TORONTO – The Toronto Blue Jays unloaded at least a week’s worth of frustration, if not more, on the Seattle Mariners as they opened up their final homestand of the season with an absolute barrage. The Jays beat up on the best pitching team in baseball as it hadn’t been beaten up at any point this season, a team with a ton to play for having entered the evening just a single game out of the second wild card spot in the American League.
Lefty James Paxton of Ladner, B.C., had by far the worst start of his brief major league career. Making his 16th big league start, the first in his home and native land, Paxton gave up nine runs (eight earned) in 2.2 innings, walking six and striking out one. All those numbers are career worsts. The seven hits he gave up tied his career worst.
It had to have been an emotional night for the 25-year-old, pitching in Canada for the first time and facing the team that made him a first-round draft pick, didn’t sign him and (in his mind) messed up his chance to return to school for a final year. All that, combined with the heat of a pennant race. Whether that had anything to do with it or not, Paxton got lit up.
Lefty killer Danny Valencia doubled and tripled, his three-run three-bagger in the first inning really being the killing blow, and every Blue Jays starter managed at least one hit. Anthony Gose and Kevin Pillar each belted their first home run of the season and Jose Bautista crushed his 35th.
Mississauga’s Dalton Pompey, also making his first start in his home and native land, picked up a couple of infield singles, scored a run for the first time in the big leagues and made a jaw-dropping catch to rob Dustin Ackley of extra bases in the fifth inning. Pompey went a long way to his right and dove along the warning track to make the sensational grab that earned him a standing ovation as he came off the field an out later.
Happ was the beneficiary of all the offence, and he deserved it. In his previous nine starts, the Blue Jays had scored a grand total of 13 runs for the lefty – a total they matched by the sixth inning of what wound up being his 10th win.
Pitching wins have lost their lustre recently, to be sure, as we learn more and more about the game and most of us have come to the realization that pitchers really can’t control how many games they win, but Happ receipting for the victory means that for the first time in franchise history, the Blue Jays have five starting pitchers in double-digits in wins, which is kind of cool.
What’s less cool about that is that the Blue Jays starting corps has a combined ERA of 4.02 for the season, which ranks them 22nd in the major leagues. Granted, the three starters who aren’t represented in the double-digit class do drive those numbers up, as Liam Hendriks, Dustin McGowan and Brandon Morrow posted a combined ERA of 6.21 over their 17 starts earlier this season.
This club record, along with the Blue Jays potentially having a pair of 35-home run hitters (Jose Bautista hit his 35th Monday night and Edwin Encarnacion has 33), and sitting fifth in the major leagues in runs scored, causes one to wonder how it is that the Blue Jays are simply fighting to finish the season with a winning record, as opposed to fighting for a playoff spot, with all the aforementioned in their favour.
It’s a mystery we have been trying to solve all season, and one that continues to confound. It’s something GM Alex Anthopoulos is going to have to figure out pretty soon, though, and once he does his job will be to put a team on the field in 2015 that can turn all those positives in the stats columns into a more appropriate number of wins on the field.