April eighteenth. Patriots’ day. Yeah, I know, the Red Sox played their Monday morning game at home yesterday while the Boston Marathon was being run, but the actual date of Patriot’s Day, which memorializes the legendary ride of American spy Paul Revere to warn his fellow insurgents that the British regulars were on the march, is April eighteenth.
At least symbolically the Toronto Blue Jays were kind of up against it today, descendants of those self-same Brits, having to face off against America’s favourite team on such a portentous anniversary, especially after the embarrassing licking laid on them by the Baltimore Orioles just two short days ago.
And yet, there was some reason to be optimistic. The pitching matchup, for one thing. Marcus Stroman has been the most consistent Jays’ starter throughout the spring, and now has to take on more of the burden of a stopper with both Aaron Sanchez and Jay Happ on the shelf for the time being.
On the other hand, Eduardo Rodriguez was slated to start for Boston tonight, but some events take on more importance than a mere professional baseball game, and Rodriguez is away from the team at the moment on paternity leave, following the birth of his son. Brian Johnson, with all of one major league start, four and a third innings against Houston in July 2015, has been called up from the Sox’ Triple A affiliate in Pawtucket to take the start for Rodriguez.
On the other, other hand, if there’s one team that Marcus Stroman has struggled against in his short major league career, it’s the Red Sox. Last year, for example, he started three times against the Sox, and, though he only took one loss, he gave up 18 runs and lasted only sixteen and a third innings.
So what may have looked like a mismatch between the seasoned young Stroman and the callup Johnson on closer examination didn’t look like such a sure thing at all.
Stroman cashed in a quick first inning against the Sox, giving up a leadoff hit to Xander Bogaerts but getting much-hyped rookie Andrew Benintendi to ground into a double play, and seeing Mookie Betts ground meekly to second to end the inning on ten pitches in efficient Stro-show fashion.
From the onset it looked like Johnson might just be the tonic the offensively-challenged 2017 Jays were looking for, as they grabbed a quick two-run lead in their half of the first, with a little help from Pablo Sandoval.
Kevin Pillar led off with a hard bouncer down the line to the left-field corner for a leadoff double. The ball easily beat a slimmed-down, recovered, rejuvenated Sandoval at third. Unfortunately, as the replay showed, Sandoval’s year spent recovering from injuries and a mid-career decline did not seem to include any defensive upgrading. While he might not have gotten to the ball and made the play anyway, his first reaction was woefully late, which made the thunderous dive that followed look rather futile.
After Jose Bautista—who else–struck out, Kendrys Morales delivered Pillar with a single up the middle. Troy Tulowitzki followed with a short hopper to third that was generously scored an infield single after Sandoval charged it but lost the handle trying to take it out of his glove.
Along with Pillar, Justin Smoak, continues to be a bright spot among the ranks of the under-performing Jays’ hitters. Hitting from his preferred right side against the lefty Johnson, he stroked a double to the wall in left centre that scored Morales and delivered Tulo to third.
Hopes for a really boffo start for Toronto faded quickly, though. Russell Martin hit a grounder to short with the contact play on, but Bogaerts’ throw to the plate was in time for the out on Tulo. Martin, however, alertly chugged into second on the play. But he died at second, and Smoak at third, when Johnson fanned Steve Pearce to end the inning.
If I ate a pancake for every runner Bautista and Pearce have stranded in scoring position so far this April by striking out, I’d be really, really fat. (Sorry, but I’m on an extremely weird diet at the moment, and I think about food a lot. A whole lot.)
After Stroman worked around a single and a walk in the top of the second, the Jays squandered another glorious opportunity to blow the game wide open against Johnson. With one out he walked Devon Travis, and Pillar followed with his second double down the line past Sandoval, who dove again, but didn’t have much of a shot at it. Travis had to be held at third, so Mananger John Farrell elected to pass Bautista to load them up with one out, only to have Morales fan, and then Tulowitzky give us a jolt by smoking one to right, but right at Mookie Betts for the third out.
So after two innings we had two runs, but wasted runners at second and third with one out in both innings. This would come back to bite us, we said to ourselves.
In the third the Sox zeroed in on the Jays’ starter, who fanned two and got the third out on a popup, but in the meantime gave up four solid singles, to Bogaerts, his second, to Benintendi, Betts, and Mitch Moreland, which delivered three runs and the lead for Boston.
Justin Smoak, who seems to have an affinity for left-handed fill-in starters, hit one out to left on the first pitch of the Jays’ half of the inning, his second extra-base hit off Johnson, and the game was tied again.
Still fighting to hold on, Stroman survived two base hits in the fourth and the Jays wasted a leadoff walk in their half, so it remained 3-3 going to the fifth, when the Sox zeroed in on him and knocked him out of the game.
In short order with one out Betts singled, Hanley Ramirez doubled, and Moreland doubled to give Boston a 5-3 lead, and just like that Stroman was out of the game, having pitched four and two thirds innings, giving up six runs on 11 hits with one walk and four strikeouts on 94 pitches. Aaron Loup came in to turn Sandoval around to his weaker right side, but the Panda knocked in Moreland with a single anyway, and Dominic Leone had to come in to mop up by getting Christian Vazquez to ground out to short on his second pitch.
What could have been a Jays’ blowout was now a 6-3 Boston lead, and a little more gloom descended on our slumping home town boys, though it lifted a bit in the bottom of the fifth when Russell Martin finally put a major crack in the horsecollar he’s been wearing by hitting a solo shot to left to cut the lead to 6-4.
Fast forward through a quiet Boston sixth delivered by an efficient Leone, who seems to be taking on some of the role, with some of the ability, of Joe Biagini in 2016. And through a Toronto sixth when John Farrell perhaps wisely decided to cash in his chips on Brian Johnson and brought in Heath Hembree, who managed to keep the Jays off the board despite giving up a single to Darwin Barney and a two-out walk to Bautista.
The run of bad luck so far this season has been marked by so many times when, as Toronto scrambled for every run in constant catch-up mode, their opponent seems to find it easy to pick up an add-on run here and there that just makes the hill to climb a little higher.
Just so, when the sidearmer Joe Smith came in to start the seventh and was greeted by a monster shot to the second deck in left by Mookie Betts, which extended the Sox lead to 7-4 before Hembree once again stranded two runners in the bottom of the inning, making ten runners left on base for the Jays so far, six of them in scoring position.
In the eighth the Sox chugged a little farther ahead, picking up a run when Andrew Benintendi hit a ground-rule double with Sandoval on with a single and Marco Hernandez with a walk. This came off Ryan Tepera, who gave way to Danny Barnes who averted further damage by stranding the runners at second and third when Betts popped his second pitch up to the catcher.
Now it was 8-4 Boston, and of course little things mean a lot. Who knew that with the Sox cruising, Benintendi’s RBI would end up being the difference?
The best combined efforts of Kevin Pillar and Pablo Sandoval gave the Jays another chance in the bottom of the eighth, but nothing came of it, raising the LOB count to 11, with 7 in scoring position. Fernando Abad had come on to pitch for Boston, and wasn’t showing a lot. Devon Travis hit a hard grounder right at Marco Hernandez at second for the first out, and then Pillar ripped his third double down the line past Sandoval’s third futile dive. I don’t know whether it was more funny or pathetic to see Panda pound his glove into the ground with frustration as he lay there.
Jose Bautista hit one deep enough to right to move Pillar to third, and that was enough for Abad. Matt Barnes came in to ensure that that Kendrys Morales would hit from his less-preferred left side, and he pulled a grounder to first for the third out.
Danny Barnes (I won’t call this one a Barnes-burner!) kept the Sox off the board in the ninth, working around a walk to Chris Young, and it was Matt Barnes’ turn to finish it off for the Sox, and he almost did, but in a bad way.
The Jays’ ninth was a textbook case of the old peewee baseball coach’s plaintive cry, “It all starts with two!” Tulo grounded out. Smoak grounded out. Russell Martin walked and took second while being studiously ignored by the Sox infield. This brought Steve Pearce to the plate. If there’s any title for a frustrated hitter worse than Designated Rally Killer it would have to be Designated Game Ender, and based on the season so far Pearce would have to wear this sobriquet.
But, voila, Pearce knocked a single up the middle that scored Martin from second and closed the gap to 8-5. You could almost hear the wheels turning in Manager John Gibbons, head as he pondered a master move, inserting Zeke Carrera to pinch hit for Darwin Barney. And didn’t Carrera slash one down the left field line, and right over the fence for a two-run homer that cut the lead to 8-7?
But Devon Travis, filling in for Pearce as the DGE, lined softly to Bogaerts at short to end the game. Benintendi’s RBI thus stood up as the game-winner, making Ryan Tepera the loser, while ol’ Brian Johnson (remember him?), who left after five with a lead that was never relinquished, headed back to Pawtucket with his first major league victory under his belt, and congratulations to him for that accomplishment!
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