From the moment I first conceived of this project of following the Blue Jays through the season by way of a long-form story reporting on each game as it is played, I determined that my focus was to be “the game on the field”, and not all of the other peripheral issues that occupy the attention of most sports journalism today.
I would write about the drama and the tedium, the joy and the despair, the funny and the tragic, as they are manifested on the field. I would not write about contracts, twitter controversies, payrolls, or anything of that ilk. Nor would I delve too deeply into issues of player selection and playing time, beyond the extent to which these might impact the outcome of a particular game, or the general arc of the team’s success or failure through the year.
However, the news out of the Blue Jays’ front office during the current road trip that Justin Smoak had signed a two-year extension to his contract, taking him out of 2016’s free agent pool, and the spin immediately applied to this news, has forced me to address the free agent issue, particularly in relation to the solid Jays’ victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks that we enjoyed this evening.
Much of the speculation surrounding the re-signing of Justin Smoak touched on its implications for Edwin Encarnacion’a future with the Blue Jays. The reasons for this should be obvious: they are both power-hitting first-basemen/designated hitters, distinguished from each other by the fact that Smoak is the better fielding first baseman, not that Encarnacion is a liability at the position, not in the least, and on the other hand that Encarnacion is the more reliable and consistent hitter, with a proven track record of maintaining a respectable batting average that Smoak’s record just doesn’t show. On the other hand, both have a flare for the dramatic, and when either comes to the plate in a clutch situation, it’s equally likely that they will spectacularly deliver, or spectacularly fail.
The financial reason for linking the Smoak signing with Encarnacion’s status is also obvious: Smoak represents two positives to the Blue Jays: he costs significantly less than the sum that Edwin will be able to command after what has been so far a truly productive season, and as such he provides low-cost insurance that at least some of the positives that Encarnacion brings to the team will still be available.
I need to state my bias very clearly here. I have a deep and abiding respect for Jose Bautista. I admire his work ethic, his professionalism, his pride, and, yes, even his prickly abrasiveness, which brings to the tip-toe-y world of sports a flash of refreshing honesty. He has made himself into a premier major-league star, and deserves to have his hard work rewarded. If his 2016 performance serves to undermine to a certain extent his value on the open market, I feel badly for him.
But I just love Edwin Encarnacion. I love what he brings to the team and to the product on the field, and I love what he brings to life. I have a grand-daughter, almost nine years old, who is delightfully Hispanic on the other side, fluent in the language and infused with the joie de vivre she has inherited from the Mediterranean strain. I would love to have my grand-daughter meet Edwin. I would love to see them laugh and giggle together, as I just know they would, because I’m convinced that Edwin really is the big, happy child he seems.
Accordingly, my most cherished memories of Edwin don’t include any of the walk-off homers, clutch hits, or crucial at-bats he has contributed to Jays’ lore in recent years. Okay, one: last year, after he came off the DL from his shoulder issue, when he was approaching the mob scene at the plate after his first post-injury walk-off, he pointed to his shoulder and wagged his finger in warning, to remind the guys to pummel him gently. And, though I love it as a meme, it’s not the parrot walk that most holds my affection. What I most remember are two recent moments: last year, it was the smile that spread over his face in the dugout when Dioner Navarro explained to him why the fans were raining hats down on the field after his third home run of the game against the Tigers. After the game, he asked people to contact him if they had thrown a hat, as he planned to autograph them all and return them to their owners. I wonder how that all worked out. The second moment from a recent game is again Edwin sitting on the bench, this time being fanned with towels by his teammates to cool him off after he impishly stole third base against the shift.
So it was with some unease that I listened to the talk that arose this week over the assumption that the Jays would not make an effort to satisfy his contract demands . I would be sorry to see Jose Bautista go. I would be profoundly disappointed to see Edwin go. And that brings us to the first inning of tonight’s game, and another example of what Edwin Encarnacion brings to this team, a statement laid down for all to see, that he has us covered. From the stats, the pitching matchup looked a bit lop-sided. Aaron Sanchez, no need to even review where he is in his season, was facing Zach Godley, a recent call-up making only his third start, with 20 innings under his belt and an inflated ERA of 5.28.
But in one of those unexpected developments that make baseball such a bundle of surprises, Godley started like a house afire, retiring eight of the first nine batters he faced, striking out four and yielding only an opposite-field single to Russell Martin in the second. But after one time through the order, the cat was out of the bag about his most effective pitch, a sharp-breaking curve ball. With two outs and nobody on in the third, leadoff hitter Devon Travis came up for the second time, worked the count full, and lofted one up the middle that dropped in front of centre-fielder Michael Bourn. Josh Donaldson followed with a second two-out single, a sharp liner through the left side. That brought Encarnacion to the plate. In his first at bat, it was obvious that he had just missed getting all of his pitch in flying out to centre field. This time he squared up the 2-1 pitch from Godley perfectly, and deposited it in the left field stands for a 3-1 Jays’ lead that they never relinquished.
Cue the joy mixed with dread: I love you, Edwin, you did it again! But please, please, don’t leave. I appreciate that it’s a business decision, and it will be severely impacted by the loss of R. A. Dickey to free agency, assuming the Jays’ don’t meet his asking price. Either way, they’ll have to pay Dickey, or pay someone else to pick up his 200 innings and every-fifth-day regularity. But if there is any room for sentimentality in this business, and if the new-ish Jays’ management has any sense of the feelings of the fan base, then they will shake out all the sugar jars in the Rogers kitchen and find the money to pay him what he’s worth.
Arizona had taken a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first with a typical National League sequence: Sanchez allowed Jean Segura, the very fine Diamondbacks’ second baseman to reach with a leadoff single, and then the stars aligned for the D-Backs to bring him around without another hit. Segura stole second, moved to third on Michael Bourne’s ground ball to first, and scored on Paul Goldschmidt’s grounder to Devon Travis that split Travis and Encarnacion, forcing Sanchez to hustle over to cover the bag. It was a good play, skillfully executed, but it absolutely conceded the run. I hope the D-Backs did some good celebrating in the dugout when Segura came in, because that was the high point of the game for them.
Sanchez went seven innings, giving up the one run, six hits, no walks, and five strikeouts on 98 pitches. Every time he got in trouble after the first, he got out of it, with confidence and style. In the second, for example, he caught Wellington Castillo and Brandon Drury looking, gave up a double to Yasmany Tomas, and then fanned Nick Ahmed. In the third he gave up leadoff singles to the pitcher Godley and Segura, and then Michael Bourn moved them up by grounding out to Encarnacion unassisted. With the infield in, Goldschmidt hit a hard grounder to Josh Donaldson who made the play at first while Godley was held at third. Then the young slugger Jake Lamb lofted an easy fly ball to Kevin Pillar in centre to end the inning.
In the fourth a Tomas single was erased when Sanchez started a double play himself on a comebacker from Ahmed. In the fifth and sixth he retired the side in order, and in the seventh he got two quick outs after Brandon Drury nearly hit one out leading off and ended up with a double. To make things interesting, Sanchez plunked Rickie Weeks who was hitting for the pitcher before retiring the side and ending his night’s labours by getting the pesky Segura to hit a grounder to first. Sanchez took the throw from Encarnacion, trotted across the bag, and right into the dugout for a well-deserved sit-down. At the end of the night, after Jason Grilli and Roberto Osuna shut down Arizona to preserve the win, Sanchez was ten and one, and his ERA had dropped to 2.87.
My take on an innings limit for Sanchez, and the question of whether he should go to the bullpen is this: he’s making it awfully hard for anyone to go ahead and implement his move to the bullpen, especially since even his teammates, like Marco Estrada, are starting to speak up about it. Former Jays’ great Pat Hentgen, who still works in player development for the Blue Jays, has recently chimed in with another suggestion on Sanchez. He says that the Jays should absolutely respect whatever inning limit they have placed on him, but that he should start until he reaches the limit, and in no circumstance be sent to the bullpen. Frankly, if an innings limit is going to come into play, this makes more sense to me than having him use up his last innings in the bullpen, where he would face a complete change of routine and be asked to get warm any number of times on an unpredictable basis. But in the end, if Sanchez is showing no evidence of fatigue or soreness, it’s going to be awfully hard for anyone to say to him that he has to stop pitching at some arbitrary point.
Other than an unearned run that he was responsible for himself, the only mistake Godley made in his five innings was the gopher ball to Encarnacion in the third. He went five innings, gave up three earned runs on six hits, with one walk and seven strikeouts. In his last inning, he gave up a single to Devon Travis with one out, and then must have really been annoyed that Travis was on base, because he almost immediately contrived to bring him around to score. With Donaldson at the plate, the Arizona pitcher bounced a pro-forma throw-over in front of first baseman Goldschmidt and it skipped down the right-field line as Travis skipped around to third, whence Donaldson promptly singled him home.
In typical National League fashion, the D-Backs used a pitcher an inning after the starter went down, owing to the need to pinch-hit for the pitcher whenever his spot came up in the batting order. All four, Silvino Bracho, Enrique Burgos, Randall Delgado, and Dominic Leone were effective in shutting the Jays down, though Leone, like Godley, victimized himself in the ninth, which gave the Jays a second insurance run. After Leone walked Justin Smoak, Andy Burns was sent in to run for him; again an errant pickoff throw allowed him to move to second, whence Leone wild-pitched him to third, so that he could score on an infield grounder by Travis.
The trio of Sanchez, Grilli, and Osuna easily held Arizona at bay, and the Encarnacion homer stood up for the win. I wish it were always that easy.
I wish they’d stop talking about letting Edwin go. Amen, brother.
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