While winning two out of three from the wild-card leading Yankees doesn’t help the Blue Jays’ near lost cause of making the playoffs as much as a sweep would have done, it’s not bad to kick back and watch an effective Marco Estrada, a shutdown bullpen, and well-executed small ball combine to keep the playoff door open for our heroes, even if only by a teeny crack. As in tonight’s nice, crisp, 4-0 Toronto shutout of the maybe-not-quite-there-yet New York Yankees.
By the way, if I haven’t ever actually defined “small ball” in the way it is commonly used in the baseball lexicon of today, the shortest explanation of the term is that it’s an offensive approach that doesn’t rely on home runs and big explosive innings to score runs. Think single, sacrifice bunt, single to score one. Or walk, stolen base, single. Or leadoff double, ground ball right side, or bunt, or fly ball to right to move the runner to third, sacrifice fly. Think squeeze play, or even suicide squeeze (you’ll find a piece on this exciting aspect of baseball in my article archive). Think hit and run, which if it works is beautiful, and even if it doesn’t result in a base hit moving the runner to third, in most cases it helps to avoid the double play by starting the runner from first.
When you look at the “line score”—the inning by account of team scoring that heads up the box score of the game—and see a picket fence, ones in four different innings for the Blue Jays, as in tonight’s line score, it means one of two things: either the Jays hit a bunch of solo homers against a fly-ball pitcher, or they played small ball. Tonight, save for Jose Bautista’s solo dinger in the seventh inning that made the count 4-0, it was small ball that put the runs up on the board.
There’s no question whatsoever as to the meaning of the row of nine zeroes opposite the Yankees’ name in the line score: faced by a resurgent, crafty Marco Estrada, who is making people think seriously about Toronto re-signing him for next year, the big, bad Yankees took a horse collar. When Estrada left after seven brilliant innings, Ryan Tepera and Roberto Osuna were well up to their responsibility to protect his gem.
It’s not like Estrada was pitching some kind of perfect game, but he sure was good at shutting down threats. With two outs in the first he walked Aaron Judge and then gave up a double to right by Didi Gregorius, and only sharp work by Jose Bautista retrieving the double held Judge at third, where he was stranded when Estrada fanned Gary Sanchez.
In the second inning, after he’d fanned both Todd Frazier and Jacoby Ellsbury on killer change-ups, Garrett Cooper collected his seventh hit in nine at-bats, a double to right centre, but then Ronald Torreyes hit a short fly to right for the third out.
In the third inning he gave up his third straight two-out double, a ground-rule job to left by Judge, but Gregorius flew out to centre. He actually retired the side in the fourth on eleven pitches, but had to face Cooper leading off in the fifth.
Cooper collected his eighth hit of ten at bats in the series, a hard single into the left field corner that would have been a double but for the hustle of Steve Pearce who tracked it down in the corner and hurried it back in to hold Cooper to first. Estrada walked Torreyes, but then induced a fly ball out and a popup to second that Rob Refsnyder ran a long way to track down. This brought Judge back to the plate, with two on, two out, and the Jays leading by a 3-0 count. In a key at-bat of the game, Estrada froze Judge on a 1-2 count with a low outside changeup on which the Toronto starter might have caught a break from plate umpire Jerry Meals.
In the sixth with one out Estrada walked Sanchez, and then watched helplessly as Todd Frazier’s jam shot somehow found its way safely into right field. The base-runners seemed to bring focus to Estrada’s work: he got Ellsbury to foul out to Russell Martin behind the plate, and then, finally, retired Cooper on a fly ball to left.
Estrada went out with a flourish in the seventh, retiring the side on ten pitches, bumping his pitch total to 110. He ended up keeping the Yankees off the board on five hits with three walks while striking out six. It had to be frustrating for the Yankees that three of their five hits were doubles, and they weren’t able to cash any of them.
Ryan Tepera gave up a two-out single to Sanchez in the eighth, and then applauded Refsnyder’s effort in going to his knees on the backhand behind second to corral Frazier’s ground ball base-hit bid, and throw the hitter out for the third out.
In a non-save situation, Roberto Osuna threw 22 pitches, almost all breaking balls, in the ninth, and not one of them was hit into fair territory. He walked Ellsbury leading off, fanned Cooper (yay!) who ended up 8 for 12 in the series, fanned Chase Headley hitting for Torreyes, walked Brett Gardner, and fanned Aaron Hicks for the third out. It was an interesting ride for Osuna, but it never became a save situation.
Sonny Gray, the centre piece of New York’s trade deadline wheeling and dealing, took the mound for the Yankees. Gray had pitched well enough in his previous start for Oakland against Toronto, giving up no earned runs in six innings, but being saddled with the loss as the result of a four-run outburst by Toronto that stemmed from his own fielding error, when he threw the ball away in an ill-advised attempt to turn a doubtful double play.
Tonight he retired the side in the first, stranding a one-out walk, but then suffered a form of Chinese water torture, giving up one run apiece in the second, third, and fourth innings. The only real difference between Estrada’s performance against the Yankees and Gray’s against Toronto, is that for those three innings in a row Toronto hitters managed to put the ball in play efficaciously with the runners in scoring position; the Yankees, as we have seen, didn’t.
With one out in the second, Steve Pearce having fanned on a 3-2 pitch leading off, after taking two strikes from 3-0, Zeke Carrera hit a double to centre. With Ryan Goins at the plate, the Toronto shortstop worked the count to 3-2, then fouled off the sixth pitch from the Yankee starter. At this point, Gray, having a brain cramp eerily reminiscent of his disastrous error against the Jays in Toronto, made an unnecessary throw to second; his throw went astray for an error, allowing Carrera to advance to third. Goins fouled off two more pitches, and then, with Carrera running on contact, he hit a little bouncer towards first that Gray cut off and tried for the play at the plate. But Carrera streaked in and evaded the tag with a great slide for the first run, while Goins was across first with an RBI fielder’s choice. Unfortunately the Jays got burned trying to continue their aggressive play, as Kevin Pillar swung through the pitch with the hit and run on, and Goins was easily out at second. Pillar bounced back to Gray for the third out, but there was that first Toronto run, unearned but real.
Jose Bautista, on base with yet another walk, manufactured the second Blue Jay run in the third by stealing second as Russell Martin struck out, on what should have been a double play, strikeout, catcher to second for the tag. But there he was on second after the video review confirmed his right to the bag, just waiting for Josh Donaldson to knock him in with a single to left. Now it was Jays 2, Sonny Gray no score.
In the fourth inning Zeke Carrera was involved again, this time by getting the sacrifice bunt down with Steve Pearce on first with a single. With Pearce on second, Gray walked Goins to set up the double play, but Kevin Pillar grounded a single through the left side to score Pearce with the third run. Rob Refsnyder hit into a double play to end the inning, but Estrada had three runs to work with after four innings.
Gray got three ground balls in the fifth to work around a two-out walk to Donaldson, and then struck out two while retiring the side in the sixth, his last inning. If you want the visual proof that only Toronto’s situational hitting separated these two teams today, all you have to do is look at the pitching lines. Estrada: seven innings pitched, no runs, 5 hits, three walks, six strikeouts on 110 pitches; Gray: six innings pitched, 2 earned runs, 4 hits, 4 walks, six strikeouts on 104 pitches.
The lefty Chasen Shreve finished up for the Yankees, going two innings through the eighth. He gave up the two-out solo homer to Bautista in the seventh which was nice to have for extra cushion, but ultimately inconsequential, and struck out three on 27 pitches over the six outs.
And so Toronto takes two of three from the visiting Yankees, not enough to close much of the gap on the teams in front of them in the wild card race, but just enough to keep them thinking. And keep us thinking too.
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