After that bracing first win last night, things looked so-o-o good tonight, five batters into the top of the first.
Tampa’s starter was Matt Andriese, a 27-year-old righty in his third year with the Rays. If there’s a weak spot in the Rays’ rotation, it’s Andriese, who is 11-13 and 4.38 in his major league career. He started out okay tonight, with a little help from the first two Jays’ hitters. Devon Travis swung at ball four to fly out on a 3-1 pitch, and Josh Donaldson fanned on a cutter in the zone that was a little down and away, but not much.
Then things got better quick. With two outs, Jose Bautista ripped a line single into right. Kendrys Morales, hitting from the left side against Andriese, hit a blast to left that hit fair inside the line and then bounced over the low wall in the corner for a ground rule double, Bautista having to stop at third. Troy Tulowitzki, mimicked Morales from the right side and shot a liner into the right field corner, scoring Bautista and Morales. In the exhiliration of such a lightning strike, it hardly mattered that Zeke Carrera grounded out to first to end the inning.
Based on his Florida appearances, and his start against the Pirates in Montreal, if anyone looked ready to dominate right from the opening bell in the Jays’ rotation it was Francisco Liriano. He had looked really confident, especially in his ability to induce hopeless swings against his wicked low slider.
Liriano was paired with catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia tonight, Manager John Gibbons choosing game four of the season to give Russell Martin a rest and get Salty some game action and plate appearances. While pros are pros and all that, and Salty is hardly a raw rookie, it was a curious decision on Gibbons’ part. There is a palpable chemistry between Liriano and Martin, supposedly stemming from their time together with the Pirates, which, the story had it, contributed much to the rejuvenation of Liriano’s career when he was reunited with Martin in Toronto last year in mid-season.
So, to go back to the first inning tonight, Liriano pitching to Saltalamacchia. Steven Souza leads off and is gifted by Liriano with a five-pitch walk. Souza fouls off the only strike Liriano throws, and none of the four balls he serves up could have made it to the strike zone with a bus pass. Kevin Kiermaier steps in, lefty on lefty against Liriano. He takes a mildly questionable called third strike low and inside on a 2-2 pitch. Oh, that’s better. Always good to keep Kiermaier off the bases.
Little did we know that the Kiermaier strikeout was the only out that Francisco Liriano would record, in what goes into the records as the shortest, and no worst start of his career.
With Kiermaier on first, Evan Longoria stepped in. He had to skip away from Liriano’s first pitch, inside and in the dirt. Then a changeup dipped under Longoria’s bat for strike one. Then, whether out of the need to throw something, anything, in the zone to get ahead in the count, or because it was just a bad pitch, the 1-1 was a four-seamer, above the waist, inner half of the plate. Longoria did not waste it. He was all over it, and it was destined for the left-field seats from the crack of the bat.
Just like that, the fine stick work from Toronto in the top of the inning was neutralized, and we were back to square one. Bad enough in its own right, but there was more to come.
Rickie Weeks walked on a 3-1 pitch. The strike was the cripple that Weeks was taking all the way. The four balls look like a shotgun pattern on Pitchcast, outside and in the dirt.
Derek Norris walked on a 3-2 pitch. Two of the balls were up and just off the corners. Liriano wanted those, but he was in no position to get a break from plate umpire Mike Winters. Ball four sent Norris skipping out of the box to save his feet.
With Brad Miller coming to the plate, a visit from pitching coach Pete Walker resulted only (not directly, I know!) in a wild pitch, moving the runners up before Miller doubled to left, opposite field, to give the Rays a 4-2 lead. There was still only the one out.
Tim Beckham walked on four pitches, probably semi-intentional to set up the double play, but the way Liriano was going, who knew? Rookie DH Daniel Robertson lifted a soft liner into left for a single, with Miller stopping at third to load the bases.
That was it for Francisco Liriano on this night. With little choice in the matter, Manager John Gibbons pulled the plug, saving his veteran and highly-prized southpaw from further damage, to his ERA or his dignity.
In from the pen came Dominic Leone, the right-hander who had been yanked off the plane to Buffalo (well, not literally), and kept with the big team when Roberto Osuna had been put on the 10-day disabled list. Not that anybody wanted things to turn out this way, but this was a good opportunity for Leone to show his stuff.
He did a good job, too. Peter Bourjos grounded out to short with the run scoring, and the runners moving up, and Steven Souza flied out to right to end the inning. So the Rays ended up with an additional run but Leone had needed just five pitches to work his way out of the starter’s mess.
This could have been one of those games where a team just rolls over and plays dead, shell-shocked both by the loss of a first-inning lead and by the utter inability of one of their best starters to throw strikes. And for the next couple of innings that’s what it looked like. Andriese settled in and dispatched the side in order in the second and third.
Worse, the Rays added a marker in the second when Leone, after a one-out walk to Evan Longoria, gave up one of those infamous catwalk doubles to Rickie Weeks, which left runners at second and third, so that catcher Derek Norris was able to plate Longoria with his sacrifice fly to right. If you ever want to give your head a spin, look up the ground rules for Tampa Bay related to balls hitting the various catwalks of the Orange Juice Dome, and how they’re scored. It’s kinda like a pinball machine in there.
But in the top of the fourth things started to turn. Tulowitzki, who had already doubled down the right-field line, went to right field again leading off, and this time parked it for a solo homer, cutting the Rays’ lead to 6-3. Toronto had a shot at more, when Zeke Carrera singled with one out, and Kevin Pillar followed with a two-out single, but the threat ended when Devon Travis was retired on a hard grounder to second.
After the horrendous first, and trailing by three, what the Jays needed most was some serious holding on the part of their bullpen. The first up, Leone went two and two thirds, and gave up a run, a hit, and a walk, while striking out three on a total of 44 pitches.
Next up was Ryan Tepera, who just might not have to ride the Toronto-Buffalo express this year. He gave Toronto more of what it needed with two almost-clean innings, enough time for the Jays’ offence to get back in the game and even take the lead.
Tepera retired the side on nine pitches with a strikeout in the fourth, and in the fifth gave up a leadoff single to Rickie Weeks, and struck out Derek Norris before Brad Miller grounded into a 3-6 double play, with Justin Smoak taking the out at first and then throwing to Tulowitzki for the tag at second.
So Tepera got his team into the sixth without further damage by Tampa’s offence. In the meantime, Andriese’s day had come to an end, and the Blue Jays managed to claw back a little closer, thanks to the generosity of Tampa’s relievers, who seemed determined to return the favour Liriano had done for them.
Andriese started the fifth but didn’t record an out. Josh Donaldson led off with a double to left centre, and advanced to third on a wild pitch. Jose Bautista lifted a medium-deep fly ball to right, easily enough to score Donaldson from third, even if Steven Souza hadn’t dropped the ball, leaving Bautista safe at first on the error, and the Tampa lead cut to two. Mercifully, Manager Kevin Cash decided to pull the plug on Andriese, giving up on the hope that he could squeeze out the five innings needed for the win. Andriese’s line was five runs (Bautista would eventually score), 4 earned, on seven hits, with one walk and four strikeouts over 85 pitches.
Brought in to face Kendrys Morales was the aptly-monikered Jumbo Diaz, more dignifiedly christened Jose Rafael, who comes by his nickname honestly, checking in at six foot-four and 278 pounds. Diaz came to Tampa Bay from Cincinnati late in the season last year, after limited service with the Reds over the two previous seasons, and won a spot in the Rays’ pen this spring.
Diaz looked fair to keep the lead at two, as he got Morales on a fly ball to right, and caught Tulo looking, though he did uncork a wild pitch that allowed Bautista to move up to second, whence Justin Smoak delivered him by spanking a two-out double to right. Smoak would then advance to third on a passed ball, before Zeke Carrera ended the inning by flying out to left. Tampa’s lead was now one, and the collars were getting tight.
By the way, all the Smoak-haters out there might just take a breath and check out his stats so far this year. At the moment he’s at .278, five for eighteen, with 2 doubles, the one RBI, one walk, and five strikeouts. Let’s see if he continues to prosper with increased playing time.
The sixth inning was crazy times for both teams. It saw the Jays jump, er, walk, into their second lead of the game, and then the Rays jump, er walk, back into the lead, never to relinquish it. Not that either team was through scoring.
Jumbo Diaz yielded to rookie Austin Pruitt. Pruitt soon found himself surrounded with Jays with only one out, giving up a single to Saltalamacchia and walking Devon Travis and Josh Donaldson. He then struck out Jose Bautista for the second out, and he was finished. Kevin Cash called on the lefty Xavier Cedeno, apparently to turn Kendrys Morales around. Didn’t much matter, because Cedeno couldn’t find the plate, and walked both Morales and Tulo, to put the Jays in the lead. He escaped further damage when Justin Smoak stung a line drive right at Tim Beckham at short for the third out.
John Gibbons sent Tepera out to start a third inning, but yanked him right away, after Beckham led off with a base hit. He might have regretted the quick hook, though, as J. P. Howell came in and allowed the four batters he faced to reach on two hits and two walks, departing after letting Tepera’s runner, and one of his own, score.
Joe Smith did a good job of mopping up the mess, coming in with the bases loaded and still nobody out, and striking out the side. Unfortunately, mixed in with the strikeouts was a bloop single by Logan Morrison that brought in Tampa’s ninth run.
That sixth inning decided the game. The Jays cut the lead back to one when Josh Donaldson led off the eighth with his first homer of the year off former Jays’ prospect Danny Farquhar, and the Rays restored it to two in the bottom of the eighth with a run basically manufactured by Kevin Kiermaier’s speed off Aaron Loup, in his second inning of work.
Kevin Cash brought in his closer Alex Colome to get Tulo for the last out of the eighth, and went on to set the Jays down in order in the ninth for his third save in five Rays’ games.
It was nice to see the Jays show some spirit and mount a comeback, though they certainly had some help from Tampa’s pitchers. But this was just a hot mess of a game, one in which even though they regained the lead for a brief moment, they never recovered from being set back on their heels in the first inning by Francisco Liriano’s failure to throw strikes.
It doesn’t get any easier for the Jays, as Chris Archer gets the nod tomorrow for the Rays, but at least it should be a good matchup, with Aaron Sanchez making his first start of the season for the boys from the north.
We try not to panic here, and we try to keep it philosophical, but there’s something foreboding in the fact that the Jays have lost two games in which they haven’t hit, won a third one on only five hits, and tonight, when they finally broke into double digits in the hit column, their pitching let them down for the first time this season.
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