TORONTO — Considering that, in the seven days prior to Sunday’s game with the Tampa Bay Rays, the Toronto Blue Jays bullpen boasted a 6.97 ERA with four blown saves, six home runs, and 25 hits in 20.2 innings, it was understandable if you let out a good, long sigh when Aaron Sanchez left his start after only one inning with a split nail.
The Blue Jays were going to need eight innings of relief—at least—from a group that had struggled mightily over the past week, blowing leads on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday as Toronto’s disastrous start to the season plowed full steam ahead.
But perhaps they were due, as a besieged Blue Jays bullpen combined for 6.1 scoreless innings of relief behind Sanchez before the Rays scratched a run across with a sacrifice bunt in the top of the eighth inning. That wouldn’t be enough, as Jose Bautista scorched a double off the top of the left-field wall in the bottom of the inning, plating Darwin Barney with the tying run.
Two batters later, with two on and two out, Russell Martin served a single into right field, scoring Bautista from second with the go-ahead run in what ended up a 3-1 Blue Jays victory. Roberto Osuna closed the game—earning his third save in six opportunities—and put a cap on a terrific day for the six pitchers who came out of the Blue Jays bullpen and allowed only four hits, four walks and a run over eight innings.
"It was a great game—it really was. We had our backs against the wall, and you look at what that bullpen did," said Blue Jays manager John Gibbons. "We’re proud of our guys. They just kept plugging away and plugging away."
Making his return from the disabled list, Sanchez threw just 13 pitches—all of them fastballs—in a three-up, three-down first inning that would also be his last. When he returned to the dugout, he threw down his glove and hurried off to the Blue Jays clubhouse with pitching coach Pete Walker. Moments later, Ryan Tepera began warming in the left-field bullpen and jogged out to the mound to take over for Sanchez at the beginning of the second inning.
Tepera was terrific, needing just 36 pitches to get through three perfect innings and give the Blue Jays everything they could have hoped for and more in a tricky situation. He started the fifth inning by surrendering his first hit—a single to right field—at the end of a seven-pitch battle with Brad Miller. But Tepera came back to whiff Rickie Weeks Jr. for his fifth strikeout of the afternoon before Gibbons lifted him at a season-high 46 pitches.
"You know, I think Ryan’s just coming into his own," Gibbons said. "He’s got a great arm. He’s got as good stuff as anybody. But early in the season, his command was a little bit off.
"The difference is he’s locating the ball. He can overpower guys—good hitters. I think he’s just really starting to come into his own. We’ve seen how good he is the last few years and what he has to offer, now it’s all just starting to come together."
Tepera’s 3.1 innings made it the longest outing of his career, and the 29-year-old left to a well-deserved standing ovation.
"What a fun game," Tepera said. "Just going out there, it was kind of like an unreal feeling. It was just different. But I just followed [catcher Russell Martin] and stayed aggressive."
Considering Sanchez’s persistent blister issues, Tepera had an idea coming into the game that he may be called upon to eat some innings. But it would’ve been hard to imagine that call coming in the second inning.
When he hit the mound, Tepera told himself to stay free and easy in his delivery, and not to overthrow. He knew he needed to last in the game for a while and that he couldn’t burn through his gas tank too quickly.
"I was able to throw the four-seam up and that was a big key for me today. That’s something that I struggle with doing. I either throw it way too high or it gets in the zone," Tepera said. "But by just saying nice and easy and trying to execute pitches, it helped."
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Aaron Loup came on in relief of Tepera and provided two more innings of scoreless, hitless ball. Then it was Dominic Leone’s turn, as the right-hander took over for Loup and kept the game scoreless. Collectively, Tepera, Loup and Leone combined for six innings of two-hit ball after Sanchez left the game.
"We’ve got a good group of guys down there. We’ve obviously had our struggles this month," Tepera said. "So it was good to get on a roll."
The Rays finally broke through in the eighth, as Logan Morrison’s leadoff walk—issued by Joe Smith—came around to score on a Norris single, a Shane Peterson pop out and a Daniel Robertson sacrifice bunt back to the mound. Smith may have had a shot at nabbing Morrison at the plate, but opted for the sure out at first instead, trusting the Blue Jays offence could score at least a run.
For a while there, it looked like maybe they wouldn’t. Rays starter Chris Archer was his usually unflappable self, cruising through his first 12 batters of the game while only allowing a hit. The Blue Jays had a brief opportunity to get something going in the fourth as Justin Smoak came through with a two-out single ahead of a Russell Martin walk. But Steve Pearce bounced an 0-2 slider to short to end the threat.
There was a strange moment in the first inning, when Archer’s first pitch to Jose Bautista sailed behind the Blue Jay outfielder’s back at 96 m.p.h. Bautista and Archer stared each other down for a beat after the near miss, and when Bautista flew out two pitches later, he made a point of running back to the dugout right past Archer, appearing to have words for the Rays starter.
"I don’t know," Bautista said when asked if he thought Archer threw at him on purpose, allowing that he did exchange commentary with Archer as he ran off the field. "I just asked him if he was okay, he said he was good. That’s it."
Bautista exacted a measure of revenge in the sixth, lining an Archer fastball over the heart of the plate into left field for a one-out single. Kendrys Morales then clobbered a long ground rule double to right-centre field—making him 13-for-22 lifetime versus Archer—putting two runners in scoring position for Smoak.
But Smoak chased a sweeping slider for the second out of the inning before Archer got Martin to ground out, leaving Bautista and Morales stranded.
Archer was finally driven from the game in the eighth after Barney led off with a walk and moved to second on Kevin Pillar’s eight-pitch groundout to third. That brought up Bautista, who barrelled a 2-0 cutter from Rays reliever Alex Colome for a 370-foot double, cashing Barney and making Bautista the ninth player in franchise history with 1,000 hits as a Blue Jay.
"I was looking for something to hit knowing that they had first base open. I was trying to just be more picky than normal," Bautista said. "Obviously at that moment it’s a huge hit so I was happy that I came through."
Morales was then intentionally walked ahead of Smoak, who struck out swinging. But Martin went the other way with the first pitch Colome threw him—a cutter tailing off the plate—to cash Bautista before pinch-hitter Ezequiel Carrera smacked a grounder up the middle that the Rays infield couldn’t turn into an out, allowing Morales to score from third with an insurance run.
That was all Osuna would need to close it out, securing the Blue Jays’ first series win of the 2017 season. It was also the first time this year the club has won two games consecutively and ensured this version of the Toronto Blue Jays would not set a new record for the worst month in franchise history. These Blue Jays finished April 8-17, while 1979’s and 2004’s Blue Jays each have a 7-15 month on the record.
"You think about it, it’s pretty amazing to go through the whole month without winning two in a row until the end. In a lot of ways, that’s hard to do," Gibbons said. "But this team—yeah, our record stinks right now, but every night they hang in there. They make a run at it. And I tip my hat to our guys for that.
"It’d be easy to pack it in. You fall behind late, you’re facing the better relievers, you could just shut it down. But they haven’t done that. Really, that’s all a manger and a coach can ask for."
