Let’s be clear right from the start: once again the Blue Jays lost because they didn’t hit and wasted base-runners. Once again they failed to take advantage of a good pitching performance, this time by starter Francisco Liriano.
So it’s not like poor Devon Travis cost them the game all by himself. Way back when, the popular daily comic strip Li’l Abner featured an unfortunate little character with the unpronouncable name of “Joe Btfsplk”, who always appeared with a little dark cloud over his head, which followed him everywhere because he was so unlucky. Last night was just one of those nights for the beleaguered Toronto second baseman, as he was at the centre of the three most crucial moments in the game, and not in a good way.
And it’s not like the inconsistent performance and bizarre behaviour of home plate umpire Toby Basner, abetted by a crew chief who refused to assert his authority over the game, cost the Jays the loss, but Basner sure as hell didn’t help things along.
To get back to Travis, his bad luck came in threes, in the proverbial manner. First, with the score tied at one in the fifth inning, the Angels had runners at second and third with one out and Yunel Escobar at the plate. As befitted the circumstances, the Jays had their infield in for a possible play at the plate, though the runner at third was the speedy Cameron Maybin. Escobar grounded one right at Travis at second, who picked it up quickly and unloaded to the plate with dispatch, but his throw was low, and Martin had to take it on the hop. This gave Maybin the chance to slide around Martin and brush the plate with the eventual winning run.
Second, in the seventh inning Travis was the victim of an inexplicable call by Basner behind the plate, a call that took the wind out of an incipient rally. Chris Coghlan had led off with a line single into right field. The Jays, looking for any extra edge to work out of the funk the team is in, put on the hit and run. Yusmeiro Petit, after a pretty fine three innings against Toronto in the first game of the series Friday night, was on the hill for the Angels. Given his impressive performance then, it’s not surprising that Toronto would be trying to scratch out a run off him.
So Coghlan broke for second on a 1-0 count. The pitch was out of the zone, but Travis swung through it to try to protect the runner. Luckily for Coghlan, or so we thought, catcher Martin Maldonado’s throw to second was high, and Coghlan was called safe at second with a stolen base. But wait! What? Plate umpire Basner was giving the “out” sign, but why? More precisely, for whom? Then it became semi-clear: Basner was calling Travis out for some reason, and sending Coghlan back to first.
As the replay showed, Travis, in the course of a normal swing, while still fully in the batter’s box, had nicked Maldonado on the left shoulder with his bat on his follow-through as the catcher was lunging forward to make his right-handed throw.
Without getting all rule-booky here, apparently Basner could have gone two ways on this: he chose “batter’s interference” with the catcher, which allowed him to call the batter out and return the runner. He could also have called “backswing interference”, which seems more to the point, since there was no evidence that the tap of Travis’ bat on Maldonado’s shoulder caused his high throw. In this case, Coghlan still would have gone back to first, but Travis would only have been assessed a strike.
Stand-in Manager DeMarlo Hale did manage to get crew chief Jerry Layne, stationed at second, involved in the discussion, and it looked like he was trying to smooth over the mess, but he wouldn’t go so far as to throw his younger colleague under the bus, though it’s clear that he could have done.
Another possibility, as former major league catcher Gregg Zaun noted after the game, is that he could have done nothing, which has apparently been the decision in most such cases of incidental contact between a bat and a throwing catcher over the years. But no, Basner called Travis out and returned Coghlan to first, instead of, best case scenario, Coghlan on second, nobody out, and Travis still alive at the plate. Naturally, I guess, the wind was out of Toronto’s sails, and Coghlan died at first when Ryan Goins popped out and Kevin Pillar made the third out on a short fly ball.
The third act of Travis’ not-so-good night came in the top of the ninth. With the Angels’ bullpen in disarray, and their most recent closer, Cam Bedrosian, just put on the disabled list, Manager Mike Scioscia tabbed well-traveled veteran starter Bud Norris, who was awarded his first major league save Saturday afternoon, to stand in as the closer.
Things started well for the Jays against Norris. Justin Smoak scorched a liner into right for a base hit, and was immediately pulled for the pinch runner Darwin Barney. Russell Martin, who had a single in his first at-bat, and produced Toronto’s only run with a long drive to centre in the top of the fourth, his bat seeming to be coming alive, drew a walk on a three-two pitch. This brought Chris Coghlan, who had gone one for three, to the plate. DeMarlo Hale put the bunt on, but Coghlan, who last played for the Cubs last year and with most of his experience in the National League, disappointed for the second game in a row and failed to get the bunt down. Rather, after two fouled attempts, he struck out on a marginal checked swing call by third base umpire Marvin Hudson.
This brought the star-crossed Travis to the plate. He worked the count to 2-1 against Norris, and then put a good swing on the next offering. Unfortunately, Danny Espinosa was stationed almost at the bag at second in the shift, and made a nice grab of the sharply-hit ball, and started an easy 4-6-3 double play to end the game, granting Travis the trifecta of plays that, his fault or no, contributed the most to Toronto’s frustrating loss.
Let’s leave Devon Travis to lick his wounds for the moment, and consider the other distracting story line of tonight’s game, and that’s the fella on the other end of the “batter’s interference” call, home plate umpire Toby Basner.
It wasn’t like the seventh-inning strangeness concerning Maldonado and Travis was the only time Basner imposed himself on the proceedings. First of all, both to my eye and to the supposedly objective presentation of PitchCast, Basner was wildly inconsistent both on, and off, the outside corner all night. The same pitch close to the outside corner was often a ball, and less often, but still at crucial moments, a strike. And maybe I’m just an old homer, but from what I saw the calls that Francisco Liriano wasn’t getting from Basner were more frequent than the calls on the same balls that Angels’ starter Jesse Chavez was getting against Jays’ hitters.
There’s a line in the old pop song from the sixties, “Standin’ on the Corner, Watchin’ all the Girls Go By” that goes “Ya can’t go to jail for what you’re thinkin’.” It seemed from the way Basner behaved in the top of the sixth that he does not find himself in agreement with that sentiment. With two out and Justin Smoak on first with a walk, Martin had worked the count to 3-2 on Chavez, when he took ball four, or so he thought. You can check GameDay right now and see that the computer had the pitch a full grid square off the plate, which works out to five inches and a bit.
Martin could not have failed to notice in his mind that when Basner punched him out on the pitch, he giving Chavez a call denied to Liriano the whole night. Here is what we saw before the broadcast went to commercial break: Martin, disgusted, slowly walked away from the plate, his head in a posture of disgust. It was hard to tell if he actually said anything, but as he walked away, Basner, mask off, glared at his retreating back as if he had just been mooned.
Here’s what we did not see, but were told happened: Basner followed Martin back to the dugout like a stalker. Martin never turned around. Near the dugout, Manager Gibbie said something to Basner. There was a report that he pointed at his wrist, as if at a watch. Perhaps he was saying that if the pace of play was so damned important, why was he wasting his time escorting Martin back to the dugout? And bingo, Gibbie was gone for the second night in a row, and for the second night in a row, only because incompetent umpiring had made his ejection a foregone conclusion.
Now, I said at the outset that neither Travis’ misadventures nor Basner’s incompetence cost the Jays the game, but I’ve spent a lot of time talking about both, right? Okay, guilty, but there’s a lot more drama in those topics than there is in the Jays having another cheap win eked out against them because they didn’t hit somebody they should have hit.
I mean, after Mike Scioscia had to use Jesse Chavez in relief in the thirteenth inning Friday night, to the delight of Jose Bautista who took him downtown for the game-winning hit, and even though Scioscia gave him an extra day’s rest, the Toronto hitters had to be looking forward to teeing off against their former team-mate.
But sometimes when anticipation meets reality, reality bites, and Chavez turned in a tidy little job against the Jays, going six innings, giving up one run, the Martin solo shot, on four hits, with four walks and seven strikeouts, on 101 pitches. Sure the walks and a propensity to fall behind in the count elevated his pitch total, but he still left with the lead and walked away with the win.
On the other hand, though he held the Angels in check, Liriano was just that little bit less fine than he’d been in his last couple of starts, as seen by the fact that it took him 97 pitches to navigate five and a third innings, walking an unwieldy four but fanning only two, unusual for him when he’s on. Whether Liriano started out a little off, or Basner threw him off with his lousy strike zone, is really a chicken-and-egg thing. Incidentally, with this outing Liriano’s ERA fell another half a run, from 5.11 to 4.58, which is looking pretty god for a guy who was at 135.00 after his first start of the season.
The relievers of both teams, Yusmeiro Petit, David Hernandez, and Norris for the Angels, and Dominic Leone, who came in and struck out Espinosa and Maldonado to strand the loaded bases he inherited from Liriano, Joe Smith, and Jason Grilli, were all effective, with the result that the score standing when the starters came out was the final score of the game.
The Angels didn’t exactly distinguish themselves in the way they scored each of their runs. After Martin’s homer in the fourth gave Toronto a brief lead, Mike Trout hit a feeble fly down the right field line that landed miles from Bautista, who was playing him to pull, of course, and kicked into foul territory. It was a double all the way, but then Bautista’s cleats hit the apparently rock-hard warning track and he skidded off his feet while going for the ball. Trout ended up on third with a very tainted triple.
With nobody out and Albert Pujols up, there was no way that Trout was not going to score the tying run, and Pujols ended the suspense right away by lining a single to left. After, the side went down in order.
Then, of course, there was the low-throw contact play in the fifth that gave the Angels the lead for good.
Notable for the Jays in the game were Ryan Goins, who continued to sparkle in the field while filling in for Troy Tulowitzki, and picked up a base hit besides, and on a sad note Kevin Pillar went oh for 3 with two strikeouts and a walk to bring his 11-game hit streak to an end.
‘Twould have been nice to take three out of four in L.A. but we didn’t, and the split just means we have to work a little harder to get on a roll, which should happen soon. It’s gotta happen soon.
Note from yer humble scribe: I have to face the fact that I won’t catch up with the current game in my reports any time soon unless I cut the cord and move forward. So from now on my first priority is yesterday’s game, and I’ll fill in the missing five, two home games against Boston, and the first three games of the Angels series, as time permits.
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