A note from yer humble scribe: this is a very long piece, but perfectly suited to the dramatic circumstances of the game it describes. If you’re the sort of person who starts worrying about the parking fee you’ll have to pay after two hours of an excellent production of Macbeth, perhaps you should search out the game story in one of the daily newspapers.
If you’re reading these game stories regularly, you probably don’t need much convincing that baseball is the most dramatic and damnably exciting of games.
This was the first meeting, an inter-league affair, between the shockingly bottom-feeding (at the moment) Toronto Blue Jays and a St. Louis Cardinals team that so far this year has underfilled expectations only slightly less than Toronto.
And yet it was a game for the ages, which had a little bit, no, a lot, of everything, with the added bonus that it resulted in a shiveringly close Toronto win.
We had: two catchers in the lineup. A supposedly fielding-challenged DH cavorting around first base like a kid. A runner leap-frogging over the catcher to score. A pinch hit by a pitcher as the key to victory. A Brett Cecil implosion that for once didn’t fill us with anguish. And such old reliable occurrences as Marco Estrada dealing his pinpoint magic to no avail. What the hell is going on here?
This game will be remembered long after the stats of most of the participants have been forgotten. It’s a good job that everything is preserved on video these days,
because nobody would believe the story without the evidence.
Toronto’s players had to be suffering from a great deal of frustration on the overnight flight to St. Louis from Los Angeles. They had gone into Monday night’s series final against the Angels having won two out of three in the series, and with a solid chance of taking their first series of the year, with Francisco Liriano facing off against Jesse Chavez.
But we know how that worked out, and it wasn’t pretty. Chavez pitched way above expectations, the Jays didn’t hit worth a damn, and all the distraction created by a very unorthodox umpiring presence seemed to fall disproportionately on the heads of the Blue Jays. Result: a disappointing split, and now a series in which they would face the Cardinals’ still very good top three starters with Estrada and then fill-ins Matt Latos and Casey Lawrence going against them.
From the opposing dugout, Marco Estrada must present a very puzzling picture. He has a retro, almost sissy-looking (if I may be so crude) windup, with the straight-up knee kick, and he throws so easily, with such an off-handed motion, he might as well be a batting practice pitcher, just serving them up to be hit at will. His delivery resembles no other pitcher’s more than that of ol’ knucksie, R.A. Dickey.
But the results show that he’s an entirely different story when viewed from the batter’s box. The fact is he has maintained the lowest opponents’ batting average in the American League since his arrival in Toronto from Milwaukee in 2015. Think about it: opposing hitters hit .203 off him in 2015, .203 again the next year, and .223 last year. This puts him well ahead of such luminaries as Justin Verlander and Cory Kluber.
His ability to locate, to throw strikes with three different pitches, to throw possibly the best changeup in the game, and especially his ability to spot a below-average fast ball, often to the consternation of the guy at the plate, add up to a real pitcher, man, and it’s a wonder to watch him work.
His opponent last night in St. Louis was Michael Wacha, one of the young lions who have made the St. Louis pennant runs of recent years possible. Though he’s not quite in the top tier of young power pitchers, his 6-6 frame and his ability to throw strikes in the mid-90s put him in a very different mold indeed from Estrada.
To summarize the different impression each pitcher leaves, if Wacha strikes out the first two batters, as he did in the first inning of this game, you think, “Man, he’s good! I wonder if we’ll ever get to him?” And when Estrada strikes out the side, as he did in the sixth inning, you think, “But how’d he do that?”
The first three innings tonight were pretty much tit for tat. Wacha had 3 strikeouts, Estrada had 4, Estrada threw 43 pitches, Wacha 34, Each gave up a ground rule double, Estrada to Dexter Fowler in the first and Wacha to Ryan Goins in the third. The only difference was that the double by Goins was the only hit given up by Wacha, while Estrada also gave up a single to Jedd Gyorko. Unfortunately for Estrada, the Gyorko single knocked Fowler in, so St. Louis was holding a 1-0 lead after three.
In the fourth, the Jays struck for two, assisted by the first of 4 errors made by the Cards’. Zeke Carrera led off with an infield single off the glove of first baseman Matt Adams. Jose Bautista followed with a hard single to right. Right fielder Piscotty, reputed to have a great arm, tried to gun down Carrera who was going first to third. Unfortunately for thc Cards, the throw was accurate enough to bounce off the sliding Carrera’s helmet and into the Cards’ dugout. Carrera scored and Bautista ended up all the way around to third. With the score tied, Kendrys Morales promptly untied it by hitting a grounder to the left of third baseman Gyorko. Bautista had taken a good read of Morales’ ball, and broke for the plate. Gyorko only briefly considered going to the plate, and retired Morales at first. Third baseman Russell Martin (that’s right, folks, you read it here!) hit an infield singled behind second. Darwin Barney singled to centre, and then Wacha walked Ryan Goins.
This being the National League, Estrada was due up. Of course it was too early in the game to pull an effective starter, so Estrada had to hit. He created a bit of a buzz by working Wacha for 6 pitches before taking a called third strike to end the inning. But the Jays’ two runs, and Estrada’s long at bat elevated Wacha’s pitch count from 34 after three innings to 67 after four.
In their half of the fourth, in what would become a pattern for this game, the Cards picked up a run to tie the game. Estrada had to face seven batters and his count would rise to 72 pitches. Back-to-back doubles at the beginning of the inning, a ground-rule job by Piscotty, who seemed everywhere, and a shot by Jedd Gyorko to right, left runners at second and third with nobody out, because Piscotty didn’t get a good read on Gyorko’s shot, and only advanced 90 feet. He scored when the next batter, Yadier Molina, delivered him with a single up the middle for the Cards’ second run. Gyorko stopped at third. Estrada issued his only walk of the night to Matt Adams, which was probably a good thing, because he then fanned Grichuk and got Kolten Wong to hit into an inning-ending double play, to minimize the damage and keep the game tied.
Both teams went down in order in the fifth, and both pitchers worked out of mild trouble in the sixth. With one out, Wacha walked Russell Martin, and promptly wild-pitched him to second. But he fanned Jarrod Saltalamacchia for the second out, and retired Darwin Barney on a groundout to shortstop.
In the bottom of the sixth the very impressive Piscotty doubled to right centre, and the Cards had the tying run in scoring position, but then Estrada turned on the fog machine and struck out the meat of the St. Louis order, Gyorko, Molina, and Adams, to protect the lead.
Then came the wild and crazy seventh, which only fails to match the craziness of the seventh inning of game five of the 2015 ALDS because the stakes weren’t as high.
First of all St. Louis Manager Mike Scioscia decided to go to the pen with Wacha at 101 pitches over six innings, with two earned runs, five hits, one walk, and six strikeouts. He brought in this year’s relief corps’ surprise hit, Matt Bowman, who hadn’t allowed an earned run in 11 appearances covering 9.2 innings. Scioscia also pulled a typical National League “double switch” by inserting rookie Jose Martinez in the lineup, replacing Matt Adams at first base, but batting in the pitcher’s spot, while the sixth slot that had been occupied by Adams would become the pitcher’s spot.
If you don’t get the reason for the “double switch”, it’s done when a new pitcher comes into the game, but the pitcher’s spot in the batting order is coming up soon. In this case, Adams had just made the last out in the sixth inning, so Scioscia inserted his new pitcher there, and so wouldn’t have to worry about the pitcher’s turn at the plate until the lineup turned completely over. Got all that?
This was a game in which playing by National League rules would have an immense impact on the outcome, and Martinez’ insertion in the lineup was the first “National League” type move that would yield a clear result.
Bowman started out well by striking out Ryan Goins, but then he issued only his second walk of the season, to Chris Coghlan, hitting for Estrada, whose day was done after six innings pitched. Having to pinch-hit for the starter put Coghlan in the game for the moment, and what a moment it would be!
The walk to Coghlan turned the lineup over and brought leadoff hitter Kevin Pillar to the plate. That’s the Super Kevin Pillar, whose eleven-game hit streak had just ended in L.A. the day before. On a 1-1 pitch, Pillar swung late at a fast ball up and out over the plate, and hit a mighty drive to right, which looked like it might go out. Right fielder Piscotty tracked it back to the wall and leaped, but the ball hit hard off the wall and rebounded sharply back toward the infield.
Coghlan, who had held up just before second in case the ball was caught, took off as soon as it hit the wall, and looked like he had a good chance of scoring from first on the hit. But Piscotty not only has a good arm out there, but he’s quick as a cat. He came down from his leap, chased the rapidly rolling ball down, and fired it toward the plate, no time for any cut-off man foolishness. The throw was pretty accurate, and one-hopped to Molina who had to go five or six feet up the line to corral it.
By this time Coghlan was only a few strides away, and barrelling toward Molina, who was reaching down to field the throw. Coghlan’s options were only two: illegally plow Molina, or try to swerve around him without going out of the base path. But Coghlan, in the fraction of a second he had to decide, came up with a new wildly crazy option: What about flying?
The plan had to be launched, so to speak, as soon as it was created. Molina’s was still bent over, securing the ball. Coghlan launched himself into the air, head first, and soared in an arc over Molinas’ still crouching body. He looked like a showoff diving into a swimming pool. Like a head-first high jumper, his entire body curled over Molina’s helmet and down his back, seemingly without even touching him, though his belly may have brushed the top of the catcher’s helmet. Molina never had a chance to raise the ball in his glove and make a tag on the missile flying overhead. As Coghlan headed for earth, the plate directly beneath him, you had the sickening feeling that he was going to pile drive into the plate and break his neck.
But somehow he had the instinct to tuck his chin and reach out to land first on his hands, so that the back of his head touched the plate, and his momentum caused the rest of his body to roll in a perfect somersault. He lept up and ran away from the plate, awarding himself with his own safe sign for everyone to see, while Molina vainly tried to reach him with a tag, in case he had somehow missed the plate.
It was a moment in baseball history, I suspect, like no other. One comment from someone who was there suffices, with child-like wonder, to sum up the entire event. When asked about it later, Marco Estrada said watching Coghlan’s leap was “like seeing a unicorn.” Who knew Marco could have such sweet imaginings? Actually, there was another good comment from Twitter that referenced his leap to something from the Cirque du Soleil.
The run gave the Jays the lead, and Zeke Carrera then benefited from an increasingly shaky defence to bring Pillar in from third with the second run of the inning. He hit a chopper toward short and Pillar, reading the ball, broke for the plate. But the third baseman, Jedd Gyorko, crossed in front of the shortstop to pick it up, lost the handle on it, and both Carrera and Pillar were safe, Pillar with the second run.. Unfortunately, he died there when Bautista struck out and Morales bounced out to the first baseman for the third out.
So to the bottom of the seventh, with the reliable Joe Biagini on in relief of Marco Estrada, who left, after 101 pitches in the unusual position of being in line for a win.
Not for long, though, because the Cards turned on Biagini in a history-making way of their own, tied the game up again, and took poor Marco off the record.
Not that it was dramatic as Coghlan’s flying run, but having a rookie hit the first dinger of his major league career to tie the game was certainly something for Cards’ fans to savour. Biagini started off by fanning Randal Grichuk, but he had a spot of bad luck when Kolten Wong’s grounder to the left side couldn’t be played in time to first.
Now, remember the Cards’ double switch? The pitcher’s spot was due up, but coming to the plate was young Jose Martinez, who had been inserted at first in the top of the seventh when Wacha was replaced by Matt Bowman on the mound.
Now, Jose Martinez has baseball DNA. He was born in Venezuela, like his dad, Carlos Martinez, who was a journeyman infielder who debuted with the White Sox, and also played with the Indians and the Angels. His career came to an end in 1995 because of the onset of a disease that has never been disclosed, but that took his life in 2006, when his son, the Jose Martinez who would hit against Joe Biagini in the seventh inning of this game, was 18 years old. The interesting coincidence about Carlos Martinez is that in 1485 plate appearances in the big leagues, he hit 25 home runs, but the first one he hit came on 27 May 1989 for the White Sox against our very own Blue Jays. Interestingly he hit it in the sixth inning off the late John Cerutti, who had a good career as a pitcher with the Jays and then became a respected broadcaster and commentator, but also died young, of a heart condition at the age of 44, two years before the death of Carlos Martinez.
Such are the interesting and amazing vagaries that emerge from the narration of just one extraordinary, game.
And in that game, in the bottom of the seventh, Jose Martinez came to the plate for the first time in the game, with Kolten Wong at first and one out. On a 2-1 count, Biagini left a cutter out over the late, a little below the waist. Martinez jumped on it like it was a piece of double chocolate cake, and drove it over the fence in right centre. On Jose Martinez’ first career home run, fittingly hit against Toronto, the Cards retied the game. A common celebration ritual for Latin players after they have done something significant is to look upwards, kiss their thumb, and reach for the sky. It’s not hard to imagine what Fernandez the son was thinking as he made the gesture while crossing the plate for his first dinger.
After the damage was done, Biagini settled down and struck out Dexter Fowler and got the shortstop Aledmys Diaz to fly out to left. So the game entered an eighth inning when both teams threatened but neither scored. With two outs the Jays got a single from Darwin Barney and an infield single by Ryan Goins, but reliever Kevin Siegrist got Justin Smoak, hitting for the pitcher, to fly out to right to strand the two runners.
Similarly in the bottom of the eighth, The Cards got a one-out infield single by Jedd Gyorko off Joe Smith, when Smith was slow getting to the bag on a hopper to Smoak, and then the reliable Yadier Molina lined a trademark single to left. But Greg Garcia, hitting for the pitcher Siegrist, hit one sharply back to Smith, who calmly turned to second and started a neat 1-6-3 double play to end the threat.
Then came the wild, and ultimately disappointing ninth inning, in which the Jays’ hopes were raised to delirious heights by a lucky bit of karma, and then dashed to earth when the Cardinals again tied the game, and snatched a neat win out of their hands, for the moment, anyway.
How fitting was it that Cards’ manager Mike Scioscia trotted out his prize free agent acquisition, Brett Cecil, to try to hold the game at four all. From the Jays’ perspective, it was a mixed bag. If he blew them away, how would that look for the club management who let him walk? But there would be something bittersweet about it if they roughed him up to win the game.
Well, he didn’t blow them away, and they hardly touched him up, but he was still instrumental in handing Toronto a 5-4 lead. He walked Kevin Pillar, and then became fixated on holding him close, figuring that the Jays would have him timed pretty well. In the process of striking out Steve Pearce, he threw over to first three times, and the third one was the charm, as it sailed wildly down the line, allowing Pillar to come around to third. After the Pearce strikeout, Scioscia ignored the matchup issue and let him pitch to Jose Bautista, who hammered a 2-0 hanging curve into left field for the base hit that brought Pillar home and gave the Jays the lead.
Scioscia yanked Cecil after the RBI and brought in the oddly-named Venezuelan right hander Miguel Socolovich, which turned Kendrys Morales around to his less productive left side, and on the second pitch from Socolovich Morales bounced into a double play to end the inning, with the Jays on top 5-4, and for once in this difficult spring it was Osuna time!
On the few occasions this year when Osuna has been put in as the tradional closer, he has shown mixed results. Doubts linger as to whether he’s fully recovered from the neck pain that put him on the disabled list at the beginning of the year. And the worst thing that can happen to a closer is to put the first hitter on.
But that’s exactly what he did. He threw five pitches to Randal Grichuk, every one of them low and away. He couldn’t get Grichuk to bite, except that he fouled off the second one, so on 3-1 he threw a curve in the same spot and Grichuk went down and got it and knocked it into right centre for a base hit.
The rest of the inning played out like your worst-case scenario. Kolten Wong bunted Grichuk to second, bringing up the young Martinez again. This time he hit one up the middle, but second baseman Devon Travis was stationed right and able to make the play to first to retire Martinez. Meanwhile, Grichuk moved up to third, now with two outs and Dexter Fowler coming to the plate. Osuna was able to keep Fowler from driving the ball to the outfield, but his loopy litttle flare into the hole between short and third just evaded Darwin Barney’s reach to catch it on the fly, and it was so weakly hit that by the time Ryan Goins reached it on the backhand, there was no chance of retiring Fowler, and Grichuk, of course scored to tie it up.
Osuna retired the Cardinal shortstop Diaz on a liner to Jose Bautista in right, but there it was, dinky and unfair as it may have been, but another blown save for Osuna, and the Jays now had to navigate extra-innings again.
Socolovich mowed Toronto down in order in the tenth inning on 8 pitches, giving him five outs on only ten pitches. Then a pumped-up Jason Grilli showed his passion by striking out the side in the bottom of the tenth, facing down the meat of the order, Stephen Piscotty, Jedd Gyorko, and Yadier Molina.
Maybe that picked the Jays up somehow, but a wonderful thing happened in the top of the eleventh. This game will not be remembered solely for Chris Coghlan’s somersault run.
Socolovich returned to the mound, and got Goins to fly out to centre. This brought the pitcher’s spot to the plate, and a problem for Manager John Gibbons, having to manage in a National League. By now Gibbie had exhausted his bench of position players as pinch hitters. We don’t know whether it was because he wore down the manager’s resistance with his whining, or Gibbie had it as plan B all along, but who should emerge from the dugout to hit for Grilli but the inimitable, effervescent, Marcus Stroman. We do recall of course that Stroman played a good bit of his college career at Duke in the infield before transitioning full time to pitching. But facing Miguel Socolovich, who had retired six in a row at Busch Stadium in St. Louis is hardly the Duke varsity baseball team.
But there he was, standing in against Socolovich. The first pitch was a fast ball up in the zone, probably the best that he saw, but he swung and missed. Then he swung over the next pitch, a nasty slider in the dirt. He finally made contact on the third pitch, which was out over the plate and he fouled it off. He showed a bit of patience then, taking an outside pitch for ball one. On the fifth pitch, Socolovich threw another slider, but this time left it up over the plate, and Stroman reached out and made good contact.
Like the Coghlan leap, you could play this out in slow motion all you want, and never get tired of it. Stroman pulled the ball and it sailed on a line over Jedd Gyorko and down into the left-field corner, an easy double for Stroman, who runs well.
Let’s say this now and get it out of the way: Stroman’s double was the first pinch hit by a pitcher in the history of the Toronto Blue Jays.
But he was just at second base with one out, and there was no guarantee that his heroic feat would mean anything to the game. Now it was up to his mates to finish it off. The resurgent Kevin Pillar failed to do the job, popping out to the second baseman. This brought Steve Pearce to the plate, and the stats guys would probably say that the probability that Stroman would score from second with two outs and Pearce at the plate was pretty well infinitesimal.
But then we had some dejá-vu all over again. Pearce hit a hard grounder into the hole, on shortstop Diaz’ backhand. With two outs Stroman was off on contact and had rounded third in time to see Diaz’ desparate throw to first tail away from, you guessed it, Jose Martinez, not a regular first baseman. The throw may have been catchable or not, we’ll never know, but Stroman was watching the play as the throw skipped past Martinez and escaped down the line into the corner. As soon as the ball got past Martinez, Stroman was able to score the lead run easily.
I shouldn’t have to remind you that both Stroman and Martinez were principals in this play only because it was being played in a National League park.
Pearce took second while Socolovich was pitching to Bautista, who put a jolt into it, but saw it hauled down deep in right by Piscotty to end the inning.
There was, of course, drama to be had in the bottom of the eleventh. Backup catcher Eric Fryer singled to right leading off against Ryan Tepera, in to try to close out the game. Randal Grichuk hit a grounder to third and they got the force on Fryer at second, but it was too late to turn two and Grichuk was now on first. Then it got dicey, as Tepera bounced one that Russell Martin couldn’t corral, and Grichuk moved up to second on the passed ball.
Tepera eased the tension a bit by fanning Kolten Wong, bringing, wouldn’t you know it, Jose Martinez to the plate. This time Martinez kept the ball in the park, but he put a scare into everybody by looping a soft liner to centre that Kevin Pillar managed to get to for the final out, making the catch sliding on his knees, as he so often does.
So ended this crazy, epic game, with a 6-5 Toronto victory in eleven innings. I don’t need to reiterate that this game had everything, and Toronto for once came out on top, by claiming more of the everything than the other guys.
Uncertainty looms, however, as the next two games will be started by Matt Latos and Casey Lawrence, the two pitchers filling in for the injured Jay Happ and Aaron Sanchez.
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