If there were any doubts remaining about whether Jay Happ has returned to last year’s level of excellence, this afternoon’s outstanding performance against the Chicago White Sox should have put them to rest once and for all.
For a moment it was questionable whether Happ would survive the first inning, let alone go on to pitch as well as he did. It seems like no matter who’s on the mound, Toronto just can’t seem to avoid first-inning trouble these days.
Tim Anderson led off with a fluke infield hit, bouncing a ball between first and second that both second baseman Rob Refsnyder and Justin Smoak broke for. Smoak saw that it was too far for him and headed back to first, but lost track of the bag while reaching for Refsnyder’s throw, and Anderson was across the bag safely. Tyler Saladino lined out to third for the first out, but Happ lost Jose Abreu on four pitches. Kevan Smith lined a shot to left for a base hit but Pearce got to it too quickly for Anderson to score, and Happ found himself surrounded by Sox with only one out.
If there was a key at-bat for Happ in this game it came right then, as he faced the rookie left-handed hitter Nicky Delmonico. It was tough sledding for the rook as Happ quickly got two called strikes on low pitches, the second one probably too low. Delmonico fouled one off that was thigh-high and out over the plate, took a slider low and outside for ball one, then fanned on the same pitch he had fouled off, a fastball out over the plate. With two outs, Happ fielded the easy come-backer from Leury Garcia and took the even easier out at the plate, tossing underhanded to Miguel Montero to force Anderson for the third out.
After having had to bear down and throw 22 pitches to retire the Sox in the bottom of the first, Happ cruised through six more innings on 104 pitches, and gave up only one run on four more hits after the first inning, no walks after the first inning, and a total of ten strikeouts, starting with that crucial punchout of Delmonico in the first.
He retired the side in the second on eleven pitches, gave up a leadoff triple to Tim Anderson on the first pitch he threw in the third, and then took only seven more pitches to retire the side and strand Anderson at third, inducing three ground balls, none of which enabled Anderson to score. In the fourth he took twelve pitches to blank the Sox, and picked up only his third strikeout. Likewise the fifth, on thirteen pitches, and two more strikeouts, bumping his total to five.
The Sox finally got to him for a run in the sixth, but it was hardly an overwhelming display of force. Tyler Saladino led off with a base hit to left, the first hit since Anderson’s triple in the third, Happ having retired nine in a row since then. Jose Abreu fanned, bringing up Kevan Smith, who beat out a little chink shot in front of the plate that Miguel Montero hustled after, but not in time to make a play, with Saladino on to second. Montero came up lame on the play and would have to give way the next inning to Russell Martin. Delmonico hit one back to the pitcher, and Happ’s best play was the force at second for the second out, moving Saladino to third, whence he scored on a base knock by Garcia. Yolmer Sanchez fanned to end the inning, bringing Happ’s count to seven in six innings.
Happ saved his best for last, and finished with a flourish by striking out the side in the seventh inning, giving him his first double-digit strikeout game of the season at ten. Remarkably, after they had seen him twice (Hanson and Engel), and three times (Anderson), two of his last three strikeouts were on called third strikes. So much for the hitters having the advantage on the starter the last time around.
There has been much discussion around which is the “real” Justin Smoak, the guy with the part-timer, so-so career record up to this year, or the offensive monster of 2017. There has been almost as much talk about the “real” Jay Happ, given that the period of his second half of 2015 with Pittsburgh, and 2016 with Toronto was such an outlier related to the rest of his career numbers, especially since he was struggled at the beginning of this season. But a quick look over his game results since he returned from the disabled list at the end of May shows that he quickly rounded into 2016 form, with the exception of a couple of outings, and has now established himself as, if not the number one on the staff, the co-number one, sharing the spot with Marcus Stroman.
By the time Dominic Leone took over for Happ in the bottom of the eighth, the Jays had built a 4-1 lead, plating the first two off veteran left-handed starter Derek Holland, who turned in a very serviceable six-innings of five-hit, two-run ball himself.
One effect of starting a left-hander against Toronto is to turn Justin Smoak and Kendrys Morales around to hit from the right side, and Smoak in particular enjoys the change of scenery. In the third inning he came up with one out and Josh Donaldson on first after drawing a walk from Holland. Smoak had already hit a solid line single off the Chicago starter in the first, and this time he picked out another one he liked and drove it to the wall in left centre for a double while Donaldson came around to score the first run of the game.
It stayed 1-0 until Steve Pearce teed off on Holland leading off the sixth and drove it over the fence in left for a 2-0 lead. As we’ve seen, the White Sox cut the lead in half in the bottom of the sixth, and keeping in mind the two recent blown leads, you had to be worried about taking a one-run lead into the late innings on somebody else’s home grounds.
Mouths got a little drier as Chicago manager Rick Renteria brought in the lanky right-hander, Jake Petricka, who’s had good success against the Jays, to pitch the seventh. He worked around a one-out walk to Donaldson in tiptoeing around the heart of the Toronto order.
After Happ finished off the Sox in the seventh with a flourish, Petricka, who had thrown 18 pitches in the seventh, came back out for the eighth. Maybe Renteria should have played it one inning at a time, because the Jays had Petricka’s number in the eighth. Or maybe he had his own number, considering how much he contributed to the Toronto uprising.
He started by walking Steve Pearce, who alertly came around to third when Kevin Pillar followed with a single to right. Russ Martin followed with a single to left to score Pearce and bring Pillar around to third, where he was perfectly poised to score the inning’s second run on a Petricka wild pitch. That was all the scoring for the Jays, but Martin stole second and advanced to third on a second wild pitch by Petricka. He had to hold there when Darwin Barney grounded out to third, and then Renteria brought in Juan Minaya, who got Jose Bautista to fly out to end the inning.
Even at 4-1, the past was hanging darkly over the park in the bottom of the eighth when it took three Toronto pitchers to retire the White Sox, working around two walks in the meantime. Dominic Leone came in and fanned Tyler Saladino and Jose Abreu, raising hopes of a quick and clean ending, but then he walked Kevan Smith, bringing up the left-handed Nicky Delmonico. This brought Aaron Loup into the game to face Delmonico, but once again he failed to put away the one batter he needed to: Delmonico drew a walk. This brought Joe Biagini into the game, and he put the rising down, such as it was, by fanning Leury Garcia to end the inning.
After Donaldson gave the Jays a little more breathing room with a leadoff homer in the ninth off Chris Beck, who then retired the Toronto hitters in order, Biagini was sent back out to try to save wear and tear on the arm of Roberto Osuna, since on the face of it it wasn’t a save opportunity. Yet.
But it was, once Biagini gave up two base hits leading off the inning. The call went out to Osuna after all, and this time there was no touching him. A foul pop to first, a strikeout, and a fly ball to centre on eleven pitches, and the game was in the bag.
The Blue Jays now pack their bags and head to Houston for a three-game series with the Astros, who are only thirty games over .500. Too bad they don’t go down there with a series sweep already in the bag.
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