PITTSBURGH – John Gibbons never made it to PNC Park the last time the Toronto Blue Jays were in Pittsburgh, fired the morning a weekend series was due to start June 20, 2008. He gathered up his family after the fateful meeting with former GM J.P. Ricciardi, rented a Suburban and drove home to Texas.
Jose Bautista did make it to the park that night, striking out as a pinch-hitter for the Pirates in their 1-0, 12-inning win, but he too wasn’t long for the place, traded to the Blue Jays about two months later.
On Friday night they were back in Steeltown, and for 8½ innings they seemed headed toward a much happier return. Then came yet another bullpen collapse – this time Sergio Santos surrendered a two-run shot to Pedro Alvarez that tied things in the ninth before Starling Marte’s solo drive won it – in a crushing 6-5 loss to the Pirates, and there was more frustration for them and the Blue Jays as a whole.
Afterwards, Gibbons described injured closer Casey Janssen and Dustin McGowan, moved from the bullpen to the rotation, as "two missing pieces" of the relief corps whose absence "is hurting us right now."
"There’s no question it’s a different look down there with Janssen being out, and McGowan not being down there," Gibbons said. "It’s a totally different look and we’re suffering for it. … We’re getting a great effort and we’re in a position to win a lot of games. We’ve coughed up way too many this early in the season, that’s for sure, to make any progress.
"We’ve definitely got to get better and if that means adjusting some things, that’s what we need to do."
Santos, now 5-for-8 converting saves after blowing two straight opportunities, described his current period of struggle as "the toughest one I’ve been through in my career" and said the was "nothing that jumps out at me" to help explain his poor performances.
"I can’t figure it out. I don’t know," he added. "It just seems like everything I’m throwing they’re hitting hard. I’ve got to make an adjustment somehow. If not, I won’t be here long."
Janssen is likely a couple of weeks away from a return and there are no obvious answers to replace him as closer. Steve Delabar has been inconsistent (he loaded the bases with two outs in the sixth before escaping unscathed) and while Brett Cecil has mostly been good, the Blue Jays want to avoid using him on back-to-back days (he pitched two scoreless innings Friday so is surely unavailable Saturday). Aaron Loup has also pitched well, but his ability to go multiple innings makes him a pivotal cog.
Gibbons has mentioned moving McGowan back to the bullpen before, and the Blue Jays have Marcus Stroman ready at triple-A Buffalo to make the right-hander’s next scheduled start Sunday should they want to shift him back to the ‘pen immediately.
The options thin out dramatically from there for the Blue Jays, who are now 13-16 and have blown six games they controlled over the past two weeks.
The Blue Jays were in the midst of similar struggles as they arrived in Pittsburgh in 2008, having lost five straight. Gibbons knew his team was in dire straits, "but I didn’t expect that. My boys were with me, and my wife and daughter drove down from Toronto. So instead of flying home, we drove cross-country."
Bautista, on the other hand, was feeling a growing sense that his place on the Pirates was slipping with GM Neal Huntington and manager John Russell new to the scene. He felt he was "kind of getting hidden messages here and there where maybe this wasn’t the best place for me."
In August that summer he was optioned to the minors and placed on revocable waivers. Alex Anthopoulos, the Blue Jays GM who was an assistant to Ricciardi at the time, asked if he could put in a claim, was granted permission and worked out a deal that eventually sent catcher Robinzon Diaz to the Pirates.
Joining the Blue Jays provided Bautista with "an instant feeling of refreshment … before I even got there. It was just a bad situation that escalated for me here. I knew I was going to have a brighter future no matter where I ended up."
Bautista was so desperate for a change because "I knew what the outlook and the perspective about me was here at that time. Going anywhere else would have been better than staying here. That’s the way things went down. I can’t really tell you why but they just did."
What was that outlook and perspective?
"It was not good," he said. "After having been up here roughly five years, to send me down and get optioned three weeks before the rosters expand, it was borderline a low blow, and pretty much the message is sent by making that move, that I did not have a future here."
His future with the Blue Jays was far from certain, as well, but he implemented some changes to his swing (primarily in getting his front foot down faster) and to his approach (former Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston and hitting coach Dwayne Murphy gave him free rein to pull the ball) and blossomed into one of the game’s elite sluggers.
"I didn’t know I could hit 50 or 40 home runs," Bautista said, but he believed he could be "an everyday above average major-league baseball player."
Still, without the tough times in Pittsburgh, without the change in scenery that landed him with the Blue Jays, the metamorphosis might not have happened. Bautista had resisted change out of stubbornness, out of ego, out of a lack of trust, but he grasped onto what Gaston and Murphy offered him.
"I didn’t have a choice when I was in Toronto," he said. "It was either stick to it or kind of get washed out. It was the time of my career to do that."
The Blue Jays are coming to the point where they must make some gains or risk getting washed out of the 2014 season, too. Back in 2008 they dropped two of three in Pittsburgh to sit at 36-41, and then went 50-25 through the rest of the season. Right now, they’d surely embrace a similar turnaround.