TORONTO – There’s just no substitute for instant offence. The Toronto Blue Jays understand that lacking in the type of overwhelming slugging depth they’ve featured in recent years, or that the New York Yankees boast now, they need to be far more opportunistic, taking responsible risks on the bases and executing situations as they come up.
When they don’t, and by coming up empty in four chances with a runner on third and less than two outs they certainly didn’t Sunday, power sure makes up for it in a hurry, carrying the Blue Jays to a remarkable 7-4 comeback win over the Bronx Bombers on Sunday.
Justin Smoak made up for a game’s worth of squandered chances with a two-run shot in the seventh that made it a one-run game, before his grand slam in the eighth ensured a split of the season-opening four-game set against Toronto’s American League East rivals.
The all-star first baseman fought off four straight curveballs before hammering a 92.9-m.p.h. fastball from David Robertson over the wall in left-centre. You won’t see many at-bats more professional than that one, and it left a crowd of 29,091 electrified.
“He snuck a cutter right down the middle by me (to make the count 2-2) when I was pretty much all-in on an off-speed pitch,” said Smoak, who matched a career high with six RBIs. “Once I battled, got it to 3-2, I fouled a couple more curveballs off and in the back of my mind I had a feeling he might try to sneak a cutter by me again, just because I was able to battle those curveballs off.
“I was able to get to it.”
The victory, closed out by Seung-hwan Oh after Roberto Osuna pitched on consecutive days, pushed the Blue Jays to the .500 mark, a mark they didn’t touch once all of 2017, and came after a wild eighth frame.
Aledmys Diaz’s first hit of the season, a one-out double, left men at second and third for Devon Travis, who promptly hit a comebacker to the mound for the second out. Rookie Yankees manager Aaron Boone, in his first decision that will be ruthlessly second-guessed, walked Josh Donaldson intentionally to load the bases for Smoak, who had been 0-for-5 with a walk and four strikeouts versus Robertson.
“Just seeing that battle was incredible, watching Smoak just be able to foul them off, foul them off,” said reliever John Axford, who threw a scoreless seventh. “In the back of his head he still saw that one four-seam with the slight cut that he throws. I wasn’t even anticipating that (pitch) coming at some point after all those breaking balls. Obviously (Smoak) he must have been anticipating that, but the adjustment a hitter can make in that spot is pretty incredible.”
The Blue Jays scored nine of their 15 runs in the series on five home runs, the first three of which were all solo shots.
[snippet id=3918627]
They need to score every which way to keep pace with the Yankees, who have so much instant offence up and down the lineup that even when Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton don’t bludgeon opponents into submission, simply navigating through the twin titans can soften up pitchers for the mashers further down the order.
“The key to our team is getting that offence rolling and we’re very capable,” said Blue Jays manager John Gibbons. “There are nights when you have to slug it out – that’s what we did today. It’s a long season, six months, but it’s always important to get off to a good start.”
The Yankees thought they had that in hand when the second time through the lineup Sunday, in the third inning, Marcus Stroman issued a two-out walk to Stanton. Didi Gregorius then doubled him in, Neil Walker stayed on a slider long enough to shoot it through the left side and Brandon Drury caught a hanging slider and slammed it over the wall in centre field.
Very innocently, an inning unravelled quickly, a 1-0 lead turning into a 4-1 deficit, but Stroman, pushed back a few days by shoulder soreness, recovered and ended up striking out eight over five innings, allowing three hits and three walks.
“I’m really happy with how my arm has progressed, I feel really strong, my stuff is where it needs to be,” said Stroman. “I just made bad pitches in certain counts. As I progress I’m a little better with the location of some of those pitches, 0-2, 1-2, especially up in counts. I’m not worried about it. …
“I got a little too excited in the moment, 0-2, 1-2, those were pretty bad pitches I threw,” he added later. “When you do that in those counts you get hurt. The 0-2 to Drury, I went back and looked at film, it’s probably one of the worst sliders I’ve ever thrown in my life, just kind of cast it out. That’s something I’ll hit on going forward.”
[snippet id=3305549]
The Blue Jays had plenty of chances both before and after against a gettable Sonny Gray.
In the first, Travis led off with a walk and took third on a Donaldson base hit. But Gray rallied to strike out Smoak, Yangervis Solarte and Curtis Granderson to escape the jam unscathed, and it’s the inability to get any contact whatsoever with less than two outs that’s troubling.
Next up was the second inning, when with men on first and second and one out, Gift Ngoepe pushed a ball through the right side and third base coach Luis Rivera made an aggressive send of Russell Martin as Judge collected the ball in right field.
Martin was out comfortably at home and while taking chances makes sense – the way Kevin Pillar did in stealing with two outs and Ngoepe at the plate with two strikes Saturday – in this case the Blue Jays would have had the bases loaded for Travis and Donaldson.
Travis proceeded to sneak a single through to right to open the scoring, but a chance at a bigger inning had been taken away. Donaldson grounded out sharply to end the frame.
The Blue Jays again didn’t execute with a runner at third and less than two outs the next inning, as Randal Grichuk struck out before Martin hit into a fielder’s choice to end the threat.
“I feel like I let us down in the first inning,” said Smoak. “To come up there with another opportunity, you want to capitalize on that.”
Smoak did, and as he showed, power can often cure all, giving the Blue Jays a heartening start to the 2018 season.
[relatedlinks]
