The collective groan you heard last week from the heart of Blue-Jay land was the response of the Yahoo Faction of the Toronto Fan Club as they reacted to the news that R.A. Dickey would receive a start in the Jays’ current series with the Angels in Los Angeles.
No doubt the groans intensified last night when, in the midst of all the delirium after the team’s effective opening-game win of the series behind the redoubtable Jay Hqpp
the realization set in that yes, indeed, the planned Dickey start was upon us. Oh, they cried, look, look (somehow I imagine the Yahoo Faction conversing very much in the manner of Dick, Jane, and Sally in the primary readers), now that naughty Dickey will spoil our playground games again!
But, you know what? R.A. Dickey is a seasoned pro, a veteran who came up the (really) hard way to make his mark in the majors. Since he has been in Toronto he has eaten an incredible number of innings without any of the naysayers acknowledging it, and has all the while served as a calming and steadying influence in the clubhouse and in the dugout. If there were a coaching position for Team Philosopher or Team Soother, the position would be tailor-made for Dickey. In short, people, he’s here, Noah Syndergaard is in New York. He has a role to play, he knows how to play it, and for the most part plays it very well.
So with Dickey taking the hill tonight, you had to expect a few of his butterflies to escape, you had to hope he didn’t have a flat inning and give up a couple of runs at some point, but you should have also expected that he would grit it out, regardless. You also had to hope that his mates would take their inspiration from him, and let him set the tone for their effort. You also had to expect that at times it would be exciting as hell.
Like the first inning, when he wriggled out of a bases-loaded jam by getting Andrelton Simmons to pop out to Edwin Encarnacion in foul territory. Kole Calhoun had flown out to centre to lead off, but Mike Trout singled to left. Albert Pujols doubled to left, breaking the hex Dickey has held over him for most of his career. Trout stopped at third on the double. C.J. Cron struck out. Jefry Marte fouled off the first knuckler from Dickey, then looked at four in a row outside the strike zone, loading the bases behind Trout and Pujols. That set up the confrontation with Simmons which Dickey won to keep the Angels off the scoreboard. Little could anyone imagine that they never would score, off Dickey or his successors.
One thing about R.A. Dickey is that if you don’t get to him early, sometimes you don’t get to him at all. The other thing about him is that he’s not bothered too much by base-runners. Sometimes it seems as though he feels that, like imminent death, they “sharpen the mind”.
In the second inning, Nick Buss led off with a single to left, and then stole second. So Dickey struck out Carlos Perez. He struck out Kaleb Cowart. He got Kole Calhoun to end the inning by flying out to left. In the third inning, after striking out Mike Trout (Yes!) he gave up a single to Albert Pujols, then got C.J. Cron on a popup to short, and Jefry Marte on a fly ball to right. His fourth inning was a showcase of soft contact, and he decided to dispense with the silly base-runners. Andrelton Simmons hit a soft little liner to Devon Travis at second, Buss bounced one back to him, and Perez popped out to Edwin Encarnation at first. Nine pitches. Ho hum.
In the fifth Cowart grounded out to Edwin at first, Cowart hit a short fly to Melvin Upton in left, Trout hit a soft little single to left, but Pujols went down swinging. Nine pitches. Ho hum.
So Dickey goes out for the sixth at 64 pitches, no runs, five hits, one walk, and five strikeouts. And gives up a soft single to left by Cron and a harder hit single to Marty. And out came Gibbie with the hook. Normally, I’d be incensed at this, and in fact I was. But by the same token, it all worked out, so who could argue in retrospect?
I guess the operative factor would have been that as good as Dickey had been, he was protecting just a 2-0 lead, on the strength of Troy Tulowitzki’s two-run homer in the fourth, that had plated Jose Bautista, on with a walk leading off. And at this point he was facing not the tying run, but the lead run at the plate, in the person of Simmons, who had disturbed Jay Happ’s pleasant run the night before with a three-run dinger.
So in came Joe Biagini, the big rally-killer disguised as a sheepish rookie with a quirky sense of humour. Except when he’s in a jam. The first and maybe smartest thing Biagini did, after getting a swinging strike on Simmons, was to throw four straight in the dirt to put him on, and yes, thank god, Russell Martin blocked them all! That brought up Nick Buss. He fanned Buss on three pitches for the first out.
Then came the pivotal at bat of the game. Angels Manager Mike Scioscia sent Yunel Escobar up to hit for the catcher Perez. Yes, that Yunel Escobar. The guy that made so many lazy, soft-contact outs with runners in scoring position and tore the cover off the ball when the bases were empty when he was with the Blue Jays. Also the guy who got in gobs of trouble here for writing a rude expression in Spanish on his cheeks with the charcoal they use for glare. The guy whose back end we were glad to see when he went to the Marlins in the trade for Jose Reyes and Mark Buehrle et al.
In typical free-swinging Escobar style, he swung and missed for strike one, fouled one off for strike two, took one out of the zone (surprise!), and then bounced a one-hopper to Biagini, who cooly threw home to get the force on Cron, leaving the bases loaded, but now with two outs. Kaleb Cowart then flied out to Kevin Pillar on an 0-1 pitch for the third out, and Biagini had effected the amazing escape of the month, if not the season.
The last time the Blue Jays faced Jared Weaver they had been befuddled by his mixture of soft and softer. Think Dickey or Marco Estrada, only a lot bigger and with a lot more hair. They didn’t fare much better against him this time. After Devon Travis led off the game with a bloop single to centre, he zoned in and caught Donaldson looking, fanned Edwin, and retired Bautista on a popup to second. Here we go again, thought yer humble scribe. Three ground balls on nine pitches in the second reinforced the sense of impending doom, and the fact that he extricated himself from a two-on, two-out situation in the third with the help of some feckless hitting/running by the Jays made it even worse.
Darwin Barney led off with a solid single to centre. Then Josh Thole, in to catch Dickey as always, dribbled one up the first-base line, and the first baseman Cron let it roll, expecting it to go foul. By the time he realized it was going to stay fair, the semi-speedy Thole had passed him, and it was too late to pick it up and tag him out. With Travis at the plate, runners on first and second and nobody out, it finally dawned on Manager John Gibbons that it might be a good time to bunt. Good luck with that, and maybe we see why the Toronto manager eschews the bunt. As Barney broke a bit early for third, Travis bunted through the ball and catcher Carlos Perez had Barney dead to rights with a good throw at second. There was a scary moment when Barney’s head, helmet flying off, made solid contact with Simmon’s knee while trying to dive back into the bag. He received a thorough examination on the bench and in the clubhouse, and was deemed all right to continue, luckily.
After Weaver caught Travis looking for the second out, he walked Donaldson, setting up the force when Edwin hit a grounder to the shortstop to end the inning.
Just when it looked like Toronto’s futility was carved in stone, they made a breakthrough in the fourth inning, thanks to Troy Tulowitzki. With Bautista on first courtesy of a leadoff walk, Tulo turned on a 1-2 changeup and hit it out for a sudden two-nothing lead. Weaver quickly restored order by retiring the side, but the damage was done though it was hard to credit that Tulo’s shot would be all the Jays needed.
Dr. Biagini having performed his successful extraction, mound duties for the last three innings were parcelled out as usual to BenGriNa. Though they were a bit ragged around the edges this time, possibly because they’d seen a lot of work in the last few games, they managed to maneuver through the Angels and keep them off the board.
Kole Calhoun led off the seventh with a single to right, and Mike Trout followed with a hard smash to deep right on which Jose Bautista was able to get back and make a nice jumping catch against the wall. Once the cracks of the bat rendered him fully awake, Benoit settled to it and struck out both Pujols and Cron to finish his seventh.
Jason Grilli came in wild in the eighth, almost worked his way out of it, but then issued a second walk, causing Gibbie to call in Roberto Osuna for the relatively rare 4-out save. Grilli walked the first man he faced, Jefry Marte, on a 3-2 pitch, then immediately wild-pitched him to second, removing the double-play possibility. The dangerous Simmons grounded out to short, forcing Marte to stay at second (unlike certain other ballplayers who like to try to advance to third on a grounder to short . . .). With Nick Buss at the plate, Grilli got a called strike on a four-seamer (his four-seamers clock at about mid-92 range), a foul on a slider, threw off with a four-seamer, then came back with a third four-seamer that Buss watched go by for strike three and two outs. Almost out of the woods, though, the crumb trail stopped for Grilli. He walked Rafael Ortega, hitting for the rookie catcher Juan Gaterol, and out came Gibbie from the dugout like a shot, and Osuna was in the game. And in the dugout four pitches later, having induced a fly ball to left off the bat of Kaleb Cowhart on a 1-2 pitch.
After Tulo’s homer, Toronto had a few base-runners against Weaver and relievers Cody Ege and J.C. Ramirez, but never really mounted a threat. Weaver gave up two base hits in the fifth, but Edwin grounded into a double play. In the sixth, he got a couple of harmless fly ball outs to strand runners at first and second, an infield hit by Bautista and a walk to Kevin Pillar. That was it for Weaver, who once again pitched well for Los Angeles against the Blue Jays, giving up two runs, seven hits, three walks, and four strikeouts on 101 pitches over six innings.
Ege retired the first two batters he faced in the seventh, and then yielded to Ramirez, who walked Donaldson before getting Edwin to ground out to second. Ramirez, who throws hard but sometimes isn’t sure where the plate is, walked two more in the eighth, but retired the Jays on two ground outs and a left-side popup in foul territory.
This brings us to the ninth inning, and Scioscia’s choice to keep the Angels close until their last bats was right-hander Andrew Bailey. For once, it was Toronto’s turn to do a little piling on and make a ninth-inning comeback unlikely. Russell Martin, who had fanned in the seventh, hitting for Josh Thole in the number nine spot, led off with a booming drive to the wall in right centre for a double. He advanced to third on a single to centre by Travis, and scored on a deep sacrifice fly to centre by Donaldson that also allowed Travis to advance to second. It didn’t really matter where Travis was when Edwin belted his fortieth home run of the season, which landed somewhere in the rocky foothills north of Anaheim. What’s that you say? That’s a water feature? In the ball park? Edwin’s homer was enough of Bailey for the Angels’ manager, and Deolis Guerra came in to finish up. He walked Bautista, but Tulo grounded into a double play. Nonetheless, the Jays had added three runs, even though it turned out that they weren’t needed.
Osuna, who had secured save 33 out of 36 by coming in to protect a two-run lead, in the eighth, finished up, providing a tense moment by walking Calhoun to lead off, so that both Trout and Pujols would come to the plate with a runner on. But Osuna was equal to the task. Trout flew out to centre, Pujols grounded out to short, and the closer blew away C.J. Cron to finish off in fine fashion.
So this is what a complete-game shutout looks like, in 2016. We can call it a complete game because it was, well, complete, but there aren’t too many opportunities for a starter, in the American League at least, to pitch a complete game, so the new normal is shutout by committee. And, unlike most committees, this one convened, did its work, and disbanded, a job well done.
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