Can you have a turning point before you even start moving?
If this game wasn’t consigned to the dustbin of history when Delino DeShields bunted his way on for a base hit to lead off the first, it was definitely sent there when Francisco Liriano served up a nice, juicy gopher ball to Carlos Gomez, the game’s fourth batter.
Before anyone says “Hey, we’re in a batting slump here. We only scored one run. Don’t start in about the pitching” let me concede that Toronto not only hit the ball really hard really often against Rangers’ starter Nick Martinez, with absolutely nothing to show for it, but they also cringingly blew a number of golden scoring opportunities against Martinez, yet another fill-in starter, all of which made his pitching line of six and a third innings pitched, one run and two hits, look way better than he actually threw.
But Toronto started out in the hole tonight and it was a deeper hole than you’d like to see. After the Jays elevated three balls for outs in the top of the first, a solid drive to deep centre by Kevin Pillar, and popups by Josh Donaldson and Jose Bautista off Martinez, Francisco Liriano took the mound hoping to build on his solid last start against Tampa Bay, when he went seven innings and gave up two earned runs on five hits with two walks and nine strikeouts.
But Texas leadoff hitter Delino DeShields took Liriano out of his comfort zone on his first pitch of the game, dragging a perfect bunt up the first-base line for a hit. Elvis Andrus made one attempt to bunt DeShields to second, fouled it off, and then popped out to shortstop. Then, despite continued attention from Liriano, DeShields easily stole second with Adrian Beltre at the plate. Liriano certainly didn’t help his own cause by wild pitching DeShields to third whence he scored on a grounder to short by the veteran Beltre, who knows an easy RBI staring him in the face when he sees one. (Unlike some local heroes we could mention.)
Okay, then, two outs, nobody on, one run in. Fageddaboudit. Get the batter and get back in there and get the run back.
Carlos Gomez, the well-known square peg/round hole guy who’s carried his big bat all over MLB, along with his well-deserved reputation as a disruptive influence lacking motivation, sems to have found a home in Texas. Must be the chance to make friends with Roughned Odor, or something like that.
And, without going into the technicalities of how Liriano pitched to him, which was apparently all wrong, according to Gregg Zaun, he had other ideas about the inning being over, golfing a low inside strike well back into the seats in left, to double the Texas lead.
So, could we come off the field now and start working on the two-run deficit? Nah. Odor lashed a single to left. Jonathan Lucroy hit a liner to centre that, truth be told, Pillar misjudged, starting in on it before retreating frantically to run down the ball over his head which scored Odor. Was the Lucroy ball catchable with a good read? Don’t know, but it definitely wasn’t with a bad read. Finally, famous strikeout king Mike Napoli didn’t strike out, but stroked a clutch two-out single to left to score Lucroy with the fourth Texas run. It mattered little that the veteran Napoli tried for second on the play, probably to protect Lucroy coming in to score, and was easily thrown out on a play that went 7 (left fielder) to 2 (catcher) to 4 (second baseman), with Napoli out at second on a tag play.
If I were a Hollywood script writer paid big bucks to produce formulaic pap, I could have written the script for the rest of this game in plenty of time for an afternoon mint julep before tomorrow’s game three of the series, without breaking a sweat.
The script would involve another parade of Toronto relief pitchers heroically throwing themselves into the breech. It would involve the vaunted Toronto sluggers all trying to get the game back to square one with a single swing of the bat, even when there was nobody on base ahead of them. It would involve the heartbreak and agony of watching them squander real opportunities to get back into it. It would resolve itslf in the confusion and frustration of a team that’s just not quite all together yet, seventy games into the season, confusion and frustration that is surely felt equally badly by the team’s legions of fans, yer humble scribe included.
Leaving my sad script aside, Liriano actually settled in reasonably well after the terrible first inning, and lasted four and two thirds. From the second through the fourth the only runner he allowed was a leadoff double to centre by Elvis Andrus, who immediately erased himself by getting thrown out by Russell Martin trying to steal third.
In the fifth, though, he elevated a get-me-over first-pitch fast ball to Nomar Mazara, and in almost a carbon copy of his shot the night before off Estrada, Mazara leapt, it seemed, at the ball and just drove it out of the park. If Mazara ever gets all of his tools sorted out, he’ll be some kind of ballplayer, because the raw talent is there.
After Mazara’s homer a couple of walks and a sacrifice bunt by DeShields left Liriano with two on and two out, and with faint hope of the Jays’ hitters pulling out a “W” for him in the top of the sixth, there was little point in leaving him in, so John Gibbons called in Leonel Campos, just arrived to take the place of Joe Smith, to pick up Liriano. It took Campos four pitches to fan Carlos Gomez, who seems to swing at almost everything, to strand the runners and hold the Rangers at 5-0.
In the meantime, Nick Martinez was benefitting from the perfect positioning of his defence, not to mention the feckless approach of Toronto hitters with runners on base, to keep the Jays off the board. In the second, Kendrys Morales led off with a double to right that might have been misplayed near the wall by Mazara (as I was saying about Mazara . . . ). Justin Smoak hit a hot grounder up the middle that was fielded by the shortstop, but actually qualified as a ground ball right side that moved Morales to third with one out. Excellent, now for the sacrifice fly, or the second ground ball up the middle to score the run. Over to you, Troy Tulowitzki. But Tulo’s struggles continued at the plate, as he was sawed off on an 0-1 fast ball way inside, and hit a foul popup to the shortstop Andrus. Russell Martin grounded out, and Morales died at third.
In the third inning, after Steve Pearce almost beat out a short hopper to Andrus, Ryan Goins drew a walk on a 3-2 pitch, to turn the lineup over to Kevin Pillar. Who hit maybe the hardest hit ball of the night, a line drive right at Mike Napoli at first, who caught it one step from the bag and easily doubled off Goins.
In the fourth inning Josh Donaldson pulled a hard liner into left for a leadoff single, but the Jays failed to advance him at all. In the fifth, after Tulowitzki popped up to the shortstop again, Martinez walked Martin, and both Pearce and Goins hit the ball on the nose behind him, but came away empty-handed, Pearce hitting a screamer right at Gomez in centre, and Goins a hard grounder that couldn’t get past Odor out in the rover spot. In the sixth two more hard liners, by Pillar and Donaldson, went right to outfielders and only yielded outs for Martinez, who then fanned Bautista to end the inning.
Manager Jeff Bannister trotted Martinez out for the seventh, but he was on a short leash. He got the first out, when Morales, again hitting the ball hard, lined out to right, but then he walked Smoak, and that was it. Martinez left after six and a third innings, having given up no runs so far on only two hits with three walks and two strikeouts, on 103 pitches.
Jose Leclerc came in to pick up Martinez and opened the door to the only real Jays’ opportunity to break out in the game, though it was without much effort on the part of Toronto’s hitters. With Smoak on first with a walk, Leclerc walked Tulowitzki and Martin to load the bases, and then settled in to do battle with Steve Pearce. With one out, it was an epic, eleven-pitch battle, with Pearce fouling off nine pitches and taking only one ball before he took what he thought was ball two on a pitch that home plate umpire D. J. Rayburn decided was strike three.
Ryan Goins followed and jumped on Leclerc’s first pitch, on the outside corner, and lined it into left for an RBI single that plated Smoak and spoiled Martinez’ clean slate, so he ended up giving up one earned run in his start. With the bases loaded, though, Kevin Pillar was badly fooled on a 3-2 slider and struck out to end the threat.
The Jays still had one chance left, in the eighth. Next in from the bullpen for Texas was the righthander Jeremy Jeffress, who quickly got two outs, retiring Donaldson and Bautista before giving up yet another opposite-field base hit by Morales. Bannister decided to make that strange call again, and bring in a lefty to turn Justin Smoak around. And again Smoak reminded the Texas manager why that’s not such a good idea as he doubled to left centre on the second pitch from the lefthanded Alex Claudio, with Morales coming around to third. This gave Tulowitzki another chance to do some damage, but he rolled over on Claudio’s first pitch and grounded out to short to end the inning.
That was Toronto’s last shot at getting back into the game. When Adrian Beltre homered off Dominic Leone in the bottom of the eighth to extend the Texas lead to 6-1, it hardly mattered that Steve Pearce finally picked up his first base hit of the night off Keone Kela with one out in the ninth. Kela got the last two outs on a popup by Goins and yet another fly ball to centre by Pillar, with Pearce stranded at second after advancing on a passed ball, as the game ended.
As for the Toronto bullpen, it came out of the first game of the series with fourteen consecutive outs. With Liriano out of the game after four and two thirds innings, Campos, Jeff Beliveau, and Dominic Leone combined for another eight consecutive outs, making a string of twenty-two consecutive outs before Adrian Beltre broke off the string with a home run to centre with one out in the eighth off Leone, who then retired Gomez and Odor to start a new string for next time.
Campos, after finishing Liriano’s fifth inning by fanning Gomez, retired Odor leading off in the sixth with a grounder to Smoak unassisted. Unfortunately Campos, who’d just arrived from Buffalo to replace the injured Joe Smith, pulled up lame after going for the ball by Odor, and couldn’t continue. Presumably he’ll be going on the DL, joining Joe Smith whom he replaced. And the beat goes on.
Mention should also be made of Jeff Beliveau, who picked up the win last night with a clean eighth inning, in which he threw only ten pitches, and came back tonight to record five more outs, with two strikeouts, on 24 pitches. Good job, and good job he’s a lefty!
Take away the strange first inning and it’s a 2-1 ball game, and in a one-run game any number of things might have been done differently, so there’s no saying that it actually would have ended up that way.
In any case, thus ended yet another opportunity for the Jays to get to the .500 level, but I don’t think we need to focus much on that. Far more significant is how do we do overall on this seven-game road trip, and where do we stand in relation to the rest of the division?
Tomorrow let’s kill a chicken and look at some bloody entrails and see if we can get a handle on this crazy season.
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