TORONTO – Over the past few years Kevin Pillar has imperilled his body in all sorts of ways chasing down baseballs for the Toronto Blue Jays. But crashing into the plastic-covered videoboard in right-centre field at Rogers Centre during his latest act of defensive thievery represented new ground.
“As long as I’ve been here, that’s the first time running full speed I’ve made contact with (that part of) the wall,” the centre-fielder said of his seventh-inning grab on Ruben Tejada’s smash in Thursday night’s 2-0 loss to the Baltimore Orioles. “I think I’ve been able to feel around for it and leave my feet a little bit early and land on that Plexiglas, but that was definitely my first time going into it.
“It kind of felt like I was checking someone. Hockey reference, you know? Plexiglas. It was cool.”
Pillar would no doubt do a great job of rattling the boards if you put him in skates on the ice, but on a baseball field without any protective equipment, running at full speed into the least forgiving potion of the outfield fence is far from ideal.
Statcast’s newest baserunning metric puts Pillar’s Sprint Speed – the feet per second covered in his fastest one-second window – at 27.8, and he was surely close to that as he broke to his left to get Tejada’s drive, which left the bat at 97.5 m.p.h. and travelled 387 feet.
Pillar took at least 15 strides before leaping to collect the ball about a foot or two from the wall, sailing right into it with his entire left side, shoulder first. He put his feet out to try and slow his momentum but was too close to the plastic at that point.
“You don’t really prepare for it – at least I don’t,” said Pillar. “I just go out there and do what I do, try to go make a play, live with the results after. That’s kind of how I’ve always been, how I was taught to be, go out there and try to make plays. Usually the guy that’s scared is the one who ends up getting hurt. The guy who is confident and just does what he needs to do, hopefully the wall absorbs some of the contact and you just get up and think about the next one.”
Absorption of contact is a possibility on the padded portions of the outfield fence, but there’s minimal give in the sheets of protective plastic that cover the videoboard portions of the wall in right-centre and left-centre.
That’s why starter J.A. Happ marvelled at Pillar’s disregard for his own safety while manager John Gibbons described the catch as “bold.”
“Kev is pretty good out there, that’s part of his game,” added Gibbons. “He’s not going to back off.”
Especially since Pillar was carrying some frustration from his at-bat in the fifth inning, when with two outs he struck out chasing a splitter in the dirt to strand Ezequiel Carrera at second base.
“You just had an opportunity to tie the game, you don’t have a great at-bat, you missed some pitches to hit, you end up chasing a pitch, and J.A. was throwing so good, you want to go out there and do anything you can to help keep him in the game, keep our team in the game,” said Pillar. “That’s what I was able to do.”
In the end, Pillar’s efforts went for naught, as the Blue Jays couldn’t solve Ubaldo Jimenez and fell to 37-41 this season and 3-9 versus the Orioles. The Boston Red Sox arrive for a three-game set that begins Friday night. A three-game set with the Yankees in New York follows before four games with the Houston Astros close out the first half.
“It’s crucial for us,” Pillar said of getting on a run. “We’re trying to get back to that .500 mark and we understand that if we put ourselves in a position to get the wild card or get back in the AL East race, good things happen around here. We’ve seen it before where they go out and get players to help this team and more so than anything, we just want to feel good going into the all-star break.
“It’s been mostly an up-and-down season, we’ve shown some flashes of being really good but we just haven’t been able to get back to that .500 mark as many times as we’ve gotten close. … My mindset is you know you’re going to have four days off here soon, so go out there and play hard, live in the moment and try to get some wins so we can all go off and get a little bit of rest and feel good about ourselves and feel good about this team.”
And as for that shoulder, after its introduction to the plastic covered portion of the wall?
“I’m good. I’m standing,” Pillar said with a grin. “I’m living, feeling all right.”
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