Question: Why don’t Toronto baseball fans go to Canada’s Wonderland?
Answer: Why would we pay to ride roller coasters when we can have the same experience for free following the Blue Jays?
Yes, it’s a long season, and yes, you have to keep everything in perspective, and look to the next game to sort everything out. But, dammit, it’s hard sometimes. Here we went into the All-Star break on a great high, convinced that it was only a matter of time before the true leaders of the American League East would emerge from the throes of modest success to take charge of the likes of Baltimore and Boston.
And then Marcus Stroman, who’d pitched so well recently, and R.A. Dickey, who’d pitched so well for so long, each gave up three homers to the Oakland A’s, in the park where home runs go to die, and we lose two consecutive one-run games. In the meantime, both Baltimore and Boston, conveniently paired against the patsies of the American League East, Tampa Bay and New York, start with two straight wins, doubling Baltimore’s lead against the Jays and putting two full games, yet again, between us and the Red Sox.
This afternoon it was Oakland rookie Ryan Healy, playing in only his second major league game, and still looking for his first hit after wearing the collar Friday night, who put the dagger into the Jays’ hearts. (“Wearing the collar”: a shortened form of “wearing the horse collar”, an old baseball expression meaning to go hitless in a game. The horse collar looks like an “0”, as in “0 for whatever”.)
Typically for R.A. Dickey, he breezed through the first inning on nine pitches, despite giving up a wasted single to Yonder Alonso hitting second, and then got in trouble in the second. Sometimes, also typically, he gets in trouble in the first and then breezes in the second, but today it was the former case.
For the last month or so, though, Dickey has largely been able to avoid the big inning, or the big blow. As a knuckle baller, Dickey knows, and we’ve all come to expect, that he’s vulnerable to the home run. A knuckler that doesn’t do anything is just too fat not to land in the seats. It’s been the case for Dickey this year, and a blessing for the team, that he has given up very few homers with men on base. The Toronto edition of Baseball Prospectus headlined its story on today’s game “Dickey Done in by Davis’ Dual Dingers”. Cute, but inaccurate. Both of the homers given up by Dickey to Khris Davis were solo shots. If he hadn’t given up the three-run shot to Healy in the second, we win, 4-2, Dickey’s record climbs to 8-9, his ERA continues to sink towards 3.50, and a whole lot of Toronto fans sleep better tonight.
After the quick first, Dickey was in the soup immediately in the second. Davis led off by crushing one to centre. Stephen Vogt singled to right. Dickey walked Marcus Semien, which seems to be kind of hard to do. Then, after getting a fly ball to centre from Jake Smolinski, he faced Healy, the third baseman who was hitting ninth today, as he did yesterday, when he went hitless in his major league debut. I chuckled to myself as to what was coming next. The raw rookie facing the knucksie for the first time. Would it be an awkward strikeout, or a topped grounder back to Dickey, who would easily turn two to end the inning? Of course it was neither, as Healy stroked one into the left-field stands, for his first major league hit, his first major league homer, his first major league RBIs, and a 4-2 Oakland lead. We’ll get to the Jays’ runs in a minute.
A’s staff immediately raced to the fan who caught the ball in the stands and quickly negotiated a buyout so that Healy could have his souvenir ball back. I wonder just how much a team would be willing to pay to ransom a coveted souvenir ball? Wicked and greedy thoughts come to mind.
A word here about Coco Crisp, Danny Valencia, and the harshness of baseball as a sport/business. When the A’s reconvened after the break, apparently Manager Bob Melvin and his brain trust pulled Valencia and Crisp aside, and basically told them this: we’re going nowhere fast; your offensive talents are definitely outweighed by your defensive liabilities. We need to give some of our young up and comers a chance to show what they can do, so don’t expect a lot of playing time over the rest of the season. Great news for the rookies Healy and Smolinski, but kind of a tough way to come back to work for Valencia and Crisp.
For Valencia, sadly, this is the second time in two years that he’s been the odd man out. You will recall that he hit several crucial home runs for the Jays last season before he was squeezed out and placed on waivers. A competent corner infielder, there was no room for him on the 2015 Jays, with Josh Donaldson installed at third, and Edwin Encarnacion, Justin Smoak, and Chris Colabello all circulating between first base and designated hitter. They tried to square peg him into the round hole of left field, but when Ben Revere was acquired from the Phillies, the competition for someone to establish himself in left came to an end.
To get back to the game, as much as I don’t want to, the Healy homer hurt even worse than one would think, as it helped erase a two-run lead posted by the Jays in the top of the second when Josh Thole, for the second game in a row while catching Dickey, was the unlikely hitter who delivered the two runs. Troy Tulowitzki was on second with a leadoff double, and after Sonny Gray retired both Kevin Pillar and Justin Smoak while Tulo had to stay at second, he walked Darwin Barney, the classic two-out mistake. In this situation it didn’t look too damaging, since it brought Thole to the plate. Thole, however, surprised everyone by pulling a liner down the right-field line, which slowed and rolled as soon as it hit the turf. With Oakland playing Thole straight up, the right fielder, Josh Reddick, had a long run for the ball. Barney, running on the hit, scored easily after Tulo, and the Jays had a transitory two-run lead.
Josh Donaldson then reached on a throwing error by shortstop Marcus Semien, but Thole was caught off third and tagged out in a rundown. There was lots of fuss from the talking heads about Thole killing the rally with his baserunning error, especially since Encarnacion led off the third with a home run (Ooh, we missed a three-run homer!) But you can never assume Encarnacion would have had the same at bat, seen the same pitches, if he had come up with runners on the corners in the second. Let’s cut Thole some slack, in fact lots of slack, here. There were two outs, he finished his route to third, maybe he was being aggressive in case there was a bad throw, but wasn’t aggressive enough. Whatever. The fact is it was a terrible, sloppy error from Semien, and never should have happened. Donaldson, not Thole, should have been the third out.
So, though I’ve given it to you in reverse order, at the end of two we had A’s 4, Jays 2, and basically that’s how it stayed. The Healy homer stood up for the A’s, Gray limited the damage the Jays could do with a number of chances after giving up the solo shot to Encarnacion to lead off the third, and the Jays remained on the short end of the score for the rest of the day. Dickey being Dickey, he settled down after the Healy shot, and retired 13 in a row, through to the top of the sixth inning, the last two outs in the string coming on a double-play ball by Danny Valencia, after a walk to Josh Reddick. Again, typically, his string was bracketed by the Healy homer in the second and Khris Davis’ second solo homer in the sixth, which completed Dickey’s record at six innings, five runs, 5 hits, 3 walks, 4 strikeouts, and 86 pitches. Did he deserve the loss today? Not particularly. Did he deserve the win? Not really. Live by the knuckler, die by the knuckler. Some days you die, some days you don’t.
Sonny Gray got the start for the A’s, and as we all know the sharks from the contending teams have been circling around the A’s trying to sniff out what price would be placed on Gray’s head to move him to a contending team. Looking at his record going into this game, 3-8, with a 5.16 ERA, I’m not sure why the price shouldn’t be a bat boy and a case of energy bars for the clubhouse. The talk is that the A’s are looking for a lot in return, and I hope they get it, a fool and his money and all that . . . Gray didn’t let the game get away from him today, but he didn’t exactly blow the lights out, either. In six innings he gave up three runs and six hits while walking four and striking out two. Agonizingly, he took 102 pitches to do this, only 61 of them strikes. There wasn’t a corner he didn’t try to nibble, missing way more than he hit. And given that the third Jay out in the second came on the Thole rundown, he was that close to never making it to the third. I guess if the energy bars were good enough to tempt the A’s management, Sonny Gray might be a good second spot starter, right behind Drew Hutchison in the rotation, but that’s about it. Now that I think about it, I hope the Orioles acquire him. That could only help the Jays.
Both bullpens were solid again today after the starters left. Drew Storen had a rocky start in the seventh, and Aaron Loup had to bail him out, which he did. Manager John Gibbons gave the ball to Roberto Osuna for the eighth, because he needed the work, and he gave up a walk and struck out one on 17 pitches. Gray was followed by Ryan Dull, John Axford, and Ryan Madson for the A’s. Dull and Axford were perfect, but Madson gave up a leadoff homer to Justin Smoak in the top of the ninth to shorten the lead to one, before retiring the side in order for his nineteenth save of the season.
I kind of wonder whether the A’s manager Bob Melvin will be able to go to the same three guys again tomorrow afternoon in the closing game of the series, when all three of them pitched in Friday night’s game as well as today’s game. Well, with any luck, our left-hander, Jay Happ, will be more effective than their left-hander, Rich Hill (who’s also wearing a “for sale” sign on his back), and the stamina of the A’s closers won’t even be an issue.
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