Here’s an important message for Blue Jays’ General Manager Ross Atkins: Put down that phone, back away from your desk slowly, and no one gets hurt. And don’t talk to Manager John Gibbons about anything other than the weather, either.
I am getting tired of all the talk about the trade deadline and roster moves, which is taking away from the really important thing: what’s going on right in front of our eyes down on the field, such as Aaron Sanchez’ brilliant performance tonight in shutting out the San Diego Padres over seven innings. In fact, I’m so determined not to write about the controversy swirling around whether Sanchez gets moved to the bullpen that I actually considered starting off by writing about the Padres’ uniforms.
Now that I’ve mentioned it, I might as well get the uniform thing off my chest anyway. I was so relieved that the Padres showed up for their first game ever at the TV Dome wearing very nice blue tops with retro piping and a lovely monogrammed Old English SD on the left breast. After watching (some of; it’s not my cup of tea) the Home Run Derby last week, I was having nightmares of the Padres showing up here wearing the incredibly ugly brown and yellow tops that have been their trademark for years. I’m not sure why they even chose those colours. I can guess that the brown was for the monks’ robes of the original padres, and the yellow maybe for the blazing southern California sun, but to me they suggest other, more vulgar manifestations of things brown and yellow. Which, when you think about the fact that the high point in San Diego Padres’ history is winning one game against the Tigers in the 1984 World Series, is probably an appropriate interpretation of their traditional colour scheme. If I were a Padres fan, and had to suffer with that shitty team all these years, frankly, I’d be pissed too.
Okay, back to Ross Atkins, and the physical threat to him implied in my opening paragraph. I don’t think the Blue Jays should be talking about finding another starting pitcher when they’ve got the best young starter in the American League right under their noses. Tonight was the tenth time in Aaron Sanchez’ last eleven starts that he held the opposition to one or zero runs. I’m not even going to comment about that. Just take a moment and think about it. Bullpen? You’ve got to be kidding.
Tonight, behind Sanchez for the first time this season, the Blue Jays fielded intact and hitting pretty well on all cylinders the team that they were supposed to deploy from the beginning of the year. What other team in either league can lead off with a proven slugger like Jose Bautista, just because the manager has to pick one of his heavy hitters to lead off, because that’s pretty well all he has? What other team can hit a proven if streaky slugger like Justin Smoak eighth, and a blue-chip young star like Devon Travis ninth? Really, if it weren’t for the fact that Bautista and Russell Martin aren’t quite one hundred percent physically at the moment, it would only be fair for the Blue Jays to spot the other team a couple of runs at the start on nights when someone like Sanchez, or Jay Happ, or Marco Estrada, or Marcus Stroman at his best, is on the mound.
That is not to say, of course, that the Jays always jump out on top, even if they’re not facing a premier starter. Tonight, for example, with right-hander Colin Rea going for the Padres, they were basically looking at the guy who, along with Andrew Cashner, who pitches tomorrow night if he’s still a Padre, is about as good as San Diego has, now that Drew Pomerantz is off to Fenway. Despite an ERA over five, and the fact that he walked three batters, he held the Jays hitless through three, facing only two batters over the minimum thanks to an inning-ending double play in the third. He did get outs on three really hard-hit balls, however, so there was a sense that it was only a matter of time before hits would start to fall in, especially as the Jays started to go through the order the second time.
The first hit fell in in the fourth, when the Jays got to Rea for a run, and could have had more. After Edwin Encarnacion, who has gone a bit quiet lately, led off by grounding out to third, Michael Saunders hit a booming drive up the alley in right centre, and by the time the fielders tracked it down, he had a triple. Troy Tulowitzki immediately delivered him with the loudest sacrifice fly of the season to date. Tulo hit one right on the screws and sent it on a line right over the fielder’s head in centre. But Travis Jankowski raced back and to his right, made a desperate leap towards the wall, and snagged it, but with no chance of getting Saunders from third. Russell Martin ended the inning by driving the ball equally deeply to centre, but into a more routine catch by Jankowski. So after four the Jays had one run, one hit, three walks, and six balls hit about as hard as they could have been hit.
The slashing continued in the fifth, and yielded two more runs for Toronto. Kevin Pillar led off by roping one into the alley in right centre for a double. After Rea struck out Justin Smoak, and had Devon Travis on the ropes with a one-two count, Travis got out in front of one that shattered his bat lengthways down the barrell, a strange sight. Even stranger was to see that he had muscled the ball fair down the left field line until it one-hopped the fence, driving Pillar in from second and arriving there himself with the second double of the inning.
Maybe feeling a little spooked by the weird RBI, Rea walked Bautista on a three-two count, and went 2-0 on Josh Donaldson, forcing him to come in with a pitch. Donaldson was on it like karate-man and slashed it through the left side of the infield for the third Blue Jays’ run on the night.
Rea got through the sixth, stranding an infield single and stolen base by Pillar, so he qualified for a quality start, albeit a shaky one, giving up three runs on five hits with four walks and four strikeouts on 103 pitches. Not a bad outing at all for a guy like Rea, against a lineup like he was facing, but way short of what was needed, which was near perfection, against Sanchez tonight.
A second right-hander, Jose Dominguez, took over for Rea in the seventh, and got out of the inning without being scored on, despite giving up lead-off singles to Travis and Bautista. He was helped by New York overturning a safe call at first on Josh Donaldson, resulting in the ever-popular 3-5-1 double play. Rather comically, Dominguez had gotten tangled up with himself getting to the bag, and ended up taking the return throw from second as he flopped to the ground, his rear end somewhere in the vicinity of the bag. First-base umpire Dan Iassogna, blocked by Donaldson crossing the bag, initially thought the pitcher hadn’t made contact with the bag, but the replays clearly showed that he had, and the out call came from New York. Taking off his headset, Iassogna altered the traditional symbol by pointing to his own butt before raising his right hand. Travis then died at third as Encarnacion skied to left.
Matt Thornton came on for the Padres in the eighth and was victimized for the Jays’ final run by ringing doubles off the bats of Tulo and Pillar, the latter down the left field line, after he had just spiked one barely foul down the right field line, a graphic display of hitting from line to line. This last run caused a bit of a flurry in the Jays bullpen, because it took the save situation off. Roberto Osuna, who had been warming up, sat down and Bo Schultz quickly got up to take his place. In retrospect, though, it was a good thing that Osuna had already warmed up.
With the four runs, given good support by his bullpen, Sanchez could have chalked up four more wins, the way he was pitching. It did take him an inning to settle, as the Padres mounted their only threat, if you could call it that, in the first inning, when after two quick ground ball outs, he walked Matt Kemp and gave up an infield single to the right side to Yangervis Solarte. Sanchez snuffed out the inning by fanning Alex Dickinson, who as it turned out was the only hitter to solve Jays’ pitching the whole night.
From the strikeout of Dickinson in the first, the imposing young right-hander cruised through nine straight Padres, until Dickinson came up again in the fourth, and hit a little nubber toward second. Travis came in for it, Encarnacion ranged over for it, but Sanchez beat them both to it, corralling it skidding on his knees, only to discover that the only player near first was Dickerson, for infield hit number two for the Padres.
Sanchez ended the fourth by getting former Jays’ farmhand and current San Diego rookie Ryan Schimpf to pop out to Donaldson at third. He retired the side in order in the fifth, and made a little mess for himself in the sixth by walking leadoff hitter Travis Jankowski and wild-pitching him to second with only one out. A sharp play by Tulo and a dumb play by Jankowski erased the runner, though, for the second out. Matt Kemp hit a fairly hard grounder to the right of Tulowitzki, who fielded it easily, and looked up in surprise to see Jankowski moseying along toward third without a care in the world. Tulo fired to Donaldson, who chased the scrambling Jankowski back toward second, eventually diving to lay the tag on the runner’s lag. It looked like an instant (well, 24-years-later-instant) replay of the non-call of Kelly Gruber’s triple play tag on the foot of Deion Sanders. This time the ump got it right, and Jankowski was out.
The Padres’ lineup turned over to bring Dickerson back up to the plate leading off against Sanchez in the top of the second, and he finally made the first solid contact off the Jays’ starter, hitting a double into right-centre field. Sanchez quickly reverted to form and stranded Dickerson at second with his seventh strikeout, a grounder to
short, and a weak fly to left to end his night, at seven innings, no runs, three hits, two walks, seven strikeouts, and 103 pitches.
Jason Grilli came on in the eighth for Sanchez and did another good job setting up for Osuna. He struck out the catcher Derek Norris, hit Jankowski, who had an adventurous night, with a pitch, then erased him with a double play ball from San Diego All Star Wil Myers.
With the save off the table, for the moment, anyway, Schultz came on to finish up for the Jays, but the Padres quickly finished him, as he had his first really bad outing since being activated from the DL, and gave Osuna his save opportunity after all. Matt Kemp led off with a double, and moved to third as Solarte grounded out to first. This brought Dickerson back up. Dickerson, who was clearly indifferent to which big flamethrower he was facing, squared one up off Schultz and hit it about nine miles to right. I wish somebody would hit a ball into the 500 level when I’m sitting there!
That was it for Schultz, and Osuna came in and wrapped it up in seven pitches for his 21st save in 23 opportunities. By the way, Dickerson’s prodigious dinger broke a streak of 18 consecutive scoreless innings by the Blue Jays’ pitching staff. Oh, why did they let David Price go?
Tomorrow night Aaron Sanchez’ best bud Marcus Stroman goes against Andrew Cashner for the Padres, if, that is, Cashner is still a Padre. Funny days, these.
Leave a Reply