Maybe it had to happen sooner or later. We’ve all taken Joe Biagini far too much for granted. No matter how talented someone is, no matter how comfortable they seem in their own quirky skin, there has to be hidden, somewhere in the inner recesses of their being, a vulnerable child half of the man-child that plays this children’s game as an adult on display for the world to see.
How else to explain what happened to Joe Biagini tonight? No need to fill in much of the back story here: Rule 5 success story, rock of the bullpen last year, future rotation fixture, all the tools, quirky personality, gives good interview. Not to mention that he’d been well nigh untouchable in his first two starts once thrust into the rotation this year because of injuries.
But there he was standing off to the side of the mound, shoulders sagging, shaking his head, obviously beside himself. We’d never seen him in such distress before.
After the two awful—I used the word “disgusting” at the end of yesterday’s game report—games in Toronto with Atlanta, the Jays needed some good news in a big way tonight, and it seemed right that Joe Biagini would be getting his third start on the mound. After the success of the first two, the prospects were pretty good that he could help turn things around.
But after Atlanta pitcher Mike Foltynewicz stranded a one-out Zeke Carrera single in the top of the first, it took very little time for the wheels to fall off Biagini’s wagon, in a most personal yet most public and most unusual way.
Leading off for Atlanta, left-handed-hitting centre fielder Ender Inciarte reached out in his aggressively insouciant National League kind of way and slapped a 1-2 pitch that was way outside, into left field, through a shift-abandoned, unmanned left side of the infield. After this rude little introduction, though, Biagini got just what he wanted, a nice one-hopper right back to him, ripe for turning two.
Biagini picked it, whirled, and, shock of all shocks, because among the many things Biagini does well, fielding his position is one of the best, he uncorked a high throw to second that pulled Devon Travis off the bag. All hands were safe on the throwing error charged against the pitcher.
And there he stood for a moment, to the first-base side of the mound, back to the plate, wondering, along with all of us, what had just happened.
And this is where we all—Blue Jays’ fans everywhere—failed Joe Biagini. No big deal, we thought, he can fix this. He’s Joe Biagini. He’s a pro. He’s the best. Strikeout, popup, easy fly, he’ll be out of there in no time.
But we forgot. Not that Biagini is a kid, because he’s not. He’s 26, played college ball, and is in his sixth year of pro ball. It’s just that he’s so good, that we forget that in almost every interview he does, he takes a moment to remind us all that he can’t believe his luck, that he can’t believe he’s landed where he has, in the middle of the big leagues, pitching meaningful innings for a powerful contending team.
We forgot that he is in many ways a wide-eyed every man, more like us than many of his team-mates, and potentially more vulnerable than most, though he’d never shown it yet.
Back on the hill, his world came crumbling down. He walked Freddie Freeman on four pitches to load the bases. He walked Matt Kemp on a 3-2 pitch to force in Inciarte. Nick Markakis lofted a teasing opposite-field fly ball to the left-field corner. Zeke Carrera, handling his first ball hit in anger in this brand new left field in this brand new ball park in the early evening lost track of the ball and it fell in safely as he twisted himself into a pretzel trying to see where it was. Because the ball was catchable, Kemp had to hold up and only got to second, so Markakis stopped at first, but Phillips and Freeman scored for a 3-0 lead. Then catcher Kurt Suzuki rounded on an 0-1 fast ball right down the middle and hit it out of this hitter-friendly new yard, over the left-centre field fence.
Six batters, four hits, 1 error, six runs, and nobody out.
To his credit, Joe Biagini did what few adults could ever manage being able to do when faced with such shocking adversity. He took a deep breath and started all over again. In eleven pitches he had retired the side. Two ground balls and a line out to centre, and he was able to escape the mound that had become his personal chamber of horrors.
When a starting pitcher takes the ball for his team after his staff has been beaten up pretty badly for a couple of games in a row, there’s a certain onus on that starter to, as they say, suck it up, no matter what, and try to put in some innings to take some of the heat off an overworked bullpen. Joe Biagini knows that. All starting pitchers know that. When Manager John Gibbons didn’t get anybody up in the bullpen, didn’t pull Biagini after the homer, he was sending him two messages: first, we need you, son, so get to work out there, and second, we trust you to find a way.
Joe Biagini could have come into the dugout a beaten man, but he didn’t. As a near-rookie fill-in, he knew his role, and he knew what he had to do. In the kind of fluke that can only happen in baseball, he got a form of do-over in the second inning. Since he had gone through the lineup exactly once in the first, giving up six runs and recording three outs, there was Inciarte at the plate again to start the second.
This time, Joe Biagini made no mistakes, and retired the Atlanta batting order, nine up, nine down, on 31 pitches, after throwing 36 in the traumatic first inning. Counting the three batters he retired to end the first inning, Biagini retired twelve batters in a row on 42 pitches, and showed his team-mates, the Atlanta team, and the world of major league baseball, that Joe Biagini can pitch.
In fact, were this not an inter-league game, at 67 pitches total he certainly would have gone out to pitch the fifth, but with his turn in the batting order coming up second, and his team down six to two, it was time for the manager and everyone in the dugout to shake hands with Joe on a brave stand and a job well done, and send Darrell Ceciliani up to hit for him.
Speaking of Biagini hitting, by the time of his first at bat in the third inning, not only had the irrepressibility of his spirit returned, but also his consummate professionalism. You couldn’t help but mark his eager grin as he grabbed his bat and headed for the on-deck circle. Then, when Luke Maile reached on a fielding error by shortstop Danby Swanson, Baseball Joe came out to play as he laid down a pretty fine sacrifice bunt to move Maile up to second.
Mike Foltynewycz, who’s filled a lower rotation spot with Atlanta for the last couple of years, with accompanying numbers you’d expect from a four/five starter on a rebuilding team, was the beneficiary of the Atlanta outburst in the first, and he did a decent enough job of protecting the lead. He escaped a small bullet in the third after Biagini’s successfull sacrifice. Kevin Pillar had followed with a nubber back to the pitcher that allowed Maile to advance to third with two outs, and Zeke Carrera hit one right on the nose, but right at Freeman at first for the third out.
In the fourth Toronto started to measure him and cut two runs into the early Atlanta lead. Jose Bautista, who is looking more like Jose Bautista, and not some pale (not really) imitation every day, led off with a hard liner to left centre that didn’t get to the wall but that he hustled into a double anyway. Justin Smoak followed with another blast to right for the Jays’ first two runs of the night. Devon Travis followed with a base knock for three hits in a row off Foltynewycz before he settled down and induced a fielder’s choice and a double play.
Biagini might have had some hope of getting off the hook for the loss as the Jays picked up another run in the fifth, when he was pulled for a pinch-hitter. In fact, only an egregious base-running error by Carrera kept them from the possibility of creeping a little closer. It’s not like they were bashing it around, though.
Luke Maile led off with a bloop single to left that ticked off Matt Kemp’s glove. (No, Kemp’s glove wasn’t really mad.) That’s Maile’s second hit as a Blue Jay. Both have ticked off outfielder’s gloves. Ceciliani, hitting for Biagini, grounded weakly to second. Phllips had no play on Maile so it served as a bunt. (The grumpy part of me says “hell, Biagini coulda done that and stayed in the game!”) Kevin Pillar grounded out to short and with a smart bit of running Maile timed his break and made it to third. It’s always good to get yourself to third base with two outs, because the pitcher might throw a wild pitch or something, which is what Foltynewycz did, allowing Maile to score.
With two outs the Jays continued to put pressure on Atlanta, until a bizarre and unfortunate baserunning mistake by Zeke Carrera took the Jays out of the inning in one of those turning points that you recognize as such right on the spot. After the wild pitch, the Atlanta pitcher finished off the walk to Carrera, and Bautista followed with his second of three hits on the night. This brought Justin Smoak back to the plate amid rising tension that something really big might happen. Instead, Smoak bid for his first infield hit of the year, hitting a dribbler off the end of the bat down the third-base line. Third basman Jace Peterson, stationed toward shortstop, had to go a long way to field it, and wasn’t going to get Smoak at first or a force at third, which would have loaded the bases. Except that Zeke decide to dance the meringué with Peterson and got called out for interference for the third out. Smoak later said that he was really mad to lose the infield hit, because he’d kicked it into high gear going down the line when he could smell the base hit. Right, Justin.
With Inciarte hitting first and Freeman hitting third in the bottom of the fifth Manager John Gibbons naturally brought Aaron Loup in to pitch. He got Inciarte to ground out, but then gave up a ground-rule double to Brandon Phillips. Phillips, remember, thus became the first Atlanta hitter to reach base since the Suzuki homer off Biagini in the first. This brought Freddie Freeman to the plate, and us to the moment when the entire game took a terrible turn.
In the first game of the series in Toronto the Jays had recorded a not-very-admirable new record of hitting five batters. Never was there any intent, and the Atlanta players knew this. In fact, the first three were by the breaking-ball specialist Mike Bolsinger, whose curve ball couldn’t break a pane of glass, let alone a bone in somebody’s wrist. In fact, there is probably not a case in recorded baseball history of a pitcher intentionally hitting a batter with a curve ball: In fact, how do you even do that?
But Aaron Loup is another story. Not that he’s a headhunter, or even a particularly aggressive guy. It’s just that he throws a lot harder than Bolsinger, for sure, and some of his most effective pitches come sweeping across the plate from a dropped arm angle. And there’s no way that Loup would have been throwing at Freeman, a left-handed hitter he was supposed to get, with Phillips on second and the Jays trying to claw back into the game.
But hit him he did, and the sound of the ball off his back wrist was so loud that at first everybody thought it was a foul ball. But Freeman’s reaction made it clear that it was no foul. His wrist was attended to on the field, he was escorted off, and Johan Camargo came in to run for him. I’ll cut to the chase here, and jump ahead to the fact that Freeman indeed suffered a broken bone, and the hottest hitter in the National League is going to be sidelined for a minimum of eight to ten weeks. I do this because Atlanta knew it was bad, the Blue Jays knew it was bad, and the tenor of the game and the series changed instantly for the worse.
With the righty Matt Kemp coming up and Loup likely too shaken to go on, John Gibbons brought in Dominic Leone, who fanned Kemp, and then got Markakis to ground out to end the inning.
Foltynowycz came out for his last inning, the sixth, with a message for Toronto, hitting Devon Travis on the thigh, if I remember correctly, with an obvious intent pitch on his first pitch of the inning. He then settled back to business, but benefited from a strange double play initiated by shortstop Dansby Swanson grabbing and dropping probably intentionally a sharp liner by Ryan Goins. Travis, of course, held first, so Swanson tossed to Phillips for the force, and Phillips threw on to first to complete the double play while Travis and Goins convened at first like they were meeting up for a coffee. Foltynewicz then finished up for the day by getting Darwin Barney to ground out, completing a workmanlike line of 6 innings pitched, three runs, six hits, one walk, one strikeout, and one statement hit batsman, on 102 pitches.
Leone returned to the hill for the Atlanta sixth, and if the Jays had any hopes of working their way further back into this one they were dashed by more weirdness that benefitted the home team. Kurt Suzuki, whose dagger had put the finishing touches on Joe Biagini’s nightmare first, hit a simple bouncer toward third. Barney went behind the bag to time a hop and toss out the slow catcher. But the ball hit the base and bounded over Barney’s head into the corner for a double.
If the Jays had been somewhat unhinged by Biagini’s start, this finished them off. Leone walked Jace Peterson. While receiving a pitch to Swanson from Leone, Luke Maile thought he saw enough daylight at second to take a shot at Suzuki—he didn’t belong there anyway. But Maile made a bad throw, the ball ended up in no man’s land, and Suzuki and Peterson advanced. Leone fanned Swanson for the first out, but former and mostly unremarkable Blue Jay Emilio Bonifacio, hitting for the pitcher, hit a sacrifice fly to right to score Suzuki, who of course shouldn’t have been there.
Gibbie turned to the lefty J.P. Howell to face Inciarte, which worked out just great . . . for Atlanta. Inciarte singled to right to score Peterson, and advanced to second when Bautista mishandled the ball in right. Phillips drew a walk before Camargo, hitting in Freeman’s spot, grounded into a fielder’s choice to end the mini-agony. With the score now 8-3, and everybody’s mind on something else, there wasn’t much likelihood of a Toronto rally.
But that didn’t mean the fireworks were over. Both teams were helped in the seventh by sparkling plays in the field, Inciarte making a leaping grab of Ceciliani’s deep drive in the top of the inning off Jason Motte, Ryan Goins making a very fine backhand stop, spin, and throw to get the no-longer-very-fast Kemp, and Howell making a nice pick on a sharp hopper to get Markakis.
But the inning, the night, the remainder of the Toronto stay in Atlanta, and the rest of the “news cycle” as they say on CNN, was dominated by something else that happened in the seventh that would not show up in the box score. With two outs and nobody on, Motte struck out Kevin Pillar, with Suzuki holding on to the foul tip. But Pillar, frustration obviously boiling over, thought Motte had quick-pitched him, and shouted something out to him as Motte headed for the dugout. Motte started to veer back towards Pillar and the plate, but plate umpire Brian O’Nora ordered him back to the dugout, some sullen shuffling around took place, and Pillar returned to fetch his glove while order was restored.
But unfortunately Jose Bautista sometimes doesn’t have the greatest sense of timing. After the Freeman injury, after the payback to Travis, after the unpleasantness directed toward Motte, with lefty Eric O’Flaherty pitching and one out, Bautista capped off his solid day at the plate with his third hit, a rocket no-doubter over the left-field wall. Then he chose to resurrect the Bat Flip in a modified way. Bad choice, wrong time. As Bautista rounded first, Peterson, who had moved over to first when Freeman came out, jawed something at Bautista as he passed, and by the time Bautista reached the plate the benches had emptied somewhat; again, to no great mayhem.
The game ended uneventfully, as the Jays went quickly after the Bautista homer, Danny Barnes took only ten pitches to mow down Atlanta in the eighth, and the Jays went very meekly against Jim Johnson on thirteen pitches with two strikeouts.
It was almost as if both teams were really eager to get into the shower and wash the stink of this one away.
Lost in the mess of the end of the game was the tragedy and redemption of Joe Biagini, which should have been the only story of the night. Instead, in the story of this season, if the Jays’ now-stalled recovery from their bad start never gets going again, we may point to this night as a key moment in the incipient tragedy of the 2017 Toronto Blue Jays.
Leave a Reply