TORONTO – On a day that you play two games and 19 innings, it helps to have some unexpected heroes, and the Toronto Blue Jays got one Tuesday in Luke Maile.
Maile’s bases-loaded single sparked a four-run rally in the bottom of the seventh inning of the nightcap of their doubleheader against the Kansas City Royals. A second bases-loaded single from the defensively-skilled catcher allowed the Blue Jays to walk it off in the 10th for a 5-4 win.
“That’s big for him,” manager John Gibbons said, “Because he does everything great behind the plate and now not only is he getting hits, he’s getting big hits.”
As Russell Martin joked afterwards, “Forget Wally Pipp, you’ve been Luke Maile’d.” More realistically, Martin doesn’t have to worry about losing his starting job the way Pipp did to Lou Gehrig. And afterwards, Maile was sure to place his own success within the broader context of two team wins. Still, those big hits are significant on a personal level.
“I feel like I’ve got a lot of experience behind the plate, but at it in big situations I haven’t got a ton,” Maile said. “It means a lot. You put it in the reservoir for later, I guess [knowing] you’ve had a little success in late innings.”
Under other circumstances, the Blue Jays might even have pinch hit for Maile in the bottom of the seventh, but Martin had already caught nine innings earlier in the afternoon and pinch hitting for Maile would have meant a return to action for him. Instead, Maile delivered with a two-run single to right field and Devon Travis and Steve Pearce followed with RBI singles of their own.
In Game 1, Randal Grichuk was the offensive star. He had been making hard contact leading into Tuesday’s game, but had little to show for it with just three hits in 42 at-bats for a woeful .316 OPS. Quality-of-contact data suggested those numbers were misleading, and Gibbons predicted that a breakout was imminent, but no hitter likes to look up at the scoreboard and see an .071 average.
That trend continued in the second inning Tuesday, when Grichuk sent a ball to the warning track at 105 m.p.h. only to see Paulo Orlando track it down for an out. Three innings later, Grichuk’s luck turned.
He hit a hustle double to spark a three-run rally that gave the Blue Jays the lead in an opening game they’d eventually win 11-3. The following inning, he pulled a ball into the right field seats at 114 m.p.h. for his second homer of the season.
“It’d be an understatement to say he needed that,” Gibbons said. “He’s been pressing big-time, grinding. That’s huge. We got him for a reason. We see a lot of good things in him and we see his talent. He can be a force in baseball.”
Those hits were among the many memorable moments witnessed by the crowd of 18,645 on hand to watch the third doubleheader in Rogers Centre history. The rebuilding Royals wouldn’t be a big draw on a Tuesday in April to begin with, and making matters worse, the area surrounding the CN Tower closed due to concerns about falling ice.
As a result, the stadium was often quiet enough to hear an umpire make a call or the first base coach tell a runner to get back to the bag. It was a good day to be a heckler. That said, the fans showed nothing but appreciation for Ryan Goins when the longtime Blue Jays infielder returned to Rogers Centre for the first time since signing with the Royals over the winter.
“Ryan was always kind of a fan favourite,” Gibbons said of the two ovations Goins received. “A little bit of the underdog. He did some good things for us. He really flashed that leather and they love that defence.”
Offensively the Blue Jays got contributions from up and down the order, as Grichuk, Pearce, Teoscar Hernandez, Yangervis Solarte and Aledmys Diaz all had multi-hit efforts in Game 1. The first of Solarte’s hits was a two-run, first-inning homer that gave the Blue Jays an early lead.
“To have a good year, everybody’s got to contribute,” Gibbons said. “You look, really since the start of the season, different guys are [contributing with] different things.”
Pearce moved from DH to first base in Game 2 and followed up with two more hits from the leadoff spot. Meanwhile, Travis showed signs of emerging from his early-season slump. In his first at-bat of the day, he hit a ball 111.5 m.p.h. for an out, but he later collected three singles, showing no ill effects of the pitch that hit him on the left hand earlier in the afternoon. The Blue Jays were encouraged by what they saw from Travis, especially when combined with Grichuk’s big day.
As Gibbons put it, “A couple of guys coming to life.”
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On the mound, both Blue Jays starters were serviceable but neither was particularly sharp.
In Game 1, Jaime Garcia held the Royals to three runs over five innings on a day he struck out five and walked one. However, Kansas City’s hitters made hard contact consistently, including back-to-back homers from Mike Moustakas and Lucas Duda. The Royals swung and missed at just six of Garcia’s 86 pitches.
Garcia had initially been slated to start Saturday, but three consecutive postponements pushed back the entire rotation. Regardless, the left-hander kept the Blue Jays in the game.
“No excuses,” Garcia said. “It wasn’t my best stuff. I really wasn’t sharp at all, but at the same time it doesn’t take away from my competitiveness and trying to get people out.”
In Game 2, Biagini pitched at the MLB level for the first time this year, completing 5.2 innings while allowing three runs. It was his first start at any level since April 9, when he made his season debut for the Buffalo Bisons.
“It was fun to pitch in the major-leagues,” Biagini said. “And it was fun to see us come back.”
The Toronto bullpen contributed in both games, with Alcides Escobar’s homer against Ryan Tepera the main blemish against the seven Blue Jays relievers who pitched Tuesday. But since John Axford was the lone reliever to pitch multiple innings, Gibbons expects to have enough options available Wednesday.
The bullpen will continue to be tested from top to bottom, as the doubleheader sweep marked the beginning of a 20-day stretch including 21 games for the Blue Jays. It’ll undoubtedly be a grind, but they started off the way they wanted to with two wins on one long and productive day.
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