ARLINGTON, Texas — Typically, a first-pitch temperature of 5.6 C is going to rather easily be the most unusual thing to happen at Globe Life Park on a given night. Only twice before since the ballpark first opened in 1994 has it been colder at opening—3.3 C on April 7, 2007 versus Boston and 3.9 C on April 10, 2013 against Tampa. And while Rougned Odor’s mocking of Marcus Stroman’s leg hitch and crotch grab toward the right-hander may have been out of the ordinary, let’s just say that Rougie truly does do him.
Really, where things got especially weird Saturday night was with Stroman struggling to find the zone so much, that for the first time in 91 big-league starts, he threw more balls—51—than strikes—45. To put that in context, 5,622, or 64 per cent, of his 8,781 pitches in the majors before this one were strikes. Even when he walked a career-high six batters last summer against Oakland, only 38 of his 90 pitches were balls.
All that grinding to get in the zone ended up costing Stroman, as three of his five walks over 4.2 innings of work came around to score in a 5-1 loss to the Texas Rangers. Forced to pitch in traffic all night, he managed to limit the damage to a Ryan Rua sacrifice fly in the second until things unravelled in a four-run fifth, which started with consecutive walks to Shin-Soo Choo and Odor and featured a balk, a Joey Gallo two-run double, an RBI double by Jurickson Profar and an RBI single by Juan Centeno.
The Blue Jays trailed 5-0 by the end of it, and with Mike Minor shoving for six two-hit frames with seven strikeouts, the Rangers had little trouble evening the three-game set.
“Honestly, this is one I’ve just got to put in the past. I had no feel,” said Stroman, who added the cold wasn’t a factor. “I’d go to throw a sinker, and then the next time I’d try to make an adjustment and the sinker would do something different. It was a battle, it was a grind to be able to go that long. You can’t walk five guys. I pride myself on not walking guys, to look back and see five walks on the board is disgusting to me because that’s not how I pitch.
“Just wash this and look forward to the next start like I’ve always done.”
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Stroman, who took the mound with “Humboldt Broncos” inscribed on one side of his cap and “SK” on the other and plans to use the hat to raise some money for the tragedy struck hockey club, at times seemed to struggle with home-plate umpire Mark Wegner’s zone. So too did Josh Donaldson, who wasn’t happy with a couple of called third strikes.
But while Stroman didn’t get a few borderline calls, he also sprayed the ball a fair bit, too, as his zone chart shows.
“I’ve never seen that before,” manager John Gibbons said of Stroman’s lack of command. “The stuff was coming out good, he just couldn’t find the zone. He held them in check, they got to him late but we really couldn’t mount anything.”
Relying mainly on his two-seamer and four-seamer, Stroman got only four swinging strikes and pitching from behind made it more difficult for him to use his vicious slider effectively. He generated only six groundballs, too, another glaring anomaly.
His varied delivery also caught the attention of Odor, who lifted his front leg high in the air to mock Stroman’s unpopular hitch on the first pitch of his at-bat in the first inning. After the sinker sailed to the backstop, Odor, his face covered by a ski mask in the cold, grabbed his crotch while facing the mound, a move more WWE than Major League Baseball.
Stroman simply stared back at Odor, who infamously punched Jose Bautista in the brawl of 2016 but later made the throwing error that allowed the series-clinching run to score in the ALDS between the clubs, and that was that.
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Odor told reporters there was no intent in his actions, while Stroman said he didn’t notice the gesture.
“But I could tell you I couldn’t care less what that guy is doing, man,” continued Stroman. “I couldn’t throw strikes today. What he’s doing in the box is zero concern to me. I know who I am. I’m right there. Zero scared of anybody when I’m in the box and I couldn’t care less what anybody is doing, gesture-wise. Like I said, I’m right there. If you have a problem, I’m right there.”
Gibbons also said he didn’t see Odor’s gesture, but added: “The whole game is turning into kind of a circus anyway. It’s the entertainment business. I don’t worry about that anymore.”
More of a worry Saturday was Minor, who generated eight swinging strikes on 34 changeups to keep Blue Jays hitters off-balance.
After the left-hander escaped a two-on, one-out jam in the first by getting Yangervis Solarte to hit into a double play, the only damage against him was a one-out Kevin Pillar triple in the fifth that was stranded, and a Steve Pearce solo shot in the sixth.
“The previous at-bat, he got me on a fastball where I popped it to centre field and it was same count the next at-bat and I made the adjustment,” said Pearce. “I had it in the back of my head that he was going to throw it again because he beat me with it the last time.”
Other than that the Blue Jays offence was as cold as the weather on a night for the unusual deep in the heart of Texas.
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