PHILADELPHIA, Pa. — Hitters talk about approach all the time. They talk about making a pitcher come in; about not getting antsy; about the paramount of patience at the plate. You can have the smoothest, most pure, powerful swing in the game, but it won’t do you any good if you can’t get a pitch to hit.
And before the game got out of hand Thursday night in Philadelphia, the Blue Jays put on a clinic in approach against Phillies starter Aaron Nola, patiently waiting out the curveball-machine and tagging him for eight runs on eight hits and three walks in what would eventually become a 13-2 laugher.
“We’ve got some of the best hitters in the world on this team,” said Blue Jays centre fielder Kevin Pillar, who hit a pair of homers late in the game. “We’ve got some of the best guys at studying film and looking at tendencies of pitchers and sitting on pitches. That’s something that I’m trying to evolve at in my game. And it paid off tonight.”
It’s important to note that despite the big numbers in his pitching line tonight, Nola’s really, really good. One of the best young pitchers in the game, the right-hander is a rare beacon of hope on this moribund Phillies team. He carried a 2.98 ERA and a 9.7 K/9 into his start against the Blue Jays. At one point this season he went 22 straight innings without giving up a run.
What’s tough about Nola is he throws his curveball 33 per cent of the time, and to great effect, as opposition batters came into the night hitting just .160 against it. His four-seamer (.279), two-seamer (.248) and change-up (.296) have been much more hittable, but you have to make him throw them in the strike zone first.
And thus, the Blue Jays were clearly trying to wait Nola out early in the ballgame, as both Jose Bautista and Russell Martin struck out looking in the first inning. Fortunately for the Blue Jays, those strikeouts sandwiched three hits, including a 424-foot rocket to left field from Edwin Encarnacion and a 390-footer to right from Michael Saunders, as Toronto charged ahead, 3-0.
The only hit in the inning not on a fastball was the two-run shot by Encarnacion, who, the way he’s swinging the bat right now, could hit a BB pellet if you shot it in the strike zone. He’s homered in five of his last six games and has made just 10 outs in his last 26 plate appearances, which is ridiculous.
But the fact Encarnacion hit Nola’s curveball out with such authority had a profound effect. Suddenly, Blue Jays hitters noticed Nola was hesitant to go back to the pitch, and that he was trying to be even more fine with his other offerings, which led to mistakes.
“Eddy did a really good job hitting the curveball. For a younger pitcher to have his best pitch, his curveball, be hit out in the first inning—he kind of shied away from it a little bit. And gave a lot of us a lot of fastballs to hit,” Pillar said. “And that’s what I’m talking about with having some of the best hitters in the game. Eddy knows that’s his best pitch. He might be going up there looking for it early, trying to do some damage with it, and he didn’t miss it. And he bought us a lot of heaters after that.”
Encarnacion said after the game that he was, in fact, looking to hit that curveball, despite the fact it’s been Nola’s most effective pitch this season.
“Yeah, he’s got a great curveball,” Encarnacion said. “And sometimes you have to go looking for it.”
As the night wore on, the Blue Jays not named Edwin who are swinging the bat like mere mortals continued to lay off Nola’s curveballs and force him into the zone with heaters, swallowing two more called strikeouts in the second inning before teeing off on the 23-year-old starter an inning later.
Josh Donaldson and Encarnacion began the third with walks ahead of Saunders, who crushed a Nola fastball that came off his bat at 106 mph yet went for an out. Then Martin worked a truly terrific at-bat, falling behind 0-2 on called strikes before battling his way to an eighth-pitch single on a fastball up and in.
That drove in Donaldson and could have started a significant rally as Pillar singled behind him on a first-pitch fastball to load the bases. But when Darwin Barney hit a slow dribbler to short, Pillar slid into second base and rolled into Phillies infielder Cesar Hernandez in an attempt to break up the double play.
Pillar never lost contact with the base and Hernandez’s relay to first wasn’t in time to get Barney, but after a lengthy review it was ruled that Pillar was in violation of MLB’s new slide rule, which cost the Blue Jays an out and a run.
“I didn’t quite understand that,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said after the game. “You wish you could get an explanation. Maybe we’ll get one. But nobody got hurt; he got the throw off. Kevin got down before the base. I think his foot got caught and he rolled a little bit.
“So, maybe it’s the fact that he rolled that got him. But, you know what, there’s no use complaining about it. Because it doesn’t do you any good.”
It was the kind of ruling that could have set off a ferocious debate if it had decided a win or loss, but the Blue Jays had no intentions of allowing that to happen as they broke the game wide open in the fourth.
Ryan Goins led off the inning with a double on a change-up before Phillies catcher Cameron Rupp botched a sacrifice bunt attempt, which gave the Blue Jays runners on the corners. Bautista cashed Goins by driving a mislocated curveball into left field before Donaldson walked on four pitches, which ended Nola’s night. It was the shortest outing of his promising young career.
“That’s one thing we do. Even during our struggles early on this year, we were making pitchers work,” Gibbons said. “We did that a lot last year. That’s kind of the way the team is built. And I think everybody expected a big offensive output this year and we’re starting to do that more and more now.”
The Blue Jays went to work on the Phillies bullpen from there, as Encarnacion drove the second pitch he saw from reliever Colton Murray into left field to put his team up by seven. An eighth run scored later in the inning when Phillies left fielder Tyler Goeddel lost a towering Martin fly ball in the night sky and let what should have been an easy out drop in.
And there was more. Pillar homered off Andrew Bailey in the seventh; Devon Travis homered off David Hernandez in the eighth; and Pillar hit another one later in that inning, giving the Blue Jays season-highs in home runs (5), runs (13), and hits (17).
“It’s a lot of fun to hit like that and it starts with these guys at the top of the order. They do a tremendous job setting the tone for us,” Pillar said. “It allows me to be aggressive.”
Meanwhile, Blue Jays starter J.A. Happ pitched like a guy with a rather large lead, attacking the Phillies with a barrage of well-located fastballs while allowing just three base runners through his first five innings. He threw a fastball for nearly 80 per cent of his pitches because he really didn’t need anything else on the night. He surrendered an unearned run in the seventh but was otherwise comfortably in control, lowering his ERA on the season to 3.41 with seven efficient innings.
“I felt really good in the first few innings; I was maybe trying to do too much. But with a lead like that, you’re trying to keep the pressure on them,” Happ said. “That was an outburst. It was fun to watch in our dugout; it was a good time. That was a good one. Hopefully we can carry some of that momentum over into a big series in Baltimore.”