TORONTO – Sure Josh Donaldson’s defence at third base is appreciated in a yeah, he’s pretty good kind of way, but there’s a case to be made that the reigning American League MVP’s glove doesn’t get nearly the due it deserves.
Take the play he made on Cameron Maybin’s roller to end the fifth inning in Friday night’s 6-0 win over the Detroit Tigers, a seventh straight victory for the Toronto Blue Jays, before a crowd of 43,228 at a stuffy, closed Rogers Centre. There was plenty of wow factor in the way Donaldson charged to his right, stopped and adjusted as the ball deflected up after hitting the bag, and threw up his right hand to barehand the ball before firing across the diamond for the out.
The combination of concentration and co-ordination required to pull off such a play is off the charts.
"Athleticism," teammate Darwin Barney, a former Gold Glove winner, said when asked what he appreciated most about the play. "There are a lot of players in this game that can make routine plays, but it takes someone that’s athletic to make plays like that, and have reactions like that."
Still, while Donaldson does the spectacular on the regular at third, his improvement on the routine has been somewhat lost. In 2014, he made 17 throwing errors while playing with the Oakland Athletics and last year he recorded 13. So far this season, he’s pared that number down to two, a product in part of a conscious effort to slow himself down in the field and improve his decision making.
Another thing he does is practise the kind of plays he makes in games during batting practice, regularly mixing in barehanded plays to create some muscle memory. On Thursday, for example, he worked on charging right for balls down the line and then lining up his body for the proper angle on the throw to first. When a throw went off-line, he’d adjust his footwork to get things right.
"Setting those angles is your footwork and being able to get your momentum going toward the base as much as possible," said Donaldson. "I’ve watched Troy (Tulowitzki) do his thing a lot and that helps, and we’ve talked a lot about it. A lot of the time it’s relying on the ball going from left to right, being able to play that. In the past I’ve had trouble with the ball going both ways, whether I was going left to right, or right to left. Now it’s almost like playing golf, whenever you’re off the tee, you want to be able to take out one side of the golf course. That’s kind of what I’m doing right now defensively, being able to rely on the ball going left to right the entire time and on that fade coming back. So far it’s working and I feel like it’s pretty accurate."
Such smart work is why Donaldson ranks fourth among big-league third baseman in defensive runs saved, a stat that aims to measure plays made in relation to one’s peers, at six. In Ultimate Zone Rating, a measure of how many different balls a player gets to, he’s eighth in the majors at 3.5. Not only is he making the plays he’s supposed, he’s taking away hits, too.
"Some of that is our pitchers pitching to contact and getting ground balls, and keeping me ready," said Donaldson. "By the same token, Troy, (Ryan Goins), Darwin and myself really put in a lot of work in spring training, we were on that back field for numerous hours just really getting after it. We take a lot of pride in our defence and I take a lot of pride in being able to help my team in any way possible, whether it’s defence, running the bases, hitting. Because there are going to be days when I’m not hitting and I can help the team defensively. That’s the value of trying to be a complete player."
The payoff comes in games like Friday, when J.A. Happ was locked in a pitcher’s duel with Mike Pelfrey and needed every out he could get.
The play on Maybin ended fifth the inning and prevented Happ from having to face Miguel Cabrera with at best two men on, if not a runner in scoring position and one run in. The score was 0-0 at the time.
"You’re talking about one of the best hitters in the game coming up with two guys on base in this ballpark, it’s not ideal, so that was a huge out," said Happ, adding later: "That’s what you need, plays like that, and that’s what you get with this defence."
Donaldson also put the Blue Jays up 1-0 in the bottom half of the inning when, with men on the corners, he ripped a groundball to third that Nick Castellanos picked nicely to start a 5-4-3 double play, allowing Barney to score.
The score held there until the Blue Jays broke through with a four-run seventh, highlighted by Kevin Pillar’s RBI double ahead of a three-run Edwin Encarnacion home run that left the slugger with 80 RBIs, tied with Joe Carter for third most in franchise history prior to the all-star break.
The end result pushed Happ to 12-3 after the left-hander threw 5.2 shutout innings, allowing six hits and a walk with nine strikeouts, as the Blue Jays pushed to a season-best 11 games over .500 at 50-39. Happ won a 10-pitch duel with Victor Martinez in the sixth, getting a weak popper to short, but then lost a nine-pitch at-bat to Justin Upton, who walked putting two on with two out.
Jesse Chavez came on and allowed a single to James McCann, but Cabrera was the lead runner and couldn’t score, before getting a weak grounder from Mike Aviles to escape trouble.
"We were trying to use the top of that zone, I’ve been using more four-seamers of late to mix the four and the two a little bit," Happ said of his approach on the mound. "We were able to get some changeups in late, which I think helped a lot."
So too did Jose Iglesias running the Tigers out of a run in the third, when he broke for third base on Maybin’s comebacker and Happ relayed the ball to Donaldson for an easy second out of the inning. That proved costly when Cabrera followed with single that would have comfortably scored Iglesias, but instead only moved Maybin to second before Martinez popped out to end the inning.
Little things sometimes end up big, and that’s why Donaldson’s play in the fifth was so important.
"He’s just a good all-around player," praised manager John Gibbons. "He never takes his at-bats to the field with him, when it’s time to play defence that’s what he does."
And the Blue Jays continue to reap the benefits.