The Blue Jays picked up another win in Baltimore, rallying late with three home runs and falling a Grand Slam short of homering for the cycle as a team. The bullpen provided 7.1 strong innings of relief, and the Jays are in position to capture a four-game series against a division rival that was on a seven-game win streak when they came to town.
Here are some things that stood out to me about the Blue Jays’ 63rd win of the season:
SCARY SCENE – Blue Jays starter Marcus Stroman’s night came to an abrupt halt in the second inning when, with a man on first and two out, Mark Trumbo hammered a line drive right back towards the mound.
The ball was hit so hard, 107.5 m.p.h., that all Stroman could do to protect himself was to throw up his right arm, and the liner struck him on his pitching elbow.
Stroman fell to the ground, writhing in agony as trainer George Poulis rushed out to attend to him. After a couple of minutes, Stroman was able to get to his feet, and immediately began pleading to be given a chance to stay in the game.
“One pitch, one pitch,” he said a couple of times to Poulis while out on the field, asking for permission to try to throw from the mound to see if he could continue.
Neither Poulis nor acting manager DeMarlo Hale would have any of it, walking Stroman off the field and into the Blue Jays dugout.
Preliminary X-rays on Stroman’s elbow were negative, which is a huge relief, but with the contusion and associated swelling one would imagine that it’ll be difficult for him to make his next start.
ANOTHER GREAT DEBUT – Friday night, Carlos Ramirez made his major-league debut for the Blue Jays, entering a 0-0 game in the 10th inning to face the top of the Orioles lineup. He struck out the first two batters he faced on the way to throwing two perfect innings.
Saturday night, it was Luis Santos’s turn. The unheralded 26-year-old Dominican, coming off a minor-league season in which he’d posted a solid-but-not-great 4.16 ERA and 1.26 WHIP at double-A and triple-A combined, checked in to start the fifth inning. Santos became the 60th player to appear in a game for the Blue Jays this season.
Matt Dermody had thrown 2.1 shutout frames in relief of the injured Stroman and the Blue Jays had a 1-0 lead when Santos came in. The first batter he faced was Trumbo, the reigning American League home run champ. Santos struck him out.
The righty wound up throwing 3.1 innings of two-hit relief, the only blemish being a solo home run by Seth Smith leading off the bottom of the eighth. The Blue Jays had extended their lead to 7-0 by then.
Contrast that to Baltimore’s Richard Rodriguez, the 27-year-old September call-up who also made his big-league debut Saturday night. The righty came in to try to hold a 2-0 deficit in the seventh inning and Darwin Barney short-hopped the left field wall with his first pitch for a double. Rodriguez would allow four runs and record just three outs.
PILLAR OF STRENGTH v2.0 – Kevin Pillar started the season as the Blue Jays leadoff man and had an incredible first six weeks before he started to slump and some of his old bad habits at the plate resurfaced.
The spectacular centre-fielder seems to have found his groove again, though. His fifth-inning home run opened the scoring and extended his career high in that category to 14 on the season. It also gave him an eight-game hit streak. More significantly, Pillar has been raking since the middle of August. He has six multi-hit games in his last 14, and since Aug. 14 is hitting .348/.348/.545.
A twitter follower of mine described Pillar’s 2017 as a donut – with a big, giant hole in the middle – and that’s a pretty fair characterization. Pillar’s OPS was .874 when he woke up on May 17, hitting .313/.365/.509. He then went into a nearly-three-month tailspin, hitting just .202/.250/.320 over 74 games through Aug. 13 before this current hot streak began.
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RAIN DONE BEEN BROUGHT AGAIN – Josh Donaldson gave the Blue Jays some much-needed breathing room in the top of the seventh. It looked as though the Jays would again leave a leadoff double stranded as, after Barney slammed Rodriguez’s first big-league pitch for a double to deep left, Ryan Goins grounded out and Steve Pearce popped up around a hit batsman.
Donaldson worked the count full against the rookie and then absolutely crushed a 3-2 fastball the leaked back over the middle. The 427-foot shot to left turned a 2-0 nail-biter into a much more firm 5-0 lead. It was Donaldson’s 24th home run of the season, but his 13th since the end of July. He wound up with a three-hit night.
JOSEPH W. BATS REVISITED – Coming into Saturday night, Jose Bautista had put two balls in play to the pull side of the field in his last eight games, but he shook out of that funk in the win in Baltimore.
Back in the clean-up spot after a day off as a starter, Bautista came to the plate four times and put three balls in play, all to the left side of second base.
In his first trip, he hit a Wade Miley fastball into the hole between shortstop and third, with an exit velocity of 103.8 m.p.h. It was knocked down by Orioles shortstop Tim Beckham, but went for an infield single.
After a groundout to shortstop and a strikeout, Bautista sent Rodriguez to the showers with a ground single to left that came off his bat at 99.7 m.p.h.
A two-hit night was Bautista’s first since Aug. 5, and it’s a very good sign just to see him pulling the ball again, never mind hitting it hard.
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