So riddle me this: how often is Chris Sale going to give up an improbably manufactured first inning run, and solo homers by Devon Travis in the second and Justin Smoak in the third, to be facing a 3-1 deficit for his Red Sox over the Blue Jays?
That’s the situation we faced last night in the series’ finale between the two East Division rivals.
No riddle here. The answer is obvious: not very bloody often.
So it’s really too bad that Marco Estrada and the Jays couldn’t hold on to that early lead, which would have given them a much-prized series win against the streaking Bostons.
As it was, Sale managed to shut the Jays down from the fourth to the sixth innings, just long enough to be the pitched-out beneficiary of J.D. Martinez’ three-run fifth inning shot off Estrada, who saw another fine beginning go south in the middle innings, leading to another less-than-successful outing for him and another loss for his team.
There were other factors at play last night as well. One was that the Red Sox picked up two very strange and lucky hits, one of which figured in the scoring. And, not for the first time, a defensive failure by Devon Travis contributed to the loss.
To hang this one at least partly on Travis may seem unfair, especially since he broke out, for one night at least, from his season-long hitting slump, chipping in a home run and a triple to the Toronto cause. But, as inarticulate people say, it is what it is: Travis bobbled a sure double-play ball that cost Toronto a run.
If you’d like to refer back to my headline, that’s “a run” as in one of 5 Boston scored against Toronto’s 4. And, yes, he contributed to two Toronto runs with his bat, but, cruelly, those were owed a long time ago, his slump’s gone on so long, and it’s just a weird coincidence that they turned up last night.
To carry this point one step further, if Toronto had been regularly starting a second baseman who could actually make the tough plays as well as chip in a hit or two and an RBI or three, how much farther ahead would the team be than it is?
Sale, who has usually mown down the Jays like a scythe, was off his form almost from the start. He jammed Steve Pearce for a soft liner to first. But he went 3-1 on Teoscar Hernandez before walking him, and Justin Smoak, hitting right-handed against Sale, lofted a bloop single to right, with Hernandez hustling to third. Then he hit Yangervis Solarte—hard, even if it was a curve ball—right on the kneecap to load the bases.
Then came a gutsy at-bat by Kevin Pillar, who was determined to get the ball in the air to score Hernandez. Sale threw him three straight high outside fast balls, the first one out of the strike zone, and the second and third ones each higher still. It’s called “climbing the ladder” by a pitcher. Pillar swung and missed the first two; the third one came in head high, but Pillar swung at it anyway, made solid contact, and skied out to J.D. Martinez, who was in right last night, with Mookie Betts in centre. The fly ball was deep enough to score Hernandez, and the Jays had broken on top against Sale for the first time that I can recall.
Sale came out loaded for bear in the second inning. Randal Grichuk fouled out to the catcher. Luke Maile struck out looking. Then the slump-ridden Travis shocked everyone in the ball yard, and everyone else watching, when he turned on a 1-1 fast ball right down the middle and just pounded it into the second deck in left.
In the third, after his team had picked up a run to cut the lead to 2-1, Sale fanned Hernandez, but Smoak hit a hanging 0-2 slider into the bullpen in left to restore the 2-run Toronto lead.
Well! Three innings in, and it’s Blue Jays 3, Boston 1 with the unbeatable Chris Sale on the mound for the Red Sox! Could it last? That would be up to Marco Estrada.
Estrada started out at his mesmerizing best. Betts fouled out to Smoak at first on a 2-1 pitch. Andrew Benintendi fanned on an 0-2 pitch. Then he stumbled a bit. Hanley Ramirez surprised everybody by grounding one through the vacant right side of the infield for a base hit. J.D Martinez squared up a high changeup, but it stayed in the park for Hernandez in right.
Estrada struck out the side in the second, one of the best innings I’ve ever seen him pitch. Mitch Moreland ran the count to 3-2 but fanned on a high fast ball. Eduardo Nunez ran the count to 3-2 and fanned on a wicked changeup. Rafael Devers took a low fast ball for a strike. He fouled off a cutter low and outside. Then he swung wildly at a fast ball high and well outside the strike zone. Three strikeouts and not a stiff among the Boston hitters.
Estrada’s streak continued in the top of the third when Christian Vazquez took a low fast ball for a called third strike. As a catcher, Vazquez should have been paying attention: it was the same pitch that plate umpire Ramon De Jesus had been giving to both pitchers consistently for the first two innings.
That brought Brock, aka Carl Yastrzemski, Holt to the plate. (Yes, that’s a bit of a sacrilege, but just think of what he’d done to the Blue Jays in this series.) After going 6 for 8 in the first two games of the series, he stood in with that short stroke of his and drove the ball to the wall in right centre for a double. Alarmingly for the Red Sox, Holt grabbed his hamstring rounding first and limped into second. He was replaced by a pinch-runner who also replaced him in the field, Tzu-Wei Lin.
After Betts flew out to centre, Benintendi finally broke off his string of frustration with a hustling double to right that scored Lin with Boston’s first run. Estrada walked Ramirez on a 3-2 count, but then neatly picked Benintendi off second for the third out.
When Smoak went deep on Sale in the bottom of the third he restored Toronto’s two-run lead, which takes us to the top of the fourth, when Estrada got the response he wanted but not the result, and a fly ball by Devers to Pillar in centre, instead of being the third out, drove in the Sox’ second run.
Martinez led off the inning with a single, bringing the left-handed Moreland to the plate. With the infield playing at double-play depth, Moreland hit a hard one-hopper right at Travis, who was positioned perfectly and made a nice snag of the tough ball. But as he turned to second and transferred the ball to his throwing hand he bobbled it just long enough that Gurriel had to eat it at second and settle for the forceout.
So when Nunez hit a golf shot into right centre for a double, Moreland was ahead of him at third instead of on the bench. And there was one out instead of two. Thus, when Devers sent Pillar on a bit of a run to flag down his fly ball, it was a sacrifice fly and not the third out, and the score was now 3-2 for Toronto.
With the score tight Sale settled in and retired nine of ten Toronto hitters in the fourth, fifth, and sixth innings, only walking Teoscar Hernandez on a ten-pitch at-bat in the fifth inning. Hernandez seems to have developed much better discipline at the plate. It’s a rare bird, let alone a rookie, who can work Chris Sale for two walks in the same game.
By the time Sale finished up his sixth and last inning he was in the lead and in line for the win.
This was thanks to Marco Estrada’s failing to finish off the Boston fifth, and giving up the blow that turned out to be fatal for Toronto’s chances for a series win.
Estrada got the first two outs quickly enough. In his first at-bat after replacing Holt, Lin popped up to Justin Smoak at first. Betts hit one hard enough, but to straightaway centre where Pillar hauled it in.
But then, Benintendi, starting to wake up from a long slump at the plate, pulled a crisp liner into right field for a single. Hanley Ramirez followed with a bloop single to right that was as strange as Nunez’ 9-iron double the previous inning. On a 1-2 pitch he reached down and away and just clipped it enough to send it on an arc into no-man’s land in right. Once again Ramirez’ muscle had given him a hit when lesser men would have made a feeble out.
Two bad results stemmed from Ramirez’ blooper. Three, actually. First, it extended the inning. Second, it brought J.D. Martinez to the plate. Third, it gave Boston his run, in effect the winning run of the game, because Martinez stepped in and slapped a high fast ball toward right that carried, and carried, and carried, over the bullpen fence for a three-run dinger and a 5-3 Boston lead.
Estrada finished the inning when Moreland flied out to left, but Martinez’ lazy fly ball home run finished Estrada.
The Blue Jays’ bullpen stepped up big time once again, and Boston never saw another baserunner until Danny Barnes walked but stranded two in the ninth.
One apparent shortcoming in Toronto’s bullpen is that there is no one out there clearly identifiable as a “long man”, a guy who can go two or three effective innings to hold the team close when the starter has gone short.
A surprising candidate emerged last night in Aaron Loup, who breezed through the sixth and seventh innings without allowing a baserunner, striking out two and throwing only 24 pitches.
Seung-Hwan Oh threw an equally effective one-two-three eighth with a strikeout on 14 pitches, and then Barnes survived a somewhat wild and wooly ninth in which he had to face Mookie Betts with two on and two out after two walks. Betts, mercifully, hit a short fly to centre for the third out.
Alec Cora went to right-hander Carson Smith to follow Chris Sale, and he gave up the Jays’ fourth run, forcing Cora to bring in Matt Barnes to put out the fire.
Barnes, who I noticed last night looks an awful lot like Danny Barnes, except his beard isn’t red, had his own rollicky eighth inning as Toronto wasn’t going down without a fight.
Smith had retired Luke Maile on a grounder to short to start off the seventh, but Devon Travis connected for a vicious low liner to the wall in left centre that rattled around enough to allow him to turn it into a triple. Kendrys Morales hit for Steve Pearce and grounded out to second while Travis scored the fourth Toronto run.
With two outs and the bases empty there was no reason to pull Smith. But there was when Hernandez followed by stroking an inside-out double into the open space in right. That’s when Barnes came in to stifle the rally by fanning Justin Smoak with a 2-2 curve ball after pumping two 97-plus fast balls in to him.
Matt Barnes had his own adventure in the Toronto eighth, but Toronto’s last gasp died with the video review umpire’s thumbs down from New York, a hell of a way to get a rally snuffed out.
With one out Barnes had walked Kevin Pillar on a 3-2 pitch, and then Curtis Granderson hitting for Gurriel on a 3-1 that was nowhere close. This brought up Randal Grichuk, inserted in the lineup because he’d gone 3 for 4 against Sale in his only start against him. Not this time, though: he’d fouled out to the catcher twice and grounded out to second in three at-bats against Sale.
This time he hit a chopper to Profar at short, and if Grichuk isn’t hitting, at least he can run. He turned an easy out into a play close enough to review. If there was one last turning point in the game, it was this: if John Gibbons won the appeal, the Jays would have the bases loaded with one out. If he lost the appeal, they’d have runners at second and third, but two outs.
The video review upheld the call on the field: Grichuk was out.
Matt Barnes fanned Luke Maile on a high fast ball on the outside corner, as Maile tried just a little too hard to replicate his earlier season success in similar situations.
You’re not likely to beat Craig Kimbrel twice in one series, and this time he was dominant. He fanned Travis, and then popped up Morales and Hernandez to secure the game and the series for Boston.
You don’t get too many chances to beat Chris Sale straight up. Hope it comes around again some time!
Leave a Reply