Will no one rid us of this troublesome second baseman?
I’d better be careful what I write. According to the story, some of King Henry II’s knights overheard him asking roughly the same thing about Thomas à Becket, and we all know what happened to the saintly Becket!
So it’s not that I want Logan Forsythe assassinated in front of the altar. A nice, annoying little hamstring issue will do nicely; but whatever it takes, please, keep him out of the game today!
If the Orange Juiced Dome has become once again the House of Horrors for the Toronto Blue Jays, the major domo, host, and doorman of the Castle of Doom is Logan Forsythe. Every time you look up, he’s at the plate. Every time you look away and look back, he’s on base. Every time you sneak a peak, he’s either scored a run or driven one in.
Today it was up to Marco Estrada to put a rope around this annoying pest and rein him in, and he did, and all his pesky little cronies, too, sublimely, definitively . . . for five innings.
But it was also up to the Toronto batting order to do their part and lay a beating on Tampa’s young left-hander Blake Snell, like they did in August, when he only managed one and two thirds innings and gave up five runs on five hits. (I’ve already referred to assassinating Logan Forsythe and beating Blake Snell; the Rays seem to evoke the violent side of me like no other team. Wonder why.)
The worst possible thing that could have happened to Toronto today would be a repeat of yesterday’s horrendous performance in a game in which they were not only badly beaten, but they contributed materially to the outcome themselves.
Well, you can argue that any loss is as bad as any other, and in some ways you’d be right. It’s a loss; who cares how it happened; clear your mind of it and move on. But yesterday, yesterday was special. So did they repeat yesterday’s mess fest in all its glory? No. But was it a close call, a tight game, a good effort, where you could take something positive away for the next day? Not really.
Take Estrada’s start. For five innings he was as good as he has ever been. His pitches were things of beauty. The frustration on the faces of the Tampa batters as they made soft contact or swung and missed was beautiful to see. In five innings he gave up no runs, two singles, and one walk. The walk was erased when he teamed up with Dioner Navarro to cut down Corey Dickinson trying to steal. The first hit was nullified when he made Kevin Kiermaier, one of the game’s premier bunters, pop up his bunt attempt to catcher Dioner Navarro. He struck out six, two of them looking. He induced four popups; ten of his fifteen outs came from strikeouts and popups.
Estrada’s brilliance was brought into full focus by the fact that Blake Snell was doing a nearly equally effective job on Toronto. In four of his six innings he retired the side in order. He shrugged off a first-inning walk to Edwin Encarnacion, and only in the third did he waver, allowing the Jays the only run either team scored in the first five innings.
The Jays hardly undressed Snell in public in the third. In fact, if he hadn’t issued his second walk on the day to Josh Donaldson, the game would have entered the sixth a scoreless tie. With one out, Devon Travis looped a single to centre. After Jose Bautista made the second out, Snell walked Donaldson, pushing Travis to second, whence he scored on a two-out, soft looped single to centre by Edwin Encarnacion. After the Edwin RBI, Snell retired the last ten batters he face. Overall he struck out seven, and finished strong, with two strikeouts and a short fly to right in the sixth, his last inning of work.
Toronto is once again going through a protracted stretch of poor hitting. Even in the Baltimore series, where they won two out of three, they only scored 13 runs in the three games, well below this year’s average of runs scored per game, and even more of a departure from the record of last year’s batting behemoth.
When you’re in a stretch like this, being involved in a tight pitchers’ battle is even more stressful than you’d expect, because you have the firm intuition, the pessimism if you will, that if the other side breaks through, especially with multiple runs, then your goose is cooked, because you just ain’t gonna climb back into it. The attack that waylaid Marco Estrada in the sixth didn’t just cook the Jays’ goose, it boiled and mashed the potatoes, made the gravy, carved the bird, and served the dressing. In the immortal if wildly optimistic words of Tiger Williams, the Blue Jays were done like dinner. Estrada was sent off to lick his wounds and ponder his misfortune, and the Jays’ batters were condemned to try to erase the entire deficit with one swing, which is never a good idea.
Estrada’s fateful sixth started off with another soft-contact lollypop put into play by Rays’ catcher Bobby Wilson, who’d be sitting on the bench in favour of Luke Maile if I were Tampa Manager Kevin Cash. Unfortunately, his lollypop touched green just inside the right field foul line, falling between Jose Bautista racing in and Edwin Encarnaction racing out. Devon Travis, who’d normally take this one, was nowhere to be seen, stationed somewhere behind the bag at second in the accursed shift. This turned the lineup over to Logan Forsythe. If the Jays’ players last year all took turns stirring the pot, Forsythe seems constantly to be stirring up trouble. He ripped a single into left, the first base hit off Estrada that was stroked with authority.
This put runners on first and second with nobody out and Kevin Kiermaier at the plate. That Kiermaier would bunt was a foregone conclusion. Besides patrolling the outfield like a gazelle and hitting occasionally with authority, Kiermaier is an excellent bunter and runs like the wind. You will recall that yesterday Marcus Stroman made a crucial error in judgement on a comebacker, and tried for the force at second when he had time to get Brad Miller at first after checking the runner at third, and ended up getting the out but no double play while Logan Forsythe scored. Marco Estrada must have had that in mind on Kiermaier’s bunt today. It was a good bunt to the third-base side, and Estrada was on it quickly, Josh Donaldson immediately retreating to the bag as soon as the pitcher was on the ball. Unlike Stroman yesterday, Estrada went for the “sure out” at first, which he didn’t get, his throw pulling Devon Travis off the bag. Meanwhile, Bobby Wilson, lumbering toward third, would have been a fairly dead duck (that’s a joke, folks) on the force, but Estrada never looked at him. The result, after one cheap hit, one decent hit, and a mis-judgement on a bunt, was that the bases were loaded with no one out.
This was a fine fix for Estrada, after sailing through the first five innings like he did, and must have left his head spinning. Three batters later, the Rays had five runs, Estrada’s gem had turned into a scratched zircon, and he was out of the game. Evan Longoria singled Wilson in from third, Brad Miller drew a walk on a three-two pitch forcing in Forsythe, and Matt Duffy cleared the bases with a ringing double to left.
Manager John Gibbons brought in Brett Cecil to deal with the two left-handed hitters among the next three batters, and this time he did the job, despite giving up a soft broken-bat single to centre by Logan Morrison that moved Duffy to third. He then fanned Nick Franklin and caught Corey Dickerson on a called third strike before giving it up to Joe Biagini, who stranded Duffy at third by getting a ground-ball to shortstop by Wilson, who finished off the inning he had started with the bloop single.
With the game in the hands of the bullpen and three innings to go, there were two questions to be asked: would the Blue Jays bullpen hold their opponents scoreless to give them a chance to scramble back into the game, and would the Jays’ hitters be able to mount any kind of an offence against the Tampa bullpen. The answers to these two questions were no, not completely, and yes, some, and that’s how we lost the game. It’s interesting as yer humble scribe chronicles game after game (after game . . .), to see how baseball always comes down to the simple proposition of hit their pitchers while you contain their hitters. Leaving aside the occasional pitchers’ duel or slugout, either of which can be decided by a fluke, that’s just about it, isn’t it?
Erasmo Ramirez pitched the seventh for the Rays, and stranded a couple of baserunners to keep Toronto off the board. As threats go, it wasn’t much, a one-out walk to Melvin Upton who stole second after Dioner Navarro flied out to centre for the second out, and took third on Kevin Pillar’s infield single before Devon Travis popped out to first.
Having thrown only five pitches to get out of the disastrous sixth, Joe Biagini came back for the seventh, and finally received his full initiation into major league baseball. If you want to know what a bargain Joe Biagini was in the Rule Five draft, consider this: Before today he had made 49 appearances (that’s right), pitching 57.1 innings, and had not given up a home run. He was the last qualifying pitcher in major league baseball to give up his first home run of the season, which was the first home run of his big league career as well. Thanks to Kevin Kiermaier, who rocketed one over the fence in left after a leadoff single by the Second Baseman Whose Name I Shall Not Utter, er, Write, Biagini has joined the ranks of mortals who have been dinged for a four-bagger in the show this year. More to the point, Kiermaier’s blast extended the Rays’ lead to 7-1, which was just a bit too much for the Rays’ bullpen to give back in the bottom of the ninth. Biagini stayed in to finish the inning, which was probably a good thing for his confidence. He gave up a one-out single to Brad Miller, but then benefitted from the latter’s wanderlust when Devon Travis snagged Matt Duffy’s liner and trapped the Wand’ring Minstrel off first.
There wasn’t going to be any Toronto uprising in the top of the eighth against Ryan Garton, no sir. He carved through some bums named Bautista, Donaldson, and Encarnacion in eight pitches, popup, flyball, flyball.
The bottom of the eighth brought the major league debut of Matt Dermody, one of the September callups for the Blue Jays. Dermody was drafted by Toronto out of the University of Iowa in 2013, and until this year he spent pitching in A level. But this year he started in high A, moved through AA and then finished the season with Buffalo. He pitched in 47 games at the three levels in the minors and compiled an ERA of 1.82. He wobbled in his debut, but didn’t fall on his face by any means. Facing Tampa’s six-seven-eight-nine, he gave up a double to right on a 1-1 pitch to Logan Morrison. Then he fanned Nick Franklin, and retired Corey Dickerson on a liner to right. His last batter, Bobby Wilson, singled sharply to left on the ground, with Dickerson being held at third. He threw 15 pitches, ten for strikes, and was picked up by Ryan Tepera, who did him the favour of striking out Kiermaier after walking Forsythe, keeping the ledger clean for him.
With a 7-1 lead Tampa Manager Kevin Cash tried to slip lefty Enny Romero into the game to get some work in the top of the ninth, but it didn’t go too well. In fact, it went so badly that Romero created a save situation, and Alex Colome had to be used for his thirtieth save. Basically, for the Jays their late rally consisted primarily of standing with their bats on their shoulders while Romero threw balls. He walked Russell Martin. He walked Troy Tulowitzki. Melvin Upton popped up to first on the first pitch to him, which raises questions about his judgement. Then Romero wild-pitched the runners to second and third. Dioner Navarro made the second out with a grounder to second that scored Martin and moved Tulo to third. Kevin Pillar drew a walk, then took second on defensive indifference, putting him into position to follow Tulo across the plate on Devon Travis’ single to left. At 7-4, that was finally enough for Cash, and Colome came in to sort things out. Not having learned their lesson with Pillar, the Rays let Travis take second, from where he was able to score on a Jose Bautista single to left. 7-5. Josh Donaldson kept the dream alive with another single to left, but Edwin Encarnacion finally brought things to an end with a sharp fly ball to left. From the sound of it, Encarnacion didn’t miss getting all of it by very much. Now that would have been something!
So, was this an awful game for the Jays, like last night’s? Not particularly. Did it hurt as much? Absolutely. The Wilson bloop gets caught, or Estrada gets the force on him at third, and it’s an entirely different game. We scored five runs, enough to win. Estrada pitched well enough to win, just not long enough to win. Chalk this up as woulda, shoulda, coulda. Now we have to make sure that the Tampa brooms stay in the closet tomorrow!
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