Long Ball Stories

Check out these pitching lines against Toronto in the last two games of the Red Sox series last weekend:

David Price: 5.1 innings pitched, 1 run, 5 hits, 3 walks, 6 strikeouts, 93 pitches

Drew Pomeranz: 4 innings pitched, 3 runs, 5 hits, 5 walks, 6 strikeouts, 103 pitches

The question is, did Toronto win one or both of these games to win or sweep the series?

The answer, which is no trick and no joke, is: Neither.

And that’s because even after the thrilling Friday-night twelve-inning walkoff, the Toronto offence only mustered five runs in total in the succeeding two games of the series.

They couldn’t put away Price, who spent all of his time on the mound trying to throw junk at the outside corner against right-handed batters, most of which missed the mark and just looked weak.

They couldn’t put away Pomeranz, who spent all of his time on the mound trying to avoid throwing the next pitch. (If I hated what I do as much as he seems to, I’d find something else to do with my time, wouldn’t you?)

I wonder if there’s anybody still out there who thinks the Blue Jays should have made a serious bid for David Price. He has not been a happy camper in Boston, and he certainly hasn’t given them the performance that they expected when they signed him.

His rocky relationship with the organization and the fan base got a little rockier when he had to miss his last start, in the “crucial” series with the Yankees, because of a “mild” carpal tunnel problem.

Without getting too far into the details, one reporter had written a story recently about how many of the Red Sox players, Price chief among them, spend a lot of off-hours playing a particular video game. After Price was scratched from his start on May ninth against the Yanks because of the carpal tunnel issue, a Boston Globebaseball writer, Dan Shaughnessy, wrote a column in which he linked the earlier story to Price’s reported injury.

Much discussion and denial ensued, and Price had to go very much on the defensive about the whole issue, making the rather shaky medical suggestion that because he’s played video games his whole life and this is a new condition there can’t be a connection.

Yeah, and a guy who eats and drinks and smokes to excess for forty years and has a heart attack when he’s sixty isn’t going to blame it on his bad habits because the heart attack just happened and he’s been overindulging all his life and getting away with it. Duh.

So, should Toronto have shelled out in excess of 217 million over seven years to David Price to get him to stay after 2015? Nah, don’t bother to answer. Boston can have him, right?

So he started for the Sox on Saturday,

Did pretty well for the first couple of innings, one baserunner, a walk to Josh Donaldson in the first, and striking out the side in the second. But here’s the thing. I thought he was throwing a lot of soft stuff, and when I counted it up he threw only 8 fast balls in 28 pitches.

The other thing was that starting with the strikeout of Anthony Alford to end the second, he was throwing a lot of pitches away, and not hard (on Alford it amounted to five pitches out of six).

In the third, after the Sox put up a three-spot on Marco Estrada, Price escaped a bullet, a bullet hit by Donaldson. He fanned Luke Maile leading off on a 3-2 pitch, then gave up base hits to Gio Urshela, playing shortstop on Saturday, and Teoscar Hernandez. Donaldson came up and hit a bullet right to the glove of Xander Bogaerts at short. Urshela, with a normal leadoff at second, was a dead duck for the double play.

But it was the fourth inning that skewed any chance of Price going deep in this game. He only gave up one run on two base hits, but he walked two and went deep into too many counts, and threw 28 pitches.

Even pitching with a lead, Chris Sale he is not. He got through the fifth quickly, but only lasted two batters into the sixth, as Justin Smoak greeted him with a monster home run, and after he retired Kevin Pillar on a foul popup to first that Hanley Ramirez made a nice catch on, he was finished for the day.

The problem with Toronto in this game, in fact in both games, is that the Jays’ starters continued to struggle, and just could not contain the get-on-base-and-run game that the Red Sox used both days, as they did all last year, to extend their early leads.

And as the Toronto hitters continued to fail to take advantage of opportunities off a not terribly impressive Boston bullpen (excepting Craign Kimbrel and Joe Kelly, who of course can’t take every inning, especially when their starters can’t get out of the fifth or sixth inning), Boston would continue to capitalize on leadoff walks and leadoff base hits.

On Saturday as soon as they turned the lineup over the first time on a hitherto effective Marco Estrada, the gloves came off. Mookie Betts and Andrew Benintendi hit back-to-back doubles and Ramirez hit one out.

The Jays got one back in their half of the fourth on the RBI single by Anthony Alford that cashed in Price’s walks that had put a runner in scoring positon.

But then the Sox extended in the sixth on a quick double by Bogaerts followed by a base hit by Rafael Devers, so when Smoak hit his shot Toronto were still two behind.

Any hope of tying it up with a bloop and a blast in the ninth was washed away when Betts and Beni(intendi) struck like lightning against Ryan Tepera after he’d retired the first two batters. A Betts double and a Benintendi single and it was 5-2.

Kimbrel came out for the save with fire in his eye. A comebacker and two punchouts over ten pitches and it was in the books for the Bosox, which left the Blue Jays looking to Joe Biagini versus Drew Pomeranz on Sunday for a series win.

Which was like waiting for rain that would never come.

If there are two pitchers in all of baseball more deliberate and reluctant to throw to the plate, I can’t imagine who they might be.

And yet, Sunday’s script was pretty much a carbon copy of Saturday’s.

Biagini gave up a two-run dinger to J.D. Martinez in the first, but still got through the first two innings on only 28 pitches with three strikeouts. You could almost think that, one bad pitch aside, we were on to something.

Then he came out for the third. And threw 41 pitches. He only gave up one run, if you can believe it, on one hit, but those three walks, well . . .

So we were down 3-0 and there was little hope that the next inning, or two at the most, would be any different for Biagini.

And the only thing that changed was the rhythm, for a moment. He had a quick ten-pitch fourth, but couldn’t get out of the fifth, finishing at four and two thirds, four runs, only four hits, but three walks and three strikeouts on 90 pitches.

Drew Pomeranz was no better than Biagini. He needed 26 pitches and a great play by Brock Holt at second, who flagged down a would-be base hit by Yanvergis Solarte with a runner at second, to get out of the first inning.

In the second he buckled down and struck out two after letting the first two on. The third inning was particularly puzzling to watch, as Pomeranz meandered his way through 32 pitches while allowing only a four-pitch walk to Smoak. How do you even do that? By comparison his last full inning was a breeze, only 16 pitches to take him to 84 for four innings and set him up for his early exit in the fifth.

Though the Jays finally pushed Pomeranz out of the game in the fifth inning, the three runs they scored off three hits and a walk at the top of the inning, and a subsequent RBI single by Russell Martin off reliever Hector Velazquez were all they got, as the Sox bullpen wobbled but didn’t break over the last four innings.

Once again the Sox picked up an insurance run in the eighth inning off Sam Gaviglio, who put Benintendi on with a leadoff walk, had him steal second and move to third on a sharp base hit by Martinez.

Tyler Clippard came in to try to hold the Bostons at bay, but he dropped a bouncer back to the mound that was a pretty sure shot for a double play and Benintendi came in with the fifth run while Clippard took the out at first and berated himself.

With a two-run lead Kimbrel finally got a break after pitching in the last two Yankee games and the Saturday game in Toronto. Joe Kelly came in to pick up the easiest save in the history of saves*, retiring the Jays on four pitches.

*I don’t know if it was, actually, but you could only go one pitch better, right?

Chris Sale aside, and remember that the Jays eventually won his start, Boston has very mediocre starting pitching at the moment as some of its stars continue to underperform, so it’s a measure of how poorly the Jays have been hitting in recent games that they could only take one of three from the Sox.

Off to see the Mets in Flushing, but we hear it’s going to be wet.

Flushing? Wet? Sorry.

NOTE FROM YER HUMBLE SCRIBE: I am skipping Game 37 and going on to Game 38, and for good reason. I was in a state of denial when Jay Happ’s situation in the first inning of Thursday’s rubber game was transformed from a relatively mundane first and third with two outs into “OMG, he just gave up a grand salami!”

A game that starts like that can’t turn out any way other than awful. I watched, 1 kept score, I muttered at the screen at all the salient points, but honestly, folks, I can’t write about that game, I really can’t.

So, here: Seattle won the rubber match of the three-game Mariners-Jays series by a ridiculous 9-3 score. There were no redeeming features in this game. That’s all I have to say about it.

So I wrote that Luke Maile was the star of Wednesday night’s win against Seattle.

If he was the star of that game, what does that make him after he hit the walkoff homer against the Red Sox Friday night? . . . After hitting the tying homer.? . . . After knocking in the second run of the game? Not to mention that he tagged out Hanley Ramirez on a play at the plate.

Even when Maile did something wrong, it was big. As when he fired a no-hoper to first all the way down the right field line that allowed Brock Holt to score from first and the batter, Sandy Leon, to reach third after striking out.

After the game Maile said, “Well, after I threw them a triple, the stupidest mistake of my career, I had to do something to make up for it.” And boy, did he ever!

We would have been perfectly happy with the tying home run off Chris Sale in the seventh, but then he went out and walked off the game in the twelfth.

Luke Maile can make a stupid mistake behind the plate on my team any time he wants!

This was a strange game in so many ways.

If I told you that Chris Sale pitched a complete game against Toronto with 15 strikeouts and a string of 15 consecutive outs, what would you think?

Sure, so would I: Boston wouldn’t need more than three runs to chalk up a win.

But like I said it was a strange game. Aaron Sanchez started for Toronto, and once again struggled to find his way. He started the game by walking Mookie Betts on a 3-1 pitch. It is inevitable that if a Toronto pitcher walks Betts in the first inning, he will score. When Andrew Benintendi hit a single into right, Betts was going with the pitch, so ended up at third with nobody out.

Hanley Ramirez swung over two Sanchez changeups, and then took a marginal 97 mph fast ball that might have been outside, but plate umpire Ed Hickox liked it. With one out, Benintendi stole second with J. D. Martinez at the plate because that’s what Boston does.

Sanchez got Martinez and Xander Bogaerts on ground outs to end the inning, but Betts scored on the Martinez grounder to first. When the Red Sox start the first inning with a Betts walk and a Benintendi hit-and-run plus stolen base you’re actually happy when they only score one.

And one is often all that Chris Sale needs, but again, this was a strange day. Teoscar Hernandez rudely belted Sale’s first pitch, a get-me-over fast ball, into left centre for a double. Josh Donaldson grounded a 1-1 pitch up the middle for a base hit to score Hernandez.

Well, that was refreshing! Boston went to all that trouble for a run, and the Jays answered on the first four pitches from Chris Sale.

Stung, as you might imagine, Sale fanned Yangervis Solarte and Justin Smoak, and retired Kevin Pillar on a fly ball to centre for the third out, but it wasn’t a typical Chris Sale first inning.

It was Sanchez who settled down right away, giving up a base hit to Eduardo Nunez after an easy comebacker and before two popups to Lourdes Gurriel Jr..

But Sale still struggled to settle into his routine. Kendrys Morales led off the second with a liner to the right-field corner that bounced out for a ground-rule double. Anthony Alford flied out deep to right and Morales alertly advanced to third. That brought Luke Maile to the plate. Sale threw him a changeup in the dirt, and then another changeup off the plate outside. Maile reached out and sharply lined the outside change into right for the inning’s second opposite-field hit and Morales trotted home.

With only four outs recorded so far in the game Sale was down 2-1 and suffering the indignity of a visit from his pitching coach in the second inning. Sale got out of the inning by fanning Gurriel Jr., letting Hernandez reach on his own throwing error, and fanning a very disgruntled Donaldson on a disputed checked swing. Remember the Donaldson strikeout.

Move ahead to the top of the fourth inning, arguably the worst defensive inning of the year for Toronto. You cannot give the Boston Red Sox five outs and hope something good will come of it.

Bogaerts led off with a blast to centre that tied the game. Nothing you can do about that, just be glad he was leading off. Moreland followed with a single to left centre after a long at-bat. Nunez hit into a force of Moreland for the first out.

Brock Holt, who is as fast as he is annoying, hit a perfect double-play ball to Solarte at second, a hard shot that was gloved cleanly. But Solarte tossed underhanded to Gurriel Jr. at the bag. The ball came off his fingertips in a slow, high arc that threatened to sail over the shortstop’s head, and the latter by dint of a big stretch managed to catch the ball and complete the force.

But the double play was out of the question, and Holt was at first.

Then Sanchez struck out Sandy Leon with a ball in the dirt, and chaos ensued. The ball dribbled away to Maile’s left while Holt took off from first and Leon chugged down the line. By the time Maile found the ball he should have just eaten it, but he tried for Leon, and heaved the ball wildly all the way down the first base line.

To compound the problem, Hernandez didn’t move to back up the throw. I’m tempted to make a joke about t-ballers and dandelions in the outfield, but I won’t. Hernandez is a rookie, and deserves a break, especially after walloping Chris Sale’s first pitch of the game.

Long story short, Holt scored and Leon ended up on third, maybe thinking about calling for oxygen from the dugout.

Mookie Betts made the fifth and final out by flying out to right field, where Hernandez had returned to duty.

Don’t give Chris Sale a gift. Ever. Remember the punchout of Donaldson to end the second inning?

That was the first of fifteen consecutive outs collected by Sale, which took him all the way to two outs in the top of the seventh and Luke Maile striding to the plate, still wearing the goat’s horns for his epic error.

Meanwhile Aaron Sanchez struggled through to five full innings on 96 pitches. He gave up one last walk in the top of the fifth, leaving him with a line of two earned runs, five hits, three walks and four strikeouts.

Then the bullpen took over for Toronto, and boy, did they take over. John Axford erased a leadoff walk with a double play and threw ten pitches in the sixth. Seung-Hwan Oh pitched a perfect seventh with two strikeouts on thirteen pitches. Ryan Tepera one strikeout, twelve pitches, retired the side. Tyler Clippard threw a perfect ninth with two strikeouts, both looking, on twelve pitches.

Then, with all of the usual suspects used up and—spoiler alert—the game going to extra innngs, handsome right-hander Sam Gaviglio made his Blue Jays’ debut in the top of the tenth, and what a debut it was.

But first let’s go back to Maile striding to the plate in the seventh. Two out, nobody on. Sale threw him a slow slider low in the zone for a strike. Then he tried to steal strike two with a fat fast ball up in the zone. Maile put a swing on it and watched it go, right into the Toronto bullpen over the fence in left centre. Tie game! Salvation for Maile!

Locked up in a tie, and Toronto’s bullpen throwing darts, Chris Sale soldiered on. At the end of seven he was at 94 pitches. He only needed ten for the eighth, and looking at him on the bench you knew he would devour manager Alex Cora alive if he so much as tried to shake hands with him after eight. He was in it for the long haul.

And it almost cost him a loss in the ninth inning. He had retired four in a row after the Maile homer, three of them by strikeouts. This brought Kevin Pillar to the plate, hitless so far in the game.

In a close game Pillar has been clutch for Toronto, and it seems even more so if he hasn’t had a base hit yet. So Sale goes 1-0 on him, and then throws a really good fast ball, low on the outside corner. But Pillar was determined to stay with the pitch and take it where it wanted to go. He hit a booming drive to right centre that hit high off the scoreboard.

Pillar was bound for third base almost right out of the box, a risk worth taking at this point, and he damn near made it. Perfect throws from Benintendi, who took it off the wall, and Holt, who made the relay to Devers at third, were needed to cut him down by the slimmest of margins, confirmed, of course, after a video review.

Morales grounded out to end the ninth on Sale’s 116^thpitch. Sale was well and truly done, and had not conquered the Blue Jays. Nor had they conquered him.

Gaviglio, who had been scheduled to start for Buffalo on Friday night, was brilliant. He pitched three full innings through the twelfth, gave up one hit, hit one batter, plunking Bogaerts right on the side of the rib cage, which obviously hurt, struck out three, and threw only 44 pitches.

If our sixth fill-in starter is going to be a big Italian-American from the Buffalo rotation, it looks like Joe Biagini has some serious competition.

A concerning note was that in the tenth inning Betts hit an easy hopper to short that Gurriel Jr. handled well but bobbled away when making the transfer to his throwing hand. Of course Betts immediately stole second, but died there as Gaviglio shut down Benintendi and Ramirez on easy chances.

Matt Barnes had a shaky tenth for Boston, and he was lucky that the game wasn’t lost then, as he walked the first two hitters he faced, Curtis Granderson, finally coming off the bench to hit for Alford now that the lefty was gone, and Maile.

Manager John Gibbons tried to get a bunt out of Dalton Pompey and it was a disaster, as he fouled off the first attempt, and was ruled to have swung at the second.

But then Gibbie did something incomprehensible, or that was caused by dozing on the bench. He left the bunt sign on with two strikes, and of course Pompey bunted foul for the third strike and the runners had to hold first and second.

[Rule review here: if a batter bunts a bunt attempt foul with two strikes on him, it’s a strikeout. This rule was probably created to keep skilled bat handlers from fouling off dozens of pitches from the bunt position. Very rarely does a hitter get a bunt sign with two strikes on him.]

Barnes fanned Gurriel Jr. and retired Hernandez on a little flare to right, so the two walks never left first and second.

Carson Smith pitched the Toronto eleventh and gave up Pillar’s second hit, a two-out single to right. Pillar stole second, but Morales stranded him there striking out.

Gaviglio gave up a leadoff single to Brock Holt in the top of the twelfth but stranded him at first with two flyball outs sandwiched around fanning Mookie Betts. The good thing about all of this was that the Jays had been knocking on the door, and Gaviglio was sailing in smooth waters.

Alex Cora brought in the lefty Brian Johnson to face Granderson, but Johnson lost him on four pitches, bringing the now-absolved Luke Maile back to the plate for another shot at it.

Johnson’s first pitch was pretty good, a fast ball down the middle, but right at the bottom of the zone. Maile’s swing was better, though, as he went down, got it, and flared it a little bit to the right, like a controlled-fade chip shot. Only a lot harder.

If you’re a Red Sox fan there must have been nothing sadder than watching Benintendi and Betts criss-cross uselessly in right centre as the ball soared into the second deck.

Did the sight make me sad? Not so much.

There were two heroes on this night, and their identities are obvious: Sam Gaviglio, who picked up his first win for Toronto, and Luke Maile, who did, well, just about everything.

How wolfishly the Blue Jays’ hitters must have felt as they contemplated facing the soft-tossing slants of journeyman lefty Wade LeBlanc Wednesday night, 24 hours after they’d been overwhelmed by the power of James Paxton.

So how’d that work out for them? Not so good, it turns out, as LeBlanc, the starter that nobody wants but everybody could use, twirled and spun and kept Toronto off balance and behind on the scoreboard for five innings.

With the injuries to Curtis Granderson and Steve Pearce, and the falloff in production from the promising start of Lourdes Gurriel Jr. , the leadoff spot for Toronto has fallen by default to Teoscar Hernandez.

It only took Hernandez three pitches to end the hitless spell after Paxton’s no-hitter Tuesday night. Showing a good approach, he slapped an outside 0-2 changeup on the ground through the vacant right side of the infield for a base hit.

So simple. How come nobody could do it the night before? Oh, yeah, Paxton. Right.

Unfortunately, in his own way LeBlanc was nearly as effective as Paxton. He went 3-1 on Josh Donaldson, fought back to 3-2, and then threw a cutter that may or may not have been on the low inside black, but in any case Donaldson deigned not to swing, and plate umpire Quinn Wolcott deigned to ring him up. Yangervis Solarte then hit a bouncer back to LeBlanc that the latter adroitly turned into a double-play, with Robinson Cano doing the honours at second.

Thus was wasted the first base hit the Blue Jays had mustered since Sunday afternoon in Minnesota. As I recall, they didn’t tot up a whole bunch on that day, either.

The Hernandez hit was the only safety allowed by LeBlanc until the fourth, and only one other Jay reached base in the first three innings, Gurriel Jr., whose fly ball to left centre got swept up in the swirling wind currents and fell for an error charged to Dee Gordon, the centre fielder. (Did I mention that the dome was open for the first time Wednesday night?)

Unfortunately for Gurriel, he was so dead certain that Dalton Pompey’s one-out liner to left centre was going to fall in that he broke too far off second and was doubled up

by Guillermo Heredia, who made a nice catch and threw behind the runner.

By the time LeBlanc got to the bottom of the fourth, he had a little wiggle room, with a two-run lead, as we shall see, so he was able to emerge from the fourth, his only tough inning, still on top.

Once again it was Hernandez leading off with a base hit, but this time it left the yard for his sixth of the year, and the Jays were on the board for the first time since the ninth inning Sunday against Tampa Bay. LeBlanc gave up two more base hits with one out after the homer, singles to Solarte and Pillar, but managed to pick up fielder’s choices from Smoak and Martin after each hit to limit the damage.

LeBlance was back on track and sailing in the fifth, throwing only eight pitches to get two ground ball outs and fan Pompey. It should be said though that Pompey was called out on a checked swing that looked pretty checked to the untrained eye.

To everyone’s surprise except the Mariners’ coaching staff, LeBlanc did not come out for the sixth inning. He’d only had one bad inning, and had reached a measly 58 pitches for five innings, but it turns out that he’s transitioning back into the rotation, and was on a limited pitch count.

Good thing for the Jays, because maybe they could hope for a little more against the Seattle bullpen.

Now, Jaime Garcia, Toronto’s starter. What can I say about him in this game, other than that it was a stereotypical start for a lefty? (Back in the old days, before the likes of Chris Sale, or even Jay Happ, all lefties were considered to be wild and wooly until proven otherwise.)

When we talk about Jaime Garcia’s performance in this game, we have to talk about Luke Maile, too. If there was ever a night when a catcher’s performance behind the plate resembled a country bear auditioning for a spot as a dancer in a Russian circus, it was the act Maile had to put on while Garcia was on the mound.

The game actually started with the dreaded strikeout on a wild pitch allowing the batter to reach. That’s because Garcia’s strikeout pitch in the dirt was so wicked that Maile didn’t have a chance on it.

That leadoff batter was Dee Gordon, and of course this being the Mariners he would come around to score. In this case, almost instantly, as Jean Segura doubled him home and took third on the throw home. So Garcia was down 1-0 after two batters, and was looking at worse to come.

But then something funny happened. The Jays’ defence stepped up, and Garcia worked his way through with some help from Maile, who kept the ball in front of him. Robinson Cano flew out to right, but the wind pushed the ball in so that Hernandez had to charge it, and he was flying toward the infield when he caught it, forcing Segura to hold at third.

Nelson Cruz hit a one-hop shot that should have been past Gurriel at short, who was playing at normal depth because the Jays were conceding the run to get the out. But Gurriel snagged the ball, and it was hit so hard that when he came up with a strong throw to the plate, Segura, who runs well, stopped cold halfway to the plate and was tagged out by Maile coming up the line without even a rundown. Two outs!

But Garcia wasn’t out of the woods yet. Not this night. With Cruz on first on the fielder’s choice, he walked Mitch Haniger on a 3-1 pitch. Then he hit Kyle Seager to load the bases.

This prompted an extraordinary moment: a first-inning mound visit by manager John Gibbons who was not taking his pitcher out of the game. It would appear that he came out to, as my Dad used to say years ago, to “talk turkey” to Garcia. It must have worked, because Garcia froze Ryon Healy on a beautiful curve on the outside corner with his twenty-fifth pitch to end the inning and escape, improbably, with only one Mariners’ run on the board.

And that’s just the kind of night that Jaime Garcia had on the mound.

He had a relatively easy second inning, aided by another baserunning mistake, this time by Guillermo Heredia, on first with a one-out walk. For some reason he broke for second while Garcia was holding the ball, and he was an easy out, pitcher to first to short. Only 14 pitches in the second.

But then there was the third, when the Mariners picked up another run, and it could have been much worse. The run was unearned, and another example of the crazy situations where the pitcher made the error that caused the run to be unearned.

Leading off, Segura topped one to the right of the mound, an obvious infield single. But Garcia decided to make the throw anyway, and it was worse than any of his wild ones to the plate. Segura ended up on second, moved to third on Cano’s groundout to Smoak, and then had to hold third when Cruz hit another hot one, this time to Martin at third, who threw him out for the second out.

Did I say Martin at third? Yup, Russell Martin had the start at third, with Maile behind the plate and Donaldson as the DH, reportedly because Donaldson’s “sore arm” needed some more rest.

Two things about Martin at third: first, he played one hell of a game there, and handled everything that came his way, including some really tough chances. Second, he must have been really happy that it was Maile catching Garcia, rather than himself.

But back to Jaime, who wasn’t out of it yet. Haniger plated Segura with a ground-rule double to left-centre, and then Garcia walked Seager on a 3-2 pitch before retiring his boy Healy on another grounder to Martin at third.

Garcia was now at three innings, 64 pitches, and one earned run. Heartened, he breezed the fourth inning on ten pitches, then walked two but didn’t give up a run in the fifth, finishing with a line of 5 innings pitched, one run, three hits, five walks, three strikeouts, and 92 pitches. It was a gutsy performance by Garcia to keep his team in the game, but it was no more gutsy than that of Luke Maile behind the plate.

Seung-Hwan Oh came in for Garcia in the sixth and absolutely died the drama down, imposing his calm visage on the flow of the game. Three up, three down, as has become the norm for him. Notably, the third out was a little hopper to third by the speedy Heredia. Russell Martin charged it, barehanded it, and fired a strong throw to first to nip the batter by a hair. Vintage Josh Donaldson from the vacationing catcher.

Hmm. Morales to wherever, Josh to DH, Martin at third two games out of three, Maile behind the dish two games out of three . . . Ya think? I’d do it in a New York minute.

(Whatever the hell that expression means. Wait—we have Google now: it probably originated outside New York, maybe in the sixties, and it refers to the frenzy of the lifestyle of New Yorkers. Perhaps best defined, as in an old Johnny Carson joke, as the time it takes for the car behind you to honk after the light has turned green.)

In the bottom of the sixth the Jays lost a golden opportunity to tie the game on a really strange NewYork umpire’s review. Hernandez led off against reliever Chasen Bradford—put a “t” in his first name and he sounds like one of the judges from the Salem Witch Trials—with another hit, this time an opposite field double to right. The ball skipped into foul territory, ran down the wall, and was grabbed by a young woman in the front row.

This person was apparently unaware of the First Commandment of sitting in front row seats at the ball yard: Thou shalt not touch a ball in play hit by the home team! And she was wearing a Blue Jays shirt, too. Sheesh!

Anyway, the ump’s called time, and, amazingly, pointed to third, where Hernandez had been heading, having rounded second under a full head of steam. You see, this wasn’t a ground rule double, but a case of fan intereference, in which case the umpires can place the batter-runner where they think appropriate.

But that old pooh-pooh Seattle manager Scott Service raised a stink about it and the umpires went to the headsets. It was most disappointing when the decision came back to place Teoscar at second.

Still, at second with nobody out he should have scored, but didn’t. The key at bat was that Donaldson was punched out yet again on a checked swing. Hernandez moved up briskly on a deep fly to centre by Solarte, but got there with two outs. After a walk to Smoak and a pitching change, Nick Vincent replacing Bradford, Pillar lined out to right and Hernandez died on third.

John Axford pitched the seventh for Toronto and benefitted from two more fielding gems to keep the deficit to one. Martin again sparkled with a quick glove to his left to snag a hot one-hopper from Dee Gordon, and Kevin Pillar almost made a diving catch on a sinking liner from Segura, but kept the ball in front of him so that it was a single instead of a triple or worse.

Toronto ended up with a runner at third and two outs in the bottom of the seventh, and this time it was Hernandez, who couldn’t come through again, flying out to right on the first pitch to leave Maile on third after a two-out triple.

Wait—Maile, a triple? Oh, yeah, it was a turf bounce of a base hit that went high over Heredia’s head in left because he charged it too hard. Still, it was the shortest throw to third, and you have to give the hard-working backup catcher full marks for not resting content with a double.

Too bad there were already two outs when it happened, though Vincent had been lucky that Gordon had made a sliding catch on a Gurriel drive prior to Maile’s hit, or it would already have been tied. Pompey walked on a 3-2, setting up a first and third for Hernandez, who skied out.

The M’s got a runner to second with a walk and stolen base off Ryan Tepera in the top of the eighth, but he shut them down after that. The second out was a Ryon Healy grounder to third on which Martin showed off his strong arm. Frisky as a colt out there, that kid! Tepera finished off his inning by fanning Mike Zunino with his trademark nasty diving slider.

This brought us to the bottom of the eighth, when everything changed. I mean everything. It was like an artillery barrage, except that the Mariners’ setup man, Juan Nicasio, didn’t have a trench to dive to for cover.

It was boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Little Boom! Boom! Four doubles and Kevin Pillar’s single on which he was thrown out at second protecting Smoak while he scored. I’ll explain the reference to protecting in a minute.

As Nicasio was going to a 2-2 count on Donaldson leading off, Buck and Tabby were gushing, as they do, about how well Nicasio had been doing as setup for Seattle. Then on 2-2 Donaldson hit a liner to left centre and hustled it into a double.

Nicasio went to 3-2 on Solarte, hitting left, who slashed one the opposite way to left for a double that scored Donaldson. While Seattle was getting a review of whether Solarte popped off the bag, John Gibbons sent Anthony Alford in to run for Solarte, carrying the lead run. An interesting question arises: Alford was announced into the game in effect before Solarte was officially safe; if the call was overturned and Solarte out, had Alford been used or not? (This is right up there with the tree falling in the forest . . . )

Problem resolved: Solarte was ruled safe and Alford took his place at second. Smoak boomed a double to right centre to score Alford.

Pillar hit one of his patented shots into the left-field corner, but Heredia got to it and played it quickly; Pillar, who might otherwise have stayed at first, wanted to make sure that the ponderous Smoak would score, so he tried for second, drew a throw, and was called out while Smoak scored.

That’s what I was referring to earlier when I mentioned Pillar giving himself up to protect the other runner.

With the bases empty and one out, Nicasio gave up another drive to left centre by that hustling third baseman Martin who dove into second with a flourish for the fourth double of the inning. His hit also ended the night for Juan Nicasio, who came in to protect a 2-1 lead and left down 4-2 with a runner on second and one out.

This brought super-sub catcher Luke Maile to the plate. Maile shook off all his aches and pains from five innings blocking Garcia’s junk, strode up to the plate after the new pitcher, Erik Goeddel, had fanned Gurriel Jr. . Maile shot one through the left side of the infield to drive in the frisky Martin with Toronto’s fifth run. Maile took second on the throw to the plate and advanced to third on a wild pitch.

But for the second inning in a row Luke Maile died at third. Curtis Granderson, hitting for Pompey, struck out to end the inning. I doubt that Maile cared he hadn’t scored this time.

What’s really neat about taking the lead in the bottom of the eighth inning is all you have to do is run out your closer and most times it’s over. But who would be the closer with Osuna on the shelf?

If you look back over the box score, there were only two real possibilities left, Aaron Loup and Tyler Clippard. Gibbie wanted to reserve the option of bringing in the lefty mid-inning if needed, so Clippard got the call.

Clippard gave up a base hit to Ben Gamel, who hit for Heredia. But then Gordon skied to right, and Clippard fanned Segura and Cano to end the game in impressive fashion.

So, where do you go with the accolades for this one? Jaime Garcia, for fighting through five innings? Luke Maile, for fighting Garcia for five innings, hitting a triple, and an RBI single? The whole bullpen? Or the meat of the order for crushing it in the eighth?

How about all of the above? “A” for effort for the whole team on this one.

How many levels of irony can be found in the fact that James Paxton of the Seattle Mariners threw a no-hitter at the Toronto Blue Jays Tuesday night in Toronto?

First, as everybody in Canada knows by now, Paxton is Canadian, born in Ladner, British Columbia. (This was, by the way, the second no-hitter by a Canadian in MLB history. The first was by Phillies pitcher Dick Fowler in September 1945, in Fowler’s first game after returning to the Phillies from duty with the Canadian Army during the Second World War.)

Second, though it never came close to a signing, in 2009 Paxton was drafted by the Blue Jays a year before he joined the Seattle organization.

Third, though it was very nice indeed that Paxton pitched his no-hitter in Toronto, had he done it at home in Seattle against the Blue Jays, there would have been a lot more Canadians in the stands to cheer him on, as only 20,513 fans turned out for Tuesday’s game in Toronto, a significantly lower number than the typical Toronto fan draw for a game in Seattle.

On top of all of this, Paxton may felt just the tiniest bit of vindication after victimizing the Blue Jays, since it had been a slip of the tongue by a young Blue Jays general manager, Alex Anthopoulos, in 2009 that had cost Paxton his senior year of baseball eligibility at the University of Kentucky.*

So there was a lot of baggage to set aside when Paxton took the ball for Seattle against the Jays Tuesday night.

But once he started wheeling and dealing, it was all real baseball, right in the here-and-now, no room for back stories, what ifs, or whatevers.

Paxton fanned Teoscar Hernandez and Josh Donaldson to lead off the game, and breezed through the first two innings on 20 pitches.

But after three batters in the third, Paxton found himself face to face with pitching coach Mel Stottlemyer Jr. He had just walked Kendrys Morales on four pitches, given up a very long and loud fly ball to centre to Lourdes Gurriel Jr. , and walked Anthony Alford on a 3-1 pitch.

Whatever Stottlemyer said to Paxton was pretty effective, because he quickly got the last two outs of the inning, and only gave up a one-out walk to Justin Smoak in the fourth, and never allowed another baserunner.

In Paxton’s last start on May second against Oakland, he went seven shutout innings, gave up five hits, walked one, struck out sixteen, and threw 105 pitches. He left the game with a 2-0 lead, and then watched his bullpen cough up a win for the Athletics.

Tuesday I guess he decided that he needed to do it all himself. I mean, if you go scoreless and hitless for nine innings, the odds are pretty good you’re going to snag a win for yourself, right?

Besides the fact that he chalked up a W with the no-hitter, he was significantly more efficient, needing only 99 pitches to navigate the 27 outs. It’s an interesting study in the difference between power pitching and effective pitching. Sure, it’s effective to strike out sixteen, but if Oakland had been able to bunch their five hits, they might’ve scored a run or two.

On the other hand, if you throw outs without building up a high strikeout total, you obviously can maintain an energy reserve to call on when needed. Paxton’s ninth inning, when he could smell the oats in the barn, is illustrative of this. Anthony Alford fouled out to right on one pitch. Teoscar Hernandez fanned on three pitches. Josh Donaldson grounded out sharply to Kyle Seager on the third pitch, an 0-2 count, to finish things off.

This took seven pitches, and the amazing thing is that he never threw a ball, and he cranked up the velocity for each batter. The one pitch to Alford was clocked at 95.5. The three pitches to Hernandez ranged from 96.4 to 97. The three pitches to Donaldson came in at 98.3, 99, and 99.5. That’s right, he increased the gas on each of the last three batters.

I mentioned that Donaldson grounded sharply to Seager at third for the final out. Another significant aspect in any no-hitter has to be the defence behind the pitcher. As a general note, Paxton, who likes to take the ball and serve it up without a lot of fuss, is the kind of pitcher who keeps his defence on their toes.

Good thing for that, because they made some great plays behind him. Naturally, as the game progresses and the possibility of a no-hitter grows, the pressure grows on the defence. It’s just not the same that somebody made a great play in the second inning, when the pressure was minimal, as when he has to really pull one out in the late innings.

In that framework, we have to highlight three plays that were made, four, really, that helped bring the no-hitter to fruition. The seventh inning was show time for Seattle’s infield. Yangervis Solarte led off with a tough grounder to short which Jean Segura handled but threw low to first. Ryon Healy made a terrific scoop to secure the out.

After Justin Smoak flew out to centre, Kevin Pillar came to the plate. If I was going to bet on anyone to break up this one, it would have been Pillar, not because of his good numbers, but because he’s been even better in the late innings and in the clutch. This time was no different. On a 2-2 pitch, Pillar hit a trademark double down the line into the left-field corner . . . except that Kyle Seager dove instinctively, snagged it when it was already past him, leapt to his feet, spun, and threw almost without looking. The throw was low, but once again Healy dug it out, and came off the bag with a huge fist pump. And he wasn’t even pitching.

There was only last sparkler in the eighth, when Kendrys Morales spiked one into left centre but Dee Gordon was up for it, racing over to cut it off, skidding on his knees, and picking it off for the out.

So that’s how Canadian James Paxton, Big Maple, threw a no-hitter at the TV-Dome on Tuesday night.

Wait, what?

There was another team out there? It was a ball game?

Oh, right, unlike the May second start against Oakland, Paxton needed some run support to make this no-hitter happen.

And for this part of the story we have to highlight not the Mariners hitters, but the other starting pitcher, Marcus Stroman.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction: at some point, maybe sooner rather than later, we are going to find out that there is in fact something wrong with Marcus Stroman. It’s more likely to be physical, given his injury-slowed spring training, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t rule out some other mental/emotional or stress-related issue.

Because ever since Marcus Stroman was the pitching star of the U.S.A. in the 2017 World Baseball Classic, he’s never truly gotten his mojo back. Last night was one of the clearest examples of how this Marcus Stroman is not the Marcus Stroman of 2016 or earlier.

Even in the first inning Tuesday night, when the bare record would suggest vintage Stroman, three ground ball outs on twelve pitches, the signs were there. He went 2-0 on Dee Gordon before he grounded out on a 2-2 pitch. Jean Segura grounded out on a 2-0 pitch. Stroman only pitched ahead on Robinson Cano, who grounded out on an 0-2 pitch.

Stroman kept Seattle off the board in the second inning, but this time at the cost of 21 pitches. He walked Nelson Cruz on four pitches. He struck out Kyle Seager on three beautiful pitches on the inside corner. He went to 2-1 and then to a full count on Mitch Haniger before he hit into a forceout. Healy hit an infield chopper to Josh Donaldson who couldn’t make the barehanded play, on a 3-1 pitch. Finally, Mike Zunino grounded out on a 1-1 pitch.

Here’s a way to visualize Stroman’s problem: first inning, 12 pitches, second inning, 21 pitches, third inning, 26 pitches and two runs.

In the third he walked the leadoff hitter, Ben Gamel, on a 3-1 pitch. Dee Gordon missed a bunt attempt for strike one, then Stroman fell behind 2-1, and Gordon ripped one past Smoak down the line for a double with Gamel stopping at third. He rallied to fan Segura on three pitches, but Cano scored the run with a grounder to first. With two outs and a runner on third, he had a chance of getting out with only one run and fewer pitches.

But he fell behind Nelson Cruz 2-1 and had to come in with a fast ball that Cruz fought off and laid out as a single to right to score Gordon with the second run. Finally, Kyle Seager flew out to centre but hit the ball hard. After three innings Stroman was at 59 pitches and down 2-0.

That would have been enough for Paxton, but with one out in the fourth Ryon Healy flared a single the wrong way to right centre, and then Mike Zunino went the wrong way as well, right over the wall to give Paxton two more runs to play with. Stroman still had to pitch around an infield single/error on throw reaches second by Gamel, and after four innings he was at 73 pitches.

Stroman’s meagre hope of lasting past five innings did not survive the first three batters of the fifth, all of whom reached on singles to load the bases. He was lucky to give up only the run knocked in by Haniger on a sacrifice fly, and ended up down 5-0 to a guy throwing a no-hitter. He had thrown 88 pitches, which in the end wouldn’t have been too bad, except that way too many of them were either out of the strike zone or fall-behind cripples.

The past and better version of Marcus Stroman would have relished a one-on-one battle with James Paxton, but the 2018 version gave up the ghost way too early.

After his weak start, it didn’t really matter, except for the stats, that Tim Mayza, Jake Petricka, Aaron Loup, and John Axford all kept the Mariners scoreless for the last four innings of the game.

That cleared away all the distractions, and we could concentrate on watching James Paxton wrap up his brilliant, well-deserved, no-hit game.

*At some point during the ultimately unsuccessful negotiations between Paxton and the Blue Jays, Anthopoulos had made the mistake of referring to powerful players’ agent Scott Boras as Paxton’s “agent”, rather than his “representative”. When Paxton tried to return to Kentucky for his senior year, some stiff-neck at the NCAA heard about the reference to an “agent”, and started the process that resulted in his losing his last year of college ball.

Paxton even filed a lawsuit against the university and the NCAA, but the suit did not proceed, and Paxton ended up pitching briefly for the independent-league Grand Prairie AirHogs in 2010 before being drafted by Seattle.

Note from yer humble scribe:  I have chosen not to mention the other major development in Toronto baseball on Tuesday, so as not to diminish the accord given to the great achievement of James Paxton in no-hitting the Blue Jays.  

I’m referring, of course, to the terribly sad and shocking news that early Tuesday Roberto Osuna was arrested and charged with an assault, which sources have indicated was an instance of domestic violence.  He has been placed on administrative leave by MLB while it conducts an investigation independent of the police investigation.  Osuna is likely facing a significant suspension under the league’s domestic violence protocol.  Aroldis Chapman received a 50-game suspension for an incident that never came to court.

My heart aches for the shame that Osuna must be feeling, but more so for the pain that the victim must be suffering, and I can only hope that he will be able to resolve this issue in a way that is fair and just for the victim.

Friday:

Oh, that orange juice bowl. Every time the Blue Jays take a dip in the orange juice bowl they forget how to swim

Early Friday morning the weary and forlorn Toronto Blue Jays dragged themselves into Tampa Bay for a three-game weekend series with the resurgent Rays, who do not look very much like the team that was supposed to roll over and play dead this year while it rebuilt.

Playing at Tampa Bay has never been a good thing for the Blue Jays. Before this series, in the team’s history their record in Tampa Bay had been 72 wins versus 104 losses, a terrible record that suggests that something darker than mere chance might be at play.

A quick look at the record uncovers an interesting little fact: in 1998, the Rays’ first season of play, their team record was 63-99. Against Toronto, the Rays went 0-6 in Toronto, but beat the Blue Jays 5-1 in the six games played in Florida.

Since then it has ever been thus, so it is not at all surprising that given their condition on arrival the Jays slumbered through the three games on the weekend, and only managed to avoid a sweep on Sunday by virtue of the gritty personal effort of Marco Estrada and the sheer offensive chutzpah of Kevin Pillar.

The team suffered a complete offensive breakdown on the weekend, and were as putty in the hands of the Tampa pitching staff, scoring only six runs in the three games.

And this is a team that despite that dismal Florida showing remained fourth in all major league baseball in runs scored for the season, and first in home runs with 51. Yes, that’s first in homers, as in three more than the Yankees, Indians, and Angels, and five more than the Red Sox. Without Josh Donaldson for much of the season, I might add. Not to mention the slow starts of Justin Smoak and Kendrys Morales, with four and three respectively, far off the team leader, Yanvergis Solarte, who has nine.

So, you get the point: what kind of wool is it that Tampa Bay pitching pulls over the eyes of Toronto’s hitters when they play in Tampa?

Take Friday night, for example, what looked like an egregious mismatch: Jay Happ starting for Toronto and Andrew Kittredge starting for the Rays, as the first up in a self-proclaimed “bullpen day” for Tampa Bay, as if they needed a bullpen day more than the Blue Jays!

Maybe it was all a scam by Rays’ manager Kevin Cash, though.

Cash left the right-hander Kittredge in for two innings and 36 pitches. He’d started the first looking like he wouldn’t last long. Curtis Granderson led off the game running out a double to left centre. Josh Donaldson walked on a 3-2 pitch. Solarte hit one high and deep to right that stayed in the park, but allowed Granderson to advance to third.

Oscar Hernandez hit a fly ball solidly to centre that scored Granderson and for once the Jays had a first inning run. It’s lucky for the Jays that they didn’t know they wouldn’t score again until the eighth inning.

Cash ran Kittredge out there for the second inning, and he picked up his first strikeout of the game, and gave up his second hit, a Luke Maile opposite-field single that crossed up the shift, a harmless two-out single followed by a fielder’s choice for the third out.

After two innings, down only 1-0, Andrew Kittredge . . . did not come out for the third inning. Out of the bullpen came the left-handed Ryan Yarbrough. This is where I question the intent of the Tampa manager: was starting Kittredge a bait-and-switch tactic, and did he really intend to get the most innings out of the lefty?

Or did he just take a wild guess and hit the jackpot, when Yarbrough gave up a leadoff base hit in the third, and then proceeded to mow down fifteen Toronto batters in a row, to take Tampa Bay through to the eighth inning, by which time the Rays had a 4-1 lead?

Yarbrough’s pitching line is about all you need to say: 5 innings, 1 hit, 4 strikeouts, 58 pitches. Total command.

Jay Happ meanwhile started without any of the fuss and drama of his recent starts. A first-inning walk to C.J. Cron on 4 pitches made you worry a little, but then Matt Duffy grounded one up the middle that Aledmys Diaz cut off, flipped the ball to Lourdes Gurriel Jr. at second with his glove, and the latter lasered to first for a lovely double play.

In the second he picked up his first strikeout, and benefitted from a nice play up the middle on his backhand by Gurriel to get the third out on Denard Span.

28 pitches and Happ was through two with no damage, having faced the minimum.

He continued his streak of facing the minimum number of batters through the first two outs of the third inning before centre fielder Johnny Field [but can he hit?] hit one out to left to tie the game at ones. After three Happ still had thrown only 40 pitches.

But in the fourth inning, with Yarbrough having already started to impose his dominance on the Toronto hitters, Happ walked the leadoff batter, which as always was a bad thing. It wasn’t like the Rays were all over Happ, but by the end of the inning they were up 3-1, and that’s all they’d need in this game.

Cron walked again on a 3-2 pitch. Matt Duffy grounded one up the middle but avoided the double play this time as the ball snaked through. The hot-hitting catcher Wilson Ramos lined one into right centre for a base hit that scored Cron and sent Duffy to third. Happ fanned Daniel Robertson for the first out, but Denard Span hit into a fielder’s choice that scored Duffy with the Rays’ third run.

This was one of those games that, though close, never really seemed to be in reach. Barring a sudden wave of fatigue or hitting the wall, it was clear the Jays weren’t going to get to Yarbrough.

The question was, what might they be able to do once he was done? That question didn’t get answered until the top of the eighth, when Sergio Romo trotted out to the mound to take over the pitching chores.

By that time the gap had grown to 4-1, as Jake Petricka, recently recalled from Buffalo, and had come on to finish up the sixth inning for Happ, was touched for a run in the Tampa seventh on a double to right by Johnny Field and a base hit to left by the Rays’ shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria, who had originally been signed by Toronto.

So when Aledmys Diaz homered off Romo with one out in the eighth inning for Toronto it only returned the Tampa lead to two runs, and when Toronto did no further damage to Romo they would be looking at Tampa’s closer Alex Colome in the ninth.

The Rays notched two more off the lefty Tim Mayza in the bottom of the eighth, via a bloop single by Span and a home run to centre by Brad Miller, the lefty Mayza was supposed to retire.

At this point with a 4-run lead the Rays didn’t have to use Colome, but they decided he needed the work anyway, which quelled any hopes that Toronto may have had for a late rally.

Teoscar Hernandez reached third after getting on by means of an error, but that was it and Toronto was done, for their second straight desultory loss.

They’ll have to shake out of it tomorrow evening against Jake Faria, who’s historically pitched well against Toronto.

Saturday:

If you thought it was bad that Toronto lost 6-2 on Friday night to a bullpen committee of the Tampa Bay Rays, how much worse would it be if the Blue Jays lost the second game by a 5-3 score while allowing 3 unearned runs, and fighting the most skewed strike zone you could ever imagine?

That’s what happened Saturday evening in Tampa Bay, and it was not a pretty sight, believe me.

Aaron Sanchez has been slowly rounding into form this spring, and with the addition of a very effective changeup to his repertoire he offers the possibility at the end of his journey of being a more complete pitcher than he was in 2016, when he just happened to be the ERA champion.

But as he works to regain his confidence and command, one new problem has emerged.

Sanchez is a pitcher who has such live movement on his pitches that it appears to be very hard for umpires to be able to see exactly what the ball is doing as it approaches the plate. I say “appears to be” to be charitable to the poor guys who have to stand back there and try to see what almost can’t be seen.

Sanchez has had problems with the plate umpire over his strike zone in several of his starts so far this season, but none were worse than what he faced on Saturday. From the moment C.B. Bucknor called his first trademark fast ball at the knees a ball, Sanchez started fretting about Bucknor. Which made Bucknor fret about Sanchez, and his team-mates. Which didn’t help anybody.

And the more Sanchez frets over the strike zone, the more he struggles.

The big right-hander didn’t help himself with three walks in the first inning, but the run the Rays scored not only wasn’t earned, it absolutely wasn’t his fault.

He went 3-1 on Denard Span and walked him. Then he got C.J. Cron to hit into an easy double play. Then he walked Matt Duffy, and it was in this at-bat that Sanchez learned that a low strike wasn’t a strike. Then he walked Brad Miller, still obviously troubled by the low strike call on Duffy. Then Wilson Ramos hit the ground ball to Gurriel that should have ended the inning.

But Gurriel picked the wrong time to make his first error as a Blue Jay. The ball clanked off his glove, Ramos was safe, and Span scored for a 1-0 Rays lead.

Sanchez had a better second inning, but he was still chewing through pitches like they were a bag of Doritos and he was Donald Trump. Just one walk in the inning, to Mallex Smith who stole second but died there, but his pitch count still had risen to 47 by the end of the inning.

The Rays picked up a second run in the third inning in a good example of the kind of inning that’s a minor nightmare for a ground-ball pitcher: 2 ground balls that snaked through for base hits, then a weak flare single by the catcher Ramos to knock in the run. It was only 2-0 at the end of three, but Sanchez was quickly coming to the end of the line, now at 63 pitches for three innings.

In the meantime Jake Faria had faced the minimum number of batters for the Rays, erasing a one-out walk in the first to Josh Donaldson with a double-play ball, and striking out two.

But despite Sanchez’ troubles the Jays were only down 2-1 after Teoscar Hernandez homered to left to lead off the fourth, the first hit and first run off Faria.

This was a point at which the game could have gone either way, but it depended on Sanchez settling down and throwing a couple of good innings.

Didn’t happen, and by the end of the Rays’ fourth their lead had increased to 4-1, and Sanchez was gone.

The first Tampa run in the fourth was manufactured by the speed of Mallex Smith. The second resulted from the speed of Denard Span. But the inning was lengthened and the Tampa runs abetted by a second Gurriel error, which was compounded by a failure to scoop his low throw by Kendrys Morales, who was playing first because Justin Smoak’s wife had a baby daughter and he was on paternity leave.

Got all that?

Smith beat out an infield single to short despite the heroic effort of Aledmys Diaz to dig the ball out on the backhand and fire it to first. He took second on a grounder to third and scored on Span’s single into the corner. Span stole second and moved to third when Cron was safe on Gurriel’s throwing error. From third he scored Tampa’s fourth run on Duffy, and that it was it for the frustrated Sanchez.

In a moment of supreme irony, Aaron Loup came in to get the final out by striking out Brad Miller looking on about the same pitch that Bucknor wouldn’t give to Sanchez. Must be the cut of Sanchez’ jib.

After Faria’s four effective innings, you’d think that if Toronto was going to brace up and fight back it would have to start right away, but the top of the fifth was the measure of where this game was going. The slumping Russell Martin rolled over on the first pitch and grounded out. Morales hit a lazy fly the wrong way to left. Gurriel put a charge in one, but it stayed in the park in left centre.

The Jays did pick up a couple of runs in the eighth to bring it to 4-3, only to have Tampa add on a third unearned run in the bottom of the inning to make the final margin two.

Toronto’s eighth inning flurry could have tied the score, except that Mr. Bucknor behind the plate intruded on the proceedings again to eliminate a hitter who would have gone on to score. Gurriel finally got all of one leading off to cut the lead to 4-2.

But then Bucknor punched out Dalton Pompey on a 3-2 curve ball from Sergio Romo that you could watch, over and over again, in agonizing slow motion, as it bent around the strike zone, never coming closer than six inches to the black. So Pompey wasn’t on base when, long story short, Diaz doubled to left centre which might have scored Pompey, and Hernandez followed with a single to left the scored Diaz, so Pompey would have been ahead of him. Outrageous, and we’ll never hear a word of it from MLB headquarters.

So it was left as the final frustration for Russell Martin in the bottom of the eighth to bat away a bunt for an error leading to Tampa’s final run, the one that made it look easier for Colome to wrap things up in the ninth as he finished an extended five-out save.

With Tyler Clippard on the mound, Mallex Smith hit a ground-rule double to right. Playing for the extra run, manager Kevin Cash had Johnny Field lay down a bunt. It wasn’t very good, driven hard enough into the turf that it hopped right up in front of Martin charging from behind the plate.

Martin was never going to get Smith at third, but he certainly had a shot at Field at first. But he batted the ball with his mitt rather than securing it, and Field was safe at first. Smith eventually scored on a sacrifice fly by Cron that would have been the third out.

So the score of Saturday’s game was a little complicated: the Rays earned 2 runs for themselves. The Jays handed them three. C. B. Bucknor stole one from Toronto. In your mind, then, this was a 4-2 Toronto win with the Umpire bringing up the rear. On the scoreboard it was something else.

Sunday:

You’d think after two such abysmal showings at the plate that the Blue Jays would break out with some big numbers to avoid the sweep. Or even that Tampa Bay might score more than a couple of runs without the help of the Toronto pitchers and defence.

This despite the fact that the Rays had Chris Archer going for them, and Toronto had Marco Estrada. To be honest, neither has much resembled the pitcher that he was in previous years, although in Estrada’s case he has shown flashes of his old mastery, stringing together several effective innings either before or after giving away the farm.

Yet both looked more like the pitcher of yore on Sunday, and we quickly settled into a for-real pitchers’ duel.

After only giving up one base hit in the first two innings, Estrada survived more of a scare in the third, and had to navigate dangerous waters in the fourth and fifth before finishing up with an easier sixth inning, aided by a fortuitous double-play ball.

The Rays pushed their aggressive button a little too hard in the third, and for once they were stopped cold by the Blue Jays. It started with a walk to Mallex Smith and then of course a stolen base. Carlos Gomez hit a sharp single into centre, Smith had to hold up on it, and when Kevin Pillar came up throwing he was held at third.

After Estrada fanned Denard Span, Gomez tried to steal second and Luke Maile threw him out, with Smith holding at third. The next thing you knew, Smith was trying to steal home, the second such attempt we’ve seen in a Jays’ game this year. But Estrada stayed calm, didn’t rush his motion, and threw a pitch that Maile could handle which took him straight into Smith’s path, legally. Smith bounced off Maile and was dead as a doornail. Well, out at the plate, I mean.

In the fourth after C.J. Cron drove Pillar to the wall in centre for a nice catch, Estrada gave up a grounder to Duffy that went off Solarte’s glove at second for a hit, and walked Brad Miller before getting the dangerous Wilson Ramos to hit into a double play started by Josh Donaldson.

In the meantime Archer had stranded a double by Pillar in the second, and had Gomez bail him out in the fourth with a nice catch of another drive by Pillar after the Jays had put two runners on with base hits, Solarte and Smoak, both of whom defied the shift to hit cleanly into a crowded right field.

If you want a turning point in this game it was the fifth inning, when Toronto finally scratched out a run, and Tampa Bay missed its third opportunity in five innings to break into the scoring column.

For Toronto it started with Anthony Alford, who led off the inning with his first base hit since being recalled from Buffalo. Alford immediately stole second, a welcome addition to the team’s repertoire. Luke Maile hit one deep to right field, and Alford moved up to third on the catch.

Then came the key play of the game, at least before the top of the ninth. Aledmys Diaz hit a grounder into no-man’s land between first and second. Archer was a bit late covering the bag, and he and Diaz converged at first as Archer took the throw from Brad Miller. Diaz was safe, Alford scored, and Diaz was down.

The replays show that he had caught the side of the bag with his left foot, turning his ankle. Diaz would be carried off, to be replaced as a baserunner by Lourdes Gurriel Jr , who would take over at shortstop as well.

Archer stranded Gurriel, but the run stood, and it stood until the bottom of the eighth inning.

Marco Estrada was pulled after six innings, despite that he was throwing a four-hit shutout, because his pitch count was already 96. His last inning was his shortest at nine pitches, but he needed some help from his friends. After walking Cron, Duffy smacked a liner over Solarte’s head at second, but Solarte leaped and made a circus snag, came down, and doubled Duffy off first. Miller lined out to Hernandez in right for Estrada’s last out.

Tyler Clippard gave up a hit but struck out two in the seventh.

Meanwhile, Archer retired the side in the sixth and seventh innings to finish strong, having given up the one run on five hits with no walks and six strikeouts, on 97 pitches. Matt Andriese pitched around a couple of baserunners in the eighth, and the game remained 1-0 for the visitors going to the bottom of the eighth.

As usual, Ryan Tepera appeared for the eighth inning, well established as John Gibbons’ setup man.

However, this time what Tepera set up was a 2-2 hanging slider that Carlos Gomez pounded over the wall in left to tie the game. Tepera got out of the inning without further damage but not without some adventure, finally getting a strikeout and a groundout to keep the Rays from taking the lead after they’d put runners on first and third with only one out.

With the game tied at one, Marco Estrada had done his job, and now it was time for the Toronto hitters to step up and make a difference. And who better to be leading off against the Rays’ closer Alex Colome but the Jays’ most consistent hitter this season, Kevin Pillar?

Pillar had already had his impact on this game. He’d recorded the first base hit against Chris Archer in the second inning when he’d lined a double into the corner in left. Then in the fourth he saved a run by taking a leadoff extra-base hit away from C.J. Cron with a leap against the wall in centre. The catch increased in significance when Matt Duffy followed with a base hit off Solarte’s glove that would have plated Cron in scoring position.

In the home half of the fourth, it had taken a good running catch in right by Carlos Gomez of a Pillar drive into the alley to keep the Jays from cashing one or two base runners.

Facing Colome in the ninth after he’d completed a five-out save on Saturday, Pillar swung at a 2-1 fast ball that the Rays’ closer left out over the plate and lashed it into left centre field. He later said that with the game tied in the ninth he was thinking double all the way as he raced into scoring position.

For once scoring the leadoff double from second looked simple. Kendrys Morales, hitting left, hit a high chopper to shortstop Drew Robertson stationed up the middle, and Pillar moved up to third. At this point, Colome contributed to his own downfall by bouncing one to the backstop, which allowed Pillar to score, illustrating the importance of moving up from second to third on a groundout.

The wild pitch was somewhat academic, because Anthony Alford skied out to Gomez in right for the second out that would have scored Pillar anyway.

Roberto Osuna came in for the save, and struck out Joey Wendle leading off. Then he got three ground balls. The first ran up the middle for a single by Drew Robertson. The second and third were converted for the outs that closed out Osuna’s ninth save in ten opportunities.

It took a couple of first-rate efforts, from Marco Estrada and Kevin Pillar, to extract one hard-fought win out of the three games played in that hell-hole that the Tampa Bay Rays call home.

The Jays came home sporting a record of 19 and 16, ready to face the very tough Seattle Mariners in the friendly confines of the TV Dome.

If you think you’d like to be a big league baseball player, maybe you should think twice about the work and travel regimen before signing on for the big bucks.

I don’t know how your work week went, but this is what the Jays’ last week looked like. Monday they arrived in the Twin Cities for a three game series with the Minnesota Twins. They played the Twins Monday night, Tuesday night, and Wednesday afternoon.

After Wednesday’s 4-0 loss to the Twins’ star pitching prospect Fernando Romero, the team flew to Cleveland for the Thursday doubleheader that was scheduled to make up for the two games lost to rain in April in Cleveland.

As is usually the case, those rainouts in April sabotaged a much-coveted off day for both teams; both were available, decreed the poo-bahs of Major League Baseball, so play a doubleheader they shall!

In the face of another round of threatening weather that almost caused Toronto’s management to preemptively cancel the Wednesday night flight to Cleveland, the teams waited out a rain delay of nearly two hours past the 1:10 p.m. scheduled start time.

When they finally started, it was the beginning of a wild and crazy game that went eleven innings and was decided by a grand slam by Yanvergis Solarte, leading to a final score of 13 to 11 for the Blue Jays.

The second game started at 8:30 in the evening; it was a game in which Cleveland’s Triple A pitchers easily outpitched Toronto’s Triple A pitchers, to the tune of an ugly 13-4 loss for the Blue Jays, and a game that ended at 11:42 p.m., ten and a half hours after the doubleheader was supposed to start.

After the game—we’re still talking about Toronto’s travel schedule here—the Jays boarded a night flight to Tampa Bay, arriving there sometime close to dawn, one presumes, in order to bunk in and get some rest before the start of the weekend’s three game series with the Tampa Bay Rays.

As for the anomaly in my headline for today’s piece, it’s explained thus: Wednesday’s loss to the Twins followed two Blue Jays’ wins in Minnesota, so they won that series. When you combine the doubleheader split with the result of the only game played in the original weekend series, an 8-4 Toronto win, then Toronto wins this Cleveland “series” as well.

Because the games have come hot and heavy this week even for yer humble scribe, I’m going to treat the three games just played all in one piece, and I’m going to abandon my usual in-depth analysis of how it all went down, just to touch on certain highlights, and notable moments and issues.

Questions abounded on both sides of the pitching matchup for Wednesday’s matinee closer in Minneapolis-St. Paul. For the the Blue Jays, it was one big one: whither Marcus Stroman? Would he avoid the one-inning beatdown that’s plagued him for much of the year? Other questions were, would he finally start to be more economical with his pitches? Would he avoid the solid contact he’s experienced lately? Would he get deeper into a game for the first time all season? The answers to these questions were yes, yes, not really, and definitely yes, notwithstanding that yet again he was unable to spearhead a victory for his team.

Just to get the numbers out of the way, Stroman went seven full innings and gave up two runs on six hits with one walk and five strikeouts, on just 99 pitches. Unexpectedly, it was one of the most solid and complete starts we’ve seen from any of the Jays’ starters all season.

He gave up a run in the first and a run in the third and that was it, so he avoided the big inning problem that’s been so troubling for him.

As for the solid contact, in the first two innings he had three balls hit solidly against him. Leadoff hitter Brian Dozier hit one to the warning track in centre in the first, and Eduardo Escobar hit one to deep centre in the second before Eddie Rosario hit one the opposite way and way deep to left centre for a one-run Minnesota lead.

By contrast, the Twins scored their second run in the third with only one solid hit. Stroman gave up a leadoff infield hit off the glove of Yanvergis Solarte at third by Gregorio Petit, who stole second, but had to stop at third on the only good hit, a line single to right by old pro Joe Mauer. Petit finally scored on Max Kepler’s groundout to first.

After that Stroman stayed in charge. He gave up a base hit in the fourth, got a double-play ball after an error in the fifth, then gave up a hit, and stranded a leadoff double in the sixth. His seventh inning was a ten-pitch three-up, three-down, rounding back on his first inning of work.

So, the only thing wrong with Stroman’s start is that he didn’t win it because Toronto couldn’t score, which raises the question of Minnesota’s starter, Fernando Romero, who was a callup, the Twins’ top pitching prospect, and was making his much-anticipated major league debut against the Blue Jays.

For the Twins the only question was whether Romero was the real deal, and based on this outing, things look pretty good for him, and for the future of the Minnesota rotation. He has a good, heavy fast ball and a nasty sinking slider.

As debuts go for rookie starters, he wasn’t exactly lights out, but he was effective when he had to be, and this seemed to be one of those days when his opponents weren’t up to much, no matter who was pitching.

Romero went five and two thirds innings of scoreless ball, giving up 4 hits and 3 walks, with 5 strikeouts, on 97 pitches. That’s the impressive part.

The less impressive part was that he had to work his way out of trouble in three different innings. He had two runners on in the second, fourth, and fifth innings. Twice he faced Kendrys Morales with two on and struck him out with his slider, showing that he can utilize a scouting report with the best of them.

So did Fernando Romero look like the saviour of the pitching staff that the Twins are looking for, especially in the absence of the injured Erwin Santana? Not completely. Did he look like he’ll be a very good major league pitcher, sooner rather than later? Absolutely.

One Jay hitter who had his number was Kevin Pillar, who went two for two with a walk against him, singling in the second and fourth, and walking in the sixth, the walk which prompted manager Paul Molitor to call it a day on Romero.

As for those two singles by Pillar, sadly his extra-base-hit streak came to an end at ten in the second inning when he hit a measly single instead of a double or better. Still, with the two base hits he ended up the day hitting .324, and I’m starting to wonder if the Pillar nay-sayers might end up not having much to chew on this year, as the “different” Kevin Pillar seems to be developing some real staying power.

The Twins’ bullpen followed Romero with a solid three and a third innings of relief, as Toronto showed no ability to mount any kind of a rally against Trevor Hildenberger, Zach Duke, Addison Reed, and Fernando Rodney.

Aaron Loup had his first rough outing in some time, but it wasn’t like the Twins clobbered him in the eighth inning. The first two hitters reached against him with soft Texas Leaguers, and only Robbie Grossman with a line single to load the bases hit the ball hard off him. Loup gave up a third Minnesota run then on a sacrifice fly, and the fourth one, also charged to him, scored on a bases-loaded walk by Carlos Ramirez, who finished out the inning.

So the Twins pitched well enough and Toronto didn’t hit hardly at all except for Pillar, and the result was that the Blue Jays had to put away their brooms for another sweep opportunity down the road, pack quickly, and head off for Cleveland, where the rain clouds were threatening once again.

On Thursday afternoon, the weather gods helped the MLB schedulers avert a huge disaster by parting those clouds, albeit a little late, and allowing the Blue Jays and Cleveland to complete their very long, and very messy, doubleheader.

Sometimes life intrudes on baseball, even for me, and Thursday was one of those times. My wife and I had planned to drive all the way across town during rush hour to attend our five-year-old grandson’s spring concert at school, preceded by a light supper at his parents’ home.

We’d planned to leave the house about 4:00, so I thought I’d get to see most of the first game of the doubleheader before leaving. Silly me. That one hour and 53 minute rain delay for the start of game one left me able to watch only the first couple of innings.

This meant that I had to listen to/follow the rest of that crazy, crazy game with Mike Wilner and Ben Wagner on the car radio, and by surreptitiously watching Gameday at appropriate, or sometimes inappropriate, moments during our visit.

The good thing was that we were well in the car and on the way home when Solarte broke up the game in the eleventh inning, and I was able to hear Wilner’s excited home-run call live.

The bad thing, the really bad thing, the really, really bad thing, was that between the rain delay and the long first game I was able to watch the whole second game, every excruciating moment of it.

So the last play that I saw live of the first game was actually Yanvergis Solarte’s face plant at third base in the third inning. He really took one for the team, that crazy Solarte. Toronto was already leading 2-0 on Russell Martin’s second-inning homer, which cashed Solarte’s first hit of the day/night, a leadoff single to left.

Solarte had led off the third for the second inning in a row with a line shot the opposite way to left while hitting left off the right-handed Cleveland starter Carlos Carrasco. Carrasco, by the way, looked like he’s not quite ready for prime time after being on the DL. He sure didn’t dominate the Toronto lineup.

This time Solarte ended up on second with a double. Then, with one out and Kevin Pillar on behind him with a walk, Solarte advanced successfully from second to third when Martin flied out to centre fielder Brad Zimmer.

It was Solarte’s awkward slide into third that tore up his upper lip, requiring the training staff to attend to him, and leaving him with a big plaster-y-type bandage on his upper lip that looked like a milk ‘stache.

There must have been some magic in that old bandage he wore (come on, sing along with me here) because from that point on Solarte continued on what turned out to be the tear of all tears. He collected three more hits after the single and double to left, to go five for six with a walk. Plus, he piled up six RBIs, two on a two-out fourth-inning single, and of course the four on the walk-off grand slam in the eleventh.

And yes, Solarte did have base hits in all three of the second, third, and fourth innings.

And yes, he did set a Toronto record with eight base hits in the doubleheader, and joined Josh Donaldson—wait for it, he’s up for discussion in this piece too—in tying a major league record of a team having two players hit a home run in each end of a doubleheader.

So then there’s Donaldson, who made his surprise return to action for the doubleheader, when everybody but Donaldson was expecting him to join the team in Tampa Bay for the weekend.

He of course also had a great game of it, going 3 for 7 with a game-tying home run off Nick Goody in the sixth inning, after Cleveland’s horrendous seven-run rally in the fourth had wiped out Toronto’s exciting five-run early lead.

And yes, I admit that I’d just finished grousing to my wife in the car that I thought Donaldson had come back too soon to play in Cleveland, when he hit his RBI double in the Toronto fourth. This embarrassing turn of events led to much mirth and jocularity from my wife over the rest of the evening, whenever Donaldson’s name came up.

Really must remember not to make dire predictions out loud, especially not within the hearing of my wife, who is sometimes merciless.

So Donaldson’s back in full force, and we don’t know whether it was his competing presence at third, or the magical bandage that caused Solarte to go on his tear, but whatever caused it, we’ll take it.

The other issue I’d like to address about game one is the Toronto pitching. Jaime Garcia, who’d looked awfully good for the first three innings, suffered from another one of those meltdown innings in the fourth that we’ve seen far too many times from Toronto’s starters.

After the Cleveland seven-run fourth, it would be up to the bullpen to keep Toronto in the game. After all, after four innings the score was only 7-5, and there was a long way to go. A long, long way to go.

After Garcia’s early exit in the fourth, it was student body to the pitching mound for the Blue Jays. Danny Barnes struggled and gave up a run of his own before closing out the fourth.

Barnes was followed by John Axford, Tyler Clippard, Ryan Tepera, Seung-Hwan Oh, Tim Mayza, and Robert Osuna.

The big Canadian John Axford, who’s been nothing short of a revelation so far this year, was fantastic following Barnes. He retired seven batters in a row—no mean feat in and of itself against these Cleveland hitters—and did it on only 18 pitches.

Of the parade of relievers, only the usually redoubtable Ryan Tepera, and Roberto Osuna, who tends to lose focus when there’s no save on the line, were touched up by Cleveland.

After Toronto had scored a pair of runs in the seventh and eighth innings to retake the lead at 9-7, Tepera allowed Cleveland to tie it up in their eighth, giving up a solo home run to Francisco Lindor, and then an unearned run that scored as the result of a very embarrassing 3-base error by Solarte, whom circumstances managed to place at first base, a not-great fit for him, by the eighth inning.

And Osuna gave back two of the four Solarte grand-slam runs in the bottom of the eleventh before closing out the game by fanning pinch-hitter Yonder Alonso and getting Jason Kipnis to fly out to centre to end the game with the tying run, for god’s sake, after all this, at the plate.

Then there was game two of the doubleheader, which I did watch. Oy, did I watch that one. Ugh.

Since this was a game in which Cleveland’s minor league pitchers were better than Toronto’s minor league pitchers, and that’s pretty well the whole story of the game, we need to address the fact that the “traditional doubleheader” is simply not a good fit for baseball the way it is played, or rather managed, now.

The traditional doubleheader, and I’ve only heard the term this year, for some reason, is the type of doubleheader that used to be part of the regular schedule. The two games would be played consecutively, with about a twenty-minute break in between.

They might have been scheduled as a day doubleheader, usually on Sundays, with the first game starting at the normal time of 1:00. Alternatively, twilight or twilight/night doubleheaders, usually slotted for a 5:00 start, would sometimes be slotted for Friday nights.

Obviously, there are no longer any scheduled doubleheaders. Team managements are completely unwilling to give up the revenue from even a single game date.

So doubleheaders are now utilized only as a last resort to make up for rained-out games. As in Thursday’s twin bill, for which the MLB schedulers utilized a mutual off-day to slot in the two games to make up for the weekend games that were rained out on April 15^thand 16^th.

The traditional doubleheader runs completely counter to the contemporary practice in utilizing pitchers, both starters and relievers.

There are virtually no complete games any more. A starting pitcher has done a good job if he has finished six innings and kept his team close. The average for all starting pitchers in major league baseball (an educated guess here) would be about five and a third innings, five and two thirds tops.

That means that on a daily basis a team’s bullpen has to provide from three to four innings of work. Combine this with the fact that most teams carry only seven relievers, and there are five starters.

Allied to this is the disappearance for all practical purposes of the long man, the bullpen guy who can throw two or even three innings, and fill in as an extra starter. With the need for the bullpen to cover so many innings effectively on a daily basis, the guy who isn’t a one-inning specialist has a lot of trouble finding a spot for himself on a roster.

The upshot of all this is plain and simple: teams can’t possibly use the pitchers needed for two games on the same day that are either long or high-scoring, and hope to continue playing the rest of the week.

So MLB has come up with a solution for a problem that it created: teams can activate a twenty-sixth player for doubleheaders. Almost inevitably, this player is a minor league starter who will take the start in one of the games. In other words, it’s a roll of the dice. And woe betide the team whose minor league starter has a short night after a long first game.

So that’s what happened to Toronto in the second game of the doubleheader: Joe Biagini was average, or, worse, typical for him in recent starts for Toronto, and Adam Plutko was outstanding for Cleveland. Case closed.

But it was close until the fifth inning, in fact it was tied 2-2, but Biagini had wavered and struggled with his control from the start. In the fifth inning he hit the wall, and hit it very hard. Cleveland scored nine runs, count ’em, nine, in the fifth inning off Biagini and his successor on the mound, Luis Santos, who had no more success than Biagini.

In fact, it’s part of the cruel calculation of managing such games that John Gibbons, after Santos had given up five of the nine Cleveland runs on 31 pitches to get out of the fifth, was sent back out to give up another run in the sixth before finishing up at 51 pitches for one and two-thirds innings.

No way was Gibbie going to waste another member of his real bullpen on such a lost cause. And of course Santos’ reward for his appearance in the game was a one-way ticket back to Buffalo.

There’s nothing sadder in baseball, I think, than a fringe pitcher, or a minor league callup, labouring away in the late innings of a blowout. It’s a chance for him to shine, of course, and make his case for a job, but if it doesn’t go well, there he is out there, getting pummelled or walking everybody, and everybody in the ball park knows that there’s no one warming up in the bullpen.

And short of injury, there won’t be.

After Santos was wrung out, there were still six more outs to be gotten, and this time the sacrificial lamb was Carlos Ramirez, who had been brilliant, both at Buffalo and at the end of the year in Toronto, last season.

But Ramirez couldn’t find the plate.

After getting the first out Ramirez walked the bases full and then bounced one while striking out Tyler Naquin for the second out, allowing Jose Ramirez to score from third with Cleveland’s final run.

Our Ramirez, Carlos, threw 28 pitches in that seventh inning, more than enough for a reliever, but there he was, back out on the mound for the eighth. He held Cleveland off the board this time, but gave up a fourth walk and his only hit. He needed 27 pitches this time, for a total of 55.

Joe Biagini 86 pitches. Luis Santos 51 pitches. Carlos Ramirez 55 pitches. 192 pitches total. Enough for an efficient starter to throw two complete games. Look up some of Roy Halladay’s complete games and see. Or Mickey Lolich and Bob Gibson in the fabled 1968 World Series between the Tigers and the Cardinals.

So in the second game of Thursday’s doubleheader Cleveland manager Terry Francona and Toronto manager John Gibbons rolled the dice for starting pitchers. Francona, with Adam Plutko, rolled sevens, or whatever’s good in Craps. Gibbons rolled snake-eyes.

For what it’s worth, Adam Plutko threw seven and a third innings, gave up three runs on six hits, walked nobody, struck out six, and threw 104 pitches.

And the Toronto Blue Jays dragged their tired asses out of Cleveland in the middle of the night for their date with the Rays on Friday evening, with not even their spirits to buoy them up after the embarrassing second-game slaughter.

And Joe Biagini, Luis Santos, and Carlos Ramirez headed back to Buffalo, with nothing to show for their quick trip to Cleveland but some terrible numbers in their major league statistics. And a day or so of pro-rated major league pay.

Oh, and Plutko? He was back to Triple A after the game as well.

Not to beat a dead horse here, but I can’t help but wonder what Paul Molitor must be thinking about the play of his currently-tanking Minnesota Twins after they threw away a second straight game to the visiting Toronto Blue Jays.

The Twins took an early lead on Marco Estrada with two runs in the first inning, on a solo homer by Joe Mauer, who looks like he’ll go on forever, and a double to right by Eddie Rosario that scored Max Kepler, who had reached on a walk.

Estrada, who has regularly experienced one really bad inning in each start, came up short in the first inning yesterday, and ended up throwing 31 pitches, virtually guaranteeing that he wouldn’t be seeing the seventh inning, or even a quality start.

To be fair to Estrada, he’d gotten the soft contact in the air that he needed from Rosario to end the inning, but the foul fly he hit to left just barely spun out of the reach of a sliding Curtis Granderson, giving him another shot that resulted in the RBI double.

Estrada kept the Twins from extending the lead as he settled down to complete five innings without further damage. He allowed two base hits in the second as his pitch count ballooned to 54.

After Kepler’s leadoff single in the third, however, he retired eight in a row to take him to the end of the fifth. By then the game was all tied up, and things were looking fairly bright for Toronto.

Minnesota’s veteran right-hander Kyle Gibson had protected his early lead through four innings. He allowed a walk to Kevin Pillar in the second, hit Granderson on the foot with a pitch in the third, and gave up a two-out double to Pillar in the fourth.

Pillar had two doubles on the day, the second one starting the Jays’s winning rally in the tenth inning, thereby extending his extra-base-hit streak to ten, one short of the franchise record.

Gibson started the fifth inning by going to 3-1 on Kendrys Morales, who was leading off. For some silly reason Gibson and catcher Mitch Garver thought it was a good idea to throw Morales a fast ball on 3-1. Then they got to watch their good idea soar into the elevated seats in right, cutting the Twins’ lead to one.

Luke Maile followed Morales with a sharp line single to left. But Gibson at this point suffered another one of those defensive lapses by his team-mates that doesn’t show up in the box score, but hurts just the same.

Jays’ manager John Gibbons, in his ongoing quest to be named Manager of the Year, with nobody out started Maile on a 1-1 pitch to Aledmys Diaz, who strikes out. A lot. But Diaz made contact, and it resulted in a strange play on the scoreboard.

Diaz hit the ball sharply to third. It looked like a double-play ball. But with Maile running, the third baseman Eduardo Escobar had to field the ball quickly and unload in a hurry to second-baseman Gregorio Petit to have any chance to turn two.

Escobar bobbled the ball, then threw to second, and Petit made the pivot and throw to first. But Maile beat the throw to second, whereas Diaz, who doesn’t exactly go down the line like a shortstop (well, maybe Troy Tulowitzki) was out easily at first.

This resulted in Diaz’ out being recorded as a ground ball 5-4-3, with Maile safe at second on a fielder’s choice. If you get one out while trying to turn two because the ball was mishandled or there was a bad throw, the rules don’t allow an error to be scored for the bobble, because the rules don’t assume double plays will be made.

So, no error, but a defensive lapse that led to the tying run. Maile, who runs the bases sharply, especially for a catcher, advanced to third on a short grounder to third by Teoscar Hernandez, and then scored when Justin Smoak flared a little looper into centre for a hit.

By the way, is there anybody out there who is still scorning the waiver selection of Luke Maile last April? As Russell Martin’s regularly scheduled relief catcher, he has been a treasure, and a big contributor to the team’s record.

Gibson fanned Yangervis Solarte for the third out, but by the time all this transpired, the Twins’ starter had accumulated 30 pitches in the inning, taking him to 96 on the game, and he would have to give it up and not come out for the sixth, leaving with the score tied.

Estrada retired the side in the bottom of the fifth, throwing only 13 pitches. The last one was a beauty, a mesmerizing curve that froze Max Kepler for strike three. Kepler had been the last batter to reach base on Estrada, with his leadoff single in the third, and with this strikeout he was the ninth straight Twin to go down before Estrada’s slants.

Kepler is an interesting anomaly: he was born in Berlin, and when I first heard this I assumed he was a U.S. military brat, but, no, he’s actually a German-German. More interestingly, he was a fellow participant in the MLB European tryout camp in Torino, Italy, with Gift Ngoepe. They both came out of the camp with contracts with major league teams. Kepler signed with the Twins in 2009.

Most importantly, he’s a fine-looking young ball player with a quick and strong bat, and good fielding instincts. He has handled centre-field well for the Twins in the absence of the injured Byron Buxton and will be a good fit for the Twins in either corner when Buxton comes back.

Molitor gave the ball to Ryan Pressly for the Jays’ sixth. Pressly had wavered but not cracked in an inning and two thirds on Monday night, but last night he became the second victim of the amazing and unexpected revival of Kendrys Morales. Pressly retired his first two batters, Pillar and Gurriel Jr. on line drives to the outfield, on only three pitchesl.

But despite the extensive book on Morales’ troubles with the curve, Pressly and Garver decided to lay in another 2-1 fast ball to the big slugger, and this one ended up in almost the same spot as the first one. Toronto had a 3-2 lead, up on the Twins for the first time in the game.

John Gibbons sent Marco Estrada back out for the bottom of the sixth when he’d already thrown 94 pitches. I understand why he sent him out for the bottom of the sixth. He had been rolling along nicely, and with his easy delivery he could easily go another inning, up to about 110 pitches or so. Besides, Estrada is a veteran, and that cuts a little more ice with Gibbie, I think.

So he sent him back out to face the switch-hitting Escobar and the left-handed Rosario. I would have done the same. And would have been just as disappointed as Gibbie surely was, that Estrada gave up a double to the right-field corner to Escobar, and a jack to Rosario that not only gave the Twins the lead again, but knocked Estrada out of the game.

Seung-Hwan Oh came in and threw about as well as he has so far this year, retiring the side, striking out Garver and Adrianza, and getting a grounder to second from the slumping Logan Morrison, all on 18 pitches.

The lefty Zach Duke protected the slim lead in the top of the seventh inning, and John Axford, who’s building quite a late-inning resume, whipped through the bottom of the inning on 14 pitches. Gregorio Petit hit a grounder back to him that he deflected off to Gurriel Jr. but he’d slowed it down and Petit was safe. The second sacker, of course, was lined up to make the play just fine until the pitcher got in the way.

Non-plussed, Axford blew a high fast ball past Robbie Grossman on a 2-2 pitch, and then got a double-play ball from Joe Mauer. Diaz took the ball at short and made a good feed to second, and the fast pivot and strong arm of Gurriel Jr. in turning the ball over to first were a wonder to see.

Paul Molitor brought in Addison Reed to protect the one-run lead in the eighth. Reed ran into control trouble immediately, going 3-0 on Justin Smoak. The latter disdained two fast balls to bring it to a full count, and then took ball four down and in. Oh, those leadoff walks . . .

The catcher Garver went out to talk to Reed. I’m pretty sure he didn’t tell him to go 3 and 0 on Solarte, and then throw two fast balls in the zone. Solarte took the first one for a strike, but the second one, a little higher and on the inside half, he really liked, so he pulled it on a line into the left-field corner for a double, with Smoak chugging into third. Nobody out, of course.

Pillar wasted no time ensuring a tie game, hitting the first pitch from Reed out into left field deep enough for Smoak to score standing up after the catch. Solarte held second, and died there, as Reed struck out Gurriel Jr. , walked Morales intentionally to fill the open base at first, and struck out Maile to end the inning.

Ryan Tepera efficiently disposed of the tough part of the Minnesota order, Kepler, Rosario, Escobar, on three easy chances and only 12 pitches.

Molitor went to his closer, Fernando Rodney, for the Toronto ninth, and Rodney needed an overturned call at first on leadoff batter Aledmys Diaz to keep Toronto off the score sheet. After Diaz was declared out at first on a play from the shortstop Adrianza, Rodney fanned Granderson, but gave up an infield hit to Hernandez and walked Smoak, so that when Solarte came to the plate, there were two on and two out, instead of the bases loaded and one out. But that’s what video replay is for, and Solarte grounded out to second to end the inning.

Tyler Clippard continued the fine run of the Toronto bullpen, and his own run of good work, retiring the side on eight pitches to send the game to extra innings. On this night, Oh, Axford, Tepera, and Clippard allowed only one baserunner in total, and that was the infield hit that Axford slowed down with his glove in the seventh.

Kevin Pillar led off for Toronto in the top of the tenth, and the way Pillar’s been going, you had to know he’d be up to starting things off on the right foot. John Curtiss, he of the flowing locks, had replaced Rodney on the mound. Pillar didn’t let him get too comfortable out there.

On a 1-0 pitch Curtiss threw a low fast ball, in the zone and a little outside. Showing his new-found maturity, Pillar didn’t try to pull it, but drove it toward the alley in right centre, and ended up with a double. As I mentioned above, this was his tenth straight extra-base hit.

But it was after Pillar reached base that he created the conditions for a game-winning rally with his smart, aggressive baserunning. Gurriel Jr for the first time was undisciplined at the plate, striking out on a 3-2 fast ball that was clearly ball four outside. Morales was up next, and after two dingers, he barely had time to pick up his bat before he was waved to first on an intentional pass.

Choosing his moment perfectly, Pillar broke for third and stole it easily. On the next pitch, John Gibbons and Tim Leiper tried to decoy the Twins into throwing the ball away. Morales was improbably sent off to second on a straight steal, but the Twins didn’t bite, Garver ate the ball, and Morales had himself a stolen base.

With only one out and first base open, and maybe with the Twins aware of the success rate of Luke Maile in situations like this, Curtiss pitched carefully to the Toronto catcher and walked him on a 3-2 pitch.

Then the Twins just threw the game away, literally. Curtiss threw a wild pitch to Diaz that scored Pillar, with Morales and Maile moving up. Gibbie inserted Gift Ngoepe to run for Morales at third as Diaz came to the plate.

Diaz hit a sharp grounder to short but Petit, playing in, had all kinds of trouble handling it. Ngoepe scored, Maile moved up to third, and Diaz had an infield single, courtesy of an overly-indulgent Minnesota scorer.

Then, and finally, Curtiss wild-pitched Maile home with the third run of the inning for Toronto. Matt Magill came in to retire Granderson and Hernandez on outfield chances. So the Jays led 7-4 with three runs in the tenth on one solid hit, one infield hit, two walks, two wild pitches, and a bobbled ground ball.

With a three run lead it was still a save situation for Toronto, and Roberto Osuna made short work of it, two easy flies and a grounder on six pitches.

So, led by Kendrys Morales, and especially Kevin Pillar, Toronto secured its third straight win after the dismal losing streak. We owe a lot to those two for leading us to a win during which we only led briefly by a run one time until the tenth inning.

But, for both Monday night’s game and last night’s, to be honest, we owe a bigger debt of gratitude to the feckless, error-prone Twins for their great generosity.

My thoughts return to Paul Molitor, who has been an excellent presence as the manager of the Twins, but must be suffering deeply through this bad stretch.

Do we think that Molitor may be thinking back fondly to the glory days of his short Toronto stay?

There wasn’t a pre-season prognosticator who would have put the Toronto Blue Jays on the same page as the Minnesota Twins as possible playoff contenders. I might’ve, mind you, but then I’m a little less than objective.

It would have been more than a little surprising, then, if they could have foreseen that a 15-12 Blue Jays’ team would arrive in the Twin Cities for a three-game series at the beginning of May with a Twins team struggling along at 9 and 14.

And all of baseballdom must register shock if not horror that a Minnesota team managed by the great Paul Molitor would make such a shoddy showing of it in losing to the visitors last night in the first game of the series, the last game of the April schedule.

To be fair to Minnesota, the team is playing more rookies than any playoff-hopeful team should. Injuries to slugging third baseman Miguel Sano and non-pareil centre-fielder Byron Buxton would obviously be hard to cover for any team. And then they were hit with the 80-game suspension of their starting shortstop, Gregory Polanco under the doping protocol.

But of course no team is immune from the injury bug; after all the Jays themselves are playing without the entire left side of their all-star, playoff-contender infield, having to cover the absence of both Josh Donaldson and Troy Tulowitzki. And yet, look at the records.

Even the pitching matchup was reflective of the differing fortunes of the two teams. Aaron Sanchez, who had a completely lost year in 2017 because of blister problems, is gradually returning to the form he showed in 2016 when he was the American League ERA champion.

Lance Lynn, starting for the Twins, was a late off-season free agent signing (as who wasn’t?) after pitching exclusively for the St. Louis Cardinals throughout his career. He was, in fact, one of the most prominent of the second-tier free-agent pitchers, i.e. anyone not named Jake Arrieta or Yu Darvish.

Lynn was an important piece in the Cardinals’ rotation from his first full year of 2012 through 2017. He had a career record in the National League of 72 wins and 47 losses, throwing to an ERA of 3.50, and never pitching less than 175 and a third innings in the five years he was in the rotation.

But Lynn has not made a good transition to the American League. In four starts he has only thrown 18 and two thirds innings, walking 18 and fanning 22. He entered last night’s game with a record of 0-2 and an ERA of 7.70.

Before we go with the game, though, I have to fill you in on the latest roster moves. As i mentioned at the end of my piece on the three-game Texas series at the TV Dome, Randal Grichuk sprained his knee when he made that crucial catch in the first inning of Sunday’s game. He’s been put on the DL, with a projected 3-weeks’ timeline, and because the Jays still have four outfielders contributing significantly without Grichuk, they decided to shore up their thin infield corps by recalling Gift Ngoepe from Buffalo.

It’s quite notable that it was Ngoepe who was recalled, and that Devon Travis was left in Buffalo to work out his hitting problems. This latest move belies the claim that the main reason Travis was sent down was in order to add a much-needed reliever at the end of the home stand.

You wouldn’t have known Lynn’s been struggling by the way he started out last night. He caught Curtis Granderson looking (with some help from home plate umpire Adam Hamari) Then he got ground balls from Teoscar Hernandez and Justin Smoak and finished with only 8 pitches.

Aaron Sanchez in turn had 2 outs in three pitches, with Brian Dozier lining the first pitch right at Lourdes Gurriel Jr. at second, and Joe Mauer grounding sharply back to Sanchez on the second pitch he saw. Eddie Rosario was positively eclectic in his approach, taking three pitches to fly out to left.

So Lynn at 8 pitches and Sanchez at 6 for 14 in total, it looked like it was going to ba pretty quick night.

But whereas my game notes for the first inning take up only two lines, the second inning runs to 9 lines as the Jays scored 2 to take the lead and the Twins loaded the bases on Sanchez with two outs before he retired the side without allowing a run.

The first Toronto run was delivered by Gurriel Jr in what has been billed as possibly the shortest RBI single in major league history. What it was, however, was a terrible mental mistake/misjudgement by Twins’ catcher Mitch Garver.

Here’s how it all came down. Yanvergis Solarte, who seems to be in the middle of every Toronto rally these days, led off with a hard ground ball that beat the shift into right centre for a base hit. Kevin Pillar followed with a line drive into right centre that split the outfielders. He ended up at second with Solarte stopping at third.

In a strange but impressive stat, Pillar’s double was his eighth straight extra-base hit. In other words, his last eight hits have been for extra bases.

After Russell Martin struck out on a 3-2 pitch for the first out, Lynn went to a 3-0 count on Kendrys Morales, and then the Twins chose to put him on, since first base was open. This brought Gurriel Jr. to the plate.

Gurriel was up there looking to put the ball in play. He fouled off a cutter on the outside corner for strike one, and then swung over a low fast ball, He topping it so it rolled, agonizingly slowly, up the third base line, mostly in foul territory but always touching the line. The catcher Garver came out from behind the plate, bent over the ball and watched it, planning to kill it, I suppose, as soon as it lost contact with the line. But it never did, and he finally picked it up.

Problem was, he was way too late. Solarte, forced from third, had roared down the line and was already out of Garver’s reach when the catcher picked up the ball. Gurriel of course was already out of sight down the line to first.

What was he thinking? What was the advantage of having the ball go foul, giving Gurriel another hack, as opposed to picking it up for an easy first out and preventing a run?

It’s an image that will stick: Garver bending over the ball, studying it intently as it perversely clung to the slightest contact with the foul line, and Solarte racing past him to the plate.

Lynn managed to regroup and fan Aledmys Diaz, bringing Granderson back to the plate for the second time. After Granderson worked the count to 3-2, Lynn missed badly with a fast ball low and outside, forcing in Pillar with the second run. He dodged a much bigger bullet when Hernandez made solid contact with two outs, but hit it to the deepest part of the park where Max Kepler flagged it down.

As much as the Toronto rotation is supposed to be a strong point, it’s never easy with these guys. We’ve seldom seen a shutdown inning after a rally, and Aaron Sanchez had to struggle to keep the Twins off the board in their half of the second.

He started well. Eduardo Escobar and Kepler both grounded out to second, for five consecutive outs at the top of the lineup. Then either he let up or the Twins buckled down. Robbie Grossman singled up the middle. Logan Morrison managed to stick the front of his jersey out far enough to flag down an inside pitch and claim a base. Mitch Garver, needing to make up for his mistake behind the plate, lined a hard single into left to load the bases; it was hit too hard to score Grossman from second.

After Russell Martin made a trip out to the mound to give Sanchez a breather, Ehire Adrianza, the Twins’ rookie shortstop, grounded one out to Diaz near the bag at second for an easy forceout to end the inning.

With a lot of help from Lance Lynn the Jays loaded the bases again in the top of the third on a base hit by Solarte and walks to Martin and Morales, but the threat died when Lynn struck out Gurriel Jr. on a foul tip. Sanchez walked Joe Mauer in the bottom of the inning and faced hard contact from Rosario and Escobar but avoided further damage.

What was telling, and a harbinger of what was to come, was that after three innings Lynn’s pitch total was 60, and Sanchez’ was 38.

The fate of Lance Lynn on this night was decided in the top of the fourth, when Toronto added 3 runs to its lead. With one out Granderson drew a walk. Hernandez hit a bullet over Grossman’s head to the wall in right. It’s a measure of Hernandez’ power that this ball was hit so hard to the opposite field. Granderson moved to third on the double, and then Mitch Garver let his pitcher down again, allowing Granderson to score and Hernandez to move up on a passed ball.

The next two runs were the responsibility of the pitcher Lynn, who thought it was okay to throw Justin Smoak a 1-2 waist-high fast ball on the inside corner. Smoak gave it a real ride to right centre; there was no doubt from the crack of the bat that it was gone.

From this point the narrative of the game became the Twins’ futile effort to catch up, which they sabotaged by their own mistakes. In their fourth Teoscar Hernandez kind of circled around Max Kepler’s leadoff drive to right, and it banged off the wall hard enough to let Kepler get to third with a triple. Kepler made a mistake not tagging up in time on Grossman’s lineout to right, but scored anyway on Morrison’s ground out to second.

Russ Martin’s blast to left when he swung away on a 3-0 pitch in the top of the fifth inning restored the five-run lead, but Lynn managed to limp through the inning to finish off his day with six runs allowed on seven hits with a damaging five walks on 99 pitches.

If there’s an indication of how Sanchez isn’t quite “there” yet, it’s the fact that again in the fifth inning he got two outs, and then found trouble. He seems to be lacking the instinct to finish well. After fanning Brian Dozier and retiring Mauer on a grounder he deflected to Gurriel, he suddenly bloomed to 3-1 on Eddie Rosario before losing him. The only thing worse than a leadoff walk, sometimes, is a two-out walk. Escobar stepped in and powdered one to dead centre, and the score was now 6-3 after five.

In the Twins’ sixth, after Trevor Hildenberger kept the Jays off the bases with only six pitches, the Twins clawed back a fourth run off Sanchez in his last inning, eliminating his quality start. Robbie Grossman lined a double into left field, moved to third on a groundout, and scored on a groundout, and Sanchez left the game to the hardworking Toronto bullpen to protect only a two-run lead.

With Lynn already gone and Sanchez gone now, the game was in the hands of the bullpens. It was an even fight. Aaron Loup let Joe Mauer on with a leadoff single in the seventh, and Danny Barnes came in to give up a run-scoring double to Max Kepler.

The score remained a tight 6-5, in a game the Jays had thought was salted away, until the top of the ninth, when the Twins made two errors, one of which led to a valuable insurance run for Toronto.

Facing the right-handed Ryan Pressly, Justin Smoak lofted a fly ball the wrong way into the left field corner. Eddie Rosario drifted over for it, caught up with it only to flub away an easy catch as Smoak steamed (sort of) into second base. Yanvergis Solarte grounded a single up the middle that allowed Smoak to score.

The inning and the torture for Ryan Pressly, and manager Paul Molitor, weren’t over. Kevin Pillar hit into what should have been a double play started by shortstop Ehire Adrianza. But Brian Dozier at second fumbled away the feed from Adrianza and both Solarte and Pillar were safe.

Pressly dodged further problems because Max Kepler made a fine diving catch coming in on a sinking liner by Russell Martin. He then ended the rising by fanning Kendrys Morales.

The Twins made it close in the ninth and made Roberto Osuna work for his seventh save in eight opportunities. With one out Rosario singled to centre, and with two outs Kepler doubled into the right-field corner, but Rosario had to be stopped at third, bringing Robbie Grossman to the plate. Grossman hit an easy fly ball to centre that Pillar camped under for the third out, and an escape by a relieved Osuna and his team-mates.

It’s hard to imagine how the proud professional Paul Molitor must feel about watching a performance like this. It was a game that in some ways Toronto was ready to give away, but the Twins seemed to want it even less, even as they closed the gap at the end.

First blood in Minnesota goes to the Blue Jays.

This weekend’s Toronto series with the visiting Texas Rangers had all the makings of a Shakespearean tragedy. There was Marcus Stroman, the tainted hero, stained with hubris. There was a tragicomic interlude where no one could do anything right, but the heroes stumbled more than the villains. .

Then, just when this tragic farce was about to play out to its final, inevitable act, the gods descended from the sky, in true deus ex machina fashion, and placed Jay Happ on the mound in the brilliant circle of Sunday sunlight. Happ, the anointed one, ledhis band of ragamuffin wanderers back, if not to the Promised Land, at least to its surburban portals, where eternal life is a few degrees better than Outside in the Dark, where Chaos reigneth over all who have abandoned hope of a Wild Card slot.

We did not have to wait long for Stroman to stumble on Friday night. In fact, I’m surprised he didn’t trip over the foul line and come a-cropper before the first pitch. Unlike his last start when he threw five innings of good ball before melting down in the sixth, the crashcame immediately.

He got a ground ball to short from Delino DeShields but DeShields beat it out. He went 3-2 on Shin-Soo Choo and lost him. Jurickson Profar tried to bunt the runners up, failed, and then advanced them anyway with a slow roller to shortstop. Nomar Mazara knocked them in with a ground single up the middle and Joey Gallo extended on a pitch away and belted one over the fence in left-centre.

5 batters, 3 hits, a walk, and it was 4-0, and not only had Toronto not come to bat, but Texas only had one out and Stroman was well on his way to a thirty-pitch inning.

I guess the only thing worse than watching your team play catchup for the whole game is being on the team that’s trying to catch up.

Actually, it wasn’t quite so bad through those early innings. Lefty Mike Minor wasn’t nearly as effective against the Toronto lineup as he had been in Texas on April seventh, when he’d given up one run on two hits over six innings with seven strikeouts.

In fact, he started out: Steve Pearce caught looking, Teoscar Hernandez double to right centre, Justin Smoak flare single to right scoring Hernandez. Then he fanned Yanvergis Solarte for the second out, but Kevin Pillar doubled to centre on a ball that hitoff DeShields’glove, and, were it not for a bad decision by either Smoak or third-base coach Luis Rivera, or both, the Jays could still be batting in that theoretical inning-that-goes-on-forever.

Because Smoak got himself thrown out at the plate, trying to score from first on Pillar’s hit. It wasn’t close.

Still, they’d scored on Minor and he’dshown that he wasn’t going to be dominant like the last time.

It’s kinda too bad that they didn’t put a “2” up on the scoreboard for innings before Stroman took the mound for the first, because he was pretty damn sharp two through five. In fact, he struck out two in the first after Gallo’s homer, and the first two in the second. More impressively, he gave up only a 2-out double to Mazara in the fourth, and a leadoff single to second baseman Drew Robinson in the fifth, both of whomdied on the bases. In all, after the Gallo homer he retired 14 of the 16 batters he faced.

Meanwhile, Toronto had managed to tie the game by the end of the third inning, and with Stroman sailing along things looked considerably brighter than they had at around 7:20 in the evening.

Minor’s wildness contributed materially to 2 Jays’ runs in the second. Russ Martin had led off with a booming double to left centre, a welcome site to Toronto slump-watchers. Then he rashly took off for third on a Minor pitch in the dirt.

(Insert here, for those who don’t know it: age-old baseball wisdom decrees never to make the first or last out of an inning at third base.)

Martin was initially called out, and after a video review it was determined that he had gotten his hand to the bag safely. Whew.

It looked like he was going to die there as Kendrys Morales fanned on a curve ball in the dirt, and Devon Travis grounded out to third. But Minor hit Aledmys Diaz with a pitch to prolong the inning and bring Steve Pearce to the plate. Pearce doubled into the left-field corner and the initial Texas bulge was reduced to one run after two innings.

Toronto tied the score in a home half of the third that was an absolute Gong Show for both teams. Smoak singled to left off the glove of shortstop Jurickson Profar. Solarte singled to centre off Drew Robinson’s glove at second. Smoak tried to go first to third on the hit and was thrown out easily by DeShields. Never make the first out or the last out . . .

Then Kevin Pillar lofted a bloop single to left that Joey Gallo over-charged so that the ball bounced over his head off the turf and went for a triple scoring Solarte from first.

But Pillar died at third and we didn’t know at the time that the Jays’ chances in this game had died with him, with only three innings in the book.

Stroman’s effectiveness came to a crashing halt in the Texas sixth. Mazara singled to right. Gallo singled to centre, though Pillar nearly came up with the sinker on a dive. Then Texas manager Jeff Bannister elected to bunt with rookie third baseman Isiah Kiner-Falefa at the plate. The rook got it down, rookie Ronald Guzman singled them both in, and both Stroman at five a third and the Blue Jays were done.

Tyler Clippard finished the sixth for Stroman, Aaron Loup pitched a perfect seventh, and John Axford saved the Jays’ bullpen a pitching appearance by closing out the eighth and ninth.

Meanwhile, Minor finished with a flourish, retiring Toronto in the sixth on six pitches, two groundouts and a lineout. Kevin Jepsen, Alex Claudio, and Chris Martin delivered a 6-4 lead to Keone Kela, who closed out the ninth for the save on only 5 pitches.

The Blue Jays entered this series hoping to regain some momentum after the disappointing week against the Yankees and Red Sox, but being beat up in the first inning of the first game against the West Division cellar-dwelling Texas Rangers was just not how you turn the ship around.

Bartolo Colon is a recurring dream. An infuriating, portly, grinning, extremely annoying recurring dream. I will not include any age insults because at my age that’s just not very appropriate. Besides, I realized recently that at 44 he’s still two and a half years younger than my oldest son.

Last year he started against Toronto three times, once for Atlanta where he was in the same rotation as R.A. Dickey (and Atlanta was supposed to be rebuilding via a youth movement at the time . . .) and twice for Minnesota after the Twins acquired him as a trade-deadline acquisition. On May 15th for Atlanta he went five innings and gave up three runs on seven hits, but got the win. On August 25th for Minnesota he went six and two thirds and gave up one run while scattering nine hits for the win. On September 15thhe took the loss but went six innings again, giving up four runs on only five hits.

After three straight losses and six of their last eight, Colon was not exactly the person Toronto wanted to see taking the hill for Texas in the second game of the series, Colon with his below-90 fast ball, his wicked control, and his even more wicked grin whenever he does good, like snagging a rocketing liner off the bat of Kevin Pillar before he was even out of the batter’s box, for the last out in the sixth inning, on his 81st pitch Saturday afternoon.

The left-handed Jaime Garcia got the assignment against Colon. Garcia has been about what you would expect as a fifth starter for Toronto so far this season, which is to say that he’s not exactly the pitcher who was eagerly sought as a trade-deadline addition by not one, but two, contending teams in 2017. Dizzyingly, he was traded from the Braves to the Twins on July 24th , and from the Twins to the Yankees on July 31st.

Garcia has been infected by the Toronto 2018 starting pitching virus, which makes its victims susceptible to extreme gopher-ball-itis. So while he has pitched a number of outstanding individual innings, and had some good runs in his starts, he has also been taken deep seven times in 26 and two thirds innings.

Bartolo Colon went through four innings like a man who knew how to conserve his energy. He faced one over the minimum, a double by Curtis Granderson leading off the fourth, while throwing only 47 pitches.

Garcia, on the other hand, fiddled and flustered his way through to exactly twice as many pitches in the same number of innings, giving up five runs along the way, two on a second-inning home run by Jurickson Profar, and another following on a back-to-back solo shot by Robinson Chirinos.

Any real hope the Jays may have had of either breaking down Colon or breaking through against the Texas bullpen was blunted in the Texas fourth when Garcia’s wildness and the Texas aggressiveness on the bases gave the Rangers two extra runs that they cashed as the result of a really unfortunate outfield mistake by the rookie left fielder Teoscar Hernandez.

Shin-Soo Choo was at the plate with two outs and Rangers on second and third. Ryan Rua had forced Profar, who’d reached on a leadoff walk. Rua advanced on a stolen base/wild pitch combo while Garcia was walking DeShields, who also stole second, bringing Choo to the plate.

Choo lofted an easy fly ball to centre. Pillar, moving to his right, waved his hands that he had it. But Hernandez, coming over from left, must have missed Pillar’s call, and kept coming. Sensing Hernandez’ approach, Pillar pulled off the ball at the last minute, and it hit off his glove, going for a double that scored both runners and boosted the Texas lead to 5-0.

Garcia finished off with three ground-ball outs in the fifth, and Toronto finally got on the board in the bottom of the inning on a leadoff home run to left by Pillar, and then threatened to break through for more against Colon. But the latter, who’d quickly gotten two outs after Pillar’s knock before giving up a line single to Luke Maile and an infield single to Diaz, ended the rising when he got Curtis Granderson to fly out to short left.

As often happens when a team that’s behind starts to show signs of coming back, Toronto took a dagger to the heart when Seung-Hwan Oh, who came in for Garcia for the sixth, was rocked by a second solo homer by Chirinos with one out to restore the Texas lead at 5, 6-1.

Leading off the bottom of the sixth against Colon, Hernandez crushed one to right centre field. For at least the second time this season, the ball got lost in the lights of the field-level scoreboard as it descended. The fielders knew it was still in play, but the ump couldn’t tell because of the glare from the lights. By the time the ball was retrieved off the wall Hernandez was in to third with a triple.

Toronto scored Hernandez on a ground-out up the middle by Solarte, but couldn’t mount another concerted effort against Colon despite Lourdes Gurriel Jr.’s first major-league homer leading off the seventh.

So after seven innings the mirthful Colon was finished, leaving with a 6-3 lead, having been touched up for three long flies, but never facing a coherent rally in the game.

It became increasingly apparent that Toronto would need a strong starting performance on Sunday as the bullpen was fast being depleted. Oh, who usually pitches in the seventh inning, had to take the sixth, Tepera pitched an effective seventh, Axford heroically came back for the eighth after two innings on Friday night, and then, ironically John Gibbons needed to give some work to his closer, because Roberto Osuna hadn’t been needed since Tuesday against Boston, when he’d suffered his first blown save of the year.

Nevertheless, the overworked bullpen had shut down Texas since the Chirinos homer off Oh in the sixth, until the rested Osuna came in and gave up a one-out double to DeShields, an RBI single to Choo, and a following single from Kiner-Falefa before retiring the side.

Kevin Pillar usefully forced the Texas manager to bring in his closer by hitting his second homer of the game off Kevin Jepsen, but Kela came in and closed the game out without further problems.

It was looking bleak for Toronto after Saturday’s loss, the fourth in a row and seventh in nine games, and particularly alarming was the fact that other than Osuna almost everyone in the bullpen had worked more than once in the last two games. Something had to give on Sunday.

What gave was pretty big: the Jays announced before the game that they’d optioned Devon Travis to Buffalo and called up Carlos Ramirez to reinforce the bullpen. This guaranteed that both Teoscar Hernandez and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. were here to stay with the team for a while.

Because of Marcus Stroman’s arm troubles in spring training, Jay Happ was kind of an accidental Opening Day starter for Toronto, but by now, after five starts, he has established that his status as the number one starter is no accident.

And who could be better to send tothe mound than Jay Happ to try to stop the bleeding and turn Toronto’s April around as it was lurching to an end?

With a little help from Randal Grichuk, Happ showed from the start that he wasn’t go to let any little mistakes bring him down. Delino DeShields started the game with a tough chance on the ground for shortstop Aledmys Diaz. DeShields made it to first for an infield single, but Diaz made an ill-advised throw for an error and DeShields made it to second.

Happ buckled down and fanned the pesky Shin-Soo Choo on a checked swing, bringing the double-named, Hawaiian-raised Isiah Kiner-Falefa to the plate. Isiah, to save a mouthful, hit a 3-2 pitch on a looping liner into right centre that looked sure to drop for a hit.

But Grichuk, who can contribute even when he’s not hitting, closed fast on the ball, and dove in andto his right on his backhand. The ball entered his glove but as he hit the ground it rolled out and he desperately tried to corral it to his chest. Agonizingly, it bounced around off various body parts before he secured it; the replays clearly showed that it never touched the ground.

Even better, DeShields never for a minute thought the ball would be caught. He stood forlornly off third and watched Grichuk throw the ball to second from one knee to double him upand end the inning.

Texas left-hander Martin Perez quickly dispatched Toronto in the bottom of the first on 11 pitches, despite walking Teoscar Hernandez, who was erased when Justin Smoak hit into a double-play.

Happ had an interesting second inning in which he struck out the side, increasing his total to 4 strikeouts over two innings, but he also gave up a very definite and very loud solo home run to the Rangers’ stout young third sacker, Renato Nunez. Not to mention a base hit to Jurickson Profar, before notching his third whiff of the inning, courtesy of the dangerous (to Toronto, if not anyone else) Robinson Chirinos.

But this was a game in which, after the first inning, the Jays constantly had Perez in trouble. They put up two runs in the second and one each in the third and fourth innings to quicklyovercome the early Texas lead.

Cleanup hitter Yanvergis Solarte, leading off the second, belted a 2-0 pitchdeep over the left-centre field fence to erase the Texas advantage with one stroke. Kevin Pillar worked a walk off Perez on a 3-2 pitch. Russell Martin hit the first pitch he saw hard back up the middle. It caromed off Perez’ knee to third and Martin beat it out for an infield hit.

This brought Lourdes Gurriel Jr. to the plate amidst much fanfare. Gurriel, who seems to do everything correctly, shot it on the ground to the right side. Unfortunately the Rangers were positioned perfectly. Isiah picked itand went to second for the force on Martin, with Pillar going to third.

Grichukcame upfor his first at-bat in the game. Before I proceed to describe how next he helped his team to win, let me tell you something we now know with the benefit of hindsight. We learned Tuesday that Grichuk had sprained a knee making that catch in the first inning. He played the rest of the game with that knee sprain. Everything he contributed to Toronto’s win Sunday should be viewed in light of that. Now he’s off to the DL with a projection of three weeks’ recovery time.

Regardless of his condition Grichuk fledout to left, deep enough to allow Pillar to score the Jays’ second run.

I just want to point out here that the lead the Blue Jays took in thesecondinning of Sunday’s game was the first lead they held in a game dating back to the fifth inning of the third game of the Red Sox series.

Toronto picked up a single run in the third when Hernandez went deep the opposite way to right on Perez, and another in the fourth on Pillar’s leadoff homer to left, his third home run in two games. They lost a glorious opportunity to put the game away early when Perez walked Martin and Gurriel Jr. after the Pillar shot, and Grichuk followed with a hard ground single to left past Nunez at third to load the bases with nobody out.

But Perez fanned the slumping Diaz for the first out, and then Steve Pearce lined into a double play over the bag at second to let the Rangers’ starter off the hook. It was the last pitch Perez threw, though, because the Texas manager went to his bullpen for the fifith inning.

Tony Barnette stopped the string of runs for Toronto in the fifth, though he did have to work around a one-out hit batsman of Smoak, striking out two Jays in the process.

In the meantime the Rangers could do little with Happ, who was seriously on his game.

Ryan Rua reached with a base hit leading off in the third, stole second, and moved to third on a groundout, but died there. Happ retired the side in the fourth and fifth innings, elevating his strikeout count to eight for five innings, on his way to nine in seven innings pitched.

In the sixth inning Happ’s string of consecutive outs was broken off at nine by a Delino DeShields leadoff double into the left-field corner. Happ responded by inducing three ground balls from Texas. DeShields moved to third on the first and scored on the second, a grounder to short by Isiah. This cut the lead to 4-2 for Toronto, but that’s as close as it would get.

The Jays responded in their half of the sixth with another run, this one totally unearned. Russell Martin reached on a fielding error by Nunez at third. Gurriel Jr. stroked a long single into centre that was played well by Mazara to hold the hitter to a single while Martin advanced to third.

Randal Grichuk put the ball in play again with a runner in scoring position, hitting a ground ball to second that scored Martin from third. The play went as a fielder’s choice to Profar covering second, but Profar threw the ball away on what should have been a double play, allowing Grichuk to reach base. Again, Grichuk was hustling down the line on that sprained knee.

Barnette promptly picked Grichuk off first, and Rua ended the inning for him with a spectacular sliding catch into the wall in foul territory in left that retired Diaz. The Jays asked for a review, but the out call on the field was upheld.

In the Texas seventh, on just eight pitches, Happ finished the job that Toronto really needed from him. He retired the side in order and rung up Joey Gallo for his ninth strikeout, and sat down with a 5-2 lead.

The Jays sealed the deal in their half of the seventh. After Barnette had pitched two effective innings, Jeff Bannister sent him out for a third, and it was too much of a stretch for him. He walked Pearce and gave up a double to Hernandez that sent Pearce to third.

Bannister pulled him for Jake Diekman, and Justin Smoak hit his first pitch deep to left for a sacrifice fly scoring Pearce, and on which Hernandez alertly advanced to third. When Solarte looped a single to left Hernandez trotted home with the final run of the day, making the score 7-2 Toronto. Both of the seventh-inning runs were charged to Barnette, who deserved better.

Lefty Matt Moore finished up for Texas in the eighth inning, inducing a double-play ball from Diaz, whose hitting woes worsened Sunday, to erase a one-out infield hit to short by Grichuk. Let’s pause on that for a minute. Grichuk hurt himself making a great catch and starting a double play in the first inning. He then produced a sacrifice fly, a solid base hit, a run-producing ground ball, and beat out a hit to short. On a bum knee.

While Randal Grichuk recovers from his knee strain, let’s not write this guy off yet. He contributed a gritty performance on Sunday, after enduring an incredibly long and frustrating batting slump.

For the Blue Jays, Ryan Tepera had made quick work of Texas in its eighth inning by striking out two and throwing only ten pitches, and Aaron Loup threw a scoreless ninth despite a one-out double to left by Isiah. Loup struck out Joey Gallo to end it, adding to his recent string of impressive innings.

So Jay Happ did what an ace does: he stopped the bleeding for Toronto. Not only did he stop the bleeding, but he did it briskly, confidently, and emphatically.

Until we hear otherwise in terms of the future performances of the other four members of Toronto’s rotation, Jay Happ has firmly cemented himself in position as Toronto’s number one starting pitcher.

In fact, despite his age of 35, it’s looking more and more like it would be a huge mistake not to resign Happ, who is a free agent at the end of the year. He’s strong, fit, works hard, and is a good role model for the two budding stars Stroman and Sanchez.

So riddle me this: how often is Chris Sale going to give up an improbably manufactured first inning run, and solo homers by Devon Travis in the second and Justin Smoak in the third, to be facing a 3-1 deficit for his Red Sox over the Blue Jays?

That’s the situation we faced last night in the series’ finale between the two East Division rivals.

No riddle here. The answer is obvious: not very bloody often.

So it’s really too bad that Marco Estrada and the Jays couldn’t hold on to that early lead, which would have given them a much-prized series win against the streaking Bostons.

As it was, Sale managed to shut the Jays down from the fourth to the sixth innings, just long enough to be the pitched-out beneficiary of J.D. Martinez’ three-run fifth inning shot off Estrada, who saw another fine beginning go south in the middle innings, leading to another less-than-successful outing for him and another loss for his team.

There were other factors at play last night as well. One was that the Red Sox picked up two very strange and lucky hits, one of which figured in the scoring. And, not for the first time, a defensive failure by Devon Travis contributed to the loss.

To hang this one at least partly on Travis may seem unfair, especially since he broke out, for one night at least, from his season-long hitting slump, chipping in a home run and a triple to the Toronto cause. But, as inarticulate people say, it is what it is: Travis bobbled a sure double-play ball that cost Toronto a run.

If you’d like to refer back to my headline, that’s “a run” as in one of 5 Boston scored against Toronto’s 4. And, yes, he contributed to two Toronto runs with his bat, but, cruelly, those were owed a long time ago, his slump’s gone on so long, and it’s just a weird coincidence that they turned up last night.

To carry this point one step further, if Toronto had been regularly starting a second baseman who could actually make the tough plays as well as chip in a hit or two and an RBI or three, how much farther ahead would the team be than it is?

Sale, who has usually mown down the Jays like a scythe, was off his form almost from the start. He jammed Steve Pearce for a soft liner to first. But he went 3-1 on Teoscar Hernandez before walking him, and Justin Smoak, hitting right-handed against Sale, lofted a bloop single to right, with Hernandez hustling to third. Then he hit Yangervis Solarte—hard, even if it was a curve ball—right on the kneecap to load the bases.

Then came a gutsy at-bat by Kevin Pillar, who was determined to get the ball in the air to score Hernandez. Sale threw him three straight high outside fast balls, the first one out of the strike zone, and the second and third ones each higher still. It’s called “climbing the ladder” by a pitcher. Pillar swung and missed the first two; the third one came in head high, but Pillar swung at it anyway, made solid contact, and skied out to J.D. Martinez, who was in right last night, with Mookie Betts in centre. The fly ball was deep enough to score Hernandez, and the Jays had broken on top against Sale for the first time that I can recall.

Sale came out loaded for bear in the second inning. Randal Grichuk fouled out to the catcher. Luke Maile struck out looking. Then the slump-ridden Travis shocked everyone in the ball yard, and everyone else watching, when he turned on a 1-1 fast ball right down the middle and just pounded it into the second deck in left.

In the third, after his team had picked up a run to cut the lead to 2-1, Sale fanned Hernandez, but Smoak hit a hanging 0-2 slider into the bullpen in left to restore the 2-run Toronto lead.

Well! Three innings in, and it’s Blue Jays 3, Boston 1 with the unbeatable Chris Sale on the mound for the Red Sox! Could it last? That would be up to Marco Estrada.

Estrada started out at his mesmerizing best. Betts fouled out to Smoak at first on a 2-1 pitch. Andrew Benintendi fanned on an 0-2 pitch. Then he stumbled a bit. Hanley Ramirez surprised everybody by grounding one through the vacant right side of the infield for a base hit. J.D Martinez squared up a high changeup, but it stayed in the park for Hernandez in right.

Estrada struck out the side in the second, one of the best innings I’ve ever seen him pitch. Mitch Moreland ran the count to 3-2 but fanned on a high fast ball. Eduardo Nunez ran the count to 3-2 and fanned on a wicked changeup. Rafael Devers took a low fast ball for a strike. He fouled off a cutter low and outside. Then he swung wildly at a fast ball high and well outside the strike zone. Three strikeouts and not a stiff among the Boston hitters.

Estrada’s streak continued in the top of the third when Christian Vazquez took a low fast ball for a called third strike. As a catcher, Vazquez should have been paying attention: it was the same pitch that plate umpire Ramon De Jesus had been giving to both pitchers consistently for the first two innings.

That brought Brock, aka Carl Yastrzemski, Holt to the plate. (Yes, that’s a bit of a sacrilege, but just think of what he’d done to the Blue Jays in this series.) After going 6 for 8 in the first two games of the series, he stood in with that short stroke of his and drove the ball to the wall in right centre for a double. Alarmingly for the Red Sox, Holt grabbed his hamstring rounding first and limped into second. He was replaced by a pinch-runner who also replaced him in the field, Tzu-Wei Lin.

After Betts flew out to centre, Benintendi finally broke off his string of frustration with a hustling double to right that scored Lin with Boston’s first run. Estrada walked Ramirez on a 3-2 count, but then neatly picked Benintendi off second for the third out.

When Smoak went deep on Sale in the bottom of the third he restored Toronto’s two-run lead, which takes us to the top of the fourth, when Estrada got the response he wanted but not the result, and a fly ball by Devers to Pillar in centre, instead of being the third out, drove in the Sox’ second run.

Martinez led off the inning with a single, bringing the left-handed Moreland to the plate. With the infield playing at double-play depth, Moreland hit a hard one-hopper right at Travis, who was positioned perfectly and made a nice snag of the tough ball. But as he turned to second and transferred the ball to his throwing hand he bobbled it just long enough that Gurriel had to eat it at second and settle for the forceout.

So when Nunez hit a golf shot into right centre for a double, Moreland was ahead of him at third instead of on the bench. And there was one out instead of two. Thus, when Devers sent Pillar on a bit of a run to flag down his fly ball, it was a sacrifice fly and not the third out, and the score was now 3-2 for Toronto.

With the score tight Sale settled in and retired nine of ten Toronto hitters in the fourth, fifth, and sixth innings, only walking Teoscar Hernandez on a ten-pitch at-bat in the fifth inning. Hernandez seems to have developed much better discipline at the plate. It’s a rare bird, let alone a rookie, who can work Chris Sale for two walks in the same game.

By the time Sale finished up his sixth and last inning he was in the lead and in line for the win.

This was thanks to Marco Estrada’s failing to finish off the Boston fifth, and giving up the blow that turned out to be fatal for Toronto’s chances for a series win.

Estrada got the first two outs quickly enough. In his first at-bat after replacing Holt, Lin popped up to Justin Smoak at first. Betts hit one hard enough, but to straightaway centre where Pillar hauled it in.

But then, Benintendi, starting to wake up from a long slump at the plate, pulled a crisp liner into right field for a single. Hanley Ramirez followed with a bloop single to right that was as strange as Nunez’ 9-iron double the previous inning. On a 1-2 pitch he reached down and away and just clipped it enough to send it on an arc into no-man’s land in right. Once again Ramirez’ muscle had given him a hit when lesser men would have made a feeble out.

Two bad results stemmed from Ramirez’ blooper. Three, actually. First, it extended the inning. Second, it brought J.D. Martinez to the plate. Third, it gave Boston his run, in effect the winning run of the game, because Martinez stepped in and slapped a high fast ball toward right that carried, and carried, and carried, over the bullpen fence for a three-run dinger and a 5-3 Boston lead.

Estrada finished the inning when Moreland flied out to left, but Martinez’ lazy fly ball home run finished Estrada.

The Blue Jays’ bullpen stepped up big time once again, and Boston never saw another baserunner until Danny Barnes walked but stranded two in the ninth.

One apparent shortcoming in Toronto’s bullpen is that there is no one out there clearly identifiable as a “long man”, a guy who can go two or three effective innings to hold the team close when the starter has gone short.

A surprising candidate emerged last night in Aaron Loup, who breezed through the sixth and seventh innings without allowing a baserunner, striking out two and throwing only 24 pitches.

Seung-Hwan Oh threw an equally effective one-two-three eighth with a strikeout on 14 pitches, and then Barnes survived a somewhat wild and wooly ninth in which he had to face Mookie Betts with two on and two out after two walks. Betts, mercifully, hit a short fly to centre for the third out.

Alec Cora went to right-hander Carson Smith to follow Chris Sale, and he gave up the Jays’ fourth run, forcing Cora to bring in Matt Barnes to put out the fire.

Barnes, who I noticed last night looks an awful lot like Danny Barnes, except his beard isn’t red, had his own rollicky eighth inning as Toronto wasn’t going down without a fight.

Smith had retired Luke Maile on a grounder to short to start off the seventh, but Devon Travis connected for a vicious low liner to the wall in left centre that rattled around enough to allow him to turn it into a triple. Kendrys Morales hit for Steve Pearce and grounded out to second while Travis scored the fourth Toronto run.

With two outs and the bases empty there was no reason to pull Smith. But there was when Hernandez followed by stroking an inside-out double into the open space in right. That’s when Barnes came in to stifle the rally by fanning Justin Smoak with a 2-2 curve ball after pumping two 97-plus fast balls in to him.

Matt Barnes had his own adventure in the Toronto eighth, but Toronto’s last gasp died with the video review umpire’s thumbs down from New York, a hell of a way to get a rally snuffed out.

With one out Barnes had walked Kevin Pillar on a 3-2 pitch, and then Curtis Granderson hitting for Gurriel on a 3-1 that was nowhere close. This brought up Randal Grichuk, inserted in the lineup because he’d gone 3 for 4 against Sale in his only start against him. Not this time, though: he’d fouled out to the catcher twice and grounded out to second in three at-bats against Sale.

This time he hit a chopper to Profar at short, and if Grichuk isn’t hitting, at least he can run. He turned an easy out into a play close enough to review. If there was one last turning point in the game, it was this: if John Gibbons won the appeal, the Jays would have the bases loaded with one out. If he lost the appeal, they’d have runners at second and third, but two outs.

The video review upheld the call on the field: Grichuk was out.

Matt Barnes fanned Luke Maile on a high fast ball on the outside corner, as Maile tried just a little too hard to replicate his earlier season success in similar situations.

You’re not likely to beat Craig Kimbrel twice in one series, and this time he was dominant. He fanned Travis, and then popped up Morales and Hernandez to secure the game and the series for Boston.

You don’t get too many chances to beat Chris Sale straight up. Hope it comes around again some time!