A note from yer humble scribe: Last night’s game was beautiful indeed, but long. My story on last night’s game is also long. I hope it does justice to the game. Just in case your interest lies one way or the other, I have taken the initiative of dividing it into two parts. If you are primarily interested in what the game was like, read the first part. If you are primarily interested in how it all happened, read the second part. For the best appreciation of a wonderful game, however, take the time to read the whole piece.
The 2016 American League Wild Card Game: What it Was Like:
From about 11:30 p.m. last night henceforward for the rest of my life if anyone asks me why I love the game of baseball as I do, my answer will always and only be, “October fourth, 2016.”
That, my friends, was a baseball game. That, my friends, was the most beautiful baseball game I have ever seen. That, my friends, may have been the most beautiful baseball game ever played.
Strong words, indeed. Strong words coloured by my passion for the Toronto Blue Jays? Maybe so. What if, say, Chris Davis, or Mark Trumbo, had hit the decisive three-run homer in the eleventh inning, and not Edwin Encarnacion? Would I still feel as I do about where last night’s game stands in the pantheon of all-time great baseball games? I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter, because I will never have to make that call, because it was Edwin hitting it out, and we did win the game.
There were so many brilliant plays, so many tense moments, so much sterling pitching, such courageous clutch hitting to write about in Toronto’s five to two wild-card victory over a very tough and deserving team from Baltimore, that I thought I’d start, not with details, but with images.
There was Tulo diving flat out to flag down a sure base hit. And the marvellous trueness of his hurried throw to first.
There was the baseball dropping into the softly leathery well of Kevin Pillar’s outstretched glove, his body airborne behind it.
There was the exultant fist clench of Josh Donaldson at second in the bottom of the ninth, as he thought that, surely, his leadoff double would lead to a swift and happy end.
There was the almost-frenzied exultation from Steve Grilli as he left the mound after his perfect inning.
There were the Baltimore batters who faced Francisco Liriano in the tenth and eleventh, eating out of his hand like so many docile pigeons, futilely beating the ball into the ground.
There was the intense, but so young and so vulnerable, concentration on the face of Marcus Stroman, as he stepped into the hero’s role he so wanted to play.
And there was the shock of disbelief, of how can this happen, that crossed his face when Mark Trumbo’s two-run homer left the yard and put Baltimore into the lead.
There was the joyful acknowledgement of his god having guided his bat as Ezequiel Carrera rounded first, after driving in Michael Saunders with the tying run of the game on an honest and clean base hit to centre field.
There was the abject dejection on the face of Ubaldo Jimenez, so dominant over the Blue Jays just last week, as he watched Edwin’s tater leave the yard.
There was the intricate choreography of Jose Bautista’s return to the dugout after his first-pitch homer in the second, each dance vignette a personal moment between the hitter and his pumped-up mate.
There was the fatherly concern on the beautiful face of Edwin Encarnacion as he called to the dugout to come out and tend to a suddenly injured Roberto Osuna.
There was, of course there was, the restrained exultation of Edwin, the moment he realized that the ball really was going out. No bat flip for Edwin, but an image that surely will endure just as long: one step out of the box, he stops, he turns to pick up the flight of the ball, and he raises both hands high in the air, bat still clutched around the handle by his right hand. At the peak of his salute, the bat falls harmlessly away, no longer needed.
Above all, there was this: Zeke Carrera and his silly parrot-on-a-bracelet. Nothing can ever so clearly illustrate the essence of the baseball player as joyful man playing a boy’s game, as the happy animation of Zeke Carrera, dancing on the field, waving his parrot around, making sure that his talisman didn’t miss a moment.
Truth be told, I don’t think that parrot missed a thing, including the soaking and splashing of bubbly champagne and stinky beer. The parrot came out to the plate for the welcoming celebration, and I never saw Carrera afterward without it waving around on his arm. I sincerely hope that he is getting a thorough and reverent cleaning as we speak, so that he’s presentable for the plane ride to Texas.
Consider this about Zeke Carrera and his parrot. Zeke is a professional baseball player, and an important cog in the Blue Jays’ machine. The recent contributions he has made to the Jays’ razor-thin securing of a wild-card slot rightly earned him a start in tonight’s wild card game. He has gone long when it was needed, laid down the bunt when it was needed, flown to the plate like Superman when needed, made all the plays in the field with grace and aplomb when needed.
This player, this Ezequiel Carrera, is a lunch-bucket guy. He is not a star, by any means. In fact, his spot on the active roster was in question when Melvin Upton arrived from the Padres. But he has contributed, and more than contributed, this entire season, to an extent well beyond his stature as measured either by reputation or salary.
And tonight we saw the quinessential Carrera. Driving in the tying run. Trying to get things going with his second hit of the game. Patrolling left with assurance and style. A true pro, giving what he could to his team’s marvellous effort. But the quintessential Carrera is also a happy child, playing in the biggest sand box of his life, and loving every minute. He is a fan as much as he is a player, his support and adoration for his big brother shining on his face as he celebrates the undeniable triumph of Edwin Encarnacion.
Oh, did I say that there was a baseball game tonight, a sudden-death wild card game, and the Blue Jays won in the eleventh inning on a three-run walkoff blast by Edwin Encarnacion, and that defying all pessimistic projections they are now off on a wing and a prayer and a whoosh of momentum to face down the fearsome Texas Rangers in their Arlington lair?
Well, there’s that, too.
The 2016 American League Wild Card Game: How it Went Down:
Like every sports decision made in this town, the choice of a starting pitcher was fraught beyond all proportion of its significance. In reality, in a single sudden-death game, the choice of a starter isn’t quite so important as you’d think. The wild card roster is a one-off. The manager can place whatever 25 players on it that might have the most immediate impact on this game. If you win, you reset your roster for the ALDS. So if your starter wavers and your manager isn’t a complete dozer, the starter will be gone at the first whiff of trouble. And you’ve got somebody lined up who can go long and take over as if they were starting. You should even have him warmed up as the game starts.
Frankly, I favoured Liriano over Stroman as the starter. I thought the reasons were self-evident and compelling. First, there’s the veteran cool of Liriano, as opposed to the high emotional investment that goes into every Stroman performance. I realize their playoff experience was equal going in, but still, the veteran . . . Then there were the relative merits of their two starts against the O’s last week. Stroman pitched very well, with some bad luck, but Liriano was dominant, and, crucially, dominant against the left-handed power of the Orioles. There was also the small matter of one more day’s rest for Liriano.
As it worked out, the decision was pretty well the right one, but for the very reasons I cited. There’s no way of knowing if Liriano would have pitched as well as Stroman over six innings, but chances are . . . On the other hand, that very veteran cool of Liriano played astonishingly well out of the bullpen late in the game, in a role that Stroman has never really faced with the Jays. So good on John for seeing that Liriano long out of the bullpen was the way to go. Imagine if the game had gone on to Canada Day versus Cleveland proportions, and Liriano were on the hill!
I was more than a little surprised that Orioles’ manager Buck Showalter went with Chris Tillman instead of Ubaldo Jimenez, and for much the same rationale. Recall that my piece on Thursday’s shutout of the Jays by Baltimore was entitled, “If you can’t hit Ubaldo Jimenez . . .” Jimenez had tied the Jays up in knots and left them muttering to themselves. I would have started Jimenez for the psychological advantage alone. Let the Jays’ hitters spend twenty-four hours obsessing over why they didn’t hit him last week, and what hex he had over them. And like Topsy, the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead, when Jimenez is bad he is really bad, and really quickly, so have Tillman hot and the hook ready and take your chances! Added to the mix was the fact that Tillman’s never been a happy camper pitching in Toronto, and the park’s confines have always constituted a major threat to him. Taking it all together, to me it suggests that Buck Showalter’s genius is highly over-rated.
For Toronto fans who cut their milk teeth on back-to-back jacks and other such wonderful offensive phenomena, this business of winning with good pitching, tight defense, just a touch of timely hitting, and a deep and powerful bullpen is a new and wonderful thing. In fact, the last factor, the wipeout bullpen, is so new that we never knew we had it until last night!
From the time Adam Jones stroked Marcus Stroman’s first pitch weakly into short centre field, for three innings the dynamic young right-hander was the best he has ever been. The Jones fly ball, a Hyun Soo Kim groundout, and a Mannie Machado popup took twelve pitches. A Mark Trumbo grounder to short, a lazy Matt Wieters fly to left, and Stroman’s first strikeout, of the strangely hapless and immensely frustrated Chris Davis, took fourteen pitches. A Jonathan Schoop groundout to short, a Michael Bourn caught looking, and a Jay Hardy punchout took nine pitches. Stroman was perfect after three with three strikeouts on only 35 pitches.
Meanwhile, Chris Tillman had equally good results, though with less dominance and control, no more so than on a 3-1 pitch to Jose Bautista leading off the second, which somehow found its way into the 200s in left field, putting the Jays on the board first. One swing from Bautista, and memories of game five against Texas circled the stadium as he circled the bases. Tillman also needed support from right fielder Michael Bourn, who moved over to the line smartly to snag a treacherous opposite-field drive by Troy Tulowitzki. To be fair to Tillman, though, Bautista was the only extra batter he faced in the first three innings, and his count, 41, was nearly as good as Stroman’s.
In the fourth inning Stroman’s nice little perfect game he had going somehow slipped out of cruise control, and the Jays suddenly found themselves on the short end of the 2-1 stick of a Baltimore lead, courtesy of the one real mistake pitch Stroman threw in his entire six innings. First, the free-swinging Adam Jones decided wisely to actually look at what Stroman was throwing before swinging with intent. On a 1-2 pitch he reached across the plate and laid a little line single into right field between Edwin and Travis. Hyun Soo Kim worked Stroman into a full count, and then bounced one to Edwin at first, who took the out himself, Jones moving up.
In what appeared at the time to be the pivotal play of the inning, Mannie Machado, who was so far 0 for 1 with a popup tonight, and who’d done no damage to the Jays in Toronto dating back through last week’s series, hit a looping liner into right centre that seemed destined to drop and score the speedy Jones with the tying run. As Jose Bautista circled over to cut it off and hold Machado to a single, a second fielder, the Superman, Kevin Pillar, raced into the picture, cut in front of Bautista, dove and skidded on his elbows while the ball gently cradled into his glove for the second out. Pillar leapt to his feet and fired the ball in to third to hold Jones at second.
If Stroman could get by Mark Trumbo, the lead would be preserved. But on the first pitch to the major-league home run leader, Trumbo reached down for a low inside fast ball, and golfed it down the line and over the bullpen fence in the left field corner, in an eerie simulacrum of Joe Carter’s series-ending homer in 1993, which landed in about the same spot. In three and two thirds innings, Stroman had given up two hits, but they came together, and one of them was a tater, giving Baltimore a 2-1 lead. Matt Wieters fanned to end the inning, but leaving the hitting-challenged Blue Jays in the hole again.
Unlike Stroman, Tillman’s fourth saw only a base on balls to Jose Bautista, and we went to the fifth inning facing the fact that if we didn’t get this game back to even before the seventh, the back end of the Baltimore bullpen would make a rally difficult in the extreme.
Stroman quickly got the first out in the top of the fifth, fanning poor Chris Davis for the second time, and then the defense came to his rescue again. Jonathan Schoop scalded a one-hopper into the hole between short and third. Reacting instinctively, Tulo laid out in a dive and cleanly backhanded the ball. That was the easy part. He then had to bounce up and throw to first with his weight still going toward third. Astonishingly, the strong throw nipped Schoop by a fraction. Tulo’s play took on greater significance when Michael Bourn followed with a single and stolen base, but Jay Hardy fanned, also for the second time, to strand Bourn at second.
There was something Shakespearean about Chris Tillman’s exit from the game in the Jays’ fifth. Something along the lines of “out too early, but yet too late” comes to mind. Tillman retired Tulo, who led off the inning after making a great play in the field, as the tradition goes, on a short fly to left. Tulo was the last out Tillman recorded. Michael Saunders crossed up everybody, well everybody wearing orange on black, by hitting a fly ball down the left field line, out of the reach of any fielder by miles, and it hopped once into the stands for a double. Kevin Pillar then followed with a much harder liner down the right field line (must have been opposites day) that Bourn got a glove on, but couldn’t catch. Saunders, holding up for a possible catch, was late breaking from second, and coach Luis Rivera wisely held him there while Pillar cruised into second with a double.
With one out, and two effective contacts in a row, in a game like this, you would have thought that Showalter would be ready with a big left-handed strikeout guy, which is what he needed with first open and one out, and what he didn’t really have with Tillman. But he stayed with his starter. Zeke Carrera rose to the occasion yet again and singled to centre to score Saunders, tie the game, and move Pillar to third, where he was also wisely held by Rivera.
Now Showalter came out to get Tillman and bring in Mychal Givens. I admit that I was so caught up in the immediate that I forgot what game we were playing, and was surprised to see Tillman being yanked in a tie game with a pitch count of 74 and the double play in order. But of course he shouldn’t have faced Carrera, and the inability to fan Zeke, who does strike out a lot, in a sense proves that he was past his due date. Mychal Givens, though, was definitely not past his due date, and escaped the inning by throwing one pitch, which Devon Travis obligingly grounded to Mannie Machado at third, who turned it into a rally-killing double play.
Stroman had an easy sixth, retiring the Orioles on three ground balls with only nine pitches, despite giving up an infield hit to Mannie Machado, when his grounder to second behind the bag with Edwin playing so far off the bag in an extreme shift that in effect nobody was able to cover first, though Stroman tried to make it over on time. This sort of anomalous play, so alien to baseball tradition, is going to take some getting used to. In reality it was only a fourth ground ball in the inning, and with two outs came to nothing.
After Givens raced through the heart of the Jays’ order on 13 pitches, striking out both Donaldson and Bautista, we came to the top of the seventh and the new reality of managing in a one-game playoff. After 81 pitches, two runs and four hits, and being in full command save for the Jones/Trumbo outburst in the fourth, Stroman was finished for the night. Perhaps Gibbie had been reading up on the high incidence of first-batter hits on pitchers sent out for “just one more” inning, but he wasn’t going to take a chance on it. Chris Davis, the Knight of the Balky Bat, was due up second, and there was no way Gibbie was going to roll the dice with Stroman against Davis after he’d punched him out twice: Brett Cecil would take Davis, and sensibly Gibbie decided to bring him in to start the inning.
Now, trigger warnings are big deals these days on university campuses and even out in the general public. It seems if someone is going to present something to a group that might be conceivably even remotely traumatic for someone in the group, they have to post a warning, such as, if one were teaching Huckleberry Finn one might be expected to warn victims of child abuse that Huck’s Pap is a pretty mean old sot, and they might want to skip those pages.
For Blue Jays’ fans, bringing Brett Cecil into a close game this year might be the occasion for a sports trigger warning. It could cause us to flash back, for example, all the way to April fifth in Tampa, when Aaron Sanchez pitched a superb seven innings, giving up one run on five hits, walking none and striking out eight. At 91 pitches over seven, Gibbie obviously felt it was time to let the bullpen finish up and protect the 2-1 Jays lead. With the left-handed Kevin Kiermaier up first, the call was to Brett Cecil, who hit Kiermaier with a 1-2 pitch, retired Brandon Guyer on a fly ball, and then gave up the game-winning two-run homer to Logan Forsythe, who was tormenting us even then. Thus was Sanchez’ first superb effort of the year spoiled. Especially in the first half of the year, this scenario was played out far too often, and with far too many relievers beyond just Cecil, who unfortunately became the lightning rod for all the yahoos wanting to weed out the entire bullpen.
Ever since, over the whole year, we Toronto fans have gut-clenched every time a starter has come out of a close game after a good outing, and when it’s been Brett Cecil coming in, fairly or not, it’s been cause for a double clench.
Recently, though, Cecil has done a good job for the Jays, especially in the full inning stint. But tonight, ironically, after retiring the switch-hitter Matt Wieters on a slow roller on which the hard-charging Donaldson made a fine barehanded play, he walked Davis. That brought the manager out, and Joe Biagini in to replace Cecil. Now, sadly for Cecil at the time, Biagini wasn’t the known, trusted quantity in April that he is now. But now, well, how many times this season has he come in and simply stopped whatever was going on, usually with a big strikeout, sometimes with a big play. Tonight it was not one, but two strikeouts, as he disposed of Schoop looking and Bourn swinging on eight pitches.
Little did we know at the end of the seventh that it would be the first of five innings pitched by the Jays’ bullpen, innings that would be scoreless, hitless, and without base-runners, after the one-out walk of Davis in the seventh. Had you asked, say, the June Blue Jay fan if such a stretch was possible, the response would be yeah, that’s a stretch all right—no way!
Here’s the roll of honour: Biagini, the two thirds in the seventh, 8 pitches, two strikeouts. Jason Grilli in the eighth, retired in order, one strikeout, 12 pitches. Roberto Osuna in the ninth, retired in order, two strikeouts, 14 pitches, Osuna in the tenth, one third, five pitches. Here’s the most concerning note of the night: Osuna pulled up sore-armed after the one out in the tenth. Edwin came over to check him, and then called for the trainer. He was pulled, as it turns out, for as they say precautionary reasons, and the later word was that it was nothing serious.
Francisco Liriano, who had been ready for matchup duty for some time, was called in to replace Osuna, and the symmetry of the Jays’ starting assignment was complete. With nobody on base, facing the right-handed Jonathan Schoop and the left-handed Michael Bourn, he said later that he just pretended he was the starting pitcher, and started with two easy ground ball outs on six pitches to end the inning.
Liriano continued his easy domination of the Orioles in the eleventh, inning, inducing his third and fourth consecutive ground balls from Jay Hardy and Adam Jones. His final batter was scheduled to be the dangerous Hyun Soo Kim, but Showalter opted to pinch hit the right-handed Nolan Reimold against the left-handed Liriano. Liriano cared not a whit for the change, and blew Reimold away on three pitches. Little could we imagine then that Reimold’s punchout was the Orioles’ last gasp, and that it ensured that Francisco Liriano would be awarded the win in the 2016 American League Wild Card Game.
The theory was that if this game were close and it got into the bullpens, then the Blue Jays would be toast, or at the very least at a significant disadvantage. Not only did the Orioles have Zach Britton, he of the perfect save record this year, perhaps one of the top three Cy Young candidates in the league this year, but they also had Brad Brach, who made the All-Star team this year as a setup man, Darren O’Day, the intimidating sidearmer, and the left-handed Brian Duensing, their recent pickup from Minnesota, whom the Jays couldn’t solve last week in Toronto.
Well, it will be a matter of discussion for years, but Buck Showalter never used Zach Britton in the game. He didn’t use him in the ninth when the Jays threatened. He didn’t use him in the eleventh, when, having brought in Ubaldo Jimenez to pitch to Devon Travis after Duensing fanned Zeke Carrera, Travis singled to left. He didn’t bring him in when Josh Donaldson singled Travis to third with no one out. He still sat in the bullpen, looking on, as Edwin’s blast sailed into the stands, bringing the game to an end. Let the Hot Stove chatter begin!
Mind you, save for a serious scare in the bottom of the ninth, the relievers Showalter did use did a fine job, right up until the arrival of Jiminez with one in the eleventh. Givens, who is certainly up for bigger things in the future, followed his one-pitch rescue of Tillman in the fifth with a clean sixth and two outs in the seventh before yielding to the left-handed Donnie Hart, brought in to take Michael Saunders out of the game in favour of Melvin Upton. Givens didn’t allow a base-runner in two full innings, struck out three, and threw only 19 pitches.
Hart induced a fly ball to fairly deep left off the bat of Upton, the only batter he faced. This was the play on which an idiot fan in the left field stands made us all look bad by heaving a beer can on the field near Kim as he was settling under the fly ball. At the time of writing, the police are distributing a picture of the miscreant, but he hasn’t been pulled out from the rock he’s hiding under yet. I would have expected neighbouring fans to have assisted stadium staff in identifying the guy on the spot. I would also expect the team to reconsider the sale of beer in cans at the park. We can only hope.
Brad Brach came in for the eighth for the Orioles. With one out, Zeke Carrera had another great at bat that resulted in a ground ball single to right. This brought Devon Travis to the plate. Travis took a shot at bunting for a base hit, not a bad idea with the speedy Carrera on first, but fouled it off. He fouled off another with a full swing, and then . . . grounded into his second consecutive double play.
When Brach came out for the ninth, he survived the best chance Toronto had of putting the game away in regulation. Josh Donaldson led off and worked Brach to 3 and 1 and then pulled a low inside fast ball inside the bag at third and down into the left field corner for a double. As the intense Donaldson reached second, it was clear that he felt that he had set the wheels for a ninth-inning win into motion. Showalter elected to walk Edwin to pitch to Bautista with the double play in order.
Once again, visions of the demons of the recent past arose before us, as Bautista took a 1-2 slider for strike three. Thus was removed the option of scoring the run while making two outs. To score on a sacrifice fly or a deep grounder, Donaldson would have to manufacture a way to get to third. Or Russell Martin would have to get a base hit off side-armer Darren O’Day, who took over from Brach after the strikeout. However, on the first pitch to him, Martin grounded into the Jays’ third double play of the game, and it was off to extra innings.
Having thrown only one pitch to rescue the O’s in the ninth, O’Day returned to the mound for the tenth, and breezed through the Jays in order, retiring Tulo on a foul popup, fanning Justin Smoak hitting for Upton, and getting Pillar to fly out to the centre fielder Jones in right centre.
With Liriano efficiently holding the Orioles down in the eleventh, the Jays returned to the plate hoping to find a way to finish Baltimore off for Liriano. Reimold stayed in the game in left after hitting for Kim, and Showalter brought in Brian Duensing to pitch to Carrera, who must have felt honoured to be the target of a matchup. Not so honoured, though, when Duensing fanned him for the first out. With the only left-handed hitter in the lineup gone, Showalter brought in Ubaldo Jiminez to pitch to the top of the order. Similarly to Francisco Liriano, Jiminez had been assigned to the bullpen after Tillman was chosen for the start. And, like Liriano, he had spent some time in the bullpen this year, but decidedly not because of a traffic jam in the starting rotation. Regardless of matchup considerations, this is the point where it becomes puzzling why Showalter didn’t bring in Britton. Even if he was only used at this point to hold the game at twos, if the Orioles didn’t hold the game at twos their season would be over.
But Jiminez he wanted, Jiminez he got, and he may get awfully tired of explaining why over the course of the off-season. Jiminez, who may or may not have been fully loose when he came in, threw exactly five pitches, but that was enough to send Toronto to Arlington to play the Rangers, and Baltimore home to contemplate their navels over a long and cold winter. Devon Travis took a ball and a strike, and then hit a line drive to left for his first hit of the game. Jiminez’ first pitch to Josh Donaldson was a waist-high fast ball and Donaldson didn’t waste any time hitting it into left field for another base hit. As Travis was rounding second, he could see Nolan Reimold, who had just come into the game, bobble the ball in left, and he boldly broke for third. Reimold’s throw was off line, and Travis was on third with nobody out.
With Edwin Encarnacion at the plate, almost any ball put in play would have a chance of scoring Travis from third and ending the game. Jiminez had but one pitch left to throw. He tried to go inside above the knees with a 91 mph fast ball, but it never got there. Edwin just wanted to make sure that the run scored from third, so he put a good swing on it, and we all know how that turned out.
On reviewing the interminable repeated replays of Edwin’s great moment, it becomes clear that there are two compelling images in view. Edwin completes his swing, starts to take a step toward first, then stops and raises his arms in the air, his bat still held in his right hand, until he lets it drop. The other side of the story is told in the view we have of veteran Orioles catcher Matt Wieters, who, at the very moment Edwin raises his arms, turns to his right, away from the diamond, and starts to walk away.
One exults. The other only wishes to escape. It is always so. But never more so than in Toronto, at 11:33 p.m. on October 4, 2016, in the eleventh inning, when Edwin Encarnacion hit the home run that propelled the Toronto Blue Jays from the 2016 American League Wild Card Game into the American League Division Series against the Texas Rangers.
As we enjoy this wonderful triumph, and look forward to an exciting series with the Rangers, give a thought to the Baltimore Orioles and their loyal fans. They could be going to Texas, and we could be drowning our sorrows in stale beer. There but for the grace of the baseball gods go I.
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