Long Ball Stories

After an off day following Toronto’s rather disappointing four-game split in Minnesota, the Jays came home for a frankly meaningless three-game series with the Kansas City Royals, who are equally on the outside looking in at this point.

From the perspective of yer humble scribe, any series that reaches its high point for the good guys in the middle innings of the first game is not only meaningless but largely devoid of interest.

Marcus Stroman pitched seven solid innings on Tuesday night while his mates finally got to Royals’ starter Ian Kennedy in the sixth inning with a single by Ryan Goins followed by a Darwin Barney home run for a 2-0 lead. After the Royals clawed one back in the top of the seventh on a sacrifice fly, the Jays iced the game with three runs in the bottom of the seventh on an RBI double by Russ Martin and an RBI single by Barney, giving him three for the night. Ryan Tepera gave up a homer to Alex Gordon in the eighth, then retired the side, and Roberto Osuna ran the table in the ninth for his thirty-seventh save.

Of note was the fact that Gordon’s homer in the eighth was later identified as the record-breaking dinger in making 2017 the season with the most home runs hit in major league history—with ten days left in the season.

The next night the Royals picked up a run with a first-out sacrifice fly before Brett Anderson settled down to retire the side. He didn’t remain settled for long, though, because after the Jays went down one, two, three in the bottom of the first, Anderson and Luis Santos gave up nine runs in the top of the second inning.

After the Blue Jays stranded a walk to Kendrys Morales in the bottom of the second, I happily turned the TV over to PBS to watch the third episode of Ken Burns’ monumental documentary on the war in Vietnam. You have to know the baseball’s bad if yer humble scribe would rather watch the scab of Vietnam being pulled off more excruciatingly than ever before. I lived that war, lived it in uniform, but not in country, as they said, and even I never knew how awful it was.

Oh, the final score of Wednesday’s game was 15-5. Teoscar Hernandez doubled home a couple in the bottom of the seventh, Raffie Lopez and Ryan Goins plated two more with sacrifice flies, and Lopez, a muscular little guy, drilled one out to centre with nobody on in the ninth.

On Thursday the Royals scored a run in the third inning on a single by former Blue Jay Melky Cabrera that stood up for a 1-0 Kansas City win in a pitcher’s duel between Jay Happ and Jason Vargas. Toronto only got two hits off Vargas and a selection of Kansas City relievers, and were utterly unable to provide any support behind Happ’s fine six and two thirds.

So the Royals left town with a series win that left them neither here nor there in terms of the wild card “race” that is gradually turning into a walkover for the Minnesota Twins under our old friend Paul Molitor.

Now, the Yankees coming to town: that was a different story, as it always is with the Yankees. But this time was special. It was the Jays’ last home series of the year, and so also, presumably, the last Toronto home series of Level of Excellence candidate Jose Bautista. And the Jays were well positioned to poke a stick in the wheels of the Yankees’ bike as they tried to run down the Red Sox for the American League East championship.

FRIDAY: MARCO AND GO-GO ON SHOW

First up for Toronto on Friday night was Marco Estrada, newly-signed to a healthy one-year contract by . . . you guessed it, the Toronto Blue Jays. And why not? From Estrada’s viewpoint, he’s had two outstanding years here, and a 2017 that ran into a low streak after a good start, before progressing to a great run of starts in the latter half of the year, and most remarkably he’s about to log the most innings he’s pitched as a Blue Jay.

The rotation should return to being a strong point next year; it’s obvious that Toronto’s management has committed to one more year of chasing the magic ring with this particular crowd, and most of all Estrada himself had indicated clearly that he would be very happy to remain in Toronto.

As for the team, all you have to do is look at the string of starts Estrada has put together since July thirty-first, marked by only two substandard outings, to know that from management’s perspective it was a no-brainer. And if they do get close to the crown, who pitched better for them in the post-season in 2015 and 2016 than Marco Estrada?

Estrada’s counterpart on the mound would be the annoying, poky, picky, Masahiro Tanaka, who seems to generate most of his outs by frustrating his opponents to the point where they’ll swing at anything. I’ve spent the last several years dismissing Tanaka’s ability, but most of the time, I’ve noticed, that by the time I’ve finished grousing about what a crappy, over-rated pitcher he is, he’s turned the ball over to the bullpen in the sixth or seventh inning with his team in the lead.

You can’t really talk about Ryan Goins as some kind of hidden treasure any more, now that everyone has noted his amazing penchant for driving in runs, the deeper the hole the better, two outs, two strikes, who cares? His relatively low batting average takes on a whole new light when you realize that his base hits, while few, have been so mighty especially with the sacks loaded.

And of course now that he’s started more games at shortstop this year than any other Blue Jay, it’s no longer possible to forget what a fine defender he is.

Still and all, no one could have predicted what a singular impact Ryan Goins would have on this easy, breezy 8-1 Toronto victory over Masahiro Tanaka and the New York Yankees.

Estrada started the game with one of those innings for which he’s noted: four fly balls, three that went for easy outs, and Aaron Judge’s forty-sixth home run of the year, a ball that he hit awfully hard and that didn’t stop until it hit the facing of the third deck in left field. Since he was only the second batter of the game, you couldn’t help worrying a bit about whether this was going to be one of those nights for Estrada. ‘Course, we didn’t know that the Yanks would never score another run, and they’d only get two more hits.

The Yankees handed Toronto a gift in the bottom of the first, in the form of a botched fielder’s choice that resulted in an error for Starling Castro. Teoscar Hernandez, who’d never faced Tanaka before, lined a 1-2 pitch into left field for a single. Josh Donaldson followed by hitting an easy bouncer to Todd Frazier at third, who went to second for the force on Hernandez. But Castro muffed the catch, the ball bounced away, and Hernandez advanced to third. After Tanaka fanned Justin Smoak, Jose Bautista, receiving the first of an unending string of thunderous ovations that would rain down on him on this special weekend, grounded out to third, scoring Hernandez, and the game was tied on the unearned run.

Both pitchers asserted their mastery in the second inning, Estrada taking eleven pitches to retire the Yankees on three ground balls, strangely enough, and Tanaka back in the dugout before he even got warmed up, needing only eight pitches to set the Jays down.

The Yankees’ third inning deserves a special place in the chronicles of the 2017 Blue Jays. Perhaps never before, and likely never again, had the Toronto fans been treated to the perfect execution of a trick play that should never happen, even to a T-Ball player. The victim was Todd Frazier, the perpetrator Ryan Goins, the benefactor Marco Estrada. The play? The hidden-ball trick.

It started with Frazier, the New York third baseman, rattling Estrada with a leadoff double to right on a 2-2 pitch. The rookie left-fielder Clint Frazier popped up to Goins at short, bringing Jacoby Ellsbury, who came into town on a tear, to the plate. Ellsbury put a jolt in the first pitch he saw from Estrada and hit it deep to right, looking good for a double over Bautista’s head. But Bautista, tracking back and to his right, raced back and reached up while leaping and made a fine running catch. Todd Frazier, who’d correctly played it half-way, waiting to see if the ball would be caught, hustled back into second in time to beat Bautista’s strong throw to Goins.

So there was Frazier, standing on the bag at second, looking off, apparently, toward the left-field corner. He certainly could not have been looking at his third-base coach. Goins, with Frazier’s back to him, made a lame and silly-looking—there’s no other way to describe it—fake throw back to the pitcher, and gloved the ball. Frazier didn’t have a clue that the ball hadn’t gone back to Estrada. Goins stood there, glove at his side, inches from Frazier’s leg, and waited. Then, Frazier decided to change feet on the bag. He lifted a foot off the bag, set it down on the infield dirt, and lifted his other foot to put it on the bag.

Echoing the climactic moment of “Peter and the Wolf”: “Bang! He got him!” Goins slapped the tag on Frazier, looked at the ump, the ump called Frazier out, and Goins scooted exultantly off the field before anyone changed his mind. Frazier stood out there stilled into disbelief, but it was true: he’d been doubled off second by the oldest and lamest trick in the world, the good old hidden ball trick.

In yet another emendation of the “make a great play, lead off the inning” phenomenon, Goins led off against Tanaka in the bottom of the third. Unfortunately, it was not yet time for the fairy tale to come full circle. He hit a come-backer to the mound for the first out.

But following Goins to the plate came Teoscar Hernandez, who is starting to write his very own fairy tale for the Blue Jays. With the two-homer night against Detroit already in the books, he was facing Tanaka for the second time in his life, having singled in the first and come around to score Toronto’s first run.

This time up, on the fifth pitch of the at-bat, a splitter that hung up there like a ripe grapefruit, Hernandez smacked it, and smacked it hard. So hard, in fact, that it was a near carbon-copy of Judge’s first-inning blast, banging off the facade of the third deck right near the name of Tom Cheek on the Level of Excellence—wherever he is now, there’s no doubt that the beloved Cheek was looking down with approval on the exciting rookie. In fact, if Hernandez is the real deal, maybe we can coin a term for when he hits a rocket to the banners: how about “he really Cheeked that one”?

Hernandez’ homer was the go-ahead run, and the Jays were never headed. Estrada wisely walked Judge to open the fourth and then retired the side in order.

In the bottom of the inning, Tanaka likewise walked the leadoff batter, Bautista, but he didn’t get off so easily as Estrada. With one out, Russell Martin lined a rocket into the Jays’ bullpen, putting the lead to 4-1 for Toronto. It was only Martin’s second home run since returning to the lineup at the beginning of August, but it was tattooed, to be sure.

Both pitchers stranded baserunners in the fifth, Estrada giving up two walks after striking out the first two batters before getting Ellsbury to fly out to left. Tanaka gave up a two-out single to Donaldson, but left him there.

In the top of the sixth, Estrada unwisely did not walk Aaron Judge, and the latter smacked one off the left-field wall for a double, the third hit off Estrada, and the third extra-base hit for the Yankees. It just goes that way sometimes.

If the Yankees had any hopes of mounting a charge in this game they peaked with Gary Sanchez following Judge to the plate. He hit an absolute rope over Darwin Barney at second that was destined for the wall in right centre. Except that Barney leapt for it, and came down with a sno-kone in the tip of his glove. Judge retreated safely to second, but Estrada retired Didi Gregorius and Starlin Castro to leave him there.

This brought us to the bottom of the sixth, when Tanaka Ryan Goins re-entered to steal the scene for the second time in the game, and knocked the battered Masahiro Tanaka to the sidelines for good.

It was his own fault, for sure, Tanaka’s demise, but he could have gotten out of with luck. But it ran out when the clutch-hitting, bases-loaded-loving Goins strode to the plate with two outs and the bases crammed.

Tanaka had walked Bautista and given up a single to Kevin Pillar. But then he fanned a brace of catchers, a sight you’d only see with the expanded rosters of September. First Russell Martin went down, and then Miguel Montero, serving as the DH. Manager John Gibbons went to his bench for Kendrys Morales, whose night off was interrupted by having to hit for Barney. Tanaka walked him on four pitches—the semi-intentional walk—to load the bases for Goins.

He then quickly jumped ahead of Goins with a called strike and a foul ball. Poor guy, Tanaka; he must not have read in the Japanese version of Baseball Reference that if anybody is more dangerous in the American League with the bases loaded this year than Ryan Goins, it’s Ryan Goins with the bases loaded, two outs, and two strikes on him.

Tanaka threw Goins a slider on the inner half that diidn’t slide, and there it went: Goins electrified the crowd for the second time that night on a deep drive to right that cleared the Yankee bullpen and disappeared into the first row of ecstatic fans for Goins’ second grand slam of the year, and an 8-1 Toronto lead.

That was all for Tanaka at five and two thirds innings, having given up eight runs and three homers in his most ineffective performance of the season. Tommy Kahnle came in and struck out Hernandez on a foul tip third strike, but it was kind of too late.

So 8-1 it was and 8-1 it stayed. The Jays had one base runner the rest of the way. Jonathan Holder struck out two in the bottom of the seventh while retiring the side in order, and Giovanny Gallegos gave up a two-out single to Montero in the bottom of the eighth before retiring Richard Ureňa on a foul popup to first for the third out.

Like the steady veteran he is, Estrada came back with the big lead and shut the Yankees down on eleven pitches in the top of the seventh to finish off a fine start.

Matt Dermody started the eighth to face the two left-handers, Clint Frazier and Ellsbury, and retired them both. Bautista once again electrified the crowd with a fine sliding catch in the heel of his glove of a ball by Frazier that was slicing away from him. Tom Koehler, who is certainly inserting himself into the equation for next year, came in and induced Sanchez to ground out to third for the third out.

Carlos Ramirez, also auditioning well for a 2018 role, retired the side in order in the ninth, to finish an eight and two-thirds innings total shutdown of the frightening Yankee bats, a result that kept the New Yorkers from gaining any ground on the Red Sox.

A GRAY SATURDAY IN THE SUN FOR THE JAYS

I can only offer a few comments on the Saturday game in the series, thanks to MLB’s annoying propensity for changing game times late in the season to accomodate the U.S. television networks. Originally the game was scheduled for the usual Toronto 1:08 p.m. Saturday start, but it was precipitously changed to 4:00, presumably because Fox or TBS or whoever wanted to broadcast the Yankees’ playoff-spot-clinching celebration.

Saturday is my grand-daughter’s day for her dance class and weekly visit to her grand-parents, and on this particular Saturday we were asked to do double driving, both picking her up and taking her home, a two-hour round-trip in the morning and the afternoon. We were to deliver her around 5:00, thus had to leave at game-time, and didn’t get back until after six.

So I followed as best I could on the radio, though it being the last homestand of the season Jerry and Joe were waxing a bit nostalgiac, and the thread of the play-by-play kind of got lost in the process.

What were the takeaways from the game? (Please pretend I didn’t write that last sentence. I hate asking what were the takeaways, almost as much as I hate asking what was the ask. Despite my best efforts to the contrary, the language is going to hell in a handbasket.)

The astonishingly mediocre and totally unimpressive Sonny Gray kept Toronto off the board for six innings, save for a third-inning dinger by exciting rookie Teoscar Hernandez, the fourth round-tripper of his September audition for Jose Bautista’s job. No doubt by now he’s earned at least a call-back from casting director Ross Atkins.

Joe Biagini turned in another in and out performance, going five innings, giving up only three hits but walking four and seeing the last hit he gave up, by Greg Bird, sail out of the park to right centre after issuing the second and third of his four walks, turning a 1-0 Toronto lead into a 3-1 Yankee lead which stood up for the win. So, a little more support would have been nice, and he could have gone farther, at only 74 pitches, but obviously Manager John Gibbons thought there would be diminishing returns by leaving him in.

Embarrassingly for him, Todd Frazier, the last batter Biagini walked, and the victim of Ryan Goins’ hidden-ball trick Friday night, got himself doubled off first when Brett Gardner lined out to Goins at short and he wandered too far off the bag. TOOBLANed twice in two days!

Chad Green, David Robertson, and Aroldis Chapman didn’t yield a hit to the Jays over the last three, Frazier got a measure of revenge with a home run in the eighth, and the Yanks added another insurance run in the ninth when Gary Sanchez’ leadoff double off Luis Santos came around to score on a Starlin Castro infield hit, making the final tally 5-1 for New York. And, yes, the 46,000-plus Toronto fans who had sold this game out months ago when Toronto was actually a possible contender, got to watch the Yankees celebrate their wild-card berth-clinching.

ROCKIN’ AND ROMPIN’ ON SUNDAY AT THE DOME

With New York still holding a slim but real hope of catching the Red Sox for the division title, the throngs who turned out on another gorgeous late-September Toronto day for the last home game of Jose Bautista and his mates were treated to a matchup of A-list lineups, the Jays being obligated to play their regulars out of respect for the race between New York and Boston that still existed.

For the Yankees, the only regular missing from the lineup was Gary Sanchez behind the plate, and of course he’s only a regular when the Yankees don’t care how many extra bases they give up as balls bounce off, and away from, the hapless rookie, who clearly has a good long career ahead of him, but as a designated hitter, not a catcher. As for Toronto, it was business as usual, with the strongest lineup they could field in the long-term absence of their injured keystone combo of Tulowitzki and Travis.

(And of course I continue to contend that, all things being taken into account, Goins and Barney concede nothing to the injured duo in their value to the team, Goins being arguably a significant upgrade on Tulo’s defence and obviously a more effective run-producer compared to Tulo at this stage of his career, and Barney providing lineup stability that Travis has never been able to muster, not to mention being a more reliable fielder.)

The game, of course, was focussed in every way on the presumed last appearance of Bautista, and every move he made on the field, regardless of its import to the game, was greeted with rapturous applause. Oh, look, Jose’s doing his wierd neck stretch! Yay!

His team-mates devised their own unique way of ceding the stage to him at the very start of the game. At the moment when the players normally emerge from the dugout all together to run and take their places in the field, Bautista, as the right fielder and farthest from the dugout, naturally appeared first and headed out to his position. But the rest of the starters held back and allowed him to trot all the way out to right, the sole focus of all eyes in the stadium, the recipient of a tremendous roar of recognition and tribute. It was clear from Bautista’s reaction that he had no idea this had been planned, and it took him a while to realize that he was not being followed by the rest of the team. It was a lovely, fitting tribute.

Appropriately, the pitching matchup favoured the Jays in Bautista’s last start, the reliable Marcus Stroman going up against lefty Jaime Garcia, yet another of New York’s quixotic acquisitions in the seemingly futile quest to strengthen their rotation for the post-season.

It was all Stroman in the early going, while the Jays chased Garcia in the third, notching five runs on four hits before Joe Girardi pulled the plug; this one was over by the middle innings, especially after Toronto piled on reliever Bryan Mitchell for an additional four runs in the fourth (three in the third and four in the fourth; there’s a nice symmetry for you) to push the lead to 9-1 for Stroman as he returned to the mound for a shutdown fifth inning.

Despite two runs in the sixth and two in the seventh, New York’s hopes for cutting the gap on Boston pretty well ran out of gas; their rally fell far short and the Bosox won to push their lead to five with seven games left on the Yanks’ schedule.

Offfensively, this was the kind of game that Toronto fans had been waiting for all year; pity that it was game 156 of the season, and game 82 of the home schedule. To the delight of the crowd, after Stroman had started smartly with three ground-ball outs on ten pitches in the top of the first, Teoscar Hernandez led off the game for the home team with another booming home run to the 200 level in left centre on a 1-0 pitch from Garcia. Even more delightful to the crowd was Bautista’s two-out line single to right on the first pitch he saw. It mattered little that, though he advanced to second on a wild pitch, he died there when Kendrys Morales, who also hit the ball sharply, lined out to right. Still, three hard-hit balls off Garcia augured well for the Jays.

Bautista brought the crowd to its feet again in the top of the second. With two outs and Jacoby Ellsbury on first after he had forced Starlin Castro who’d notched the Yankees’ first hit, Todd Frazier looped one into short right that bid fare to fall in cleanly, were it not for Bautista racing in like a colt to pick it off after a long run.

In the bottom of the second came that rarest of feats in this year of disappointing moments: the Jays cashed a leadoff double. Kevin Pillar hit one down the line and off the wall in left, and then stole third base, just like he was on some other team, like one that creates chances. After Russell Martin fanned, probably in shock at seeing a runner on third with nobody out, Darwin Barney came through with a solid poke to centre-fielder Ellsbury that was sufficient to bring Pillar home after the catch.

An extra frisson of excitement ran through the crowd when Ryan Goins worked Garcia for a walk, bringing young Hernandez back to the plate, but this time the throngs were disappointed as he tipped a third strike into the big mitt of Austin Romine.

Stroman issued his first walk to Greg Bird in the top of the third, but then threw some more ground-ball magic, getting Romine to ground into a Darwin-Barney-initiated double play, and retiring Brett Gardner on a grounder to Justin Smoak unassisted.

In the bottom of the third, the Jays once again pulled off a rara avis of their 2017 season, the big swing with two outs, to boost the lead to 5-zip for Stroman, which allowed the crowd to sit back and relax for the rest of the way.

With one out Justin Smoak doubled to left-centre, and Garcia completely lost it, issuing walks to Morales and Bautista to load the bases, without ever throwing another strike. That was enough for Joe Girardi, who came out with the big hook and yanked Garcia for Jonathan Holder to pitch to Kevin Pillar, who predictably, if you’ve been watching closely this year, popped out to Frazier in foul ground off third for the second out. But then, unpredictably, Russell Martin hammered one to the gap in right centre that cleared the bases, with Bautista scampering in to score close on the heels of the labouring Morales. Holder fanned Barney to strand Martin, but hardly anyone cared.

Stroman got himself into some trouble in the top of the fourth and gave up a run on a single by Didi Gregorius, after he had walked Chase Headley and Aaron Judge to lead off the inning. However, Starlin Castro forced Gregorius at second for the first out, with a video review overturning the initial call of a double-play out at first, and then the diminutive but combative right-hander settled things himself by freezing Ellsbury on a 3-2 pitch and then fanning Frazier to strand Castro at first.

In the bottom of the fourth another outburst by Toronto yielded four more runs, which made the issue academic, and gave signal to the gathered multitude that the good-bye party, for Bautista, for his team-mates, and for the failed hopes and bitter frustrations of an utterly unsatisfying season, might begin.

If you check back over the record, you might find, I suspect, that the next best thing Ryan Goins does at the plate after shining with the bases loaded is starting rallies when leading off. First-pitch hitting, he stroked a ground ball single to left. Hernandez walked on a 3-2 pitch. Josh Donaldson knocked in Goins with a line single to centre, with Hernandez moving up to second.

Bryan Mitchell, in for Holder who had failed to clean up for Garcia in the third, wild-pitched the runners to second and third. He wisely chose not to give Smoaky anything to hammer on 3-2 to load the bases for the man of the day, Bautista. Once again the crowd was sent into ecstasy as its hero slashed another one to right to score Hernandez and move the others up, the sacks still full for Morales.

Taking his cue from Bautista, Morales hit a drive the other way to left that scored Donaldson and Smoak. Bautista, perhaps overplaying his hand on a ball that ended up being just a single for Morales, tried to score from first on the play. He was called out by plate umpire Mark Carlson, no fan he of sentimental farewells. The Jays challenged the play but the call was upheld, and Bautista, called out, remained out.

Not done messing up yet, Mitchell hit Kevin Pillar with a pitch before taking his leave; Ben Helder came in and threw one pitch to get Russ Martin to ground into a double play.

Back in our salad days, when my wife was regularly protesting my interest in baseball, she used to say, “Balls and strikes and ins and outs and who cares?” I thought this charming enough, but completely disregarded, of course, its characterization of my obsession. Nevertheless (another word she was fond of; she always used it to preface telling me that I was full of . . . stuff), it’s an apt characterization of the rest of this game.

Notable among the various events that took place were the removal of Stroman after five and two-thirds, having given up the early run and two more in the sixth, the first on an Aaron Judge home run, the second when reliever Matt Dermody gave up a two-out double to Greg Bird that scored Ellsbury, a runner Dermody had inherited from Stroman.

Then the Yankees ended the scoring when Ryan Tepera gave up a one-out base hit to Chase Headley, and then Judge’s second homer of the game, his forty-eighth of the season to set some record or other, blah blah and all that. Actually, it brought him within one of Mark McGwire’s 1987 American League rookie home run record, which actually gave Judge the American League rookie home run record for players who did not imbibe PEDs with their baby formula.

Though Toronto threatened from time to time, they never scored again, and after Judge touched up Tepera, Aaron Loup, Tom Koehler, and Roberto Osuna ensured that the Jays’ lead, reduced to four, never got any slimmer.

Which brought us to the top of the ninth, when the Toronto crowd got to cut loose one last time for the much-beloved, often-misunderstood, flawed hero that is Jose Bautista. After Osuna fanned Chase Headley leading off, Zeke Carrera popped out of the dugout and jogged out toward right, manager John Gibbons classily bringing Bautista off in the middle of the inning so that he could leave to the cheers of those who would miss him, for good or for ill, for all the drama that he had brought to the franchise in his ten years of service.

Jose Bautista’s exit was a triumphal show of fraternity among the ball-playing set. First Carrera enveloped him in a hug. Then Pillar, and Hernandez after him, as they converged in short centre field. Then near second it was first Goins, then Barney, folllowed by a brief, manly mutual back-thump with Smoak, the country boy. Finally, a hug from Donaldson, and a wave to Osuna and Martin at the mound, and he was down into the dugout, and a gauntlet of hugs from the rest of the team.

Finishing the game was an after-thought for both sides, as both Headley and Judge looked at called third strikes from Osuna, who thus struck out the side.

So the Yankees left town no closer to, in fact farther behind, the Red Sox, their fate to be determined by hosting a single wild-card game, evidently with the Twins, though nothing as yet was carved in stone.

As for the Toronto Blue Jays, having completed their home schedule, reconciled to their fate, they had to pack up for three in Boston, three in New York, and a long winter of discontent.

Meanwhile, on the fake green grass of the TV Dome, players gone, grounds crew buzzing around, impersonally carrying out their duties, there was no palpable hint left of the immense presence of Jose Bautista, though the memories of his exploits will echo whenever the roar of the crowd again fills the building that he ruled. Just as Tom Cheek’s “touch ’em all, Joe!” will forever warm our hearts, that bat will ever remain suspended in the air for all to see and savour.

Exit rex.

Exeunt omnes.

After dashing the playoff hopes of the Baltimore Orioles, what could be more exciting than for the Toronto Blue Jays to fly into the Twin Cities for a four-game set with the Minnesota Twins, currently sitting in the second wild card slot in the American League?

The Twins, henceforth never again to be derided as the “Twinkies”, are a young, exciting, and hungry team, a team that gave Toronto all kinds of fits in their late August series in Toronto, when they took two of three from a Blue Jays’ team that still fancied itself in the race for that same wild card slot.

The Wild Card setup is a tawdry gimmick, designed only to boost year-end attendance in cities that would otherwise be moving on to hockey and basketball thoughts by now. Sure, we were thrilled to make it last year, and even more thrilled to take that incredible heart-stopper from the Orioles.

But for players and fans alike to be pining desperately for a chance to be assured of only one more game in their season, the wild card setup is little more than a cynical ploy.

Yet, with the Jays out of it now it’s surprising to see how the games left to play with contenders and pretenders add more than a little frisson of excitement to the experience.

I only have to mention for example the fact that the two one-run games that opened this series with the Twins were not only the fourth and fifth straight one-run games the Jays have played, but also the sixth and seventh such out of eight, going back to the Detroit series.

The outside observer might have thought that the pitching matchup for game one of the series rather strongly favoured the Twins, with rotational regular Jose Berrios, carrying a fine season reacord of 12-7 and a 3.94 ERA, facing off against the newly-arrived fill-in Brett Anderson, who’s essentially auditioning for a spot on next year’s Toronto team.

But Anderson has had some good outings so far for the Jays, showing off his impressive mix of breaking balls, his brisk demeanour on the mound, and some veteran savvy.

So it was that both starters put up zeroes for the first four innings. Both flirted with trouble, in particular Berrios in the second, when he gave up base hits to Kevin Pillar and Zeke Carrera, and then walked Raffie Lopez with two outs before he struck out Richard Ureňa with a wicked curve ball to end the inning.

Anderson gave up a leadoff single to Byron Buxton in the bottom of the second, and a double to the wall in right centre by Kennys Vargas, but fortunately in between the two Eddie Rosario hit into a double play.

Both pitchers threw a clean third. Amazingly, by the end of the third inning Anderson had only thrown 28 pitches. But after Berrios stranded a two-out walk in the fourth, Anderson ran into a spot of trouble in the Twins’ half of the fourth. With one out he walked Eduardo Escobar. But after fanning the dangerous Buxton, he gave up the world’s shortest infield single fielded by Raffie Lopez (yes, that’s right, an infield single to the catcher) to Rosario. Then Anderson wild-pitched the runners up to second and third before fanning Vargas on another great curve ball.

It was the Jays who broke through first, in the top of the fifth, with a solid double by leadoff batter Raffie Lopez, a successful sacrifice bunt (yay!) by Richard Ureňa that moved him to third, and a bit of luck, as Josh Donaldson lifted a short fly into left centre that fell into no man’s land between three fielders while Lopez scored from third. The Jays’ rally ended there as Justin Smoak was caught looking and Jose Bautista grounded out to short to strand Donaldson at first.

Anderson got one out in the bottom of the fifth, Jason Castro on a grounder to Smoak at first, and then the wheels fell off for him. All of a sudden he totally lost his command and walked the bases loaded. Number nine hitter Ehire Adrianza, playing left field, walked on four pitches. Brian Dozier walked on a 3-1 count. Anderson fought back to 3 and 2 on Joe Mauer before losing him. And Anderson is a guy who tends to keep the ball in play. Something was obviously wrong with him.

He only faced one more batter, Jorge Polanco, who rifled a 1-1 pitch into left to score Adrianza and Dozier, giving Minnesota the lead and suddenly putting Anderson on the hook for the loss, apparently, as we learned later, another victim of the altered game balls/blister problem, despite never having had a problem with blisters in his career.

Danny Barnes came in and threw one pitch. Eduardo Escobar lined it at Ryan Goins at second, who doubled Mauer off first, but it was now 2-1 Twins.

Berrios lasted two outs into the Toronto sixth. He was chased by a line single to right by Goins that was hit too hard to score Kendrys Morales from second. With Lopez due up, first and third and two outs, Twins’ manager Paul Molitor (may his tribe increase!) opted for left-handed Buddy Boshers. John Gibbons countered with Teoscar Hernandez hitting for Lopez, but Boshers was up to the challenge and struck out Hernandez with a curve ball.

From this point we saw a parade of relievers on both sides, all of whom contrived to keep the score tight at 2-1, right up until there were two outs in the Toronto ninth. For the Twins, Boshers was followed by Alan Busenitz, Trevor Hildenberger, Taylor Rogers, and their closer, Matt Belisle. For the Jays after Barnes went another full inning it was Tom Koehler for an inning, Leonel Campos for one batter, Aaron Loup for an inning, and Carlos Ramirez for another scoreless inning to continue his amazing oh-for-2017 ERA streak.

One of the odder things that any team did at the trade deadline was that the Twins divested themselves of their closer, Brandon Kintzler, trading him to the Washington Nationals, who had been desperate to acquire a funcional closer all year. Once the trade was finalized and July rolled into August, the Twins started to work their way back into playoff contention, so they needed to find a new closer, ASAP. They settled on the veteran Matt Belisle, a 37-year-old right-hander who had a grand total of five saves, three in 2012 with Colorado, in a career stretching back to his MLB debut with Cincinnati in 2003. Belisle, incidentally, had come the other way as part of the Nats’ package for Kintzler.

Belisle picked up his first save for the Twins on August sixth, and by the time he came into this one he had seven in the books. After two Toronto batters in the top of the ninth, he was only one out away from number eight. But that proposed out was none other than Justin Smoak. Belisle came away from this encounter with a little note in his pitchers’ log: if you’re going to throw an 0-1 slider inside to Justin Smoak, make sure it’s down, not hanging. Smoak hammered the hanger all to hell and back, and the game was tied, just like that, just like Smoak!

Belisle stayed in to get Bautista to sky out to Buxton in centre but, as they say, the damage was done.

Aaron Loup, who’d bailed out Campos in the eighth after Campos had walked Buxton leading off, started the ninth with his own mistake, hitting the first batter, Max Kepler, before making his exit. It only took Carlos Ramirez 5 pitches to record his tenth straight scoreless inning for Toronto, by popping up Brian Dozier and then getting Joe Mauer to ground into a double play.

Dillon Gee pitched the tenth for the Twins, and though he gave up a hustle double to Kevin Pillar with one out, he kept the Jays off the board, getting ground ball outs from Michael Saunders who hit for Rob Refsnyder, and Darwin Barney.

Luis Santos, who’d been nearly as effective as Ramirez since coming up in September, took over on the mound for Toronto in the bottom of the tenth. But anyone who watched any of the Toronto-Minnesota series in August knew that the Jays’ status in this game rested on very shaky ground as long as the brilliant, Toronto-tormenting, Byron Buxton was lurking in the shallows.

Santos quickly dispatched the first two Twins, taking nine pitches to pop up Jorge Polanco to short, and strike out Eduardo Escobar. Then the lanky and intense Buxton strode to the plate and settled in, all coiled energy, dangerous as a cobra ready to strike. He managed to lay off—sometimes he doesn’t—a low, outside fast ball. Then Santos threw him a curve ball that got down, but stayed in the middle of the plate. Buxton exploded, and you knew it was over as the ball leapt from his bat. So did he, as he watched it jump out of the park on a line, and so did the slump-shouldered Santos, who could console himself with the fact that he wasn’t the first Jays’ pitcher to be victimized by Buxton.

In dramatic but almost inevitable fashion, round one in Minneapolis went to the Twins. Did the Jays have anything left in the tank to try to derail the Minnesota playoff drive?

And after senior citizen and all-around jokester Bartolo Colon befuddled the Blue Jays’ batters in Toronto last month, what do you think their chances were against him on “Big Sexy Night” in Minneapolis?

Turns out, pretty good.

A word of explanation here.

At the end of August, when MLB had its “Players’ Weekend”, all the players put their nicknames on their jerseys instead of their last names. But there was a problem with Colon; it may be hard to imagine, but he wanted to put “Big Sexy” on his shirt as his nickname, and the league, not surprisingly, vetoed it.

But the Twins decided to thumb their noses at MLB and sponsor a “Big Sexy” t-shirt giveaway. The stands were full of people wearing bright red shirts with Colon’s favoured nom de geurre.

Perhaps it was all a bit distracting for Colon. He didn’t really mesmerize Toronto like he had in his last start. It took the Jays a few innings to see some results from their efforts against the wily old Colon, but they clearly had him timed up from the beginning.

There was a deep fly from Ureňa leading off the game, followed by a line shot to centre by Donaldson, a deep fly by Bautista in the second, a sharp line single to centre by Hernandez in the third, followed by a hard grounder to first by Ureňa that was picked by Mauer for the third out.

In the fourth, Donaldson led off with a vicious grounder right back at Colon, who stuck his glove down between his legs and played “Look what I got!” Even Donaldson had to laugh ruefully at Colon’s mixture of skill and luck as he trotted down toward first. Colon walked Smoak, Bautista flied out to centre again, and then Morales spiked one to left that died on the track for Rosario.

So far the Jays had nothing to show but the one single for some good swings they put on Colon. You had to hope their luck would turn.

Meanwhile, after two quick innings by Jay Happ, giving up only a single to, guess who, Buxton , the Twins had chipped away at the Toronto leftie for a run in the third and a run in the fourth.

In the third, Happ walked the Minnesota catcher, Chris Gimenez leading off the inning, and of course he eventually came around to score. Max Kepler singled Gimenez to second, Brian Dozier loaded the bases with an infield hit behind second, a tough chance for shortsop Ureňa, and Joe Mauer brought Giminez home with a sacrifice fly. Happ controlled the damage with a foul popup and a strikeout, but the Twins had the lead.

Byron Buxton created a second run in the fourth with his legs, laying down a bunt single, stealing second, and eventually scoring on Gimenez’ hard single off the wall in right.

Kevin Pillar cut the Minnesota lead in half in the top of the fifth with a leadoff home run to left. Russ Martin followed with a double to right centre, but Colon managed to put out the fire, though Ureňa made the final out with a scorcher to right, but right at Kepler.

Dozier restored the two-run cushion in the bottom of the fifth with his leadoff home run to left, but the Jays continued to rock Colon, though he managed to hold on into the seventh. Donaldson led off the sixth with a smash to the second deck in left to make it 3-2, but rockets by Smoak and Bautista were turned into outs.

Toronto finally finished off Colon and took the lead from the Twins the next inning, turning Happ from a potential bad-luck losing pitcher into a winner. As so often, it started with a leadoff walk, to Kevin Pillar. Martin followed with his second double of the game, a shot that rattled around in left long enough to allow Pillar to score from first to tie the game.

Ironically, the double by Martin, which finished off Colon for the night at six and a third rather lucky innings, was the only hard hit ball in the inning. Paul Molitor brought Ryan Pressly, a rightie, in to face Goins, who bunted Martin to third, but ended up with a base hit too when Pressly couldn’t make the play on him. After Hernandez flew out, and Pressly caught Ureňa looking, Donaldson hit one that deflected off Pressly for an infield hit that scored Martin with the lead run.

John Gibbons pulled Happ after he retired the left-handed-hitting Kepler on a short fly to left to open the bottom of the seventh, and Dominic Leone retired Dozier and Mauer to preserve the lead. Ryan Tepera pitched a clean eighth, and Roberto Osuna a clean ninth for the save. Pillar helped Osuna out by sliding on his butt to snag Robbie Grossman’s sharp liner for the second out.

Tyler Duffey kept Toronto off the boards in the eighth and ninth innings, despite walking two, one intentional, and giving up a two-out double to Donaldson in the ninth, but as it turned out this was one of those relatively rare occasions when the Toronto bullpen needed no insurance to close out the game, a close and satisfying 4-3 Toronto win that evened the series at one game apiece, temporarily stalled Minnesota’s drive for a playoff spot, and extended Toronto’s streak of one-run ball games to five in a row, three of which they had turned into victories.

Game three of the series, played on a still warm early Saturday evening in Minneapolis, marked the tenth start of Marco Estrada since the end of August, and his thirty-first start of the year. Starting on July thirty-first, in seven of his last nine starts he has looked like the Marco Estrada of 2015 and 2016, and not the Marco Estrada of the first half of 2017.

His return to effectiveness had been one of the main factors in Toronto’s grasp on the possibility of making the playoffs. Since that hope has been effectively squelched, his solid appearances have at least given Blue Jays’ fans something to look forward to as the season winds down.

And, on a practical note, his recent work has bolstered his chances of finding a good fit for himself for next year, when he will face the free-agent market. He has certainly been making a case for himself lately that he has much to contribute as a number two or three starter in any rotation in baseball.

Over his years with the Blue Jays, Estrada has suffered from a chronic lack of run support, and has seen many of his best efforts result in no decisions or low-scoring losses. After this string of five one-run decisions for Toronto, all the prospects were for another tight, low-scoring affair.

But it was the hard luck of the playoff-contending Twins to run into Marco Estrada at his best on a night when the Toronto offence, led by Josh Donaldson, gave him a lead to protect that ended up being more than enough for him to nail down the win, leaving Minnesota in desperate need of a Sunday win to gain a draw in the series.

Estrada would be faced by young Adelberto Mejia, a lefty with lots of promise who’d had eighteen starts for Minnesota, with a middling record of 4-5, and an ERA of 4.47. He also had a record of relatively short outings for the Twins, suggesting that Paul Molitor hadn’t been too willing to let Mejia try to go very deep once he got into some trouble.

Donaldson gave Estrada a run to work with in his first at bat, on the first pitch he saw from Mejia, a fast ball high out of the zone that the Toronto slugger reached up and crushed into the left-centre field stands.

Mejia quickly fanned Justin Smoak and retired Jose Bautista on a short fly to right before turning things over to Estrada for the bottom of the first.

Estrada took the ball and ran with it, if I can mix my sports. He retired the first twelve batters he faced, popping up six of them, and adding a fly ball and a line-out to left to his list of dismissals, making for a quintessential Estrada streak. By the end of four innings he had thrown only forty pitches.

He also had a 3-0 lead by the end of four. After the Donaldson homer in the first, Mejia had matched Estrada pitch for pitch through the end of three. The Toronto third sacker was the only Jay to reach base, as Mejia faced only one over the minimum.

But Mejia didn’t get an out in the fourth, and was out of the game after four batters and two runs scored. Donaldson led off with his second hit of the game, a line shot through the left side. Smoak hit a towering drive to left centre that thudded off the screen protecting the bullpen. By the time Buxton had played the carom, Smoak was on second and Donaldson had scored from first. Bautista hit a hard shot through the left side, but Smoak had to stop at third because the ball was hit in front of him and because, well, Smoak. But he scored on an a generously-awarded infield hit by Kendrys Morales, and the Jays were up 3-0.

The Morales hit should have been an error on shortstop Jorge Polanco, who backhanded Morales’ bouncer up the middle, and then tried a blind flip to Brian Dozier, covering second for the force, that pulled him off the bag. All hands were safe, and Smoak was across. Polanco should have gone to first for the more sure out.

Molitor had seen enough of Mejia, and yanked on his short leash. Dillon Gee came in, retired Kevin Pillar on a liner to left, and then ended the inning on his seventh pitch, which Russell Martin hit into a double play.

Gee pitched a second effective inning in the Toronto fifth, allowing only Richard Ureňa to reach on a walk.

Estrada induced four more balls in the air in the Minnesota fifth. Unfortunately, mixed in with the two popups—that made eight out of fifteen outs—and one fly ball was Eddie Rosario’s solo blast to centre, the first hit and first run for the Twins, and the only batter to reach base on the Toronto starter in the first five innings.

Gee and his replacement, Alan Busenitz, struck out the side in the Toronto sixth, Bautista hitting a hustle double to left centre off Gee after Smoak had been called out on strikes, but then staying there while Busenitz came in and fanned Morales and Pillar.

Estrada, eschewing the aerial route, fanned Jason Castro and Robbie Grossman to start the Twins’ sixth, gave up a base hit, the second of the game, to Dozier, but then went back to his trusty fly-ball routine to retire Joe Mauer for the third out, on an easy fly to centre.

The Jays looked like they were in business against Busenitz in the top of the seventh when Russell Martin led off with a blast to dead centre, but Byron Buxton (remember him?) ran it down with a nice over-the-head snag. Busenitz then took care of matters himself, making a nice recovery on a tough comebacker by Barney, and then freezing Ureňa for the third out.

Estrada walked Rosario, his first walk and third baserunner of the game, in the bottom of the seventh, but left him there by popping up the ever-dangerous Buxton and then fanning Max Kepler for the third out. At 90 pitches, Estrada was looking pretty good to try for eight complete, which would be the first time for him this year.

But first Toronto made their starter’s job a lot easier by adding on three runs, and they did it against Trevor Hildenberger, a reliever they hadn’t touched in four previous encounters this year.

Zeke Carrera hit for Hernandez and led off by beating out an infield hit to second. Donaldson then sent his third hit of the day through the left side, with Carrera reaching third on the hit. After Donaldson stole second on the 1-1 pitch to Smoak, they decided to put him on and load the bases for Bautista. A questionable call, here, taking the bat out of Smoak’s hands.

Bautista, with the Twins pulled around to the left in the shift, hit a pitcher’s nightmare, a popup that would’ve been a can of corn for a second baseman in normal position, but Dozier was pulled way around past the bag. It was too far in even for the speedy Buxton, and neither Dozier nor Polanco, the shortstop, had a chance on it. It dropped in, Carrera scored, and when Dozier kicked the ball away from the infield for an error trying to run it down, Donaldson scored, with Smoak stopping at second, keeping Bautista at first.

This brought up Kendrys Morales, still hitting left against the right-handed Hildenberger. As usual, the Twins cleared out the whole left side of the infield for Morales, giving him lots of room to shoot a no-brainer single to centre through the unoccupied territory around the bag, allowing Smoak to trundle around to score the third run of the inning, while Bautista stopped at second.

Molitor pulled Hildenberger for the right-handed Michael Tonkin, who survived a scare getting the first out when Kevin Pillar lined one hard to the track in left. Then he lost Martin to load the bases, which set him up to fan Ryan Goins and Richard Ureňa to get out of the jam.

The Twins had one last gasp against Estrada in the bottom of the eighth when Eduardo Escobar took him out to right field leading off. One thing about Estrada is that he’ll give up his dingers, but if he’s fortunate enough to do it with nobody on, it’s no big deal especially when your team’s given you six runs to work with. After Escobar’s homer, Estrada pitched a clean final inning to finish his eight with two runs, three hits, one walk, four strikeouts, and only 101 pitches.

Anyone who thinks Marco Estrada won’t pick up a decent contract somewhere next year is not paying attention.

All that was left for this game was for Josh Donaldson to have one more at bat, which came in the top of the ninth against left-hander Gabriel Moya. Already three for four with one homer, he came up with one out and nobody on. He took a called strike and then golfed a high drive to straightaway centre. Buxton might have had a chance to leap for it at the wall, but he was a little slow getting back, and could only watch helplessly as it bounced off the top of the wall and over.

Donaldson was four for five with two homers, the Jays led 7-2, and there was nothing left but for Matt Dermody to mop up, which he did effectively after giving up a leadoff double to Joe Mauer.

Dermody, just learning the style of the game, had never before finished off a victory for the Jays. After Byron Buxton flew out to Bautista to end the game, he turned and headed for the dugout, leaving Russell Martin like an abandoned groom standing at the altar with a sheepish grin on his face. Dermody was almost to the dugout when his mates pointed out to him that he needed to go back out there and shake Martin’s hand.

But the Twins weren’t laughing so much, considering that they were staring at losing three out of four to Toronto, exactly what they did not need when they were trying to secure their playoff spot.

On Sunday they would be playing for a much-needed split to maintain their spot in the standings.

As for Toronto, go figure, eh?

Joe Biagini was coming off his best outing of the year: eight brisk, dominating innings against Baltimore, in which he gave up two runs on six hits, and only threw 88 pitches.

A four-run Toronto first, started off by Josh Donaldson’s second first-inning solo blast in a row, followed by Twins’ starter Kyle Gibson walking four in a row for a second run, and a two-run, two-out single by Raffie Lopez, was followed in the second by another solo shot by Donaldson, a puny one that went only two rows into the stands, lol. Biagini, who had breezed the first inning on eight pitches, started the bottom of the second with a five-run lead.

By the end of the inning, the Twins had a 7-5 lead and Biagini was gone, departed after getting only one out, responsible for six of the seven runs, enough to saddle him with the loss.

It started out innocently enough when Eddie Rosario homered to left. More ominously, Rosario was followed by Byron Buxton, who took Biagini out the opposite way to right. Still, it was only 5-2, and there was nobody on base after Max Kepler grounded out to first.

But not for long.

Biagini never got another out. Escobar singled through the right side. In what may have been the pivotal at-bat of his short outing, Jason Castro fell into an 0-2 hole, took a ball, fouled one off, took another ball for 2-2, and then fouled off four in a row. Finally, on the tenth pitch, a waist-high inside fast ball, Castro singled to right. I would contend that if Biagini had retired Castro, he may have gotten out of the inning.

But, he didn’t. Robbie Grossman walked on a 3-2 pitch. Brian Dozier singled to left to score Escobar and keep the bases loaded. John Gibbons was not prepared to go any farther with Biagini, and brought in Tim Mayza for the lefty-lefty matchup against the veteran Joe Mauer.

If the base hit by Castro was the pivotal at bat for Biagini, the play not made on Mauer was the pivoital play of the inning. Mauer hit a hard one-hopper to the left of Goins at second, and the ball took a vicious second hop under Goins’ snatching glove. The ball was either a double play or an error and Goins missed it for the error. Two runs came in to tie the game, with Dozier stopping at third. Polanco grounded into a fielder’s choice at second scoring Dozier for the lead. Rosario singled Polanco to second. John Gibbons pulled Mayza for the hitherto effective Luis Santos, who gave up a double to the always-redoubtable Byron Buxton, scoring Polanco with the Twins’ final run of the inning. Max Kepler lined out to Smoak at first to end the carnage.

The inning was a disaster. The brilliant five-run lead was gone. The Jays were two pitchers into their bullpen. But it was still only a two-run deficit.

Of course the Minnesota starter Gibson settled down and started throwing strikes for outs. Santos matched him pretty well through the third and into the fourth, when Gibbie pulled him with two on and two out to bring in Aaron Loup to face and retire the left-handed Kepler, who grounded out to second.

Gibson retired the side in the top of the fifth, bringing us to the bottom of the fifth, when the roof really fell in on Toronto.

Or, rather, good ol’ Gibbie pulled it all down on his head with a completely inexplicable, and ultimately stubborn, decision to remove Loup and insert right-hander Chris Rowley to start the fifth, after Loup had faced one batter and thrown five pitches.

Before I proceed to dessicate John Gibbons here, for all the Aaron Loup nay-sayers out there, I just want to point out that if you check his game-by-game record he has made a lot more appearances, most of them effective, as a full-inning relief pitcher, rather than just as a lefty matchup specialist.

So here’s what Chris Rowley was facing as a right-hander with limited major league experience: switch-hitter Escobar, lefty Castro, and switch-hitter Grossman; both Escobar and Grossman having way better power numbers from the left side; the right-handed Dozier; the lefty Mauer; the switch-hitter Polanco, who also has better power numbers against righties; and the lefty Rosario. If you go far enough, after navigating the rightie Buxton, god forbid, you’re back around to port-sider Kepler.

So why Rowley instead of leaving Loup in, and taking his chances on the first three of these guys? Even worse, why leave Rowley in to suck it up for the whole inning when this is what they did to him: Escobar single, stolen base, to third on throwing error by catcher Lopez; Castro single scores Escobar; Grossman single pushes Castro to second; Dozier sac bunt attempt turns into an infield hit to load the bases for Mauer who hits a grand slam; Polanco flies out for the first out; Rosario hits a home run; Buxton strikes out; Kepler walks; Escobar finally strikes out to end the inning.

The Jays went into the inning down by two, 7-5, and came out down by eight, 13-5. Thanks, Gibbie. That was real smart.

Oh, not that it matters but in the sixth he put in lefty Matt Dermody to face Castro, Grossman, and Dozier. He retired the side on eleven pitches.

The Jays capitalized on a couple of doubles, by Zeke Carrera and Justin Smoak, to score two runs in the top of the seventh, not that it mattered. Course with a shut-down of the Twins in the fifth those were the erstwhile tying runs . . .

So with a little help from an easily-unsettled and unreliable Joe Biagini, and some atrocious managing by John Gibbons, the Twins breezed to an easy 13-7 win to escape with a draw in a four-game set that otherwise would have set them back on their heels instead of holding their ground in the race for the second wild-card slot.

The Jays are back home to host the Royals, who are also on the outside looking in, but have a little better place in front of the window than Toronto, and then the Yankees, who are steamrolling to the top wild card slot in the league.

It will be Jose Bautista’s last home stand ever (probably) in Toronto, so there’s that.

The next best thing to your team playing meaningul games in September is playing games that are meaningful for the other team. Especially if that other team is the Baltimore Orioles, ‘cuz we don’t like them birds so much here in Tranna.

The three game series with Baltimore that ended the Blue Jays’ brief home stand couldn’t have been tighter. If you’d dropped a piece of paper between the two teams any time during the series it would never have reached the ground. Scores of 4-3, 3-2, and 2-1 are all you need to know about how close this series was.

The fact that Toronto came out on the long end of the first two scores was gravy for the Jays’ disappointed fans, who, if they can’t watch playoff baseball themselves, are very happy to see that the Baltimore fans won’t have the pleasure either.

In an interesting sort of symmetry, Toronto benefitted from some shaky Baltimore defence to take a lead that they never relinquished in game one of the series, then returned the favour with a sloppy first inning in game three to set up the Orioles’ only win. The middle game was sharp, cleanly-played, and flat-out exciting, especially if you were rooting for the home side.

The Monday night matchup, Marco Estrada against Ubaldo Jimenez, was rife with possiblities. Would Estrada continue his resurgence as his career arc moves again toward free agency? Would Jimenez stone the Jays, as he has from time to time, or be stoned by them, as he also has from time to time, most notably in that electric moment when he dished up the Edwin Encarnacion dinger in last year’s wild card game?

Estrada managed to avoid the first inning wildness that has plagued him occasionally this year, retiring the Orioles on fifteen pitches in the first inning. In a harbinger of things to come, he caught Manny Machado looking for his first strikeout, and Machado was not at all pleased with the call by plate umpire Chris Segal on a 3-2 pitch that appeared to be right on the black at the bottom of the zone, the ninth pitch of his at bat.

From the bottom of the first on it almost seemed like the Orioles were playing with lumps in their throats and looking over their shoulders. For a team that had to create a chance to win every game the rest of the way in order to close the gap on a playoff spot, this was not the way they needed to comport themselves.

Their starter Jimenez struggled in the bottom of the first, loading the bases after retiring the first two batters. He walked Josh Donaldson, back in the lineup from his recent illness, gave up an opposite-field hit to Kendrys Morales, and an infield hit to Machado at third, before fanning Miguel Montero to leave the bases loaded, on his twenty-ninth pitch of the inning.

The tension for Baltimore built in the top of the second. Adam Jones fouled out to Jose Bautista in right, and then Trey Mancini picked up Baltimore’s first hit, a Texas Leaguer to centre. But Estrada frustrated both big sluggers, Chris Davis and Mark Trumbo, by striking them out looking. Neither was pleased with Segal’s calls as Estrada racked up his second and third called third strikes.

With the game still scoreless, the fuming Orioles, in particular Trumbo, took the field for the bottom of the second. More trouble found Trumbo in right, as leadoff hitter Teoscar Hernandez hit a high, short fly down the right field line. Circumstances coincided to create an outfielder’s nightmare for Trumbo. The twilight sky was bright and deceptive. Hernandez’ right-handed swing had imparted terrific out-spin to the ball.

First Trumbo lost it in the sky, and it fell untouched about ten feet behind him, in fair territory. It took a terrific turf bounce into foul territory, and a second one toward the seats, as Trumbo desparately gave chase. The second bounce hit the railing in front of the first row of seats just as Trumbo arrived to try to corral it. But it must have still been spinning, because it popped right out of Trumbo’s hands, and into the seats, much to the amusement of the Toronto fans.

Meanwhile, Hernandez had easily motored around to third, where he would stay, despite the Orioles’ unfounded protest that it should have been a ground-rule double. In fact, it was ruled a double in play, and Hernandez was allowed third base on the error on Trumbo, for causing a live ball to go out of play.

But wait, it got better. Adam Jones, who had not been personally offended by the plate umpire, was the next to make a damaging mistake in the outfield. After Ryan Goins efficiently scored Hernandez with a hard ground-ball up the middle, Darwin Barney stepped up and lined an even harder shot up the alley in right centre that one-hopped the wall and dropped at the feet of Jones, who picked it up. Barney, expecting the ball to be coming in, rounded second, looked out to centre, and realized that Jones had dropped the ball on the warning track for another outfield error, an unheard of second one in the same inning for the usually slick-fielding Orioles.

Barney took off again for third, and would have made it easily, except that he started his head-first slide about six feet too soon. Luckily for Barney, the relay went to the plate as he frantically swam/crawled along the infield dirt to finally clap his hand on the base between Manny Machado’s brilliant orange shoes. Jones and Trumbo should be thankful for Barney’s comical dive, because the enduring image of this game became, not either of their errors, but the sheepish grin on Barney’s face as he gratefully clutched the bag.

Barney scored immediately on a hustle double to right by Richard Ureňa, and the Jays had a 2-0 lead they would never relinquish. Because Hernandez would have scored in any case on Barney’s double, and likewise Barney on Ureňa’s double, both runs off Jiminez were earned.

The 2-0 Toronto lead after two innings put the Orioles into catch-up mode, and they never did, in particular because Estrada was brilliant, if short, and the Blue Jays’ bullpen was good enough over the last four innings.

Buck Showalter’s funk over the Baltimore hitters and Chris Segal’s strike zone only got deeper. Two more called third strikes in the third for Estrada, and another one to end the fourth, after the O’s had clawed back one run on a Machado double and a Jones single.

The Jays got that one back in the bottom of the fourth on a very long, very quick Ryan Goins solo jack to the 200 level in right.

A day late and a dollar short, Baltimore closed it to one again when Trumbo made up for his earlier woes with a leadoff homer against Estrada, who then finished his night by getting three ground-ball outs, a rather strange ending for the fly-ball/popup/strikeout pitcher.

An oddly familiar figure, the lanky Miguel Castro—remember him?—took over for Jiminez in the top of the sixth. Castro had been the other youthful golden boy beside Roberto Osuna in the Jays’ bullpen out of spring training in 2015. But Castro, originally having won the closer’s spot over Osuna, didn’t pan out. For the Toronto bullpen, the rest was history as Osuna took over the job, and Castro went on to the Rockies as part of the package in the Tulowitzki trade.

After suffering and overcoming some injury problems, Castro has resurfaced in Baltimore, and has been making a case for being part of the mix there next year. They’re even talking about trying him out as a starter. God knows the Orioles need starters.

Castro had some bad luck in his initial appearance against his original team, giving up a run without the ball reaching the outfield safely. He didn’t help himself by hitting Miguel Montero with a pitch leading off. Montero moved up to second on an infield hit by Hernandez. Both runners were advanced by Ryan Goins, again effectively using his at bat to ground out to first. Another infield single by Barney, deflecting off Castro, scored Montero with the fourth Toronto run.

Again Baltimore cut the lead to one in the top of the seventh, despite John Gibbon’s attempt to keep them off the board with his bullpen-by-committee. Danny Barnes, who had pitched a clean sixth for Estrada, walked Trey Mancini to lead off. Matt Dermody came in and caught Chris Davis looking, again, in an successful matchup situation. Then Tom Koehler got Mark Trumbo to ground out to third, but Mancini was able to advance to second. He scored when Caleb Joseph bounced a single up the middle. 4-3 Toronto.

And that’s where it stayed. Castro pitched a clean seventh to run his strikeout total to three, and Brad Brach a clean eighth to keep Toronto from picking up an insurance run, providing some nice one-run tension for the Jays at the end of the game.

Carlos Ramirez added to his sparkling ERA of 0.00 with a quick and clean eighth inning, aided by a third-out dive to his knees glove-side by Barney at third to cut off a shot by Jonathan Schoop.

And in the absence of Osuna, off on paternal leave (who knew?) Dominic Leone was elected to serve as closer, and he wrapped it up, after yielding a leadoff single to Adam Jones, and seeing him advance to second on a Mancini right-side grounder, by striking out the hapless Davis and the hapless (despite his homer) Trumbo to end the game. This time, at least they both swung at strike three.

So, one less chance for Baltimore to close the gap on its competition. Would the Jays be able to thwart their ambitions behind Joe Biagini on Tuesday night?

Well, that was a story of a different colour!

If Baltimore’s defensive sloppiness (tightness?) contributed significantly to their falling behind on Monday night, and not being able to climb out, this was a briskly played game, with neither team giving anything away, until the very end, when Toronto ripped the win from the very grasp of the desperate Orioles.

Joe Biagini has followed a strange path of alternating good starts and bad starts, and this was a good one indeed, eight innings, two runs on six hits, and only 88 pitches. This, after not being able to get out of the fourth inning in his last start in Boston. But Dylan Bundy, who had been very effective against the Jays back in April, going thirteen innings in two starts, giving up only one earned run on nine hits in total, was equal to the task, if a little shorter and only a little less efficient. Bundy went six full innings, and gave up only one run on five hits, walking one and striking out eight, on 89 pitches.

In short, this was a pitchers’ battle, and a fine one it was. Biagini had the better of it in the early going, breezing through three innings on only 26 pitches, despite giving up a leadoff hit to Adam Jones in the second and a two-out hit to Tim Beckham in the third.

Bundy stranded a leadoff single by Richard Ureňa in the first, then had to dig a little deeper in the second, but pulled it off admirably. Kendrys Morales, relishing the chance to hit from the right side against the portsider Bundy, drilled one into the gap in left centre for a leadoff double, then was able to move up to third safely when Bundy bobbled Kevin Pillar’s comebacker, and had only one option, to take the out at first. Ah, but then he pulled out his wicked slider and fanned Teoscar Hernandez and Ryan Goins, while Morales waited patiently at third before going back to his seat in the dugout.

Bundy wasn’t so fortunate in the third, though, as Toronto started to make serious contact on him. Luke Maile lined a leadoff single to centre. Then the warning track gods gave Bundy a hand by keeping both Ureňa’s and Josh Donaldson’s deep drives in the park. But his luck failed him with Justin Smoak, who went the opposite way on Bundy and ripped a double to right centre over Joey Rickard’s head that pinged off the DQ sign and away from the fallen Rickard. Maile, running from first with two outs, was able to come all the way around and score. Bundy then froze Jose Bautista with a wicked curve ball, but the Jays had the lead.

The middle innings zipped by, Biagini finishing the sixth on only 61 pitches. The only batter to reach on him was Chris Davis, who singled to lead off the fourth. Bundy retired seven in a row starting with the Bautista punchout in the third, but again was lucky that a couple of deep drives, by Morales and Pillar, stayed in the park to be caught.

Bundy’s stint was marked by reliance on his strikeout repertoire, as he fanned two in the fifth and two in the sixth, his last inning, the latter two after allowing Donalson to reach on a leadoff Texas Leaguer, and walking Smoak.

So Bundy left after a fine start, deserving more, though the Orioles did immediately take him off the hook for the loss in the seventh with their first run off Biagini.

Biagini allowed Trey Mancini to reach with a one-out double to the left field corner, only their fourth hit off him, but it was hardly his fault that the Orioles managed to bring him around to score the tying run. The big righthander blew away big Chris Davis on high heat that the lefty slugger couldn’t handle and couldn’t lay off. That brought up the second Baltimore Bopper, Trumbo, who didn’t exactly bop, but managed to lift a low strike over the infield that fell perfectly equidistantly between an onrushing Pillar and a retreating Goins, who was waving that he wasn’t going to get it either. Mancini came around on the hit to score and the game was tied.

Mychal Givens came in and settled Toronto’s hash quickly in the bottom of the seventh with two strikeouts and a popup on only eleven pitches. Givens effctively quashed any hope of the arrival of the walk-a-palooza that he sometimes puts on against the Jays.

You were kind of holding your breath when John Gibbons sent Joe Biagini back out for the eighth inning. Even after only 79 pitches, eight innings seemed a stretch. But Biagini was up to it, more or less, allowing only one batter to reach while retiring the side. Unfortunately, the one batter who reached was shortstop Tim Beckham who reached them all He put a confident swing on a tempting pitch and hit the big fly that sailed over the left-centre field fence for the home run that gave the Orioles the lead, and left Biagini finishing off the inning responsible for the loss.

The first indication that this game was not quite decided yet came in the bottom of the eighth, when the home town boys got to Brad Brach, for only the second time all year. The first was on June twenty-seventh in Toronto when he gave up a solo home run to Troy Tulowitzki with two out in the bottom of the ninth, a shot which didn’t mar Brach’s save, as he had gone into the ninth with a 3-0 lead. Get this: that was the only run Brach gave up against the Jays in twelve appearances, including this one.

Now wait a minute: if Toronto didn’t score against Brach in this eighth, how did they “get to him”? Well, first of all Richard Ureňa led off with a single to left centre, and made the rookie mistake of trying to stretch it when his team was down a run in a late inning. Trey Mancini shot him down at second and presumably taught him a lesson. But don’t worry, Ureňa’s night wasn’t done yet.

Then, Brach walked Donaldson, only the third walk he’d given up to Toronto in those twelve appearances. The walk was followed by Justin Smoak lining a single to right into the teeth of the shift, hit so hard that Donaldson had to stop at second. Zeke Carrera came in to run for Smoak, but before Kendrys Morales could stride to the plate, Buck Showalter was out of the dugout to call on his closer, Zach Britton.

And that’s why I say that Toronto “got to” Brad Brach: for the first time in twelve appearances he did not finish an inning that he started, and even though Britton fanned Morales to strand Brach’s runners, it still marked a significant milepost for Toronto that Brach wasn’t able to finish his inning. And keep in mind that if Ureňa had just checked in at first and not tried for second, the game would have been tied on Smoak’s hit.

John Gibbons played it just right in the top of the ninth, sending out Tom Koehler in relief of Biagini. Koehler retired the first two batters, Jones and Mancini, and then out popped Gibbons to bring in the lefty Tim Mayza to face the lefty Chris “All or Nothing” Davis. The move paid off for Gibbons as Davis went down swinging, and it paid off for Mayza because he was now the pitcher of record though with Britton returning to the mound for the final three outs, no one really made note of that.

If there’s anything more amazing than the fact that it was Zach Britton who not only blew the save in this game, but took the loss, while only getting one out, it was that of the five batters who faced down Britton and won the game for Toronto, not one was named Bautista, Smoak, Donaldson, or Morales. Rather, it was the supporting cast that did the job, Pillar, Hernandez, Barney, Maile, and finally, improbably, Richard Ureňa.

Pillar opened the inning by drawing a walk on a 3-1 pitch. On a 2-2 pitch, the Jays sent Pillar on the hit-and-run, and Teoscar Hernandez lined a single into right, with Pillar ending up at third. Barney, hitting for Goins, grounded into a fielder’s choice thereby replacing Hernandez on first, while Pillar was held at third. Then Luke Maile swung at the first offering from Britton and ripped a vicious shot to the left of Mannie Machado at third. Machado dove for the ball but couldn’t come up with it. He tipped it with his glove towards Tim Beckham. Maile was safe on the infield hit, and Pillar scored the tying run, with Barney checking in at second.

Then came Ureňa. With the count 1-1, Britton threw him a high fast ball on the inside corner. Britton may have been unlucky to have blown the game for Baltimore, but he was extremely lucky that the wicked line drive Ureňa hit back up the middle for the game-winning hit didn’t take his head off.

So there it was, the bottom of the Toronto batting order against the great Zach Britton, and Britton didn’t have a chance.

Maybe it didn’t really matter that Buck Showalter never used Britton in the Wild Card game last year, eh?

So as Wednesday’s final game of the series approached, the question was whether or not the Orioles could regroup to salvage at least one game, having handed one win to Toronto, and having had a second one stolen from them by the feisty non-contenders from Toronto.

As I mentioned in my lead, there was as much symmetry in this series as you can get in an odd-numbered sequence of events. The Orioles handed the first game to the Blue Jays, the second game was a hard-fought tooth-and-nail thriller, and the Jays handed the third game to Baltimore, so that they could avoid being swept by the cellar-dwelling Torontos.

Even more oddly, the Toronto breakdown in game three, like the O’s breakdown in game one, came early, and the rest of the game represented the playing out of a fait accompli.

If anyone could be justified in bringing suit against his mates for non-support, it would be Marcus Stroman on this Wednesday night. He pitched six innings, gave up six hits, walked three, and struck out seven. Oh, did I leave out the runs? Well, yeah, two of them, both unearned, in the first inning.

Not that Kevin Gausman didn’t deserve to win too: seven innings, 1 earned run, six hits, one walk, six strikeouts. But still, all things being equal, he should have left the game down 1-0, and it would have stayed that way until the last out.

It was passing strange indeed that the player who wrecked Marcus Stroman’s night was none other than third baseman Josh Donaldson, who seemed to have taken a bag of pre-game jitters onto the field with him for the top of the first.

Tim Beckham started off by hitting a Marcus-Stroman special on the first pitch, two hops, bounce, bounce, right to Donaldson. The latter glided in, picked the easy hop, took a step to line up his throw, took another step while he seemed to be counting the stitches with his fingertips, and then unloaded an awful, wild throw that left Justin Smoak with zero chance of staying on the bag for the out.

Instead of one pitch, one out, it was one pitch, runner on first who never should have been there. Stroman quickly set to work to eradicate the problem: he fanned Manny Machado with a wicked slider away in the dirt, and grounded out Jonathan Schoop to third on the second pitch, with Beckham moving up to third.

But wait, let’s revisit the Schoop at bat. He hit the ball hard on the ground at Donaldson. It was a pick-it-or-die kind of hit: pick it and double up Jones, or knock it down and miss the dp. On a ball we’ve seen Donaldson handle dozens of times, this time he knocked it down, and with Beckham in to second, he had no choice but to take the out at first. Though you can’t assume a double play, that was the inning right there, and on it went.

And it went on with Adam Jones, good ol’ Adam Jones, at the plate. Stroman didn’t get a call he wanted on the first pitch, which was low and away. Then he missed way outside. On 2-0, he came inside with a four-seamer that Jones liked, and he hit it hard to left. It might have been catchable with a good jump, but Teoscar Hernandez didn’t get a good jump. It looked like he lost it for a moment. It went for a double, Beckham scored, of course, and it was 1-0 Baltimore, with Jones on second.

As if that weren’t bad enough, Trey Mancini then launched one that carried to the wall in centre, unfortunately for Toronto it was a catchable ball that hit the wall just to Kevin Pillar’s right, well within reach if he’d gotten his usual jump on it. It bounced far enough away from him that Mancini, having knocked in Jones, went all the way to third for a very suspect triple.

Stroman managed to knuckle down and fan Mark Trumbo to leave Mancini on third, but Stroman and the Jays were down two unearned runs before they’d even lifted a bat against Kevin Gausman.

It didn’t much matter when they did lift their bats against Gausman; he sailed through his seven innings against Toronto.

Well, not quite sailed, but enough good innings to keep the Jays in his rear-view mirror. His worst inning was the third, when they broke through for a run on a leadoff double to right by Hernandez, who was sacrificed to third by Ryan Goins, and plated by a bloop double by Richard Ureňa. But the story of this game was that Toronto never really capitalized on their chances against Gausman. With one out, Donaldson moved Ureňa to third with an infield hit, but Gausman sawed off Smoak, who hit into a double play.

Toronto had runners at second and third with one out in the fourth after two singles and a mishandled ball by Mancini in left that let the trailing runner, Pillar, take second. But Russell Martin, back on the roster at last, and Hernandez put the ball in the air for easy and unproductive outs.

Pillar fanned behind a two-out double by Morales in the sixth, and Goins grounded into a double-play after a one-out walk to Hernandez.

And that was it for Gausman. They created a few chances; he was equal to them.

And the Baltimore bullpen was aces on this night, Darren O’Day retiring the side in order in the eighth with three strikeouts, and Zach Britton throwing a double-play ball, only his sixth pitch, to Pillar who grounded into the game-ending twin-killing in the ninth. Thus Britton redeemed himself for his shocking loss the night before.

As for Stroman, he danced through and around the Orioles from the second through the sixth in typical Stromanesque fashion, a walk here, a hit there, a little bases-loaded jam in the fourth, nothing he wasn’t able to handle without the help of a double play or two. The number says it all, two unearned runs in six innings.

The Jays’ bullpen was perfect again, keeping the team close through the latter innings, in case their bats might come alive.

Carlos Ramirez extended his scoreless streak in the seventh. The Orioles never put a ball in fair territory off him. He took fourteen pitches to fan two with very effective breaking balls, give up a walk, and retire the side on a foul popup to first.

Dom Leone gave up a weird double to right by Adam Jones, who used his bat like a cue-stick leading off the eighth. He then retired the next two hitters, fanning Mancini and getting Mark Trumbo on a fly ball to right on which Jones advanced to third. Matt Dermody came in to match up with Chris Davis, who hit a line drive toward right on the first pitch, a shot that Ryan Goins snatched out of the air at the last minute. This saved the Jays from giving up an insurance run that the Orioles in the end wouldn’t have needed anyway.

Ryan Tepera pitched a clean ninth inning, leaving it up to Toronto versus Britton, and we know how that turned out.

So on the whole it was a good series, exciting if flawed, which put Baltimore a little deeper in the whole in regard to making the playoffs. Whether being the agents, perhaps, of Baltimore’s demise is enough satisfaction for Blue Jays’ fans to savour over the winter as they try to put the bitter disappointment of the past season behind them, is a question that they’ll have to answer in the silence of their darkened post-season rooms.

In the meantime, there’s still some pretty interesting baseball to be played, though.

In a melancholy sort of way, there’s something quite exhilarating about a September series between two teams no longer harbouring any hope of making the playoffs.

The air is crisp and clear, September in the midwest, including the Canadian midwest, being the loveliest time of the year. The warmth of the day’s sun lingers into the evening, helping to ward off the encroaching chill of early fall.

Rosters have been expanded with new faces, rookies as well as veterans, all hoping to make an impression that will last through the winter and give them a leg up on making the team, or any team, out of Florida next spring.

Veterans continue to play hard to cement their positions and prove their continued worth. Even—especially—those players facing free agency have much to play for, in order to improve their worth on the open market, or to entice their current team to take a flyer on them for another year. Are you listening, Ross Atkins and Marco Estrada? Get a deal done. Soon.

In short, the game is reduced to its simplest elements: pitchers pitch, hitters hit, fielders field, and whichever team does it best wins the game. In the process, there is much to watch, much to appreciate, and much to ponder.

And so it was this weekend that the Toronto Blue Jays returned home from their week-long road trip to the unfriendly lairs of division-leading Boston, and wild-card-contending Baltimore. Considering the stakes at hand for their opponents, the Jays comported themselves about as well as they had this entire disappointing season, winning three games of seven and just missing taking six of seven by the measure of three extra-inning walkoff losses.

If Toronto came into this series hoping to make up for some of the close calls and failures of 2017, how much more so the Detroit Tigers, who came in with a record of 59-80, having lost hope ages ago, and being among the first teams to dismantle, dump salary, and start the process of retooling, not for 2018, but for some point beyond.

Consider the changes in the Tigers’ lineup since the two teams last met: traded away have been Justin Verlander, Justin Upton, Justin Wilson*, Alex Avila, and J.D. Martinez; on the disabled list: Michael Fulmer, Jose Iglesias, and Victor Martinez, most worryingly with an irregular heartbeat. Sadly, unless Victor Martinez makes his way back, the days of annotating Victor and J.D. as VMart and JMart, and making jokes about KMart, are over.

*Apparently, Tigers’ management has decided that if they haven’t been able to put it all together with a bunch of Justins, they need to go in another direction.

So on Friday night we were looking at a Tigers’ lineup that started with old reliable Ian Kinsler leading off at second, and then went quickly nouvelle vague with Jeimer Candelario at third, the familiar and destructive Nick Castellanos in right, John Hicks at DH, more familiar names Mikie Mahtook in centre and James McCann behind the plate, Efren Navarro at first, long-time utility guy Andrew Romine in left, and sparkling rookie shortstop Dixon Machado hitting ninth.

On the other hand, manager John Gibbons, returning Friday after a leave of absence, had a more veteran array of talent on offer for the Jays, with only callup Richard Ureňa at short and hitting ninth. Arguably, Ureňa was only out there because Josh Donaldson had apparently come down with a bug and was unavailable, so Ryan Goins was slotted at second and Darwin Barney at third. The early notion of leaving Goins at short and seeing how Ureňa might adapt to second seems to have been put off until the spring; Goins, being more experienced and versatile, is the more obvious candidate to play second, leaving Ureňa where he’s most comfortable. The other appearance of a newbie in Toronto’s batting order was Teoscar Hernandez, who took over for Steve Pearce in left field after one at-bat because, as we learned later, Pearce’s back had stiffened up.

The pitching matchup represented the same kind of distinction between the two teams on Friday, with Marcus Stroman taking the hill for the Jays and . . . Buck Farmer (??) starting for the Tigers. Okay, to be fair, Farmer, whose name belongs on my list of great baseball names, has been up and down with Detroit since 2014. And yet this was only his seventh appearance for the Tigers this year, coming in with a positive won/loss record of 3-2, but a dreadful ERA of 7.18.

But wait, we’ve heard this story before. Guy you’ve hardly heard of, guy his team-mates have hardly heard of (okay, that’s going a bit far), comes in and outpitches the established major-league starter.

Well, that’s what we got. Farmer only went five innings, gave up two runs, only one earned, on five hits, but dang it, he got the win to go to 4-2.

Even the earned run was tainted. Ureňa reached with a two-out base hit in the fifth, and then Hernandez, hitting in Pearce’s slot, lofted a blooper into centre. Mahtook came racing in and unwisely tried for a diving catch. The ball kicked off something hard, maybe Mahtook’s forearm, and kicked away. Far away. Running on contact, Urenã scored from first, Hernandez given credit for a double. No error was given, but still.

Then, in the sixth, when Tiger manager Brad Ausmus sent Farmer back out with only 68 pitches under his belt, his catcher let him down with a passed ball when the pitcher had Jose Bautista struck out leading off, but he reached, eventually coming around to score on singles by Justin Smoak and Kendrys Morales, the last batter Farmer faced. Unlike the fifth inning run that was earned on paper, but shouldn’t have happened, this one was definitely unearned.

The game was really decided by two pitches and two swings of the bat, it was that close. The second swing of the bat was the vicious one-hop liner that Kevin Pillar ripped toward third off reliever Drew VerHagen, who’d just come in to replace Farmer after Morales’ RBI single. With the two lead sleds Smoak on second and Morales on first, the Pillar one-hopper that didn’t go for a double, because it was skillfully picked by Candelario right at the bag, turned into a batter’s nightmare: Candelario spun with the pickup, poked a foot at the bag at third, fired the ball to second, where Kinsler whipped it to first, barely beating the hustling Pillar, as the video review confirmed, for a shocking, devastating, around-the-horn triple play to end the threat.

The other pitch? The other swing of the bat? Ah, that one hurt even more than the Pillar bullet turning into dust.

Marcus Stroman seriously breezed through the first eight batters, needing ten pitches for the first inning, twelve for the second, and five for the first two in the third, eight hitters, twenty-seven pitches. Then the kid Machado came up and ripped a double to right field. Kinsler, who has always been kind of a poor man’s Dustin Pedroia to the Blue Jays, in other words a real pain in the bupkus, hit one through the left side. Machado had to hold up on the ball, and checked in at third.

On second thought, maybe it wasn’t the one pitch that Stroman threw to Castellanos that disappeared over the centre-field fence for a grand slam, but the four straight bad ones he threw to Candelario, the new guy, to load the bases. If he had gotten Candelario, Castellanos would not have gotten to the plate. But, sadly, five pitches after Kinsler’s base hit, the Tigers had a 4-0 lead, on a ball that Kevin Pillar thought he had in the bag, until it just carried, and carried, over his head and over the fence, for a Tiger grand salami.

Then it was a question of whether Toronto could recover from the blow. Stroman did, but it was too late for him. He went out after six innings, still down 4-2 because of the slam, the only mistake he made that he was punished for. Give him a scoreless third inning, and he was brilliant on the night.

Toronto suffered the frustration of seeing the lead lengthen, rather than shorten, once the bullpens were involved. Danny Barnes came in for the seventh, and retired Romine and Machado on two pitches each, but then threw a changeup in to Kinsler after throwing five pitches away. Kinsler jumped on it, and it was 5-2.

The Kinsler homer was all the Tigers needed to hold off the Blue Jays, who clawed back within one in the eighth inning, on solo homers by Ureňa, his first in the majors, and Bautista, the three hundred and thirtieth of his career, and twenty-second of the season. Thus the generations pass in baseball.

But it was for naught. The Detroit bullpen, denuded of experience, has ended up devolving the closer’s job on Shane Greene, a twenty-eight-year-old righty who has logged major innings in relief for the Tigers in the last two seasons, but never closed before. Greene issued a two-out walk to the pinch-hitter Michael Saunders, but then fanned another pinch-hitter, Miguel Montero, to end the game.

Thanks to the grand slam gopher ball and the take-it-or-leave-it triple play, the young Tigers took the first game of the series from the Jays’ veterans. Little did we know that those two plays would be all that would stand between the Blue Jays and a series sweep.

I had the pleasure of listening to most of Saturday’s game on the car radio, courtesy of Jerry and Joe, because the last-minute starting time change from one to four pushed the game back into driving time for taking our grand-daughter home to Scarborough after her regular Saturday visit.

So, sticking with tradition, I’ll offer some quick observations on the first seven innings or so, before spending a bit more time on the end of the game, which I did see.

The game featured a pitching matchup between a pair of left-handers who were in effect auditioning for consideration for next year’s rotation for their respective teams. Chad Bell of the Tigers is one of those late-twenties guys who’s taken since 2010 to finally make his major league debut this year. He’d appeared in 19 games in relief for the Tigers, and this would be his second start, after going four innings in Cleveland on the third of September and getting cuffed around a bit.

Brett Anderson, on the other hand, has been pitching in the majors since 2010, and had accrued 86 decisions with a career ERA of 3.97. Yet he too was a tryout in this game. He’d been cut free by the Cubs in May, and the Jays picked him up to fill the rotation in Buffalo, with an eye toward seeing whether he has anything left to offer to a major-league team. This would be his third start with Toronto since being called up in late August. Thus far he’d had a loss and a no decision, allowing four earned runs in eleven and two thirds innings, while pitching quite well..

The Tigers struck first, in the first inning, when Anderson ran afoul of Miggy Cabrera, which is not such a grave fault: he’s certainly not the first. With Jeimer Candelario on first with a base hit, Cabrera belted a two-run homer to left. Luckily for Toronto, these were the only runs Anderson would give up in six full innings of work; he would only give up four hits the rest of the way, walking none and striking out five.

Toronto got one back in the bottom of the first thanks to the first of four base hits on the day by Kevin Pillar, who was by all accounts the star of this game. With two outs, Bautista on third and Morales on first, Pillar ripped a liner past Machado at short into left to score Bautista. And rip it he did; I saw the first inning before we left.

The game remained 2-1 until the bottom of the fourth, when, if you can believe it, and to the great amusement of Jerry Howarth, Kendrys Morales scored from third on the front end of a double-steal. Morales had walked. Pillar had singled him to second. Hernandez had hit into a force play, with Morales going to third. With two outs, after Barney had struck out and with Goins at the plate, Hernandez broke for second. In what he later admitted was a mistake, McCann threw down to second, but Hernandez stopped and got himself in a runown. While the rookie Machado elected to chase down Hernandez, Morales romped home with the tying run. The mirth over this play was only slightly dissipated when the official scorer decided that Morales had not stolen home, but had scored courtesy of a fielder’s choice, McCann’s throw to second.

I missed, but saw replays later, of Pillar’s brilliant catch against the wall in the top of the fifth off Machado after Anderson had struck out the first two batters. Now having seen it on replay, I would classify it in the top ten or so all-time of his catches, though that number of ten is getting to be mighty elastic these days.

I also missed Pillar’s leadoff, go-ahead homer in the bottom of the sixth off reliever Warren Saupold, which was eventually followed by an insurance run driven in with a clutch two-out base hit by Luke Maile that scored Barney, who’d reached on a single, stole second, and advanced to third on a right-side ground ball out by Goins.

With the Toronto lead at 4-2, and both starters gone, Anderson after his quality six innings, I arrived home to watch the wrapup of the game, starting with Carlos Ramirez in the seventh adding to his amazing string of scoreless innings, encompassing all of 2017, minors and majors, including three appearances totalling six innings with Toronto. He added a seventh perfect inning against the Tigers, striking out two in the process.

Dom Leone, continuing to impress with his solid work, pitched a quick eighth, taking eleven pitches to get two groundouts and then fan Kinsler to end the inning.

In the meantime, after Pillar’s homer off Saupold, it had been Daniel Stumpf who came in and allowed Saupold’s base runner, Barney, eventually to score on Maile’s single. Drew Verhagen finished off the sixth with no further damage.

Jeff Ferrell managed to keep Toronto from extending its lead in a rocky seventh. With one out, Ferrell walked Morales. Pillar hit a solid liner to left for his fourth hit of the game, Morales moving up to second. Hernandez hit a second straight line single to left. Coach Luis Rivera tried to challenge the arm of Andrew Romine, normally a utility infielder, in left, and sent Morales around third only to be gunned down at the plate by Romine.

Lefty Blaine Hardy came in to face and retire Goins to start off the eighth, but Maile, who is starting to make sharp contact, shot a double to centre. After Urena fanned for the second out, Bautista lofted a teasing little fly over Kinsler’s head at second. Kinsler tracked it back, dove for it, but it ticked off his glove for a base hit that scored Maile with a very important fifth run.

Which took us to the top of the ninth and the rather surprise appearance of Ryan Tepera as the closer, going for his second save of the year. We later learned that Roberto Osuna was unavailable because of a stiff neck.

For all of his advancement this year, on this Tepera was not quite up to turning in an efficient ninth inning, limiting the drama, which is what we would have wanted with a three-run lead going in. Yet, in the end, he held off the Tigers, earned the save, and closed out the Jays’ 5-4 win, the same score as Friday night, but with the other team on top.

Almost all bad things start with a leadoff walk, this time to Candelario. Miggy Cabrera singled to left, bumping Candelario up to second. Castellanos doubled home Candelario, Cabrera stopping at third. Nobody out, 5-3, tying run at second. Who ya gonna call?

Nobody, because there weren’t nobody out there no how! Tepera just had to buckle down and do it. Cabrera didn’t matter, but Castellanos had to be left out there on the bases.

And by god, Ryan Tepera did it. Here’s how: John Hicks grounded out to Smoak unassisted, the runners holding. Jacoby Jones popped out to Goins at second. And Andrew Romine, who’d saved a run in the seventh with his throw to cut down Morales at the plate, and who’d also made a Pillar-esque diving snag of a liner headed for the corner in left off Maile, a catch I didn’t see until just now watching the video, in the end, that Andrew Romine could not quite top the heroics of the real Kevin Pillar, and so took a called third strike from Tepera to end the game.

Whew! And I raced back in from the car to watch the last part of the game just to put myself at risk of a cardiac adventure?? Thank god it turned out okay for the good guys, or I’da been off to the emerg fer sure!

So, series tied at a game apiece, runs dead even at nine apiece, Sunday would tell the tale, whether the Tigers would leave town with their heads held high, or their tails (sorry) between their legs.

I started this narrative with commentary on the Tigers’ having already dismantled much of their long-standing core contingent, going with a lineup featuring quite a few new faces.

Sunday’s game, however, presented a promising new face breaking out for Toronto as well. Teoscar Hernandez, who has been a regular presence in the lineup since coming up from Buffalo, gave a performance that on its own merits, regardless of what he does from this point on, should merit him serious consideration for a regular spot in the outfield for Toronto next year.

Hernandez, it will be recalled, came to Toronto along with the departed Nori Aoki from Houston in exchange for Francisco Liriano, whose days in Toronto were numbered in any case. It should also be recalled that he had caught the attention of the Jays’ pooh-bahs in August, 2016, when his first major-league home run was hit against Toronto, in Toronto, in his first major-league game, while on a callup assignment for Houston.

In one of baseball’s typical little ironies, the victim of Hernandez’ first dinger in his first game? None other than Francisco Liriano.

On Sunday, facing the veteran right-hander Anibal Sanchez of the Tigers, Hernandez struck out to strand the bases loaded with one run already across the plate in the first inning.

But he made up for the first inning disappointment in the fourth inning when, after Ryan Goins reached on a one-out flare single to right, he took Sanchez to the deepest part of the ball park, hitting it out to centre to give Toronto a 3-0 lead, recording his first homer for Toronto, but his second career dinger in Toronto.

Then, in the fifth inning, maybe manager Brad Ausmus would later regret his decision to let Sanchez pitch to Hernandez with one run already in and a couple of runners on. Singles by Bautista, Morales, and Pillar had already plated one additional run, making the score 4-2 for Toronto. (In the top of the fifth, Manny Machado had reached on a fielding error by Ureňa, and Kinsler had homered to left off Jay Happ, cutting the lead at that point to 3-2, the closest the Tigers would come.)

With Morales and Pillar on base, Hernandez took Sanchez downtown again, this time to the opposite field, this time for three runs, giving him five ribbies for the game and basically salting it away for the Blue Jays.

It’s not like Hernandez was the only Jays’ rookie to impact Sunday’s game. Richard Ureňa seems to have found a spot as leadoff batter, not to mention his sparkling defensive play at short, leaving aside the careless error or two. In the first inning, his speed turned a Kendrys Morales single into an unusual RBI for the Toronto DH. He had led off the game with a ground single up the middle, and then looked destined to die at first as Josh Donaldson and Justin Smoak made outs, bringing up Morales. But Toronto manager John Gibbons started Ureňa on a 1-0 pitch. Morales lashed the ball on a line past the empty infield on the left side into left centre for a single. The speedy rookie never hesitated as Luis Rivera waved him home, and he scored from first on the single without even drawing a throw to give Toronto an early lead.

Jay Happ started for the Jays, and though he had to work his way out of trouble in three of the first four innings, on this day he had his strikeout mojo, eventually notching up nine which helped him out of a couple of jams, as in the first, when after striking out the first two Tigers he gave up base hits to Detroit’s twin terrors, Miggy Cabrera and Nick Castellanos, but extracted himself by fanning John Hicks to strand the runners.

Happ’s only lapse (nice phrase, that) came in the fifth, when he served up the homer to Kinsler that cost Toronto two runs, because of the afore-mentioned sloppy miss by Ureňa at short on an easy grounder by Dixon Machado, who rode home on Kinsler’s blast. But the dinger by Kinsler of course only put one run on the board in terms of Happ’s record.

The Toronto lefty’s strikeout total, not to mention his penchant for working in and out of trouble, led once again to an elevated pitch count, and he was more than well done after six at 113 pitches, though by this time he was cruising along on a 7-2 lead.

But Happ’s departure left a big chunk of outs to accomplish to seal the deal, and that’s where a third impact rookie had a big role to play for the Jays. Luis Santos, the chunky twenty-six-year-old right-hander with the crazy record in Buffalo this year (3-12, but a decent 4.07 ERA and a not-bad WHIP of 1.26), who has flown under the radar with all the attention garnered by Carlos Ramirez, was just the man to fill the bill.

Santos, with two solid appearances already under his belt, three and two thirds innings against Baltimore with one earned run, and two scoreless innings against Boston, was a real zip-meister in his three innings of mopup work. No runs, two hits, two strikeouts, and thirty-four pitches for three innings. Despite the Jays’ big lead he qualified for his first major-league save under the provision of pitching effectively over a number of innings to preserve a lead.

What’s amazing about Santos is his nonchalant, bring-it-to-em approach. No nonsense, just go after them, with a funky delivery of a nice repertoire of pitches that has so far been very effective. And how valuable can Santos be next year, as someone who has always started, for giving the team three innings of bridge work when it’s badly needed?

In fact, it’s become obvious, with the performance of the Toronto relievers who have been here all year, and the glittering work turned in by the recent arrivals, that the one place where Ross Atkins does not have to throw money around in the off-season for new talent is the bullpen, which is getting stronger by the game. In fact, the toughest job for management might be finding roster spots for all the relievers who deserve them.

Oh, and we didn’t even mention that Teoscar Hernandez (all for re-christening him “Oscar” raise your hands!) was on the front end of what was, given the way Santos followed Happ, a totally superfluous eighth run in the seventh inning. He reached with a one-out single to centre, and zipped around to third on a single to right by Darwin Barney, who quietly went four for four today when nobody was looking. By the way, I really like this first-to-third stuff. Where’s it been hiding all these years? From third, Hernandez was able to score on a James McCann passed ball off a pitch by Tiger reliever Artie Lewicki.

I was going to add Artie Lewicki to my list of great baseball names, but on second thought, especially since he’s from Detroit, the erstwhile pro bowling capitol of the world, maybe his name would be better suited for a character role in the proposed sequel to The Big Lebowski, a project which doesn’t exist, because I totally made that up.

On the whole, then, it was a fun and interesting weekend at the old TV Dome. Nothing to do with the pennant race, mind you, just some good, old-fashioned baseball. Toronto took the series, two out of three, from the bottom-dwelling Tigers (we should talk?) and were it not for the precise placement of a hot shot by Kevin Pillar, and the lousy placement of a pitch to Nick Castellanos, both on Friday night, the Jays would be sitting down Sunday evening to dine on big cat road kill, after a most satisfying sweep.

We came close, though.

One of the most remarkable developments in contemporary baseball is the incredible level of accomplishment that has already been achieved by players in their early twenties.

Looking at the American League alone, consider that among the Blue Jays Roberto Osuna is 22, Aaron Sanchez is 25, and Marcus Stroman is 26. Mike Trout, a veteran at 26, made his major-league debut at 20 in 201l. More noticeably, the sparkling Boston duo of Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts are 24, Carlos Correa of the Astros is 22. Meanwhile, Jonathan Schoop of the Orioles is 25, and hasn’t he played second for Baltimore for at least ten years?? Jose Ramirez of the Indians is 24. So is Gary Sanchez of the Yankees. Aaron Judge is a relative senior citizen in his first full year at 25.

In this context, then, it wasn’t all that surprising to watch twenty-three-year-old centre fielder Byron Buxton utterly dismantle Toronto twice to lead the visiting Minnesota Twins to a crucial (for both teams) series win over the weekend.

Reggie Jackson famously and rather arrogantly referred to himself as the “straw that stirred the drink” for the Yankees, which is probably the origin of the stirring motion that players make these days after a base hit in the middle of a rally.

When you look at Buxton’s contribution to the three Twins’ games in Toronto, it can be truly said that, at his tender age, for this weekend at least, Buxton was Minnesota’s straw. When he went well—and boy, did he go well when he went well—the Twins won; in the one game when he didn’t have an impact, the Twins lost.

On Friday night he went three for five with two bunt singles and two RBIs. In the third inning after Joe Mauer and Brian Dozier pulled off a hit-and-run to send Dozier to third he bunted safely to third to score Dozier on the safety squeeze. In the fifth inning, following a leadoff double by Mauer, he bunted him to third, but ran that into a base hit as well, and immediately stole second. In the ninth inning, with one out and Chris Gimenez on third after a double and Mauer (again) on first with a single, Buxton took the more conventional route of a line single to left that scored Gimenez for the Twins’ last run in a 6-1 win over Toronto. Incidentally, when you have Joe Mauer getting three base hits hitting second right ahead of Buxton comin of of the three-hole, you’re looking at lots of scoring opportunities. I mean a lot.

And what was all that horse manure about Mauer being washed up a couple of years ago, with injuries and all? Don’t see it now: he’s hitting like a member of Mike Trout’s graduating class, not like the fragile 34-year-old he’s supposed to be: .303 in 436 at bats this year. Are you kidding me??

But to get back to Byron Buxton, his three hits were just his contribution at the plate. In the eighth inning he robbed Rob Refsnyder with a running, leaping grab of a ball that was over his head in right centre. The catch saved two sure runs. Miguel Montero had led off with a walk, followed by Kevin Pillar hitting a hard liner right at the right fielder Max Kepler. Nori Aoki hit into a fielder’s choice for the second out, replacing Montero’s lack of speed with Aoki’s quickness. Ryan Goins lined a single to left, against the left-handed Taylor Rogers, we should note, sending Aoki to second and bringing Refsnyder to the plate. If Refsnyder’s ball clears Buxton’s glove, with two outs both runners easily score, and the game is suddenly five-three, and Refsnyder has at least a double, with the top of the order coming up.

Let’s be clear, though. As much as Buxton stood out, those “random guys in Twins’ uniforms” that I referred to in my headline contributed a great deal to what was essentially a walkover, even if the score was only 6-1. The moment when you thought Refsnyder’s drive might reach the wall was the only moment that the Jays were ever in this game after the Twins’ three-run start in the third.

For one thing, as maddening as it was to watch, they never solved Bartolo Colon, the elderly humpty-dumpty who wasn’t good enough for the lowly Atlanta Braves, but now finds himself smack dab in the middle of a pennant race. His pitching line speaks for itself, six and two thirds innings, nine hits and a walk but only one run, and no strikeouts. Everything you need to know about Bartolo Colon on this night and maybe about his whole career is encapsulated in this single image: Colon standing off the mound waiting for play to be called again after some delay or other, tossing the ball up in the air and catching it with his meat hand, like some ten-year-old kid on the playground, waiting for someone else to come along and have a catch. You can see that he finds it immensely amusing at his age and condition that he can still get major league hitters out.

For another thing, in the words of my summary of the game notes for this night, the game represented a “clinical dissection” of Toronto by a Twins’ team still very much in the hunt despite the absence of such salwarts as Miguel Sano, Robbie Grossman, and number one catcher Jason Castro.

The Twins were relentless in putting pressure on Toronto. They put their leadoff hitter on in seven of nine innings, three times with extra-base hits. Even in the first two innings, when Jay Happ managed to keep them off the board, they had leadoff singles, and in both cases the runner ended up in scoring position before the inning ended.

Ironically, in the third inning when they opened the scoring, Chris Gimenez led off by flying out to centre. But then Dozier walked, starting the sequence that resulted in Buxton plating him with his first bunt single. But then Jorge Polanco came through with a two-out drive to the gap in left centre that scored both Joe Mauer and Buxton from first. (Did I mention that Buxton can fly, as well as hit and field?)

Justin Smoak had doubled off Colon with two outs in the first. When he hit a two-out solo homer in the bottom of the third, it might have looked this could still be a ball game, but as it turned out, Smoak was the only Blue Jay able to solve Colon; the other seven hits he allowed were scattered singles.

In any case, the two-run differential only lasted two batters into the Twins’ fourth; these guys just don’t like to let their opponents off the mat. Mitch Garver hit a ball off the wall in centre that took a bad hop and eluded the fielders, allowing him to reach third, and he was immediately plated by a sacrifice fly off the bat of Max Kepler, making it 4-1.

in the fifth Mauer led off with a double and was bunted to third by Buxton as mentioned on a sacrifice attempt that turned into a base hit, and then he scored on a sacrifice fly by Eduardo Escobar, and it was 5-1.

it wasn’t like they were clobbering Jay Happ. The only decisive blow with runners in scoring position was the Polanco double in the third. For the rest, it was just chipping away, while Colon befuddled and annoyed the Toronto hitters until it was too late to mount a comeback. Rather, in the immortal words of the Randy Bachmann anthem, the Twins were just “taking care of business”.

Except for that one dicey moment in the eighth, cut off by Buxton’s acrobatics in centre, the Jays were never really in this one, and the top-off run by Minnesota in the top of the ninth, driven in by Mr. Buxton, was one last stake in the hearts of the Blue Jays.

Looking forward to Saturday afternoon’s game two of the series, the prescription was clear for Toronto: neutralize Byron Buxton, get the bats going against the Twins, and keep Minnesota’s leadoff hitters off the freakin’ bases.

So, how did we do Saturday afternoon compared to my “keys to victory”? Well, Buxton went oh fer three, we got ten runs, Minnesota put only two leadoff batters on base the whole game, and Marco Estrada pitched six innings for the win.

So why were my nails down to the bloody* cuticles by the time Roberto Osuna finally nailed down the save?

*Not swearing here, just being descriptive!

Because this Minnesota team is relentless. Marco Estrada avoided his first inning funk this time out, and after four innings he’d given up only a walk and a base hit, facing only two over the minimum.

Meanwhile, Toronto was facing Dillon Gee, who’d been somewhat of a fixture in the Mets’ rotation for a number of years until he ran into injury problems, spent 2016 in the Royals’ bullpen, and been signed and released (twice) by the Rangers this spring, eventually signing with Minnesota and going to their Triple A team. Today was his second start with the Twins after being called up to the big team; he’d gone six strong innings and recorded the win against the White Sox in his first start.

Toronto picked up a run off Gee in the second when Kendrys Morales hit a leadoff home run to right centre, and another one in the third, the only time before the fifth that Gee allowed more than one baserunner, and he did a good job of getting out of it after filling the bases with nobody out. Raffie Lopez and Zeke Carrera singled to right. Josh Donaldson surprised everyone so much laying down a sacrifice bunt that he was easily across first to load the bases. Then Gee fanned Justin Smoak, gave up a sacrifice fly to Jose Bautista, and popped up Morales to the shortstop to end the inning.

Down 2-0 and not doing much so far against Estrada, the Twins tied it up in the fifth on a two-out, two-run shot to right field by Eduardo Escobar which scored Kennys Vargas, who had led off the inning with a drive off the right-field wall that Bautista played skillfully to hold him to a single.

Two batters in to the top of the fifth showed that Gee had overstayed his welcome. Zeke Carrera led off with his second hit in three appearances against Gee, an infield single to third, and Donaldson, continuing his August tear, followed with his twenty-third homer of the season. This restored Toronto’s two-run lead, and Jays’ fan favourite and Twins’ manager Paul Molitor decided that at 74 pitches he’d seen enough from Gee and went to his bullpen.

The only false note played by the Twins this whole weekend series was the failure of the Minnesota bullpen to retire Toronto in this fifth inning.

Tyler Duffey was charged with four additional runs on three hits and a walk, and though Ryan Pressly technically didn’t give up a run in getting the last two outs, he gave up a two-out single to Lopez, his second of the game, that drove in the last two baserunners left by Duffey.

Duffey’s tenure, starting with a do-over of nobody on and nobody out after Donaldson’s home run, started innocently enough with a walk to Smoak. Bautista followed with a bloop single to left centre. Morales ripped a rope of a single through the shift into right, but with Smoak leading the way the Jays had to play one base at a time. With the bases loaded Kevin Pillar singled to left to finally bring in Smoak and move everybody up one. Ryan Goins had maybe the key at-bat of the inning. With nobody out and the bases loaded he tied into one and hit it to Buxton in the deepest part of the park, not only driving in Bautista but allowing Morales to move up to third, and Pillar to second.

Molitor brought in Ryan Pressly to face Rob Refsnyder, now with runners at second and third and one out. He retired Refsnyder on a grounder to second while the runners held with the infield in, but then Lopez came through with his clutch base hit, bumping the Toronto count for the inning to six runs, and their lead to 8-2.

Maybe suffering the effects of the very long bottom of the fifth, Estrada came out for what would be his last inning and gave up a single to Joe Mauer, who had another three-hit game. Jorge Polanco followed with a double to right, and the Twins held Mauer at third. Eddie Rosario immediately cashed in Mauer with a sacrific fly to Carrera in left. Estrada then struck out the quiescent Buxton and retired Max Kepler on a fly ball to centre.

Danny Barnes for Toronto and the combination of Pressly and Glen Perkins kept their opponents off the board in the seventh, and Toronto cruised into the Minnesota eighth enjoying its 8-3 lead, with Tim Mayza coming on to pitch for the Blue Jays.

But, like I said, these Twins are relentless.

With one out, Mauer (third hit) doubled to left centre. Mayza got the second out, punching out Jorge Polanco, but then Eddie Rosario singled to right, Mauer stopping at third again. Manager John Gibbons, taking no chances, decided to bring in Ryan Tepera to face Buxton.

Nope, it wasn’t Buxton’s night to kill us, but he did take one for the team: Tepera hit him with a pitch, loading the bases and bringing Max Kepler, possibly the most dangerous .248 hitter ever born in Berlin (Germany, that is) to the plate. Tepera, who has been so good for so long this year, made a huge mistake, leaving a 2-2 cutter right in the power zone, and Kepler pulled it out of the park for a grand slam, closing the score to 8-7. Kenny Vargas grounded out to end the inning, and the nail-biting started.

Things looked better—a lot better—after the bottom of the eighth, when Toronto picked up two more runs to restore a bit of a cushion against the Twins. Minnesota brought in John Curtiss, a young right-hander who’d made his major league debut on Friday night, rather embarrassingly having been brought in to mop up in the ninth against the already dissected Blue Jays.

Friday night he’d dismissed the Jays in order on thirteen pitches, but on Saturday not so much. He wasn’t helped by his catcher Mitch Garver, who threw the ball away when Zeke Carrera tried to steal second after a leadoff walk. So Curtiss had a runner on third with nobody out, right off the bat.

The rest was all on Curtiss, though. Donaldson doubled down the line in right, scoring Carrera. Smoak grounded out to the first baseman, moving Donaldson to third with one out. Then Curtiss wild-pitched him home with the second run of the inning, making it 10-7 Toronto. Then he walked Bautista, and that was enough for Paul Molitor, who brought in Trevor Hildenberger, a sharp-looking right-hander with a good mix of pitches, who put out the fire by fanning Morales and Pillar.

On came Roberto Osuna for the save. Cue the bated breath.* The trouble started immediately with the improbably-named Zack Granite hitting for catcher Mitch Garver. Granite golfed a pitch at his feet he never should have swung at and looped it into right field for a base hit.

*Anyone who thinks I mis-spelled “baited” can save your own breath. The phrase means that the person is holding his/her breath, and comes from “abated breath”, with the “a” poetically dropped to create alliteration. It was first used by Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice, when Shylock, asked to lend money to Antonio after Antonio has abused him for being a Jew, chides Antonio, asking if, after the way Antonio has treated him, he should wait with “bated breath” to be asked for a loan. See what kinds of things you can learn here?

Back to the game, there came a moment of pure shock that left runners on second and third with nobody out, without a trace of blame accruing to Osuna. Eduardo Escobar hit a sharp grounder to the almost perfect-fielding Justin Smoak. He was two feet off the bag, and it was absolutely a 3-6-3 double-play ball. Somehow, probably, he was anticipating the play, the ball went right through the wickets and down the line for a two-base error, with Granite going to third.

Knowing the Twins, you know both runners scored. Brian Dozier singled home Granite, with Escobar checking in at third. Then came the break Osuna and the Blue Jays needed. Joe Mauer grounded into a double play, scoring Escobar but clearing the bases with two outs. Jorge Polanco grounded out to short and that was the ball game, 10-9 for the Jays.

Just in time to save my poor cuticles from further damage.

And when have you ever seen a game end up 10-9 yet both the winning pitcher and the losing pitcher were the starters? Must turn this over to Jerry Howarth for further research.

Well, it was obvious what Paul Molitor had to do for game three of the series: get Byron Buxton back in gear, of course. That’s exactly what he did, and boy, did it ever work!

This was Joe Biagini’s first start since returning to Toronto from Buffalo, where he’d been sent at the beginning of August to stretch back out as a starter, and specifically to become comfortable again pitching from a full windup. It was hard to know what to expect from him, since this whole project is somewhat of a work in progress.

As it turned out, he was lucky to get out of the first inning alive and down only 1-0. After leadoff man Brian Dozier grounded out, that old guy Joe Mauer (clear evidence that he’s slowing down: he only went two for five in this one) casually flicked a hit to left opposite the shift. Jorge Polanco, hitting third behind Mauer, doubled him to third. Toronto pulled the infield in, and it paid off: Eddie Rosario hit one to Ryan Goins at short and he threw home to retire Mauer on a tag play, with Polanco holding at second.

Maybe Biagini would work his way out of it, with two out and men on first and second. But Buxton was hitting fifth today, so he stood between Biagini and the dugout. It didn’t happen, of course, because Buxton was on his game today; he singled to centre to score Polanco and the Twins were on the board.

Eddie Rosario amost ran himself out of the inning on the play. Zeke Carrera fired to third to hold Rosario at second, but the runner had rounded the bag too far. Josh Donaldson had a shot at him going back into second, but the ball bounced away from Darwin Barney for an error on Donaldson, and Rosario ended up at third.

There was a spot more trouble for Biagini: he walked Max Kepler while Buxton stole second on him. This loaded the bases for Kenny Vargas, who fanned on curve balls to end the inning. It seemed like a lot longer than twenty pitches, and you knew that Joe Biagini wasn’t about to go six, let alone seven, innings today.

Kyle Gibson is a lanky right-hander who’s been an end-of-the-rotation fixture for Minnesota since 2014. He was on the hill for the Twins. Like his career numbers, 39-48 with an ERA of 4.73, his record for 2017, 7-10 and 5.76, reflects the journeyman nature of his career with Minnesota. He started a good deal quicker than Biagini, though, retiring Toronto on twelve pitches despite giving up a leadoff single to Carrera.

The second inning represented a reversal of the first, as Biagini retired the side while stranding a base hit by catcher Chris Gimenez. Then, the Jays made Gibson work a little harder and tied it up in the process, taking advantage of the only misplay by Buxton the whole weekend, and then loading the bases before Gibson induced a double play ball that prevented further damage.

With one out, Miguel Montero hit a liner to centre that took a turf bounce over Buxton’s head, and then came off the wall with backspin on it so that he couldn’t get a handle on it, while Montero chugged into second with a double. Nori Aoki lined a base hit into centre to score Montero and tie the score. Ryan Goins moved Aoki up to second with a ground single up the middle. Darwin Barney hit a grounder to second that went for a fielder’s choice, but the shortstop Polanco fumbled the catch for an error and everyone was safe, to load the bases for Carrera. This may have been the high point, and the key moment, of the game, Carrera having a chance to break it open with only one out. But he grounded into a double play to end the inning.

It wasn’t obvious yet, but the moment Carrera’s out was recorded at first and we moved on to the Twins’ third, the momentum shifted to the Twins, and it would never shift back.

In the third Biagini found himself right back in the deep end, though once again he seemed to have been rescued by an out at the plate, and then once again the Twins came on to score after the play at the plate. This time it took 32 pitches, the Twins ended up with a two-run lead, and not only Biagini but the Blue Jays were pretty well toast, and it would only remain for Byron Buxton to spread on the peanut butter and jam.

The Twins started with a spot of luck. Jorge Polanco hit a blooper to centre; Zeke Carrera dove for it, but it ticked off his glove and got away from him as Polanco reached second. Then Nori Aoki hustled to get a quick throw off on a single by Eddie Rosario, and held Polanco to third. Then Buxton, not contributing this time, hit a grounder to third. The Twins had the contact play on, and Polanco was out in a rundown. This helped, but not much, as Rosario and Buxton ended up at second and third. Biagini walked Max Kepler to load the bases for Kennys Vargas, who singled to left to knock in two runs.

Biagini was able to hold the damage to the two runs, but only after he fanned Escobar, walked Gimenez to reload the bases, and fanned Brian Dozier to strand the bases loaded. But at 72 pitches, what was left of Biagini, even if he still could throw strikeouts?

With the score 3-1, you could take the progress of Friday night’s game for a template; Gibson kept the Jays off the board in the bottom of the third, Buxton’s turn came around again in the fourth in time for him to hit the first of his three homers, which chased home Joe Mauer, on third with a triple, and chased Biagini from the game, even though he’d gotten two ground-ball outs after Mauer’s leadoff triple, which was actually a single that bounced over Aoki’s head and went to the wall. It was now 5-1, and the only hope was for Toronto to start doing some damage against Gibson.

They got one back in the bottom of the fourth from a surprising source. After Montero flew out to centre, Aoki drilled one to right for his fifth homer of the season to make it 5-2. Gibson must have been a little annoyed at serving up a gopher ball to Aoki (shoudn’t have been: Aoki swings hard when he gets one he likes, and the ball really jumps off his bat). Gibson hunkered down and fanned Goins and Barney to end the inning.

The fifth and sixth innings went by scoreless, the score holding at 5-2. Aaron Loup who’d finished the fourth inning for Biagini struck out the side in the fifth, giving him four in a row after he’d fanned Kepler to finish the fourth. Matt Dermody finished off a clean sixth by fanning Polanco with a big, beautiful sweeping curve ball.

Meanwhile, Gibson retired six in a row, eight in total after the Aoki homer, through the fifth and sixth, ending with fanning both Morales and Montero.

Dermody stayed on for the seventh for the Jays, which gave him the distinct pleasure of giving up Buxton’s second homer of the game. Too bad the homer spoiled his work. Having struck out Rosario in the sixth, he struck out the side in the seventh after the Buxton home run, only giving up a two-out base hit to Escobar, and that on the tenth pitch of a tough battle.

It’s interesting to note Toronto logged three and a third innings out of the bullpen to this point, giving up one run and two hits while striking out eight of ten batters, using two left-handed relievers. I’m not sure if a Toronto bullpen has ever been able to pull off something like this.

It wasn’t enough, though, to make up for the Twins’ built-up lead, that reached its final form in the top of the ninth when you-know-who—initials, BB—jacked his third home run of the game to left as the leadoff batter against Tim Mayza, another left-hander, who took over from Dominic Leone, who’d pitched the eighth. Besides being his third homer, it was his fourth hit and his fifth RBI. He never got to six geese a-laying, though.

After the Buxton shot, Mayza in turn struck out the side. In all, quite amazingly, Toronto pitchers struck out 17 batters in a game that the team lost 7-2. Too bad all that hurling firepower was wasted on an anemic offensive effort, not to mention the scratchy aggressiveness of the Twins’ offense.

So, as I said from the start, Toronto won one game in the series, Byron Buxton won two, and the Twins rode out of town still well in the mix for a Wild Card spot, while the Jays slunk home for the night to lick their wounds and think about the season that might have been while waiting for the high-flying Boston Red Sox to arrive Monday for another three-game set in the TV Dome.

One of the great things about baseball is that you can have exciting, tense games in a wonderful old park like Wrigley Field, and you can have tense, exciting games in a clangy, tin-can abomination like the Orange Juice Dome in Tampa Bay.

One of the lousy things about baseball is your team can be competitive in tense, exciting games no matter the venue, yet lose almost all of them, as in the sweep of the Blue Jays by the Cubs in Chicago last weekend being followed by a two out of three loss to the Rays in Florida during the week.

But one of the great things about baseball is that sometimes the play between two teams, teams that have a particular rivalry, can be so sharp, so exciting, that a series can have the atmosphere of the playoffs, even though one team is iffy and the other likely out of playoff contention.

The first game of the series on Tuesday featured a return matchup between the mismatched Chrises, the veteran front-liner Archer for Tampa Bay and the rookie Rowley for Toronto, who had prevailed over Archer five days earlier in Toronto

The game started with a rush and a shock. Nori Aoki, inserted in the leadoff position for the Blue Jays, as he had been the last time they’d faced Archer, laid off a high and outside fast ball on the first pitch of the game, but when Archer threw the same pitch in the strike zone, Aoki whipped that short stroke of his at the ball and drove it hard, out of the park to right centre, for a 1-0 Toronto lead. Archer retired the side after that, with a couple of strikeouts, but what a start.

In return, Rowley hung a 1-1 breaking curve ball right in the wheelhouse of Lucas Duda in the bottom of the first and the game was tied.

After Archer disposed of the Jays on ten pitches in the bottom of the second, just to clarify any lingering nonsense about this being another “pitching duel” here, Tampa piled on Rowley for three more runs. By the end of the inning it was pretty clear that the bloom was off the rose for Chris Rowley, following two effective, if short, starts in a row.

With one out, Corey Dickinson unloaded on Rowley with a line shot that put the Rays in the lead, which they would never relinquish. Two left-handed power hitters, two solo home runs, okay, you can sort of deal with that. But when Wilson Ramos, hitting right, singled, and Brad Miller walked, you had to start crossing your fingers, like, really hard. When Adeiny Hechavarria popped out to short on the infield fly rule you had some hope.

But unlike last week in Toronto, the always-dangerous Kevin Kiermaier, especially against Toronto, was back in the lineup for Tampa. Kiermaier delivered a two-out triple to centre that chased Ramos and Miller home and pushed Archer’s cushion to 4-1.

From this point on, the whole question would be whether the Blue Jays could keep Tampa Bay in their sights until Archer finished up, and whether Toronto could mount a comeback at the end of the game against the Tampa bullpen.

But Toronto took a significant blow, right away in the top of the third. After Kevin Pillar grounded out to short for the first out, he was trotting behind the plate back to the dugout; without turning his head or stopping, he said something—he later claimed that all he said was that the first pitch to him had been “terrible”—and plate umpire Chad Fairchild immediately ejected him, gesturing at Pillar’s retreating figure. Pillar was in disbelief; it was his first ever ejection in the majors. When the Jays came out for the bottom of the third, Zeke Carrera was assigned to patrol centre in Pillar’s stead.

The lead held through the fourth inning, but when it was over so was Rowley’s night. Archer retired the Jays in order with two strikeouts. Then Rowley gave up a deep fly ball to centre to Wilson Ramos, and walked Brad Miller on four pitches before giving up a bloop single to centre to Adeiny Hechavarria.

That was enough for manager John Gibbons, who came out with the same hasty hook he used on Nick Tepesch the other day in Chicago to pull Rowley at almost the same point, 3.1 innings pitched, 4 runs, 4 hits, 3 walks, 4 strikeouts but only 62 pitches. Gibbie wanted the favourable matchup of bringing lefty Matt Dermody in to match up with Kevin Kiermaier, who had already tripled off Rowley for two runs in the second inning.

The strategy worked. Kiermaier hit a fly ball to left on which Miller was able to advance to third, but Duda lined out to Justin Smoak at first for the third out.

Toronto rallied in the top of the fifth to cut the Tampa lead to one on Archer. The little rising featured a clutch hit by Ryan Goins, and a sacrifice fly, this time by Nori Aoki, another occasion when the “little guys” have been able to step into the gap created by the middle-of-the-order power outage that continues.

It started with one out, just like the Cubs’ Sunday extra-inning playbook: Archer fanned Miguel Montero on a wild pitch that enabled Montero to reach first. Zeke Carrera hit a liner to left that Steven Souza took an ill-advised dive on, and missed. Carrera ended up with a double, Montero moving to third. Then Ryan Goins hit a solid base hit up the middle to score Montero, but Kiermaier charged it really well, and Carrera had to stop at third after making sure the ball went through. He was able to show his speed though when he and coach Luis Rivera challenged Corey Dickinson’s suspect arm to score on a shallow sacrifice fly by Aoki, who collected his second RBI of the game. Goins moved up to second on the throw, but was stranded there when Josh Donaldson was rather irately caught looking.

This was a game of day late and a dollar short for our guys.

Again like the Cubs, Tampa manufactured a run in the bottom of the fifth by means of one decent hit, a ball hit to the left-centre alley by Longoria that looked like it had bounced out and back in. It was bobbled in centre by Carrera, who had replaced the ejected Pillar. This allowed Longoria to get to third, where he remained after the video review confirmed that the ball was live when it bounced back. A cheap infield hit to Bautista at third by Ramos scored him, after he had held while Logan Morrison and Corey Dickinson made outs, and Steven Souza received an intentional walk. Gibbie replaced Dermody with Dom Leone, who gave up the bouncer to Ramos, and then brought the inning to an end by getting Brad Miller to fly out to left.

Archer walked Bautista in the sixth but fanned Smoak and Morales and got Pearce to sky out to left. The Tampa hitters came back and added another insurance run in the bottom of the sixth, restoring their original three-run lead. Day late, dollar short.

Leone gave up singles to Hechavarria and Kiermaier, but Duda hit a line drive right to Smoak at the bag at first for an easy double play. But with two outs and Hechavarria still on, it was Longoria who delivered again, a triple to left centre that scored Hechavarria. Tim Mayza came in and got Logan Morrison to fly out to left; it was now 6-3, and up to the Rays’ bullpen to protect the lead for Archer, who was finished at six innings and 104 pitches, but another ten strikeouts against Toronto.

After the sixth the Jays’ bullpen was more effective than the Rays’. Mayza carried on in the seventh and gave up two singles, one of them a Tampa Dome roof special, a popup lost by Barney just beyond second, but escaped without a blemish, and T.J. House made his Blue Jays’ debut with a very quick nine-pitch eighth.

Meanwhile, the Rays’ new lefty Dan Jennings threw a clean seventh inning, but Tommy Hunter gave up a solo homer to Donaldson in the eighth, inching Toronto closer at 6-4 as we headed for the ninth inning.

Alex Colome, the Tampa closer, took the mound for the save, and he got it, but it wasn’t easy. In fact, it was knee-knocking time for both teams.

Kendrys Morales led off with a single to centre. It might not have been a decisive move, but John Gibbons, who still had Rob Refsnyder on the bench, didn’t run for the DH, so when Steve Pearce followed with a double to left centre Morales only checked in at third. Montero plated Morales with a sacrifice fly to centre, and Pearce advanced to third on the catch and throw. Now Refsnyder appeared, to run for Pearce.

Maybe this decision didn’t matter, but it might have if Pearce had hit the ball on the ground, instead of going for extra bases. Also, with nobody out, a run in and the tying run on second, maybe Colome pitches Montero differently, or Montero takes a different approach.

This brought Barney to the plate, who had hit for Carrera against the left-hander in the seventh. Barney grounded out to second with the runner holding at third. But consider yet another consequence of Pillar receiving the ridiculously quick hook in the third: Barney was in Pillar’s spot in the order, and that could have been Pillar at the plate with the tying run on third and one out. No guarantees, of course, but you never know. Goins ended the suspense by hitting the ball smartly, but right to Souza in right to end the game.

It was close all right, that close: the tying run on third with one out in the ninth. But Toronto couldn’t bring him home, and that was the ball game.

It was a chastened and determined lot of Blue Jays who turned out on Wednesday night for game two of the Tin Can Series in Tampa Bay, now having lost four in a row on the road, at a time when every game had to be won, or there would be no further point to the season, save for playing the role of spoiler.

The Jays’ hitters came out loaded for bear in the middle game of the series, and it would have been a tough go no matter who the starting pitcher was. The lot for Tampa Bay fell to Austin Pruitt, a rookie who has been up and down in the minors this year, though mostly up, and has appeared in relief against Toronto three times this year, two of which were quite effective. He came into the game with a positive win/loss record of 6-4, but a tellingly high ERA of 5.37.

It was Pruitt’s twenty-fifth appearance and eighth start for the Rays, and he did not get off on the right foot; Steave Pearce whacked a 1-2 fast ball up and out over the plate for an opposite-field double to start the game. Josh Donaldson followed by golfing a 2-2 fast ball on the outside corner over the fence in left centre, and the Jays were on the board. After getting Justin Smoak to fly out to centre field and fanning Jose Bautista, Kendrys Morales hit a shot to left that came off the wall so hard that he only got a single out of it, but Kevin Pillar flew out to right to end the inning.

After Marcus Stroman disposed of the Rays on twelve pitches—groundout, strikeout, fly ball—Toronto went back to work with the lumber. Ryan Goins led off by falling into a count that he likes, 1-2 that is, and then got a pitch to his liking, even if it was up in his eyes, and pulled it over the right-field fence. 3-0 Jays. Darwin Barney

flew out to Kevin Kiermaier in centre. Raffie Lopez clobbered a pitch on the outside corner into the left-field seats. 4-0 Jays. Steve Pearce back-to-backed with Lopez with a long drive down the left-field line. 5-0 Jays.

So, end of Pruitt? Not quite yet. End of Rays for tonight? No, sir. End of Toronto’s long-range artillery attack? Not quite.

Despite the crazy start, crazy-good if you’re a Toronto fan, crazy-bad if you’re a Tampa fan, this game ended up being as close and exciting as the first game of the series, thanks to the fact that the Rays battled back and treated Marcus Stroman with considerable disrespect.

Oh, Stroman still had it in the second, getting Steven Souza to ground into a double play erasing a leadoff walk to Logan Morrison.

But after Pruitt pitched a 1-2-3 third, thanks to a brilliant play by Adeiny Hechavarria at short, who went into the hole to flag down a shot by Kevin Pillar that was past him for the third out, the Tampa comeback started in the bottom of the third when with two outs Kiermaier hit a blast to centre that scored catcher Wilson Ramos, on base with another blankety-blank infield hit to third, ahead of him to make it 5-2 Toronto.

Pruitt’s start came to an end in the fourth inning with two outs and Darwin Barney on first with a single; manager Kevin Cash brought in Chase Whitley to face Steve Pearce. After wild-pitching Barney to second, Whitley retired Pearce on a hard liner to right. Cash seemed to be taking a page out of John Gibbon’s playbook with the rather abrupt removal of his starter at that precise point. It seems that the monitoring of how many times the order has been faced has become a major factor for managers. Of course, Pearce was two for two with six total bases against Pruitt, so that might have had a little to do with it as well. Ya think?

Stroman quickly got two outs in the bottom of the fourth before the Tampa hitters started measuring him again. Steven Souza got every bit of a hanging 0-1 curve ball and hammered it out to left, followed by singles to right by Corey Dickinson and Ramos, who actually reached the outfield this time. Brad Miller closed out the inning with a short fly to left, but the Rays had inched a little closer.

The bombs continued to fly in the fifth inning as the teams traded solo homers, Justin Smoak to centre for Toronto and Kiermaier’s second, the wrong way to left for Tampa, so the two-run difference still stood. Whitley needed some help from Hechavarria after the Smoak homer to get out of the inning. Kendrys Morales had followed Smoak with a base hit into the teeth of the shift. Kevin Pillar followed with a grounder that deflected off Longoria’s glove and took a late, high bounce. Hechavarria leapt for it, came down with his momentum taking him backward away from second, and still managed a one-hop throw to force the chugging Morales for the third out.

No one seems to comment on this any more (maybe Jerry Howarth on the radio?) but it used to be proverbial that a player who made a great play in the field would be first up to bat next inning. It just always seemed to happen, and still does, but hardly anyone notices. So Hechavarria led off the bottom of the fifth for Tampa, but, sadly for him, struck out on a checked swing. Kiermaier’s homer to left followed, which cut the Toronto lead to 6-4.

The Jays wasted a chance to extend their lead in the sixth when they got two runners on with one out, but Kevin Cash pulled Whitley and brought in Andrew Kittredge, who got a fielder’s choice and a strikeout to strand the base runners.

The Rays cut the lead to one in the bottom of the sixth, and got Stroman out of the game in the bargain. With one out he gave up an infield hit to Souza and a single to centre by Dickerson, and that was it for this night. At five and a third innings, five runs and eight hits, it was his least effective performance since a start in Oakland on July twentieth-seventh when he went four and two thirds and gave up three runs on six hits. Danny Barnes got the second out with a popup, but gave up an opposite-field hit to Brad Miller that scored Souza and cut the Toronto lead to one.

Kittredge maneuvered a quick top of the seventh, giving up a one-out single to Jose Bautista, but then throwing a double-play ball to Kendrys Morales. The Rays came back at Barnes in their half of the inning, taking advantage of a leadoff walk to Kiermaier by Barnes, a stolen base, a throwing error by catcher Raffie Lopez, all with nobody out, to set up the tying run, with Evan Longoria cashing Kiermaier on an infield single to short off Ryan Tepera, who’d relieved Barnes after he failed to retire a batter. Tepera in turn was lucky to get out of the inning, walking Dickerson with two outs to load the bases before getting Wilson Ramos to ground out to third.

With the game tied and both starters now off the record, Tommy Hunter took the mound to try to maintain the tie until the Rays could scratch out another run or two. Well, that only lasted until Hunter’s sixth pitch to Kevin Pillar, who attacked another hanging curve with abandon and broke Toronto’s three-inning homer with a blast to left that put the Jays up by one. How’s this for an odd offensive night for Toronto: they scored seven runs on six home runs, five solo jobs and Josh Donaldson’s two-run shot in the first.

Aaron Loup and Roberto Osuna finally were able to stop the bleeding against Tampa, shutting them down in the eighth and ninth to protect the one-run lead. Loup got the first two outs in the eighth, then gave up an opposite field hit to Kiermaier, who just never gives up, does he? John Gibbons made the unusual move to bring in Roberto Osuna in the eighth to try for a four-out save. He got the first one, a groundout to first by Cesar Puello, hitting for Duda, on two pitches.

No chance for Toronto to add an insurance run in the top of the ninth as Steve Cishek came in and retired the side on 14 pitches with two strikeouts. Unfortunately for the Rays Osuna was even more efficient than Cishek. He retired Longoria on a fly ball to centre on the first pitch, caught Logan Morrison looking, which didn’t make Morrison too happy with the plate umpire, Lance Barrett, and then Steven Souza who grounded out to shortstop. So Osuna closed out the four-out save on only 15 pitches, for save number 33 in 41 opportunities.

Did I say the games in this series were close? I also said that the Jays were a day late and a dollar short Tuesday night. Wednesday night the situation was reversed, and it was the Rays who were a day late and a dollar short, not to mention a little shell-shocked by the long artillery Toronto arrayed against them.

As much as I hated the simplistic, Reagan-era crypto-fascism of Forrest Gump, there’s still something useful and true about the movie’s sappy tag line about life being like a box of chocolates, at least when you apply it to baseball. One night a team will hit six home runs, the next night it can’t scratch a run across the plate to save its skin.

And so it was Thursday night when the Jays and the Rays met up for the third and deciding game of the Tin Can Series in Tampa Bay. After all of Wednesday night’s thunder, the Jays’ hitters were able to score absolutely zero runs against a Tampa starter on a short leash and the four relievers who followed him to the mound. So when the Rays squeezed out a run in the second and Corey Dickerson hit a solo home run in the eighth, it was one more than Tampa needed to take the deciding game of the series by a 2-0 score, leaving Toronto limping home with a 1-5 record on the road trip to Chicago and Tampa Bay, and pretty much holding an empty bag of chances for the second Wild Card spot in the playoffs.

There was no way of predicting what the pitching matchup would be like. For the second time in the last two seasons Toronto would be facing Alex Cobb in his first appearance after having been on the disabled list. As I recall it, things did not go well for the Blue Jays the first time we danced this dance, last September when Cobb was making, finally, his first start of 2016.

On the other hand, facing the Rays would be the latest in what seems like an unending string of rotational fill-ins for Toronto, thirty-one-year old Tom Koehler, who spent his entire previous career with the Miami Marlins, which for the Toronto fan is akin to having spent his whole career in Siberia, only warmer.

When you dig into it a little bit, the Koehler story is interesting. Despite the fact that I’d never heard of him, turns out he had 33 starts for Miami last year, highest on the team, and went 9-13 with a 4.33 ERA, not bad for a team that went 79-82. Also turns out it was his third season with more than 30 starts for Miami. He fell from grace with the Marlins this year, though, compiling a 1-5 record and a 7.92 ERA in 12 starts. In fact, he fell so far from grace with Miami that they were willing to trade him to Toronto on August nineteenth for a minor league pitcher, Osman Guttierez, who at the time of the trade was sporting a 4-ll record and a 7.85 ERA with the Lansing Lugnuts in high A ball, in his fifth season with the team. Oh, and Miami was so eager to dump Koehler that they sent some cash to Toronto, to help cover off his 5.75 million dollar 2017 salary. Baseball’s a strange business, eh?

The Jays basically acquired him for the rotation at Buffalo and for added depth, but as we’ve seen this year, if you’re starting at Buffalo you’re only a heart beat away . . .

Funny thing is, Cobb pitched a shutout for four and a third innings against the Jays Thursday night, but reached a pitch count of 94, probably way more than enough for his first time back. Meanwhile, Koehler, mixing mid-nineties velocity with a variety of breaking balls, certainly pitched well enough for a win, though he took the loss. He went five full innings, giving up one run on four hits and three walks and two hit batters while striking out seven on 98 pitches.

The one run came in the second, when Tampa scored after loading the bases on a base hit, one of the three walks, and the first hit batter, and it resulted from a sacrifice fly off the bat of second baseman Daniel Robertson.

Koehler allowed a single base runner in each of the first, third, and fourth innings, and escaped another bases-loaded jam unscathed in his last inning, the fifth, resulting from a leadoff double, a walk, and the second hit batter. So it was not like he came in and blew the Rays away, but he did come in and pitch like a veteran, somebody who knows how to work his way around the odd baserunner or three. Like Jack Morris always said, bend, don’t break.

In the meantime, there must have been some skullduggery on the part of the home team before the game. It seemed like the good Toronto bats had all been replaced with the Tupperware variety.

Steve Pearce got a hit in the first. Darwin Barney and Pearce again got one-out hits in the third and moved up when Cobb threw a wild pitch, but then caught Josh Donaldson looking and got Justin Smoak to ground out to second.

In the fifth Steve Cishek took over from Cobb with one out and Miguel Montero on second after a walk and Ryan Goins on first with a single. It was at this point, regardless of the Tampa pitchers throwing a shutout, that this game became the Kevin Kiermaier show. First, with Cishek in, one out, and the two runners on, Pearce, already two for two, pole-axed one to right centre field that would have easily scored both runners, Goins being the trailer.

But Kiermaier, racing across from centre, closed fast on the ball, stretched out his glove hand while still in full stride, and just caught the ball as it was almost past him. Two outs, runners retreat.

But now, as much as Kevin Kiermaier wanted to stay on centre stage, the focus has to change for a moment to Josh Donaldson, third base umpire Lance Barrett, and the video review team in New York, because an overturned call on the field was as much the key to this game as Kiermaier’s heroics.

Donaldson ripped one past Longoria at third and down into the left-field corner. Lance Barrett signalled “fair ball”. Donaldson ended up at second and both runners scampered home for a 2-1 Toronto lead. We thought. But Longoria had immediately told the dugout that the ball was foul and that the Rays should ask for a review. They did, the call was overturned, the runs taken away, and the runners sent back to first and second. Donaldson then drew a walk, but somehow it wasn’t the same.

Now it was Justin Smoak’s turn. He hit a teasing, looping ball over the infield that no infielder would get. With two outs the runners were off, and with the hang time of the hit, again they’d probably both score. But here came Kiermaier, flying in and to his left, reaching and leaving his feet at the same time, and getting his glove under the ball for the third out, just before he hit the turf. He saved the same two runs twice in the inning, while his team was clinging to a 1-0 lead.

A quick note about the “make a great play then lead off” cliché: Kiermaier led off the bottom of the fifth. He flew out to—guess where—centre field, put out by his partner in crime, Kevin Pillar.

Since Kiermaier’s theft of the game narrative brohgt us back to the fifth inning, it’s worth lingering for a minute on Koehler’s last inning of work. After the Kiermaier fly ball, he struck out Lucas Duda, freezing him with a fast ball, down and on the inner half. With two outs, Evan Longoria hit one to right field that went for a double when Jose Bautista took a bad route to the ball, and might have otherwise flagged it down. That ball was hit on Koehler’s eighty-sixth pitch; if it had been caught, Koehler might have had another inning in him.

But as it was, the double was followed by a walk and another hit batter to load the bases before Dickerson lined out to left to end the inning and Koehler’s start, now at 98 pitches.

The score stayed at 1-0 for Tampa through the sixth and seventh. Brad Boxberger held the Jays at bay for an inning and two thirds, giving way for Sergio Romo to get the last out after giving up an infield single to Barney with two outs in the seventh.

Continuing his impressive work, Dominic Leone struck out the side in the seventh inning, and the young call-up lefty Tim Mayza struck out two in the eighth, Duda was the only Tampa hitter to put the ball in play, off Mayza, and he hit a liner toward left that Donaldson, playing at shortstop in the shift, made a great leaping grab on.

Romo stayed on for the eighth and retired the side in the order, bringing Mayza back to the mound to face the left-handed Logan Morrison, whom he fanned, for three strikeouts in four batters. Manager John Gibbons brought Danny Barnes on to face Steven Souza, whom he fanned for seven strikeouts out of eight batters by the Toronto bullpen.

But all good things come to an end. Gibbons left Barnes out there to face the left-handed power of Corey Dickerson, comfortable in the knowledge that Barnes has had really good numbers against lefties. But this time it went awry as Dickerson powdered one over the centre-field fence to make it just that much harder for Toronto to come back in the top of the ninth.

Alex Colomé came on in the ninth looking for his thirty-eighth save in forty-three tries, and was good for it, despite giving up a leadoff single to Kendrys Morales. Kevin Pillar flied out to right, and then the Tampa closer caught Miguel Montero looking and fanned Ryan Goins to finish off the job.

There was a lot of anticipation surrounding Toronto’s first visit since 2005 to the Chicago Cubs for interleague play this weekend. The Blue Jays had just wrung three games out of four from their perennial nemeses the Tampa Bay Rays. They were going to spend a weekend in Chi-Town, one of the best cities on the circuit. There promised to be lots of Jays’ fans in attendance; the series had sold out for individual ticket sales in only thirty minutes, and you could anticipate that it was the Blue Legions of Toronto supporters doing most of the buying.

And, of course, they were going to play the world champion Cubbies on their history-laden home grounds, the fabled Wrigley Field.

Unfortunately, anticipation does not always result in fulfillment. Sure, the Toronto fans were there, in droves. Sure, the weather was spot-on perfect, especially for three straight day games (Friday afternoon games? only at Wrigley!) And sure, the games were close and exciting.

But reality bit: when the first Blue Jays lost their way in the cavernous tunnels between clubhouse and field; when someone jumped up in excitement and clunked his head on the low-slung dugout roof; when Kevin Pillar bravely charged face-first into the ivy in centre field, only to be reminded, not once, but twice, that there really is a brick wall under all that green. And, finally, when the Blue Jays learned to their bitter disappointmen that not only was the ballpark festooned with reminders of the Cubs’ brilliant season in 2016, but that it was also arrayed with clusters and clusters of four-leaf clovers, all working their good-luck magic for the home team.

Having sashayed into Chicago with their hearts light and gay on a Friday morning full of bright possibilities, our heroes slunk out of town on Sunday night with the taste of ashes and bitter defeat in their mouths, and nothing to look forward to except a three-game set with those blankey-blank Rays in their horrendous tin can of a Tampa Bay ball yard cum airplane hangar.

The first game of the series looked like a good matchup, between Jake Arrieta and Jay Happ. Arrieta, though not as dominating this season as in 2016 and earlier, with an ERA running at 3.73, is still the best the Cubs have to offer. The Jays countered with Jay Happ, who has been mostly consistent and reliable since his stint on the disabled list earlier in the year. And, I might add, whose ERA was actually running ten points under that of Arrieta.

And Happ had the best of it in the first inning. Arrieta had started quickly in the top of the first, fouling out Jose Bautista, and flying out Josh Donaldson. But the newly-reliable and steadfast Justin Smoak stroked a double to right, and was brought home when Steve Pearce hit a rare two-out RBI single to right, crossing up the shift and giving Toronto a 1-0 lead before Miguel Montero grounded out to end the inning.

Other than serving them up from the port side, Jay Happ pitched more like Jake Arrieta in the bottom of the first. He struck out the centre fielder Albert Almora on high heat. He struck out All-Star third baseman Kris Bryant with some sharp curve balls. He got first baseman and All-Star Anthony Rizzo to ground out to Ryan Goins behind second in the shift for the third out.

So far, so good.

But after Arrieta quickly disposed of the Jays in order in the second, Happ came back out to face the Cubs; with a sprinkling of fairy dust or something, home team magic happened, and without hardly doing anything impressive, the Cubbies had a 3-1 lead.

Happ walked the leadoff batter, Ben Zobrist, who’s always been right in the thick of it when playing the Blue Jays. Second baseman Ian Happ, a rookie switch-hitting power hitter, and no relation to Jay Happ, was fanned by his namesake, who made him chase a breaking ball.

This brought the catcher, Victor Caratini, another and very newly-arrived rookie and an unknown quantity, to the plate. Caratini quickly made himself known by doubling to right, sending Zobrist to third. Remember this hit. Jason Heyward came up and hit a bouncer to the right side. Zobrist broke from third on contact; Justin Smoak had to range far to his right to flag down the ball. There was no play at the plate, and none at first either, because Happ was slow leaving the mound and never got to first to cover the bag.

Caratini of course moved to third. With runners on the corners, Javi Baez blooped a little popup to short right near the line that only Jose Bautista had a chance on, and he had to pull up, so Caratini scored. Next up was Albert Almora, who hit another bloop, or more accurately a flare, that just sailed over Darwin Barney’s desperately reaching glove. Heyward scored the third run from second, and Baez, running aggressively from first, headed for the plate himself when he saw that Almora had got himself trapped into a rundown between first and second. Ryan Goins was able to abandon the rundown effort and fire to the plate in time to nab Baez for the third out.

So, three runs on four hits: a respectable double, an infield bouncer on which Happ made a mental error, an elusive pop fly down the right-field line, and a little flare over the second baseman. It was the attack of the gnats, but when gnats coordinate their efforts, they can mount quite a campaign. 3-1 for the gnats after two. There had to be a lot of muttering on the Toronto bench after that inning. Bad enough to have to hit against Arrieta: now he was pitching with a fluky lead.

Both teams had chances in the third and fourth innings, but neither was able to break through against the veteran starters. The best chance for either side was in the Toronto fourth when, with two outs and Smoak and Montero on base with singles, Goins hit one deep to centre that was hauled down by the Cub centre-fielder Albert Almora.

Moving ahead to the fifth, Arrieta retired the side in order, but Toronto’s hopes of keeping the score close went out the window when the first three Cubs got base hits in the bottom of the inning to chalk up two more runs, Rizzo’s single to centre scoring Almora, on with a single, and Bryant, who had doubled him to third. It took Jay Happ 29 pitches to finish the inning, taking him to 103, so the Jays would have to go to the bullpen for the sixth, and hope they could make a dint in the armour of Arrieta, who was gathering strength.

The lead held through the sixth and seventh, though a leadoff double by Kevin Pillar, who moved to third when Ryan Goins grounded out to second, and a subsequent walk to Zeke Carrera in the seventh brought Arrieta’s outing to an end, and manager Joe Maddon brought in Carl Edwards to hold Toronto off the board, which he did with the help of another unsuccessful contact play by Toronto. Mutter, mutter . . .

Meanwhile Aaron Loup in the sixth and Tim Mayza in the seventh held off the Cubs, so we entered the eighth with the score still 5-1. It was an eighth inning that raised and then crushed our hopes, all within the space of six outs.

Pedro Strop (pronounced Strope), a hard-throwing veteran right-hander who’s given the Cubs a lot of innings in the last couple of years, came in for the eighth, and just like that his hard pitches were turned into two hard-hit outs, a Donaldson liner to right and a Smoak grounder to second in the shift. Then Steve Pearce found the key: don’t hit it so hard. He dropped a Texas Leaguer into right, followed by a single to centre by Miguel Montero. Still with two outs, mind you, Kevin Pillar doubled home Pearce, Montero stopping at third.

This brought up Mr. Clutch with the runners at second and third and, yes, the two outs. And of course it was a 1-2 count when Ryan Goins singled through the shift to right to knock in both Pillar and Montero, and suddenly it was 5-4 and looking a lot more interesting, even though Goins was stranded at first when Zeke Carrera hit it deep to centre, but it stayed in the park for Almora.

Tim Mayza stayed on to face the Cubs in the bottom of the eighth. The catcher Caratini led off with his third base hit but Jason Heyward erased him with what was initially ruled a double play. But the Cubs asked for a review, and the call at first was overturned. Heyward was on with a fielder’s choice, available to ride home on Baez’ clutch home run to left that for all practical purposes clinched the game for the Cubs.

Leaving aside the question of whether calls on the field should be overturned, it has to affect a pitcher to think he’s thrown a double play ball and then find out that he hasn’t. Not to mention the fact that the lead was 7-4 now, and not 6-4.

There remained one last signature Wrigley moment before the game moved on to the ninth. After the Baez homer, Mayza walked Jon Jay, who was hitting for the pitcher. Manager Gibbons brought Ryan Tepera in to try to finish off the inning. The first batter he faced, Almora, spiked one to dead centre field. Kevin Pillar in his usual fearless style raced back for the wall, reached up, secured the catch, and then smashed face front into the greenery. The ivy gave. The bricks didn’t, and Pillar tried his best not to show how shaken up he was by the collision. Kris Bryant hit an anticlimactic little fly to right to end the inning.

The Cubs’ closer, Toronto’s old friend from his days in the American League with Tampa Bay and Kansas City, Wade Davis, came in to finish things off, and he retired the side in order, but Baez had one more chance to flash his brilliance. With one out and Toronto needing base runners, Jose Bautista pounded a hard grounder between short and third that was a sure base hit, until Baez, on the backhand, flagged it down when it was past him, already into the outfield, and managed to make a strong throw to first for the out.

So the inning of the luck of the Cubbies that produced three runs on just about nothing, was the difference in this first game of Toronto’s Great Wrigley Adventure.

The next afternoon’s matchup was Nick Tepesch and Jose Quintana, and not many people liked our chances in this one, including me.

Quintana, of course, is Chicago’s prized cross-town acquisition from the south side White Sox; he throws from the south side too, and he came to the Cubs with a career record of 180 appearances and 943 strikeouts in just over 1100 innings. Tepesch, on the other hand, had appeared in 47 games and struck out 144 in 238 plus innings. Quintana is expected to make a major contribution to the Cubs’ pennant drive. Tepesh, he was hoping to pitch well enough just to get another start with Toronto.

But you know what? After four innings the score was tied 2-2. Tepesch was gone, mind you, pullled by Manager John Gibbons after three and two thirds, in order to bring Danny Barnes in to finish off a Chicago threat. But when you line up Tepesch’s record for his start with Jose Quintana’s record for the same three and two thirds innings, this is what you get: Tepesch: 2 runs, 5 hits, 3 walks, 3 strikeouts; Quintana: 2 runs, 4 hits, 2 walks, 6 strikeouts. Interesting, no?

The Cubs struck first in the first inning, when Tepesch started with a streak of wildness, walking two and hitting one to load the bases for Anthony Rizzo’s base hit that produced a run before catcher Alex Avila grounded into a double play.

The Jays threatened in the second with runners on second and third with two outs, but ran into the old downer of National League rules with the pitcher hitting. Steve Pearce led off with a double, and then Kris Bryant saved a likely big inning with a great play on a liner by Kevin Pillar. He leapt for the ball, caught it, it popped out of his glove, and he grabbed it with his bare hand for the out. Then on the next batter Bryant turned around and made a bad throw to first allowing Darwin Barney to reach and Pearce to advance to third. Barney stole second while Raffie Lopez struck out.

This brought Rob Refsnyder to the plate, but the inning, and the threat, were already over: Joe Madden ordered Refsnyder walked, so that Quintana could fan Tepesch to end the inning. The Cubs still had the lead.

Ironically, National League ball bit the Cubs in their bear bums in the bottom of the inning. After Jason Heyward reached on still another bloop single to centre Javi Baez struck out, bringing Quintana to the plate. Even with one out, standard NL strategy is to have the pitcher bunt unless he’s a slugger, which Quintana ain’t. But the Chicago pitcher messed up the bunt, popping into a double play started by Tepesch who alertly got it over to first in time to double off Heyward.

After a quiet third inning in which both pitchers stranded a base runner, the Jays took a brief lead in the top of the fourth, as the bottom of the order touched up Quintana for three straight hits. The key to the inning for the Jays was Barney’s ground rule double to left, which moved Kevin Pillar, on with a leadoff single, around to third. Both were driven in by the backup catcher, Raffie Lopez, who moved to second on the throw to the plate, again showing some extra quickness you don’t normally see in a catcher.

Lopez had to hold at second when Refsnyder grounded out to short, and then Quintana fanned Tepesch—the pitcher coming to the plate at a key moment again—and blew away Bautista with high heat to strand Lopez at second.

The Toronto lead lasted only as long as it took for Tepesch to throw his fourth pitch to leadoff hitter Ian Happ in the bottom of the fourth. It disappeared over the fence in left with the homer that Happ deposited there. Tepesch didn’t last the inning, though there was only one more base hit, Alex Avila singling after Happ’s dinger.

Somehow I feel that Tepesch was a bit mistrusted by John Gibbons here. I don’t think any regular rotation member would have been pulled at that point. Here’s the setup: with Avila on first, Heyward hit a ball to Smoak at first, who went to Barney at second for the force on Avila. Barney rushed his throw back to first, conscious of Heyward’s speed, and threw it away, with Heyward advancing to second on the error. With Quintana on deck, Gibbons followed standard National League strategy and walked Baez to bring the pitcher to the plate with one out, keeping in mind that Quintana had already botched one bunt attempt in the second.

This time Quintana succeeded in getting the bunt down, and Tepesch had runners on second and third with two outs and Jon Jay coming to the plate for the third time, after he had walked in the first and been struck out by Tepesch in the third. This was the point when Gibbie hooked Tepesch, bringing in Danny Barnes, replacing one right-handed pitcher with another to face the left-handed Jay, whom Barnes promptly caught looking on a 3-2 fast ball on the inside corner.

One last short comment: with the score tied and Tepesch at 67 pitches, he deserved the right to stay in the game and face Jay, and maybe have a chance to go on and record a win. I’d call Gibbie out as a bit gutless here.

Skip ahead to the bottom of the sixth, after Quintana had retired six in a row and gone to 102 pitches, and Barnes had stayed on to throw a clean fifth for the Jays. Barnes came out for a second full inning in the sixth, and he was burned for the Cubs’ lead run by another typical example of Chicago “offence” if you want to call it that:

Barnes walked the leadoff batter, Happ, leadoff walks being catnip to these Cubbies. Avila grounded out to first, moving Happ to second. Heyward fanned, freeing Happ to take off on the crack of Baez’ bat, so he was able to score on Baez’ deep infield single behind second. With the damage done, Barnes was out, and Matt Dermody came in to retire Ben Zobrist, hitting for Quintana, on a grounder to third. Cubs 3, Jays 2. Underwhelming, but whatever floats your boat.

For all their great stars and impressive stats, it looks to me like the two biggest offensive weapons wielded by the Cubs are staying out of the double play and hitting bloopers and bleeders that fall in at just the right time.

After Felix Pina took over for Quintana and struck out the side in the top of the seventh, Dermody came back out and gave up a one-out base hit to Albert Almora. John Maddon started the runner when Kris Bryant grounded one to Donaldson at third, and Donaldson had to go to first. Anthony Rizzo contributed the bloop, a little looper that evaded Barney’s reach and fell safely in short right while Almora scampered around to score the insurance run.

With Hector Rondon on the mound in the top of the eighth the Jays took advantage of an error by Kris Bryant to close the gap to one, but it was all they would get. With two outs, Steve Pearce hit a little dribbler to Bryant that was obviously going to be a base hit, but Bryant let fly in a vain attempt to throw out Pearce. When the throw went awry Pearce ended up on second. Kevin Pillar cashed him with the two-out base hit through the left side. Toronto’s hopes died with Pillar at first when Kendrys Morales, hitting for Barney, grounded out to first.

Dermody got the first two outs for the Jays in the bottom of the eighth, and then Dominic Leone got the final out as the game headed for the top of the ninth and Toronto’s last chance.

Closer Wade Davis finished things off for the Cubs, but he was fortunate to have the dazzling Javi Baez behind him, for the second day in a row. After Nori Aoki grounded out, Ryan Goins hit one that was clearly going for a base hit, deflecting off Kris Bryant’s glove, but there was Baez behind him, deep in the hole, to field the ball and gun out Goins. Montero’s fly ball to Almonte in centre was almost an afterthought after the Baez play, and the fearsome Cub dinkers had corralled another win at the expense of the Toronto Blue Jays.

On Sunday, the stadium still peppered with Blue Jay blue, Toronto was playing to avoid the embarrassment of a sweep in Chicago in front of all those travelling fans.

It was bad enough that the day would end in a Cubs’ sweep on the weekend, but this one was the must hurtful loss of all.

The pitching matchup was a strong and intriguing one. Toronto had Marco Estrada going to the hill, in his continued quest to recover from his terrible start this season. He was motivated by numerous goals: first was to reestablish his reputation as one of the most effective starters in the American League in recent years. Then of course he wanted to contribute to stopping his team’s bleeding against the Cubs. Last, I think, would be future considerations: he needed to continue his improvement/rehabilitation in order to increase his value on the free agent market for next year, probably for the sake of getting the best possible deal for returning to Toronto. Maybe off the radar at this point would be the thought that he might be of sufficient value to a contending team to wrest a prospect or two for Toronto, without ruining his prospects of returning to the Jays next year. I’d be happy to see him get to pitch in significant games, just so long as the team reels him back in for next year.

On the hill for Chicago was the lanky young right-hander Kyle Hendricks, he of the 16-8, 2.13 ERA last year, who also made five starts in the post-season, splitting 2 decisions but pitching to an ERA of 1.42.

The two starters went pitch for pitch in the first two innings, Estrada retiring six in a row, and Hendricks six out of seven, allowing only Miguel Montero’s one-out double in the second. In the top of the third Hendricks walked Zeke Carrera with two outs but threw three straight called strikes to Estrada to end the inning.

The Cubs pulled some of their damned pixie dust out of their equipment bags in the bottom of the third and manufactured three cheap runs against Estrada, who only gave up one solid hit, but it happened to be a bases-clearing double by Albert Almora that netted them the three-spot.

The catcher Rene Rivera bounced one back toward the pitcher. It deflected off Estrada to Jose Bautista, playing third in this one, but too late to catch Rivera at first. Then Estrada hit Jon Jay with a pitch, admittedly not helpful. This brought up Hendricks in the perfect situation for the pitcher hitting, runners on first and second, just begging to be bunted over, still nobody out. Hendricks laid down a bunt so perfect that he legged it out for a base hit.

With the lineup turned over Almora came to the plate with the bases loaded and nobody out. With Bautista playing even with the bag, Almora scorched a grounder between him and the bag. Bautista dove, but too late. The ball went into the corner where Aoki had to run it down against the wall. Rivera scored. Jay scored. And here came Hendricks, running like a gazelle, not a pitcher, flying around from first to beat the throw at the plate for the third Chicago run.

Two mistakes from Estrada, hitting Jay and leaving one up to Almora, turn into three runs, not one. That’s just Cubs’ baseball, I guess. Estrada went on to throw three easy ground balls, Almora moving up to third on the first one, but not able to score on the second one, and dying at third on the third one.

Not about to roll over and play dead, the Jays got one back right away in the fourth when Justin Smoak, of all people, ran through a Luis Rivera stop sign at third to score on Bautista’s single to left. Smoak had reached second leading off by slicing a double into the left-field corner. Toronto got another one back in the fifth when they cashed an Aoki leadoff double, after the little outfielder contributed some daring base-running to the cause. Batting behind Aoki, Estrada hit a bouncer to short. Aoki broke for third, and Javi Baez tried to throw him out, but Aoki beat the tag. From there he scored when Zeke Carrera hit into a double play. After four and a half innings it was 3-2 Chicago.

In the meantime, Estrada had pitched a clean fourth inning to run his string to six straight retired, and added two more in the bottom of the fifth before a single by Almora and a double by Kyle Schwarber put runners on second and third for Ben Zobrist, who flew out to centre to end the inning.

The sixth inning was the end of the line for both starters, and by the time the inning was over, the score was knotted so that neither would be able to record a win. After retiring Bautista on a fly ball to centre in the top of the inning, Hendricks threw a batting-practice fast ball, below 90 over the outside part of the plate, just to get a strike up on Miguel Montero, who spoiled his plan by getting all of that first pitch cripple, hitting it out to left centre where it was pitched, and the Jays were even with the Cubs at 3-3.

Hendricks breezed the last two batters to finish with a quality start of six innings, giving up 3 runs on 6 hits with two walks and 6 strikeouts on 90 pitches. Estrada then pitched around a leadoff walk to Rizzo, and would be replaced by a pinch-hitter in the seventh, to finish with a comparable line of 6 innings pitched, 3 runs, 5 hits, 1 walk, 4 strikeouts and a hit batter who came around to score, on 96 pitches.

Neither team scored in the seventh. The lefty Brian Duensing started the inning to match with Aoki and Carrera. He retired Aoki on a ground ball, but walked Steve Pearce hitting for Estrada. When Kendrys Morales was announced for Carrera, Joe Maddon went to the right-handed Carl Edwards to keep Morales hitting from the left side. Edwards fanned Morales and flied out Donaldson for the third out. The net result was that Maddon burned two relievers and John Gibbons burned two right-handed pinch-hitters, leaving only Rob Refsnyder left on the bench besides Raffie Lopez, the left-handed-hitting backup catcher.

Dominic Leone was first in for Toronto after Estrada, and he pitched a clean inning, albeit aided and abetted by Kevin Pillar’s second frightening encounter with the bricks of Wrigley. With one out Kris Bryant smacked one to deep centre on Pillar’s backhand side, and despite having already smashed into the bricks on Friday night, Pillar raced right into the wall to make the catch, bouncing off the bricks as he raised his glove with the ball in it like a punch-drunk sailor. I fear for his life sometimes, but at Leone and the rest of the team sure appreciated the effort.

With the eighth inning the dance of the relievers proceeded apace. Pedro Strop retired the Jays in order and struck out two. Aaron Loup started the Cubs’ eighth and retired the lefty Schwarber, gave up a single to the switch-hitting Zobrist and fanned the lefty Rizzo, before giving way to Ryan Tepera, who retired Baez on a grounder to first.

As is the fashion these days, the home team in a tie game went to its closer in the ninth, Wade Davis, who walked two but kept Toronto off the scoreboard. Whether the strategy of using the closer for a hold before winning the game in the bottom of the ninth worked would have to wait for the Cubs to come to bat.

Sorry, Joe Maddon, but no go. The Jays’ setup man, Ryan Tepera, who’d closed out the eighth, stayed on for the ninth. Like Davis he walked two, the first two he faced, but managed to keep Chicago from walking it off, making the key play himself when he turned a sacrifice bunt attempt by Jon Jay into a force out at third for the first out. Then he fanned Bryant and the pinch-hitter Ian Happ in dramatic fashion to send the game to the tenth inning.

In the Jays’ top of the tenth inning it looked like the dusting pixies had changed dugouts and offered their favours to the visitors for once. We might have thought they’d been won over, but they were just messing with us, and never really abandoned their Cubbies. Just a dirty trick, that’s all.

Josh Donaldson led off against Koji Uehara with an infield hit to short. Javi Baez ran the ball down in the hole, but it popped out of his glove, and he couldn’t make a throw. After Justin Smoak flew out to centre, a weird thing happened. A really weird thing. Donaldson advanced to second when newly-inserted catcher Alex Avila, a trade deadline acquisition by the Cubs from Detroit, made a throwing error throwing the ball back to the pitcher.

Now, this wasn’t just a throwing error. Avila spiked the ball into the ground halfway to the mound, on the third-base side. He looked exactly like a first-year T-Baller trying to throw the ball bavk to the infield.

With a base open they walked Jose Bautista, and then Darwin Barney, hitting for Ryan Tepera (with National League rules and double switches all over the place, by this point the lineups were a mess) flew out to short centre. But Kevin Pillar singled to right with two outs to score Donaldson from second and move Bautista to third. Meanwhile, Pillar moved up on the throw to the plate.

The Cubs brought in lefty Justin Wilson to pitch to Ryan Goins and Nori Aoki, but he walked both of them to force in a second run, and Toronto had a two-run lead to hand over to Roberto Osuna who would come in for the save.

Or not. Those damn Pixies flew right back over to the Chicago side!

The memory of the end of this game will ever be entwined with the image of Raffy Lopez, a mostly career minor-league catcher asked to carry the load as the result of the slaughter of the Toronto catching staff, standing forlorn between home and third, staring at Ben Zobrist on third while Javi Baez, a strikeout victim, scampered safely to first.

That image encapsulates everything that went wrong for the Blue Jays in the bottom of the tenth inning of this horrible Sunday afternoon in Chicago. And what went wrong with the Blue Jays determined the outcome. The Cubs only had to sit back and reap the benefits of the craziness visited upon the Toronto team.

Oh, you say, Chicago scored the walkoff on a legitimate base hit with the bases loaded by Alex Avila? Well, let me tell you: Avila never comes to the plate except for all of the craziness that happened before.

There were two major factors that determined what happened: Roberto Osuna had wicked, nasty stuff, nearly unhittable. And Raffy Lopez could not handle it, not that the alternative, Miguel Montero, would necessarily have done any better.

The leadoff hitter, Kyle Schwarber, struck out on a crazy away and in the dirt slider that went to the backstop, allowing Schwarber to reach. (Would have been the first out.) Ben Zobrist singled to right, sending Schwarber to third. (Alternative world: Zobrist on first.) With Anthony Rizzo at the plate, Osuna threw a wild changeup in the dirt, allowing Schwarber, who shouldn’t have been there, to score, while Zobrist advanced to second. (Alternative world: Zobrist on second, still 5-3.) It was now 5-4. Rizzo grounded out to second while Zobrist moved to third, in what should have been the second out (or a double play, if Zobrist hadn’t advanced on the wild pitch). (Alternative world one: Zobrist to third with two outs, still 5-3.) (Alternative world two: game is over on double play.)

With Zobrist on third, Javi Baez fanned (Alternative world: the third out, with the score 5-3) on another crazy wild slider in the dirt. This time Lopez kept the ball in front of him, and blocked it toward third. He raced over, picked it up, looked Zobrist back to third, looked at first, and froze. Osuna was yelling at him to throw it to first, but he froze. Who could blame him? It would have been close at first, Zobrist might have broken for the plate, he might have thrown it away, better to eat it, if he was able to reason at all in that split second.

Baez stole second. Osuna, still wild, hit Jason Heyward to load the bases, and Avila did his thing, singiing home Zobrist and Baez with the tying and winning runs.

Did I say pixie dust? The pixies, plus the fairies, the gremlins, and the leprechauns, must have been throwing bricks, not dust, and the bricks all landed on the poor Blue Jays, forcing them to crawl off the fabled field, swept in the series and, surely, swept from playoff contention.

And what was next on the agenda for our suffering heroes? Only a visit to the frozen-juice can home of their worst nemeses, the Tampa Bay Rays.

Could it get any worse? Please, god, no.

Get this: at the start of today’s action, eight teams were within three games of the second wild card slot in the American League. The bottom three of those teams, the Orioles, the Rays, and the Blue Jays, trailed the leading Angels by three games. And the record of the Angels? 62-59. Thus the Trash Heap Derby.

The funny thing is, every single game for every one of these eight teams counts mightily, with the result that games between “contending” teams in this race for mediocrity might hold more import—and more excitement—than the playoffs themselves.

Witness tonight’s series-ender in Toronto of the four-game set between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Tampa Bay Rays. It had a little bit of everything, starting with a pitching matchup that was a battle of the Chrises, though it might have looked a bit like a mismatch rather than a matchup. Like, Chris Rowley, with one major league start (and one major league win) against Chris Archer? Really? Give me a break!

And yet, when Chris Rowley was pulled by manager John Gibbons after one batter in the top of the sixth, he left with a 3-1 lead over Archer, the anchor of the Tampa rotation and one of the best starters in the league. (The one batter was Wilson Ramos, whom Rowley walked, and who would come around to score, cutting the lead to 3-2 and leaving Rowley with a line of five innings plus one batter, 2 runs, 4 hits, 5 walks, 3 strikeouts and 90 pitches.)

Archer? He went seven innings, and gave up 3 runs on 5 hits, walking none and striking out ten on 105 pitches. Sure, by the numbers Archer’s was the stronger performance, but Rowley left the game with the lead and a chance to claim the win, and Archer left the game on the hook for the loss.

It was interesting that there was so much singular drama packed into the first three innings of the the game, and even more interesting that the Toronto Chris did a better job of dodging the bullets than the Tampa Chris.

Rowley started the game with an easy ground out to second by Brad Miller, but then pulled out his trusty shovel and started to dig his own grave. He walked Evan Longoria, wild-pitched him to second, and walked Lucas Duda. Then Justin Smoak pulled off a great, running over-the-shoulder catch of a long foul pop up by Steven Souza for the second out; Rowley took a deep breath and got Logan Morrison to ground out to second for the third out.

Then, with Nori Aoki leading off for the first time for the Blue Jays, Chris Archer had to hustle to barely throw him out at first on a squibber in front of the plate. Good thing he did, because that made the Josh Donaldson jack to left only worth one run instead of two. Though they didn’t score again in the first, there was a little more in store for Archer after he fanned Smoak. Kendrys Morales came to the plate carrying an impressive record of 15 for 25—that’s .600, folks—against Archer. He immediately boosted it to 16 for 26 by ripping a double to the wall in right centre, but Steve Pearce popped up to Duda at first for the third out.

And that’s only the first inning.

Rowley ran into more trouble in the second, and needed a good bit of hubris from Tampa catcher Wilson Ramos and a great infield play to the plate to keep the Rays off the board. Leading off, Ramos smashed an 0-1 pitch to left and casually watched it sail over the fence as he dogged it to first. By the time he realized it hadn’t actually cleared the wall and was back in Pearce’s hands, he had no choice but to hold up with a single.

So, after Corey Dickinson fouled out to Smoak, when Adeiny Hechavaria ripped a double down the line, Ramos had to stop at third; his nonchalance had cost his team a run. The Jays pulled their infield in, which never works, except this time it did, thanks to a quick grab of a Mallex Smith grounder and a strong throw to the plate by shortstop Ryan Goins.

I don’t like playing the infield in, but I don’t like the contact play even more, especially when the runner at third is driving a lead sled, like Ramos. No matter, Brad Miller flied out to left, and Rowley’s lead was intact.

Good thing, too, because Chris Archer settled down in the bottom of the second and retired three south-sider Jays, Zeke Carrera, Miguel Montero, and Goins, on thirteen pitches with two strikeouts.

Rowley settled as well and put some of the drama behind him in the third, walking Duda with one out but stranding him by fanning Souza and grounding out Morrison.

In the bottom of the third, Archer struck out the side, but also helped hand Toronto a second run when Ramos couldn’t handle his stuff. Darwin Barney led off, and Archer struck him out with a nasty breaking ball in the dirt, so nasty that Ramos couldn’t corral it, and Barney made it to first. Then Aoki and Barney—the smallest guys on the field, played a littled small ball and pulled off a neat hit and run, with Barney going around to third on Aoki’s ground single to right through the hole that second baseman Brad Miller had just vacated to cover the bag. Archer dug down and caught Donaldson looking, but Smoak stroked a single to right to score Barney. Archer fanned his nemesis Morales, and escaped with his neck intact when Steve Pearce ended the inning by hitting one right on the button but right at Souza for the third out.

So far so good for the Jays, and for Chris Rowley, who was proving himself a better escape artist than Chris Archer.

But you can’t escape forever, not in the big leagues, oh, no. Now with a two-run lead, Rowley quickly retired Ramos and Dickinson, but walked Hechavarria. The only thing worse than a leadoff walk is a two-out walk. It almost always bites you in the butt, like when Mallex Smith tripled into the gap in right centre to drive Hechavarria in with the first Tampa run. Rowley retired Miller on an easy little fly to centre, but it was now 2-1.

Chris Archer glided through his fourth on nine pitches, two strikeouts and a grounder to first, but his first punchout, of Miguel Montero on one of his trademark sliders in the dirt, was his thousandth of his major league career, so the ball was taken out for Archer’s trophy case.

Chris Rowley retired the Rays on two strikeouts and a popup in the top of the fifth, but even that involved a bit of fun and strangeness. On the first pitch of the inning, Evan Longoria singled to centre and thus became the Rays’ Designated Table Tennis Ball.* Rowley is nothing if not efficient: Lucas Duda popped out to Smoak on the second pitch of the inning. But then he got into a deep count with Steven Souza before he struck him out with a low off-speed pitch.

The ball got away from Miguel Montero; Souza was automatically out because first base was occupied (that’s the rule: the catcher doesn’t have to control a third strike or throw down when first base is occupied and there are less than two outs). With the ball loose, Longoria broke for second and slid in without a throw, but wait: he was sent back to first, because Souza had clunked Montero in the head with his bat on his strikeout swing. The ruling here was that since Montero was interfered with by Souza’s bat, he couldn’t catch the ball or make a throw, so Longoria’s advancement was reversed. Then Chris Rowley balked and back he went to second—Designated Table Tennis Ball!

*Table Tennis, not Ping Pong! I play regularly with players a lot better than me: Ping Pong is a basement game, Table Tennis is a sport .

It was all for naught when Rowley struck out Logan Morrison on a 2-2 pitch to end the inning (don’t forget that Souza’s strikeout was the second out). Longoria was stranded at second. Or was it first? Third?

Archer must have been eager to get back out there after all this, as he retired Barney and Aoki quickly on six pitches, bringing Donaldson to the plate, the same Donaldson who had never homered off Archer before, and who proceeded to give Toronto a 3-1 lead with another blast to centre on the first pitch from Archer.

With Rowley out of the game after walking Ramos to lead off the sixth, Aaron Loup came in and for one of the few times in recent weeks he brought his gas can instead of his fireman’s hose: he quickly gave up singles to Dickerson and Hechevarria, and checked out, leaving Danny Barnes the unenviable task of coming in with the bases loaded and nobody out, a pickle he almost wiggled out of. (“Pickle” is a funny word in baseball, used to describe both a pitcher in trouble and a baserunner in trouble in a rundown. But why “in a pickle”?)

Barnes retired Trevor Plouffe, hitting for Smith, on the infield fly rule for the first out, and then almost got a double-play ball from Brad Miller, who is very quick. Miller bounced one between Smoak and Barnes. The sure-handed Smoak flagged it down and decided that his best chance was at second, rather than risking the throw home; no one was covering first. Miller was safe on the fielder’s choice and Ramos scored to make it 3-2. Barnes walked Longoria to load the bases again and keep it interesting, but then Duda grounded into the shift as Goins gunned him out from behind second to end the inning.

The noose was getting tighter, though, as we went to the bottom of the sixth, with Archer still on the hill at only 79 pitches. Twelve pitches, a couple of ground outs and another strikeout, and Archer was through to the seventh at 91 pitches, and it was definitely nail-biting time.

Barnes started the seventh against Souza and popped him up to Smoak. Then John Gibbons called on the lefty callup Tim Mayza to pitch to the two lefties among the next three batters. Mayza kind of mixed things up, though, by yielding a single to the lefty Morrison, fanning the righty Ramos, and then, while Morrison stole second for naught, fanning Dickerson. Archer must have gotten some extra gas in the tank from Donaldson’s homer in the fifth. He’d retired four in a row since, and his seventh inning

extended the string to seven, putting down Montero, Goins (his tenth strikeout), and Barney, to finish seven strong innings, if you don’t count Josh Donaldson. .

Dominic Leone came in for the eighth, tasked with defending Rowley’s slim lead. He tried, but couldn’t hold on, over 23 pitches and seven batters, as the Rays eked out the tying run; you just knew it had to happen, seeing how the Jays’ season has gone.

Leone got the first out, a squibber in front of the plate by Hechavarria that Montero played down to first. Then Peter Bourjos, in to play centre after Plouffe hit for Smith, singled to left, and stole second while Leone was fanning Miller for the second out, but veteran Jay-killer Evan Longoria, roused from his ominous quiet in this series, hit a drive to dead centre field. Zeke Carrera, playing in centre for Kevin Pillar, went straight back to the fence, leapt at the wall, and came down with the ball, but didn’t hold it long enough; as the ball popped free at Carrera’s feet, Longoria cruised into second with a double while Bourjos scored to tie it up.

Tampa wasn’t finished, however, and it took a great play by Darwin Barney to keep the score tied at three. With first base open, Duda was walked intentionally, bringing Souza to the plate. Souza bounced one up the middle that would have easily scored Longoria from second, but Barney dove for the ball, kept it on the infield for a Souza base hit, but his throw to the plate kept Longoria at third, where he was stranded when Logan Morrison grounded out to, you got it, Barney, at second.

With Archer finally finished, Kevin Cash called on Tommy Hunter to pitch the eighth. Better he should have left a tired Archer in, who might have done better than a fresh Hunter. (I just noticed the names: Archer, Hunter, where does it end?)

Actually, it ends with Smoaker, because it turned out that Hunter was Justin Smoak’s meat. Nori Aoki flew out to left, Josh Donaldson walked, and Smoak powdered a 2-0 pitch to the right-centre power alley that wasn’t coming back, and Toronto had a two-run lead with only three outs to get. Hunter finished the inning, but there was no getting that pitch back that he threw to Smoak.

Roberto Osuna came in for the save, and our hearts jumped into our throats again when Wilson Ramos lined a single to right on an 0-1 pitch. But on the very next pitch, Corey Dickingson grounded into a double play started by Ryan Goins, and the pressure was off with two outs and nobody on. Osuna went to a full count on Adeiny Hechavarria before he grounded out to second to end the game.

Here was a game that meant everything to both teams, held interest for the whole game, included enough strange and interesting plays to put a red star, not next to the great play, but next to the great game. Best of all, the good guys won the game and the series against the team they have the toughest time beating. Who needs the playoffs when you get a game like this?

Well, as a matter of fact . . .

When I was in Catholic high school a long time ago in Detroit, we heard that at some of the schools the nuns who chaperoned the dances used to carry yardsticks: they had to be able to slide the yardstick between the boy and the girl during slow dances or there was trouble. At my school, where the nuns were mostly old and perpetually grumpy, they didn’t need to carry yardsticks; they were sufficiently armed with a glare that cut you to the core.

If tonight’s game between the Blue Jays and the Rays was a slow dance in days of yore, you’d have needed Saran Wrap to measure the distance between the two teams, the game was that close. Hm-m-m Saran Wrap, slow dancing, back when you were young, kinda sets you to thinking, doesn’t it?

Anyway, this one might as well have been a playoff game, because it had every element of excitement, from gritty starts by Marcus Stroman, in this case the elder veteran, and young Jake Faria for Tampa Bay, to a fluke double, to a clutch homer, to a sketchy strike zone leading to a sketchy ejection (John Gibbons, who else?), to a stomped-on shortstop, to some great moments of relief pitching, to a diving stop that saved the game, it was all there, and what an entertaining night it was!

And what about a game three of this series that was decided by one run; the cumulative winning margin for one win so far by Tampa Bay and two for Toronto has been four runs, exactly one run over the minimum.

Stroman went six and a third innings, gave up two runs on six hits with three walks and seven strikeouts on 108 pitches. Faria went five and a third, gave up three runs on six hits with two walks and three strikeouts on 98 pitches. And if Corey Dickerson hadn’t lost Steve Pearce’s line drive in the lights leading off the sixth, which was followed by Kevin Pillar’s grounder moving him to third, Faria might have matched—or exceeded—the innings logged by Stroman in his start.

Both teams mounted challenges in the early innings, but the starters kept the slate clean until the Toronto third. Stroman retired the side in order in the first, the only clean inning he had all night. Faria gave up a one-out base hit to Josh Donaldson in the bottom of the inning, but threw a double-play ball to Justin Smoak. In the second inning Stroman caught Peter Bourjos looking for the third out with Dickerson on first after a two-out infield single by that bad-hopped viciously off the shoulder of Ryan Goins. Faria had to retire Goins on a grounder to first to close out the Jays second after Kevin Pillar hit a two-out double down the left-field line.

In the third inning Stroman had to face his toughest challenge thus far in the game, and was fortunate that it came with two outs. Brad Miller hit an opposite-field single to left, and Lucas Duda followed with a double to right, but Jose Bautista played it in quickly enough that Miller had to hold at third, and then both were stranded when Evan Longoria lined out to Bautista.

Faria wasn’t quite so lucky in the bottom of the third, as a classic “turf bounce” produced the first run of the game for Toronto. With one out for the Jays, Raffie Lopez drew Faria’s first walk of the day, which turned the lineup over and brought Bautista to the plate for his second appearance against the Tampa starter, who had fanned him to lead off the game for Toronto. This time Bautista hammered an 0-2 pitch into right centre that Mallex Smith, playing right, raced over to try to cut off before it got to the wall. Unfortunately for him he didn’t anticipate the bounce, got too close, and it sailed over his head. The catcher Lopez was able to get all the way around to score the first run. I have to say that he might well not have made it without the high bounce, but coming around third he looked pretty darned fast for a catcher.

Perhaps rattled, or maybe just mad, Faria proceeded to plunk Josh Donaldson hard in the back, earning him a stern look from the combative Toronto third baseman, but no further action ensued. Then he settled down and retired Justin Smoak on an infield fly rule popup to third, and fanned Kendrys Morales to avoid further damage.

After Marcus Stroman stranded a two-out “hustle double”* by Dickerson with two outs in the fourth, Faria gave up his second run to Steve Pearce leading off for the Jays, who went with the first pitch, a high fast ball on the outside corner, and muscled it out to right centre. After Pearce’s shot, Faria quickly retired the side on ten pitches, but it was now 2-0 for Toronto.

*Some commentators use this term to define a ball hit into “no-man’s land”, short or medium deep right or left centre field, or a liner down the foul line. The defining nature of the hit is that the ball has no chance to get to the wall, and the hitter perceives that the fielder has a long run to get to it, and he has a chance to beat a throw to second. It’s as much a question of good, aggressive base-running as it is of solid hitting.

The Rays got one run back in the fifth despite the fact that Stroman threw three ground ball outs, all to second base. Mallex Smith atoned for his first-inning fielding gaffe by hitting an opposite-field double to right leading off the inning. The first grounder to second moved Smith to third. The second scored him. The third ended the inning.

In the bottom of the fifth the Jays got something going with two outs—there’s been a lot of that going around—when Donaldson singled to left and Smoak walked. Morales hit the ball hard on the ground, but right to the second baseman Miller, way out in right field, in the old softball “rover” position. Threat over.

Stroman pitched around a walk to Logan Morrison in the top of the sixth to take him to 91 pitches, which gave him a fair chance at going at least seven, and Ryan Goins gave him added hope in the bottom of the sixth by driving in another run to expand the lead to 3-1. We’ve already mentioned that the tainted Pearce double to left and the Pillar groundout moving him to third ended the night for Faria. Manager Kevin Cash called on his prized new lefty, Dan Jennings, to face Goins.

In short order, very short order, Goins added to his clutch RBI reputation, got gunned down at second on a failed hit-and-run that turned into a strikeout-throw out, got stomped on the left forearm, and had to leave the game.

Only down by one, the Rays had the infield drawn in. Jennings’ first pitch to Goins was high on the outside corner. Shortened up on the bat, Goins slapped the ball past Jennings and between the tightened infielders into centre, and Pearce trotted home with an important third run. Then, with Darwin Barney at the plate in a 2-2 count, the Jays put on the hit-and-run, but Barney fanned and the catcher Sucre fired down to second in time to get Goins to end the inning. But damage was done: Goins slid in head first, with his left hand reaching for the bag. The throw was slightly off-line towards first, and second baseman Daniel Robertson had to cross the bag toward the sliding Goins to make the catch and apply the tag.

Unfortunately and unintentionally, Robertson’s left foot landed squarely on Goins’ bare left forearm, leaving him in pain with a nasty red contusion developing immediately. The inning was over, and Goins would be out of the game, Rob Refsnyder coming in to play second and Barney sliding over to short.

Marcus Stroman ran into his wall in the top of the seventh, despite striking out Peter Bourjos leading off. If anything, manager John Gibbons went too far with him: he walked Mallex Smith, gave up a single to “Sweet Jesus” Sucre that sent Smith racing around to third, and walked Brad Miller to load the bases before Gibbie came out with the hook, calling on Aaron Loup to face Lucas Duda, who was replaced at the plate by Steven Souza. Loup walked Souza to force in a run after a terrible call on a 2-2 pitch that should have struck him out. Gibbie thought so, vociferously, as he came out to remove Loup and bring in Dominic Leone. Loup went to the bench and Gibbie to the clubhouse, sent off by plate umpire Lance Barksdale.

With the lead down to one and the game on the line, Leone did a magnificent job, freezing the veteran Longoria and popping up Logan Morrison to get out of the jam. Longoria was furious about the call from Barksdale on a 2-2 pitch, and the pitch graph shows that he had justice on his side, but Barksdale was wearing the funny cap and the big shoulders of his trade, so there was no reversing the tide of history.

The Jays never threatened again. Jennings got the big K he’d needed the inning before, but fanning Raffie Lopez in the bottom of the seventh was not what Kevin Cash had in mind when he brought him in. Nevertheless, Jennings turned over a one-out, nobody on seventh to Sergio Romo, who retired five in a row over the seventh and the eighth to keep Toronto from threatening.

Ryan Tepera once again was perfect in the Tampa eighth, getting two ground balls and a strikeout on fifteen pitches.

Roberto Osuna followed with his thirty-first save, grateful for a big fielding assist by Darwin Barney, who took a dive and maybe saved the win for Toronto. The speedster Mallex Smith led off with a ground ball single up the middle. Adeiny Hechaverria hit the same grounder up the middle: if it got through, it would be first and third with nobody out, blazing speed at third and decent speed at first. But Barney, moved over from second to short after Goins went out, put everything into it, flagged down the ball skidding on one knee, spun and threw to second without having the time to set up for the throw. Refsnyder made it to the bag, and the throw just beat Mallex sliding in for the forceout.

After that, Osuna took over. Miller bounced one back to him and he turned and made the throw to second to force Hechaverria. Steven Souza took a called third strike, and the game was in the bag.

The series is now 2-1 for us, with just tomorrow afternoon to go before we head for the fabled Wrigley Field for the weekend. It would be a lot nicer to head out of town 7-3 on the homestand than 6-4, now wouldn’t it? The only thing in the way is the little matter of Chris Rowley making his second major league start against Chris Archer. What, me worry?

Okay, let me get this off my chest right away: the Toronto infield doesn’t work with Darwin Barney at shortstop and Rob Refsnyder at second.

A fifth-inning mishandling of what should have been a double play cost Marco Estrada extra outs and extra pitches, and led inexorably to two tainted Tampa Bay runs that turned out to be the difference in the ball game tonight.

Don’t get me wrong here. This isn’t a knock on either player. Barney of course has a Gold Glove in his back pocket from his time with the Cubs, but it was won at second base, not shortstop. He’s got the quickness, the arm, and the range to play shortstop, but I’m not sure if he’s got enough games under his belt there to tend to his own knitting plus carry along/make up for the shortcomings of Refsnyder, who’s basically just learning the position, and has been thrust into a spot that to be fair maybe he’s not ready for.

If you look at Refsnyder’s fielding record you can see the problem. He appeared in 58 games for the Yankees last year, but in only eight did he spend some time at second base. He had sixteen chances and made two errors. Before the Jays picked him up, he had time at second in only two of the twenty games in which he appeared this year, taking two chances and making one error..

It wasn’t like what happened in the fifth inning spoiled a no-hitter or anything like that. The Rays went into the inning up 4-1, courtesy of a two-run home run by Lucas Duda off Marco Estrada in the third inning, a Wilson Ramos solo homer in the fourth, followed by a Corey Dickinson RBI single that drove in Adeiny Hechaverria, on second with a fluke bloop double to right. And the two walks that forced in the runs in the sixth weren’t Estrada’s only walks in his short outing; he’d already walked one in the second and one in the third that didn’t enter into the scoring.

But of course when you look at the final score of Tampa 6, Toronto 4, it stands out glaringly that the runs that came across in the fifth inning were the decisive runs in the game, and that’s why we have to focus on the botched double play that kept Estrada on the mound too long, and led to the forced-in runs that extended the Rays’ lead to 6-1 before Donaldson’s blast in the bottom of the fifth cut it to 6-4.

Since he’d already given up the seven hits and four runs, it wasn’t too much of a surprise that Logan Morrison and Steven Souza led off the fifth with base hits, leaving Estrada dangling by a thread. But it looked like the thread would be enough to save him when Mallex Smith lined softly to Refsnyder at second while Morrison took one step too many toward third. Barney was on the bag, Morrison was a dead duck, and Refsnyder ten feet from Barney with the ball. But he double-clutched before letting it go, and Barney, his momentum toward Refsnyder and coming off the bag, had closed the distance to Refsnyder and the throw handcuffed him. He succeeded in holding on to it briefly before it got away from him as he left the base and Morrison finally tiptoed back in.

The initial ruling by base umpire Eric Cooper was that Barney had control of the ball long enough while on the bag to record the out on Morrison, but the Rays asked for a review, and the review overturned the call and restored Morrison to second, with Souza still on first. The next terrible thing that happened was that Ramos lofted an easy fly to medium centre, with the runners on and holding. But uncharacteristically Kevin Pillar lost it in the twilight sky and it dropped for a single to load the bases. Estrada then went on to walk Hechaverria and Daniel Robertson to force in the two runs and end Estrada’s day.

Now, let’s replay the inning and look at the possible alternative results.

If they make the double play, and Pillar doesn’t lose the ball, the inning would have been over with Souza on first and Estrada, even though not at his best, would have pitched on, with a pitch count in the mid-70s.

It’s a more theoretical question if they make the double play and Pillar still loses the ball. Then it would have been Souza on second and Ramos on first. With the two walks that followed, only one would have scored, and Matt Dermody, who came in for Estrada, would have left the second run at third with the Dickerson short fly to left and the Duda comebacker. A scorer’s note here: both runs were earned because no error was given on the missed double play; the scorer cannot assume a double play, and if one out is recorded and no runner advances an extra base, no error can be ascribed to a fielder.

But the question that has to be considered and is harder to answer definitively is, how does Estrada pitch to Hechaverria and Robertson if he’s got the two outs and two on: in other words, what was the effect on his composure of the messed-up twin-killing?

A final word on this: nobody can blame Rob Refsnyder for this situation. He just doesn’t have the innings at second to be sure of himself there. As a converted outfielder, the thing that I think would be most difficult would be that the player is inserted into the close and tense maelstrom of infield play with runners on base, a far different environment from patrolling the outfield. Conclusion: Rob Refsnyder might be a useful utility piece, but it should be as a corner outfielder or first baseman, pinch hitter (he’s reputed to wield a better stick than we’ve seen,) or a pinch runner, (he is quick), but not as a second baseman. Now that the Jays have Nori Aoki and Zeke Carrera as outfielders, both hitting left, maybe that carves out a niche for him hitting right.

To give him his due, though, we can’t ignore the fact that Estrada would have started the game in a hole again, were it not for a beautiful, leaping grab by Refsnyder of a liner off the bat of the leadoff hitter Dickinson that looked destined to go all the way to the wall in right centre in the bottom of the first inning.

The Blue Jays weren’t going to run up a big number against the Rays’ lefty beanpole Blake Snell. You can just disregard his 0-6 record this year, it just wasn’t relevant against a team that’s always had trouble with him.

Toronto picked up a run off him in the second inning, but it was more than a little bit tainted. Steve Pearce was on first with a one-out single, and Kevin Pillar blooped one into short right centre that drew both centre fielder Mallex Smith and right fielder Steven Souza. Neither could get to it as it fell safely, but Souza cut in front of Smith to take it on the hop but it bounced over his head, hit the turf still spinning, and skipped under Smith’s glove. All of this silliness took enough time that Pearce came around and score, with Pillar to second with a double. Pillar died at second, but the Jays had a lead on Snell, briefly.

Lucas Duda took care of the lead three batters into the top of the third. Daniel Robertson singled, Corey Dickinson struck out, and Duda hit a blast to right that made it 2-1 Rays. Estrada then gave up a double to Logan Morrison after Evan Longoria flew out, and walked Souza behind Longoria before Smith flew out to leave runners at first and second.

In the fourth Ramos hit a rope to left to make it 3-1, and then the flukey Hechaverria double was cashed in by a single by Dickerson and the Tampa lead was solidified at 4-1 before that messy fifth.

In the meantime, besides the Pearce-Pillar combo for the Toronto run, Snell allowed only two other runners, a walk to Donaldson in the third, and a single to Pillar in the fourth, before he came out for the fifth inning newly fortified with a five-run lead. Mike Ohlman, tonight serving as the backup catcher to the backup catcher Raffie Lopez (I could go on, but I won’t) made the first out, a loud one, with a deep fly to left. Barney singled to centre for the Jays’ fourth hit, and Bautista followed with the fifth, a double to right that pushed Barney to third.

Then, in the most promising moment of the game, Donaldson crushed another one, this time to right centre, to bring Toronto within a tantalizing two runs of Tampa Bay, where they would stay until the Rays’ bullpen closed it out.

Snell finished off six innings, pitching over Refsnyder reaching base on a catcher’s interference call against Ramos in the sixth. He’d given up four runs on seven hits, walked one and struck out four on 108 pitches. Except for the gopher ball* to Donaldson, it was a pretty solid outing for Snell.

*”Gopher ball”? That’s easy, a hit that “goes fer four” eh?

Steve Cishek pitched the seventh, and failed to pick up a little bouncer by Donaldson that went for a one-out infield hit. But then Justin Smoak hit a one-hop bullet to the second baseman Robertson who started an easy double play. Toronto went down meekly on ten pitches by Tommy Hunter in the eighth, and twelve by Tampa closer Alex Colomé in the ninth, and the Rays had tied the series at one win apiece.

As for the Toronto bullpen, after Matt Dermody rescued Estrada in the fifth inning, manager John Gibbons sent him out for the sixth inning, and he retired Longoria on a ground ball, but walked the lefty Morrison whom he was supposed to retire, so Gibbie handed the ball over to Danny Barnes, who made things more interesting for himself by giving up a double to Souza that moved Morrison to third before retiring the last two batters on weak contact.

In the seventh Barnes easily pitched over a throwing error by Barney at short which was at first called as having nipped Robertson in a bang-bang play at first, but then was overturned on appeal.

The call went out to Ryan Tepera to pitch the eighth, in the hope that the Jays might stir things up in the bottom of the eighth, bringing Roberto Osuna into play. Tepera had another clean, efficient inning, dispatching the Rays on 13 pitches, though he walked off the field applauding his centre fielder Pillar for ranging to the wall in deep left centre and reaching up over his shoulder to haul down a drive by Souza.

It’s an axiom in baseball that he who thrives and surprises in the spring will inevitably join the big club before the end of the year. In the absence of meaningful work for the closer, today was the day for Tim Mayza, a rangy (six three, 225) twenty-five-year-old left-hander, who had impressed in spring training, to make his major league debut. After Florida, Mayza started at New Hampshire in Double A, and then was promoted to Bufallo, where he made eleven relief appearances, and went 1-1 with an 0.93 ERA, good enough to get a look-see in Toronto.

It didn’t take Mayza very long to get his first strikeout in the show, either, as he gunned down the first batter he faced, Peter Bourjos, with a 1-2 killer slider. Nor did it take long to give up his first base hit, because he went 3-1 on Wilson Ramos, up next, and Ramos grounded one up the middle for a base hit. Next he got Adeiny Hechaverria to ground into a fielder’s choice, but Daniel Robertson doubled to left before Corey Dickinson lined out softly again, this time with no drama, to short, to end Mayza’s debut. Lots of interesting experiences in those 23 pitches.

So, there you go. Muck up a double play and sometimes the whole ball game can be wrapped up in that muff. If they make that play, they could still be playing since, as we all know, “there’s no time clock in baseball”. (Except for the silly pitcher’s clock that absolutely does not speed up the “pace of play”.)

Oh, and a message for Gibbie: do not platoon Ryan Goins. How many of his key RBIs have been off left-handed pitchers? And what offensive “advantage” gained by hitting Refsnyder against lefties could ever outweigh Goins’ play at shortstop, or Barney’s at second? Case closed.