FORT MYERS, Fla. – It was a game befitting the date on the calendar.
The Blue Jays wrapped up their Grapefruit League schedule with an April Fool’s Day win over the Red Sox in a contest that was awash in sheer and unadulterated crazitude, the highlight of which was Dioner Navarro showing off his wheels to reach base not once, but twice.
But the nonsense started in the very first inning, when the Blue Jays loaded the bases with one out against Boston knuckleballer Steven Wright – no, not THAT Steven Wright, this guy doesn’t live on a one-way street that’s also a dead end.
Boston’s Wright served one up to Josh Donaldson, who drove the ball into the gap in left-centre field for what should have been a bases-clearing double. Problem was, in this brand new mini-Fenway Park replica, there are advertising signs on the “Green Monster” that don’t go all the way down to the ground, and the ball got stuck underneath one of them. Instead of three RBIs, Donaldson got two on the ground-rule double.
Edwin Encarnacion would have scored had they made a wall that leaves no space between it and the ground, but instead he remained at third and stayed there when Navarro followed by drawing a walk on four pitches to re-load the bases. Then more wackiness.
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Dalton Pompey hit a high pop-up just in front of home plate that the umpires correctly ruled an infield fly. If the ball wound up in fair territory, Pompey was out, and the runners could advance at their own risk. Three Red Sox converged on the pop-up, and the ball dropped between them, but Pompey was out regardless. Seeing the ball hit the ground, and apparently not knowing the rule, Encarnacion took off for home and was tagged out easily by catcher Humberto Quintero.
Don’t think that Edwin was the only one who didn’t get it, though, because after Quintero tagged him for the third out of the inning, the Red Sox catcher fired the ball to second base where Boston shortstop Brock Holt was waiting, and he tagged Donaldson coming back to the bag. As he placed the tag on Donaldson, the Blue Jays’ third baseman – who may have been the only one on the field who knew what was going on – held up three fingers, telling Holt the inning was already over.
Things remained relatively sane until the fourth inning, when Navarro struck out on a knuckleball that Quintero couldn’t handle and took off for first. The two slow-moving catchers ran in opposite directions as Quintero chased the ball to the backstop and Navarro sprinted hard down the line. The Blue Jays’ backstop beat his opposite number’s strong throw by a hair. Pompey followed with a bunt right back to the mound, and Wright bounced a throw to second that Holt couldn’t handle, allowing Navarro to slide in safely. After a Kevin Pillar single loaded the bases, Devon Travis delivered a sacrifice fly to right to score Navarro – speed, after all, does not slump.
We saw some more speed on display – kind of – in the bottom of the fourth when Allen Craig hit a fly ball down the right field line off Marco Estrada. With JetBlue Park’s field being an exact replica of Fenway Park, it contains the angled wall in the right-field corner, and Craig’s fly ball kicked off that wall and back towards right-centre, bouncing past Jose Bautista and rolling along the warning track as the Blue Jays right-fielder chased it. When Bautista reached down to pick up the ball, his feet went out from under him and he fell, flipping the ball to Pompey, who fired it in to the infield too late. Craig had an inside-the-park home run.
The weirdness abated for a few innings, but returned in the top of the seventh.
Russell Martin led off the frame with a single, and an out later, Justin Smoak belted a towering shot to deep centre. It’s 420 feet to the wall out there, and Smoak’s blast hit about two-thirds of the way up for a double that scored pinch-runner D.J. Davis and gave back the Blue Jays the lead at 5-4. After a Danny Valencia single sent Smoak to third, more magic as Navarro came to the plate for the fourth time.
Navarro hit a slow roller to the left side, and Red Sox third baseman Mike Miller cut in front of the shortstop to grab it. He bobbled it briefly, then threw to first on the run … and Navarro beat it out!
The RBI infield single made it the second time in the game that Navarro had reached with his legs and it doubled the Blue Jays’ lead to 6-4. Then, an entirely different type of shenanigans ensued.
Munenori Kawasaki drew a walk to re-load the bases and minor-league call-up David Harris followed by hitting a fly ball to left. The catch was made, Valencia tagged up at third and scored without a throw, and seemingly everybody missed it. The run didn’t go up on either the main scoreboard or the hand-operated in-wall scoreboard, nor was it reflected on the MLB.com GameDay scorecast, and the game continued.
Ryan Goins led off the eighth inning with a left-on-left home run to make it 8-4 Blue Jays, and that was when the Jays’ seventh run appeared on the scoreboard. But not the eighth. It wasn’t until our fine radio engineer and producer – The Great Tom Young – went over to talk to the official scorer that they finally added the run they’d all missed.
Things calmed down from there and when Wil Browning came out of the Blue Jays’ bullpen to strike out Mike Miller and end the game, the Jays had wrapped up their Grapefruit season for another year, finishing up at 18-12.
The Jays are off to Montreal for a pair of “fake” games against the Reds (they don’t even count in Grapefruit League standings!) before they open the season for real on April 6 in the Bronx, with Drew Hutchison on the hill against the Yankees’ Masahiro Tanaka.
All that’s left for the Blue Jays to decide between now and then – assuming everyone survives the two games at Olympic Stadium – is whether Goins or Liam Hendriks will be the 25th man on the roster. Goins has done everything possible to earn a spot on the team, even playing a very good centre field in Wednesday’s win to go along with two hits, but the betting is that he’ll go down at least temporarily so that the Jays can save Hendriks from having to face the waiver wire just yet.