He’s ba-a-a-a-ck!
Marcus Stroman strode to the mound tonight, reached into his back pocket, and pulled out his Stro-mojo, demonstrating to the whole baseball world that he still had it, and it was as potent as ever.
All talk of skipping a turn in the rotation, being sent to the bullpen, going down to Buffalo to regroup, faded into a barely-remembered background murmuring, as Stroman fronted the Jays to an exciting and precise 4-2 victory over the reigning World Series champs the Kansas City Royals.
This was vintage Stroman, if a twenty-five-year-old with only parts of three major league seasons under his belt, comprising a grand total of 42 career starts, can claim anything vintage about himself. He went eight innings, giving up two earned runs, and three hits while walking one and striking out six. He only threw 85 pitches, and induced 14 ground balls that produced 15 outs. The only balls hit to the outfield were the three hits he gave up, a triple to Alcides Escobar that produced the Royals’ first run, cashing a Brett Eibner walk in the sixth, an Eric Hosmer leadoff single in the seventh that was immediately erased with a double play by the Blue Jays, and a one-out homer to left by Eibner that temporarily tied the game in the eighth.
Luckily for Stroman, Manager John Gibbons chose to let him finish the inning. No reason not to, unless the next hitter got on base, but you know Gibby and his nervous trigger finger. Having wrapped up the eighth inning himself, he was still on the record for the win when the Jays suddenly reclaimed the lead with two outs in the bottom of the inning, and then reaped the benefit of Roberto Osuna’s seventeenth save in nineteen opportunities.
Oh, and did you notice that all the offence the Royals could muster against Stroman came in the sixth, seventh, and eighth innings? Well, that’s just because he was letter-perfect in the first five, mowing down fifteen Royals in a row to enter the sixth with a two-nothing lead.
The Royals countered Stroman on the mound with Ian Kennedy, the free agent from the San Diego Padres they had signed in the off-season, and whom they expected to fill an important spot in their starting rotation. As I mentioned the other day, when reviewing the changes made by the Royals in preparation for 2016, Kennedy may have filled a spot in the rotation, contributing 17 starts and throwing 99.2 innings counting today’s work, but he’s hardly filled it with distinction, coming out of the game with a
6-7 won-loss record, and an ERA of 3.97. It’s not like the Royals shouldn’t have known what they were getting either, since Kennedy’s combined 2014-2015 won-loss record with an admittedly weaker team was 22-28, with a decent ERA of 3.63 in 2014 but a mediocre 4.28 in 2015.
To give him his due, Kennedy was far better than his record shows today, giving up only two runs on four hits with one walk while striking out ten, while throwing 101 pitches. He departed without the chance of a win, down 2-1 at the time, the only difference between his and Stroman’s performances to being a fifth-inning solo home run by newly annointed All-Star Michael Saunders, winner of the American League Final Man vote, that put the Jays into a lead that would hold until Eibner’s blast off Stroman in the eighth tied it up.
Following the formula set by the Royals last year of staying close, then rallying late for the win, and relying on the bullpen for the save, the Jays struck with sudden swiftness in the bottom of the eighth. Facing Kelvin Herrera, the strongest arm remaining in the Royals’ bullpen, in the absence of Wade Davis, it looked like the home team was destined for ninth-inning drama, or extra innings, after Herrera started the inning by freezing Zeke Carrera (could this be the germ of a poem?) with an incredible curve ball, and fanning Josh Donaldson.
But Edwin Encarnacion ripped a two-out double to left, then raced (yes, Edwin raced) for the plate to score on a single to centre by All-Star Clutch Hitter Michael Saunders. The glaring hole left in centre by the absent Lorenzo Cain was never more evident than by the fact that Edwin actually scored standing up, as the throw to the plate from Jarrod Dyson sliced twenty feet up the third-base line. Even worse, it allowed Saunders to take second, whence he was perfectly positioned to score easily when Russell Martin, going the other way in the crunch yet again, hit a double to right. Two strikeouts, three quick hits, two quick runs, and Herrera was in line for the loss, and Marcus Stroman for the win, to reward him for his fine effort. It hardly mattered that Herrera fanned Troy Tulowitzki to finish striking out the side and strand Martin at second.
Roberto Osuna gave up a two-out single to Eric Hosmer, but recorded the save on fourteen pitches, with one strikeout. It’s kind of interesting that, for all of his power and awesome stuff, Osuna doesn’t usually generate more than one whiff per inning. He seems to be working in the same style as Stroman and Aaron Sanchez, limiting the pitch count by pitching to soft (mostly) contact.
How satisfying is it to sweep the Royals the first time we see them after the devastating loss in last year’s ALCS. And finishing it off with a 2015 Royals-style sudden late rally in the third game just put the ricotta into the canolli.
A key factor in this sweep of the Royals, obviously, is the primacy of the Blue Jays’ starting pitching. Here’s an interesting and revealing simple statistic to reflect on. Of the 27 innings the Jays’ pitchers had to work, Sanchez threw eight, Dickey threw seven, and Stroman threw eight, for a total of 23 innings by the starting pitchers. By contrast, the Royals’ starters went six, two and a third, and six, for a total of fourteen and a third innings. This means, obviously, that of the 24 innings Kansas City pitchers had to cover—because they lost all three games in regulation to the home team—their bullpen had to cover nine and two thirds innings, while the Jays’ relievers had to cover four innings. Also by comparison/contrast, Baltimore’s starters for the same three-game period threw 16 innings, while Boston’s starters were more competitive with the Jays, throwing 20 innings. Just to be fair to our guys, it should be noted that the trio of Boston starters bore the names Price, Porcello, and Wright, and if you subbed in any other Boston starter for one of these three, the total would start to decline, whereas you have a good chance of getting a similar performance out of any three of the five Jays’ starters. If this trend continues, as it has for most of the first half of the season, it can’t help but have a profound effect on the race for the divisional title down the stretch.
Now 48 and 39, the Jays host the Tigers at the TV Dome tomorrow night in a four-game series that will bring us to the All-Star break. Drew Hutchison gets the spot start in the first game in place of Marco Estrada. Some spot: the Tigers have Justin Verlander taking the hill against Hutchison.
[A brief note from yer humble scribe: if you are a regular reader, you will have noticed that my game reports have fallen behind “real time”. I apologize for this, but I have had to tend to the needs of my wife, who had major surgery at the end of June. I have adapted to the new conditions and am now able to carry on with up-to-the-day reports as her recovery progresses. That’s why the gods gave us the All-Star break, so we can catch up on our reporting! I will finish covering the Tigers series in Toronto during the break, and be ready to go for the beginning of the post-break series in Seattle, trust me.]
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