BOSTON — The ninth inning the Blue Jays pieced together Saturday night at Fenway Park is without a doubt the most crucial the team has played this season. It gave them the run they would need to beat Boston and regain control of their playoff destiny. Here’s how it played out.
As Michael Saunders walked to the plate to lead off the inning against Red Sox closer Craig Kimbrel, all he could think about was the game the night before.
“I watched him pretty closely last night and recognized that he didn’t really have good command of his curveball,” Saunders said. “I don’t know if he’s not feeling comfortable with the curveball right now or what. But watching him yesterday really helped me out tonight.”
Of course, Kimbrel had nearly let the Blue Jays back into the game on Friday, walking two and throwing more balls than strikes in a rocky ninth inning save. So, when Saunders stepped in to begin the ninth on Saturday, he took his first two pitches, both of them balls.
Saunders also had an idea that Kimbrel wouldn’t be going to that curveball after he had so much trouble with it the night before. And, sure enough, the only pitches Saunders saw were fastballs, all between 96 and 97 miles per hour.
“He just started attacking me immediately with nothing but fastballs,” Saunders said. “But he was a little bit erratic yesterday, so I had that in mind and I got ahead in the count.”
Saunders worked the count to 3-1 and shook off a dubious second strike call on a 96-mph fastball that was just outside the zone. He stepped back in with the count full looking for only one pitch.
“Oh yeah,” Saunders said. “I was selling out on the heater.”
And he got one, a 97-mph fastball that rode up and in on the left-handed hitter for ball four, giving Saunders a free trip to first base.
On the bench, Blue Jays outfielder and late-game baserunning specialist Dalton Pompey had been stretching out, getting ready for exactly this scenario. He knew if Saunders reached base he was going to pinch run. He was warm and he was ready. And he was very, very nervous.
“I’m usually pretty nervous running out there until I actually get to the base. Once I’m there, I’m OK,” Pompey said. “Adrenalin just takes over. And it’s just the same game that I’ve always been playing.”
Pompey took a moment to collect his thoughts and try to get his heart rate under control before he took his lead. But on the mound, Kimbrel had his own ideas, and as Pompey took his first steps off the bag, Kimbrel fired over to first, trying to catch him by surprise. Pompey dove back to the bag just in time. If he had reacted a hair later, he would’ve been picked off.
“Yeah, that caught me off guard,” Pompey said. “I wasn’t really ready for a throw over on the way up. It caught me by surprise. I had to get back pretty quick.”
After that, the Blue Jays flashed the sacrifice bunt sign to Kevin Pillar, who stood in against a wild Kimbrel and hoped he wasn’t about to take one in the teeth.
“I said a couple of prayers to whatever god I believe in. Whether it’s the Jewish one, the Christian one, the Catholic one. The baseball gods were with me, too,” Pillar said. “It’s a big opportunity for our team to get that runner over. And he can get wild, too, as we saw. You’ve got to put everything on the line, dig in and get it on the ground.”
Pillar did just that, placing a 95-mph fastball perfectly up the right side of the infield, where Kimbrel fielded it and threw it to first as Pompey advanced. Pillar was obviously happy to do his job, but also ecstatic to have got the bunt down on the first pitch. Bunting is always much harder than most people think it is—especially against an erratic hard-thrower like Kimbrel.
“With a guy like that, you really just have to look centre-cut, right down the middle. If it’s not there, he’s an extremely tough guy to bunt,” Pillar said. “Sometimes when you bunt you can get stagnant and wait on the pitch, so you try to stay athletic. But at the end of the day, you’ve got to put your sack on the line and get it done.”
Pillar jogged back to an overjoyed dugout as Kimbrel and his catcher, Christian Vazquez, talked things over. Ezequiel Carrera was coming up and it doesn’t take much of an advanced scout to tell you the Blue Jays outfielder likes to surprise teams with bunts of his own.
But that wouldn’t be necessary as Kimbrel’s first pitch of the at-bat sailed out of his hand and well over his catcher’s head, bouncing off the green backstop at 97-mph. Pompey jogged to third base but he could’ve walked.
“Honestly, it looked like the catcher didn’t even see it, because it was such a late reaction,” Pompey said. “It was like a gift because I could move up without having to do anything.”
From there, Carrera went to work on Kimbrel with a runner at third and only one out. He fouled off the very next pitch, a 97-mph fastball, before working the count to 3-1. He swung through maybe the best pitch he saw, a 96-mph fastball up in the zone, and fouled off another fastball behind it.
Kimbrel, clearly determined to not throw his curveball, went back to the fastball yet again and actually located it well, down and away on the outside black of the zone. But Carrera flung his bat out after it, and lifted a fly ball 277 feet into left field.
“Zeke’s got that ability. He can just flick a ball. That’s one of his strengths,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said. “He hung in there and got just enough barrel on it.”
Left-field fly balls can be tough to judge at Fenway Park. The Green Monster is only 310 feet away down the line, and balls hit in the air to that direction can look deceptively deep when they’re actually not. But as he stood on third base, Pompey didn’t care about any of that.
“I think it could have been shallow and I was probably still going to go,” Pompey said. “You don’t know if you’re going to get many chances against [Kimbrel]. I was going on contact and once it was hit to left field and I saw it was pretty deep, I just tried not to leave the base early. That’s all I was focused on doing.”
Pompey took off as soon as Red Sox left-fielder Brock Holt fielded the ball. As he sprinted for home, he saw Vazquez setting up to the right of the plate, so he began angling his run to the left so he could make it as difficult as possible for Vazquez to tag him.
The throw arrived on time but off line from home plate, which allowed Pompey to dive in head first with the winning run as Vazquez stabbed at him in vain. Pompey popped up and gave a safe sign of his own before he ran back to a charged up dugout that was practically bursting onto the field.
“It was pretty close,” Pompey said. “But it’s like Devon Travis always says: I kind of just blacked out and all of a sudden I was at home plate.”