Whether they were lucky enough to hold tickets for today’s long-ago-sold-out game or not, Blue Jays’ fans were abuzz with anticipation.
The home team was going for its third straight series win, and had the brooms out for the hitherto high-flying Red Sox. We were also going for our fifth straight win, and eighth of our last ten. The excitement of the close first two games against Boston only promised further great things to come.
While the Jays’ management continued to celebrate the club’s fortieth anniversary season by bringing in a group of the leading offensive start of the past for a special ceremony on a hot, bright day, the current team and its supporters also looked back, to the heady days of last year’s pennant run, and the rekindling of that excitement after a long and slow spring. And David Price would finally make his first start here for Boston against his former short-term-lease teammates.
With all the warm fuzzies of seeing old favourites like Robbie Alomar, Carlos DelGado, Tony Fernandez and the like duly appreciated, it was time to turn to the subject at hand as R.A. Dickey took to the mound for the Jays against this fearsome Boston lineup.
And for the first five innings of the game, it was Dickey, and not Price, who held centre stage. Price nibbled and fussed, giving up 3 walks, two in the first, and two hits through four. Not very interested, it seemed, in challenging the Jays’ hitters, he was away with everything, and if it was too away, well, that seemed fine as well—let’s just pitch to the next guy. By the way has he slowed his pace appreciably on the mound this year, or did we just not notice last year?
Meanwhile, relishing the hot day and the warm sun in the open air, Dickey toyed with the Sox through the first five. He walked three, true, but none of them hurt, and the last, to Jackie Bradley in the fifth, was quickly erased on an easy six-unassisted to three double play handled by Darwin Barney. More importantly, he did not give up a hit, and Boston had trouble squaring up, only hitting three balls on the nose, but that’s what your fielders are there for, right, R.A.?
In the Jays’ fifth, Price finally paid the price for one of his mistakes. Ezequiel Carrera, playing in left on a rest day for Michael Saunders, led off with his second of three hits against Price. Who knew the lefty-hitting outfield sub, whose value is growing by the game, had an improbable cousin in the left-handed Price? With the left-handed Thole facing Price in a scoreless game, it was such an obvious bunt situation that even Manager John Gibbons got the memo. Thole couldn’t get it down, though, and ended up striking out. This brought Jose Bautista to the plate, and the last thing Price wanted to do was miss inside to Bautista, who has seldom failed to punish a Price mistake in the past, and this time was no different. The ball leapt off the slugger’s bat with that sweet no-doubt sound, with enough on it to keep it straight, until it bounced off the fall pole at the 200 level. 2-0 Jays against Price, who finished the inning without further damage, stranding a walk to Josh Donaldson following Bautista’s blast.
Now there isn’t a veteran starter out there who doesn’t know how important it is to lock down the other team right after you’ve taken the lead in a close game. Dickey looked good for it as he started the top of the sixth by fanning Blake Swihart to turn the lineup over. But then it went south very quickly for him, as often happens with the knuckler once the worm starts to turn. Mookie Betts ended the no-hit bid, splitting Pillar and Bautista with a drive that bounced all the way to the wall, Betts ending up with a triple. Dustin Pedroia, hitting safely for his fourteenth consecutive game against Toronto, promptly delivered Betts with a single to left, halving the Jays’ lead. A single to left by Xander Bogaerts, a walk to Travis Shaw, and a hit batter to Hanley Ramirez, and the game was tied, bases still loaded, and Dickey done for the day. Gibbie brought in the rookie lefty Chad Girodo to face the left-handed-hitting Jackie Bradley. But Girodo failed his one-hitter test, walking Bradley to give the Sox the lead. Gibbie then turned to Jesse Chavez, who smartly got out of the one-out sacks-drunk jam by fanning Josh Rutledge and getting Christian Vazquez on an easy fly to right.
The Sox rally in the sixth gave Price new energy, of course, and he set the Jays down in order in the bottom of the sixth, though with two outs Kevin Pillar put a scare on him, and sent a chill down our spines, by putting a serious jolt into a tasty 1 and 0 two-seamer which drove Mookie Betts back to the wall in right. Chavez worked through the seventh for the Jays without allowing a run, as Blake Swihart, on with a leadoff single, eventually made the third out in a rundown between home and third after aggressively rounding the bag when Bogaerts hit one that Smoak managed to keep in the infield.
Price wasn’t much longer for the game than Dickey. Carrera led off the seventh with an infield hit, his third, and then Thole managed to get a very good sacrifice bunt down this time. It’s an open question whether shock over Carrera’s third hit off him, or shock that the Jays actually executed a sac bunt, was what drove Price from the mound, but really 105 pitches in six and a third is all the explanation you need. The mellifluously named Heath Hembree came in to snuff out the threat and strand Carrera at second.
Joe Biagini, who is well on his way to being number two in the bullpen, came on for the Jays in the eighth, Chavez having done a good job of holding the Jays close. Biagini breezed, with two left-side grounders, followed by his fanning Bradley to end the inning. After his good work in the seventh, Hembree showed he had missed the class on not pitching Edwin Encarnacion inside, and Edwin pounded his second pitch over the left-field wall to tie the game. The Jays missed their best chance to win the game after the Encarnacion shot, as Smoak and Barney singled with one out, and Smoak was replaced by Jimmy Paredes running at second. After Hembree got Pillar on a fly ball to centre for the second out, Sox manager Farrell pulled the plug on Hembree and went to the lefty Robbie Ross Jr. (another Jr.!), who got Russell Martin, hitting for Carrera, on a grounder to third to end the inning. For the second day in a row, Gibbie pinch-hit for the hot bat, this time playing the percentages when Carrera had already gotten three hits off the premier lefty Price, and for the second day in a row it didn’t pan out.
Both Biagini and Ross pitched through the ninth, and both wavered, but didn’t crack, each leaving two runners on. In the tenth, Gibbie took a chance on burning his closer, in hope of a walk-off home tenth, and Osuna held them in the game, though not without some tension, yielding a base hit and a walk, and letting both runners move up on a wild pitch, before enticing Josh Rutledge to loft an easy fly to Pillar in centre to end the inning. Clay Buchholz came on for the Sox, in his first appearance out of the pen for them, and looked good in his new role, retiring the Jays with little fuss on 19 pitches, despite giving up a one-out single to the pesky Darwin Barney.
With limited options left in the bullpen, Manager Gibbon’s chose Gavin Floyd, who had thrown in the ninth on Saturday, picking up the win after giving up the go-ahead homer to David Ortiz, then benefitting from the Jays’ walk-off rally. He could have gone to Drew Storen, but then he wouldn’t know which Drew Storen would arrive from the bullpen. On the horns of a dilemma, he ended up being gored by both of them. Floyd, who later admitted to the press that he was gassed, got the first out when reserve catcher Ryan Hanigan snubbed one in front of the plate, and was thrown out at first on a good play by Russell Martin, now behind the plate for Thole. But that was the only out Floyd would get. He walked Blake Swihart. He walked Mookie Betts, the fourth ball being a wild pitch that moved Swihart to third. That was it for Floyd, and Gibbie jumped nimbly onto the other horn, calling Storen in to try to put out the fire against the ever-dangerous Pedroia.
Didn’t work. Pedroia slammed the 1-2 pitch to right centre, and it fortuitously hopped over the fence, scoring Swihart but stopping Betts at third. Storen then got Bogaerts and Shaw to end the inning. Unfortunately, Bogaerts was retired on a grounder to short, scoring Betts, and the Sox had a two-run lead.
No doubt exhausted after the late-inning heroics of the last two games, like Floyd, the Jays’ hitters had nothing left in the tank, and went quietly in order on only twelve pitches from stand-in closer Koji Uehara. So it didn’t matter to John Farrell that he had burned Craig Kimbrel the day before. Too bad for that.
Your reporter felt a curious lack of despair after today’s game. For almost the first time this season, the Jays are in a place where you can look for the bright side, and there actually is one. They have won three series in a row. They have gone seven for their last ten. Seven out of ten for the whole season is 113 wins, and nobody is ever going to get 113 wins in a season. Their last two series wins were against important division rivals, and they took two out of three this weekend from the team that still has the best record in the American League, and by far the most intimidating offence in the entire league.
On a personal level, R.A. Dickey pitched well. David Price is not awesome. Jesse Chavez and especially Joe Biagini pitched very well out of the pen. And as a most appropriate final note, today being Mothers’ Day in the Dominican Republic, the Jays’ Dominican players broke out the pink accessories again in honour of their mothers, and our two most prominent Dominicans, Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion, produced all three Blue Jay runs today on a home run each. Feliz Dia de la Madre, ladies!
Tomorrow the Yankees come to town. Does this schedule feel like a spinning wheel for hamsters to you too? Are there any teams out there that aren’t division rivals?
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