ARLINGTON, Texas – The boos for the Toronto Blue Jays were few and far between in their first engagement of the season with old rival the Texas Rangers, a smallish crowd of 21,670 directing some half-hearted venom toward Josh Donaldson. Pretty mundane stuff.
Of course, that was probably to be expected with Jose Bautista, the prime protagonist in the recent strife between the clubs, no longer in the picture and both teams looking to rebound after grinding through step-back 2017s.
The American League Division Series they played in 2015, featuring Bautista’s famous bat-flip homer, and in 2016 were both memorable, but history between non-divisional rivals has only so much run.
“Bautista was a big part of that and he’s not here anymore,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said before a series-opening 8-5 victory. “I don’t know if there’s anything (left) other than both teams are on similar paths. We were both really good those two years, both had tough years last year and now we’re both trying to get back, so there are a lot of similarities there.”
The Blue Jays, so far at least, seem to be doing a better job of that, improving to 5-3 with a fifth win in six games.
Marco Estrada, who threw a gem in each of those division series, dazzled through five brilliant innings and then waded through a tougher sixth, burned only for a Shin-Soo Choo homer among the five hits against, walking one and striking out seven.
With both his fastball and changeup working so well, he threw only three curveballs all night, generating eight swinging strikes on 68 fastballs and seven whiffs on 34 changeups.
“I had a pretty good changeup early on and I had some swings and misses on a few that were bouncing, so I’m assuming they were moving OK,” said Estrada. “I got a little tired toward the end and starting leaving a few up, fastball started to elevate a little bit, too. Not really sure what happened, maybe the long innings, we did score a lot of runs, maybe that got me a little out of whack, but overall it was pretty good.”
Russell Martin, meanwhile, paced a balanced offence that chewed up Matt Moore for six runs, five earned in 3.1 innings, with a pair of RBI singles and a 424-foot solo shot in the sixth that followed an even longer 459-foot drive to right by Yangervis Solarte.
Josh Donaldson added two hits and RBI, Justin Smoak and Kendrys Morales each hit sacrifice flies and Devon Travis, moved from the leadoff spot to the bottom of the order, ended an 0-for-12 slide with a double and another base hit.
“We were making (Moore) throw strikes,” said Martin. “It looked like he was having a hard time getting his breaking ball and changeup over for strikes. We did a good job of being selective and waiting for our pitch.”
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Randal Grichuk, also pushed down the lineup as he fights through a slow start, went 0-for-4 out of the eighth spot but in the fifth hit a rocket to the wall in left-centre against steady winds gusting at 40 km/h that Drew Robinson tracked down.
A one-sided affair got hairy in the seventh, when Aaron Loup allowed three runs and Seung-hwan Oh, who had a deal fall through with the Rangers before signing with the Blue Jays, allowed another before getting out of trouble.
That chiselled down what had been an 8-1 edge down to 8-5, but Ryan Tepera held things there in the eighth and Roberto Osuna closed things out in the ninth for his third save.
Last April, the Blue Jays didn’t reach the five-win mark until their 18th contest. They never got over .500, let alone two games over the way are now.
“It feels like we’re playing the way we should be,” said Martin. “We can still get better, still a lot of season ahead of us, but I like the way we’re playing right now.
“We’ve got good energy on the bench, on the field, pitchers are throwing strikes and we’re having good at-bats. We’ve got to keep doing that.”
The Rangers, meanwhile, fell to 3-6, yet the loudest boos of the night belonged to an announcement that the post-game fireworks were being postponed to Saturday because of the steady winds that followed the thunderstorms which caused the game to start 36 minutes late.
Safety, who cares, right?
Usually, with the Blue Jays in town, those boos would have belonged to Bautista.
“He wasn’t well liked here, no doubt about that. I know Jose will miss (the boos) – I’m sure he’d rather be here to get them at the moment,” said Gibbons. “He was always viewed as the bad guy anyway. I do think he liked that, or at least didn’t mind it, anyway. And he did the damage. Backed it up.”
Once again against the Rangers, so did the Blue Jays.
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