The great Joe Garagiola used to always say that baseball is a funny game, and it is. But, it’s also magical.
The two most-maligned Blue Jays of late stepped up as Toronto managed their first-ever road sweep of a series longer than two games against the Tampa Bay Rays, devilish or otherwise. Colby Rasmus’ pinch-hit home run leading off the 10th inning was the game’s only run, and Casey Janssen – passed over in three of the last four save situations the Jays have had – came on to pitch a hitless bottom of the 10th and secure the win. How did this all come together? Because baseball, that’s how.
Rasmus, told earlier this week that he was no longer the Blue Jays’ starting centre fielder, came off the bench to which he’d been nailed to pinch-hit for John Mayberry, Jr., who was pinch-hitting for Adam Lind leading off the 10th. Mayberry had come on to make his Blue Jays’ debut because of the presence of lefty Jake McGee on the mound, but once Mayberry was announced, Rays manager Joe Maddon went to righty Steve Geltz, and Blue Jays’ skipper John Gibbons countered with Rasmus, who crushed a full-count Geltz fastball deep to right field, a no-doubt bomb. And I’m sure that as he was running the bases, Colby was whispering “Pow! Suck on that” to himself.
It was Rasmus’ 17th homer of the season, but only the second in his last 83 plate appearances. Twenty-seven years ago, to the day, Cecil Fielder smacked the last pinch-hit go-ahead, extra-inning home run for the Blue Jays — doing it at Exhibition Stadium against the New York Yankees.
Janssen was warming up in the top of the ninth in case the Blue Jays scored to take the lead, and when that didn’t happen, Brett Cecil came out and worked a nervous frame. The lefty allowed back-to-back leadoff singles to Ben Zobrist and Wil Myers, putting runners on the corners with nobody out in a 0-0 game. He bounced back by striking out Brandon Guyer, which allowed the Jays to intentionally walk Evan Longoria, loading the bases with one out. Cecil, who hasn’t allowed the opposition to score in 19 of his last 20 appearances, steeled himself and struck out both Logan Forsythe and Sean Rodriguez to hold the Rays at bay and allow Rasmus his magical opportunity.
Once Rasmus went deep, Janssen started to warm up and in he came to pitch that hitless bottom of the 10th, working around a one-out walk to pinch-hitter David DeJesus and picking up his eighth save in ten tries since the all-star break. For all the gnashing of teeth about Janssen lately, he has held the opposition scoreless in 10 of his last 13 appearances, and in one of the three in which he was scored upon, the runs were allowed after he came back out for a second inning of work, something he hadn’t been asked to do since August of 2012.
The game never gets to extras, of course, without the fine work of veteran lefty Mark Buehrle, who pitched brilliantly but found once again that a win eluded him. Buehrle, who has notched just one win since June 1, threw eight innings of five-hit shutout, walking only one and allowing only one Tampa Bay baserunner to make it past first.
Since a five-start run that saw Buehrle post a 7.04 ERA, 2.174 WHIP and a crazy opponents’ OPS of 1.020, the veteran lefty has caught a second wind. Buehrle came out of that slump by taking a shutout into the sixth against the Chicago White Sox before flagging. The next time out, he allowed the Rays to score one run through six innings before hitting a wall. Buehrle then shut out the Yankees into the seventh inning before getting knocked around in his last start. He was able to maintain his greatness all the way through eight this time, getting him up to 175 innings for the season as he looks for an unprecedented 14th straight year of at least 200 innings pitched. He’ll have at least four more starts to try to get there, and if the Blue Jays keep up this September magic, they’ll all be pretty important ones.