Toronto’s power outage continued tonight against the very mediocre Baltimore starter Kevin Gausman, as the Orioles took advantage of Jays’ starter Joe Biagini’s curious inability to finish off innings in the early going to secure a 3-1 win that wasn’t as close as the score would suggest.
On Sunday against the Kansas City Royals, Toronto’s hitters went two for seventeen with runners in scoring position. Tonight they went oh for three. That’s right, zero hits with RISP in only three opportunities. Were it not for their fruitless attempts to mount a rally in the fifth and sixth innings, they might as well have just handed their results to the official scorer at the end of each inning without even taking their ups.
Troy Tulowitzki’s two-out solo homer in the bottom of the ninth off Orioles’ closer Brad Brach, while it might have enlivened the crowd in attendance at the TV Dome just before embarking on their homeward trek, and might have been an encouraging sign on a personal level for the struggling Tulo, was a hopelessly inadequate rejoinder to another feckless offensive effort by the hometown heroes.
I want to say really nice things about Joe Biagini, because he’s a really nice guy, a guy who seems totally devoid of the MLB persona that he’s supposed to be carrying around. There is no question that Joe Biagini has electric stuff, and there’s little question that maybe as soon as next year, pending the possible departure of some of our free agent starters, he’ll be an important part of the Blue Jays’ rotation.
But, unlike his body of work out of the bullpen over one season plus, the totality of his pitching starts since coming into the rotation would suggest that he’s not fully formed as a starter yet. Tonight a pattern emerged in the course of his performance that would suggest that he was somehow lacking in the killer instinct that the best starting pitchers all seem to have. Yet we’ve seen that killer instinct out of the bullpen on many occasions. We know he’s capable of it. We just don’t know why it’s sometimes not there when he starts.
Tonight, eight pitches in, he had two outs and nobody on after retiring both Seth Smith and the struggling Mannie Machado, both on easy grounders to second baseman Darwin Barney. It looked like we could relax a little and enjoy Biagini making the Orioles eat out of his hands.
Then Jonathan Schoop rifled an 0-1 pitch into left field for a base hit, bringing Adam Jones to the plate and a sick feeling to our guts. The sick feeling started to rise as Biagini suddenly lost the plate, eventually burying the four pitches that made up Jones’ 8-pitch, 3-2 walk, moving Schoop up to second and bringing Mark Trumbo, the under-paid, not-wanted 2016 American League home run champ, to the plate.
Trumbo, who has had too many significant hits to recount against the Jays in the last couple of seasons, took two more in the dirt, as Biagini continued to pull his pitches, fouled one off, and then with a flick of his mighty wrists lined one hard off the top of the wall in centre, a shot that had Kevin Pillar retreating from the wall to play the carom almost from the crack of the bat. With two outs Jones scored as well as Schoop on the double, and we were in the hole again, without ever raising a bat in anger.
After a quick and reassuring twelve-pitch second, marked by a terrific Darwin Barney diving stop on a ground shot up the middle by Baltimore catcher Wellington Castillo, Biagini got two quick outs in the third, once again retiring the top two hitters in the Baltimore order, getting to six outs in a row since the Trumbo double. That brought—uh, oh—Schoop to the plate again, with two outs and nobody on.
As you could have predicted, Schoop ripped one past Josh Donaldson at third and down into the corner for a double. Wasting little time to take advantage of the opportunity, Adam Jones fouled off a pitch in the dirt. When the next pitch from Biagini stayed inside but was up just enough to make the bottom of the zone, he shot it into left between Donaldson and Tulowitzki, and it was 3-0 Baltimore, with six innings to go for Toronto.
By then Toronto had had two looks at Ken Gausman, who has been terrible against every other team he’s seen, but gotten past the Jays by throwing batting-practice fast balls for first-pitch strikes, putting them behind and changing their approach. It looked to be going that way again, with the added filip that the Jays almost wanted to help him beat them.
Jose Bautista had led off the game in the home half of the first, with Toronto already down 2-0 remember, by taking a called strike, then watching Gausman fall behind 3-1 by throwing everything down and away. Way down and away. Then he tried to come up and in, and Bautista fought it off and looped it into centre for a Texas-League hit. Gausman quickly went 0-2 on Martin, before Martin started battling. After eight pitches it was 2-2, and you felt that a dramatic turn was about to take place. Oh, yeah, you were right. On the ninth pitch Martin hit an easy double-play ball to Paul Janish, filling in at short for the injured J.J. Hardy.
In the second, Gausman started out with the yips once again, and walked Justin Smoak by burying one on a 3-2 count. With Morales at the plate and nobody out, in his infinite but inscrutable wisdom Jays’ manager John Gibbons decided to start Smoak from first (yes, you read that right) on the no-out 3-2 pitch to Kendrys Morales. Not only did Morales fan for the first out, but of course Smoak ran into the second out. To his credit, Smoak made it close enough at second to slide. To his credit, though, he didn’t slide very hard, protecting one of the few growth assets Toronto has this year.
So after two and a half innings, the Orioles had a lead, not a huge one, but not a single run, either, and the Jays had already shown themselves to be less than equal to the task of making a fight of it.
Though labouring all the way, Biagini settled down enough to go five and a third innings without incurring any more serious damage. He had problems in the fourth and fifth innings, but they were self-inflicted, and he managed them. The fourth looked more like one of Biagini’s interesting innings of relief.
With two outs (naturally), on a Trey Mancini popup and a Castillo fly ball to centre, Biagini walked Hyun Soo Kim and Janish, then wild-pitched them to second and third, before dramatically fanning Seth Smith to end the inning.
In the fifth, he walked Machado leading off, bringing Schoop to the plate and the sick-making feeling back to the gut. Ah, but this time Schoop grounded one right to Tulowitzki near the bag, and the latter fed Barney for an easy double play.
In the sixth inning Biagini induced a foul popup off the bat of Trumbo for the first out, then gave up a ground single through the left side to Mancini, and then gave up the game ball to manager Gibbons, who wasn’t going to wait around and see what Castillo would do on his third crack at Biagini. So Biagini left with just short of a quality start to his credit, five and a third innings, three runs, five hits, four walks, only one of which figured in the scoring, and three strikeouts, on 98 pitches. Actually, in 2017, across major league baseball, these numbers in fact probably represent the new normal, and maybe we’ll see a downgrading soon of the requirements for a quality start. (When in Rome, etc.).
One thing that has been consistent about these frustrating Toronto Blue Jays has been the quality work of the bullpen, which time after time has been asked to go long, or at least medium long, and has seldom failed the task. Tonight was no different. Gibbie brought in his go-to bridge man, Dominic Leone, who got Castillo to fly out to left, walked Kim to push Mancini to second, and then retired the side on a Janish fly ball to centre.
Leone stayed on for the seventh and retired the side in order. Ryan Tepera came in for the eighth, gave up a one-out double to right to the ubiquitous Trumbo, who moved to third on a Mancini fly ball to right, but died there as Tepera fanned Castillo to end the inning.
In speaking of the bullpen and its accomplishments this year, the arrival of Chris Smith, called up from Buffalo to make his major league debut pitching the ninth inning for Toronto, is the appropriate point to mark the departure of the not-always-effective, but always-interesting Jason Grilli from the Toronto roster. Earlier today, it was announced that Zeke Carrera had been reactivated after the completion of his rehab stint, with Dwight Smith being optioned to Buffalo, and also that Grilli had been designated for assignment, and his spot taken by Chris Smith.
What will be missed about Jason Grilli is his veteran presence on the team, and his infectious enthusiasm. What will also be missed is the effectiveness he brought to his work out of the bullpen for Toronto since his arrival from Atlanta last year in mid-season. But of course we’ve already been missing that, because he’s obviously not been the same pitcher this spring as he was last year, and if the writing wasn’t on the wall before his disastrous four-homer inning on June third against the Yankees, it certainly has been since then.
In any case, it’s salve atque vale, grizzled warrior Grilli. If you don’t find another landing spot in the show, be assured that your last gig was one of your best!
As for the future of the Jays’ bullpen, Chris Smith managed a smooth introduction to the show for himself, retiring Baltmore in the top of the ninth on two popups and a line out to centre, while giving up an inconsequential base hit to Craig Gentry with two outs. He took his seat after just thirteen pitches.
As he watched Toronto bat in the bottom of the ninth, surely there was a part of him that couldn’t help thinking “what if”, about the chances for a Toronto rally in the bottom of the ninth, that would give him a “W” in his first major league appearance.
However, after a quiet evening at the plate for the Blue Jays, who were as inneffective against the Orioles’ bullpen as they had been against Gausman, hope for Smith died with Brad Brach’s strikeout of Zeke Carrera that ended the game.
As I read back through this piece, I realize that I haven’t written a word about the Jays’ offence since the second inning, except to mention Carrera’s strikeout ending the game. While that may seem like a huge omission to some, it’s hardly worth worrying about. Not much to write about anyway, because the bats just weren’t in it tonight.
After the Smoak/Morales fiasco in the second, Toronto went out in order in the third and fourth, but picked up two base hits against Gausman in the fifth, the secondsssss a ground single to centre by Steve Pearce that moved Morales around to third that came with two outs and was followed by Kevin Pillar skying out to right.
Gausman ran out of gas in the sixth, retiring the first hitter, Barney, who hit the ball hard, but right at the right-fielder, Seth Smith, but then giving up another ground single to centre by Bautista, and walking Martin. That was enough for manager Buck Showalter, who despite that it was only the sixth inning, went to his high-leverage, later-inning specialist Mychal Givens. Unfortunately for Showalter, Givens’ performance wasn’t calculated to reassure, and before Givens got out of the Gausman mess that he made worse, Showalter’s blood pressure must have risen a few dozen points, judging by the growing tightness of his collar.
With Donaldson at the plate, the first thing Givens did was to bounce one that Castillo couldn’t flag down, letting the runners move up and removing the double play option. Then came the single crucial play of the game. Donaldson teed off on a 3-2 slider low in the zone, and ripped a line drive toward left. Unfortunately for him and his team, Mannie Machado was perfectly stationed for Donaldson, and the line shot was right at him, for the second out. To say that Givens was careful in walking Smoak on four pitches is putting it mildly, but he obviously felt better going after Morales, whom he fanned on a 1-2 pitch to end the threat.
Givens finished his stint with a clean seventh, Darren O’Day stranded a two-out single by Martin in the eighth, and Brach gave up the Tulowitzki homer in the ninth on the way to his fourteenth save.
With any kind of an effective offence Joe Biagini’s start was good enough for a win, but with the Jays still in their terrible trough of inneffective at-bats, only a complete-game shutout would have been enough to keep poor Joe from absorbing his seventh loss of the year. Sad!
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