TORONTO — Kevin Pillar won’t lie: he was a bit cross Friday night when the Los Angeles Dodgers intentionally walked Justin Smoak to get to him with two runners on and one out in the eighth inning of a tied game.
"I completely understand where they’re coming from — they’re trying to get a double play," Pillar said. "But, yeah. Naturally, you try to do too much."
And of course the first pitch he got from Dodgers reliever Joe Blanton was a fastball right down the middle. And of course Pillar was taking all the way.
Now he was down 0-1, and that only drove his emotions up even further, which is why he tried to hit the next pitch he saw somewhere north of Pluto and fouled it off. Down 0-2, Pillar stepped out of the box and took a few deep breaths. "I got caught up," he says. "I just had to gather myself and get back to doing what I’ve been doing."
What Pillar has been doing of late is hitting—anything and everything. He came into the game batting .409/.447/.636 over his last 12 games, and he hadn’t struck out in more than a week.
These kinds of things will happen with Pillar. He’s a streaky hitter—a product of his aggressiveness at the plate and his ability get hits on balls outside the strike zone. "It can be a blessing and a curse sometimes," he says. "It’s gotten me in trouble in the past. But I’m pretty hot right now."
He is; he’s locked in. And as he took the third pitch of the at-bat down below his knees for a ball he started to feel more like himself. The fourth pitch was below the zone as well. But Pillar threw his bat down there and got it, golfing it 392-feet over the left field fence to give his Blue Jays all the runs they would need in a 5-2 victory over the Dodgers.
"I think it’s the first time someone’s been intentionally walked in front of me," Pillar said "It always feels good being able to pick up your teammates. But it’s extra special when it comes after an intentional walk."
The game to that point had been a pitcher’s duel—one between both Marcus Stroman and Kenta Maeda, who both threw terrific starts in very different ways.
Stroman struck out eight over his seven frames, becoming the first pitcher in the majors to reach 50 innings pitched on the season. He allowed plenty of contact, including eight hits. But he was generally as efficient and frustrating for hitters as he always is.
Maeda, on the other hand, allowed only two hits, but walked four and ran up his pitch count quickly as the Blue Jays did their best to lay off his wide arsenal of quick-spinning breaking balls. Toronto had never seen Maeda before, and neither has much of the league as the 28-year-old from Osaka, Japan is pitching his first season in the MLB. But they had some idea of what to expect.
"Nowadays, really, there’s no secrets. They’ve got video and all the statistics on everybody and what they do," Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said before the game. "He likes his breaking ball. So, it’ll be a good challenge. When you’re facing him for the first time, you kind of feel him out a little bit."
That’s what the Blue Jays did in the early going, trying to remain patient and force Maeda to come into the zone. What can make him so frustrating for hitters—especially the Blue Jays, who are a fastball-hitting team—is the fact he throws his breaking pitches more often than anything else.
Coming into the outing he was throwing his four and two-seam fastballs 43.8 per cent of the time, while using his slider and curveball for 46.7 per cent of his pitches. He’d been accurate with them, as well, earning a first-pitch strike 63.7 per cent of the time.
That scouting report held true in the first inning, as Maeda threw a fastball with just four of his 15 pitches in the frame while the Blue Jays tried to size him up. Josh Donaldson tried his best to throw Maeda off, drawing a walk before stealing second base easily on the very next pitch, a tumbling 71-mph curveball to Jose Bautista.
Bautista flew out, but Edwin Encarnacion took his best shot at rattling Maeda behind him, ambushing a first-pitch slider and lacing it at 95-mph towards left field. The only problem was Encarnacion hit it directly at Dodger third baseman Justin Turner, who watched it into his glove.
And so it went for the first five innings as Maeda pumped breaking ball after breaking ball into the zone, only occasionally flashing his hard stuff in untraditional counts.
"It’s definitely really frustrating. It makes his fastball play up," Pillar says, referring to how Maeda’s 90-mph fastball can look much harder when thrown behind all those breaking balls. "You just have to be really disciplined with guys like that and not try to do too much."
The Blue Jays tried to stay patient, and worked a season-high four walks off the Dodgers starter, but they were still forced into plenty of awkward swings. In all he earned 11 swinging strikes with his slider, and four more with his fastball, as he cruised through five innings.
But then, the sixth—when all that patience paid off. Josh Donaldson drew his second walk of the game before Jose Bautista worked a 3-2 count as Maeda’s pitch count crept towards 100. The right-hander reached back for an 84-mph slider that Bautista was sitting on; he didn’t miss, smacking it 436 feet into the second deck of the right field seats, giving the Blue Jays a 2-0 lead.
Meanwhile, Stroman was his usual two-seaming, bottom-of-the-zone-attacking self through his first six innings of the game. He relied on strikeouts early on with six through the third, before getting his outs in the middle innings almost exclusively via groundballs.
"I had a good mix. Me and Russ were on a good page. I felt like I was getting to all my pitches—mixing and using all six," Stroman said. " I felt like we were able to keep them off balance pretty much throughout the game."
But with two outs in the seventh things quickly came undone, as Joc Pederson took a 1-2 fastball to centerfield for a double, before Carl Crawford doubled two pitches later to drive Pederson in. Three pitches after that, Chase Utley drove in Crawford with a single and the game was tied.
"They just put better swings on balls. I left a couple balls up in the zone," Stroman said. "I didn’t execute where I felt like I really needed to."
But in the bottom of the eighth, Pillar did, and the Blue Jays won their fourth in a row to push back over .500 for the first time since April 19. Stroman finished the game with an MLB-best 50 innings pitched on the season, a full quarter of the way to his stated goal to throw 200 innings this year. He’s averaging more than seven a start.
"My goal is to go out there and go nine every time," Stroman said. "It helps the team as a whole, being able to go seven, eight, nine innings. That’s my mentality and that’s my goal each and every time."
So it was a special day for him. And a special one for Pillar, who got to play hero against the team he grew up cheering for in the West Hills, Calif., area.
"Against any team it’s special, but it’s extra special knowing all my friends and family were together watching at home against a team we all grew up rooting for. It’s somewhat surreal," Pillar said. "I’m looking forward to talking to my dad. He’s probably out celebrating right now like we just won the lottery."