If there’s one number that stands out in all the statistics we dealt with in yesterday’s exhilirating doubleheader sweep by the Toronto Blue Jays over the Kansas City Royal, it’s that before yesterday, only two members of the Royals had hit home runs since the beginning of the season. Mike Moustakas and Lucas Duda had hit five between them.
Contrast that number with the nearly-complete, up-and-down-the-lineup contribution that the members of the Blue Jays have made to their April hot streak: coming into the game, 10 different Blue Jays had hit home runs, 20 in all.
Of course those numbers changed yesterday, as the Royals nearly doubled their total in the friendly confines of the TV Dome, Duda and Moustakas adding one each and Alcides Escobar and Abraham Almonte finally posting new names to the Royals’ home run roster.
In fact, the Royals outhomered Toronto in the twin bill, but the Jays employed the baseball equivalent of a full-court press to engineer their sweep of the day’s festivities. So many players contributed to the two wins that just listing them makes for a long laundry list: effective enough starting pitching, nearly lights-out work from the bullpen, clutch hits up and down the line, from front-line players and bench strength guys, some big power at just the right moments to blow open game one, and an amazing clutch performance in the second game by the erstwhile peaceful and unobtrusive Luke Maile.
It was a funny atmosphere around Toronto’s baseball world yesterday. If the players were as yantzy to get on the field as their more devoted fans were to see them back in action, they must have been pretty keyed up.
After the great, ghost-banishing win last Friday night in Cleveland, there was a huge letdown around town as the team had to sit through three straight postponements, an almost unheard-of stretch, especially for a team whose home field is a covered dome, supposedly impervious to the elements.
Yet after the gods of spring had decreed a cold, wet washout of the two weekend games in Cleveland, there was more bad news late Monday afternoon, at the end of a weekend of nasty weather in Toronto, that the roof of the TV Dome had been damaged by ice chunks falling from the CN Tower that soars over the stadium so picturesquely on days when the roof is open. This led to the postponement of Monday night’s opener of the three-game series with the Royals, and the creation of a “traditional” double-header, a baseball fest that would follow the old style when double-headers were actually scheduled, with the second game following the first after a brief 20 to 30 minute break, allowing for some snacks, rehydration, and a change of shirts. Oh, and for the players, too.
Among the more obvious questions that needed to be answered were whether the starting pitchers would manage being put so far off schedule, whether the Toronto lineup would continue to contribute key hits from almost everybody in a distinct improvement over the last few years, and overall whether the team would have lost its momentum coming off three straight series wins and the abbreviated one-game sweep, if you want to call it that, in Cleveland.
Lefty Jaime Garcia, who’d waited since Saturday to start his next game, got the ball in yesterday’s opener for the Blue Jays. The first inning seemed to answer a couple of the return-to-action questions that had been raised.
Garcia had a good start, fanning Jon Jay to lead off the game, but then walked Whit Merrifield* on four pitches before adroitly picking him off in a badly botched straight steal attempt that ended in a tag play on Merrifield at second. The powerful Mike Moustakis grounded straight into the shift for the third out and the Jays were coming to the plate for the first time in four games.
*Now Whit Merrifield—that’s a great baseball name. He sounds like he’s right out of the Zane Grey baseball stories, written before the First World War and collected under the title The Red-Headed Outfield and Other Stories. And if you’ve never heard of Grey’s baseball stories, you must look them up. I have two copies of the book, but they’re too frail to loan. Anyway, they were written at a time when Whit Merrifield would have been a perfect name for a baseball player.
Okay, back to the action, with the Jays coming up in the bottom of the first. Steve Pearce, starting both games because of the Royals’ scheduling two southpaws to start against Toronto, blew the dust off and rifled an 0-1 pitch from starter Erik Skoglund into right field to start the game. But it looked like he was going to die at first. Teoscar Hernandez, posted in left while Pearce was the DH, was badly fooled on a curve ball for the first out and Justin Smoak skied to centre for the second.
And then the insouciant, irrepressible Yangervis Solarte, who never fails to love a pitch somewhere in the neighbourhood of the plate, swaggered to the dish. For all of his go-for-it aggressiveness, Solarte has shown a surprising ability to work the count. He went after the first two pitches—of course—and fouled them off, before holding off on three that went too far astray even for his eclectic taste. Then Skoglund threw a fast ball over the heart of the plate, and bing! It was 2-0 Toronto, as Solarte rifled the ball deep into the nearly empty second deck in left.
About those empty seats: it seems that Toronto’s ticket-buying fans, as rabid as they are when the team is going well, are still, under the surface, stodgy, schedule-bound Torontonians, who just really can’t, you know, deal with short-notice changes to their routines, like the scheduling of a make-up double-header. Which explains why the Dome at the start of the first game was as empty as I’ve seen it in recent years, emanating the cavernous feel of the old neglected stadiums of yore, like gloomy Municipal Stadium in Cleveland during the worst dog days of that franchise.
But yes, we were treated to another Solarte butt-wiggle, what passes as his baseball Happy Dance, before he entered the dugout to greet his excited team-mates.
The second inning brought the Jays up short, just as it buoyed up the Royals. Garcia took 26 pitches to work his way through a big mess, and was lucky to get away with only one run scored. He gave up 3 straight hits to load the bases, got a nice 6-4-3 double play that allowed the run to come in, hit Escobar on the foot, and finally retired backup catcher Cam Gallagher on a fielder’s choice.
Then the Jays picked up an infield hit by Aledmys Diaz and smacked the ball hard 3 times with no results to show for it, and so clung to their narrow 2-1 lead.
That only lasted until the top of the third, when Garcia struck out Jay and Merrifield, and then gave up back-to-back two-out jacks to Moustakas and Duda, increasing Kansas City’s homer total by 40 per cent in just a couple of minutes.
After the boost from his big lefty hitters, Skoglund came out and struck out the side in the third, pitching around an error by Escobar that let Smoak reach with 2 outs.
Garcia settled in the fourth and gave up a leadoff base hit but saw Russell Martin erase him with a good throw on a strike-em out throw-em out double play. More concerningly, though Skoglund walked Russell Martin on 4 pitches to open the inning, he fanned Pillar and then got some luck as Diaz lashed a wicked liner right over the bag at first that Duda laid out for, and then landed himself on the bag to double off Martin.
Going to the fifth Skoglund was looking better than Garcia, and that one-run lead was more than a little troubling. A key moment in the game came in the top of the fifth, in his last inning of work, when some gutsy scuffling by Garcia kept the Royals from blowing the game open.
Gallagher hit a ball to the wall in right centre that it looked like Pillar had tracked down, bobbled, and then secured near the wall. But the video review showed that the ball had bounced off the wall before he secured it, and Gallagher was “awarded” a double. Jay followed with a nice bunt single that moved Gallagher to third with nobody out.
Then Garcia reached down in his bag of tricks and found his off-centre contact mojo working, and the next three hitters put the ball ineffectually in the air. Merrifield lofted a twisting fly down the right field line that drifted foul. Randal Grichuk tracked it after a long run and hustled it in to keep the catcher Gallagher at third. Then the big guys went down easily, Moustakas on a foul pop to Russell Martin, and Duda on a fly out to centre.
Emboldened by Garcia’s tough resistance, the Jays came out in the fifth, took the lead with some sharp hitting, and never looked back. After Devon Travis lined out to right. Grichuk at long last broke his hitless streak with a booming double to centre. Steve Pearce immediately delivered him with a single through the vacated right side. Hernandez grounded a single up the middle, Pearce checking in at second. Smoak, hitting right-handed, also went through the empty right side to score Pearce and send Hernandez to third, whence he trotted home on Solarte’s base hit to centre. Smoak tried to go from first to third on the play but was thrown out by the centre fielder Paolo Orlando, and Martin was retired on a nice play in the hole by Escobar at short.
Controlling their swings, taking what the Royals gave them in terms of positioning, they quickly scored 3 runs to take the lead, and who were these guys? Certainly not the Toronto Blue Jays of recent vintage.
Both starters were done after five innings, and John Gibbons got a nice 4-batter inning out of Seung Hwan Oh, who gave up only a bloop single to Jorge Soler. Meanwhile, the Jays climbed all over Blaine Boyer, and by the time Burch Smith had put out the fire Toronto had counted six more markers, only two of them earned, breaking the game open for good.
It was quick and kind of dirty, and the centre piece of the rally was a decisive statement by Grichuk that his slump was over, a vicious three-run homer to left that scored Pillar, who’d reached on a throwing error by Cheslor Cuthbert* at third, and Diaz, who’d followed with an infield single to short.
*Cuthbert’s name makes him sound like he could have been Whit Merrifield’s double-play partner in Zane Grey’s baseball world. But Grey would never have imagined that half of his fictional keystone combo might have come from Corn Island, Nicaragua.
Travis started things over again with a single to centre, and after Granderson flew out deep to centre, Hernandez lined a double into the left-field corner, with Travis checking in at third. Smoak was given a free pass, allowing Solarte to plate Davis on a sacrifice fly to centre off Burch Smith, who replaced the beleaguered Boyer.
Given the error on which Pillar reached, Solarte’s fly ball should have been the third out, so the run he drove in, and the two that followed (plus Pillar’s, of course) were all unearned, for those of you out there who find it difficult to understand the assignment of earned and unearned runs. Smith walked Martin to load the bases, and Pillar, returning to the plate, doubled done the line to left knocking in Hernandez and Smoak. It mattered little that Diaz went down before Smith’s high heat.
With the game basically over after six innings, the rest of the game was denouement. Aaron Loup maneuvered through a rocky seventh for Toronto, and big Canuck John Axford came on and gave the Jays two full innings of mop-up work, impressing with his power and the movement on his pitches. He retired 6 in a row on only 25 pitches.
Smith finished off the game for the Royals, saving manager Ned Yost from going deeper into his bullpen, pitching 2 and 2 thirds with 1 hit, 1 walk, 3 strikeouts, and 1 hit batter, on 50 pitches.
I was pleased to see and hear the warm reception Ryan Goins received on his return to the TV Dome. In fact, he received it twice, granted an ovation when he took the field as a defensive replacement for Escobar at shortstop in the seventh, and again when he came up to the plate leading off the ninth, when the small crowd rose to his feet to pay him tribute. It was a nice touch at the end of a game that had long been over.
And, lest we forget, a game that boosted Toronto to a 10-5 record and once again gave us the possibility of winning another series by winning the first game.
When I was a kid growing up in Detroit my dad always took us to doubleheaders to see the Tigers, since it provided better value, twice the baseball for the bucks. I can well remember how impatient I would be sitting in the stands between games, forlornly surveying the empty field, waiting for the players to return to the dugouts for the second game.
I felt much the same way yesterday as I futzed around the house doing little tasks waiting for the second game to start. I kept checking to see when Gameday would move into “warmup” mode, my signal to get back to the tube.
I’d already checked over the lineup, and the broadcasters had clarified the big question of the day: how did Joe Biagini suddenly appear as the starting pitcher? The answer is that teams can add an extra player for doubleheaders, and unbeknownst to anybody the Jays had called up Biagini to take the start.
There must have been some matchup reason that Jay Happ, who was supposed to start the second game of the series all along, was being put back a day. With the Yankees and Red Sox coming up next, the pitching matchups are no doubt being given a lot of scrutiny.
Otherwise the lineup was basically the same as you’d expect for a second game on short rest. Luke Maile would catch, Gift Ngoepe would play second, and in a move that made sense at the time, Steve Pearce would take his hot bat to first base and swap with Justin Smoak, who moved to DH. Teoscar Hernandez’ solid start militated keeping him in left, so the Pearce/Smoak swap was a way to keep Pearce’s bat in the game and give Smoak a rest.
Biagini on the mound and Pearce at first inserted themselves into the game right off the bat, so to speak. On a 1-1 count, Royals’ leadoff hitter Jon Jay hit a fairly tough grounder to first. The ball played Pearce, and bounced off him. He dove for it, and threw behind Biagini who was coming over to cover.
The scorer gave Jay a base hit, which was a bit generous to Pearce, who should have handled the ball cleanly. Once he bobbled it, a rushed throw was all that would get the speedy Jay (John, that is), but it had to be perfect and it wasn’t.
The unsettled Biagini proceeded to walk Whit Merrifield and give up a short single to centre to Mike Moustakas to load the bases. Then he hit Lucas Duda to force in a run. All with nobody out.
Joe Biagini has nothing if not loads of grit, though, and he managed to get out of the inning without further damage, in part thanks to a stellar play at first by Pearce, who redeemed himself after the earlier bobble, with an able assist from Maile at the plate.
With Pearce playing in, Cheslor Cuthbert lashed one on the ground toward right. Pearce made a desperate dive to his right, snagged the ball on his backhand, and threw to the plate from his knees. Maile made a great stretch to corral the desperate throw and keep his foot on the plate for the forceout.
Then Biagini saved himself a run but just missed getting out of the inning. Ryan Goins hit a hard one-hopper back to him and he came to the plate for a second forceout at the plate, but he bobbled the ball slightly, which cost him a double play.
Abraham Almonte hit one deep to centre that Kevin Pillar hauled in for the third out, and the threat was over.
Veteran lefty Danny Duffy, by default the ace of the Royals’ staff, got some help from Moustakas at third who leapt and speared Teoscar Hernanez’ one-out liner, then followed a 3-2 walk to Justin Smoak by striking out Solarte to end the Toronto first.
After a quiet second for both teams, Kansas City touched up Biagini for another run in the third. He walked Merrifield leading off, and Moustakas brought him home with a double to centre off the wall. The big young right-hander asserted himself after the blow from Moustakas, and fanned the side, Duda, Cuthbert, and Goins all going down swinging.
Duffy was spot on tonight, and deserved better than he got for his effort. His only tough inning was the third, when he loaded the bases with one out for Smoak with a 10-pitch walk on 3-2 to Maile, a double to right by Pearce, and a walk to Hernandez. But Smoak hit it right up the middle where Ryan Goins was stationed near the bag in the shift, and what used to be a base hit was turned into an easy double play.
After that Duffy cruised through the sixth, giving up only Pillar’s line single in the fourth, the second and last hit he gave up. As a guy who works the corners and can be pushed into some deep counts, he’d thrown 100 pitches by the end of six, and that was enough for Ned Yost. He came out throwing a shutout on 2 hits with 3 walks and 8 strikeouts. Whatever else happened after that, he had done a good job, and gave the best performance by a starter in the series so far.
He also left with a 3-run lead, thanks to a leadoff homer by Almonte to centre in the fifth. John Gibbons pulled the plug on big Joe after five and two thirds innings, after he walked Jay, bringing the dangerous Merrifield up again. He did a pretty good job for a fill-in, and could go back to Buffalo quite satisfied: 3 runs, 6 hits, 3 walks, 4 strikeouts, and 106 pitches. The only thing he would really regret, I imagine, was hitting Duda with a pitch in the first to force in a run.
Danny Barnes came in and fanned Merrifield to strand Jay at first, and going to the seventh the game was in the hands of both bullpens. This was good news, mostly, for Toronto, and terrible news, totally, for Kansas City. Which in the era of 6-inning 100-pitch starts, is probably a large reason why the Royals came into this game 3 and 11 while the Jays came in at 10 and 5.
After Duffy finished up the Blue Jays’ sixth inning, Barnes came back out for the Royals’ seventh, and pitched around a walk to Cuthbert, ending up with a walk and 2 strikeouts in one and a third innings pitched.
Ned Yost called in Justin Grimm from the KC bullpen for the seventh. Ah, the KC bullpen. Balm for a sunny (snowy?) evening. Grimm’s an experienced guy who’s been around, starting with Texas and then spending five years with the Cubbies, where he even scored a World Series ring.
Unless there’s a big turnabout in his fortunes, he’s not likely to score another one any time soon, either pitching for the Royals, or pitching like he did tonight. He faced 3 batters; he walked 3 batters, on 17 pitches. Then he took a seat on the bench to watch Brad Keller come in and allow all three bases on balls to score, and one more for good measure as the Jays took the lead.
First to face Zimmer would be backup catcher Luke Maile, about to become Toronto’s newest folk hero. Zimmer threw him 3 sliders. He swung through the first, took the second for a called strike, and laced the third the wrong way into the right-field corner for a long single that scored Pillar and Diaz and sent Grichuk around to third.
Then John Gibbons started pulling some strings. He sent the slumping Devon Travis up to hit for the even more slumping Gift Ngoepe, and Travis responded by hitting a hard double-play ball on the ground to a drawn-in Moustakas, who—oops—couldn’t get it out of his glove to make a play. Grichuk scampered in with the tying run and Maile had reached second.
Up came Steve Pearce—remember him? He of the hot bat and hot-and-cold glove? Well this time he wielded his bat and stroked a single to centre to score Maile, and two relief pitchers had contrived to spoil Duffy’s truncated shutout and give up the lead to Toronto.
With Ryan Tepera coming in for the eighth this was all good news. But after he retired Almonte on a ground-out, the good news looked premature, as he gave up a very long and very loud solo homer to old Toronto nemesis Alcides Escobar.
Tepera finished up the eighth with the game tied, despite giving up a 2-out hustle double to John Jay.
Tim Hill, a lanky lefty who had come in to shut down the Toronto rally in the seventh, retired five in a row through the eighth on only 17 pitches, which brought us to the ninth inning, and the sight of Roberto Osuna on the hill for the Jays in the tie game. This is the new old: using your closer in a tied ninth inning, in the hopes of delivering a chance to your hitters in the bottom of the ninth. Everybody has taken a lesson from the sorry Buck Showalter/Zach Britton mess in the 2016 Wild Card game.
And it basically worked out for Toronto. Osuna held them off, and the offence had a chance to put it away in the bottom of the ninth, but that didn’t happen, and at the end of nine it was still tied.
Sometimes Osuna likes to make things more difficult for himself, like last night. He gave up a leadoff single to Moustakas, and then wild-pitched him into scoring position, with Lucas Duda coming up next. Osuna fanned Duda on a 2-2 changeup. Then Moustakas did Osuna a favour, wandering off second on Cuthbert’s comebacker.
Osuna played it textbook: ran right at Moustakas, freezing him about 15 feet from second. He was so nailed that he gave up, and let Osuna charge him and tag him out without a throw. Ryan Goins popped up to short, and it was off to the bottom of the ninth, and breath-holding time.
The Royals brought in righty Kevin McCarthy to start the ninth, and McCarthy fanned Maile to start the inning, but gave up another opposite-field ground single against the shift to Travis. Just to change things up, Pearce shot one through the stacked left side, and Travis, running with abandon, beat the throw to third.
Ned Yost decided to go to his closer, Kevin Herrera, to try to get out of the jam. Not sure about the logic of not using him to start the inning.
John Gibbons countered by hitting Curtis Granderson for Hernandez against the tough righty. Pearce immediately took second on Herrera, with no attempt to hold him at first. Also not sure why Yost didn’t then walk Granderson to re-establish the double play, but he didn’t, and it worked, because Herrera proceeded to strike out Granderson with a mesmerizing breaking ball, and fanned Smoak to send the game to extra innings.
With Osuna used, Gibbie went to Tyler Clippard for the tenth. It’s really worked out well for Toronto’s bullpen that Ross Atkins picked up 3 former closers in the off-season, Clippard, Seung-Hwan Oh, and John Axford. This provides for a wealth of veteran calm in tough situations.
Like Clippard in the top of the tenth. Almonte grounded out on a 2-2 pitch. Alcides Escobar lined a single into left. Drew Butera grounded out to Pearce at first, with Escobar moving up to second, and then John Jay hit a weak wrong-field fly ball to left to end the inning.
Like the Jays’, Kansas City’s closer was done for the night, and left-hander Brian Flynn came in to face Toronto. Solarte lined out to Merrifield in right on a nice running catch, but Pillar hit a ground single to left and advanced on a Flynn wild pitch. Then Ned Yost elected to put Diaz on with the intentional pass to restore the double play. But Flynn hit Grichuk with a pitch to load the bases with nobody out.
Home game, extra innings, bases loaded and nobody out, automatic win, right? But how many times have pitchers worked their way out of just such a situation? It was Luke Maile’s mission to end the suspense early, though, and he went with the pitch on a low 0-1 fast ball and rifled it into right field safely to end the game.
So in a 5-4 ten-inning win, backup catcher Luke Maile had 3 RBIs on 2 base hits including the game-winner in the tenth inning.
A team that has any pretension to contending for a playoff spot needs to see production from all 25 players on the roster. That includes the backup catcher. This year’s backup catcher is Luke Maile, and so far the kid’s all right!
And Maile’s hit capped off a long day and night of success for the Blue Jays, who swept the rebuilding Royals by preying on their struggling bullpen, getting key hits up and down the order, just enough starting pitching to get by, and great work by their own bullpen.
Which brings us to tonight’s series-ender against Kansas City, a series win already in the bag and another chance to bring out the brooms.
But don’t even mention those damn brooms, and keep them out of sight. Please!
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