The Blue Jays needed a win today to come back from their short post-All-Star western road swing with a winning record, and they got one, big time and easy-peasy, dumping the Arizona Diamondbacks 10-4 in an afternoon game that was effectively over after the first two batters in the top of the first. Or, if you will, after the bottom of the first when Marcus Stroman extricated himself from a potentially bad start with minimal damage.
After the conclusion of the evening games in Boston and New York, the Jays found themselves in third place in the American League East, but only one game behind the new leaders, the Red Sox, and a half game behind the Orioles, who suddenly found themselves dumped out of first place after leading the division for most of the season.
Before I go on to parse the ways and means of today’s win, which was a delightful event with lots of impressive plays (for the visitors, at any rate), but not very dramatic, let’s look at where the Blue Jays are today, where they were last year at this time, and consider how we should be feeling about them in this hot and sunny season of July.
I have just posted a new piece in the “Articles and Ephemera” section that was inspired by a column in the Toronto Star this morning by veteran baseball writer Richard Griffin, a column that I would place in the category of pieces taking the approach that “if things are looking good, they must be really, really bad”. In my new post I take issue quite vigourously with the gloom and doom and conspiracy hunting that Griffin’s column, for whatever reasons, espouses.
For a more detailed consideration of the “state of the [Jays’] nation”, I would direct you to that post, but I offer an overview of my main points here.
First of all, our boys are 12 games over .500 after today’s game, rapidly closing on the two teams ahead of them in the division. They currently hold the second wild card playoff spot by a clear two and a half games over the Tigers. They trail Baltimore/Boston by one game for the first wild card spot. (Since Baltimore and Boston are at this moment tied for the division lead, one of them—pick a team, any team—is the division leader and the other by definition the first wild card team.) It wasn’t until the fifteenth of August that the 2015 Blue Jays were in anywhere near the position they are right now. On that date they were ten games over .500, a game and a half behind the Yankees, and three games in hand on the first wild card spot.
Now that last sounds pretty impressive, but last year there was a significant drop off in the won/loss record of the last wild card team. The Jays were fourth best at ten over .500. This year they’re fifth best at 12 over .500. And even Houston, the sixth-best team, is three games better than the Angels, who held the second wild card spot last year at only four games over .500.
The fact that the Blue Jays are in a much better position now in 2016 in comparison to even three weeks later in the season last year must be seen in the context of the status of the roster of each team at the point of the season under discussion. The Jays’ roster of mid-August last year had been substantially changed by the flurry of activity that took place before the trade deadline, a change that was clearly needed, given the malaise into which the team had fallen by mid-July. We know, of course, the results of those changes.
This year, however, as of the third week of July, the team is substantially unchanged from the one which opened the season on April third in Tampa. Devon Travis has been added, while Ryan Goins is down with an injury at the moment. Jason Grilli and Bo Schultz have been added to the bullpen to great effect. And of course Jose Bautista has missed a significant portion of the season with two stints on the DL. So, assuming that the front office doesn’t make any major additions before the deadline, the team should be stronger on the first of August than it is now, with Bautista back in the lineup, Goins available to fill in as he does so well, Travis continuing the upward arc at the plate that he has been following recently, and possibly the return of Chris Colabello, if he is able to shake the cobwebs out of his batting gloves.
So this team whose performance we have fretted and fussed about since opening day, this team that has been essentially the same for the entire 2016 season so far, is 12 games over .500, and right in the thick of the pennant race. Toronto fans: don’t worry, be happy!
And happy we were today to see Marcus Stroman, gifted with a two-run lead by Josh Donaldson as the second batter in the game, pitch over a first-inning Arizona run aided and abetted by a Junior Lake throwing error, settle down, not give up another run over seven more innings, and strike out six while walking none.
This marks the third time in his last four starts that Stroman has looked like the Stroman of old, if September 2015 qualifies as “old”. More importantly, it was a decisive turnaround after the one bad outing of the four, his start against Oakland on the fifteenth of July.
Much has been said of the child-like spirit of Marcus Stroman, and nothing brings it out more in him than starting in a National League park where he can actually take his turns at the plate. Today, for example, he was 0 for 3 with a sacrifice bunt, but made contact every time. The first time up he reached on an error by the second baseman, who couldn’t make the play on a tricky hopper, the second time he grounded out to shortstop, the third time he executed a perfect sac bunt to move Devon Travis, who eventually scored, over to third after he had led off with a double.
In the eighth, he came up with one out and Travis on first with a single. Asked to bunt again, this time he pushed it too hard toward the pitcher, Daniel Hudson, who threw the ball away trying to get the force at second. Stroman rounded first, then saw his opening and accelerated into second, hitting the bag with a perfect pop-up slide. He was immediately cashed, as well as Travis from third, when Darwin Barney hit a triple to dead centre. No doubt the run scored is as important to Stroman tonight as his excellent pitching line. In fact, though, his performance was so strong that only in the third inning did he even allow so much as a second baserunner.
Just as Stroman took care of business on the mound, so did the Jays’ hitters. It didn’t help the D’Backs that Patrick Corbin, a lefty whose most recent outings have been about as meh as his season record going in to the game, of 4-8, with an ERA of 5.25. And it didn’t help Corbin that the Chase Field surface for whatever reason was a tad quirky today.
Darwin Barney led the game off with a sharp grounder to second baseman Jean Segura. Segura only came into focus on my radar when the D-Backs were here last month, mainly because almost all of his major league experience has been recorded in the National League, with Milwaukee until moving to Arizona this year. But he’s a good ballplayer, quick and alert, who runs well and hits well for a second baseman, with a bit of power. And he’s a guy whose fielding has improved exponentially in terms of errors since leaving Milwaukee: last year he committed 19 errors in 622 chances, and this year so far he has committed four in 421 chances.
But on Barney’s leadoff grounder today, the field ate him up. He moved quickly a couple of steps to his right, but the last hop took the ball back into his body, on his glove side, and went through to centre field for a hit. It certainly should have been an out off the bat, but it was also certainly not an error. He didn’t have a chance on it. Perhaps shaken by such an unpropitious start to his outing, Corbin immediately made two mistakes. He wild-pitched Barney to second, and then grooved one to Josh Donaldson, who took him over the right field wall. Two batters, five pitches, and a two-zip deficit. As my two-year-old grandson said when asked to comment on the boiled potatoes served with dinner, “Not good!” Understandably not interested in challenging Edwin Encarnacion at that point, he walked him on a three-one pitch before settling down to fan Russell Martin and Troy Tulowitzki, then stranded Edwin at first when he got Kevin Pillar to fly out to right field.
When the D-Backs came back with one in the bottom of the first to narrow the gap, it looked like a ball game. Even after the Jays tacked on a third run in the top of the second on a sac fly by Barney that converted Devon Travis’ leadoff double, Travis having moved up on Stroman’s right-side grounder, it looked like a ball game, though when Stroman stranded a single by catcher Tuffy Gosewych in the bottom of the inning, it was starting to look like a ball game where the Jays were in charge.
By the way, Tuffy Gosewych has just been added to the starting lineup of the American League Best Ball-Player Names All-Star Team. With Gosewych behind the plate and co-captain Coco Crisp patrolling centre, it’s starting to look like the team’s going to be pretty strong up the middle.
It continued to look like a ball game into the top of the fifth, when Corbin ran into some bad luck at second, and ended up giving up two more runs on two-out base hits—what a treat—by Tulo and Pillar. With two outs and Donaldson on first via a walk, it looked like the Arizona lefty was out of the inning when he induced Russell Martin to ground into what should have been a forceout at second, started by shortstop Nick Ahmed. But wait, cue the replays. Second-base umpire Ramon de Jesus had made a really terrible call to punch out Donaldson at second. Even my pet bat could see that Josh’s slide beat the throw by a clear margin. (I really did have a pet bat once. Like the potatoes, it was “not good”.) This kept the inning alive for Tulo and Pillar to come through for the good guys, and Corbin finished the fifth down 5-1.
He came back out for the sixth, but unfortunately for him another two-out RBI hit brought his day to an end. After Stroman’s perfect sacrifice bunt had moved Travis, on second with a leadoff double, to third, the D-Backs starter looked fair to get out of it when he got Barney to ground out to second on a play on which Travis had no chance to score. But Josh, smelling an RBI, smacked a double to centre, that just missed going out, and poor Corbin was dead in the water. Randall Delgado came in and got Edwin to end the inning, and finish Corbin’s ledger with six runs allowed, but only 3 of them earned, in five and two thirds innings.
With better defensive support it was a fair matchup, Stroman against Corbin, but after six innings Stroman was rolling with the five-run lead, and it basically became a mopup action for the Jays after that.
It didn’t much matter that Daniel Hudson came on in the eighth and threw gas on his own fire by botching the force at second on Stroman’s second sac bunt attempt, and then grooved one that Barney crushed to centre for a triple scoring two, and that he grooved another one to Edwin (yes, again with two outs) for a a homer scoring two. Going to the bottom of the eighth, the Jays were up 10-1, and the Jays’ charter flight back to Toronto was revving up on the runway. Hudson had given up four additional runs to the Jays, but because of his own error, only one of them was earned. There should be a special stats category for unearned runs given away by a pitcher’s own defensive failure.
It was a bit of a surprise that Manager John Gibbons had let Stroman bat for himself in the eighth, but the reason for that became clear, because with the nine-run lead it was even more of a surprise that he sent Stroman out to pitch the eighth instead of giving him a rest. Stroman was up for it, allowing Segura to reach on an infield hit that glanced off his glove, giving Travis no chance to make the play at first. But he eventually threw a double-play ball to end the inning in fine style, finishing up at 99 pitches. Nobody’s quite clear on why Stroman isn’t in the same category with his buddy Sanchez in terms of accumulating innings pitched, but there it is. I suspect it has something to do with personalities. Sanchez seems more phlegmatic and willing to take things like it is, but I see the hyper Stroman as a little kid who probably gets very annoying when he’s whiny. Maybe Gibbie just can’t stand listening to him.
In the last analysis it almost didn’t much matter that Brett Cecil, brought in to get some work to finish up, struck out the left-handed Ryan Lamb to lead off the inning, and then gave up three straight hits, culminating in a home run to left by Tuffy Gosewych, which gave the Diamondbacks a bit of dignity, at least, in the end. I guess a 10-4 loss is marginally better than a 10-1 loss, eh?
Oh, I almost forgot to mention. Michael Saunders was called away from the team on what was described as a “personal matter” before the game. With Zeke Carrera still nursing a sore Achilles tendon and Junior Lake already covering for him in right, Darwin Barney was sent out to patrol left field for the first time in his professional career. Not to worry though, because it was Barney, right? Can’t he do everything? Even pitch, mostly well, anyway? Besides going two for four and knocking in three and keeping his average at .297, he made two difficult catches in the second inning out there, and played flawlessly the rest of the game. What a find this guy is, and why shouldn’t he play short on the Best Ball-Players’ Names team? The middle is looking better all the time!
The Jays return to Toronto for a day off tomorrow, while they savour having restored their dignity with three straight wins after the two difficult one-run losses in Oakland. Friday night it’s the Mariners, and we welcome Marco Estrada and his hopefully reinvigorated back on his return to the rotation.
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