BOSTON — Toronto Blue Jays closer Ken Giles had a pretty good idea he was going to pitch in Saturday’s game. His manager, Charlie Montoyo, was navigating the day without a starting pitcher, and with only five relievers who hadn’t carried a substantial workload in recent days. Giles was one of those five.
But he might not have been expecting to pitch in the kind of leverage he ultimately faced, as he entered the game in the bottom of the ninth with his team ahead by two. The Blue Jays had fallen behind against the Boston Red Sox, 6-0, after only three innings. And they didn’t claw their way back into the game and earn a lead until the seventh and eighth.
So, as a closer, how do you flip the switch so quickly? When your team stages such a dramatic late-game comeback, how do you go from preparing to simply get some work in during a blowout to preparing to protect a slim lead? Well, you don’t. You stay prepared for it all.
“I try to stay as loose as possible. I’m always ready for any kind of situation, for any game,” Giles said, after picking up his 12th save of the season in Toronto’s 8-7 victory. “Even if we’re down by 10 or whatever, however many runs, I always believe in my guys — we’ll come back and grind out.”
That’s exactly what the Blue Jays did Saturday, working long, annoying plate appearances against Boston’s bullpen to turn what had all the hallmarks of another lopsided loss in a season full of them on its head. Toronto had only four hits through the first six innings, all of them singles. And when Teoscar Hernandez led off the seventh with an infield pop-up, he became the ninth-consecutive Blue Jay to be retired. Toronto was down five, and no one would have been shocked to see them pack it in and try again on Sunday.
But Cavan Biggio followed Hernandez with a single, before Freddy Galvis and Rowdy Tellez hit back-to-back homers. And things continued from there. Luke Maile walked in a seven-pitch plate appearance. Eric Sogard was called out on strikes, but Vladimir Guerrero Jr. followed with a single at the end of an eight-pitch at-bat, pushing Maile to third. A wild pitch allowed Maile to score, pulling the Blue Jays within one.
And leading off the eighth, Randal Grichuk saw eight pitches before being called out on strikes, Hernandez saw five while collecting a base hit, and Biggio saw eight more before a single of his own cashed Hernandez, who had advanced to second on a wild pitch. Tellez, Billy McKinney, and Guerrero all came up with plate appearances of six pitches of more in the inning, as Toronto wore down Boston’s relief pitching. Ultimately, the go-ahead runs were scored on walks by Sogard and Guerrero.
In all, the Blue Jays saw 87 pitches in the seventh and eighth innings alone, a remarkable number, bringing 17 batters to the plate and scoring seven of them. Boston relievers Mike Shawaryn, Marcus Walden, Matt Barnes, and Ryan Brasier struggling with their command certainly helped. But the Blue Jays did their part, featuring a patient, disciplined plate approach up and down the lineup.
As he watched it unfold from the dugout, Montoyo was already thinking about how he was going to praise his hitters after the game, whether they managed to come back and win it or not.
“Right before we tied the game, I was already thinking that I was going to tell you guys that we don’t quit. And you’ve seen it. We always battle back,” Montoyo said. “Sometimes we don’t win the games. But we never quit. And today was another example of that.
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“Everybody had great at-bats. McKinney when he pinch hit. Biggio had a great game. I think everybody grinded out the at-bats pretty good there at the end. It was outstanding. Because, honestly, it’s against good pitching.”
The Blue Jays got some good pitching themselves, as Nick Kingham, Daniel Hudson, and Giles all pitched strong, high-leverage innings late against a dangerous lineup. Giles was the only one of the three to allow a hit, on a sky-high pop-up to shallow left field that fell between Galvis and Lourdes Gurriel Jr., going for a ground-rule double.
That pop-up should have ended the game. But Giles rallied and came back to strike out J.D. Martinez with a 98-m.p.h. elevated fastball to earn the final out, his third strikeout of the inning. It was a fitting way to end an evening in which the Blue Jays fought for every out on one side of the ball, and every baserunner on the other.
“I just trust in my guys. I know we have the talent to come back and win every game. It’s just a matter of everyone making their adjustments throughout the game,” Giles said. “We were patient and we were being selective, and we were grinding it out. We were just trying to make them pitch more than they have to and then it worked out for us in the end.”
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For Giles, it was his second appearance since returning from a bout of elbow inflammation that sent him to the 10-day IL. His ERA may have taken a slight hit, going from an unbelievable 1.04 to a still unbelievable 1.33, as he allowed a run for the first time in 18 outings. But his K/9 didn’t, climbing from 15.2 to 15.7, as he’s now struck out 44 per cent of the batters he’s faced this season.
It’s been a remarkable one for Giles, who’s put up some of the best numbers of any reliever in the game. But the most important thing for him is feeling healthy and strong after the hard-thrower suffered the elbow scare following back-to-back outings earlier this month
“Rest always helps. No matter what the situation is. Arm’s feeling great. Just felt like I could’ve thrown a bit better sliders today. But, you know what, I worked with what I got, and I made it work,” Giles said. “I’ve just got to be smart with [my elbow.] If I feel like I need to do some extra work in between outings, I’ll do that. But, overall, I’ve just got to make sure that I don’t overdo or do too much work in between. Because that’s when fatigue and everything else factors in.”
In a Blue Jays season with more moral victories than actual ones, Saturday’s triumph over the Red Sox qualified as both. Down five runs going into the seventh, on a day that the club was piecing together innings with a beleaguered pitching staff, it would have been awfully easy to pack it in. But the Blue Jays didn’t. And Giles, who was staying ready just in case, was rewarded with an opportunity.
“It’s easy to just give in after that. Just because sometimes our bats are lighting it up, sometimes they’re not, sometimes they’re in between. We know how it is,” Giles said. “But, you know what, you can’t let that drag you down. It was early enough for us to realize that we’ve got time to be selective and make our adjustments throughout the game. And then everyone offensively did that perfectly today.”
