TORONTO – They cheered Aaron Sanchez at 6:55 p.m. when he jogged out of his dugout, a towel in one hand, his glove and a water bottle in the other. They cheered him from the standing-room seats in centre field at 7:02 when he ran out beneath them to stretch against the outfield wall. They cheered him at 7:16 when he went into the left-field bullpen to throw his warm up pitches. They cheered him at 7:29 when he walked back to the Blue Jays dugout from the bullpen, catcher Russell Martin on his right, pitching coach Pete Walker on his left.
And they really cheered him – all 49,555 who packed Rogers Centre to the rafters Sunday – at 7:39, when Sanchez delivered the first pitch of the game. It was the kind of noise that sends chills through your vertebrae. And the kind that can get young pitchers a little amped.
“Honestly, I was too pumped up. Out of the shoot, I was buzzing. I actually came out of my mechanics a little bit,” Sanchez said after the Toronto Blue Jays won Game 3 of the ALDS, 7-6, completing a sweep of the Texas Rangers. “You try to tell yourself to just treat it like any other game, but as a human, as an athlete, as a competitor sometimes that energy just takes over and you just have to try to keep it in check as much as you can.”
So, if Sanchez didn’t look quite like himself Sunday night, that’s why. You could really see it in the first inning. Sanchez walked his first batter of the game, Carlos Gomez, who accentuated his free pass with a bat flip. Gomez then stole second, advanced to third on an Ian Desmond tapper in front of the plate and scored on a weak Carlos Beltran ground ball to first base.
Sanchez struggled to find the zone in the first, and to get the outside corner against right-handers from home plate umpire Sam Holbrook, but the only contact against him in the inning was weak. He went back to the dugout encouraged, trying to calm his emotions.
“I had to battle out there. They came with it,” Sanchez said. “I was pulling some balls early. It being the type of game it was, you try not to do too much and I felt like I was a little bit at the beginning.”
The second inning went smoothly, and ended with a charged-up Sanchez stalking off the mound, fists clenched, exchanging silent death glares with Mitch Moreland, who swung through a curveball to end the frame.
Still, Sanchez threw first pitch balls to six of the seven batters he saw to that point and wasn’t locating his curveball where he needed to. In the third, Sanchez was better, throwing a first-pitch strike to Elvis Andrus and then a well-located two-seamer down and in. But Andrus was apparently sitting on that pitch in that very spot, or maybe he just managed the best reaction swing of his career, because the Rangers shortstop crushed the ball 411 feet to left.
“That wasn’t a bad pitch,” Martin said. “Andrus, he just pulled his hands in. Sometimes you’ve got to tip your cap to the other guy.”
“That’s just one of those things,” Sanchez added. “Me being so aggressive with my heater, you know that they’re going to try to come out and jump on it and he jumped on a really good pitch. I made my pitch and he hit it a long way. There’s not much you can do about that.”
Sanchez settled in after Andrus’ long ball, retiring the next three batters without trouble, but he struggled with his command again in the fourth, issuing a leadoff walk to Beltran. Adrian Beltre reached on a fielder’s choice next, before Rogers Centre public enemy No. 1 Rougned Odor put a very hard swing on an 0-1 Sanchez fastball that caught just a little too much plate, driving it 419 feet over the wall in centre field.
“That one had a bit more plate than the one Andrus hit, but at first I didn’t think it was going to get out,” Martin said. “He must have just back spun it perfectly, because it carried just enough.”
Sanchez retired two of his next three batters to escape the inning, went back to the dugout and took a moment to ponder the situation he was in. It was 5-4 Blue Jays at the time and Sanchez thought he’d pitched better than his results were showing.
“I think at the time I had two hits and four runs. You look at the line and it’s pretty crazy,” Sanchez said. “But you just try to go out there and battle until you’re not out there anymore. That’s just what I did. I was going through the lineup again and I was like, ‘I’ve gotta get something going. I’ve gotta battle here.’”
A determined Sanchez went back out for the fifth and struck out the side, throwing 10 of his 15 pitches for strikes. It was his best inning of the night.
“He did great in that inning. He threw the ball really well,” Martin said. “That team is able to put runs on the board in a hurry and, right there, I felt like he really kept us in the ballgame.”
The sixth inning would be Sanchez’s last. Facing the heart of the Rangers lineup for a third time, Sanchez retied his first two batters quickly before Walker came out of the dugout for a chat. Odor was coming to the plate with two out and first base open. Walker gave Sanchez the green light to go after Odor instead of pitching around him, but with one caveat: He was not to get beat with his curveball. If Odor was going to beat Sanchez, it would have to be against a two-seamer.
Sanchez threw Odor a litany of sinkers away, and the Rangers second baseman took nearly all of them, which earned him a free pass to first base on Sancehz’s fourth walk of the night. Next was Jonathan Lucroy, the Rangers catcher who was without a hit in the series. Naturally, he took a first-pitch sinker to left field for a single. At 92 pitches, Sanchez was pulled.
It was far from his best outing, especially coming on the heels of his brilliant seven-inning, one-run performance against the Boston Red Sox on the final day of the regular season, but it was a growth outing. Not only did the Blue Jays get a win but Sanchez got to face situations he’d never faced before. He got to feel emotions and energy he’d never had to pitch through until now. He got to deal with incredible pressure. And he got to learn.
“I’m just glad I got the chance to stay out there as long as I did. Our offence answered every time I gave up runs,” Sanchez said. “In a game like this, you try to keep your emotions in check. As hard as it is to do, you try. I felt like all night I was over-amped. I knew what this game meant with a 2-0 lead. Last year we were down 0-2, so you know that anything can happen at this point in the year.
“But these are the games that you live for. I wouldn’t want it any other way, me being out there on the mound in a clinching game for my squad. I’m just glad that I worked through what I had to work through and gave my team a chance to win. That’s all you want to do out there.”