After all the problems the Toronto Blue Jays have had with injuries to its starting pitchers, the last thing they needed, or that anyone would have expected, was to have their Last Man Standing, Marcus Stroman, come out of a game with a blister problem on his pitching hand.
Buoyed by his role in leading the U.S. team to the championship of the World Baseball Classic, Stroman started the season on a roll, and has become the rock of a rotation shaken by injuries to Aaron Sanchez, Jay Happ, and Francisco Liriano, not to mention the curious loss of precision exhibited by Marco Estrada. So to see him surrounded by coaches and training staff on the mound in Yankee Stadium tonight in the fifth inning of tonight’s game, followed by his failure to come out for the sixth inning, despite having thrown only 79 pitches, was a shock to the system.
Stroman’s removal added fuel to the rampant speculation about changes to the baseball that might be contributing not only to the rash of blister problems experienced by pitchers around the league, but also to the record numbers of home runs that are being hit. The theory is that the balls are more tightly wound, and that the stitching is tighter and less raised, the former issue causing the ball to fly, the latter issue forcing the pitchers to make minor changes in the way they grip the ball.
Stroman’s early departure, in a close game between Toronto and New York, with New York holding a 2-0 lead at the time, was the story line that overshadowed a game which was finally broken open by a late flurry of Yankee runs, not all of them earned, followed by a last-gasp rally by the home team that came up yes, once again, with too little and too late.
The pitching matchup provided a complete contrast between the frenetic, aggressive, hurry-up persona of the volatile Stroman, and the laid-back, seemingly disinterested torpor of the Yankees’ Master Fiddler from Japan, Masahiro Tanaka.
The first inning set the tone for the Toronto hitters’ approach to Tanaka, and, conversely for the Yankees, saw them gifted with two runs by Stroman, who had no one to blame but himself.
Jose Bautista led off the game by ripping a sharp liner into left on the second pitch for a base hit after flailing at a reality check breaking ball from Tanaka that ended up miles low and outside. Whatever else has been happening with some of the Jays’ hitters, during the recent funk they’ve been in Bautista has been one of the few to modify his approach and concentrate on getting on base. Not so Josh Donaldson, hitting second, who struck out on four pitches, missing one up and well outside, taking one in the same plane but close to the strike zone, fouling off the only pitch Tanaka threw in the zone, and then striking out on the same slider way down and outside that Bautista missed on the first pitch of the game.
Now, you can talk about nasty sliders all you want, but if you go up there knowing that that’s what he’s got, and that three quarters of the time he does not throw fast balls, if you see that pitch coming for the heart of the plate, shouldn’t you be ready for it to fall way out? Not every hitter swings and misses at that pitch, but Donaldson was the first of many Blue Jays to do so today, and that kept them from doing much damage to Tanaka.
Justin Smoak ended the inning by swinging over one splitter, and then taking the next one, outside on the black waist high, to left, but it was a grounder to Headley at third, who easily turned it into a double play, and Bautista’s leadoff single was wasted.
Enter Stroman, who retired Brett Gardner on a squib to Luke Maile in front of the plate, but then ran into a piece of good hitting by Aaron Judge, who inside-outed a high inside pitch and shot it to right for a single, and lucky hitting by Gary Sanchez, who swung at a pitch that was way outside, and sent it to right for another hit, with Judge racing around to third like Secretariat roaring down the stretch.
After that it was all on Stroman, who walked Didi Gregorius to load the bases, plunked Chase Headley to score Judge, and walked Jacoby Ellsbury to score Sanchez. It was
2-0 for the Yankees, and all they could claim responsibility for was setting the table. Stroman provided the feast.
With Toronto down two, the familiar pattern quickly emerged, a pattern that has to be due at least partly to the desperation Toronto’s hitters must be feeling. Kendrys Morales struck out chasing. Steve Pearce struck out chasing. Zeke Carrera showed some patience and golfed a 3-2 low strike into centre for a base hit. Darwin Barney popped out to second to strand Carrera.
Toronto continued to reward Tanaka for not throwing strikes. They stranded a two-out walk to Bautista in the third, a leadoff double by Smoak in the fourth, when Morales and Carrera struck themselves out chasing, bookended by a Pearce grounder to third. They stranded a two-out double by Luke Maile in the fifth, after Maile advanced to third on a passed ball, when Bautista fanned on a pitch that was at least in the zone.
Tanaka finally retired the side in order, the only time in his seven innings, in the sixth, before giving up his only run in the seventh, a run he and Gary Sanchez handed to Toronto. With one out, Tanaka nicked Zeke Carrera to put him on. Carrera broke for second and had it stolen, but got to third when Sanchez pulled his throw and it went into centre field. He then scored on a Texas League single by Darwin Barney. At the end of seven, Tanaka gave it up to the Yankee bullpen to protect his one-run lead, which Dellin Betances did in the eighth, though it took him twenty pitches and a strike-out-throw-out double play on Smoak and Donaldson, whom he had walked, to do it. As for the Toronto ninth, let’s just bring you up to date on Stroman and the Toronto relievers first. After his bout of wildness in the first, which ended with Ronald Torreyes hitting into a double play, Stroman retired eight Yankees in a row, which brought him to the top of the fourth, which looked eerily like the first inning, for a while.
Leading off, Chase Headley hit an opposite field single to left, and Jacoby Ellsbury followed by doing the same thing. But this time Stroman shut things down himself. Torreyes tried to bunt the runners over, and dropped one toward third that wasn’t bad, but Stroman was on it in a flash, Donaldson stayed home for the throw, and they just nipped Headley with the force. Chris Carter then hit into a double play started by Donaldson and the threat was over.
In the New York fifth it was hard to imagine that Stroman was having a problem with his pitching hand, though he did give up a one-out base hit to Brett Gardner, who hustled it into a double. This was when the Toronto pitcher called out the coaches and trainers to look at his hand, the hand with which he had already fanned Clint Frazier. Then after being attended to, he got Aaron Judge to ground out to second, with Gardner moving to third, and fanned Gary Sanchez to end the inning, and, as it turned out, his night, after five innings, having given up two runs on five hits, two walks, and a hit batter, while striking out three on, as I said earlier, only 79 pitches.
So once again the heroic but flagging Toronto relief corps came into play early. Aaron Loup fared well again in a full-inning stint, retiring Gregorius on a short fly to centre, and Headley and Ellsbury on grounders. He breezed through in only eleven pitches. Danny Barnes took 24 pitches to get through the eighth, and walked Carter in the process, but also struck out Frazier and Gardner.
Next up, as if you hadn’t guessed, was Ryan Tepera to pitch the eighth, making his thirty-sixth appearance in the Jays’ eighty-second game. I mention the number of appearances for Tepera only to exculpate him for not doing the job, just this once. And since two of the four runs he gave up were unearned, it turned out worse for Toronto than it should have.
Facing the meat of the order, Tepera was in trouble right away. Aaron Judge singled to left. Gary Sanchez doubled to left, a ball over Pearce’s head that a better fielder might have caught (IMHO), with Judge stopping at third. Tepera walked Gregorius on a 3-2 pitch that wasn’t close, and then Headley doubled to right to knock in two and send Gregorius to third. Tepera fanned Ellsbury for the first out, and then Torreyes hit one back to Tepera with the contact play on, and this time it worked, for the Yankees. Tepera’s throw was in time to get Gregorius, but Luke Maile never got a handle on it, and it bounced away, just far enough for Headley to follow the lead runner home with the second unearned run, the error charged to Maile, and now a 6-1 Yankee lead.
For one of the few times this season, Ryan Tepera was unable to finish his inning of work, and Mike Bolsinger, newly acquired from Buffalo after passing through waivers, came on to get the ever-accomodating Chris Carter to hit into his second double play on his second pitch.
Incidentally, watching Carter strike out way too much, lumber around the bases like an old dray horse, and kick the ball around at first, it’s not hard to see why he took so long to sign with somebody this past off-season. So how’s that power-hitting free agent first baseman you signed workin’ out for ya? Oh, he’s hitting eighth. When he’s in the lineup. And one of the other eight guys who’ve played first for you this season isn’t in there. Ouch.
With Aroldis Chapman coming in for a non-save situation, since he had already been warmed up, things looked bleak for Toronto, but the Jays’ hitters shook themselves out of their torpor for the moment, and with the help of the great Chapman himself, managed to make it interesting. And if Maile had been able to hold onto the throw from Tepera, it would have been a good deal more interesting indeed.
Facing the lefty Chapman, Morales, hitting right, led off by driving a double the wrong way, to right. He had to hold at second when Pearce dribbled one back to the pitcher. Kevin Pillar, who’d been given the night off to recuperate from a brilliant diving catch he’d made with his team losing 15-1 the night before, was sent up to hit for Carrera. Chapman might throw over a hundred, but that didn’t keep Pillar from driving a double into the left-field corner to score Morales. Barney then cashed Pillar with a ground single to right for his second RBI of the night.
In came Troy Tulowitzki, also given the night off by manager John Gibbons, to hit for Goins. While Tulowitzki was striking out (no comment here), Chapman wild-pitched Barney to second. This brought Russell Martin to the plate to hit for Maile, and also brought the tying run to the on-deck circle in the person of Bautista.* Chapman got ahead of Martin 1-2, and tried to blow a 100 MPH fast ball by him, but Martin got hold of it and hit it on a line, really hard. Luckily for Chapman, though, it was right at Headley at third, and ended the game.
It’s funny how little things accumulate and lead to big things. Marcus Stroman is pitching well and keeping the Blue Jays close, and then he has a blister problem—a little thing, in the grand sweep of the cosmos—which cuts short his start by at least one, if not two, innings. This brings more of the bullpen, the tired, overworked bullpen, into play, and one of its finest exemplars doesn’t bring his “A” game to the inning he might not have otherwise pitched, and a close and exciting game goes tantalizingly out of reach, just like the ball that ended up far enough away from everybody to let a sixth run score and put the game away for the home squad.
*Chapman was not awarded a save tonight, though he certainly kept his team ahead while having the tying run come to the on-deck circle. Guess that explains one of the great conundra of baseball life: what if a closer comes in with a fat lead and then creates, and overcomes, a save situation? Unlike the tree falling in the forest, we now know the answer to that question: no, a closer can’t pitch himself into trouble so he can be recognized for pitching out of it. Fair enough, I’d say.
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