On the face of it, this looks like a candidate for submission to one of those short-short story contests; you know, the ones where they’re complete in one page, or one paragraph, or even, god help us, in a tweet:
“Carrasco pitching against Bolsinger. Cleveland won 6-zip. Move along folks. Nothing more to see here.”
But on the face of it, you’d be wrong.
Oh, sure, Carlos Carrasco stonewalled the Jays for seven innings, and the Cleveland bullpen sucked all the air out of the stadium in the eighth and ninth. And why wouldn’t they? Carrasco came into the game with an ERA of 2.18, and came out at 1.86. And before tonight’s added two scoreless innings by the Cleveland ‘pen, their combined ERA since April twentieth was 0.200. Yeah, read that again, that’s one-fifth of an earned run allowed per nine innings. Yup. And of course they were pitching against the hot-hitting Jays, right? Um, not.
But damn, this Mike Bolsinger pitched his heart out tonight, didn’t he? Not only did he give Manager John Gibbons a much-needed five and two-thirds innings, but he did it while allowing two earned runs on three hits against the defending American League champions, whose top five spots in their batting order, let me remind you, are pencilled in every night, like this: Carlos Santana, Francisco Lindor, Jason Kipnis, Edwin Encarnacion, Jose Ramirez. Don’t trust the reports that they’re having trouble scoring runs; it’s a subterfuge.
Let’s just get the Jays’ lack of offence tonight out of the way before going on to talk about Bolsinger’s debut with Toronto.
So Carrasco goes seven innings, throws 97 pitches, gives up three hits, and no walks, and fans seven. The three singles are scattered. Zeke Carrera bounces one up the middle in the first, but is erased on an inning-ending double play. Darwin Barney reaches out and smacks a nice liner to right for a hit leading off the third, but dies at first. In the seventh, Jose Bautista, hallelujah, hits a hard liner to left for a single with one out, and even steals second when Carrasco ignores him, but Justin Smoak leaves him out there when he goes down on strikes.
In the seventh, with the score only 3-0 Cleveland, Terry Francona has Andrew Miller up in the pen to do the eighth, but then Yan Gomes hits the three-run homer off Aaron Loup to ice the game. Well, what can Francona do? He’s got Miller hot in the ‘pen, but doesn’t need him any more. Best to add insult to injury and bring him in anyway, so he comes in and shrugs off our heroes on 8 pitches, getting the lefties Ryan Goins and Chris Coghlan to swing late and ground out the wrong way, while Darwin Barney makes himself the hitting star of the game by actually lofting one to fairly deep centre for a loudish out.
Sitting 6-0 going to the ninth, Cleveland closer Cody Allen can just sit down and work on his dinner reservations for after the game. Extra arm Nick Goody comes in instead, and despite giving up a single to the never-say-die Kevin Pillar, he mops up in good order, getting rookie catcher Mike Ohlman, making his major league debut, on a popup to first before Pillar’s base hit, and then converting Zeke Carrera’s sharp comebacker into a game-ending double play.
Now, about this Bolsinger guy. Drafted by the Diamondbacks in 2010, he stayed in their organization through 2014, making his big league debut in 2014, 10 appearances, 9 starts, 1-6, and a 5.50 ERA. This didn’t impress Arizona too much, so he was sold to the Dodgers after 2014.
He had a decent year with the Dodgers in 2015, going 6-6 with a 3.62 ERA in 21 starts, but he fell off in 2016, spent some time in the minors, and was only 1-4 in 6 starts with an ERA of 6.83 when the Dodgers traded him to Toronto for Jesse Chavez. To Toronto fans, it was a great trade: nobody had a clue who Mike Bolsinger was, but Jesse Chavez was going the other way, so it was all good for Mike in Mississauga and his hoser buddies.
Bolsinger never made an appearance with the Jays last year, and he spent most of the latter half of the season kind of hidden on the disabled list. It seemed like a good place to park a guy they didn’t need in the rotation, and weren’t going to throw into a pennant race in any case.
So, the guy’s 29, and this is his first American League start, against Cleveland. Now Mike Bolsinger’s not going to blow anybody away with any heat. He’s got a good curve ball and he relies on that, plus spotting what he can with his fast ball. If it works, it works okay.
In the first inning, it worked. His first pitch to Carlos Santana was up and away. The second one was up and in, and Santana lined a little chip shot to Darwin Barney at third. Then Bolsinger threw seven straight strikes to Francisco Lindor, the last one a fast ball up in Lindor’s eyes that he laughably swung through. Then he threw seven straight strikes to Jason Kipnis, the last one a curve ball in the dirt that the rookie catcher Ohlman had to track down and throw down to first.
Mike Bolsinger threw 16 pitches in the first inning. 15 of them were strikes.
When he came out for the second inning, Bolsinger threw two more strikes (that’s 17 of 18, if you’re counting), and then must have given himself a shake and realized where he was: facing Edwin Encarnacion after having mown down Cleveland in the top of the first. He threw four straight balls to Edwin, and four straight balls to Jose Ramirez, putting the first two batters on with nobody out.
Of course, Cinderella is just a fairy story, and we know Bolsinger didn’t throw a shutout, but those two walks both scored, that was all he gave up in the game, and if the Jays hadn’t been so hopeless at the plate tonight it just might have been enough.
Lonnie Chisenhall followed with a double to left centre, the first of three hits Bolsinger would give up. That scored Edwin with Ramirez stopping at third. Yandy Diaz grounded to Ryan Goins at short and Chisenhall wandered off second, getting himself caught in a rundown that allowed Ramirez to score the second run. Justin Smoak alertly raced, if we can put it that way, to second base to keep Diaz at first. Two popups later and the inning was over, and so were the Jays, though they didn’t know it yet.
And Bolsinger sure didn’t know it, because he recovered his composure and pitched his heart out for another three and two thirds innings, going out as the pitcher of record for the loss, but still down only 2-zip.
Starting with the popups in the second, he retired nine in a row, a string broken off by a Yan Gomes one-out single in the fifth, which he stranded with two quick outs.
In the sixth he came to the end of the line, as Manager John Gibbons, supremely grateful for the work he got from Bolsinger, wasn’t about to push him too far. It’s not that the rails actually came off for the fill-in right-hander. After all, he got Kipnis on a ground-out leading off before walking Edwin and then fanned Ramirez for the second out. That brought Lonnie Chisenhall to the plate, whose double in the second had cashed Bolsinger’s first walk. And didn’t he hit another double, the third and last hit off the Toronto starter, down into the right-field corner, with Edwin stopping at third. That was it for Bolsinger’s first start for the Jays.
Dominic Leone came in and got a fly ball to right from Yandy Diaz to close the books on the starter. Cleveland added another run in the seventh, once again taking advantage of a one-out base on balls by Leone to Yan Gomes, who eventually scored on Lindor’s ground-rule double to left off lefty J. P. Howell. Howell got Kipnis to pop out in foul territory before yielding to Jason Grilli, who came on to fan Edwin in another emotionally-charged at-bat to leave Lindor at third.
So going to the eighth, it was still close enough to think that the Jays could get Bolsinger off the hook for the loss, but as we were saying, they never did find the good bats they needed to get it done.
And just to make sure that they didn’t jump up and bite Cleveland’s bullpen in the late innings, Aaron Loup came in for an inning of work and helped the visitors put the game out of reach, though, truth be told, it might have stayed at three-nothing if Gomes hadn’t decided to practice his golf swing on Loup and loft a three-run five iron out of the park against his long-ago mates.
Loup had actually just about extricated himself with a clean inning when the roof fell in, in the person of human baseball target Brandon Guyer. After Ramirez led off with an infield single, Loup induced a smooth 6-4-3 double play before facing Guyer, who makes a tidy living getting various uniform parts brushed by moderately inside pitches. This time it was his left knee, or was it his right foot? Nobody could tell, even with the review, so in the absence of countervailing evidence he was awarded a decidedly cheap base. Abraham Almonte followed with a clean single to right, Guyer stopping at second, and that set the stage for Gomes’ Tiger Woods moment at the plate.
So when you look at the final score of 6-0, and who pitched for each team, it all looks like a forgone conclusion.
But it definitely wasn’t for most of the way. Just ask Mike Bolsinger.
He’s now given the Jays’ management a bit of a problem. What do they do with him, out of options, when Aaron Sanchez comes off the DL for a weekend start, especially with Joe Biagini already lined up for a second, longer start this weekend as well?
If I were a Jays’ reliever with options left, I think I might consider packing my bags for the shuffle off to Buffalo, because Mike Bolsinger just showed us all that he deserves to stay on this team, at least for now.
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