TORONTO, Ont. – In honour of the longest game in Blue Jays’ history, here is an incredibly long column: 19 things you need to know about the insanity that began early Sunday afternoon and carried over into the night,
1. Quality finish: Chad Jenkins threw six spectacular shutout innings for the Blue Jays, and would have been rewarded with a Quality Start, except he wasn’t the first Jays’ hurler into the ballgame – he was the eighth. The last man standing in the Jays’ bullpen, Jenkins was called upon to begin the 14th inning and got the job done in rather massive fashion. He got the win, but had he been first out of the chute, the quality of his work would have been noted in a separate statistical category. Instead, we just have to marvel at the greatness of the performance of a man who is very familiar with the road from Toronto to Buffalo and back. Jenkins’ strong effort was a huge part of the 15 2/3 shutout innings delivered by the Blue Jays’ bullpen Sunday.
2. I want a shot at redemption: The topic of conversation for the first couple of hours of the ballgame was Jose Reyes. The Blue Jays’ shortstop bobbled a routine grounder by Victor Martinez that would have been the third out of the first inning. Instead, the frame continued and the next three Tigers’ hitters singled to give Detroit an early 3-0 lead. Little did we know then that Reyes would come to the plate ten times in the game, collect a big RBI single in the 7th, an even bigger one in the 9th – tying the game with two out – and drop down a 19th-inning bunt that Tigers’ starter-as-reliever Rick Porcello would throw away to set up the winning run.
3. Happy Birthday: Anthony Gose arrived at the ballpark on his 24th birthday and didn’t see his name on the lineup card, yet he wound up playing 10 innings and was integral to the win. Gose led off the bottom of the ninth with a pinch-single, stole second and scored the tying run on Reyes’ two-out single. He also singled and stole second in the 16th, but Munenori Kawasaki’s two-out liner was hauled in by Rajai Davis to end the inning.
4. Eight is enough, kind of: Melky Cabrera had a busy day on the bases, reaching base eight times in ten plate appearances with three hits and five walks, two of which were intentional. He was left on base all eight times, though he was completely fine with the last one, since he was busy celebrating the guy behind him having driven in the winning run in the bottom of the 19th. Cabrera is the first big-leaguer to reach base safely eight times in one game in 42 years: Rod Carew did it last in 1972.
5. Finally rewarded: Jose Bautista went into Sunday having reached base safely in 18 straight games, but he came to the plate in the 9th inning 0-for-4 on the day, having been robbed twice by his former teammate Davis in centrefield. With two out in the third inning, Bautista hit a shot to deep left-centre that Davis hauled in with a leaping grab at the wall, and Davis made a great sliding catch on the dead run coming in to pick Bautista’s hard liner off the turf in the 6th. Bautista struck out into a double play to end the 7th inning, flied out with the winning run at first in the 12th, grounded out with the winning run at second in the 13th and flied out again with the winning run at second in the 17th. But his final at-bat ended the game as his second career walk-off hit was a line drive to deep right field with the bases loaded in the 19th for a game-winning single.
6. Rasmus-Tazz – Flashing the leather edition: Colby Rasmus saved his best work for really, really late. The Blue Jays’ centre fielder made two spectacular, potentially game-saving catches with the second one being more incredible than the first. With Ian Kinsler on first and one out in the 18th, Rasmus ran down a Miguel Cabrera blast at the wall, leaping against the blue padding to steal what probably would have been a go-ahead double; and with Don Kelly at first and one out in the 19th, Rasmus went flat out to his left – a legit Superman dive at the end of a long sprint – to steal a gapper off the bat of Bryan Holaday.
7. Easy as 1-2-3: Jenkins’ biggest spot of trouble came in the 16th inning, when back-to-back singles by Kinsler and Cabrera put Tigers on the corners with only one out for the dangerous Victor Martinez. Blue Jays’ skipper John Gibbons ordered an intentional walk to Martinez, loading the bases for Torii Hunter. Jenkins got ahead of Hunter 0-2, then threw a power sinker that the Detroit rightfielder pounded into the ground in the front of the plate, making for an easy one-hopper back to the mound. Jenkins threw home for the forceout, and Josh Thole fired the ball down to first to complete the inning-ending 1-2-3 double play.
8. Price is right for Valencia: Danny Valencia found himself in the clean-up spot in the line-up owing to his complete and outright ownership of Tigers’ starter David Price. The newest Blue Jay came into the game having been retired only five times by Price in 18 career plate appearances. Of course, Valencia had a big day, going 2-for-2 with a double and a walk, raising his career line against the Cy Young winner to a ridiculous .706/.762/.882. His sixth-inning double was a line shot back up the middle that caromed off Price’s left leg all the way into short right field, and although Price didn’t come out of the game, his performance took a nosedive from there. The Blue Jays were down 5-0 at that point, but Dioner Navarro hit Price’s next pitch out of the yard. Three of four Blue Jays reached base after Valencia drilled Price, which led to his exit — even though he had retired 14 of 15 prior to getting hit.
9. Brad Toss-Mus: Tigers’ rookie skipper Brad Ausmus had an issue with the strike zone of home plate umpire Bill Miller, as he should have. Miller had a rough day behind the plate, with lots of balls called strikes and vice-versa. Ausmus let his frustration boil over rather early, though, after Mark Buehrle struck out Nick Castellanos and Alex Avila, both looking, to end the top of the 3rd. Ausmus came out to discuss matters with Miller after the inning and was ejected, forcing him to watch approximately the last five and a half hours of the game from the Detroit clubhouse. At least he got to eat.
10. Blue Jays loving instant replay: After having some pretty hard luck as far as baseball’s new instant replay system is concerned, the Blue Jays had two huge calls overturned in their favour on Sunday. The biggest one came in the bottom of the ninth, when Gose was called out on the field trying to steal second as Rasmus struck out. Had the call stood, there would have been nobody on base and the Jays one out away from a loss. Instead, Gose was sent back to the bag after a review, and that was where he scored the tying run on Reyes’ single. In the 13th, Tigers’ shortstop Andrew Romine rounded first too far on his one-out single, and got hung up. Bautista chased him towards second, diving for his leg as Romine slid into the bag. The call on the field was safe, putting Tigers at second and third with one out. The umpires in New York said Bautista got him, though, allowing Jenkins to get out of the jam with one ground ball.
11. Regression to the mean isn’t pretty: Mark Buehrle started the season like a house afire. The veteran lefty was 10-1 with a sparkling 2.10 ERA after throwing eight shutout innings at the Royals on June 1st, his 12th start. Since then, he’s had another dozen starts and managed just one win. Buehrle got roughed up by the Tigers to the tune of five runs (two earned) on nine hits over just 3 1/3 innings, making it the first time in his great career that he’s failed to go at least five innings in back-to-back starts in the same season. In fact, Buehrle has failed to even throw a pitch in the fifth inning in three of his last four starts. Despite the recent struggles, though, his ERA for the season sits at 3.31, over half a run below his career 3.84 coming into this season. His FIP for the year is still below his career total as well, which might mean he has a little more regressing to do until his numbers even out.
12. Man, that was fast: We’re used to Buehrle working quickly, but the top of the second inning was a little ridiculous. After throwing 32 pitches in the first – the grounder to Reyes that should have ended the frame came on his 17th pitch – Buehrle got to work in the second. He got Romine to ground out to third on his first pitch and Davis to fly to centre on the next one. Kinsler took a first-pitch strike, then skied a fly ball to left to end the inning. Three outs, four pitches.
13. Man, that took a while: The Blue Jays set franchise records for longest game by inning and time on Sunday. The Jays had played two 18-inning games before, both at home and both wins (Buehrle started the last one), in 2005 and last season. The most recent one took five hours and 28 minutes to play, then a club record. This one beat that by over an hour. The game went past the six-hour mark in the bottom of the 17th, while the grounds crew was doing some resurfacing of the pitchers’ mound at Porcello’s request. When Kawasaki crossed the plate with the winning run, the game clock read six hours, 37 minutes.
14. Working the bench: When Navarro singled to open the bottom of the 10th inning, Gibbons looked down his bench and saw only Josh Thole remaining on it. Realizing that Thole wasn’t a significant upgrade on his slow-footed fellow backstop, Gibbons sent Marcus Stroman out to pinch-run. The Jays’ skipper had used pitchers to run before this season, but only on rare occasions and usually in interleague games. Stroman had to dive back to the bag on a few pick-off throws from rookie lefty Blaine Hardy, and was ultimately erased on a Gose double-play ball – but he did slide hard into the bag to try to break it up.
15. Getting a little shifty: One of the common complaints when teams play a severe defensive shift is that hitters don’t take the free bunt single that they’re being given. Another is that a runner on second base doesn’t just walk to third, since there’s no one playing anywhere near the bag. Blue Jays Radio Analyst Joe Siddall and I were discussing just that very thing in the top of the 5th as Castellanos took his lead off second base with the Jays playing the shift on Avila. We figured third base was ripe for the picking, and Castellanos was thinking right along with us. He took off for the free base, but the Jays defended it perfectly, with Navarro throwing a bullet to Steve Tolleson, who caught the ball on the run and put the tag down in the very same motion. So much for that idea.
16. The 26th man: Blue Jays fans came out in full force for the entire homestand that saw the Jays play three games each against a pair of first-place teams – the Baltimore Orioles and Tigers. There were over 103,000 people in attendance for the three games against Baltimore, and Jays fans packed the house on the weekend for back-to-back sellouts against the Tigers. The Detroit series drew over 128,000 fans to Rogers Centre in total. For the six-game homestand, the Blue Jays averaged almost 39,000 fans per game. That’s what a pennant race should do, and good for the long-suffering fan base for showing up in droves.
17. Rivalry renewed?: The Blue Jays and Tigers used to have an incredible rivalry, and every Jays fan of a certain vintage remembers the end of the 1987 season with tears in their eyes. The Blue Jays and Tigers played each other in seven of the last 10 games of that year, each game decided by one run, the Jays winning the first three, the Tigers the last four. Needing a win to force a one-game playoff for the A.L. East, the Blue Jays fell 1-0 in Detroit in the season’s final game. I can still see Garth Iorg grounding out to end it. With the two cities separated by only about 3 1/2 hours on the 401, this was once a rivalry almost without peer. But then, the Tigers moved to the A.L. Central, and now the two teams meet but once a year in each city. This weekend’s incredible series, with each of the three games won in the ninth inning or later, might have relit that spark more than a little bit. But the only way the flame will really get crackling is if the two teams should meet in the playoffs. If they do, remember that the Blue Jays took five of six against the Tigers this season.
18.Tough day at the office: The Blue Jays have a fearsome top three in the batting order in Reyes, Cabrera and Bautista, but the Tigers were bound and determined not to let those guys beat them for as long as they could. In the bottom of the ninth, Bautista was walked intentionally with two on and two out to get to Juan Francisco, who struck out. In the bottom of the 15th, with a man on second and two out, both Cabrera and Bautista were walked intentionally to get to Francisco, who grounded out to second as part of his 0-for-5 day that didn’t get started until the 8th inning. Francisco also booted a Miguel Cabrera ground ball in the 13th behind Casey Janssen, who pitched out of the jam. Even when things went right for The Big Juan, they went wrong; with two on and one out in the 17th, Francisco ripped what should have been a hard line single to right field. Hunter made a great play to short-hop it, and since it looked like he might make the catch, the runners had to wait and Cabrera was an easy out at second.
19. Help from beyond?: Late in the Blue Jays’ series-opening loss Friday night, a fan ran down and dumped some of the ashes of his late stepbrother on the Rogers Centre turf near the Jays’ dugout. The merits of the gesture can be debated, surely. I mean, it’s artificial turf with concrete underneath and it gets rolled up on a regular basis, so it’s not as though there’s really any hallowed ground on which to be a final resting place. However, prior to Friday night, the Blue Jays hadn’t had a win all season in a game in which they trailed going into the ninth inning. They haven’t lost one of those since, with come-from-behind ninth-inning rallies that led to victories on Saturday and Sunday.