Long Ball Stories

When Marco Estrada is on his game, all you can do is sit back and enjoy it.

While he’s almost always very good, you can never really tell when he’s going to be at his best, which is as good as it gets in terms of starting pitching in the American League.

When Estrada took the hill for the bottom of the first in Baltimore, the auguries were decidedly mixed. Baltimore isn’t really the greatest fit for Estrada’s “skill set”, if I can use a term I actually despise.

As we all know, Estrada’s a fly-ball pitcher. His off-speed pitches and his location make it hard for hitters to make solid contact, and he throws a lot of easy fly balls and popups. A power lineup like Baltimore’s has a better chance of somebody squaring one up once in a while, or more than once in a while. In addition, they play in a hitter-

friendly park with reachable fences. For a guy like Estrada, to whom it’s all the same whether the batter fouls out to the catcher or hits one to the warning track in left, it would be better if the warning track were a little further out.

On the other hand, Estrada’s record has never shown much distinction in terms of wins and losses despite a fine career ERA of 3.82 and despite consistently sporting among the lowest opponents’ batting averages year after year. This is because at least during the Toronto part of his career he has never received much run support.

Yet tonight, facing Baltimore in Baltimore, Estrada had to feel pretty good going to the mound. Because with a little egregious help from Orioles’ second baseman Jonathan Schoop, his team had put up a big three-spot in the top of the first before he had even thrown a pitch.

Robert Fulghum is one of those pop phenomena who’s easy to envy. Make that hate. In 1988 the Unitarian Universalist minister published a book of essays containing his gentle musings of life lessons. It was based, I’m sure you know, on the charming essay, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”. Had there been viral sensations in 1988, the essay would have gone viral, and the book built around it has become a perennial best-seller. Hate? Sure. Anybody who can turn a whimsical little essay into an industry and a money-making monster is kind of easy to hate, in a sort of non-visceral, at-arm’s length way.

Anyhoo, the reason for the digression about Fulghum, of course, is to reinforce the point that everything you need to know about tonight’s ball game was contained in its first inning. As a former principal of mine used to tell the students on the first day of classes, “Let us begin as we intend to continue.” By the end of the first inning the story line of the game was set and never deviated.

Left-handed veteran Wade Miley, one of the few Baltimore starters so far this year to be depended on for a solid start by manager Buck Showalter, took the hill for the Orioles. With the resurgence of switch-slugger Justin Smoak and the acquisition of switch-slugger Kendrys Morales, going up against a lefty these days tends to put a little swagger into the Toronto lineup. Often, though, swagger doesn’t translate into runs with our boys.

And it looked like another one of those days, as Kevin Pillar led off by popping out to third on an 0-1 count, and Jose Bautista checked his swing and dribbled one back to Miley. But then Jonathan Schoop, stationed near normal shortstop depth in the Morales shift-left formation, jogged over glove-side to the latter’s bouncer, picked it up, and tossed Morales out at first. Except, no, is that the ball still lying there in the dirt? Why, yes it is. The casual, normally highly-skilled Schoop just somehow forgot to pick up the ball.

If there’s anything to beware more than the two-out walk, it’s the two-out error. A big part of Justin Smoak’s newly-found repertoire is a much more professional, contact-seeking approach with two outs and even two strikes, which is where he found himself against Miley. That includes going the other way, which Smoak somehow managed to do on an inside strike up in the zone, singling to right. Morales checked in to second, bringing the ever-puzzling, but currently very hot, Devon Travis to the plate.

Now here’s how puzzling Travis is. Miley threw a first-pitch fast ball to every single batter in the inning except Travis. He started Travis on a curve ball, a good one, low and breaking in to Travis from the left side. Was Travis sitting on it because of a wild guess? Was he lucky? Or is he just instinctively a really good hitter? Whatever the reason, after bouncing doubles off walls all over the place in the last week, Travis finally hit another hard one to left centre, but this time with a better angle, and suddenly Toronto had a three-unearned-run lead, and if Schoop and Miley go out to dinner tonight, I’m sure Schoop will be picking up the tab. Or maybe Travis should cover the tab for both of them.

So Estrada took to the hill for the first time through the Orioles order with the unexpected luxury of a three-run cushion, and it was up to him to take advantage of it. And did he ever.

Against all expectations, Schoop, leading off, took the first pitch for a called strike. Eventually, on 2-2 after a fast ball, Schoop flailed at a changeup. Adam Jones saw the change first, and fouled one off that was up in his eyes. He never saw another change, and maybe didn’t see the eye-high 89 MPH fast ball that he swung through for strike three.

Mannie Machado didn’t wait around to be embarrassed, but grounded out to Russell Martin at third on an 0-1 change, the second changeup Estrada threw to him.

Wait a minute. Was that Russell Martin throwing Machado out from third? Why, yes it was. That Russell, what a funny guy. First he sneaks his way off the disabled list and back into Friday night’s game, and then he conjures up an infielder’s glove and sneaks out to third in the disguise of Josh Donaldson. Don’t worry, folks, with the spate of injuries he has had to deal with, manager John Gibbons has had to become more creative with his lineup. With a lefty on the hill, it was a good idea to stack as many strong right-handed bats in the lineup as he could. With Martin having returned to his post behind the plate the night before, this was an opportunity for his bat to be in the lineup in a day game after a night game. Besides, Martin has been a wannabe sometime-infielder his whole career, much like Marcus Stroman sees himself as a slugging second baseman who just happens to pitch. Ballplayers, eh?

So, there you had it: Toronto takes advantage of a totally unnecessary error to jump on top, and Estrada is in “let’s see just how silly we can make them look” mode.

The Jays never scored again, in fact never really threatened. Oh, Darwin Barney reached leading off the fifth when Mannie Machado joined Schoop in the looking-silly column by just not picking up Barney’s easy grounder. Barney eventually wended his way around to third, but died there.

Oh, and Kevin Pillar reached on a slow roller infield single to Schoop in the third, and got to second when Miley bounced a check-in pickoff attempt to first (write this down in your memory book for a day like this may never come again: Machado’s error on Barney in the fifth, after Schoop’s in the first and the bad Miley pickoff, made for three Baltimore errors on the day). Pillar almost made it to third, trying to advance on a short bouncer that got away from catcher Caleb Joseph, but Joseph gunned him down.

So that was it. Miley deserved better, going seven innings, giving up six hits but no earned runs while walking but one and striking out three on 107 pitches. Alec Asher mopped up with his very best Ultimate Spin-Mop, striking out two, and walking one, but erasing the walk with a double play, on 26 pitches over the last two.

Good job that Travis got all of that curve ball in the first, because that’s all the Jays’ hitters were going to get today.

But oh, this was Marco Estrada’s day. Beginning to end, it was all about him. It’s hard for me even to write that horrid contemporary cliche, “it was all about him”. Because the way Marco Estrada carries himself, it’s never all about him. Famously, he gives his catcher free rein, and never shakes off a pitch. (Indicative here of his self-effacing flexibility, this was one of his best starts of the year, and it was caught by Luke Maile with Martin playing third, and Estrada handed the whole game plan successfully to Maile, with whom he’s just barely gotten acquainted, as if the master himself were behind the plate.)

Then there’s his demeanour on the mound. A windup and delivery that for all the world resembles the style of the knucksie, like his old team-mate R. A. Dickey, or Steven Wright of the Red Sox. It’s funky and old fashioned looking, and you might think it looks more like the way you’d deliver your darts in an English pub, if, that is, you’d never actually seen a dart thrower’s stance. You know when you watch his delivery that it’s not coming at you at 98.

But I can imagine what’s going through the hitter’s mind. Not 98, but what, where, most importantly, what spin? What is he doing with those devilish fingers of his?

Then there’s the peekaboo above the glove as he peers in for the sign. I know that the bobblehead makers had a decision to make, whether to show Marco’s face or not, but I’m sure the recent Marco bobblehead would have been a lot more popular if he had been posed peeking out from behind his glove.

But when he finally throws the ball (not that he takes any time between pitches), he’s something else entirely. A wizard. A trickster. A guy who after a fairly long apprenticeship (interesting how many cases of this we have on the Blue Jays) is a master of what he does, and what he does is confound hitters, who find it impossible to square it up on his pitches, or even, in recent times, to make contact with the ball at all.

Estrada’s pitching line today, though instructive and mighty good, doesn’t tell the whole story. There’s a lot to be mined from it, to be sure: seven and two thirds innings, one run, five hits, one walk, twelve strikeouts, on 115 pitches. And don’t worry about that pitch count: his arm appears to be made of India rubber. (All in, the Orioles struck out thirteen times today. The other one came via Joe Smith, who ended the eighth by ringing up Chris Davis, who has become more hapless by the at-bat in this series.)

Let’s just survey the Orioles’ Murderers’ Row here, and see what we’ve got: Schoop twice, Jones once, Machado once, Davis looking, twice, Trumbo once, One-ell Welington finally neutralized, twice, Caleb Joseph, who usually eats the Jays’ lunch, twice. He also struck out rookie shortstop Paul Janish once, which hardly seems fair.

When you read through this it’s easy to foresee that the next time we play the O’s there might be a lot of “Orange Flu” going around the Baltimore clubhouse. Here’s another little research project for the metrics guys: follow up next game a crowd like the middle of the Baltimore order and see whether or how they remain messed up after hitting against Estrada.

Oh, sure, Estrada didn’t throw a shutout, but with all the power horses around these days, who ever does, hardly? And as I said earlier, every once in a while one of his fly balls is just gonna keep flying right out of the park. So Adam Jones tied into one in the fourth with nobody on—the best kind—to make it a little closer, but really, so what? Give the home fans a little something for their money, right?

It’s always tense to sit through holding a 3-1 lead for five innings, but if we had known that it was carved in stone from the first inning, we could have just relaxed and enjoyed the ride with Estrada. I kinda ended up doing that anyway.

I mentioned that Smith rang up Chris Davis to end the eighth. Estrada started the inning, and wasn’t exactly sweating. Hyung-Soo Kim hit for Janish and skied to Pillar on an 0-1 pitch. Schoop fouled out to Russell Martin on an 0-1 pitch. Then, on a 1-2 pitch, Estrada’s nemesis for the day, Adam Jones, threaded a grounder up the middle for a base hit. Ring the alarm bells, Gibbie, your starter is finished. Well, not really, after eight pitches in the eighth, but it turned out okay because we got to see Smith make big Chris Davis look like he was playing Frozen Tag to end the “threat”.

Before he fanned Davis, though, there was a scary moment. Mannie Machado was first to face Smith, and one of Smith’s sweepers brushed Machado back and made contact with his back hand. Buck Showalter, who can’t be in any other mode, looked dark and angry, which you can’t really blame. After attention, Machado took his base, and came back out for the ninth to finish the game.

I have to say, though, that this was at least one case where it didn’t look like he made much of an effort to get out of the way. Oh, he leaned back as the pitch came in, but made no move to fall away from the pitch until after it was past him. Of course Machado didn’t want to get hit on the hand, but I have a problem with power hitters who hang over the plate, play macho on inside pitches and don’t bail like they were taught in Little League, for pete’s sake. Then they take a pitch on the hand, go on the DL with a broken bone and it’s all boo-hoo. Okay, rant over.

Roberto Osuna came in for the save and cleaned things up, in a messy kind of way.

He had to face Mark Trumbo leading off, and of course Osuna gave up a single, bringing One-ell Welington Castillo to the plate. Gulp. If this was going to be a bad Osuna moment it was going to happen now, and why not? Look who was at the plate. But this time Castilo grounded one out to Travis at second, and Travis was able to turn it into an easy double play.

So we could breathe a little easier, until Trey Mancini grounded one up the middle that went for an infield single. Oh well, it wouldn’t be Osuna time without a few base runners, right? But Seth Smith hitting for Caleb Joseph popped out to third for the game and the save for Osuna.

So Travis’ homer in the first that was enabled by a sloppy error by Jonathan Schoop stood up for the win.

But this was Marco Estrada’s night all the way, and don’t you forget it. He may not look like it, either on the mound or sitting in the dugout, but Marco Estrada is one hell of a pitcher.