The informal definition of a “laugher” is “a contest or competition in which one person or team easily overwhelms another; easy victory”.
If there was any chance of tonight’s game being a laugher after the Mariners batted in the bottom of the third, you would have thought it would be for Seattle. How little we knew.
If there was ever a pitching matchup where something had to give, it was this one. Seattle’s starter was Hisashi Iwakuma, who has quietly been compiling a very fine season for the Mariners, going into tonight’s game with a 16-ll record and an ERA of 3.87. More to the point, the only time he had faced the Jays this year, on July 23rd in Toronto, he had emerged victorious, having gone six innings, given up two runs on four hits with three walks and three strikeouts on 98 pitches. Moreover, if there has been a type of starter that has mesmerized the suffering Blue Jays’ hitters this season more than the strike-throwing power pitcher, it has been the corner-nibbling, breaking-ball-throwing soft tosser, the type we used to call a “junker”. Jared Weaver, are you out there?
Actually, if the Jays have had a trouble with flame-throwers and more trouble with soft-tossers, that kind of covers the gamut, doesn’t it? The only type left is the knuckleballer, the only one in the league is Steven Wright of the Red Sox, and as I recall our heroes didn’t hit him all that well either. In fact, though he only won one and lost two against the Jays, he only gave up three earned runs on 15 hits in 17.2 innings, so the losses can’t be pinned on him. So that pretty much covers it: the Jays have struggled against all kinds of pitchers.
If the Mariners had to feel good about Iwakuma against the Jays, the Jays had to feel good about Happ against the Mariners. In his only prior appearance against them, in Toronto in July, he pitched six innings of one-hit shutout ball to take the win. Moreover, after a little dry spell of a loss and two no decisions, including his shortest outing of the year, in which he threw 85 pitches over only two and two thirds innings in Tampa on September fourth, he had won his last two starts, giving up only three earned runs in twelve innings, and tonight stood on the brink of his landmark twentieth win of the season. Finally, unlike any other member of the rotation, Happ has generally been blessed with strong run support by the fickle Toronto batsmen.
The game started as the pitchers’ duel that the matchup might have predicted. In his first two innings, Happ gave up only an infield hit to Franklin Guttierez in the first on a smash to Josh Donaldson that the Toronto third sacker made a great play on, but had no chance to throw out the hitter. Iwakuma kept the Jays off the board for the first three innings, with a little help from the pitcher’s friends, the double-play ball and the raging wind coming in from centre field. After two easy outs in the top of the first, Edwin Encarnacion absolutely smashed one to centre. Everyone, including Edwin, thought it was out, but the wind or the hand of some Seattle-friendly benevolent being pushed it back in and into the glove of Leonys Martin at the fence.
One of the funniest sights of the season was Edwin’s reaction when he realized the ball hadn’t gone out. He had started out, obviously, in his home-run trot, admiring the ball as he headed for first. Then when he saw it stay in he stopped in his tracks with a “Wait, what?” incredulous look on his face, like “what just happened here, what world have I entered?” Equally funny was his sheepish laugh as team-mates and opponents alike gave him the gears for his reaction.
In the second inning Iwakuma walked Russell Martin after striking out Jose Bautista but immediately got Troy Tulowitzki to ground into a double play. In the third he relied on his own wits to strand two one-out opposite-field singles by Kevin Pillar and Zeke Cabrera when he struck out Devon Travis and Josh Donaldson.
But the bottom of the third was when it started going very wrong again for Toronto. And, though I hate to dwell on it, the fielding adventures of Devon Travis were front and centre in this strange and disturbing inning.
Catcher Chris Iannetta started the inning by lining out to left fielder Zeke Carrera. Shortstop Shawn O’Malley then stirred things up by dropping down a bunt and beating it out for a single despite a fine effort by Happ to make the play. Then Guillermo Heredia hit a ball between Travis and Encarnacion that was a pretty tough chance for a double play. Travis dove and skidded to make the play, jumped to his feet, thought of second, turned toward second, and let the ball slip out of his hand . . . once again. The out at first was a sure thing, and would have been the second out. In a typical “homer” scoring decision, Heredia was given a hit.
Then with two fast base-runners, the usually staid Mariners pulled off a double steal while Happ was fanning Gutierrez, for what should have been the third out. But now we had Robinson Cano at the plate with ducks on the pond. Cano hit a hard grounder—oh no—to Travis’ left, a more difficult ball than Heredia’s. He got to it with a slide, and got his glove down, only to have it ricochet—hard—off his knee, and shoot down into the right-field corner. By the time the dust had settled, Cano was on third with a triple (can’t argue with the scorer on this one) and two runs were in. If Travis had just managed to keep the ball in front of or even close to him, he might have thrown Cano out, or at worst he would have had an infield single and one RBI, and not a triple and two RBIs. No doubt a bit rattled, but probably very wisely, Happ walked Nelson Cruz with the runner on third, and then fanned Kyle Seager, who has had a terrible series at the plate so far, for the third out.
The final assessment of the Mariners’ third inning evokes the anomaly that there were no errors charged, but it was plainly in sight for all to see that the Mariners had a two-run lead because Devon Travis failed to make two plays, difficult plays to be sure, but plays that a pennant-winning team has to make. Ominously, Happ, who had only thrown 26 pitches in the first two innings, took 30 more to extricate himself from the mess he didn’t create.
But then the Blue Jays batted in the fourth and all was gloriously, joyfully, forgotten in the delirium of the biggest inning of the year.
But before I get to all the heroics, I need to address a glaring omission in my last post, about Marco Estrada’s fine performance last night. Now in this day and age of wondrous publishing capability, I could just use the magical capabilities of Word Press to go back and add an appropriate paragraph to that post to cover my fault, but that’s just not me.
Would all the amazing Toronto fans who made a sea of blue in Seattle’s home park please accept my deepest mea culpa for not mentioning the hordes of Canadian fans who travelled down from Vancouver and, really, all parts of Canada, to flood every section of the stadium with their team gear, signs, parrots, raincoats, Superman capes, and all the other paraphernalia that make up a typical Toronto home crowd? Even the guy in the full-body parrot costume was there, thankful for the cool Pacific air, no doubt. The views of the Toronto fans swarming the gates and filling the aisles on the way to their seats were astonishing, as was the noise level, and the total audibility of all of the typical Jays’ chants and cheers.
Though the TV broadcasters constantly stressed how packed the place was with Jays’ fans, they missed one of the biggest stories of the series. While they were talking on, as the do, the camera panned over the stadium, showing the progress of a very solid “wave” of blue-shirted fans going around the stadium, and starting over, and not stopping, all the while the cameras followed it. Now, I’ve never been a fan of the wave—I find it kind of sophomorish, and not at all in keeping with the dignity of the game—but this was stunning. Who could ever imagine there being enough fans to sustain a wave at a road game in an away ball park?
Finally, most unforgiveable on my part was failing to mention the amazing standing ovation received by Marco Estrada last night as he left the mound after his excellent outing. Even Estrada himself was shocked by the strength of the crowd’s support for the Toronto team. These games have become such a fun thing that I predict that the Jays’ series in Seattle next year will be sold out, and pretty quickly, too.
I mention this phenomenon now in order to expiate my fault for omitting it last night, but also because this is the right place to mention it. If a crowd can ever be said to be the “tenth man” in the team’s batting order, this crowd was absolutely a contributor to the crazy outpouring of runs by the Jays in the fourth inning. The sound in the park rose to crescendo after crescendo as successive Blue Jay hitters contributed to the all-in assault on the Mariners’ pitchers. Our boys had to be inspired by the support they received in Seattle, and at no time more so than in tonight’s fourth inning.
The inning started innocuously enough when Edwin struck out on a foul tip caught by the catcher, Chris Iannetta. Then it looked like another desultory effort as Iannetta went back to the screen for a foul pop up off the bat of Jose Bautista. Until Iannetta realized he had overrun the ball, tried to back pedal to it, and then had the ball fall to the ground for an error, giving Bautista a new lease on life at the plate. Which he used to hit a soft flare to right for a base hit on the ninth pitch of a full count. This brought Russell Martin to the plate bringing imminent danger for the M’s pitcher.
Iwakuma made the mistake of going 2-0 on Martin, and then trying to get a not-great slider over the plate. Martin rifled it into the stands in left, and the game was tied. The pitcher quickly got two strikes on Tulo, but Tulo lined a single into left on the third pitch. Iwakuma fell behind again on Michael Saunders and got burned again, this time to right field, and the Jays had a two-run lead. That was four hits in a row.
Kevin Pillar came up smelling blood, and quickly fell behind 0-2 on a foul and a swing and miss, before he measured one and doubled inside the bag to left. Zeke Carrera worked the count to 2-2 and five pitches, then hit another little flare to right on the sixth pitch, Pillar got a good read that it was a hit, and it was 5-2. Manager Scott Servais had seen enough, and called for Nick Vincent from the bullpen to stop the bleeding.
There followed one of the craziest and most audacious plays you will ever see. On a 1-2 pitch from Vincent, Travis lofted a popup down the line to short right field. Carrera, running from first, instinctively gambled that the ball would fall in for a hit, and took off hell bent for leather and third base. The ball dropped, tantalizingly, right on the foul line, between the frantically charging Robinson Cano coming from second, and right fielder Franklin Gutierrez. Carrera never broke stride, even as he rounded third, and began to track the play in right field as he raced for the plate. The throw was good, and received by the catcher in front of the plate before Zeke arrived. Watching all the way, the daredevil launched himself in foul territory, out of the reach of the catcher, swiped his hand across the plate before being tagged, and ended in a somersault with his feet up in the air. There was no video review. Only a run, but what a run! By the way, that was the seventh consecutive batter to reach base with a hit in the inning.
Vincent walked Donaldson; this brought Edwin Encarnacion to the plate, looking for a chance to shed the embarrassment of having started this inning by striking out (remember that?) Edwin reached out and stroked an outside pitch into the alley in right centre, scoring Travis and Donaldson, for the eighth consecutive hit from nine batters, and Edwin’s pride was restored. Scott Servais went to the bullpen again for Cody Martin, and he had the key to ending the mess (if you’re a Seattle fan, that is),
getting Bautista to fly out to centre, and Martin to line out hard to right.
Jay Happ’s unfortunate 2-0 deficit was now an 8-2 lead, and it was up to him to shut down the Mariners. I guess he did. Recall that the Mariner’s lucky third inning had ended with the strikeout of Kyle Seager. Now the big left-hander came back out after nearly 40 minutes of mostly pleasant delay and proceeded to strike out the side, with a variety of means. Dae-Ho Lee went down swinging, Leonys Martin on a foul tip controlled by Russell Martin, and Chris Iannetta was caught looking.
Happ picked up one more strikeout to lead off the top of the fifth, as Martin corralled a two-strike foul tip by Shawn O’Malley for Happ’s fifth consecutive punchout. But the pitch total, extended in the Mariners’ third, was mounting, and Happ was losing his mastery. He gave up a single to Heredia, retired Gutierrez on a pop to the shortstop, and yielded another single to Cano. Happ finished off holding his breath, along with the rest of us, as Nelson Cruz scalded a 2-2 four-seam fastball to left, but lined it right at Zeke Carrera for the third out, and the end of Happ’s day, after five innings, two runs, earned supposedly, six hits, one walk, eight strikeouts, and 99 pitches. It would be up to the Toronto bullpen to bring home Happ’s historic twentieth win.
This was a serious assignment, and with such a lead calling for the use of anyone but BenGriNa, Aaron Loup, Ryan Tepera, Brett Cecil and Scott Feldman were basically perfect, pitching one inning apiece. Loup gave up a double to Lee in the sixth, Tepera hit Heredia with a pitch in the seventh, and Heredia stole second, the only advance to second by the Mariners after Happ’s exit, Feldman walked pinch-hitter Daniel Vogelbach in the ninth, and that was it for the Mariners.
As for the Blue Jays, Josh Donaldson made a distinct statement that he was coming out of his slump by hitting a homer to left off Cody Martin, the only run Martin gave up in three and two thirds innings of relief of Iwakuma, leading off the sixth. It was Donaldson’s thirty-sixth of the year. Then, in the eighth, Edwin put his own stamp on the game by hitting number forty-two off David Rollins, to complete the scoring at 10-2.
What more could you ask, as a Jays’ fan, than winning the first two of the three-game series in Seattle, and winning it in such an emphatic fashion, combining eight innings of shutout pitching and a riotously exuberant big inning to shut down the Mariners, who are losing their momentum in their chase for a wild card slot.
Tomorrow afternoon the Jays go for the sweep and a five-two road trip behind Aaron Sanchez, saved specifically for this start, and the Mariners hope that King Felix Hernandez will be able to save them from the Blue Jay brooms. Should be a doozy!
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