MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — So, the Blue Jays won 3-1 Sunday. Jose Bautista and Josh Donaldson started the game with back-to-back long balls off the homer-prone Phil Hughes; Marcus Stroman dominated through seven-and-two-thirds innings; Kevin Pillar made another ludicrous diving catch; there was some purpose-pitch tomfoolery in the middle frames; and the Blue Jays took three of four from the hapless Minnesota Twins, which seems about right.
We’ll come back to all that later. But first, let’s talk about the fans.
They came in droves to Minneapolis, from Saskatchewan and Manitoba and probably a good amount from Western Ontario, all to watch their favourite team play ball. They were loud, they were boisterous, and they were everywhere you looked in the stands at Target Field, little patches of blue shirts like polka dots throughout this beautiful ballpark.
Hundreds of them came out early before each game to watch the Blue Jays take batting practice, and on Sunday morning, as the Blue Jays relievers came back to the dugout from grunting through their early work in the bullpen, they all stopped along the left field wall for autographs and pictures. Gavin Floyd started well up the right field line and made his way slowly down the wall towards the dugout, signing and posing for a good 20 minutes.
And after the games they were out in force, filling bars and restaurants and hole-in-the-wall pizza places around Minneapolis well into the night. Walking down 1st Avenue—party central in this underrated drinking city— as Saturday night became Sunday morning, you’d run into packs of them, still wearing Blue Jays colours, stumbling along the sidewalk making friends, bellying up to bar rails, sitting in big circles on patios.
We probably don’t talk enough about how impactful this team is from coast to coast. Maybe it’s a Toronto thing. But there are legions of Blue Jays fans everywhere you go across this wide country, some of them diehards since the championship years, some of them new to the game.
Go to any MLB ballpark near the border when the Blue Jays are playing there and half the crowd isn’t cheering for the home team. They’re starting Blue Jays chants throughout the game and losing their minds when Bautista or Donaldson go deep. What other team has that? It’s cool and it’s unique and it’s a pretty special part of being a fan of this team, and a citizen of this country.
“We’re the most unique team in baseball in the sense that we get a ton of fan support on the road. The fans we get here, the fans we get in Seattle, the fans that come down to Boston and New York—their energy is just unbelievable,” Pillar said. “These are the only games that they may get to see live. They let us know how important we are to them. And we appreciate their support. It almost feels like a home game when we play here.”
Right, the game. It started well enough for all those fans who made the trip, as Bautista and Donaldson took turns making Hughes regret his decisions. Bautista’s blast, his third in as many games, was on an inner-half fastball that he golfed 367-feet over the left field wall.
Donaldson’s—a fitting piece of vengeance considering the third baseman was ejected in the first inning of Saturday’s game by Toby Basner, who thought Donaldson’s chirps with the Twins dugout were directed at him—was much, much louder, as he took a hanging breaking ball 428-feet to dead centre field, staring intently into the Twins dugout as he touched home.
“I definitely had a little bit more motivation to go out there and play today. I try to go out there and play hard every day,” Donaldson said. “But the fact is I wasn’t too happy with how things transpired yesterday. So, I definitely wanted my presence to be felt today.”
Two batters later Michael Saunders drew a walk ahead of Troy Tulowitzki, who doubled to left-centre field to drive in Saunders and give the Blue Jays a three-run lead.
The Twins got one back off Stroman in the second when a Kurt Suzuki grounder drove in Robbie Grossman, who walked earlier in the inning. But Stroman otherwise breezed through his afternoon, inducing 13 groundballs with an onslaught of two-seamers down in the zone.
“My two-seamer felt great today. It felt like I was commanding it all day and I was able to get that depth from early on,” Stroman said. “I just really focused on my routine in between starts and just really locating my sinker. When I’m locating that pitch, I’m usually pretty successful.”
Stroman had plenty of help behind him, as well, especially from Pillar, who made one of his trademark, full-extension, how-the-hell-did-he-get-to-that catches to rob Brian Dozier of extra bases in the fifth.
“I might have to give him a pair of Jordan’s or something,” Stroman said “He’s always helping all of us out there each and every day. We’re just thankful to have him out there. Any ball that’s remotely close to him he usually comes down with. So, that’s pretty reassuring, having someone like that out there behind you.”
And I guess we have to talk about the fifth inning here as well. Donaldson led it off for the Blue Jays, and Hughes began the defending MVP’s at-bat with one pitch that careened just inside his hip and another that flew behind his back.
It was a suspicious bout of wildness from Hughes, who had been around the zone the entire afternoon, and it brought Blue Jays manager John Gibbons out of the dugout to make the case that Hughes shouldn’t be permitted to throw fastballs at his best hitter.
Well, that got Gibbons ejected. It was the fifth time this year he’s been tossed from a game, and the third time in the Blue Jays’ last eight, which is impressive considering Gibbons was suspended for three of them.
Then, at the end of the sixth inning, Stroman induced a weak pop up from Trevor Plouffe and jawed with the Twins third baseman as he walked off the field. Russell Martin intervened and ushered a heated Stroman into the Blue Jays dugout, which appeared to be the end of the shenanigans in an emotionally heightened game on a hot mid-May Sunday afternoon.
“The guy’s a strike-throwing machine. And then there’s a tight pitch, and then he throws behind him,” Gibbons said of the two pitches Hughes nearly hit Donaldson with. “I thought they were going to chuck him. But you never know what’s going to happen nowadays, if you want to know the truth. Whether it’s warnings, the guy gets thrown out, or nothing. You never know.”
Of course, as David Price was fond of saying, ‘If you don’t like it, play better.’ And if the Twins didn’t like what Stroman and the Blue Jays were doing to them, they certainly didn’t heed that advice. Despite often getting ahead in the count, Minnesota batters weren’t able to do anything with Stroman’s barrage of sinker, cutters, sliders and change-ups.
Stroman held the Twins to just one hit through the first seven innings before allowing back-to-back singles to open the eighth. But Stroman used a well-located two-seamer to get Brian Dozier to bounce into a double play, before giving way to Roberto Osuna, who took care of the final four outs.
And as he walked off the field, Stroman looked up at the hundreds of Prairie-bred Blue Jays fans sitting behind the third base dugout, smiled, and touched his heart.
“I’ve never been to Minnesota before. This is my first time here. And I wasn’t aware of the support that we get here. It honestly felt like a home game from the second I walked out of the dugout to warm up,” Stroman said. “It’s unbelievable. To have that fan support from all of our fellow Canadians up north, coming down here to support us, it means the world to us. And we love it.”