Long Ball Stories

Three things we learned from today’s eleven-inning loss to the Tigers which gave the Detroiters a series win over Toronto:

Marco Estrada’s problems are nowhere close to being resolved as his season from hell continues unabated.

Toronto can play over a bad performance by a starting pitcher and remain in the game.

If you have to run six relievers out there, it’s unrealistic to think that all of them will put up goose eggs, especially if they have to pitch eight and a third innings.

Oh, and we learned that the Blue Jays can hit two homers in the top of the first and put up a three-spot, and still lose the game. In fact, lose the lead in the bottom of the first, as Estrada started the game with both feet in the fire in the first inning again.

The pitching matchup should have been listed as question mark versus question mark. In the immortal words of I-don’t-know-who, Anibal Sanchez of the Tigers “used to be somebody”. Sanchez was a regular and reliable rotation starter for the Tigers for several years, going 26-19 with an ERA under 4.00 from his arrival in Detroit in 2012 through 2014. In 2015 he went 10-10 but his ERA went up to almost 5.00, and last year he went 7-13 with an ERA of almost 6.00, and fell out of the rotation. This spring, after two months in the Tigers’ bullpen, he apparently opted to go to Triple A and try to work out his kinks as a starter.

Today would be his fifth start since returning to the team and the rotation, and he hasn’t done badly so far, going six innings in three of his first four starts, after pitching five innings in the first one, and only giving up three runs once, and never more than five hits. On the other hand, he’s had a history of not faring so well against Toronto, so at best it was an open question of how well he’d do today.

And then there was Marco Estrada taking the hill for Toronto, and what need we say about Marco Estrada in 2017? Nothing, really, all we could do was join manager John Gibbons and cross our fingers. Really hard.

Sanchez started quickly, getting the first two outs, though Jose Bautista started the game by lining the ball really hard right at third baseman Nick Castellanos before Zeke Carrera popped out to the shortstop. Five pitches, two outs. So far, so good. But then Josh Donaldson lined a single to right centre, which in the immortal words of Tuck and Babby means he had a “good approach” at the plate. Guess if he lined a single to left, his pull field, it would be a “bad approach”. Well, okay, then.

Justin Smoak, whose approach has been great all year, went the opposited way to left centre on a 2-0 pitch, and suddenly the Jays had a 2-0 lead after the two quick outs. Then Sanchez was burned again on a 1-0 pitch that Kendrys Morales hit out to right centre field. As he continued his curious hold-it-back at-bats, Troy Tulowitzki struck out looking for the third out, but there they were, a big three on the board for Toronto in Fenway.

Alas, in a trice Marco Estrada was in trouble in the bottom of the first. He walked the leadoff hitter Ian Kinsler on a 3-1 pitch. Kinsler stole second. Nick Castellanos hit one to Josh Donaldson at third that Donaldson had no real play on. Kinsler advanced to third on Donaldson’s throw to first. Justin Upton doubled to left for the first Tiger run and brought Castellanos around to third. A sacrifice fly by Miguel Cabrera scored Castellanos but also moved Upton up to third, and he scored on a sacrifice fly by J.D. Martinez. The mess continued for Estrada as he walked Victor Martinez before taking eleven pitches to strike out Alex Presley.

33 pitches after Toronto had jumped out into the lead, the game was tied. Not only that, but you just knew that Estrada’s goose was cooked. It wasn’t the walks, and it wasn’t the Tigers’ efficiency in cashing in their chances, it was the pitch count that would do him in.

Not to mention that the Jays’ hitters fell right back into their old pattern: they could have had Sanchez teetering on the edge in the second, but the double play ball did them in again as Bautista’s grounder to third snuffed out consecutive one-out base hits by Kevin Pillar and Ryan Goins. In the third and fourth Sanchez locked in and retired six out of seven, allowing only a harmless single to Troy Tulowitzki in the fourth. By the end of the fourth his pitch count had levelled at a very reasonable 60.

Estrada followed the bad-inning/good-inning pattern established in recent starts by breezing the second in only eight pitches before wobbling again in the third. He kept the Tigers off the board, but it took 29 pitches to do it, and he was into the seventies in pitch count before it was done. It could have been another quick inning, with Montero and Tulowitzki wiping out Tulowitzki’s fielding error on Justin Upton by cutting his stolen base attempt down for the second out, but a single by Cabrera and a walk to J. D. Martinez extended the inning, and the pitch count, again.

In the fourth Estrada was betrayed, to a greater or lesser extent, by his outfield defense. This allowed the Tigers to take the lead, and led to his being pulled from the game because of his pitch count before finishing the fourth. Alex Presley led off by lifting a lazy fly ball into right centre, but for some reason Kevin Pillar and JosemBautista couldn’t sort it out and it fell between them for a tainted double. Then James McCann hit one to the fence in left. Zeke Carrera tracked it to the fence, timed his jump, made contact with it, and then we all watched helplessly as it rolled out of his glove and fell for another double, scoring Presley. Estrada faced three more batters. He struck out both Iglesias and Kinsler on three pitches each, and looked good to go on to the fifth, albeit with a pitch count reaching 90, but a walk to Castellanos on a 3-1 pitch was enough for John Gibbons with Miggy Cabrera coming to the plate, and Estrada made another early exit.

With Estrada’s early exit it became another bullpen night for the Blue Jays. Ryan Tepera finished the fourth for Estrada and handled the fifth inning. Joe Biagini pitched the sixth and seventh, and managed the tricky feat of retiring the Tigers in the sixth on just six pitches, despite the leadoff hitter reaching on a booted grounder by Kendrys Morales at first. Biagini’s seventh was a rockier ride, but two perfectly-placed ground balls saved him. Kinsler singled to lead off, and Biagini wild-pitched him to second while walking Castellanos. But Upton grounded one right to the bag at third for an easy force play, and then Cabrera grounded one up the middle to Tulowitzki at the bag for an easy double play.

By then Anibal Sanchez was gone, and so was the Tiger lead, which had flown over the left-field fence in the fifth along with a vicious line-drive homer off the bat of Bautista, which plated Ryan Goins, who had led off with a sharp single to centre. Sanchez exited after six, down 5-4, having given up the most runs in his five starts, but if it weren’t for the gopher ball, it would have been his most effective, with no walks and three strikeouts to go along with six other scattered hits over six innings and 96 pitches.

So now it was just a question of whether the Toronto bullpen could protect the slim lead and turn it over to Roberto Osuna. After Biagini’s seventh, it was Danny Barnes’ turn in the eighth, and the answer to the big question wasn’t long in coming. On the 0-1 pitch to leadoff hitter J. D. Martinez, Barnes left a fat one over the plate and Martinez lofted a deep drive to right. Originally it was played off the top of the wall and went as a double, but the Tigers asked for a review and it was ruled that it had cleared the home run standard according to the ground rules.

Barnes finished the eighth and got two outs in the ninth before yielding to Osuna, who finished the ninth and pitched the tenth, working around a one-out walk and stolen base by J. D. Martinez, before turning it over to Jeff Beliveau to start the eleventh.

Meanwhile, an effective combination of Daniel Stumpf, Alex Wilson, Bruce Rondon, Justin Wilson, Shane Greene, and Warwick Saupold was maneuvred in and out of the game by manager Brad Ausmus to keep the Jays in check through the eleventh.

Of course, when you’re playing extras on the road, every inning the game lasts adds to the sense of impending doom, and every little thing, like a leadoff walk by Beliveau to Alex Avila in the eleventh, assumes huge proportions. This time, as Iglesias sacrificed Avila to second, the proportions looked about right. John Gibbons brought Lucas Harrell in to try to stem the tide.

He would’ve done, too, were it not for an egregious error on a routine ground ball by Donaldson at third. Harrell retired Kinsler on a liner to first for the second out, and then Donaldson booted Castellanos’ grounder that would have been the third run. Harrell walked Upton, and then Cabrera, to end the game. Not only did it end on a walk-off walk, the worst way possible, but the run was unearned, as well.

A flat ending, then, to a series that the Jays should have taken, despite the 11-1 shellacking they took on Saturday, from a team that’s even deeper in the dumps than they are.

Not a great way to get out of Detroit, heading for Boston and four games with the division-leading Red Sox. Yoicks!

Tonight’s was a game to consider the pitchers, even though the Detroit Tigers racked up eleven runs and fourteen hits to put the Toronto Blue Jays away early. Whom to feature?

Well, we could start by writing about another befuddling, injury-shortened start by Francisco Liriano.

Or, we could do a sensitive treatment of the role of the spear-carrier, bucket-hauler, and mucker-out of major-league baseball, the long man who comes in and eats innings when the starter comes a-cropper early on. This would be Mike Bolsinger, who has returned to the Jays’ roster yet again to apply himself to the Augean Stables of Toronto’s injury-wracked rotation*.

*Cleaning out the Augean Stables was the fifth of tweve labours assigned to Hercules by Eurystheus, the king of Tiryns and Mycenae, at the instigation of Apollo, so that Hercules could gain atonement for killing his wife and children, which he had done in a fit of insanity cast upon him by the goddess Hera. King Augeus owned more cattle than anyone in Greece, so we can be assured that cleaning out his stables involved picking up a lot of shit. Just so is the job of the long man in the bullpen.

Or, we could focus on Michael Fulmer, who made the Toronto pitching staff’s effectiveness irrelevant by going eight innings on 101 pitches, giving up one run on two hits and walking only one batter.

Despite the fact that tonight’s game posed yet another injury problem for Toronto’s beleaguered starting rotation, and the game’s outcome was determined early by an uncomfortable Liriano’s inability to find the plate, and despite the fact that it featured another effective mop-up performance by the stoic Mike Bolsinger, in all fairness we have to start with Michael Fulmer.

Because it doesn’t really matter how many runs the Tigers cashed in against an undermanned and under-armed Toronto pitching staff, all Fulmer needed was one. Well, two.

It’s interesting that while the consideration of last night’s Toronto win over Justin Verlander highlighted that Verlander’s ascendancy may just be coming to an end, tonight’s dominating performance by the Tiger’s starter would suggest that Verlander’s heir-apparent has already emerged, and his name is Michael Fulmer.

Fulmer was one of those “prospect capital” players who came over from the New York Mets to the Tigers at the trade deadline in 2015, along with Louis Cessa, in exchange for Yoenis Cespedes. While most of the focus on this deal was on Cespedes, it’s notable that the Mets felt they could part with two such quality arms as Fulmer and Cessa, to shore up their playoff drive. Like many such deals, you wonder what kind of second-guessing might be going on in New York, given the number of injury problems the Mets have had with a crop of pitchers that two years ago looked absolutely overly-abundant.

Fulmer made his major-league debut for the Tigers at the end of April last year, quickly moving into the rotation and making himself at home, to the point where he swept all three major American League rookie-of-the-year awards, based on his record, for a middle-of-the-pack team, of 11-7, with an ERA of 3.06, over 159 innings with a WHIP of 1.12, and an opponents’ batting average of .231.

Though he can throw up to 97 MPH, Fulmer relies on control, breaking balls, and changeups to keep hitters off-balance and guessing. He does not rack up the strikeouts that a power pitcher normally would, because he’s not a power pitcher, averaging well less than a strikeout an inning, seven and a half per nine innings, a paltry number in this day and age.

And yet, Michael Fulmer gets people out, efficiently and almost monotonously. Tonight, he faced the minimum over the first three innings, on only 36 pitches. The only base runner he allowed, Kendrys Morales, who singled to centre with one out in the second, was quickly erased by a double play.

The only wobble by Fulmer tonight came in the fourth inning, when he walked Jose Bautista leading off, and then wild-pitched him to second, whence he scored on two ground balls. But by this time Liriano had imploded, the Tigers had five runs on the board, and this scratchy run eked out by the Blue Jays was but a mosquito bite inflicted on Fulmer’s broad back, annoying but not concerning.

After the Jays’ run in the fourth, they had exactly one more base runner off Fulmer, Troy Tulowitzki, who reached on an infield single to third off the glove of Nick Castellanos with one out in the eighth. Tulowitzki stayed at first while Steve Pearce flied out to left, and then was forced at second by Kevin Pillar, to end the inning and Fulmer’s commanding performance.

To recap: Morales reached on a single in the second and was erased by a double play. Bautista was walked in the fourth and came around to score without benefit of a base hit. Tulowitzki reached on an infield single in the eighth, and never advanced. That’s it. How neat is that? Eight innings, 101 pitches, three base runners, two stranded, one scored, thanks to his own wild pitch.

Maybe it’s goodbye to Detroit for Justin Verlander, but rest assured that his immense shoes in the Detroit rotation will be well-filled, barring injury, by the feet of Michael Fulmer.

Francisco Liriano added to his string of on-again, off-again performances tonight, and not in a good way. What’s worse is that he not only came out without retiring a batter in the third, but he came out with discomfort, later reported to be stiffness in his neck, that caused him to lose any command of his pitches at all. We await word on his condition.

Though Nick Castellanos homered to left on the third pitch of the game, Liriano showed no evidence of any problems in the first inning, popping up Ian Kinsler leading off and striking out Justin Upton, using only nine pitches to retire the Tigers.

Liriano gave up another run in the second inning, but it was a started-with-two-outs scratchy sort of thing, and really didn’t presage any problems to come. He retired both Martinez boys, fanning J.D. and getting Victor on a grounder to short, but then Mikie Mahtook reached on an infield single to Tulowitzki, and Liriano walked McCann following. The run scored on a little Texas Leaguer by Jose Iglesias, and the Tigers were leading 2-0, but no alarm bells were ringing.

It all changed in the third. Liriano walked Castellanos on a 3-1 pitch. He walked Justin Upton on a 3-1 pitch. He walked Miguel Cabrera on a 3-1 pitch. He went to 2-0 on J.D. Martinez, and that was enough for manager John Gibbons. Mike Bolsinger came in, bases loaded and nobody out, and give up an RBI single to J.D. Martinez that scored two, and a sacrifice fly to Mahtook that scored Cabrera after he had advanced to third on a fly ball to centre by Victor Martinez. That finished off Liriano’s record with five earned runs in only two innings, and it left Bolsinger in charge of the game and in charge of mucking out the stables.

Now, the thing about the long man, or the mucker-out, if you will, is that his main job is to eat innings, regardless. Sometimes he can do the heroic thing and hold the opponent down while his team claws its way back. Then again, he may hold them down while his team does nothing. Finally, he might suffer from a continued onslaught, but has to “suck it up” to save other, usually more valuable, arms from extra work.

Bolsinger’s outing tonight represented more of the third option. There was never a chance that the Jays were going to get back into it against the very effective Fulmer, but even if they had offfered some offensive counterattack, the Tigers were just too relentless, and the result would still have been Toronto receding in Detroit’s rear-view mirror.

After allowing all of Liriano’s base runners to score, walking James McCann, and throwing 22 pitches, Bolsinger fanned Jose Iglesias to bring the messy Tiger third to an end.

He escaped the fourth and fifth without further damage, despite giving up a hit in each inning, and then ran into his own wall in the sixth.

Iglesias, who has been hitting above his weight in this series, even if not with authority at times, led off with a single to centre, and then stole second. After going up 0-2 on Ian KInsler, Bolsinger lost the plate and walked him on four straight balls well out of the zone. Iglesias advanced to third as Castellanos flied out to centre for the first out, and then scored when Upton grounded out to second. Cabrera followed with a 1-0 shot over the fence in left centre, and it was 8-1 for the Tigers. When J. D. Martinez followed with a double, manager John Gibbons decided that his gritty curve baller had absorbed enough, and pulled him for Lucas Harrell, who got Victor Martinez to fly out to centre to end the inning.

Picking up the starter with the bases loaded and nobody out in the third inning, nobody’s idea of a picnic, Bolsinger allowed all three of Liriano’s runners to score. His own line was three and two thirds innings pitched, three runs on seven hits with four walks and three strikeouts on 75 pitches. Among these not-so-gaudy numbers, these two stand out: three and two thirds innings, and 75 pitches. These represent innings pitched and pitches thrown that were not a drain on the rest of the bullpen. They also represent the bridge from a starter leaving early to the point where that starter might have reasonably been expected to come out in a typical game.

This, then, is the value, and also the curse, of the long man: eat the innings, throw the pitches, absorb the punishment if that’s what it takes, but last as long as you can, because we don’t want to waste any more pitchers on this game than we have to.

It’s a sad fate; on the other hand, it’s a living.

And, by the way, the Tigers jumped on Aaron Loup for three more in the bottom of the eighth, so there you go.

Tomorrow has to be a better day; in the meantime, raise a glass to Mike Bolsinger, long man and muck-master. It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.

It’s quite amazing how quickly the generations turn over in baseball. You had the feeling that Justin Verlander would always be in mid-career, top of his game, racking up the innings and the strikeouts that would lead him, one day, a long way in the future, to the Hall of Fame.

It comes as a shock, then, at the mid point of the 2017 season, to realize that Verlander is a veteran, 34 years old, half way through his eleventh full season as a starter for the Detroit Tigers. It comes as even more of a shock that in this eleventh season he appears to be only a little more than merely mortal, and only a shadow of the Justin Verlander who regularly struck out double digits while keeping his opponents off the board.

On the face of it, the pitching matchup should have overwhelmingly favoured the Tigers, with an uncertain Aaron Sanchez going up against Justin Verlander. But this is not the Justin Verlander of old, and the Tigers are not the perennial contenders of recent years. Like Toronto, but more so, the Tigers are coming up to a decision point in the season as to whether to try to hold on to their major assets, or see what returns they can get in prospect capital.

Verlander, with his huge contract and his storied record, has been a major point of discussion coming up to the trade deadline, since the Tigers’ general manager has been open about his desire to cut payroll and willingness to listen to offers for any and all of his veteran players. But Verlander’s situation has been complicated by the fact that he’s struggled this year for the first time in his career, entering tonight’s game with a record of 5-6 and an ERA of 4.73, though in his last start, in Cleveland before the All-Star break, he did pitch six and two thirds innings and gave up only one earned run, “only” striking out six.

As for Aaron Sanchez, you could almost hear the unfurrowing of the brows of the long foreheads in the gilded private offices of Blue Jays’ upper management after his gritty six-inning, no earned runs, performance against Verlander tonight.

In his first start after returning from the disabled list, last Friday at home against Houston, Sanchez completely lost the strike zone in the early going, and exited after only one and two thirds innings, leaving his team in an 8-0 hole that would eventually turn into a 12-2 Houston rout.

Tonight, against an admittedly less imposing Tigers’ lineup, Sanchez turned that around, holding Detroit to one unearned run in his six-inning stint. He allowed nine base runners, seven hits and two walks, and only struck out four, but was able to pitch his way out of every traffic jam he faced, and kept the Tigers in check while his mates gradually built a lead that even the tired Toronto bullpen found easy to protect for the win.

For the first four scoreless innings there was little to choose between the young Sanchez and the veteran Verlander. In fact, Verlander had a little the better of it, as he allowed only two hits and a walk while striking out four on 77 pitches. Meanwhile, Sanchez gave up four hits and a walk, while also striking out four, on 71 pitches. If the pitch count totals seem to suggest to you that there were a lot of deep counts and long at-bats, you’d be right.

But it was Verlander who cracked first, in the top of the fifth, thanks to a home run to left by leadoff hitter Steve Pearce, and with the help of a Kevin Pillar drive to right that clanked off the glove of J.D. Martinez and went for a two-base error. With Pillar on second and nobody out, Darwin Barney hit a grounder up the middle that was played on to first by the shortstop Jose Iglesias, but Pillar reacted well to the direction of the hit and advance to third, so that he was able to score on the sacrifice fly by Jose Bautista, for a two-run Toronto lead.

In the bottom of the inning a rather unlucky error charged to Josh Donaldson allowed the Tigers to cut the lead in half, but Sanchez was able to minimize the damage by getting an inning-ending double-play ball to short off the bat of Miguel Cabrera. Iglesias had led off with an infield single into the hole at short, and Alex Presley had shot one through the right side to send Iglesias to third.

In an eerie mirror image of the double play that Donaldson initiated in support of Stroman against Houston last week, Alex Avila lashed a liner right at Donaldson, who gloved it and fired it to first to try to double off Presley. But this time his throw was low, and somehow deflected off Presley, and skipped past Smoak. Iglesias, who had held at third on the play, was free to scamper home with Detroit’s first run. Presley had also moved up to second on the error, so it was just as well that Sanchez walked Justin Upton, setting up the double play situation for which Cabrera obliged, and after five innings it was 2-1 Jays, each pitcher having given up an unearned run, but Verlander had also coughed up the Pearce homer..

When Verlander came out for the sixth, it was a struggle, and he was only able to retire one batter, the leadoff hitter Donaldson, who finally fanned on the tenth pitch of his at bat. That was the swan song for Verlander. He walked Smoak and Morales, and Tigers’ manager Brad Ausmus decided his ace was done for the night. Unfortunately for Verlander’s stats, Shane Greene, who replaced him, gave up an infield single to Steve Pearce and then walked Kevin Pillar to force in Smoak, whose run of course was counted against the Tigers’ starter.

Now leading 3-1, Sanchez finished off his night with an eleven-pitch sixth inning, despite giving up a one-out single to Victor Martinez, after Kevin Pillar had made a great sliding catch on a liner by J. D. Martinez for the first out.

Warwick Saupold, now that’s a name that needs some investigation! The fellow with the unusual name was next up on the hill for the Tigers, and Jose Bautista, no respecter of people with distinguished names, greeted him with a solo shot to left that extended the Toronto lead to 4-1. Saupold escaped the inning without further damage, despite walking two; he was helped out of his jam by getting Morales to ground into a well-turned 3-6-1 double play.

Following his usual pattern, Jays’ manager John Gibbons brought in Danny Barnes in the seventh, after the end of Sanchez’ effective six innings. Barnes got the first two outs, then Avila reached on a roller out behind second that Darwin Barney ran down but had no play on. Then Barnes retired Upton on a fly ball to centre.

The usual pattern of Barnes-Tepera-Osuna-for-the-save became unnecessary when Blaine Hardy, brought in to pitch the eighth, ran into trouble with walks, and couldn’t nail down the third out in the inning before giving up three more runs, Donaldson capping off the rally with a rare two-out base hit with the bases loaded. With one out Pearce delivered his third hit of the game, a rope to left for a single. Hardy walked Pillar, struck out Barney for the second out, walked Bautista, and walked Martin to force in the fifth Toronto run. Then Donaldson delivered Pillar and Bautista, and for once we had some insurance runs.

Brad Ausmus finally pulled Hardy and brought in another left-hander, Daniel Stumpf, to pitch to Smoak, who hit a hard grounder to Castellanos at third on the first pitch to end the inning.

With the six-run lead, it was Joe Biagini who came in instead of Ryan Tepera to pitch the bottom the bottom of the eighth, and he fared much better than in his last outing against Houston last Sunday, when he gave up four runs. This time he retired Cabrera and both of the Martinez boys on 16 pitches.

Stumpf stayed on for the ninth, and quickly struck out Morales and Tulowitzki before giving up an opposite-field double to Zeke Carrera and walking Pillar, but then he caught Barney looking to finish off the Jays, having struck out the side.

Jeff Beliveau mopped up for Toronto in the Tigers’ ninth. With one out he gave up a solo home run to Andrew Romine to close the gap to 7-2, and then a single to Iglesias before striking out Presley and ending the game by inducing Dixon Machado, hitting for Avila, to ground out to Donaldson at third.

We did learn one interesting thing in the bottom of the ninth, though. We learned that Hunter Wendelstedt, working behind the plate tonight, has a pretty easy-going notion about what players can say to him in the heat of the moment. For some reason you can hear quite clearly on the broadcast what the players say at the plate in the Tigers’ ball park. When Wendelstedt punched out Nick Castellanos to lead off the ninth, on a pitch that appeared to be on the black up and away, Castellanos’ shouted “no fuckin’ way” and Wendelstedt did not react at all. Interesting: he’s an older, more experienced umpire. Any connection?

A good start to the second half of the season. Let’s see if Francisco Liriano can keep it going tomorrow night. Time’s a-wasting!

For a game that started out with high drama, this one sure turned into a stinker quickly.

One of the vagaries of major league baseball is that it’s only the wins and losses that count. In the four games of this series Houston won two games by a combined total of 31 runs for and 3 against. Toronto won the other two games by a more reasonable total of 14 runs to 6. But it all goes down in the ledger as a sawoff: two wins apiece.

It would be easy to get all tied up in the mess of today’s game and think that not only the first half of the season but the Jays’ prospects for the whole year had just gone down the drain. But no matter how ugly today was it was just one game, one loss out of 47 the Jays suffered in the first half of the season, with no more weight than any other.

The strange thing about it is that today’s game was not destined to be a terrible blowout, it started very dramatically for Toronto, and turned on a single play.

Jay Happ had put up a string of five quality starts since his first few restricted starts after returning from the disabled list on May thirtieth. His prospects were as good as any for taking charge of the strong Houston lineup.

Happ escaped damage in the first inning with the help of some spectacular defensive play by his mates. He started by apparently retiring George Springer on a chopper to third that Josh Donaldson adroitly barehanded and ostensibly nipped Springer at first, but the Astros asked for a review, and the decision was reversed. Non-plussed, Happ induced Jose Altuve to hit into a double play, bringing Carlos Correa to the plate with two outs.

Correa hit the one hard ball of the inning off Happ, a shot off the right-field wall that Jose Bautista played perfectly to hold Correa to first. Next up was the dangerous Marwin Gonzalez, who looped one softly into centre that Kevin Pillar raced in and plucked off the turf at his shoetops. This led to another review, as the Astros wanted to make sure Pillar hadn’t trapped the ball. He hadn’t, the inning was over, and Happ had retired the side on 16 pitches with only one hard-hit ball against him.

Brad Peacock, a right-handed slider specialist who has slid into the Houston rotation and delivered some good work for Houston, worked through the Jays’ first with much less drama, though he did give up a two-out line single to left by Donaldson before retiring Justin Smoak on a fly ball to right to end the inning.

This brought us to the pivotal Astro second, the inning that determined the outcome of the game and pinned the loss on Jay Happ, when a crucial throw by Josh Donaldson, with two outs and only one run in, went astray and opened the doors to a five-run inning, only two of which were earned.

Happ led off the inning by striking out Carlos Beltran, but Yuli Gurriel hit a 3-1 hanging breaking ball to the back wall of the Jays’ bullpen for the first run of the game. Alex Bregman followed with yet another opposite field base hit, a double to left. Then Happ struck out Jake Marisnick for the second out, bringing George Springer to the plate. Springer lashed a vicious one-hopper to Donaldson’s left. Donaldson dove for it and made a brilliant diving stop. But after scrambling to his feet he threw high to first, the throw sailing over Justin Smoak’s outstretched glove while Springer was still a couple of strides from the bag. Bregman came in to score to make it 2-0, and the inning was still alive.

Still alive for the Astros to tee off on Happ, that is. They racked up three more runs, all unearned, as was Bregman’s. Jose Altuve homered to left behind Springer, and then Carlos Correa homered to left back-to-back with Altuve, the first runs from two Houston hitters who would end up very productive by the end of the day. Evan Gattis finally brought the inning to an end, ironically, by grounding out to Donaldson at third.

When Peacock came out for the second and pitched around a two-out opposite-field single by Steve Pearce, you kind of knew where it was going to go from there, which was nowhere as far as the Jays were concerned.

Happ did retire Houston on ten pitches in the top of the third, and the Jays put together a couple of two-out base hits in the bottom of the inning, but that little rally came to an ignominious end when Donaldson tried to stretch a hard single off the wall in left into a double and got himself tagged out after a video review, with Martin chugging around third. This was the second time in this series that the Jays ran themselves out of an inning on a base hit when they were multiple runs behind. They need to fix this; it smells of desperation.

Happ gave up a scratch earned run in the fourth to run the Houston lead to 6-0, before Manager John Gibbons pulled him at 82 pitches, having given up the two earned runs on seven hits while walking three and striking out three, but of course three of the seven hits left the yard, earned or not.

Lucas Harrell came in to pitch the fifth and managed to extricate himself from a one-out, second and third jam, but couldn’t get through the top of the order in the sixth, when Springer and Altuve reached on singles and with one out Evan Gattis homered to

left to extend the lead to 9-0. Harrell retired the last two batters to finish two complete innings after Happ, but the rout was well past on.

And we won’t go into the gory details after that. The numbers are enough. 19 runs, 17 hits. Five homers. Altuve 3 for 4 and Correa 4 for 5 (with two homers), and eight RBIs between them.

Only Jeff Beliveau, who pitched the eighth, retired Houston in order. They touched up Loup and Tepera for six runs, five earned, in the seventh, and crowned the edifice off Joe Biagini in the ninth with another four-spot.

Oh, we have to mention that Zeke Carrera finally put the Jays on the board against

Francis Martes with two outs in the ninth when he hit his seventh homer of the season, the second time in this series that he hit one out in similar circumstances. Curious, that.

What to say about this debacle? Only this: Toronto just split a four-game series with the hottest team in the American League. Let’s just leave it at that, and not dig too deeply into the details, okay?

The All Star Game is Tuesday night. Time for a break, but let’s go Smoakie and Roberto!

What if you were throwing a no-hitter and nobody noticed?

In the first few innings of today’s third game of the Houston-Toronto series at the TV Dome, Houston starter Mike Fiers was all over the place with his curve ball, which is normally his bread-and-butter pitch. He walked two in the first and two in the third, not to mention throwing in a balk for good measure in the third, and by the end of three innings had thrown 60 pitches, the benchmark for an early exit after five innings for a typical starter.

Marcus Stroman was just about as shaky for Toronto in the early going. He also walked two in the first, throwing 26 pitches in the process, though Russell Martin and Troy Tulowitzki helped him out with a nifty caught stealing on George Springer, who had led off with a walk. After a quick second inning, he walked Norichika Aoki to lead off the third, and then saw Springer rifle a double into the right-field corner to score Aoki for a 1-0 Houston lead. Josh Reddick then singled Springer around to third, but Josh Donaldson saved further damage to Stroman with the defensive play of the game, leaping high in the air to snag Carlos Correia’s screaming liner, and coming down throwing to double the trapped Reddick off first. Stroman then popped up Evan Gattis on the infield to bring the inning to an end.

Both pitchers settled down in the fourth, Stroman retiring the side in order and helping himself by making a nice barehanded catch and throw on a ball to his right to nip the speedy Yuli Gurriel at first to end the inning. Fiers easily pitched over an error by Alex Bregman that allowed Troy Tulowitzki to reach by retiring Zeke Carrera on a fielder’s choice at second, and Kevin Pillar on a popup.

Stroman whipped through the fifth on only ten pitches, giving up a single to Aoki but getting Springer to ground into a double play, one of four pulled off by the Jays to support the sinker-throwing right hander.

As Fier took the mound for the home half of the fifth, it barely occurred to me, and I’m sure most other observers, that Fiers was actually working on a no-hitter. After five base runners and 71 pitches in four innings the fact that the Jays didn’t have a base hit kind of got lost in the shuffle.

No matter. After only one more out, Darwin Barney’s fly ball to left, and Jose Bautista reaching on a hit batsman, Russell Martin came up to the plate and spoiled the no-no with a base hit to right. This brought Josh Donaldson to the plate, and his blast into the 200 level in left centre on a 2-2 pitch not only emphasized the end of Fiers’ dominance over the Torono hitters, but also gave the Blue Jays a 3-1 lead that they would never relinquish.

In a way Fiers was lucky not to suffer further damage. Justin Smoak followed with a deep fly to right that stayed in the park, and Kendrys Morales hit one into right centre that should have been a double except that he hit it too hard and had to settle for a single. Fiers finally escaped by fanning Troy Tulowitzki, and even extended an extra inning to save his bullpen some work, putting the Jays down on only eight pitches in the sixth inning.

As it turned out, despite Fiers’ holding the Jays hitless for four and a third innings, it was Stroman who took the pitching honours today. After Donaldson’s homer gave him the lead, he struck out the side in the sixth, despite giving up a two-out base hit to Evan Gattis. He retired the side in the seventh on soft contact to finish up his day’s work, going seven full innings, giving up one run on 6 hits with three walks and six strikeouts on 109 pitches.

By the time Danny Barnes took the hill for the top of the eighth, the game had become a mopup operation. Houston manager A. J. Hinch followed Fiers with one of his most effective relievers, Chris Devenski, a big right-hander who relies on a changeup and mid-90s fast balls, and had only given up two runs in 14 appearances in June, and none in his first two appearances in July.

But Devenski wasn’t the right fit against Toronto on this day. After retiring Jose Bautista on a foul popup to the first baseman, Russell Martin stroked his second hit of the game to left. Donaldson worked Devenski for a walk, and Justin Smoak lined a 2-0 pitch to centre for a single that scored Martin with Toronto’s fourth run. Morales struck out on what was definitely ball four, giving Devenski some hope that he might escape the inning with only one run charged against him, and the Astros still within striking range.

But Tulowitzki spoiled that hope with a two-out line shot to left that extended the Toronto lead to 7-1, basically out of reach even for the tough Astros’ lineup. Devenski finished off the inning by fanning Zeke Carrera, but the damage was done.

Ken Giles for the Astros, and Danny Barnes and Joe Biagini wrapped up the game quickly enough, Danny Barnes picking up Stroman in the eighth with a quick 14-pitch clean inning, and Giles pitching a clean eighth to keep the Jays from extending their lead.

In the non-save situation Manager John Gibbons opted to give Joe Biagini his first airing since returning to the bullpen from the rotation, and he maneuvered the top of the ninth on only six pitches, one of which, however, was knocked out of the park by Marwin Gonzalez to shave a run off the Toronto lead. It would have been nice for Biagini to have put up a goose egg on the board, but he’s not the first good pitcher super-sub Gonzalez has taken deep, given that this was his sixteenth homer of the year.

So Marcus Stroman fell behind early in what looked like it was going to be a pitcher’s mess, while Mike Fiers didn’t give up a hit until the fifth. But it was Stroman who settled in and took control, while Fiers couldn’t get past the meat of the Toronto order in the fifth. When Devenski coughed up four more runs to the Jays’ order in the seventh, that was the ball game.

The Blue Jays, improbably, bounced back today from the drubbing they took from Houston last night, and now we shall see whether or not they can actually take this final series before the All-Star break from the hottest team in the league.

Aaron Sanchez made his long-awaited return to the mound tonight after finally conquering the blister problem that has bedevilled the 2016 American League ERA leader for most of this season. However, it didn’t go well for Sanchez, as he left the game in the second inning after only five outs and fifty-five pitches, with his team already down 8-0, and the game for all practical purposes over.

How much of Sanchez’ implosion could be attributed to the aggressive Houston hitters, and how much to the failure of home plate umpire Dana DeMuth to allow him the strike zone he needed to succeed in the first inning, is hard to determine.

As I write this, it occurs to me that sometimes we forget how young some of these players are. Roberto Osuna has admitted to anxiety problems, and has brought his family up from Mexico to provide support for him off the field. Marcus Stroman displays some rather immature behaviours at times. And who knows what’s behind Aaron Sanchez’ seemingly bland and sleepy countenance? Sanchez is twenty-five, Stroman is twenty-six, and Osuna, or course, is only twenty-two. But Sanchez and Stroman are now in their third seasons, Osuna in his second. At what cost to them has been their immersion in the very real and very tense environment of the Show at such young ages?

Through no fault of his own, Sanchez found himself in trouble right off the bat tonight. On his second pitch, George Springer looped one just over Ryan Goins’ outstretched glove for a soft base hit. On his fourth pitch, he sawed off Jose Altuve, but the latter still dribbled the ball with his cracked bat toward third for an infield hit. He went to 3-1 on Josh Reddick with some questionable calls on low pitches before Reddick hit a double-play grounder to Goins at second, with Springer moving to third. This should have been Sanchez’ ticket out of the inning, but these are the Astros here, and he still had to face Carlos Correa.

His first two pitches were way outside, and Correa didn’t bite. He didn’t bite on the first four-seamer up in the zone, either, but when Sanchez came back with the same one, he was all over it, and hit it out to centre field, scoring Springer ahead of him.

Maybe things would have been different if he had been able to retire the side after Correa’s blast, but he couldn’t get a call on several close pitches on Marwin Gonzalez, and eventually walked him on a 3-2 count. Gonzalez then stole second with Carlos Beltran at the plate, but Beltran grounded out to end the inning.

So, two runs in the first was not such a big deal, but who can say for sure how much the plate umpire threw Sanchez off his game? What he was thinking about the next inning while he sat in the dugout? Several times in the first he had backed off the mound to regroup, his usual response to being unhappy with the strike zone.

What we do know is that after the Jays went down against retread Houston starter Charlie Morton, with a single by Josh Donaldson erased by a Justin Smoak double-play ball, when Sanchez came out for the second inning he couldn’t find the plate at all. He walked Evan Gattis; not one of the balls was remotely close to the strike zone. After Alex Bregman hit a comebacker to him, Sanchez walked Norichika Aoki on four wild ones.

This brought Springer back to the plate, and Sanchez managed to get him to foul off a curve ball out over the plate, so he threw him a fast ball in the same spot. Big mistake, because Springer teed off on it, and hit it where it was pitched, for a homer to right, chasing home the two Sanchez walks ahead of him. 5-0, with one out in the second.

After that, it just went all crazy, both for Sanchez and the rest of the team. Altuve grounded one through the left side for a base hit. Pitching coach Pete Walker came out to try to settle his young pitcher, but after the visit he walked Josh Reddick. Correa then hit what should have been a double-play ball to Troy Tulowitzki, but in the strangest play of the game, Tulo flipped the ball to an uncovered base for an error, and the bases were loaded.

The base was uncovered because Ryan Goins backed off, since it looked like a straightforward shortstop unassisted to first double play. The ball was hit to Tulowitzki’s left, and he picked it up two steps from the bag, with his momentum going both to the bag and toward first. Had Goins moved into position, his pivot would have been a full 180 degrees to throw to first, whereas Tulowitzki had the clearer path to finish the double play.

The effect was an Alphonse-Gaston routine, only it wasn’t comedy night, and nobody was laughing, except the Astros. In short order, Gonzalez’ grounder to Goins scored Altuve, Beltran’s high bouncer off the plate went for an infield single to score Reddick, and Gattis’ double to centre scored Correa. Finally, manager John Gibbons came out with the hook, and Sanchez was finished, after one and two thirds innings, having given up eight runs, five earned, on seven hits with four walks and no strikeouts.

Mike Bolsinger came in to strike out Alex Bregman to end the misery.

When you’re down 8-zip going into the bottom of the second, you pretty well have to start pecking away at the lead right away, or you can just sign off on the loss. So the Jays came out in the bottom of the second, got two base hits, and nothing came of them. With one out, Steve Pearce blooped a safe hit into short right, and for some strange reason thought it was okay to gamble and go for two. He didn’t make it, so there was nobody on and two out when Tulowitzki followed with an infield single, instead of two on and one out for Miguel Monteiro . . .

And that’s basically the story of the game. Mike Bolsinger ended up putting in what was in effect an okay start, pitching five and a third innings, giving up four more runs on six hits, walking one and striking out seven on 88 pitches. Jeff Beliveau finished the last two innings, and gave up just one hit while striking out two.

As for the Jays, they finally picked up their only run off Morton in the fifth when Tulowitzki hit a solo homer to “cut” the Astros’ lead to 10-1. Morton went six innings and gave up the one run on only four hits. He was followed by James Hoyt, Tony Sipp, and Francis Martes, all of whom went an inning apiece, with only Martes being touched up by a last-gasp homer by Zeke Carrera leading off the ninth, which made the final score 12-2 for Houston.

Is it surprising that the Houston offence broke out big time after being held down fairly well the night before? Not particularly. Is it surprising that having fallen behind right from the first inning there was little hope for the Jays’ offence to catch up, even against mediocre pitching? Not at all. Is it troubling that Sanchez had such a poor outing? You betcha.

To be fair, the young right-hander with the scintillating stuff came out of the game claiming absolutely no problems with his healed blisters and that he’s good to go for his next start. That comes up after the All-Star break, when he’s first up in Detroit. We shall see.

Funny thing about baseball: Houston leads the aggregate scoring for the series so far, 16-9, but it’s still one victory apiece, with two games to go.

Funny thing about baseball: Houston leads the aggregate scoring for the series so far, 16-9, but it’s still one victory apiece, with two games to go.

So after a bit of a scramble to take the rubber game in New York against a slumping Yankee team, Toronto returned home to face the Houston Astros tonight, starting a four-game series, the last set before the All-Star break.

Let’s see, the Astros. 58-27, 31 games over five hundred. With Dallas Keuchel on the disabled list for most of the year. With their top three hitters, and four of the top five, hitting over .300. With Yuli Gurriel, famous here as the older brother of Jays’ prospect Lourdes Gurriel, hitting down in the number seven spot, even though he’s hitting .295 and came into the game with ten homers. And with Josh Reddick, hitting .319 over 262 at bats, “resting” tonight.

Gulp.

The same Astros who were starting a slow-throwing, curve-ball specialist named Lance McCullers (Jr.), who was sporting a record of 7 wins and a loss, and an ERA of 2.69, just the kind of guy our fast-ball loving sluggers want to see . . . pitching against any team but theirs!

Double gulp.

And who and what did our heroes have going for them tonight? For starters, er, the starter, they had Francisco Liriano taking the hill. He of the inconsistent season, sharp as a tack one time, wild as a March hare next time. He’d fall in the middle tonight, not brilliant but not nearly as bad as he’s been on occasion this year: six innings, 106 pitches, three earned runs on nine hits and a walk, but only four strikeouts.

As for the attack, Toronto has consistently only been competitive this season when the sluggers have hit jacks, more than one if you please, so what do you think would be the result if the Jays were facing said curve-baller, their starter gave up three runs, and they only hit one out of the yard, Russell Martin’s solo shot in the sixth? A 3-1 loss, or, if they were really sharp, a 3-2 loss, right?

Well, you’d be wrong. After Liriano left the game, the bullpen gave up another run, a Carlos Beltran home run off Ryan Tepera in the eighth, but even that wasn’t enough for Houston, because, mirabile dictu, the Blue Jays had six runs on the board off McCullers, one in the fourth and five in the fifth, without hitting a single home run.

So this was a different kind of ball game for the Blue Jays, against a very good baseball team. Hell, let’s face it, the best in the American League so far this year.

Despite giving up a single to Carlos Correa, Liriano had an efficient first inning, striking out George Springer and Carlos Beltran, and retiring the crazy-good Houston second baseman Jose Altuve on a little comebacker to the mound. Then the Jays came up to hit against McCullers and did what they do best, or at least most frequently, squandering an opportunity. They put a couple of base runners on with one out on a walk to Josh Donaldson and a base hit by Justin Smoak, before stranding them as Kendrys Morales and Troy Tulowitzki struck out.

Good luck to any pitcher who hopes to shut out the Houston lineup. After a reasonably good first inning, Liriano was dinged for a leadoff home run to left in the second by super-utility guy Marwin Gonzalez, playing left field tonight. Then with two outs he gave up a base hit to Alex Bregman, who promptly stole second, but died there when Martin made a fine play to jump on a dribbler in front of the plate and throw out the very fast Jake Marisnick.

Liriano kept Houston off the board in the third and fourth innings with some help from his defence. In the third, after fanning Springer for the second time, Altuve reached on an infield single behind second, but was thrown out by Martin trying to steal second, rendering Correa’s two-out walk that followed irrelevant. In the fourth he retired the side on three ground balls, but if it weren’t for Donaldson’s brilliant dive into foul territory and strong throw from his knees, the first grounder, a scorcher off the bat of Gonzalez, would have been an easy double.

In the meantime, McCullers was chewing through the Jays in only twenty-one pitches in the second and third, despite giving up a one-out base hit to Martin in the third, who was erased when Donaldson immediately grounded into a double play.

The Jays finally broke through against McCullers in the bottom of the fourth, thanks to, of all things, a two-out base hit with a runner in scoring position. But courtesy also of some shaky defence on the part of Houston. With one out, Morales hit one opposite the shift that should have been a fairly routine grounder to shortstop, but Bregman, the third baseman, let it go under his glove and Morales was on first with the error. Then McCullers wild-pitched him to second, and he advanced to third on a ground-out by Tulowitzki. That brought up Steve Pearce, who brought Morales home with the tying run on a single to centre.

Toronto had a shot at another run in the inning, but was burned by the ground-rule double again. With Pearce on first and off with the hit, Kevin Pillar hit a double to right, but it bounced out and Pearce had to stop at third. Both runners died in place when Ryan Goins grounded out to end the inning. Still, Liriano went into the fifth all even with the Astros.

But not for long. The Astros led off the fifth with Bregman’s bloop double down the left field line. After Marisnick flied out, Springer hit a Texas Leaguer to centre, but Bregman only advanced to third because Pillar took a diving shot at the ball, and he had to hold up to see if Pillar was going to catch it. Then the redoubtable Altuve delivered an opposite-field base hit that scored Bregman and put the Astros back in the lead. Liriano shut them down after that, and the Jays went back to work at the plate with another one-run deficit to work on.

They didn’t take long to turn the game around, rattling off three base hits around a crucial passed ball by the veteran catcher Brian McCann to take the lead for the first time in the game. Bautista lined one to left for a hit. Martin bounced one through the left side for a hit. Both moved up on the passed ball, and were in position to score when Donaldson took a low and away 3-0 pitch in the zone the other way for a base hit to right. After McCullers struck out Smoak for the second out, Morales doubled to the wall in right and Donaldson came all the way around to score the fourth run for Toronto. When Troy Tulowitzki hit a hard liner into left centre for a base hit, Morales came in with the fifth run, and that was it for McCullers, who in the end couldn’t keep the Jays at bay with his curve balls and slow stuff.

Michael Feliz came in and proceeded to make things worse, though the Jays did help him end the bleeding with some questionable base running. He couldn’t find the plate on Steve Pearce and walked him on a 3-1 pitch. Then he compounded his problem with a mental error that turned into a physical one. Pillar grounded one back to him, a possible double play ball, but he hadn’t resolved the coverage at second with Altuve and Correa, and so threw the ball over the bag, where there was no fielder yet, and Pearce was safe at second.

Ryan Goins, who starts to salivate and hyperventilate when he comes up with the bases loaded, hit a drive to centre that went for a double against an outfield that was playing too short. When will they learn? Tulowitzki scored, but Pearce was slow off second for some reason and Pillar very fast off first, and as Pearce rounded third Pillar was pounding at his heels. Coach Luis Rivera had no choice but to send Pearce, and he was DOA at the plate to end the inning. It was a deflating ending to a great inning of hitting with runners in scoring position (three, Donaldson, Tulo, and Goins), but Toronto took the field up 6-2, a lead they’d never relinquish.

The sixth inning was marked by an ejection of Marwin Gonzalez after plate umpire John Libka called strikes on two pitches that appeared to be on the black, and he swung at and missed a pitch below the zone to strike out, no doubt frustrated by it all. It was also marked by the afore-mentioned only home run hit by Toronto, a leadoff shot by the rapidly rebounding Russell Martin off reliever Dayan Diaz, who had replaced Feliz on the mound.

With seven runs on the board, the Jays’ offence was shut down the rest of the way by the Houston bullpen. After the Martin shot, Diaz retired six out of seven, giving up only a two-out single by Pillar in the seventh, while striking out three. Similarly, Luke Gregerson gave up a lone single to Donaldson with two outs, also striking out a couple of batters in the eighth.

Meanwhile, manager John Gibbons tried to sneak Liriano through an extra inning, the seventh, and as is often the case the experiment didn’t last long. Two pitches, to be precise. The first, to Alex Bregman, was high and outside. The second was a strike, down and in, until Bregman belted it to left centre where it hopped the wall, putting Bregman on second with his second double in a three for three night. It is just me, or is Bregman as tough an out for Toronto as the Correas and so on?

Anyway, Liriano was out and Ryan Tepera, now clearly settled in with Danny Barnes as the two holders/setup men to Roberto Osuna, came in to replace Liriano, inheriting Bregman at second. Tepera almost managed to strand the Houston third baseman. He fanned Marisnick. Then he fanned Springer. Ah, but this brought Altuve to the plate.

I’m going to need to stockpile adjectives for Altuve. I’ve used “redoubtable”. Now maybe it should be indomitable. Must make a list for future reference, see how far I can go before repeating myself. Tepra started him off with an unhittable pitch, a 94 MPH “sinker” that was more of a riser, and was up and in. So Altuve swing at it anyway, it completely sawed him off, broke his bat, and he hit a single through the open right side of the infield to knock in Bregman and finish Liriano’s ledger with the three earned runs. Then Tepera retired Correa on a squibber back to him, stranding Altuve at second, which he had stolen. Did I mention that Altuve is also annoying?

Houston crept within three with a home run by Carlos Beltran off Tepera leading off the eighth inning, and it took Tepera, Dominic Leone, and Jeff Beliveau to get out of the inning, each of them picking up one out, with Tepera leaving after hitting Brian McCann, Leone leaving after walking Bregman, and Beliveau retiring the only batter he faced, Josh Reddick hitting for Marisnick, who flew out to left.

With the lead now at three, Gibbie had little choice but to call on Osuna for the third day in a row. Showing little effect from the amount of work he’s been getting, Osuna gave up a hard drive to Springer that Pillar tracked down in centre for a nice running catch, and then dispatched Altuve (yes, it is possible, at times) and Correa on ground balls, the latter’s a sharp comebacker that Osuna stabbed nicely. Nine pitches, and Osuna had his twenty-first save in twenty-four opportunities, and his twentieth in a row.

Against a hot team and a tough pitcher, Liriano kept the lid on and the boys in blue/white/red/whatever gritted out the hits they needed to get ahead and stay ahead, and suddenly we’re sitting on a modest little three-game winning streak.

Maybe we missed something important Monday night. The apparent key to Toronto’s loss to the Yankees was the four-run New York outburst against Ryan Tepera in the bottom of the eighth inning. But in noting the significance of those add-on runs, we might have downplayed the fact that Toronto came back in the top of the ninth and picked up a couple of runs off Aroldis Chapman.

And they did it by getting base hits with runners in scoring position, Kevin Pillar’s double that scored Kendrys Morales, and Darwin Barney’s single that scored Pillar. In fact, all three Toronto runs scored on base hits with runners in scoring position. I shouldn’t have to point out that this development marks a significant improvement for Toronto in a key component of playing winning baseball.

In fact, if the Jays go on the improbable run that we’re all hoping for, and make the playoffs for the third year in a row, we just might look back to Monday’s ninth inning as the beginning of the turning point.

It was only fitting that on Tuesday, the American fourth of July, Jay Happ stifled the Yankees over six innings on three scratch hits and the obligatory prodigious blast by Aaron Judge, spoiling the national holiday, appropriately, for the team named after its country’s citizens. After all, the Red Sox had spoiled Canada Day for the Jays’ fans, so a little turnabout was fair play.

I missed all but the first inning of Tuesday’s game because of a specialist medical appointment, so I can only offer limited comments on Toronto’s tidy 4-1 win. I wasn’t even able to follow events via GameDay, as the large new public building where the medical office was located did not have public WiFi. Who knew you could have a signal-free public space in 2017? Is this a third world country or something?

C. C. Sabathia returned to the hill for New York after a stint on the disabled list, and it seemed like he’d never been away, at least based on the first eight batters he faced, none of whom reached base. But then he made the cardinal sin of walking the ninth batter, Darwin Barney, with two outs and nobody on in the top of the third.

I know it’s a cliché and all, but, man, isn’t it so often the case that the two-out walk, especially by a pitcher who’s been cruising, is the start of something bad? Sabathia had chewed through two and two thirds innings on just 34 pitches, and then he took seven pitches to walk Barney, none of the balls even close. He never retired another batter, and left the game down 4-0.

With Jose Bautista at the plate, Sabathia wild-pitched Barney to second. Bautista singled him home. Russell Martin followed with a single, Jose checking in at second. Josh Donaldson walked. Justin Smoak walked, forcing in Bautista with the second run. Kendrys Morales smoked a grounder through the left side, into the shift, that scored Martin and Smoak.

Just like that, it was four to nothing, Sabathia was out of the game, and Adam Warren had come on to retire Troy Tulowitzki on another hard-hit ball to short.

That’s really the whole story of the game. The Jays never scored again, in fact only had two base runners on once, in the seventh, as Luis Cessa shut them down over four and two thirds innings, allowing five hits but walking none and striking out three.

As for Happ, other than the excitement of allowing Judge to put a dent in the facade of the second deck in centre field with one of his bazooka blasts, he was in control all the way, and was never better than in the fifth when he fanned Judge, who represented the tying run at the plate, to end the inning.

Dominic Leone, Jeff Beliveau, Ryan Tepera, who was right back in the saddle and highly effective after Monday night’s struggles, and Roberto Osuna kept the Yankees from mounting a comeback, Osuna striking out two in the ninth for the save.

If you’re looking for another piece of the puzzle that needs to be solved to get Toronto back into the thick of things, maybe it’s lessons learned from a two-out, four-run rally against a pitcher who looked like he had your number. And how did that flow from a last-gasp rally against a dominant closer the night before?

Speaking of pitchers and numbers, today’s series final in the Bronx featured a pitcher whose numbers don’t resemble anything he’s ever experienced before, and that’s Marco Estrada. No matter where you look, it’s all bad for Estrada: ERA of 4.86 going into today’s game; nineteen walks in his last four starts; no start shorter than six innings before June first, one start of seven innings, one of five and two thirds, and five of four and two thirds or less since the first of June. When you take all this into account, add to it the historical inability of the Jays to provide run support, and the ongoing offensive slump that they still haven’t got shut of, it doesn’t leave room for much optimism when you know Estrada’s taking the mound.

Mind you, I say this as a committed Estrada admirer, who loves a well-pitched game more than anything, and has been held in complete awe by Estrada’s artistry in the past.

After the first inning today, perhaps I could be forgiven for thinking that maybe another corner had been turned by Toronto, this time by Marco Estrada. First off, the Jays put together a run in the top of the first off Michael Pineda without a home run, and with the benefit of opposite-field base hits by both Jose Bautista and Justin Smoak, not to mention Jacoby Ellsbury’s fumbling of Smoak’s hit that allowed Bautista to score from first.

So when Estrada took the mound he already had a one-run lead, not a lot, but more than he’s used to. And then he proceeded to retire the top of the Yankees’ order on twelve pitches, popping up Brett Gardner and Gary Sanchez, sandwiched around striking out Aaron Judge. And kudos to the newest Blue Jay, controversial catcher Miguel Montero, for staying with Sanchez’ nasty, twisting foul, eventually making an acrobatic catch.

After the Jays wasted two soft base hits in the second, a Texas Leaguer by Steve Pearce and a dribbler to third that Kevin Pillar beat out, Estrada retired the side in order again, adding the scalps of Chase Headley and Ellsbury to his strikeout pouch, and still coming in at a moderate thirty pitches for two innings.

By the end of the third things were looking so-o-o-o good for both Toronto and Estrada. Pineda led off the top of the inning by walking Josh Donaldson, and after Russell Martin hit into a force play, Smoak pulled a 3-2 pitch over the fence in right for his twenty-third homer of the year, and Kendrys Morales followed with number sixteen to dead centre, giving Estrada a four-run cushion to work with. He finally allowed a base-runner, walking catcher Austin Romine with one out, but then got rookie second baseman Tyler Wade to ground into a double play, Smoak to Tulowitzki, with Smoak taking the out at first and Tulo applying the tag to Romine at second.

Pineda, who’d lost an earlier start to the Jays in Toronto, didn’t retire a batter in the fourth. Pillar lined a home run to right leading off, and Ryan Goins followed with a single to left—two more opposite-field hits—and Yankee manager Joe Girardi had seen enough. He brought in lefty Chasen Shreve, who shut things down after walking Bautista by fanning Martin and Smoak, and retiring Morales on a foul popup to first.

Now Estrada had five runs to work with, and had faced the minimum number of batters. But he didn’t get the shut-down/hold-’em-down inning he needed facing the lineup for the second time. Gardner worked him for a walk, after managing to foul off two high, inside fast balls on 3-2. This brought up Aaron Judge, and he just couldn’t let Estrada’s first-pitch fast ball strike go. He launched it out of the park to centre scoring Gardner. It was the first hit given up by Estrada, and it was a doozy. Still, he went into the fifth with a 5-2 lead.

After Shreve kept it there with a clean inning in the top of the fifth, that ol’ debbil inconsistency showed up again, and not only did Estrada not qualify for the win, he left the game responsible for the Blue Jays’ loss unless something changed.

Ellsbury led off with a sharp grounder up the middle that Estrada just missed with his glove, before it went on into centre for a base hit. A game of inches, as always. This brought first baseman Ji-Man Choi to the plate. As a Korean player, Choi is an anomaly in that he was signed by the Angels at the age of 19, and never played professional ball in either Korea or Japan. His other claim to fame, or notoriety, if you prefer, is that his start tonight at first base, in his first game with the Yankees, makes him the tenth player to start at first for New York this year.

None of this mattered to anyone as much as the fact that Choi, who’d grounded out to Smoak the first time up against Estrada, hit a 1-0 fast ball up and out over the plate as far and as hard into the seats in right centre as anything Aaron Judge has hit all year. Now the nice 5-0 lead was cut to 5-4, and it would have been good if Estrada had been able to finish things off there, but it didn’t work out, as the bases on balls rose up again to bring him down.

He walked Romine, then struck out Wade on a foul tip, but walked Gardner. Two on, one out for Judge, who “only” hit a single right, so hard that Romine had to be held at third, loading the bases for Sanchez, who popped out to Tulowitzki in foul territory behind third for the second out. Estrada got that close to getting out of the inning, but no closer. Having gotten by the two most dangerous bats in the Yankee order, he had only to retire the unpredictable Didi Gregorius to escape the inning still in the lead. But Gregorius lined a double to right on the third pitch, plating two and giving New York the lead.

Also, knocking Marco Estrada out of the game after another mixed-review performance of four and two thirds innings, unable to hold a decent lead for his team. For the first time in this observer’s memory, Estrada was visibly upset with himself in the dugout, and it’s no wonder after the strange run he has had.

Aaron Loup came in and retired Headley on an easy fly ball to left to strand the last two runners left by Estrada. Chad Green took over from Shreve and retired the Jays in order in the sixth, and Loup returned the favour for Toronto in the bottom of the sixth. Curiously, both threw seventeen pitches to keep the bases clear.

But when Green returned to the mound for the top of the seventh, Russell Martin attacked his first pitch, a strike up in the zone, drove it to right centre and over the fence to re-tie the game at six. Green retired the side after that, despite giving up a two-out base hit to Tulowitzki.

Surprisingly, manager John Gibbons sent Loup back out for the bottom of the seventh. Even more surprisingly, he got away with it, with a little help from Danny Barnes, who must have ice water in his veins. I guess Loup stayed in to pitch to the left-handed Tyler Wade, whom he walked, and the left-handed Brett Gardner, who curiously was asked to bunt Wade to second. Curious, because it was obvious that Gibbons wasn’t going to pitch to Aaron Judge with first base open. The last thing Loup did was wave his hand to make Judge magically appear at first on the no-pitch intentional walk.

All Barnes did when he came in was strike Gary Sanchez out, and retire Didi Gregorius on a fly ball to right. On six pitches. Ya gotta like this guy.

However, the Jays were still left with the daunting task of being tied with the Yankees on New York’s home grounds with two innings to go, that is, one inning, the eighth, to be pitched by Dellin Betances, and one inning, the ninth, to be pitched by Aroldis Chapman.

Prospects did not look good for our heroes, until Betances came in and, like he has done at times in the past against Toronto, began throwing smoke all over the place, except over the plate, that is. In short order he walked the bottom of the Blue Jays’ order, Miguel Montero on a 3-2 pitch, and then Kevin Pillar and Ryan Goins on four straight balls each. This brought Jose Bautista to the plate, Bautista, who would either knock in some or all of the runners, or strike out. He struck out. Looking. But Betances got back off track, so to speak, and walked Russell Martin on a 3-2 pitch. As Betances left the mound, he got to wave bye-bye to Montero who was jogging in from third with the lead Toronto run.

Adam Warren came in and struck out Justin Smoak and got Kendrys Morales to fly out to centre, but there was that one-run lead for Barnes to protect, which he did by fanning Chase Headley and Jacoby Ellsbury, and retiring Ji-Man Choi on a grounder to third.

And so to the ninth, and no Aroldis Chapman. It was still Adam Warren on the hill, and he, like Barnes, finished off a stint of five outs in a row by retiring the side.

This left Roberto Osuna to come in and try for his twenty-first save in twenty-four opportunities, and his twentieth in a row, I might add. Osuna quickly disposed of the bottom of the New York order, Austin Romine and Wade, but gave up a base knock to the leadoff hitter, Gardner, fittingly bringing Aaron Judge to the plate, for One of Those Moments.

Judge fouled off the first pitch he saw, the only decent one he saw, a cutter up in the zone. Then he swung over a maybe strike down and away, and never saw another strike from Osuna, who went ball in the dirt, ball in his eyes, and a slider in the dirt that Judge tried to check on, but failed.

Dramatic finish to a strange game, but in the end a 7-6 win for Toronto, and a series win in Yankee stadium. The boys in blue ain’t dead yet.

After all the problems the Toronto Blue Jays have had with injuries to its starting pitchers, the last thing they needed, or that anyone would have expected, was to have their Last Man Standing, Marcus Stroman, come out of a game with a blister problem on his pitching hand.

Buoyed by his role in leading the U.S. team to the championship of the World Baseball Classic, Stroman started the season on a roll, and has become the rock of a rotation shaken by injuries to Aaron Sanchez, Jay Happ, and Francisco Liriano, not to mention the curious loss of precision exhibited by Marco Estrada. So to see him surrounded by coaches and training staff on the mound in Yankee Stadium tonight in the fifth inning of tonight’s game, followed by his failure to come out for the sixth inning, despite having thrown only 79 pitches, was a shock to the system.

Stroman’s removal added fuel to the rampant speculation about changes to the baseball that might be contributing not only to the rash of blister problems experienced by pitchers around the league, but also to the record numbers of home runs that are being hit. The theory is that the balls are more tightly wound, and that the stitching is tighter and less raised, the former issue causing the ball to fly, the latter issue forcing the pitchers to make minor changes in the way they grip the ball.

Stroman’s early departure, in a close game between Toronto and New York, with New York holding a 2-0 lead at the time, was the story line that overshadowed a game which was finally broken open by a late flurry of Yankee runs, not all of them earned, followed by a last-gasp rally by the home team that came up yes, once again, with too little and too late.

The pitching matchup provided a complete contrast between the frenetic, aggressive, hurry-up persona of the volatile Stroman, and the laid-back, seemingly disinterested torpor of the Yankees’ Master Fiddler from Japan, Masahiro Tanaka.

The first inning set the tone for the Toronto hitters’ approach to Tanaka, and, conversely for the Yankees, saw them gifted with two runs by Stroman, who had no one to blame but himself.

Jose Bautista led off the game by ripping a sharp liner into left on the second pitch for a base hit after flailing at a reality check breaking ball from Tanaka that ended up miles low and outside. Whatever else has been happening with some of the Jays’ hitters, during the recent funk they’ve been in Bautista has been one of the few to modify his approach and concentrate on getting on base. Not so Josh Donaldson, hitting second, who struck out on four pitches, missing one up and well outside, taking one in the same plane but close to the strike zone, fouling off the only pitch Tanaka threw in the zone, and then striking out on the same slider way down and outside that Bautista missed on the first pitch of the game.

Now, you can talk about nasty sliders all you want, but if you go up there knowing that that’s what he’s got, and that three quarters of the time he does not throw fast balls, if you see that pitch coming for the heart of the plate, shouldn’t you be ready for it to fall way out? Not every hitter swings and misses at that pitch, but Donaldson was the first of many Blue Jays to do so today, and that kept them from doing much damage to Tanaka.

Justin Smoak ended the inning by swinging over one splitter, and then taking the next one, outside on the black waist high, to left, but it was a grounder to Headley at third, who easily turned it into a double play, and Bautista’s leadoff single was wasted.

Enter Stroman, who retired Brett Gardner on a squib to Luke Maile in front of the plate, but then ran into a piece of good hitting by Aaron Judge, who inside-outed a high inside pitch and shot it to right for a single, and lucky hitting by Gary Sanchez, who swung at a pitch that was way outside, and sent it to right for another hit, with Judge racing around to third like Secretariat roaring down the stretch.

After that it was all on Stroman, who walked Didi Gregorius to load the bases, plunked Chase Headley to score Judge, and walked Jacoby Ellsbury to score Sanchez. It was

2-0 for the Yankees, and all they could claim responsibility for was setting the table. Stroman provided the feast.

With Toronto down two, the familiar pattern quickly emerged, a pattern that has to be due at least partly to the desperation Toronto’s hitters must be feeling. Kendrys Morales struck out chasing. Steve Pearce struck out chasing. Zeke Carrera showed some patience and golfed a 3-2 low strike into centre for a base hit. Darwin Barney popped out to second to strand Carrera.

Toronto continued to reward Tanaka for not throwing strikes. They stranded a two-out walk to Bautista in the third, a leadoff double by Smoak in the fourth, when Morales and Carrera struck themselves out chasing, bookended by a Pearce grounder to third. They stranded a two-out double by Luke Maile in the fifth, after Maile advanced to third on a passed ball, when Bautista fanned on a pitch that was at least in the zone.

Tanaka finally retired the side in order, the only time in his seven innings, in the sixth, before giving up his only run in the seventh, a run he and Gary Sanchez handed to Toronto. With one out, Tanaka nicked Zeke Carrera to put him on. Carrera broke for second and had it stolen, but got to third when Sanchez pulled his throw and it went into centre field. He then scored on a Texas League single by Darwin Barney. At the end of seven, Tanaka gave it up to the Yankee bullpen to protect his one-run lead, which Dellin Betances did in the eighth, though it took him twenty pitches and a strike-out-throw-out double play on Smoak and Donaldson, whom he had walked, to do it. As for the Toronto ninth, let’s just bring you up to date on Stroman and the Toronto relievers first. After his bout of wildness in the first, which ended with Ronald Torreyes hitting into a double play, Stroman retired eight Yankees in a row, which brought him to the top of the fourth, which looked eerily like the first inning, for a while.

Leading off, Chase Headley hit an opposite field single to left, and Jacoby Ellsbury followed by doing the same thing. But this time Stroman shut things down himself. Torreyes tried to bunt the runners over, and dropped one toward third that wasn’t bad, but Stroman was on it in a flash, Donaldson stayed home for the throw, and they just nipped Headley with the force. Chris Carter then hit into a double play started by Donaldson and the threat was over.

In the New York fifth it was hard to imagine that Stroman was having a problem with his pitching hand, though he did give up a one-out base hit to Brett Gardner, who hustled it into a double. This was when the Toronto pitcher called out the coaches and trainers to look at his hand, the hand with which he had already fanned Clint Frazier. Then after being attended to, he got Aaron Judge to ground out to second, with Gardner moving to third, and fanned Gary Sanchez to end the inning, and, as it turned out, his night, after five innings, having given up two runs on five hits, two walks, and a hit batter, while striking out three on, as I said earlier, only 79 pitches.

So once again the heroic but flagging Toronto relief corps came into play early. Aaron Loup fared well again in a full-inning stint, retiring Gregorius on a short fly to centre, and Headley and Ellsbury on grounders. He breezed through in only eleven pitches. Danny Barnes took 24 pitches to get through the eighth, and walked Carter in the process, but also struck out Frazier and Gardner.

Next up, as if you hadn’t guessed, was Ryan Tepera to pitch the eighth, making his thirty-sixth appearance in the Jays’ eighty-second game. I mention the number of appearances for Tepera only to exculpate him for not doing the job, just this once. And since two of the four runs he gave up were unearned, it turned out worse for Toronto than it should have.

Facing the meat of the order, Tepera was in trouble right away. Aaron Judge singled to left. Gary Sanchez doubled to left, a ball over Pearce’s head that a better fielder might have caught (IMHO), with Judge stopping at third. Tepera walked Gregorius on a 3-2 pitch that wasn’t close, and then Headley doubled to right to knock in two and send Gregorius to third. Tepera fanned Ellsbury for the first out, and then Torreyes hit one back to Tepera with the contact play on, and this time it worked, for the Yankees. Tepera’s throw was in time to get Gregorius, but Luke Maile never got a handle on it, and it bounced away, just far enough for Headley to follow the lead runner home with the second unearned run, the error charged to Maile, and now a 6-1 Yankee lead.

For one of the few times this season, Ryan Tepera was unable to finish his inning of work, and Mike Bolsinger, newly acquired from Buffalo after passing through waivers, came on to get the ever-accomodating Chris Carter to hit into his second double play on his second pitch.

Incidentally, watching Carter strike out way too much, lumber around the bases like an old dray horse, and kick the ball around at first, it’s not hard to see why he took so long to sign with somebody this past off-season. So how’s that power-hitting free agent first baseman you signed workin’ out for ya? Oh, he’s hitting eighth. When he’s in the lineup. And one of the other eight guys who’ve played first for you this season isn’t in there. Ouch.

With Aroldis Chapman coming in for a non-save situation, since he had already been warmed up, things looked bleak for Toronto, but the Jays’ hitters shook themselves out of their torpor for the moment, and with the help of the great Chapman himself, managed to make it interesting. And if Maile had been able to hold onto the throw from Tepera, it would have been a good deal more interesting indeed.

Facing the lefty Chapman, Morales, hitting right, led off by driving a double the wrong way, to right. He had to hold at second when Pearce dribbled one back to the pitcher. Kevin Pillar, who’d been given the night off to recuperate from a brilliant diving catch he’d made with his team losing 15-1 the night before, was sent up to hit for Carrera. Chapman might throw over a hundred, but that didn’t keep Pillar from driving a double into the left-field corner to score Morales. Barney then cashed Pillar with a ground single to right for his second RBI of the night.

In came Troy Tulowitzki, also given the night off by manager John Gibbons, to hit for Goins. While Tulowitzki was striking out (no comment here), Chapman wild-pitched Barney to second. This brought Russell Martin to the plate to hit for Maile, and also brought the tying run to the on-deck circle in the person of Bautista.* Chapman got ahead of Martin 1-2, and tried to blow a 100 MPH fast ball by him, but Martin got hold of it and hit it on a line, really hard. Luckily for Chapman, though, it was right at Headley at third, and ended the game.

It’s funny how little things accumulate and lead to big things. Marcus Stroman is pitching well and keeping the Blue Jays close, and then he has a blister problem—a little thing, in the grand sweep of the cosmos—which cuts short his start by at least one, if not two, innings. This brings more of the bullpen, the tired, overworked bullpen, into play, and one of its finest exemplars doesn’t bring his “A” game to the inning he might not have otherwise pitched, and a close and exciting game goes tantalizingly out of reach, just like the ball that ended up far enough away from everybody to let a sixth run score and put the game away for the home squad.

*Chapman was not awarded a save tonight, though he certainly kept his team ahead while having the tying run come to the on-deck circle. Guess that explains one of the great conundra of baseball life: what if a closer comes in with a fat lead and then creates, and overcomes, a save situation? Unlike the tree falling in the forest, we now know the answer to that question: no, a closer can’t pitch himself into trouble so he can be recognized for pitching out of it. Fair enough, I’d say.

Okay, so I’m combining these two game stories into one narrative, which is not going to be very long, for a number of reasons, all of which an be conflated into a single statement: these were absolutely the worst, most dispiriting, two games played by the Toronto Blue Jays in recent history, which we can date back to the 2015 trade deadline, and the beginning of Toronto’s first pennant drive in twenty-two years.

(I recognize that I might seem to be ignoring last year’s disappointing ALCS against Cleveland, but the Jays were competitive in every game in that series, and their loss can clearly be attributed only to a failure to hit the ball, not to the kind of system-wide breakdown we’ve seen this past weekend.)

After losing two of three to Baltimore here at home, it was imperative that our heroes acquit themselves better against the de facto division leaders, the Boston Red Sox. Not that the Sox haven’t played well enough so far this year, considering the significant decrease in power output they’ve experienced, and the number of disruptions they’ve suffered to what should have been an overpowering rotation. It’s just that they’ve played more okay than the other teams in the division, given the dismal performance of Toronto, the five-hundred-ish play of Baltimore and Tampa Bay, and the recent slide by the erstwhile front-running Yankees.

On paper, taking into account a relatively equitable rash of injuries to key members on every team, Toronto should be right in the middle of things. But, as of Sunday evening, after Part Two of the Rape of the Blue Jays, the locals are languishing at the bottom of the division, though undeniably still within striking range, considering how far back they were in 2015 before the Big Push.

However, judging from what we saw this festive weekend, there ain’t no Big Push in sight, no-how, no way. The starting pitching is still remarkably inconsistent and unreliable—witness the wildness of Marco Estrada on Friday night—the bullpen is exhausted and growing more so by the day, and the hitting, well, the hitting has been the pits, is still the pits, and if it remains the pits for much longer, no amount of bucked-up pitching, shored up by the return of Aaron Sanchez to the rotation and Joe Biagini to the bullpen, will salvage the season.

There—sheesh! I finally got all that off my chest!

So last Canada Day, 2016, was the day of the epic battle between Cleveland and Toronto, the nineteen-inning game which ended up with Darwin Barney giving up the winning home run to Carlos Santana in the top of the nineteenth after Ryan Goins threw out his arm with bowdacious curve balls in the eighteenth, and Trevor Bauer pitched five innings for the win, taking himself out of the rotation for his next start, and making his biggest impression on Toronto fans prior to the Episode of the Bloody Digit in the ALCS.

What did we get on Canada Day this year? A dismal, dispiriting affair which could have been called after the second inning. Hell, make that the first inning, since the Bosox handed Chris Sale a 2-0 lead before he ever took the mound, and Sale and the Boston bullpen held the Blue Jays scoreless until Steve Pearce’s solo homer leading off the ninth.

We were looking at an uphill climb right off the bat, and when the Red Sox added two more in the top of the second, the prospects for the day took a dive right into the tank.

We hosted a family picnic, which ended up indoors, refugees from the rain, for Canada 150, so I had to abandon the game in the seventh, but it was no great loss: I’d been looking for an excuse to flee since the third inning. Theoretically, the only thing worse than bad baseball is no baseball, i.e., December and January, but this time out it was a dead heat, methinks.

On Saturday, Francisco Liriano started the game by doing a prudent thing and throwing four wide ones to Mookie Betts, putting the leadoff batter on. Then he retired the next two batters, which took all of thirteen pitches for a walk and two outs. On the fourteenth pitch, though, he coughed up a double to Hanley Ramirez, on which, amazingly, Betts did not score. But that just meant he could trot hom ahead of Ramirez when Jackie Bradley hit his usual opposite-field base hit, a double to left. Chris Young grounded out to short for the third out, and Sale could start with his little clutch of runs in the bank, not a great prospect for Toronto.

And, all of this took 21 pitches, so Liriano was on track for another five-inning start at best, meaning another four innings on deck for the beleaguered bullpen.

But, really, this wasn’t all that much about Liriano, was it? The real question was whether or not the Jays could generate any offence against Chris Sale at all. If not, it wouldn’t matter of Liriano gave up two or ten.

For the first two innings, Sale did expend a few pitches and allow some base runners, throwing 19 pitches and allowing a single and walk in the first inning, and hitting Steve Pearce leading off in the second. But with another two runs to work with, Liriano again giving up two after retiring the first two batters, the occasional base runner against Sale didn’t mean very much. After hitting Pearce in the second, for example, he struck out the side.

From that point both pitchers settled in, and Liriano even managed to last through the sixth on an even hundred pitches while giving up one more soft run in the fifth on Betts’ third walk, a stolen base, an advance to third on a ground ball, and a sacrifice fly.

Sale, meanwhile, cruised seven shutout innings. After hitting Pearce in the second, he retired seven in a row before giving up a single to Tulowitzki in the fourth. He then hit Martin leading off in the sixth and gave up a following double by Smoak, and allowed a two-out Texas League single to left by Ryan Goins in the seventh. At no time was there any sense that the second or third base hit in the inning might be coming, or even possible. He finished up seven innings on 116 pitches, giving up no runs on four hits while walking one, striking out eleven, and hitting two, just to keep the guys loose up there.

Blaine Boyer pitched a clean eighth after hitting Martin, the latter’s second hit-by-pitch in the game, and Robby Scott mopped up in the ninth, giving up the Pearce homer and a one-out single to Darwin Barney, but finishing off by fanning Ryan Goins and popping up Jose Bautista to bring this one to its actual, technical, end, long after it was truly done.

Journeyman right-hander Lucas Harrell, just called up by Toronto, came in to pitch after Liriano finished up, and even manager John Gibbons seemed to have conceded the game to Sale, letting Harrell stay in through the seventh and eighth, and only pulling him in the ninth when he’d run out of gas after throwing 52 pitches and giving up two runs, expanding the Boston lead to 7-1. Jeff Beliveau came in and finished up by fanning Bradley, but it was too little and too late.

As were all the Jays’ efforts on Canada Day 2017.

Sunday it was up to Joe Biagini, in probably his last start before the return of Aaron Sanchez, to try to stem the tide for Toronto and salvage one game of the series. After a close extra-inning loss on Friday night, and a breeze by Chris Sale on Saturday, this one had to go well for Toronto and Biagini, or . . . Can’t finish that thought, eh? Neither can I.

Biagini, who’s obviously been drinking from the same Kool-Aid jug as the rest of the Toronto starters, quickly retired the first two Sox in the top of the first, on only seven pitches, no less, even catching Mookie Betts looking on a 2-2 pitch. But then, well, it started again. He walked Dustin Pedroia on a 3-1 pitch. Pedroia stole second while Biagini was walking Mitch Moreland. Hanley Ramirez grounded one up the middle and through to score Pedroia, with Moreland taking third. Finally, Jackie Bradley grounded out to short to end the inning.

Another two-out rally. Another first inning lead.

And another fine start by an opponent’s starter, this time lefty Drew Pomerantz, who retired the top of the Jays’ order on thirteen pitches.

If that’s all we had at the start, what was the big deal? One run down, and we’re not facing Chris Sale, right? Except that with one out in the top of the second, the rookie Tzu-Wei Lin tripled to centre and later scored on a single by Betts, who couldn’t possibly have struck out again, could he have?

And it was kind of good for Toronto to come right back in the bottom of the second and recover one of the two runs, without even hitting a home run. Justin Smoak, who later in the evening would learn that he had won the starting job at first for the American League All Star team, led off with a single to centre, and then applied an under-appreciated talent of his, good base-running, to get into position to score. After Pomerantz walked Kendrys Morales, Troy Tulowitzki hit a deep liner to centre, Smoak read the contact properly, tagged up, and made it to third on Bradley’s throw, whence he could score on Steve Pearce’s sacrifice fly. 2-1 Boston after two.

Biagini and Pomerantz both stranded two runners in the third, the Sox getting base hits from Moreland and Bradley, who were stranded when Biagini fanned Christian Vazquez. Pomerantz was victimized by a careless misplay of an easy fly ball to left by Darwin Barney that Andrew Benintendi just plain muffed, Barney ending up on second. Bautista walked, and Russell Martin followed with a hard drive to right, but right at Betts for the first out. But on an 0-1 count, Josh Donaldson grounded one right to Marrero at the bag at third for an easy 5-3 double play.

After the end of the third, any semblance of a real baseball game simply blew away on the wind, the wind created by the whoosh of Mookie Betts’ bat. In a most un-Boston-like display, the two rookies at the bottom of the order, Lin and Marrero, bunted their way on to lead off the inning, bringing Betts to the plate. Biagini made the mistake of falling behind 2-0, and had to come in with a juicy fast ball over the heart of the plate that Betts promptly deposited into the hands of a guy strangely dressed all in white in the first row of seats beyond the wall in left centre field.

Though it was only a four-run lead, and though Biagini came back to retire six in a row after the (first) Betts homer, when the Jays rolled over and failed to capitalize on a base hit in the fourth and two in the fifth, it looked like it was Pomerantz’ win to protect.

In the top of the sixth Betts guaranteed the outcome and drove Biagini from the game with his second round-tripper, following yet another opposite-field single by Marrero, which extended the Boston lead to 7-1. Aaron Loup came in to finish up the inning, but once again it was too late: the horse was long gone.

Any remote hope of the Jays mounting a comeback went on life support in the bottom of the sixth when Smoak, continuing to hit the ball hard regardless of his team-mates fecklessness, hit a one-out double to left centre, only to have Morales fan and Tulowitzki ground out weakly to second.

With the help of Glenn Sparkman, on for the second time in the series against Boston, the Sox finally pulled the plug on the hapless Jays by ringing up eight more add-on runs to make the game a bizarre sort of joke. Sparkman only managed one out and gave up seven runs on seven hits. But, to be at least a little fair, I kept track, and six of the seven hits off Sparkman were to the opposite field, and even the two-run job by Hanley Ramirez off Jeff Beliveau went out to right, not to mention a following base hit by Bradley to left that didn’t enter into the scoring. You know you’ve had it when the opposition scores eight runs on nine hits in one inning, and only one hit, a single to centre by Mookie Betts, did not go the wrong way.

For some strange reason my game notes don’t exist for the last two innings of this one. Maybe I just lost interest. D’ja think?

After the Sox put Friday night’s game away with three runs in the top of the eleventh, the cumulative score for the next two games was, if you’ve got the stomach for it, 22-2. The hit totals were—wait for it—33-11. Oh, but each team had only one error. That’s because you couldn’t really charge errors on all the bloopers hit by Red Sox batters that bounced away from frantically charging Jays’ outfielders.

Though it’s not likely that Boston was very happy to leave the friendly confines of the TV Dome, there’s no doubt the Jays were happy to get out of town, if only to find a dark, quite place to lick their wounds, and contemplate the disaster their season may be becoming.