ARLINGTON, Texas – Take nothing for granted in the post-season, no matter how big a lead is, no matter how comfortable an advantage seems. The Houston Astros thought a trip to the American League Championship Series was booked with a 6-2 lead six outs away from victory; instead they’re heading to Kansas City for a decisive fifth game against the Royals carrying some major bullpen baggage.
A little bit of momentum can go a long way in the playoffs, when the margin for error is slim and the magnitude of the moment can be both a blessing and a burden. Which is why at Globe Life Park, some 400 kilometres north of Minute Maid Park, Toronto Blue Jays manager John Gibbons ran an 8-4 victory over the Texas Rangers that forced a decisive fifth game in the American League Division Series like it was a white-knuckle, one-run contest.
Again needing to win to fight off elimination and get to Wednesday’s 4:07 p.m. ET contest at Rogers Centre, when Marcus Stroman will take on Cole Hamels, Gibbons yanked a strong R.A. Dickey for David Price with one on, two out, Shin-Soo Choo due and a 7-1 lead in the fifth.
Over-managing? Managing scared? Too cute? Maybe, but Gibbons knew what went down in Houston and he wasn’t only aiming to keep the Rangers from gaining any momentum, he was intent on suffocating them.
"You know what, things happen fast," said Gibbons. "I’ve watched enough baseball games, been involved in enough that sometimes the only chance you’ve got to win is to keep the team from coming back in those lopsided games. At that point, too, they started to hold our offence in check. We scored a lot early. The other pitcher was pretty good, which you see a lot, but you score a lot of runs early, all of a sudden you dry up. Next thing you know a team climbs back, so that’s basically what it was."
The Blue Jays are now in position to become just the third team to rally from a 2-0 deficit in the division series after losing the first two games at home, but a complicating factor is that Gibbons’ quick hook turned Dickey into collateral damage. The 40-year-old was robbed of a win when he was one out short in his first career post-season game, an opportunity he long awaited, and came poetically against the team that drafted him and converted him into a knuckleballer.
That hurts, on a number of levels.
But, much like when they left Mark Buehrle off the post-season roster, the Blue Jays recognize now isn’t the time for sentiment. Gibbons acknowledged that the decision is "probably not a relationship-building move," but Dickey understands the intent, even if he still plans to talk things over with the manager.
"No competitor would or should want to come out of a game like that, OK? Everybody understands that," said Dickey. "Gibby’s the manager and what he says goes. I’m an employee, and sometimes you don’t necessarily like what your boss wants you to do, but I respect him.
"And at the end of the day when you look over your shoulder and you’ve got a guy like (Price) coming in behind you, it makes it a whole lot easier to give the ball to Gibby. So am I disappointed? Sure, I think any competitor should be. But at the end of the day, I’ve said this before and I mean it, it’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t care who gets the credit, and we won and we’re going back to Toronto with a chance."
Price – described by Dickey as "a bazooka in the bullpen" – secured the outcome by getting Choo on a fly ball to centre to end the fifth, and worked three innings – allowing a two-out Robinson Chirinos RBI single in the seventh plus a Mitch Moreland run-scoring groundout and Elvis Andrus RBI single in the eighth. Aaron Sanchez blew away Drew Stubbs to end the frame before Roberto Osuna wrapped things up in the ninth.
But the 50 pitches he threw Monday eliminated any possibility that Price might start Game 5, a scenario no one would have imagined a week ago. Stroman is no doubt on a roll, but elimination games are the type of starts the Blue Jays acquired Price for and this is another call that can hurt feelings.
"We have a lot of guys that put up really good numbers, but this is a pretty selfless team, and whenever you’re a part of something like this where 25 guys on that active roster and everybody else in that clubhouse have one common goal, that’s special, you don’t get that a lot," said Price. "There’s always somebody that cares more about what they do than what the team does, and that’s not the case here and we have our fair share of big-name guys and we want to win and that’s the bottom line every day.
"Everybody just do their part, do your job and don’t try and do too much."
The offence has certainly taken that approach during the two wins in Arlington, a key element in its reawakening.
Derek Holland – captured on video wiping his back-side with a Blue Jays rally towel dropped into the Texas bullpen back in Toronto – bore the brunt of it Monday, greeted by a club record three-homer barrage that stunned a crowd of 47,679 on an oppressive 32C afternoon.
Ben Revere opened the first with a bunt single, Josh Donaldson followed with a two-run shot to right field and five pitches in the Blue Jays led 2-0. Chris Colabello added another opposite-field shot in the first before Kevin Pillar launched a solo blast that Price caught in the bullpen in the second.
That quickly killed the boost the Rangers received when Adrian Beltre was a surprise addition to the lineup at third base about an hour before game-time, when his tight back loosened up just enough.
"If you could script it, that’s what you would want, give R.A. a little bit of breathing room right off the bat," Donaldson said of the early offence. "That’s really how we’ve played up to this point. …
"Overall I feel like we’ve just been having pretty good at-bats all the way through (the lineup)."
The Blue Jays tacked on three more in the third as Jeff Banister stayed too long with Holland, who got yanked after a Donaldson walk and Jose Bautista single. Colby Lewis took over, surrendered a run-scoring fielder’s choice to Edwin Encarnacion, an RBI double to Chris Colabello and a run-scoring single to Pillar that made it 7-0, and it felt over at that point.
Choo scored on a wild pitch in the third, and Dickey cruised until Chirinos’s one-out single in the fifth. After a Delino DeShields fly out to deep centre, Gibbons came in to get Price.
"Really what it came down to, I was looking at their lineup, what was going to happen," said Gibbons. "(Dickey) had three guys before he got to Choo. Choo had been on him all day, and he’s hit him his whole career. It’s a great hitting park if you’re a left-hander, it’s some easy home runs. So I thought, you know what, if I’m getting David hot, he’s got to go in. So and this is the situation, maybe we eliminate them from getting Choo on, and then you’ve got (Prince) Fielder and all those guys. There’s a method to the madness. I’m sure it’s not real popular."
Another factor is that Aaron Loup, the only lefty in the bullpen, wasn’t available because of a family matter, meaning the Blue Jays only had one shot at a southpaw in the game, and that was Price.
"I will say it was pretty cool, David and I share a lot of similarities in our story as far as where we come from, both Nashville guys, both won the Cy Young the same year," said Dickey. "Has there ever been a game where one Cy Young has handed the ball to another one? That’s kind of cool. Same agent. We know each other well and I think – really, that made it a little bit easier knowing that this guy was coming in behind me. But obviously I would have liked to continue to go."
Pillar’s RBI single in the seventh made it an 8-1 game, but the Rangers chipped away in the seventh and eighth, although the game never risked veering from the Blue Jays control.
Had Gibbons turned to his secondary relievers under the circumstances to bridge the gap from Dickey to Sanchez and Osuna, might the Rangers have found life? Would they have rallied?
The Blue Jays didn’t risk finding out, and are a win away from an unlikely trip to the ALCS as a result.