ARLINGTON, Texas — In this furious era, when all the world’s information resides in your front pocket, and events that would have shook the planet decades ago are scrolled away with the flick of a thumb, a little perspective can be difficult to come by.
Baseball wasn’t meant for a world like this — one that demands instantaneous analysis, explanations, results as events transpire. Baseball takes time to play out. It needs days, weeks, months before anything that’s happening makes much sense. Slumps, streaks, skids, surges, they all play out slowly and average out in the end. When every day’s tree is scrutinized to death, it’s easy to lose sight of the forest.
So, if Toronto manager John Gibbons, or his coaching staff, or the 25 players in his clubhouse, or the untold droves of Blue Jays fans across Canada and the rest of the world, were looking for instant validation of the club’s new-look lineup, an immediate sign that this shakeup was the answer to the team’s month-long difficulty scoring runs, it was a good bet that weren’t going to get it. That’s not how baseball works.
Except when it does. Like on Wednesday night, a mild one in Texas, when the Blue Jays waited all of 10 minutes to blitzkrieg the Texas Rangers in a rollicking first inning that set the stage for a 7-5 Blue Jays win.
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Sweeping changes don’t often yield results this good this soon. But when new Blue Jays leadoff hitter Jose Bautista drew a walk to open the game, you got the sense something was brewing. He moved to second on an errant pickoff throw, third on a Dwight Smith Jr. groundout, and across home plate when new cleanup hitter Justin Smoak served a single into right field. It was all going according to plan.
And then they really poured it on. Kendrys Morales singled, Steve Pearce doubled, and Ryan Goins doubled to the wall in left-centre, giving the Blue Jays an imposing lead before the batters’ box chalk had even been disturbed.
That brought up No. 8 hitter Darwin Barney, who worked a full count before hooking a fastball around the left field foul pole for a two-run shot that gave the Blue Jays a half-dozen. Balls of a similar exit velocity (88.6-mph), launch angle (35 degrees), and distance (337-feet) have resulted in outs 96 per cent of the time this year. But all that matters is that the box score will forever read home run.
“I’m used to those ones turning foul for me,” Barney said. “I’ve hit a couple of those that have just kind of ran that way. I know I clipped it, got a little bit of backspin on it. But the ball’s flying a little bit here. It’s getting warm out there. So, I was happy to extend that lead for us today.”
All six of those first inning runs were driven in with two out as the Blue Jays strung together five consecutive hits and gave starter Joe Biagini all the breathing room he should need.
Of course, it won’t always be like this. It isn’t 2015. And a truly disastrous outing from Rangers starter Tyson Ross contributed, as the right-hander alternated between throwing his pitches either well off the plate or right over the heart of it.
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But when you rework your lineup as dramatically as the Blue Jays did Wednesday, rolling out an entirely new top five that the club hopes will shake it out of its offensive slump, you can’t ask for more immediate results than that.
Biagini certainly couldn’t ask for more, as he took the mound for the first time with a six-run cushion. He walked the first batter he faced, Shin-Soo Choo, before settling in and retiring his next half dozen to cruise into the third inning. The Blue Jays added a seventh run in the top of the third, as Smoak led off with a double, moved to third on a Pearce single, and scored on a Ryan Goins groundout.
And that was a good thing, because the Rangers weren’t rolling over. Joey Gallo drove a 2-1 Biagini fastball into left-centre field to open the bottom half of the third, before Choo worked a 2-0 count and got a Biagini fastball up and over the plate that he crushed 420-feet beyond the right-centre field wall for a two-run shot.
Another Rangers run came in the fifth, when Gallo lifted a fly ball to deep left field that Steve Pearce badly misplayed, crashing hard into the wall and struggling to pick himself up as Gallo rounded the bases. Josh Donaldson ended up fielding the ball, sprinting 182-feet from third base. But his effort was in vain, as Gallo coasted into home with an inside-the-park home run.
Pearce suffered a right knee contusion on the play and left the game. X-rays were negative and he’s being treated as day-to-day.
“I couldn’t see it,” Pearce said. “When it went up, I looked back to find the wall, and when I looked back up to find the ball again I had no idea where it was. So, I had to rush back there and try to time the catch. And I hit right in between two pads right into something pretty hard.”
Biagini pitched into the sixth when, with two out, he gave up a weakly-hit first-pitch single to Mike Napoli. That brought Gibbons out of the dugout to summon the left-handed pitching Aaron Loup to face the left-handed hitting Gallo, who already had two extra-base hits in the game.
Well, that didn’t work out, as Gallo smoked the third pitch he saw off the wall in right, hitting his second double of the night and putting two runners into scoring position. Gibbons re-emerged to bring in Danny Barnes, whose first pitch, a fastball up in the zone, was laced into left field by Delino DeShields to cash both.
But Barnes got out of it, returning to pitch a clean seventh before giving way to Ryan Tepera, who worked a perfect eighth. Roberto Osuna came on for the ninth, and, as he does, finished off the night.
So, a pretty successful night all around. For the Blue Jays bullpen, for the club’s new batting order, and for Biagini, who was coming off of the worst start of his major-league career last weekend, when he lasted only an inning against the Chicago White Sox. Biagini battled his mechanics in that outing, but was able to mostly correct the issue in between starts.
“I felt like I wasn’t totally on tonight, but I moved in that direction, which was good. I think that’s all you can ask for,” Biagini said. “I was just looking forward to another opportunity to keep my team in the juego, which is Spanish for game. It’s spelled J-U-E-G-O. The J is silent.”
