TORONTO – The throw is one Jose Reyes makes in his sleep – in motion after gobbling up yet another grounder, a quick flick across his body, an on-the-money arrival for an out. Only this time, during the seventh inning Tuesday night, the ball short-hopped Edwin Encarnacion, who couldn’t corral it, and as he flung back into the base path Mark Teixeira’s elbow inadvertently Gordie Howe’d him in the head.
Oh, and two runs scored to tie the game, the Toronto Blue Jays allowing a six-run lead over the New York Yankees to slip away through a rapid set of unfortunate events, turning a sure win into a much-harder-than-it-needed-to-be 7-6 victory.
Reyes atoned for that error in the ninth, opening the inning with a double off Adam Warren, and then chugging home when third baseman Yangervis Solarte threw away Melky Cabrera’s bunt, bringing a crowd of 34,206 to its feet.
The Blue Jays (44-35) won consecutive games for the first time since June 5-6 and moved 2.5 games up on the Baltimore Orioles (40-36) and 3.5 games up on the Yankees (39-37) for the AL East lead, but regardless of the result, the game left some concerns in its wake, with Reyes in the middle of things.
"I tried to make something happen after that mistake," he said of his approach at the plate in the ninth. "They tied the game there in that situation, I have to make a better throw than that. It is what it is, when I came up there in the ninth inning, I tried to make something happen and I put a good swing on the ball and hit a double."
The shortstop has been mired in a slump of late – he started the night in a 2-for-28 hole over his last seven games, riding a 0-for-17 slide – and he left Saturday’s game against the Cincinnati Reds with left knee soreness. Reyes was supposed to have Sunday off, but instead was pressed into duty when Brett Lawrie’s finger was broken.
So was that why he didn’t stop and plant before throwing to first on what should have been Teixeira’s inning-ending grounder? Is there lingering pain in his knee that’s affecting him at the plate and in the field?
"My knee is good, I don’t need to worry about that. Everything is good," he said. "I don’t think (the bad throws are) a mental thing. It’s a long season, it’s going to happen a couple of times, that’s the way it is. Hopefully it doesn’t happen again in key situations like that in the seventh inning up by two runs, I’m not allowed to make that kind of throw there. I have to make a play there."
Reyes also made a throwing error in the first on Derek Jeter, who had his own misadventures in the field, but also singled and scored in the fifth before his pivotal double.
Maybe the misplays were just a couple of blips in a long season, but they were reminiscent of his ninth-inning throwing error against the Kansas City Royals earlier this season that helped end the Blue Jays’ nine-game win streak.
"I think at times he’s trying to guide it over there instead of just letting it loose," said Mark Buehrle, who settled for a no-decision in this one but deserved better. "The last couple of years with him, he’s a great shortstop, sometimes he gets to balls he shouldn’t get to and then he throws it away and gets charged with an error, but some of these routine groundballs that are coming to him and he’s throwing away, it’s kind of a surprise to everybody, but we all have confidence in him."
The error in the seventh was all the more dangerous because it put Encarnacion in harm’s way, and though he remained in the game after being hit on the back of the head, he lost track of the count in the eighth, standing in at the plate after taking ball four from Dellin Betances.
Any type of injury to Encarnacion would be deeply damaging to the Blue Jays, who are already down Lawrie and the day-to-day Jose Bautista while Adam Lind plays through a sore right foot he fouled yet another ball off of, although the star slugger insisted he was OK.
"Right now I feel good, I feel great, I feel 100 percent," said Encarnacion, who’s never experience a collision like that before. "I expected a long bounce, (the ball) was too short for me to go forward to get it. I had to reach back and wait for the ball. That’s when I got hit."
The messy five-run Yankees seventh spoiled a very good start from Buehrle, who ended up allowing four runs in 6.2 innings of work but was much better than his line.
Up 6-0 he gave up a Jeter solo shot in the sixth and a two-run poke to Brian Roberts in the seventh that made it 6-3. He left after Cabrera couldn’t snare Brett Gardner’s little dink to left, and things unravelled from there when Dustin McGowan walked Derek Jeter and gave up an RBI single to Jacoby Ellsbury, setting the stage for the Reyes error.
Buehrle hasn’t beaten the Yankees since April 10, 2004 – his only career win against them in 18 starts.
"Can you add half-a-point to my victory total?" he quipped. "I try to go out there and get as deep in the game as I can and hopefully win. Seems like crazy things happen, today was another one of those, but I’ve always said I can go 0-0 and if we win so many of my starts I’ll be happy. It’s another win in the column, and yeah you’d like to get it, but they’re not always going to happen."
The Blue Jays took a 3-0 lead in the fourth on Dioner Navarro’s three-run homer, which he almost pimped like Puig with a bat flip, while Colby Rasmus’s single off the wall in the fifth scored two before Encarnacion came around while Rasmus was in a rundown on the bases.
Encarnacion was only on base because of Jeter’s indecisiveness in the field, allowing him to take his base.
The resoluteness the Blue Jays showed after the Yankees rallied matters, especially given the lack of success against their rivals, and where they are in the standings. Getting swept in the Bronx last week gave New York some life, the response in Toronto so far is taking it right back.
"If we blow that lead last year, it sucks the wind out of you and you don’t come back," Gibbons said. "It wasn’t a real well played game but the name of the game is winning. We booted a couple of balls, they threw one away and we won, maybe it evens out."
It did for Reyes.