Adrian Beltre left the field in tears and didn’t return. Josh Donaldson took a knee to the head and lay on the turf for long enough to spark panic. Jose Bautista walked up the dugout stairs, winced in pain, and he was out, too.
No, you couldn’t have scripted a more eventful Game 1 of the ALDS.
The Toronto Blue Jays now find themselves down a game against the Texas Rangers ahead of Friday’s 12:45 p.m. ET start, with Jays right-hander Marcus Stroman and Rangers ace Cole Hamels set to take the mound.
But there’s much to talk about from the table-setter of this series. Here are five takeaways from the first MLB playoff game in Toronto in 22 years.
What now? You have to figure the worst is behind the Blue Jays when it comes to injury surprises. First, Donaldson the MVP candidate went down. Then, Bautista disappeared, the guy with the cannon of an arm from right field who hit 40 home runs this season.
And while after the game there was what appeared to be encouraging news — Bautista said he felt better (manager John Gibbons said it was a leg cramp) and Donaldson passed initial concussion testing — you could feel the panic at Rogers Centre. It got awfully quiet.
This game featured a lot of crescendos of noise, but none more telling than in the fifth. There were two out and Kevin Pillar was standing on third base, and on came the “MVP!” chants, with Donaldson’s No. 2 spot in the order up next and the Jays down 4-2. Then pinch hitter Ezequiel Carrera walked up to the plate. It got awfully quiet, then.
“A 20-something-year wait, just exploding” It was a sober bunch of players in the Blue Jays’ clubhouse following this 5-3 Game 1 loss. But the mention of the 49,834 people in the crowd drew a grin out of the otherwise straight-faced Russell Martin.
“That’s as loud as a stadium can get, in my opinion,” the Canadian-born catcher said. “Just a sea of white towels. It was pretty cool, man. Especially when Bats [Jose Bautista] hit that home run, it kind of gets us back in the game. I think that’s a 20-something-year wait, just exploding.
“But, yeah,” Martin added, “I wish we could’a won the game for those fans.”
Those fans cheered every Toronto fly ball. They booed so loudly they drowned out the Rangers opening lineup announcements. Many had a wooden spoon in hand, or a face tattoo, or a cardboard parrot on an arm. When Troy Tulowitzki came to the plate, they let out a deafening and somehow synchronized “Tu-lo!” chant.
And if you ask Sportsnet’s colour analyst Pat Tabler, a former Blue Jay who played on the team in 1991-92 in the first of back-to-back World Series-winning seasons, the crowd Thursday eclipsed anything he saw in Toronto as a player.
“Louder,” Tabler said. “The atmosphere now is more like a college football game. It’s a younger crowd. They’re standing and cheering in the first inning. Back then they weren’t doing this. They were loud, but they weren’t like this.”
The pitching duel: There was a lot of talk about this pitching matc-hup: Yovani Gallardo, who hadn’t given up a run against the Blue Jays in two outings this season, and ace David Price, who hadn’t pitched a (non-simulated) game in 11 days.
Gallardo was perfect through three innings, but the Blue Jays did earn a pair of runs and he only saw five frames before escaping with the eventual win. Rangers manager Jeff Banister pulled Gallardo just as Toronto was starting to get to him; but Gallardo got the job done.
On the other side, Price pitched on a lot of rest, and he hit Rougned Odor at the top of two separate innings to spur two-run frames for Texas. Price had only hit three players all season, and none since he joined Toronto.
While you can debate that decision to rest Price forever, Gibbons had this to say on Price’s outing and the suggestion of rust: “I don’t know if it had anything to do with the layoff.”
The fact is Gallardo got the job done. And you may have noticed, he also has one of the scraggliest mullets in sports.
Tabler: “What is this, 1992? Did we jump in a time warp?”
The bullpen: The result (a loss) and the fact it’s on the record of Toronto’s ace (David Price) is bad news for the Blue Jays. But Brett Cecil (in the 8th) and Aaron Sanchez (in the 9th) both came in and pitched nearly flawless innings.
Gibbons says Cecil, whose only blemish Thursday was giving up a walk to Mike Napoli, will be the most over-worked pitcher on the Jays’ staff during this post-season run. And Sanchez, who had struggled late in the regular season, served up a three-up, three-down outing.
Playoff baseball: Bautista hit his first-ever playoff home run in his first-ever playoff game, and the crowd hit a towel-waving boiling point.
Beltre, the Rangers veteran third baseman, somehow hauled himself along the base path in obvious pain and limped off the field in tears. Banister called him “the heart and soul of this team.”
This is playoff baseball. And all we know for certain now is that for a minimum of one more game this season, a Canadian city gets to host it. And that Game 2 won’t feature as many surprises as Game 1 (probably).
