Weather recording stations across Canada recorded a wind surge at about 1:10 p.m. today. Veteran meteorologists were unable to come up with a scientific explanation for the huge gust of wind that swept across the entire country at that moment.
Obviously, the meteorologists aren’t baseball fans, because the explanation is readily at hand. At approximately that time, at the TV Dome in downtown T.O., Boston leadoff hitter Dustin Pedroia swatted an 0-1 pitch into the turf in front of home plate. It bounced directly into the glove of Jays’ starter Jay Happ, and Happ calmly threw Pedroia out at first.
At that precise moment, every sentient baseball fan north of the border let out a huge sigh of relief: Dustin Pedroia was indeed human, the Boston dismantling of another Toronto starter was not a foregone conclusion, and it was not out of the question that the Jays just might be able to even the series with Boston at a win apiece. And the “after-shock” surge of slightly lesser force reported by meteorologists at about 1:12 p.m. was simply another reaction from the Blue Jays’ hordes of fans, this time to the slap of Xander Bogaert’s hard-hit line drive into the glove of Troy Tulowitzki.
The difference between last night’s contest between Boston and Toronto and this afternoon’s was, well, the difference between night and day. The pitching held Boston in check, the Jays’ defenders gut-checked themselves into bracing up and acquitting themselves properly, and Melvin Upton dispatched his personal gremlins of Friday night with a two-run home run in the second that gave the Blue Jays a lead that on this changeable early fall day was never relinquished.
Besides the fact that Toronto’s pitchers actually held the fearsome Sox lineup to only four hits and two runs, thanks to a stellar start by Jay Happ and near-perfect relief work by the Bengrina (Benoit/Grilli/Osuna, if you haven’t read much of my work before) combine, the story of this game had to be the redemptive work of Upton, who had been singled out by the home crowd as the chief culprit in last night’s defensive collapse. Though, to be fair to the fans here, it was his dropped fly ball that seemed to be the harbinger of doom for the Jays, at a point at which the outcome of the game was still very much an open question.
Subsequent to his miscue, every play involving Upton elicited seldom-heard boos from the gathered multitude, whether in the field or at the plate. Derisive applause rained down on him when he caught subsequent flies hit to him. This was a strong reaction from a usually generous and forgiving crowd, and I’m not sure why it happened, though I have the sense that Upon has taken a good bit of abuse from the haters on social media since his arrival in Toronto. I have my own ideas about why Melvin Upton has not been particularly accepted by Blue Jays’ fans, but it’s a very sensitive topic, and I would reserve it for possible treatment in a side article, but I need to consider first whether it’s a topic I can raise.
In the second inning, when Boston starter Eduardo Rodriguez, after walking Russell Martin and retiring Troy Tulowitzki on a fly ball to left, served up a juicy one to Upton who promptly parked it in the left field seats, the Toronto fans being what they are (forgiving? or hypocritical?) were delirious with joy. The Jays jumped out into a two-nothing lead over the hated Sox, and last night was forgotten. It will be interesting to see how long the good will for Upton will last.
The pitching matchup today was a good news/bad news story for both sides. Jay Happ has been a rock the entire year. With Marco Estrada struggling a bit lately, R.A. Dickey fallen back into an on-again, off-again routine, and Marcus Stroman gradually recovering from his earlier struggles, Happ and Aaron Sanchez are clearly numbers one and two in the rotation, in whichever order you choose. You didn’t think it was a coincidence did you, that the assignments for the second and third games of this Boston series just happened to fall into the laps of Happ and Sanchez? Yet Happ has been labouring lately, trudging valiantly along from inning to inning, his starts a little shorter, his control fraying at the edges. We only need mention that today was his fourth attempt to go beyond the 17-win mark. He was ahead of Rick Porcello in wins all season, but Porcello reached 20 last night, and Happ was still looking for 18 today.
Eduardo Rodriguez had his worst outing of the season earlier against the Blue Jays, giving up four homers, the only four hits he allowed, in his only start against Toronto. He’s also recently spent time on the disabled list. However, looming large in the minds of the Toronto hitters, surely, were two facts. First, Rodriquez is a lefty, and for whatever reason, with all their right-handed firepower, the Jays haven’t fared well against lefties in the last while. Also, Rodriguez just happened to carry a no-hitter into the eighth inning in his last start at Oakland, finishing up with one hit allowed and eight innings of shutout ball.
As it turned out, the matchup was a good news story for both teams; both Happ and Rodriguez pitched well enough to win. In fact, their pitching lines were almost a perfect match for one another, which is surprising, because as you were watching the game you had the sense that Happ was much more effective. But see for yourselves: Happ went 6 innings plus 2 batters, gave up 2 runs, 4 hits, and a walk, and had 5 strikeouts on 95 pitches. Rodriguez went 6 innings, gave up 2 earned runs, 4 hits, 2 walks, and struck out 5 on 100 pitches. Both pitchers gave up a home run, Happ to Dustin Pedroia in the sixth inning , and Rodriguez to Melvin Upton in the second. The difference in the game came down to the fact that the additional walk issued by Rodriguez preceded Upton’s home run, and that Toronto’s winning run scored in the third inning was unearned, resulting from a rather tough error given to third baseman Aaron Hill on a bullet of a ground ball off the bat of Edwin Encarnacion.
This was in fact Jay Happ’s most effective start in some time. The Pedroia homer in the sixth was only the second hit he gave up. In four and a third innings the only base-runners he allowed were Mookie Betts with a walk and Chris Young with a hit-by-pitch in the second inning. Young broke up the string and the developing no-hitter with a one-out single in the fifth, but he ended up stranded at first base. In fact, in a rather strange play, Young chose to stay at first when Edwin Encarnacion made a nice stab of a grounder by Jackie Bradley just in front of the bag at first. Young wasn’t particularly quick off the bag, and as Encarnacion set up to throw to second for the force, he broke back to the bag. This upset Edwin’s concentration, he didn’t make the throw, reached to tag Young and missed, and then stepped on the bag to retire Bradley for the second out. Non-plussed, Happ struck out catcher Ryan Hannigan for the third out.
This base-running thing by Young seems to me to be an injection of a bit of anarchy into a game that is played in a certain way. There’s no rule that says that a runner has to proceed to the second base on a ground ball, unless the batter/runner reaches first safely. If two runners ended up “safe” on the same base, the bag belongs to the lead runner. But in this case as Young broke back to first there was no question that Edwin would get an out. Somewhere. If Bradley ran like a plow horse, there could be some rationale for the runner on first to maneuver to keep the bag, rather than being forced at second and yielding first to the batter. Yet it is called a “force play”, and obviously the batter has to be able to take first base. Do we need a “Chris Young rule” to go with the “Chase Headley” rule (aggressive slide into second base), and the “Buster Posey” rule (base-runner plowing the catcher)?
By the way, I’d like to add to the curious lexicon that may be used exclusively in Canadian amateur, i. e. kids’, baseball. I’d earlier noted the use of “back catcher” to identify the catcher, and “decker” to refer to the catcher’s mitt. When I referred above to Happ hitting Young (that guy again) with a pitch, I thought of the term “pinged off” to refer to being hit by a pitch. And just now I used the verb “plow” to denote a runner/catcher collision initiated by the runner when the catcher is blocking the plate.
Back to the game. After Pedroia’s home run in the sixth, Happ retired the side, and with a 3-1 lead and only 86 pitches under his belt, he looked pretty good to go at least seven innings. But leadoff singles by Ramirez and Hill brought Manager John Gibbons out with his famous hook, and Happ was finished for the day. Joaquin Benoit came on and took a good shot at keeping the runner on third, but with nobody out it’s pretty tough. He got Chris Young on a short foul fly to Jose Bautista in right, on which the Sox chose not to test Bautista’s arm. But then Jackie Bradley squared up a pitch and drove Bautista back to the wall and up against it for the catch, allowing Ramirez to score easily on the sacrifice fly.
If the pitching lines of the two starters were near mirror-images, so had been their first innings of work. Happ retired the Sox on 9 pitches, oh happy day, and Rodriguez retired the Jays on twelve, after Devon Travis reached on a soft looper into right. The Upton homer in the second and the run the Jays scratched out in the third allowed Happ to pitch on the lead for the rest of his outing.
The add-on run in the third started with a good play by Travis, as his hustle turned a leadoff hit to left centre into a double. Then it featured a really bad play by Travis who TOOBLANed himself right off the bases when Josh Donaldson hit a grounder to short. For absolutely no reason, Travis took off for third. Xander Bogaerts threw to Aaron Hill at third, the throw was a bit off, and Travis was first called safe, then out, on review. Edwin Encarnacion followed with a smash on the ground to third that ticked off Aaron Hill’s glove and ricocheted into short left centre field. Donaldson ended up on third, with Encarnacion safe at first on a very harsh error decision. Jose Bautista followed by fighting off a not-great pitch and looping it into centre for a run-scoring single. But that was all the Jays got, as Rodriguez reached back and fanned Russell Martin and Troy Tulowitzki.
Incidentally, Sportsnet’s Hazel Mae filed an in-game report on how Travis had spent some time working on ground balls with infield coach Luis Rivera before the game. Hmmm. I would say “about time”, except that if Mae’s report was accurate, apparently Travis took about 25 or 30 ground balls under Rivera’s tutelage. When some players will take 100 balls in a session to work on something, that 25 to 30 sounds more like normal infield practice. Oh well, baby steps.
Though the Sox made it close with the run in the seventh, they were only able to muster a base-runner in each of the eighth and ninth, David Ortiz in the eighth on a rare muff by Tulo of his grounder off Jason Grilli, and Ramirez in the ninth on a leadoff walk from Roberto Osuna, after which Osuna closed it out for the tense save.
The Jays’ and Donaldson’s, frustration over the failure to cash in an insurance run in the seventh helped to make it tense in the ninth. After Matt Barnes fanned Justin Smoak leading off, Pillar singled to left and Travis to centre on the hit and run, Pillar reaching third. But Donaldson hit one right on the button, right at Bogaerts at short, and Edwin hit one right on the button, right at Mookie Betts in right field, to end the inning.
So, great pitching and a well-timed blast from Melvin Upton led to a series-tying win, and the future looks a bit brighter, with Aaron Sanchez shrewdly placed to try to pitch Toronto to a series win on Sunday, and a tie for the division lead.
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