TORONTO – John Gibbons doesn’t deal in fire-and-brimstone. He’s spent too much time on the fringes of baseball to believe anything other than the cream eventually rises, or doesn’t- not without some breaks along the way at least.
A lifer, his whole career has been one long big sample size of up and downs. He does his best not to get in the way – this is meant as high praise – and ideally make enough good decisions to give his team a chance.
Heading into Game 4 of the ALCS against the Cleveland Indians with his team facing post-season elimination for the fourth time in two seasons, Gibbons gave the same answer he always does when asked if he had any special words for his charges:
“I really don’t think there’s a need to. They all understand what we’re up against.”
And after his club kept the Cleveland tide at bay with a season-saving 5-1 win in which they actually pitched and hit like the team that earned their way to the ALCS by sweeping away the Texas Rangers — Gibbons said his best pre-game indication of what was to come was simply that the day felt like any other.
“Obviously it’s not, but it was almost like a normal, regular season game,” he said. “They were nice, loose, and relaxed, well aware of the circumstances. They showed up today like they always do and played a good ballgame.”
Keeping things as normal as possible is an art form and Gibbons does it as well as anyone and his players respect him for it. The highs and lows of the post-season come so fast your head can spin. It was barely more than a week ago the Blue Jays were on fire, launching home runs and riding shutdown pitching. After Game 3 of the ALCS they seemed a spent force, incapable of punishing even the most marginal Cleveland reliever, befuddled at pitches that only seemed to graze the outside of the plate.
But Gibbons simply treated do-or-die Tuesday like any other day and his team played like it was Tuesday night in August.
“I think we all love Gibby,” said Blue Jays catcher Russell Martin. “He never makes you feel stressed out. Always makes you feel comfortable and like you’re going to get the job done. No panic from that guy and it trickles down to the players, for sure.”
For one game at least the cream rose. Against a fairly average Corey Kluber and a cross-section of the Cleveland’s bullpen not named Andrew Miller or Cody Allen, Gibbons enjoyed his team righting the law of averages.
One noticeable difference was an apparent determination throughout the Blue Jays lineup to either take outside pitches the other way or at least drive them up the middle.
Was that a stroke of interventionist managing?
Nah.
“They hear it all the time from the hitting coaches and they talk amongst themselves about doing that,” said Gibbons. “And we don’t always do that. But we just saw Kluber not too long ago [in Game 1], he’s fresh on your mind, you get a little better idea what he’s doing.
“Yeah, I thought we battled pretty good today, with the bats. But naturally when you score, which we haven’t been doing, it always looks good.”
The outcome was welcomed throughout the Blue Jays clubhouse where the choking sombreness that was in the air after Game 3 was replaced by a general lightening and a renewed sense of purpose. They have a chance, slim maybe, but they have one.
“That’s the beauty of baseball,” said Jason Grilli, who pitched a perfect eighth inning after a 2-1 game was torn open by a two-run single by Edwin Encarnacion and a sacrifice fly by Kevin Pillar cashed Ezequiel Carrera from third after he started the bottom of the frame with a triple. “In the regular season you can always say there’s tomorrow. Thankfully after what we’ve been through and today we can say there’s tomorrow. And everyone in this room believes and that’s how we got to this point and that’s how we’re going to get to World Series.”
They might yet. Led by their manager the Blue Jays treated Game 4 of the ALCS like getaway day game rather than the game that could send them home for good. Over a sample size of three games the Blue Jays looked over-matched and out of sorts, even if they’d lost all three by a total of five runs. With one more game to play they looked like themselves.
Their manager resisted the urge to do anything that looked desperate and will follow the same formula in Game 5. He’ll express faith in his starter, Marco Estrada. He’ll believe in his guys. He’ll hope that the longer the series goes the better the chances his team will come out on top. That’s all he can do, but now Gibbons and the Blue Jays have one more day to do it.