TORONTO – It’s taken two full seasons, but Roberto Osuna seems to be finally acting his age.
Heralded for an uncommon maturity and coolness as the Toronto Blue Jays closer, Osuna’s April served to remind everybody that, for all the Osuna Matata stuff, he still is a 22-year-old pitcher – and one who wasn’t doing very well, at that.
“They say that the best time to give someone advice is when they’re scuffling a bit, because then they’re searching for it, right?” Blue Jays catcher Russell Martin said Sunday. “I liked what I saw today. Today was definitely a very good day for us.”
Osuna recorded the save in Sunday’s 4-1 win over the Tampa Bay Rays, his third in six opportunities and the first time this season he’s notched back-to-back saves. This wasn’t a 1-2-3 effort like Saturday’s save – Ryan Goins made a one-out error and Osuna himself deflected Logan Morrison’s hit off his glove and out of reach of his infielders to put two on with two out and bring the tying run to the plate – but Martin believed the method behind it might have been even more impressive than 24 hours earlier.
Much was made of Osuna’s comments following Saturday’s game that he followed a suggestion by Martin to shelve his two-seam fastball and go back to throwing his four-seam, rising fastball. Martin shrugged and said all he told Osuna was that the two-seamer was “now that you know the two-seamer is leaking back over the plate, why just not go back to your bread-and-butter?”
Why on earth would a guy go away from something that was so successful? “Testing it out,” Martin responded, almost in the form of a question.
Osuna’s slider was also perhaps at its sharpest of the season: he threw three consecutive to strike out Rickie Weeks Jr., and fired two more past Derek Norris, including the final swinging strike of the game.
“They just weren’t picking it up at all,” Martin said. “Today, it was a plus-slider. You love to see that in a young guy; love to see the secondary stuff coming along because you’re not going to throw a million miles per hour for the rest of your life, you know?”
Osuna and the Blue Jays will play their next three games at Yankee Stadium, where Osuna came of age in his rookie season. Osuna loves the Bronx, with four career saves in nine games and 10 strikeouts in 9.2 shutout innings for a WHIP of 0.414. Getting the lead? You’re right. That’s going to be a different story.
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WHINE AND GOLD
It’s never too early to start carping about NBA officiating because – let’s face it – you just know that at some point in Monday night’s first game between the Toronto Raptors and Cleveland Cavaliers LeBron James is going to get one of those calls. And among the memories of the Raptors’ first-round defeat of the Milwaukee Bucks was the manner in which DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry often did not get their own benefit of the doubt, despite the fact that for all of Giannis Antetokounmpo’s brilliance, the two Raptors have a fairly well-established pedigree.
This isn’t to trot out the suggestion that NBA games are fixed or there’s some type of anti-Canadian sentiment – although we will likely have to put up with more of those insipid U-S-A chants, as if that’s somehow going to bother the American-born Raptors players – rather it’s favouritism aimed at stars or an added benefit of the doubt given them. And in the NBA, there are levels of stars. As good as the Raptors are, they seldom have the best player in the series or the biggest star and, in facing James, they are facing the biggest star in the league.
But what they do have in this series that they didn’t have in last season’s Eastern Conference final against the Cavaliers are two players with superb defensive reputations, in Serge Ibaka and P.J. Tucker. And head coach Dwane Casey and his staff must surely be hoping those reputations might sway game officials in the heat of the action. The two players are very much on the minds of the Cavaliers heading into Monday’s game. On Friday, James responded to a question specifically about Ibaka by saying he was “a good piece” for the Raptors and then added: “And P.J. Tucker, too.” Head coach Tyronn Lue said that Tucker will be a handful because “he competes hard, and makes it hard for you.
“And that’s about all you can do. The way the rules are now, with how little you can use your hands, it’s tough to actually shut someone down.”
Prediction: there’s going to be a whole lot of whining in this series.
QUIBBLES AND BITS
• Our Jeff Marek was one of the few prognosticators out there to have the Nashville Predators winning the Stanley Cup and he told The Jeff Blair Show that the Predators defence was a key reason – a defence that passes both the eye and analytics test. No kidding: Predators defenders have had a hand in 12 of the team’s last 13 goals, and they have scored seven goals so far in the playoffs – two more than the blue-line corps of the Edmonton Oilers and New York Rangers. The Predators were second to the San Jose Sharks this season in goals from defencemen after leading in that category in each of the previous three seasons. Ryan Ellis’ six-game point streak is tied with P.K. Subban (then with the Montreal Canadiens in 2014) and the Washington Capitals John Carlson (2016) for the longest by a defenceman in the past seven playoffs.
• The Pittsburgh Penguins Jake Guentzel moved into a tie with the late Michel Briere as the only rookies in club history with three winning goals in the playoffs. His seven goals make him the third player since 1943-44 to score at least seven goals in his first seven playoff games, alongside Maurice (The Rocket) Richard (who scored 10 in 1943-44) and Dino Ciccarelli (who had seven in 1980-81). Briere, one of two Penguins to have his jersey number (21) retired – Mario Lemieux’s 66 is the other – died after head injuries sustained in a car crash during the off-season following his rookie campaign. It’s the same uniform number that the Pittsburgh Pirates retired in honour of Roberto Clemente, who died 19 months later in a plane crash.
• You haven’t heard much from Joffrey Lupul or even seen his name in print lately – hell, you might never hear from him again – so let’s not waste this chance. Before the Ottawa Senators’ Jean-Gabriel Pageau finished off his four-goal game with Saturday’s overtime winner, only one player in NHL history had a similar game: Lupul. He scored all the goals for the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim in a 4-3 victory over the Colorado Avalanche in Game 3 of their 2006 second-round series, including the winner in extra time. Pageau is the first player in NHL post-season history to complete a natural hat trick with an overtime goal and he’s the fifth player to record his first two NHL hat tricks in the playoffs, joining Johan Franzen, Frank St. Marseille, Paul Reinhart and Patrick Kane.
THE ENDGAME
I get what happened in Sunday’s game between the Toronto Blue Jays and Tampa Bay Rays when Chris Archer threw that pitch behind Jose Bautista – and so do you. Of course, Archer was sending a “message” after Joe Biagini hit right-fielder Steven Souza with a pitch on Saturday; a “just-in-case message” after Souza’s mashing of the Blue Jays this season and those two run-ins with the Blue Jays’ Troy Tulowitzki and Russell Martin dating back to last season. Doesn’t make it right, but there you go. And manager John Gibbons gets it, too, which is why he was right to state that commissioner Rob Manfred should suspend Archer just as the Boston Red Sox’s Matt Barnes was suspended for four games for throwing behind the head of Manny Machado. What Gibbons didn’t say – but was understood – was that the suspension was made almost imperative by the fact the Rays and Jays play a three-game series in Tampa next weekend, with Archer scheduled to pitch.
Jeff Blair hosts The Jeff Blair Show from 9 to 11 a.m. and Baseball Central from 11 to noon ET on Sportsnet 590/The Fan
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