Okay, let’s just get all the cliches out of our system right at the start. Can’t win every game. It’s a long season. Sometimes you just run into a hot pitcher. We were due for a letdown. The Phillies had nothing to lose. They’re playing loosey-goosey, we’re in a hammer-and-tongs divisional fight.
All of the above apply to tonight’s desultory (for the Jays, anyway) 7-0 shutout by the Phillies. Let’s start with the letdown. If you could have wrung more tension out of a four-game series than the Jays and the Orioles did over the weekend, the area’s hospitals would have been swamped with cardiac cases. Saturday’s was the only game that didn’t go down to the last batter, last pitch, last instant. Thursday the bullpen couldn’t protect Marcus Stroman’s slim lead and the Orioles tied it in the seventh and won it in the ninth. Friday was the Encarnacion walkoff in ten innings. Saturday was the 11-6 “laugher”. Sunday Grilli had to strike out Schoop with the bases loaded in the ninth to preserve his own one-run lead.
Where’s a day off in the schedule when you need one? The Orioles got one. We didn’t. Unfair. That should be a rule. A mandatory day off after a series with Baltimore/Boston/Yankees/Royals/Texas . . . I know, where does it end? Not to stretch the point, which I already have, our guys were due for a letdown.
So yes, the Jays were flat tonight. After the first inning you could almost read it in the cards. R.A. Dickey stranded a two-out double by Andres Blanco in the top of the first. (I should warn you: the Phillies lineup is loaded with guys who should be called “Who Dat?” If it weren’t for Ryan Howard, they could all wear paper bags like the unknown student. It’s called rebuilding.) The escape by Dickey after the double was good. Kevin Pillar, hitting fifth (not good), struck out swinging in the bottom of the inning to strand two. Not so good. Little did we know that Michael Saunders reaching second in the first would be the height of excitement for us for the night.
The pitching matchup tonight looked good for the Jays, on first glance. Dickey has had really good outings for his last seven starts, with an ERA of 3.25 and averaging six-plus innings per start. The Phillies’ starter was young Jared Eickhoff, who came up with them last year and had 8 starts, with good numbers, 3-3 with a 2.65 ERA and also averaging over 6 innings a start. This year he’s apparently not had much support, going 3-7 before tonight but with an ERA of 3.68.
Pitching against a slightly depleted lineup, Eickhoff had a very good outing, going 6 innings, giving up no runs on 3 hits with 5 strikeouts. He walked four, but managed to scatter the walks and the hits so that he was never really in trouble after the first. The Jays’ lineup was depleted hitting-wise against him, which helped. Edwin Encarnacion was held out, nursing a minor hand injury suffered when he slid into third on Sunday. It was hard to have his bat stay in the rack all night, as hot as he’s been lately. Russell Martin has been heating up by the day as well, but with the Dickey start, of course Josh Thole was behind the late, and Martin on the bench. Thus we had the oddity of Pillar hitting in the five-hole, as I mentioned. He’s been really hot lately as well, but his hotness, when it’s hot, is of the shit-disturber type, not the clear-the-bases type. Putting him fifth in the order signals a bit of a short-handed night for the home team. They generally had a pretty quiet night, a credit to Eickhoff and the three relievers who followed, giving up nary a hit in the seventh through ninth innings.
Dickey certainly pitched well enough to win, yielding only five hits and a couple of walks, and making only a few mistakes. But of course Dickey’s mistakes tend to leave the park, namely Odubel Herrera in the third and Howard in the seventh. And when the knuckler walked Cody Asche (I warned you about the unknown players) after Howard’s homer, Manager John Gibbons came out with the hook. His sense seems to be that when Dickey’s stuff starts to go flat, it goes flat fast.
The relievers for the Jays did little to help their cause tonight, save for Drew Storen, who struck out the side in the eighth on ten pitches, a most encouraging sign. Biagini and Loup followed Dickey in the seventh, with not so great results. In his second shaky appearance in a row, Biagini let Dickey’s third run in, and allowed a double that would eventually score off Aaron Loup, who once again failed to get the left-handed hitter, Herrera, he had been sent in to face. In the ninth Guelph native Scott Diamond, whose contract was just purchased from Buffalo, made his Blue Jays’ debut, and it’s good we got that one out of the way when we were losing anyway, because it wasn’t a great debut for the lefty. In his inning he walked two and gave up two base hits, yielding three more runs to the Phillies while throwing 26 pitches. He walked off the mound with the dreaded 27.00 ERA for his only inning of work thus far in the majors this year.
It’s a day game tomorrow, 12:30 start, Marcus Stroman against 22-year-old Zach Eflin, who is making his major league debut. Could be a good chance for Stroman to work out the kinks. Could be a good chance for the Jays to feast on a raw rookie. Or, maybe not. The only thing that’s sure about major league baseball is that nothing is sure. Else, how do you explain Phillies 7, Blue Jays 0?
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