HOUSTON – They led, they trailed, they clawed back, they trailed, they tied, and finally, they won.
And, ironically, the Toronto Blue Jays have the disciplinary scratching of Colby Rasmus from the lineup for his tardiness in large measure to thank for that.
Nolan Reimold, who wasn’t in the original lineup penned by manager John Gibbons, hit his first two home runs of the season Thursday night, including a go-ahead solo shot in the ninth inning of a 6-5 victory over the Houston Astros.
“Late in the day I had a hunch that Reimold would have a big day,” Gibbons said in obfuscating why he sat his centre-fielder. “It’s called good managing instincts.”
Or, if you prefer the truth, here’s Rasmus: “I was late getting here to the field, wasn’t here when I was supposed to be here, and they punished me as they should have.”
The victory, coming after the non-waiver trade deadline came and went with no moves by GM Alex Anthopoulos, much to the disappointment of the players, was a sixth in a row for the Blue Jays, who improved to 60-50 on the season.
They also moved within 1.5 games of the Baltimore Orioles for the AL East lead behind the big night from Reimold, who only learned he’d play right before batting practice.
“It’s funny how that works out sometimes,” he said. “Obviously I was glad to be in the lineup.”
At 11-3 since play resumed out of the all-star break, the Blue Jays continue to play their best baseball since a torrid stretch in May and early June, and they beat the Astros (44-65) despite getting just three innings of four-run work from Drew Hutchison, who was up in the zone and paid for it.
“Hutch didn’t have it,” said Gibbons.
Todd Redmond, with 2.2 innings of important relief, Brett Cecil, with a key out in the sixth, and Aaron Sanchez, who threw two clean innings for his second career win, picked up the extra slack, while Casey Janssen locked things down in the ninth for his 18th save.
“We’re up in the dugout, our hitters came through big, Reimold came up big, and we’re not going to give in to anybody,” said Redmond. “The morale in the dugout is great, picking people up, get a couple of guys on, have Cecil strike a guy out, we needed that big-time right there, great team morale right now.”
The Blue Jays opened the scoring on Jose Bautista’s solo shot in the first and went up 2-0 on Ryan Goins’ RBI single in the second.
Hutchison surrendered a Jon Singleton solo homer in the second and three runs in the third on a Robbie Grossman RBI single, Jason Castro RBI double and Marc Krauss run-scoring single.
Home runs by Reimold in the fifth and Dioner Navarro in the sixth tied things up before a Gregorio Petit infield chopper on what appeared to be a botched squeeze play put the Astros back up. A dropped ball in right field by a running Bautista helped set that up.
Bautista’s sacrifice fly in the eighth tied things up again before Reimold took Chad Qualls deep in the ninth to give the Blue Jays the lead for good.
“It definitely feels good to help get the win and contribute,” said Reimold. “Not that I didn’t feel part of the team before, the guys are great and I’m really happy to be here, but it’s special to help the team actually get the win.”
The stirring victory was an important tonic for the Blue Jays after their hopes for reinforcements were dashed earlier in the day.
“Hopefully it brings us together and we just have this, I don’t what to say what the heck attitude, but hey, we’ll just run with this underdog, everyone is kind of counting us out, type of attitude,” Janssen said before the game. “Again, if we have a May like we had and it happens to be for these next two months and into the playoffs, I think we can beat anybody. I think our starting pitching has been doing well and when our offence hits, we’re as good as anybody. I guess that’s just what our rally cry is going to be.”