Stop me if you’ve heard this before.
The Blue Jays were locked in a scoreless pitchers’ duel this afternoon, with the recently-returned-from-the-disabled-list Jay Happ going pitch for pitch against the recently-returned-from-the-disabled-list James Shields of the Chicago White Sox.
Then in the top of the fifth inning Chicago bleeped and blooped its way into, not only a lead for Shields to protect, but a three-run lead at that.
This is where you interrupt me and say, wait, I can’t stand this script any more. I can’t—I won’t—read another word!
And you would be well within your rights to cash in your chips and check out for more cheerful climes and cheerful times.
But today you’d have been wrong. Dead wrong.
Sure the Jays had blown glorious scoring opportunities in the first, when they lost yet another run to a ground-rule double, and the fourth. And sure, by the end of the Chicago fifth, with the score 3-0 for the Chisox, of the seven singles given up by Jay Happ, three of them were of the reach-down-and-hit-it-off-the-end-of-the-bat variety, and two more were ground balls that just snaked past the diving gloves of Toronto infielders, including the single by Jose Abreu that knocked in the second and third runs.
And sure, finally and most maddeningly, for the second day in a row a sacrifice bunt by Melky Cabrera, for god’s sake, figured prominently in the proceedings. Talk about adding insult to injury, to have Melky kill us with the bunt when John Gibbons would have run the bases starkers before giving him the bunt sign when Melky was a Blue Jay.
But then in the bottom of the fifth, down 3-0 to a James Shield who had effectively closed the door on two possible rallies already, Steve Pearce, who had grounded into a double play to erase a Russell Martin walk in the second, lined the first pitch of the inning, a high fast ball on the outside corner, into right field for a base hit. And then a strange play on a ground ball scorched to third by Ryan Goins that should have been yet another double play had the same effect as if Goins had bunted Pearce to second.
It was a low liner to Todd Frazier’s left, and before he could get his glove down it deflected off his heel, but right to shortstop Tim Anderson on one hop. Too late for the force at second, Anderson briskly threw Goins out at first, leaving Pearce in scoring position. And then Kevin Pillar, who was hitting all of .100 with runners in scoring position, softly lofted a 1-0 curve ball into left field, Pearce got a good read on it, and scored without a throw to cut the lead to 3-1. In fact, Toronto was inches away from a second run in the inning as well. Josh Donaldson, up next, hit one to the deepest part of the ball park, where Willy Garcia hauled it in, with Pillar smartly moving up to second on the catch. But Jose Bautista, unlike Jose Abreu in the top of the inning, didn’t quite get his hard-hit grounder up the middle past the shift, and the little rally was over.
I suppose all sports are games of inches, but sometimes it seems that baseball is far more so, especially if you think about the numerous replay reviews we’ve watched in the last two years of close plays at first: which first, ball in glove, foot on bag? Foot on bag, ball in glove? After Jay Happ came out for the top of the sixth and breezed through the meatiest of the meat of the Chicago order, Frazier, Davidson, and Avisail Garcia, on eight pitches, James Shields bid fair to do the same, striking out Kendrys Morales with a called third strike and retiring Justin Smoak on another hard grounder into the shift. But then those inches reared their ugly heads. (Surely, if inches had heads they’d be ugly, wouldn’t they?)
These were the inches by which Troy Tulowitzki’s soft bouncer up the third-base line with two outs stayed fair, as it bounced right into the bag, leaving a bemused Frazier to look on helplessly while Tulo crossed the bag at first without a throw for an infield hit. Tough couple of innings at third for that Frazier guy, who’d had, remember, Goins double-play shot carom off his foot for a virtual sac bunt the inning before.
But there were more inches to come, about six to eight of them, by my guess-timation, and these were the inches by which Russell Martin’s following deep drive to centre first of all cleared Willy Garcia’s outstretched glove, and then managed to bounce off the top of the fence and out for a two-run homer, a tie ball game, and another dramatic late-inning dinger by Toronto’s star catcher and proud Montrealer.
This had all started, remember, with two outs and nobody on. Now, still with two outs and nobody on, and Anthony Swarzak into the game to replace the unlucky and rather angry James Shields on the mound, Steve Pearce came up again. Once again he collected a base hit, this time a single to right on a 2-2 pitch on the outer half of the plate. Which brought Ryan Goins to the plate: Goins, who brought his Mixmaster to the game today to help him stir things up. This time, on a 1-0 pitch, he got a high 95 mph four seamer up in his wheelhouse, on the inside corner, and hit a majstic drive to right centre that split the outfielders and went to the wall. Pearce, running with the hit with two outs, scored easily from first as Chicago misplayed the relays to the plate, and Goins ended up on third with a go-ahead triple.
Goins died there as Pillar grounded out to third, but Jay Happ was able to come out for the top of the seventh at 92 pitches, but now pitching on the lead. He was only an out away from a full seven-inning start, too, when he made the mistake of letting Melky Cabrera come to the plate with nobody on to bunt over. Happ fanned the catcher Kevan Smith leading off, and then retired the second baseman Yolmer Sanchez on a grounder to second, bringing Melky to the plate with two outs and nobody on. Unfettered by strategic concerns, Melky swung away and hit the ball over the head of Steve Pearce in left to the wall, and rolled into second with a double.
With only the one-run lead, John Gibbons decided that Happ had done enough to keep Toronto in the game, and went to the bullpen for Danny Barnes. Keeping in mind the scratchy nature of the run-producing hits given up by Happ, this had to count as a second successful start for the big left-hander: six and two-thirds innings, three runs, eight hits, all of them singles except this last double by Cabrera, no walks, and nine strikeouts over 98 pitches.
Maybe Happ would have retired Tim Anderson to finish off the inning, but a bullpen call is always a good one if it works, and this one worked. It took the now-reliable Barnes just two pitches to get Anderson to hit a can of corn* to centre for the third out.
*A “can of corn” is an old baseball term for an easy fly ball out. It’s a funny one, though: I wouldn’t want to try to catch a tin can of corn dropped over a hundred feet or more from the sky, armed with just a baseball glove!
I’m not quite sure why Chicago manager Rick Renteria decided to leave Swarzak in to start the seventh against the Jays, but he did, and it didn’t work out well. He literally dodged a bullet from Josh Donaldson who led off. Donalson lashed one back up the middle and Swarzak flicked his glove at it from his finish position. He was twice lucky: the ball hit his glove instead of his rump, and hitting his glove deadened the ball so it didn’t bounce very far away, and he was able to take the out at first. Jose Bautista then borrowed a page out of the Chisox’ play book and reached for a low outside pitch, lifting it into centre for a single.
Renteria decided he’d seen enough from Swarzak, and brought in the left-handed Dan Jennings. This would have the effect of turning around both Kendrys Morales and Justin Smoak, who would hit right against him. This is not the first time an opposing manager has done this, and I still don’t get it, considering that both switch hitters have better power numbers hitting right than left.
It didn’t work out too well for Renteria this time, either. Jennings threw two fast balls that were wildly outside, and then was forced to come in with one, and Morales crushed it to left, bouncing it off the facing of the Level of Excellence, targeting Tony Fernandez’ sign, to be exact. Considering the season that Toronto has had, a 6-3 lead looked a lot sweeter than a 4-3 lead.
But the Jays weren’t done yet, keeping in mind there was still only one out. Justin Smoak lined a single to left off Jennings, the lefty having gone oh for two in dealing with the big Toronto switchers. He stayed in to face Tulowitzki, and got a ground ball, but it wasn’t good enough for an inning-ending double play, and went for a fielder’s choice. That ended Jennings’ brief moment on the stage, and Renteria opted for the big right-hander Michael Ynoa to come in and face Russell Martin, now with two outs.
Ynoa didn’t work out that well either, as he walked Martin, bringing Pearce, already two for three on the day, to the plate. With Tulo at second and Martin at first, Pearce powered a 1-0 pitch high into the left-field corner where it hit fair, bounced up to the fence in foul territory, and was touched by an idiot fan who undoubtedly cost Toronto Martin’s run, as he was placed at third on Pearce’s ground rule double that had counted Tulo for the seventh and final Toronto run, a run charged against Jennings. Another lost run to the ground rule double, but this time not from a bounce out.
Ynoa wasn’t quite done yet, though he didn’t give up any more runs. Dwight Smith was sent out to run for Pearce, who could trot off with a good day’s work to his credit. Ynoa
then fell behind Goins 3- 1 before walking him, bringing Pillar to the plate with the bases loaded and two outs.
Pillar bounced one toward right that looked like it had a good chance of going through, but Sanchez got to it on his backhand, and made an awkward flip throw to first which bounced in the dirt and was scooped by Abreu as Pillar crossed the bag. What was I just saying about replays at first? Pillar was called out, but of course manager John Gibbons asked for a review, given the weight of the moment, it being the third out with the bases loaded. It was pretty clear from the replays that Pillar was out, and the review confirmed it fairly quickly, so the game moved on to the eighth with the Jays suddenly holding a 7-3 lead, and Jay Happ in line for the win.
I was surprised, after a very long bottom of the seventh, to see Danny Barnes come back out to pitch for Toronto, since it seemed like Joe Smith time, and Smith hadn’t pitched at all in the first two games of the series, and Barnes, it seems, has appeared in almost every game this season. (Actually, this was Toronto’s sixty-eighth game, and it was Barnes’ thirty-fifth appearance, and by way of comparison, Ryan Tepera, who also seems to be on the mound every time you look, has made thirty appearances.)
In any case Barnes did just fine, facing only four more batters after retiring Anderson to end the top of the seventh and pick up Happ. He fanned Jose Abreu, retired Avisail Garcia on a short fly to right, walked Todd Frazier, and fanned Matt Davidson, quite a tidy bunch of prey to gather into his hunting pouch. He took 24 pitches to navigate the inning, so he just might get a rest Monday night in Texas.
The Sox’ top of the eighth was certainly not without interest to the obvervant fan, though. First there was the Garcia popup to Bautista in right, a ball that Bautista took after calling off Ryan Goins, who had called for it and clearly had it lined up. At the last minute Bautista called for it, Goins dropped away, and then Bautista realized he didn’t actually have it in his sights. Luckily, he stuck his glove out at the last minute and caught the ball rather awkwardly at his waist. What was interesting to see was that after the play was over Bautista clearly communicated to Goins that he had been mistaken in calling the infielder off, and you could see how relieved he was that the ball had been caught.
And then there was Matt Davidson, possibly inventing a whole new play, maybe to be called the Davidson Pretend Base on Balls, to cover a delayed steal of second. Davidson was completely responsible for a major mistake here, but the upshot of the play was that Todd Frazier ended up on second with a very strange stolen base.
On a 2-2 count of a long at bat, Davidson lost track of the count, for which he needs to be fined big time in the White Sox’ kangaroo court*, and thought that ball three, which Barnes threw in the dirt, was ball four. He stepped across the plate, bent over, and started to take off his shin guard. Frazier, on first, either playing along with a set play (please god, no!) or caught up in the same dream world as Davidson, thought it was ball four too, and started leisurely jogging toward second.
Russell Martin, of course, knew exactly what the count was, and when he saw Frazier wandering toward second, he fired to Smoak at first, who turned and threw to second to retire the now panicked Frazier, who was moving more urgently toward the bag. But Smoak’s throw hit the sliding Frazier in the back and bounced away. It took a long time for it to be scored as a stolen base, but there was no real alternative. Natural justice was restored two pitches later when Barnes fanned Davidson on his trademark high hard one.
*It’s a long-standing tradition in major league baseball that teams convene a clubhouse kangaroo court, empowered to find guilt and impose fines and other punishments, to call out mistakes, not errors, that should not be made by major league ball players. Such as: losing track of the count, losing track of the outs, passing a base runner ahead of you, forgetting the batting order, and so on. Some mistakes, of course, cross into game-changing errors. If the player who’s forgotten his place in the order steps into the batter’s box and takes a pitch, he is out for batting out of order. And sometimes a player can commit an error because of a brain cramp.
Not too long ago, an un-named outfielder on an un-named team thought the fly ball he had just caught was the third out. He turned and tossed the ball into the stands, which is now common practice. Then, to his horror, he realized that it was not the third out, and there was at least one base runner enjoying his freedom mightily. You be the umpire: how do you score this one? Worse, how does the player ever go into the clubhouse again?
After the high drama of the Jays’ comeback, and the craziness of the Davidson Play, the end of the game was anticlimactic. Michael Ynoa settled down and dispatched Toronto’s two, three, and four hitters on just thirteen pitches. Perhaps to give him the work after the two losses, John Gibbons brought Roberto Osuna into a non-save situation and he retired the bottom of the Chicago order, also in thirteen pitches, with two strikeouts.
There are 162 games to be played in the major league championship series. Some of them, regardless of the standing of the teams involved, are of little significance. Some are eminently forgettable. Some are over before an out is recorded, and some teeter on the brink for hours, which sometimes feel like days.
But some games are near epic, their scenes and moments to be indelibly etched in our minds. Especially given the desperate need of the Toronto Blue Jays to salvage one of these three games with Chicago, I think this game qualifies as one of the very special ones.
But will it be remembered for the Martin homer, for the Goins triple, or for the Davidson Pretend Walk? Only time will tell.
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