman has improved every outing lately. Should be a good one. Just call us Pitching Duels ‘R Us!

We certainly expected a pitcher’s duel this afternoon in the rubber match of Toronto’s series with the Mariners in Seattle. But who expected to see a game in which the Jays were brought back from the brink in the top of the ninth by a dramatic home run off the bat of Jose Bautista? And who expected to see a game that was decided in the bottom of the twelfth, with R.A. Dickey on the mound in relief, Ryan Goins playing first base, and Josh Donaldson being the key to victory, but not in a good way?

The pitching matchup was a classic indeed, but by the time Aaron Sanchez had finished after six innings and Felix Hernandez after seven, little had been resolved, and there was no clear winner emerging from the duel. Yes, Hernandez went out with a one-run lead, but with three innings to go for the Blue Jays to equalize, it was hardly secure.

“King” Felix Hernandez is, at the relatively young age of thirty, not the same dominant pitcher we have known in the past, at least not at this point in this season. By way of comparison, David Price is about six months older than Hernandez. While I may still question whether Price is able to provide the value the Red Sox were looking for, considering the price they paid for him, there is no question that Price is still well able to dominate, and still pitches with enough power to generate the same strikeout totals in the past. (In fact, one positive outcome of the sad fact that the Sox will probably take the division is that we will not have to face them in a wild card game. I would not want to go into a sudden-death game facing Price.)

Hernandez, on the other hand, is now relying almost exclusively on breaking balls. He’s not breaking 92 on his four-seamer fast ball. While his record for the year (16-11 and an ERA of 3.79) is representative of a typical number one starter, a look at his last seven games will show that while he is pitching with success, the King’s crown has slipped a little. He’s won four and lost two, but with an ERA of 4.25. Revealingly, he has averaged exactly six innings a game, and given up a hit an inning with a WHIP of 1.42. Most striking is that he has struck out 28 in these seven starts, an average of only four strikeouts per start. This is mediocre output that’s not worthy of the Felix Hernandez we have known.

It’s kind of sad, in fact, to see the yellow-clad denizens of the King’s Court, down in the left field corner, all wearing their King Felix t-shirts, holding their big yellow “K” cards to wave when he chalks up another strikeout. Pretty hard to get excited about waving your “K” card only four times a game. From the Mariners’ standpoint, it’s even sadder to note, as the camera pans around the stands, that the King’s Court is the only place in the ball park not dominated by waves of Blue Jay blue. The Vancouverites were out in full force again, ready to cheer their heroes on to a sweep.

As for Aaron Sanchez, this was a start that had been projected for him when the end-of-the-season “Save Aaron’s Arm” programme went into effect. It would be interesting to see whether the extra rest and the targeting of a particular opponent would turn out well for the young right-hander and the Jays’ brain trust, or whether the disruption to his routine might prove more of a detriment than a boon.

Through his first three innings, Hernandez held the Jays to a hit and a walk, with two strikeouts, but at the cost of 53 pitches for the three innings. Limited as they were, he faced his toughest moments in the fourth and fifth innings. In the fourth a lucky carom off Hernandez himself preserved his slim lead. Josh Donaldson led off with one of only two hard-hit balls that Toronto generated against Hernandez, hitting a double to right. Edwin Encarnacion followed with a ground smash up the middle that 99 times out of 100 would have gone through for a single, scoring Donaldson, but the ball caromed off Hernandez and right to second baseman Robinson Cano, who threw out Edwin while Josh moved to third. With one out, first Jose Bautista and then Russell Martin hit balls right at third baseman Kyle Seager, who was able to check Josh at third and throw Bautista out, then throw Martin out to end the inning.

In the fifith the threat was reduced to a moment, a moment waiting to see if Seth Smith in right field would run down a drive hit over his head by Kevin Pillar with Justin Smoak on first after a two-out walk. He did, and the inning was over. It was a great running catch, by a fielder who may have been positioned too shallow on Pillar, and hats off to Smith.

In the sixth and seventh innings, the only hitter to reach against Hernandez was Edwin, with a two-out walk in the sixth. In the seventh he gained strength and breezed to the finish line on nine pitches, getting two ground balls and a popup from the Jays’ four, five, and six hitters. The King finished with the line of seven innings, no runs, two hits, three walks, four strikeouts, on 112 pitches.

Aaron Sanchez’ first inning against the M’s showed him at his best, and, frankly, the most dominant he has looked since the rotation juggling began. (I’m not commenting one way or the other on the wisdom of the rotation change, just observing what should be clear to anyone who can see, that he’s not had as good command since the regime changed.) He popped up Norichika Aoki, who looked like the batboy facing Sanchez, and then fanned Seth Smith and Robinson Cano, taking 13 pitches to retire the side. It took him 16 pitches to get through the second, when he yielded his first hit, a two-out, weak, opposite-field looper to left by Adam Lind, before fanning Leonys Martin to end the inning.

The Mariners scored the only run that mattered until the ninth (duh! It was the only run, period, until the ninth!) off Sanchez in the third. It went as an earned run, but it hardly resulted from a solid Seattle attack on the big young right-hander.

The only hard-hit ball in the inning was an opposite-field double lined to right by the Mariners’ backup catcher, leading off the inning. Jesus Sucre (pronounced “Sucré) has been an occasional catcher for the Mariners since 2013, amassing only 231 at-bats in four years, and only 19 plate appearances this year.

I considered naming Sucre to my All-Time Great Baseball Names Team, obviously under the English version of his name, inverted in proper alphabetical form. You’ve got it, “Sweet Jesus”. However, I’m not sure if he’s an appropriate addition, given his marginal career, and the fact that we have to transform his name to make it work. I do have another spot in mind for him, however: Starting catcher on Bud Abbott’s famous silly-nickname team, the basis of the “Who’s on First” routine. I can just hear it:

Costello: What’s the name of the catcher?

Abbott: Sweet Jesus.

Costello: I just asked you a question. How come you’re swearing at me? What’s the name of the catcher?

Abbott: Sweet Jesus.

Costello: I ask you the name of the catcher and you tell me Sweet Jesus.

Abbott: That’s right.

Costello: Sweet Jesus, the catcher.

Abbott: That’s right. The catcher.

Costello: The name of the catcher is . . .

Abbott: Sweet Jesus.

Costello: What would your mother say if she heard you talking like that?

Anyway, with Sucre on second, Sanchez fanned Ketel Marte for the first out. This brought Nori Aoki, notorious slap hitter, to the plate. He blooped one out over second that fell just in front of a charging Kevin Pillar. Pillar, probably torn over trying to cut Sucre down at the plate, bobbled the ball, and not only missed the chance to throw out the catcher, but was charged with an error for a weak throw to the cutoff that allowed Aoki to reach second while Sucre scored.

This was the Mariners’ only run until they scored the winner in the twelfth, but Sanchez struggled to finish off the inning, and ended up expending a precious 32 pitches to do it. He’d thrown 29 over the first two, but came out of the third at 61, pretty well guaranteeing that he wouldn’t go seven. With Aoki on second, he walked

Smith to set up the double play, and then got the ground ball that he wanted from Cano, a sharply hit bouncer right at Donaldson. But Josh bobbled the ball, had to let the play at second go, and threw Cano out at first. Sanchez then walked Nelson Cruz (semi-intentionally?) to load the bases before retiring Kyle Seager on an easy grounder back to the pitcher.

Sanchez cruised through the fourth, fifth, and sixth innings, giving up only one hit, a base hit to that same Sweet Jesus, who went again to right field for a single in the fourth. Sanchez returned to his mastery in his last inning, retiring the side on two strikeouts and a comebacker to the mound. He departed with a line of six innings, one tainted if earned run, only four hits, three walks, and five strikeouts on 103 pitches.

With the two starters out of the game, the question of the night was “Whither the bullpens?” The answer to the question was “plugging the hole”, right where they were supposed to be. Seattle used five relievers over 5 innings. The Jays used nine over six innings. The Seattle relievers gave up one run. The Jays’ relievers did not give up an earned run, and only saw one scored against them. Unfortunately, Seattle went into this rondelay with a one-run lead, and the tainted run off the Jays’ ninth reliever decided the game.

Joaquin Benoit as usual came out for the seventh for Toronto and allowed one base-runner but held Seattle at bay. With one out, Sweet Jesus picked up his third hit, a blooper that dropped in front of Pillar in centre. Manager Scott Servais opted for a pinch-runner, Shawn O’Malley, taking Jesus out of the game, to the gratitude of Jays’ fans everywhere. Who knew Jesus could be such a tough out? However, O’Malley never advanced as Benoit struck out Ketel Marte, and Nori Aoki was retired on a grounder to short. Tulo’s throw pulled Justin Smoak off the bag but he made a nice leaping catch and sweep tag to get Aoki.

In the eighth the Jays were unable to take advantage of two walks, thanks to pinch-runner Dalton Pompey being thrown out trying to steal second. Brett Cecil started the bottom of the eighth to pitch to the two left-handed hitters first up for the Mariners. He “got” both, catching Ben Gamel looking, but hitting Robbie Cano. Steve Grilli came in to do his thing and fanned Cruz and Seager to take the Jays to the top of the ninth.

Does it seem to you that good things happen offensively for the Jays after Grilli ends the eighth with a punch-out? The emotional boost didn’t particularly help Edwin, who struck out to lead off the inning. Pitching for the M’s was Edwin Diaz, their lanky young closer who has done a good job, completing 16 of 17 save opportunities since taking over as closer. By this time, it was somewhere around 3:30 in the afternoon Pacific Time, and the shadows heading across the field left the mound in brilliant sunlight and the batter’s boxes in complete shade. In fact, when Edwin swung and missed at the first pitch from Diaz he shook his head and raised his hands, clearly indicating that he hadn’t seen the pitch he’d missed.

Which makes it all the more remarkable that, having worked the count to full against Diaz, and fouling off a couple, Bautista made good contact on a ball he could pull, and drove it down the line and into the seats to tie the game, inspiring an orgy of frenzy from the largely Blue Jays’ crowd still hanging on in the ball park. Jose skipped sideways down the line towards first before picking up his home run trot half way to the bag. Much has been made of this new version of “showboating”, but in reality Bautista was only trying to follow the flight of the ball as it resisted slicing foul. Batters have done this since time immemorial, or at least since Carleton Fisk.

Interestingly, Manager John Gibbons brought Joe Biagini in for the bottom of the ninth, rather than going to Roberto Osuna in a tie game. This would suggest that he had high hopes of taking the lead in the top of the tenth now that Seattle’s closer was out of the game, and that he wanted to save Osuna to close in the tenth. It also attested to Gibbie’s well-earned faith in Biagini, who has done everything asked of him this season. This time he didn’t quite save Osuna from pitching in the ninth, but he did get two outs, so that Osuna could still pitch in the tenth. Biagini got Adam Lind, the former Jay who had only one soft single to show for the series here, to ground out to Travis on the first pitch. Then he gave up a single and stolen base to Leonys Martin, whose ninth-inning heroics had rattled Osuna’s cage on Monday. Gibbie left Biagini in to fan Mike Zunino, and then brought Osuna to face Ketel Marte. Servais countered with Dae-Ho Lee. The Jays didn’t show much concern when Martin stole third, considering that he was the winning run, but Osuna fanned the overmatched Lee on three pitches to strand Martin and take it to extra innings.

Gibbie’s hope that Osuna would close out the game came close to fruition, but there were no cigars today. Toronto had much the better chances in the tenth and eleventh, but they weren’t able to push a run across, causing the ominous thunderclouds to gather. It seems like the deeper you go into extra innings on enemy ground, the closer you come to the lightning strike you’re dreading. My kingdom for a three-run homer in the top of the tenth!

Even though Dae-Ho Lee struck out to end the ninth, his insertion for Ketel Marte turned out to be a brilliant, if lucky, move for Seattle. With the starting shortstop out of the game, Servais inserted Mike Freeman in the lineup for the top of the tenth. Seattle got burned once again by playing their opposite-field outfielders too shallow, as Michael Saunders led off the inning by pounding a double over the head of Guillermo Heredia’s head in left, and was replaced on the bases by Melvin Upton. Ryan Goins, inserted at first base after Smoak was lifted for the runner in the eighth, laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt on the first pitch, and the lead run was at third with one out. This brought Kevin Pillar to the plate for the second pivotal at-bat in the game, prior to the walkoff for the Mariners in the twelfth. Unlike Bautista’s homer in the ninth, this one didn’t work to Toronto’s advantage.

There have been a couple of pieces lately decrying the lack of production from the bottom of the Jays’ order, pointing to the relatively weak contributions of Melvin Upton, Michael Saunders, Zeke Carrera, Darwin Barney/Ryan Goins, and Pillar. Although it’s hard to argue with this evaluation in general, I find it hard to lump Carrera and Pillar in with the rest. Carrera has proven again and again that stats and overt run production don’t tell the whole story, and that when you need someone to bring the intangibles to the fore, he’s the guy. And I don’t know what Kevin Pillar these guys are watching. He’s been stuck with the “wild swinger” label for a couple of years now, and though his on-base percentage is on the low side, he has regularly shown the ability to fight off pitches and change his approach in key situations, especially since his return from the DL.

And it was Kevin Pillar this afternoon who took one ball from reliever Evan Scribner, and then fouled off six pitches before getting the one he wanted and hitting a rope past the diving new shortstop Freeman, to drive in . . . er, no, Freeman made a spectacular, game-saving snag of Pillar’s shot, Upton was frozen at third, Devon Travis (top of the order; just sayin’) struck out, and the game was still tied.

Both teams tiptoed through baserunners and walks in the eleventh, Tom Wilhelmsen allowing two on in the top of the inning before Nick Vincent came in to retire the side. Danny Barnes retired Nelson Cruz, Aaron Loup walked two and got a popup,

Ryan Tepera wild-pitched the runners to second and third, walked Zunino to load the bases and then recorded the out at first as Freeman, who couldn’t do it on both sides of the ball, hit a ground ball to Edwin Encarnacion.

Vincent stayed on for the M’s in the twelfth. He got two quick outs, then gave up an opposite field single to Goins before retiring Pillar on a fly ball to right.

This brings us to the bottom of the twelfth and the end of the road. After using eight relievers, Gibbie rolled the dice and brought in R.A. Dickey, who has been available in the bullpen in favour of Francisco Liriano since the rotation was cut back to five starters. Before you start boo-hooing about Dickey, know that this loss was not his fault, though he got to wear it. Dickey had been given ample time to warm up, and even brought his catcher, Josh Thole, into the game.

Dickey quickly ran up an 0-2 count on Heredia leading off, then got him to bounce an easy one to third after the count ran to 1-2. Josh Donaldson came in, rushed the throw, and fired it out of play. Heredia was on second after an excruciating E5 throw. Ben Gamel fouled off a bunt attempt, laid off a knuckler in the dirt, and then dropped down an okay sac attempt just to the first-base side of the plate. Goins, whom Gibbie has only used a couple of teams in late innings at first, raced in, picked it, and made a perfect throw to third. Donaldson caught it and put the tag on Heredia, who would have been DOA, except that as Josh swiped the tag on him, the ball flew out of his glove and bounced away. Heredia was safe, Gamel was on, and we had missed our second clear shot at getting the first out. This brought Robbie Cano, who had done little damage to us so far in the series, to the plate, and it was too much to hope for that Dickey could stop him from driving in the winning run.

Cano put an ordinary swing on an ordinary 2-1 knuckler, and lofted a lazy fly ball slicing toward left, an easy catch for Upton, and just deep enough to score the speedy Heredia from third with the game-winner.

So what started as a bang-up pitchers’ duel ended up turning on a sac fly hit by a struggling superstar off a knuckleball-throwing starter after a guy playing his fourth infield position saw his perfect throw to third muffed by an MVP third baseman letting a base-runner who got on because of an error by that same MVP third baseman arrive safely at third with nobody out.

Josh Donaldson has won plenty of games for us since his arrival in Toronto. The law of averages says that sooner or later he would have to lose one for us, and he did today. Still, I can’t help wishing the game were still going on, in the way of the theoretical endless ball game. Still, the Jays come home with a 4-3 record on the road, having regained a good bit of their self-respect, and kept themselves firmly in the hunt for October, even if it’s a very scary October ahead.

The informal definition of a “laugher” is “a contest or competition in which one person or team easily overwhelms another; easy victory”.

If there was any chance of tonight’s game being a laugher after the Mariners batted in the bottom of the third, you would have thought it would be for Seattle. How little we knew.

If there was ever a pitching matchup where something had to give, it was this one. Seattle’s starter was Hisashi Iwakuma, who has quietly been compiling a very fine season for the Mariners, going into tonight’s game with a 16-ll record and an ERA of 3.87. More to the point, the only time he had faced the Jays this year, on July 23^rd in Toronto, he had emerged victorious, having gone six innings, given up two runs on four hits with three walks and three strikeouts on 98 pitches. Moreover, if there has been a type of starter that has mesmerized the suffering Blue Jays’ hitters this season more than the strike-throwing power pitcher, it has been the corner-nibbling, breaking-ball-throwing soft tosser, the type we used to call a “junker”. Jared Weaver, are you out there?

Actually, if the Jays have had a trouble with flame-throwers and more trouble with soft-tossers, that kind of covers the gamut, doesn’t it? The only type left is the knuckleballer, the only one in the league is Steven Wright of the Red Sox, and as I recall our heroes didn’t hit him all that well either. In fact, though he only won one and lost two against the Jays, he only gave up three earned runs on 15 hits in 17.2 innings, so the losses can’t be pinned on him. So that pretty much covers it: the Jays have struggled against all kinds of pitchers.

If the Mariners had to feel good about Iwakuma against the Jays, the Jays had to feel good about Happ against the Mariners. In his only prior appearance against them, in Toronto in July, he pitched six innings of one-hit shutout ball to take the win. Moreover, after a little dry spell of a loss and two no decisions, including his shortest outing of the year, in which he threw 85 pitches over only two and two thirds innings in Tampa on September fourth, he had won his last two starts, giving up only three earned runs in twelve innings, and tonight stood on the brink of his landmark twentieth win of the season. Finally, unlike any other member of the rotation, Happ has generally been blessed with strong run support by the fickle Toronto batsmen.

The game started as the pitchers’ duel that the matchup might have predicted. In his first two innings, Happ gave up only an infield hit to Franklin Guttierez in the first on a smash to Josh Donaldson that the Toronto third sacker made a great play on, but had no chance to throw out the hitter. Iwakuma kept the Jays off the board for the first three innings, with a little help from the pitcher’s friends, the double-play ball and the raging wind coming in from centre field. After two easy outs in the top of the first, Edwin Encarnacion absolutely smashed one to centre. Everyone, including Edwin, thought it was out, but the wind or the hand of some Seattle-friendly benevolent being pushed it back in and into the glove of Leonys Martin at the fence.

One of the funniest sights of the season was Edwin’s reaction when he realized the ball hadn’t gone out. He had started out, obviously, in his home-run trot, admiring the ball as he headed for first. Then when he saw it stay in he stopped in his tracks with a “Wait, what?” incredulous look on his face, like “what just happened here, what world have I entered?” Equally funny was his sheepish laugh as team-mates and opponents alike gave him the gears for his reaction.

In the second inning Iwakuma walked Russell Martin after striking out Jose Bautista but immediately got Troy Tulowitzki to ground into a double play. In the third he relied on his own wits to strand two one-out opposite-field singles by Kevin Pillar and Zeke Cabrera when he struck out Devon Travis and Josh Donaldson.

But the bottom of the third was when it started going very wrong again for Toronto. And, though I hate to dwell on it, the fielding adventures of Devon Travis were front and centre in this strange and disturbing inning.

Catcher Chris Iannetta started the inning by lining out to left fielder Zeke Carrera. Shortstop Shawn O’Malley then stirred things up by dropping down a bunt and beating it out for a single despite a fine effort by Happ to make the play. Then Guillermo Heredia hit a ball between Travis and Encarnacion that was a pretty tough chance for a double play. Travis dove and skidded to make the play, jumped to his feet, thought of second, turned toward second, and let the ball slip out of his hand . . . once again. The out at first was a sure thing, and would have been the second out. In a typical “homer” scoring decision, Heredia was given a hit.

Then with two fast base-runners, the usually staid Mariners pulled off a double steal while Happ was fanning Gutierrez, for what should have been the third out. But now we had Robinson Cano at the plate with ducks on the pond. Cano hit a hard grounder—oh no—to Travis’ left, a more difficult ball than Heredia’s. He got to it with a slide, and got his glove down, only to have it ricochet—hard—off his knee, and shoot down into the right-field corner. By the time the dust had settled, Cano was on third with a triple (can’t argue with the scorer on this one) and two runs were in. If Travis had just managed to keep the ball in front of or even close to him, he might have thrown Cano out, or at worst he would have had an infield single and one RBI, and not a triple and two RBIs. No doubt a bit rattled, but probably very wisely, Happ walked Nelson Cruz with the runner on third, and then fanned Kyle Seager, who has had a terrible series at the plate so far, for the third out.

The final assessment of the Mariners’ third inning evokes the anomaly that there were no errors charged, but it was plainly in sight for all to see that the Mariners had a two-run lead because Devon Travis failed to make two plays, difficult plays to be sure, but plays that a pennant-winning team has to make. Ominously, Happ, who had only thrown 26 pitches in the first two innings, took 30 more to extricate himself from the mess he didn’t create.

But then the Blue Jays batted in the fourth and all was gloriously, joyfully, forgotten in the delirium of the biggest inning of the year.

But before I get to all the heroics, I need to address a glaring omission in my last post, about Marco Estrada’s fine performance last night. Now in this day and age of wondrous publishing capability, I could just use the magical capabilities of Word Press to go back and add an appropriate paragraph to that post to cover my fault, but that’s just not me.

Would all the amazing Toronto fans who made a sea of blue in Seattle’s home park please accept my deepest mea culpa for not mentioning the hordes of Canadian fans who travelled down from Vancouver and, really, all parts of Canada, to flood every section of the stadium with their team gear, signs, parrots, raincoats, Superman capes, and all the other paraphernalia that make up a typical Toronto home crowd? Even the guy in the full-body parrot costume was there, thankful for the cool Pacific air, no doubt. The views of the Toronto fans swarming the gates and filling the aisles on the way to their seats were astonishing, as was the noise level, and the total audibility of all of the typical Jays’ chants and cheers.

Though the TV broadcasters constantly stressed how packed the place was with Jays’ fans, they missed one of the biggest stories of the series. While they were talking on, as the do, the camera panned over the stadium, showing the progress of a very solid “wave” of blue-shirted fans going around the stadium, and starting over, and not stopping, all the while the cameras followed it. Now, I’ve never been a fan of the wave—I find it kind of sophomorish, and not at all in keeping with the dignity of the game—but this was stunning. Who could ever imagine there being enough fans to sustain a wave at a road game in an away ball park?

Finally, most unforgiveable on my part was failing to mention the amazing standing ovation received by Marco Estrada last night as he left the mound after his excellent outing. Even Estrada himself was shocked by the strength of the crowd’s support for the Toronto team. These games have become such a fun thing that I predict that the Jays’ series in Seattle next year will be sold out, and pretty quickly, too.

I mention this phenomenon now in order to expiate my fault for omitting it last night, but also because this is the right place to mention it. If a crowd can ever be said to be the “tenth man” in the team’s batting order, this crowd was absolutely a contributor to the crazy outpouring of runs by the Jays in the fourth inning. The sound in the park rose to crescendo after crescendo as successive Blue Jay hitters contributed to the all-in assault on the Mariners’ pitchers. Our boys had to be inspired by the support they received in Seattle, and at no time more so than in tonight’s fourth inning.

The inning started innocuously enough when Edwin struck out on a foul tip caught by the catcher, Chris Iannetta. Then it looked like another desultory effort as Iannetta went back to the screen for a foul pop up off the bat of Jose Bautista. Until Iannetta realized he had overrun the ball, tried to back pedal to it, and then had the ball fall to the ground for an error, giving Bautista a new lease on life at the plate. Which he used to hit a soft flare to right for a base hit on the ninth pitch of a full count. This brought Russell Martin to the plate bringing imminent danger for the M’s pitcher.

Iwakuma made the mistake of going 2-0 on Martin, and then trying to get a not-great slider over the plate. Martin rifled it into the stands in left, and the game was tied. The pitcher quickly got two strikes on Tulo, but Tulo lined a single into left on the third pitch. Iwakuma fell behind again on Michael Saunders and got burned again, this time to right field, and the Jays had a two-run lead. That was four hits in a row.

Kevin Pillar came up smelling blood, and quickly fell behind 0-2 on a foul and a swing and miss, before he measured one and doubled inside the bag to left. Zeke Carrera worked the count to 2-2 and five pitches, then hit another little flare to right on the sixth pitch, Pillar got a good read that it was a hit, and it was 5-2. Manager Scott Servais had seen enough, and called for Nick Vincent from the bullpen to stop the bleeding.

There followed one of the craziest and most audacious plays you will ever see. On a 1-2 pitch from Vincent, Travis lofted a popup down the line to short right field. Carrera, running from first, instinctively gambled that the ball would fall in for a hit, and took off hell bent for leather and third base. The ball dropped, tantalizingly, right on the foul line, between the frantically charging Robinson Cano coming from second, and right fielder Franklin Gutierrez. Carrera never broke stride, even as he rounded third, and began to track the play in right field as he raced for the plate. The throw was good, and received by the catcher in front of the plate before Zeke arrived. Watching all the way, the daredevil launched himself in foul territory, out of the reach of the catcher, swiped his hand across the plate before being tagged, and ended in a somersault with his feet up in the air. There was no video review. Only a run, but what a run! By the way, that was the seventh consecutive batter to reach base with a hit in the inning.

Vincent walked Donaldson; this brought Edwin Encarnacion to the plate, looking for a chance to shed the embarrassment of having started this inning by striking out (remember that?) Edwin reached out and stroked an outside pitch into the alley in right centre, scoring Travis and Donaldson, for the eighth consecutive hit from nine batters, and Edwin’s pride was restored. Scott Servais went to the bullpen again for Cody Martin, and he had the key to ending the mess (if you’re a Seattle fan, that is),

getting Bautista to fly out to centre, and Martin to line out hard to right.

Jay Happ’s unfortunate 2-0 deficit was now an 8-2 lead, and it was up to him to shut down the Mariners. I guess he did. Recall that the Mariner’s lucky third inning had ended with the strikeout of Kyle Seager. Now the big left-hander came back out after nearly 40 minutes of mostly pleasant delay and proceeded to strike out the side, with a variety of means. Dae-Ho Lee went down swinging, Leonys Martin on a foul tip controlled by Russell Martin, and Chris Iannetta was caught looking.

Happ picked up one more strikeout to lead off the top of the fifth, as Martin corralled a two-strike foul tip by Shawn O’Malley for Happ’s fifth consecutive punchout. But the pitch total, extended in the Mariners’ third, was mounting, and Happ was losing his mastery. He gave up a single to Heredia, retired Gutierrez on a pop to the shortstop, and yielded another single to Cano. Happ finished off holding his breath, along with the rest of us, as Nelson Cruz scalded a 2-2 four-seam fastball to left, but lined it right at Zeke Carrera for the third out, and the end of Happ’s day, after five innings, two runs, earned supposedly, six hits, one walk, eight strikeouts, and 99 pitches. It would be up to the Toronto bullpen to bring home Happ’s historic twentieth win.

This was a serious assignment, and with such a lead calling for the use of anyone but BenGriNa, Aaron Loup, Ryan Tepera, Brett Cecil and Scott Feldman were basically perfect, pitching one inning apiece. Loup gave up a double to Lee in the sixth, Tepera hit Heredia with a pitch in the seventh, and Heredia stole second, the only advance to second by the Mariners after Happ’s exit, Feldman walked pinch-hitter Daniel Vogelbach in the ninth, and that was it for the Mariners.

As for the Blue Jays, Josh Donaldson made a distinct statement that he was coming out of his slump by hitting a homer to left off Cody Martin, the only run Martin gave up in three and two thirds innings of relief of Iwakuma, leading off the sixth. It was Donaldson’s thirty-sixth of the year. Then, in the eighth, Edwin put his own stamp on the game by hitting number forty-two off David Rollins, to complete the scoring at 10-2.

What more could you ask, as a Jays’ fan, than winning the first two of the three-game series in Seattle, and winning it in such an emphatic fashion, combining eight innings of shutout pitching and a riotously exuberant big inning to shut down the Mariners, who are losing their momentum in their chase for a wild card slot.

Tomorrow afternoon the Jays go for the sweep and a five-two road trip behind Aaron Sanchez, saved specifically for this start, and the Mariners hope that King Felix Hernandez will be able to save them from the Blue Jay brooms. Should be a doozy!

On the fourteenth of September, Marco Estrada had a rather strange outing against the Tampa Bay Rays.

Ever since before the All Star Game, for which he was named but could not participate, there have been issues with his back. This would explain why the quality of his starts had deteriorated somewhat since the break. His location was not as precise, a crucial problem for a pitcher who relies totally on location and spin to be effective. Because of control issues, he was falling behind batters, his walks were up, and his pitch count was up. The results were not great: he was pitching less effectively, and not going as deep into games.

Even so, the start against the Rays was most puzzling. For three innings he was perfect, and I am not using hyperbole here. Literally, he was perfect. Nine up, nine down, on 46 pitches. Five strikeouts on the first six batters for a Blue Jays’ record. In all, six strikeouts on nine batters.

But in the fourth something clicked over. He gave up a leadoff single to Logan Forsythe and a home run to Kevin Kiermaier. After getting the second out, he gave up a single, stolen base, and single for a third run. In the fifth he walked two batters, but kept the Rays off the board. In the sixth he gave up a leadoff single and was pulled from the game after 101 pitches—46 over three, then 55 over two and a third and a batter. The base-runner in the sixth scored, so he ended up giving up four earned runs in total.

The next day Manager John Gibbons finally confirmed that the back issue Estrada had been dealing with the entire season, ever since he famously tweaked his back trying a Bruce Lee exercise in spring training, was a herniated disk. His back was still bothering him when he joined the rotation on April tenth, throwing seven shutout innings against Boston on five hits. His back was still bothering him when he set a major league record this year with a string of twelve consecutive starts of six innings or more while allowing five hits or less. (I don’t know who makes up the categories for major league records, or if the creation of records follows the achievement of something remarkable, but it seems that this particular record marks the work of one damn fine starting pitcher.)

And his back was still bothering him when he took the mound tonight in Seattle, with the heavy weight of needing to stop the team’s bleeding after two awful losses in Los Angeles pressing down on his already-vulnerable spine.

Now you and I, ladies and gentlemen, if we were suffering from a herniated disk, would drag ourselves through our boring daily routines, gingerly changing position always with an eye toward not causing another painful twinge. We would awaken in the morning and spend a moment planning how we would get out of bed without the pain taking us back to the mattress. We would stuff ourselves with pain-killers and hope to accomplish half of what we would normally do in a day.

Here is what Marco Estrada accomplished today while suffering from his herniated disk: he pitched seven runless innings, gave up one hit, walked three, and struck out eight, on 97 pitches. As we say in Blue-Jay Land, he was re-Marco-able!

Of course, Estrada has access to the finest orthopaedic doctors and physiotherapists that big baseball bucks can buy, but still, how can you adequately assess a performance like that, on a day when the whole season appeared to be hanging in the balance for Estrada and his team-mates?

Beyond the pitching line itself was the manner of its execution. Once again he started the game with a perfect run, this time of eleven straight batters retired. When he stumbled in the fourth inning, issuing two walks after two were out, he received a truly supportive gift from Kevin Pillar in centre. With Robinson Cano on second and Nelson Cruz on first, Kyle Seager hit a low line drive to centre that bid fair to become a very damaging first base hit against Estrada. But Pillar raced in, slid, and plucked the ball cleanly just before it was to touch down in front of him. Estrada returned to perfection for the fifth and sixth innings, and then, on a 2-1 pitch to Robinson Cano, leading off against Estrada in the seventh, Cano grounded a single cleanly up the middle to end yet another no-hit bid for the Toronto pitching master. After the Cano hit, Estrada closed out the inning with three soft-contact balls in the air, then led off the eighth by walking Leonys Martin, and his night was done.

This is what Marco Estrada did with a herniated disk in his back. What did you do with your bad back today?

After Estrada’s remarkable outing was finished, Jason Grilli and Roberto Osuna managed—barely—to preserve the win for him, creating more tense moments in one and two thirds innings than Estrada had in his whole start.

Estrada’s starting the eighth was helpful to manager John Gibbons, because it gave him the chance to get both Grilli and Osuna ready. It’s a good thing he did. Coming in with a man on and nobody out, Grilli walked pinch hitter Ben Gamel, hitting for catcher Mike Zunino. Grilli then got the next two outs, fanning Ketel Marte and retiring Norichika Aoki on a liner to right. Martin advanced to third on the catch. Grilli now faced left-handed-hitting right fielder Seth Smith, and it’s a bit of a puzzle why Gibbie didn’t bring in Brett Cecil to pitch to Smith. In any case, you had the sense that Smith would be Grilli’s last shot. He walked him, and it was his last shot. Roberto Osuna, ready early, came in to face Cano with the bases loaded and the game seriously on the line. And did we hold our breath when Cano drilled one to right that Zeke Carrera, playing deep, scrambled back and just managed to run down. On second thought, maybe it wasn’t all that great that Osuna was ready . . .

The drama wasn’t over yet, either. Osuna still had to navigate Nelson Cruz and Kyle Seager to get the save, and he almost didn’t get past Cruz, who crushed one, but luckily to dead centre, where Pillar tracked it down for the first out. Seager popped out to third for the second out, and we started to breathe a little easier, but not for long. Adam Lind hit a little flare single to right centre. Seattle’s manager Scott Servais sent Shawn O’Malley in to pinch run for Lind. Leonys Martin rendered the pinch-runner irrelevant by jacking one out to right on Osuna, and the lead was one. Osuna closed it off by fanning Ben Gamel for his very exciting 34^th save in 37 opportunities.

Big right-hander Taijuan Walker started for Seattle. Walker’s won/loss record (but who cares, it’s “meaningless”, right?) was a mediocre 6-10 coming in to this game, but his ERA was an okay 4.28. Moreover, he had recently undergone major reconstructive work on his delivery, and his last couple of starts had been very solid. On the eighth against Texas he went 5 innings, gave up 7 hits and 3 runs, but on the thirteenth against the Angels he pitched the game that stands out, a complete-game, three-hit shutout, with no walks and eleven strikeouts. Who even pitches a complete-game shutout any more?

His start was solid tonight, too, despite the fact that Edwin Encarnacion tried his best to take him out of the game in the first inning. He started his day by striking out both Devon Travis and Josh Donaldson. But Edwin lashed one back through the box that deflected, hard, off Walker’s leg and into centre for a single. After attention from the trainer, he decided he could carry on, and walked Jose Bautista before retiring Russell Martin on a fly ball to centre.

Maybe inspired by Estrada’s work, Edwin’s single was the only base-runner Walker allowed in his first two innings. Meanwhile, he struck out four of six. He eventually had to get around to Edwin again, and it came sooner than he wanted, in the third. Kevin Pillar led off with an infield single. He promptly stole second, but looked to die there when Devon Travis struck out, and then Kyle Seager robbed Josh Donaldson of an RBI single with a diving stop and throw across for the out. But Edwin seemed to find Walker’s offerings rather tasty on this night, and pounded an 0-1 pitch into the seats in left for a 2-0 lead, his forty-first of the year.

Pillar was in the middle of some action in the next inning that resulted in the last run off Walker, that would prove to be the winner. This was another of those rare occasions when the Jays did the right thing and made sure of the one run on offer. Troy Tulowitzki led off with a double to left. Zeke Carrera promptly laid down a sacrifice bunt moving Tulo to third. After Walker caught Melvin Upton looking, Pillar cut his swing down on an 0-2 pitch and poked a base hit into right to score Tulo with the third Toronto run. Pillar, having a field day on both ends of the ball, promptly stole second, but was stranded there when Travis grounded out to third.

The normally cautious Jays must have figured out something about Walker’s delivery, because besides Pillar’s two, Jose Bautista had also easily stolen second after he walked after Edwin’s homer. But maybe it wasn’t Walker, because Travis also stole a base in the seventh off Evan Scribner. Whatever it was, I hope the Jays retrieved second base from the diamond for their memory box!

Walker stumbled twice on fielding plays, and by his demeanour it was hard to tell how much discomfort he was feeling from a possible injury to his foot/leg. In any case, he finished up reasonably well, pitching into the sixth, with a line of five and a third innings, three runs, five hits, four walks, and six strikeouts over 93 pitches.

That was it for the Jays, who didn’t need any more with Estrada in command, and Grilli and Osuna squeaking through. Drew Storen, the Jays’ big hope from Washington, who provided valuable capital to acquire Joaquin Benoit, which turned out to be quite the upgrade for the Jays’ bullpen, was brought in when Walker, with one out in the fifth, walked his second batter of the inning.

Storen showed what he never did in Toronto: the ability to overpower. With two on, he fanned Upton and Pillar on nine pitches to close out the sixth. He started the seventh by giving up an infield hit to Travis. Then he struck out Donaldson on a called third strike, and all hell broke loose between Donaldson and home plate umpire Chris Conroy. Josh had been incensed on the 1-1 pitch when Conroy called him for a swing and wouldn’t check with the base umpire. Then, after a ball in the dirt, he took another pitch nearly in the dirt, and was utterly apoplectic when he was called out on strikes. It didn’t take Conroy too long to toss him from the game, as the manager, and coaches failed to pull him away in time. Darwin Barney came in to finish up at third, and luckily Josh’s potential at the plate was not further needed in the game.

Scott Servais didn’t like the Storen-Edwin matchup, and so brought on Evan Scribner to finish up the seventh. Storen went out after an inning, with a hit and three strikeouts under his belt. Scribner came on and stifled a further threat. He struck out Edwin as hoped, but Travis stole second, and then Scribner walked Jose Bautista before also fanning Russell Martin to end a long but fruitless inning for the Jays.

Scribner had a quick eighth inning, and then Servais brought in Dan Altavilla in the ninth. Altavilla wavered a bit, giving up singles to Pillar, his third hit on the day, and Travis, though Pillar, trying for his third theft to match his three hits, was thrown out at second by catcher Chris Iannetta before Travis’ base hit. Altavilla then retired Michael Saunders and Edwin to finish the Jays’ night without scoring again, though thanks to the work of Estrada and company they already had enough money in the bank.

For a long time everyone has been saying that there’s lots of games left, it’s not time to worry too much yet, and such like, but that point has now been passed. If there was a crucial game that seemed like it had to be won, this was it for the Blue Jays. After the two demoralizing losses to saw off the series with the Angels, with Seattle playing strongly to try to get into contention for a Wild Card slot, if the Jays couldn’t declare their right to be in the mix right here, right now, it just might begin to slip away.

John Gibbons sent out Marco Estrada, bad back and all, to pitch this crucial game, and despite his recent struggles, he came through brilliantly, giving the Jays just what they needed, a courageous and effective performance that called out the best his team-mates had to offer. They responded with good defence, good relief pitching, and just enough timely hitting to save the day.

Thanks to Marco Estrada, the outlook for the Blue Jays tonight is much brighter than it was last night. It was only one game, to be sure, but it was a game we had to win. We look forward to seeing if the good vibes from tonight will carry forward. Are the Toronto Blue Jays a thing, or not?

Inspired by the disappointing results of the last two games, though haunted would be the better word, maybe we should talk turkey about the playoff setup up, how that setup would affect the Blue Jays, and what we need to understand about their present circumstances.

First of all, let’s look at how it works, who plays whom and where.

Obviously the setup is the same for both leagues, but I’ll refer to the American League, and the teams that are currently in the mix in the AL. Five teams “make” the playoffs, but only the division winners are guaranteed a full series of games, in one of the two American League Division Series (ALDS), which are best of five series. The winners of the two ALDS play a best of seven American League Championship Series (ALCS), the winner of which is the league’s champion and representative in the World Series.

So how do the two non-division winners with the next-best records, the “Wild Card” teams, fit into this picture? Well, the first Wild Card position was created to provide four teams for the ALDS when baseball went to the three divisions in each league. The original Wild Card team was in the happy position of being in a full ALDS. The second one was created to provide added “interest” and “excitement” to the late season proceedings. We can read this as simply a money-maker for the teams involved and the league, as attendance remains high for all teams in contention for a Wild Card spot. For the teams who “win” these spots, it’s not such a great deal, because the two teams play a single sudden-death play-in game, hosted by the team with the better record. So you make the playoffs and are finished after one game, as happened to the Yankees and the Pirates, who had the second-best regular-season record in all of baseball last year.

Once the Wild Card winner has been determined, the pairings for the ALDS are the number one seed, the team with the best record, playing the Wild Card winner, and the second and third seeds, the other two division winners, playing against one another. Home team advantage is held by the first and second seeds.

As it stands right now, with Toronto and Baltimore tied for the two Wild Card spots, they would play in the stadium of the team that won the season series, which at this moment stands in favour of Toronto by 9-7, with next week’s three game series in Toronto yet to be played. If the Blue Jays won the Wild Card game, they would face Texas in one ALDS, with Texas holding the home team advantage, and Boston would play Cleveland, with the home team up in the air at this point.

It’s obvious that winning the division is a huge advantage. At this stage, with the Jays four games behind Boston with thirteen games to go, is it a foregone conclusion that Boston wins the division? Not necessarily. First, Boston has a full series left in Baltimore, and the Blue Jays still finish the season with three at Fenway. Based on how they’re playing right now, it’s a tough road, but if the Sox slow down and the Jays brace up, it’s doable.

But if it’s not doable, then, assuming that Toronto doesn’t fall out of the playoff picture altogether, which I don’t see happening, then we face the crap shoot of the Wild Card game. And, if you’ll forgive me, that’s just one game away from seeing the whole season going into the crapper.

Just a final reflection here on last year’s playoff run, and the end of the season shenanigans indulged in by Jays’ manager John Gibbons. It’s probably been noted that yer humble scribe has more than a little antipathy to our folksy, long-suffering peerless leader, and I freely admit it. More than a little of that antipathy stems from Gibbie’s decisions regarding lineups and resting players after we clinched the division last year. Until the final weekend, we were in contention with the Royals for the top seed in the league. Securing that would have given us two advantages in the playoffs, home field advantage all the way through, and a first-round matchup with Houston, the Wild Card winner, rather than the ding-dong brawl of a series we had with Texas. Even if we had tied with the Royals we would have had the first seed because we had earlier closed out the season series in our favour against them.

To me it was ridiculous for big league players making big league salaries to all sit the second game of the doubleheader after we clinched in the first game, and then to sit the final regular season game. In both of these games, Gibbie basically fielded the Buffalo Bisons’ starters instead of the Blue Jays. We lost both games, naturally, and the Royals took the first seed. In “real life” I’m the least likely person to wink at the mistreatment of workers by their bosses, but ball players aren’t workers, and as much as I love it, baseball ain’t “real life”. Rest the players that need resting judiciously and in ones or twos over a week, but two wholesale sitdowns with significant results at stake? No way.

By the same token, I’m not prepared to hear any downscaling of aspirations coming out of Gibbie over the next week or so, none of his “that’s okay, we can do it”. Until we’re mathematically eliminated from the division, every game is crucial, including last night’s stinker, and this afternoon’s dozy shutout loss to the Halos.

The pitching matchup for today’s closing game of the Jays-Angels series in Anaheim was so unbalanced, yet so eerily similar to a number of the matchups we’ve seen in the last few weeks, that though it gave rise to at least some optimism that we had the advantage, it also inspired a bit of dread lurking just below the surface, dread that it was going to happen again.

It, in this case, is the phenomenon of the contending team throwing its set rotation against a team that’s basically playing out the string. Though these games in September take on supreme importance to a team like Toronto, struggling to secure not only a spot in the playoffs, but a coveted division title, their value is seen in a different light by opponents languishing deep in the standings. Such teams are in essence already preparing for next year, and one of the things that they want to do is audition players who have been moving up in their system in order to see which ones might be able to contribute in 2017.

Marcus Stroman took the hill for the Blue Jays today. Stroman has been gradually trying to rebuild his confidence in his approach after a disastrous mid-season swoon, and he’s been meeting with some game-to-game success, which has resulted in several quality starts, though not much success in the win column. If the Jays do indeed make a full playoff series, there is no question that Stroman will receive regular starting assignments, so not only is it important for him to keep his team in these crucial games, and give it a chance to win, but it’s also important for him to feel that he is returning to the peak form we saw from him last fall.

Alex Meyer, on the other hand, a long, skinny drink of water with a nice easy motion, has taken quite a while to get to the position where he could be ready to play a role for the Angels next year. Drafted in 2012 out of the University of Kentucky, he had a couple not very successful appearances in relief for the Twins in 2015, and one so-so start for them last spring, after which he spent the entire season in Triple A as a starter. Traded to the Angels along with last night’s starter Ricky Nolasco from the Twins on August first this year, this would be his third start for the Angels. His combined Twins/Angels record going into today’s game was 0-3 with an ERA of 8.18.

So when Meyer walked Devon Travis to lead off the game, it looked like a good thing. But it didn’t look so good when he struck out the next four batters in a row, and threw in a fifth strikeout to end the second inning to count five punchouts on his first six outs of the game.

Helped by a couple of examples of both Toronto’s hitting blues and their base-running misadventures, which I hope are not spreading, Meyer continued to stifle the Jays through five effective innings. In the third the Jays saw some promise snuffed out by the dreaded double play. With one out, Meyer walked Kevin Pillar on four pitches and then was started for second as Devon Travis hit a little flare to right that served as an effective hit and run. But Josh Donaldson hit a hard grounder to third and the Angels turned two.

In the fourth Edwin Encarnacion led off with a ringing double to left, and then wisely held second when Jose Bautista grounded out to the shortstop. Not. Edwin must have been sitting next to Devon Travis on the bench and gotten some of Travis’ je ne sais quoi rubbed off on him, because he exuberantly broke for third with the hit, and was DOA. Is there a season statistic for wasting leadoff doubles by running into the first out at third? By now we must lead the league. After that, they went quietly.

In the fifth Meyer pitched around a walk to Michael Saunders to finish an effective five innings of shutout ball, on two hits, three walks, seven strikeouts, and 79 pitches. Oh, did I say seven strikeouts?

After Meyer, the Angels bullpen kept the barn door firmly closed with the horses still whinnying inside. Jose Valdez struck out the side in the sixth. Deolis Guerra, helped by a nice diving stop by Yunel Escobar at third that robbed Troy Tulowitzki, stranded a Dioner Navarro single in the seventh. In the eighth J.C. Ramirez erased his walk to Travis with a double-play ball from Edwin, and in the ninth the Jays wasted another leadoff double, this time by Jose Bautista. I know that they needed more than a small-ball run at that point, but how frustrating is it that two smart hitters like Russell Martin and Tulo both ground out to the shortstop after a leadoff double? Maybe they were just testing Bautista’s base-running smarts, to see if he would break for third.

Though he still had trouble throwing strikes, Marcus Stroman’s start was certainly strong enough to be rewarded with a win, if he weren’t backed up, that is, by an offence that is taking its lumber to the plate in the form of kleenexes from the tissue box, rather than bats from the bat rack. With a line of 2 runs, seven hits, two walks, three strikeouts, and 105 pitches over six innings, he chalked up another quality start, though the way Toronto’s been hitting, that and a loony will only get you a really bad cup of coffee.

Stroman was victimized by home plate umpire CB Bucknor and his own catcher in the second to allow the Angels to chalk up their first run. Albert Pujols walked when Bucknor called three consecutive pitches up in the zone balls, all in almost the exact location where he had called strike one. C.J. Cron singled to centre, Pujols going to third. Rafael Ortega reached on catcher’s interference on a foul tip of a 1-1 pitch, perhaps prolonging the inning. Rookie catcher Juan Gaterol, who maybe shouldn’t have gotten to the plate with only one out, grounded into a fielder’s choice to score Pujols, who maybe shouldn’t have reached base to begin with.

At any rate, Stroman left after six down only two-nothing, the Angels having scored a perfectly acceptable run in the fifth when Pujols singled home Mike Trout, who had doubled. Brett Cecil started the seventh and won the lefty matchup, striking out Kole Calhoun. The usually dependable Joe Biagini came in next, tasked with keeping the game close against the heart of the order.

But Biagini, who might be getting a little ragged around the edges, saw the lead extended, not controlled, albeit with more than a little help from an uncharacteristically befuddled Bautista in right, though this is not reflected in the box score, as the Angels’ scorer appears never to have seen an error that he didn’t want to turn into a hit. I appreciate the kindness of not wanting to score errors, but come on, this guy (gal?) wouldn’t give an error to a fan who fumbles a bag of peanuts when the peanut vendor makes a perfect toss.

Biagini didn’t help himself by walking Trout and giving up a single to Pujols, which of course sent Trout to third. He didn’t throw a strike to Trout, which raises suspicions of pitching “carefully” but walking him with one out to get to the skilled but ponderous Pujols isn’t such a bad idea any time . That left Biagini a double play away from ending the inning, and how many times has he done that this year? He didn’t get the ground ball, but he got the next best thing. The Angels started Pujols from first, like they like to do, and C.J.Cron lofted a lazy fly ball to short right. Pujols was slow to pick up what happened, and slow to react. Bautista had a real chance to double him off first and end the inning before Trout scored on the sac fly. But from only third-base distance away from first, he airmailed the ball over Edwin’s head, Pujols got back safely, and Trout scored.

Note on rules: I double-checked the rules, and my narrative is correct. Attempting to double a runner off base after a caught ball is a “time play”, and when the out is recorded is germane to whether the run counts. If Encarnacion had the ball in his glove before Trout crossed the plate, the run would not count. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in his glove, but sailing over his head!

With the inning extended, Biagini walked Andrelton Simmons and gave up a bloop single to Rafael Ortega, which scored Pujols. Instead of escaping with the lead still at two, it was now four, and the hill had become a mountain for the Jays to climb.

Aaron Loup and Bo Schultz managed the eighth, but it hardly mattered, because the Blue Jays weren’t able to dent the Angels’ relievers anyway.

In other circumstances this game would have been a turn-the-page, maybe we’ll hit better tomorrow type of outcome. But in the context of the ongoing hitting slump, and the tightening noose around the Blue Jays’ championship hopes, it became much, much more than that. Now we have to take two out of three in Seattle to salvage a winning record on the road trip; pretty daunting, you might say. Nail-biting time, fer sure!

Man, when we played good ball to win the first two game of this series, I thought all the bad vibes and noxious fumes emenating from the last two home series had been dissipated across the continent along with the jet contrails as the team flew west Wednesday afternoon.

But two good games do not a season make. Nor do they put a definitive end to a bad smell. Just look at what we had in front of us this evening, when the Angels of wherever embarrassed the boys in blue 6-1. Check that sentence: rather, when the boys in blue embarrassed themselves in a 6-1 giveaway to the lowly LA Angels.

We had another good pitching performance wasted. Francisco Liriano is going head to head with R.A. Dickey to be named for the one or two starts left for a number five in the remaining games, and, we should be so fortunate, inclusion on the post-season roster. To keep his claim relevant, he needed a second straight good start following his terrific no decision outing against the Rays in Toronto on the twelfth, a game the Jays eventually won 3-2 on Zeke Carrera’s game-winning pinch-hit homer in the bottom of the eighth. And he certainly filled the bill tonight, matching Dickey’s solid start last night. He went six innings on 94 pitches and gave up four runs, only two of them earned, on six hits, with two walks and four strikeouts. What’s that, you say? Only two of the four runs were earned? What was that all about? Yeah, that’s right, it’s not a typo. Just wait, we’ll get to all the messy details.

Yet again we failed to capitalize on numerous chances against a very mediocre Ricky Nolasco. We’ve heard this before, haven’t we? Maybe we should have a template to report games like this, with blanks, like the “write your own adventure” books for kids. Yeah, that’d be good: Tonight we wasted another fine outing by ___________. Tonight we had base-runners up the ying-yang against some random guy named ___________. Tonight ____________ made a crucial mental error on the bases that killed a promising threat by the Jays’ offence. And so on. Ad nauseum.

Wasted hits, wasted base-runners? Try this on for size: in the first, second, third, sixth, seventh, and eighth, we had a leadoff single aboard. In the fifth it was a leadoff double, but that was by Devon Travis, and for the second time in a week he took off for third on a grounder to short and made the first out at third. Only in the fourth did they make two outs before Justin Smoak drew a walk, but Troy Tulowitzki led off the inning with a blast to the centre-field wall that in 90% of the parks is a home run, but at Angels Stadium it was just an impressive out. And in the ninth, when the game was already sewn up by the Angels, Edwin Encarnacion singled with two outs. So, seven innings out of nine the leadoff hitter had a base hit, and they had at least one base-runner in every inning. And it took them until the bottom of the eighth to score a run, on a sac fly with the bases loaded. A record of some sort for futility?

And it wasn’t as if they were up against Rick Porcello or somebody. Sure, Nolasco had good numbers, six innings, no runs, five hits, two walks, seven strikeouts, but he threw 102 pitches, and there’s the key. He laboured all the way. He had base-runners on in every inning. You can look at that both ways. He was bad because he was sloppy, or he was good because he was pitching out of a jam all night. And watching him work, inning by inning, your feelings were ambivalent, too. This guy’s on the ropes, you thought, he couldn’t last. But then you thought, no he’s not. We couldn’t cash a base-runner to save our butts the way we’re hitting. The gloomy bird on my right shoulder won the day. Nolasco wasn’t on the ropes, and we couldn’t put him away.

Yet again we slopped it up in the field, to the extent that only two (two!) of the six runs off the Jays’ pitchers were earned. And another one, the second run off Liriano, was hardly “earned” by the Angels. They scored in the fifth inning on just a hit and a walk, but Andrelton Simmons, the beneficiary of the leadoff walk, was able to go all the way to third on a wild pitch that Russell Martin couldn’t find, so he was in position to score on a Shane Robinson single, yet without the wild pitch Simmons would have just been on first when Robinson singled, and they both would have died at first and second when Yunel Escobar struck out to end the inning.

In fact, the only legitimate run off Liriano or the bullpen was Albert Pujols’ historic solo homer. He led off the second inning with a short sweet stroke that jumped the ball over the fence in left on a line. Full credit to the illustrious career of Pujols. This was his thirtieth homer of the season. He is only the fourth major league hitter in history to have had fourteen, that’s right, fourteen seasons in which he has hit thirty or more homers. My hat goes off to him, but I wish he’d do it against somebody else!

As for the rest of the legally-credited unearned runs, what a dreary list of sad stories it is.

In the Angels’ sixth, Liriano was still on the hill and the game was still close, the teams separated by the Pujols’ homer and the wild-pitch-assisted run in the fifth. Kole Calhoun led off with a single. Mike Trout hit a slow bouncer right at the usually impeccable-fielding Justin Smoak at first, but Smoak couldn’t come up with it, and it ticked off his glove for an error, allowing Calhoun to reach second with Trout safe at first. Pujols then flied out to right, and Calhoun moved up on the catch. He scored on a ground-out to second by Jefry Marte, which should have been the third out, but was only the second, and Trout moved into scoring position. After stealing third, he easily scored on a soft single to centre that Simmons hit on a pitch that totally handcuffed him. Two runs unearned because Smoak had to get an out on the grounder he missed, but he didn’t.

With Liriano finished, Ryan Tepera came in to pitch the seventh, and saw the Angels’ score two more unearned runs, all for the lack of Josh Donaldson making the easy throw to first with two outs already in the books. On what shoud have been the third out, Donaldson picked up an easy one hopper and fired way wide of first. The ball went out of play, so not only was Escobar safe on the error but he ended up at second. He scored on a double by Calhoun, and Trout scored him with a single to centre.

If the Jays had played decent major-league defence on this night, this game could still be going on, a one-one tie.

So there you have it. A good start wasted. A mediocre starter allowed to get away with it. Uncashed base-runners galore. A defensive mess. All the classic ingredients were there tonight to contribute to what we might refer to as the Blue Jays having been “Tampa-ed” again.

After Nolasco was taken out, Manager Mike Scioscia played match-a-pitcher-to-a-hitter with his huge post-callup bullpen, and the Jays treated them as junior Houdinis in training. He ran through six of them in three innings, which may explain why my bed-time tonight is pushed back even a good bit more than usual for a west coast game.

Oh yes, the Jays did score a run in the eighth, after some strange base-running killed a potentially much bigger rally, on a sacrifice fly by Melvin Upton. The die was already long cast, though, and it was past time for the players to head out and the groundskeepers to start tidying up the messy dugouts for Sunday’s game.

Which we hope will look a little more like professional baseball, on Toronto’s part, anyway.

The collective groan you heard last week from the heart of Blue-Jay land was the response of the Yahoo Faction of the Toronto Fan Club as they reacted to the news that R.A. Dickey would receive a start in the Jays’ current series with the Angels in Los Angeles.

No doubt the groans intensified last night when, in the midst of all the delirium after the team’s effective opening-game win of the series behind the redoubtable Jay Hqpp

the realization set in that yes, indeed, the planned Dickey start was upon us. Oh, they cried, look, look (somehow I imagine the Yahoo Faction conversing very much in the manner of Dick, Jane, and Sally in the primary readers), now that naughty Dickey will spoil our playground games again!

But, you know what? R.A. Dickey is a seasoned pro, a veteran who came up the (really) hard way to make his mark in the majors. Since he has been in Toronto he has eaten an incredible number of innings without any of the naysayers acknowledging it, and has all the while served as a calming and steadying influence in the clubhouse and in the dugout. If there were a coaching position for Team Philosopher or Team Soother, the position would be tailor-made for Dickey. In short, people, he’s here, Noah Syndergaard is in New York. He has a role to play, he knows how to play it, and for the most part plays it very well.

So with Dickey taking the hill tonight, you had to expect a few of his butterflies to escape, you had to hope he didn’t have a flat inning and give up a couple of runs at some point, but you should have also expected that he would grit it out, regardless. You also had to hope that his mates would take their inspiration from him, and let him set the tone for their effort. You also had to expect that at times it would be exciting as hell.

Like the first inning, when he wriggled out of a bases-loaded jam by getting Andrelton Simmons to pop out to Edwin Encarnacion in foul territory. Kole Calhoun had flown out to centre to lead off, but Mike Trout singled to left. Albert Pujols doubled to left, breaking the hex Dickey has held over him for most of his career. Trout stopped at third on the double. C.J. Cron struck out. Jefry Marte fouled off the first knuckler from Dickey, then looked at four in a row outside the strike zone, loading the bases behind Trout and Pujols. That set up the confrontation with Simmons which Dickey won to keep the Angels off the scoreboard. Little could anyone imagine that they never would score, off Dickey or his successors.

One thing about R.A. Dickey is that if you don’t get to him early, sometimes you don’t get to him at all. The other thing about him is that he’s not bothered too much by base-runners. Sometimes it seems as though he feels that, like imminent death, they “sharpen the mind”.

In the second inning, Nick Buss led off with a single to left, and then stole second. So Dickey struck out Carlos Perez. He struck out Kaleb Cowart. He got Kole Calhoun to end the inning by flying out to left. In the third inning, after striking out Mike Trout (Yes!) he gave up a single to Albert Pujols, then got C.J. Cron on a popup to short, and Jefry Marte on a fly ball to right. His fourth inning was a showcase of soft contact, and he decided to dispense with the silly base-runners. Andrelton Simmons hit a soft little liner to Devon Travis at second, Buss bounced one back to him, and Perez popped out to Edwin Encarnation at first. Nine pitches. Ho hum.

In the fifth Cowart grounded out to Edwin at first, Cowart hit a short fly to Melvin Upton in left, Trout hit a soft little single to left, but Pujols went down swinging. Nine pitches. Ho hum.

So Dickey goes out for the sixth at 64 pitches, no runs, five hits, one walk, and five strikeouts. And gives up a soft single to left by Cron and a harder hit single to Marty. And out came Gibbie with the hook. Normally, I’d be incensed at this, and in fact I was. But by the same token, it all worked out, so who could argue in retrospect?

I guess the operative factor would have been that as good as Dickey had been, he was protecting just a 2-0 lead, on the strength of Troy Tulowitzki’s two-run homer in the fourth, that had plated Jose Bautista, on with a walk leading off. And at this point he was facing not the tying run, but the lead run at the plate, in the person of Simmons, who had disturbed Jay Happ’s pleasant run the night before with a three-run dinger.

So in came Joe Biagini, the big rally-killer disguised as a sheepish rookie with a quirky sense of humour. Except when he’s in a jam. The first and maybe smartest thing Biagini did, after getting a swinging strike on Simmons, was to throw four straight in the dirt to put him on, and yes, thank god, Russell Martin blocked them all! That brought up Nick Buss. He fanned Buss on three pitches for the first out.

Then came the pivotal at bat of the game. Angels Manager Mike Scioscia sent Yunel Escobar up to hit for the catcher Perez. Yes, that Yunel Escobar. The guy that made so many lazy, soft-contact outs with runners in scoring position and tore the cover off the ball when the bases were empty when he was with the Blue Jays. Also the guy who got in gobs of trouble here for writing a rude expression in Spanish on his cheeks with the charcoal they use for glare. The guy whose back end we were glad to see when he went to the Marlins in the trade for Jose Reyes and Mark Buehrle et al.

In typical free-swinging Escobar style, he swung and missed for strike one, fouled one off for strike two, took one out of the zone (surprise!), and then bounced a one-hopper to Biagini, who cooly threw home to get the force on Cron, leaving the bases loaded, but now with two outs. Kaleb Cowart then flied out to Kevin Pillar on an 0-1 pitch for the third out, and Biagini had effected the amazing escape of the month, if not the season.

The last time the Blue Jays faced Jared Weaver they had been befuddled by his mixture of soft and softer. Think Dickey or Marco Estrada, only a lot bigger and with a lot more hair. They didn’t fare much better against him this time. After Devon Travis led off the game with a bloop single to centre, he zoned in and caught Donaldson looking, fanned Edwin, and retired Bautista on a popup to second. Here we go again, thought yer humble scribe. Three ground balls on nine pitches in the second reinforced the sense of impending doom, and the fact that he extricated himself from a two-on, two-out situation in the third with the help of some feckless hitting/running by the Jays made it even worse.

Darwin Barney led off with a solid single to centre. Then Josh Thole, in to catch Dickey as always, dribbled one up the first-base line, and the first baseman Cron let it roll, expecting it to go foul. By the time he realized it was going to stay fair, the semi-speedy Thole had passed him, and it was too late to pick it up and tag him out. With Travis at the plate, runners on first and second and nobody out, it finally dawned on Manager John Gibbons that it might be a good time to bunt. Good luck with that, and maybe we see why the Toronto manager eschews the bunt. As Barney broke a bit early for third, Travis bunted through the ball and catcher Carlos Perez had Barney dead to rights with a good throw at second. There was a scary moment when Barney’s head, helmet flying off, made solid contact with Simmon’s knee while trying to dive back into the bag. He received a thorough examination on the bench and in the clubhouse, and was deemed all right to continue, luckily.

After Weaver caught Travis looking for the second out, he walked Donaldson, setting up the force when Edwin hit a grounder to the shortstop to end the inning.

Just when it looked like Toronto’s futility was carved in stone, they made a breakthrough in the fourth inning, thanks to Troy Tulowitzki. With Bautista on first courtesy of a leadoff walk, Tulo turned on a 1-2 changeup and hit it out for a sudden two-nothing lead. Weaver quickly restored order by retiring the side, but the damage was done though it was hard to credit that Tulo’s shot would be all the Jays needed.

Dr. Biagini having performed his successful extraction, mound duties for the last three innings were parcelled out as usual to BenGriNa. Though they were a bit ragged around the edges this time, possibly because they’d seen a lot of work in the last few games, they managed to maneuver through the Angels and keep them off the board.

Kole Calhoun led off the seventh with a single to right, and Mike Trout followed with a hard smash to deep right on which Jose Bautista was able to get back and make a nice jumping catch against the wall. Once the cracks of the bat rendered him fully awake, Benoit settled to it and struck out both Pujols and Cron to finish his seventh.

Jason Grilli came in wild in the eighth, almost worked his way out of it, but then issued a second walk, causing Gibbie to call in Roberto Osuna for the relatively rare 4-out save. Grilli walked the first man he faced, Jefry Marte, on a 3-2 pitch, then immediately wild-pitched him to second, removing the double-play possibility. The dangerous Simmons grounded out to short, forcing Marte to stay at second (unlike certain other ballplayers who like to try to advance to third on a grounder to short . . .). With Nick Buss at the plate, Grilli got a called strike on a four-seamer (his four-seamers clock at about mid-92 range), a foul on a slider, threw off with a four-seamer, then came back with a third four-seamer that Buss watched go by for strike three and two outs. Almost out of the woods, though, the crumb trail stopped for Grilli. He walked Rafael Ortega, hitting for the rookie catcher Juan Gaterol, and out came Gibbie from the dugout like a shot, and Osuna was in the game. And in the dugout four pitches later, having induced a fly ball to left off the bat of Kaleb Cowhart on a 1-2 pitch.

After Tulo’s homer, Toronto had a few base-runners against Weaver and relievers Cody Ege and J.C. Ramirez, but never really mounted a threat. Weaver gave up two base hits in the fifth, but Edwin grounded into a double play. In the sixth, he got a couple of harmless fly ball outs to strand runners at first and second, an infield hit by Bautista and a walk to Kevin Pillar. That was it for Weaver, who once again pitched well for Los Angeles against the Blue Jays, giving up two runs, seven hits, three walks, and four strikeouts on 101 pitches over six innings.

Ege retired the first two batters he faced in the seventh, and then yielded to Ramirez, who walked Donaldson before getting Edwin to ground out to second. Ramirez, who throws hard but sometimes isn’t sure where the plate is, walked two more in the eighth, but retired the Jays on two ground outs and a left-side popup in foul territory.

This brings us to the ninth inning, and Scioscia’s choice to keep the Angels close until their last bats was right-hander Andrew Bailey. For once, it was Toronto’s turn to do a little piling on and make a ninth-inning comeback unlikely. Russell Martin, who had fanned in the seventh, hitting for Josh Thole in the number nine spot, led off with a booming drive to the wall in right centre for a double. He advanced to third on a single to centre by Travis, and scored on a deep sacrifice fly to centre by Donaldson that also allowed Travis to advance to second. It didn’t really matter where Travis was when Edwin belted his fortieth home run of the season, which landed somewhere in the rocky foothills north of Anaheim. What’s that you say? That’s a water feature? In the ball park? Edwin’s homer was enough of Bailey for the Angels’ manager, and Deolis Guerra came in to finish up. He walked Bautista, but Tulo grounded into a double play. Nonetheless, the Jays had added three runs, even though it turned out that they weren’t needed.

Osuna, who had secured save 33 out of 36 by coming in to protect a two-run lead, in the eighth, finished up, providing a tense moment by walking Calhoun to lead off, so that both Trout and Pujols would come to the plate with a runner on. But Osuna was equal to the task. Trout flew out to centre, Pujols grounded out to short, and the closer blew away C.J. Cron to finish off in fine fashion.

So this is what a complete-game shutout looks like, in 2016. We can call it a complete game because it was, well, complete, but there aren’t too many opportunities for a starter, in the American League at least, to pitch a complete game, so the new normal is shutout by committee. And, unlike most committees, this one convened, did its work, and disbanded, a job well done.