TORONTO – The ferocity with which the Toronto Blue Jays and Texas Rangers played, so hot that the field of play turned into a tinderbox, was exhilarating and exhausting.
There were pitches to live and die on for 14 innings over nearly five hours, and sustaining that high a level of intensity, one that drove the benches to clear in the 13th inning when Josh Donaldson and Keone Kela exchanged the kind of words that gets kids’ mouths washed out with soap, made for spectacular theatre.
That’s of cold comfort for the Blue Jays, who are facing a 2-0 deficit as the best-of-five American League Division Series shifts to Arlington after Friday’s gutting 6-4 loss, settled when Hanser Alberto’s go-ahead single followed a potential inning-ending out at second base they didn’t get on replay.
“I would like to hear an answer from the replay booth in New York on why they made the decision,” said Blue Jays right fielder Jose Bautista. “I know that’s not part of the protocol, and it seems pretty convenient that it’s not. Will we ever get an answer? Will our fans ever get an answer? I don’t know.”
So suddenly, after battling both the Rangers and their rage at umpire Vic Carapazza’s strike zone, the Blue Jays are in win-or-die mode, having let a 4-3 lead in the eighth inning and several quality chances to score slip away.
Oh and Brett Cecil left the game with a tear in his left calf that manager John Gibbons described as significant. Brace yourselves kids – only five times have teams erased 2-0 deficits in the division series, most recently the San Francisco Giants in 2012.
“This is an uphill battle. It’s been done before,” said Russell Martin, who repeatedly pressed his team’s case about the strike zone with Carapazza both at and behind the plate. “I told the guys, we just need to get on that 11-game winning streak and we’ll be fine. We’ve done it before. It’s a good time to start when we get to Texas. But it’s really one game at a time. This is already over with. And we understand, you’ve got to win three. But you can’t win three in one day, so you’ve got to win that first one.”
Marco Estrada will be charged with holding the Rangers down in Game 3 on Sunday night, but an offence that hasn’t delivered the types of big blows the Blue Jays are accustomed to can help by setting the tone against Martin Perez with the season on the line.
“I’m taking it the same way as I would any other game,” said Estrada. “We’ve got to win regardless.”
Tensions nearly boiled over in the 13th when Donaldson got in front of a Kela offering and hooked it just foul over the wall in left. Kela stepped toward the batter’s box, broadcast cameras captured Donaldson mouthing some four letters words not used in polite company and the benches quickly cleared.
“We made eye contact and exchanged a few words, and he didn’t back down and I didn’t back down,” said Donaldson, who when asked what sparked things, replied: “It was a couple things, but we’ll just leave it at that.”
Donaldson, too amped up afterwards, struck out on a bouncer in the dirt, Kela chirped him and Bautista followed with a walk, staring at the mound, and then discussed the matter aggressively with Mike Napoli at first base. Edwin Encarnacion flew out to the wall in centre ending the inning, and the Rangers rally in the 14th off LaTroy Hawkins followed.
“Well, after he’s coming after Josh, I’m not going to let Josh just stand out there with nine other guys on the other team just defenceless, you know?” Bautista said. “You can ask (Kela) what he did. He’s a grown man – he should man up.”
Kela wasn’t available to media in the Rangers clubhouse.
“The intensity of these games and the magnitude of these games, there are competitors that run at a high level and things happen,” said Rangers manager Jeff Banister. “After the leadership of the group of players on the field walked over and calmed Keone down and got him refocused, he was completely in control of himself.”
Banister also praised his team for controlling itself when it came it to Carapazza’s strike zone – “That’s the thing that we challenge our guys to do, is to stay in the moment, stay focused and don’t get caught up into anything,” he said – while the Blue Jays became visibly frustrated on multiple occasions.
Uncharacteristically, when he struck out in the 14th inning, even Troy Tulowitzki barked at the umpire.
“If it was a regular season game, there’s a pretty good chance I’m getting thrown out of that game,” said Martin. “But, you know, circumstances, got to stay in the game. I tried to talk to him. Sometimes umpires just have a hard time seeing the ball, and getting a feel for it. And then we looked like we had some questionable calls against our own hitters. It’s definitely frustrating but we had tons of opportunities to win that game. We didn’t come through. You can’t really blame the umpire.”
Said Kevin Pillar: “Whether [the strike zone] is big or small, all anyone in this clubhouse asks for is consistency. … You can’t give up, down, all around. You got to pick a side or up down, but it can’t change. Hitting is extremely difficult as it is. When the plate starts expanding it makes it even more difficult. If they want the zone bigger, make the plate better.”
The messy end came after a messy start for the Blue Jays, who needed a brilliant, unassisted double play from Chris Colabello to end a two-run first inning just when things could really have gone off the rails.
That helped settle down Marcus Stroman, who also couldn’t figure out Carapazza, and the rest of the team, with Donaldson’s electrifying solo shot in the first, Russell Martin’s RBI double in the second and Ben Revere’s go-ahead RBI single in the fifth building a 4-3 edge.
Stroman, making his post-season debut, delivered seven strong innings of work, leaving after Delino DeShields’ bloop leadoff single in the eighth, but was erratic early.
DeShields opened the game with a liner to the wall in right that Bautista had in his glove but popped out when he slammed into the fence, Shin-Soo Choo’s base hit cashed him in, a Prince Fielder chopper up the middle skipped over Ryan Goins at second to put men on the corners, and Mitch Moreland hit a grounder to first that Colabello fielded and relayed home to hang up Choo, but Martin’s throw tailed past Donaldson at third, putting the Rangers up 2-0.
After an Elvis Andrus groundout to first, Colabello proceeded to field Josh Hamilton’s chopper, freezing Prince Fielder between home and third, tagging the runner at first before charging across the diamond to run down the burly slugger and get his team back in the dugout.
“As soon as I came up I looked (to Fielder) right away and was able to freeze him,” said Colabello, who remembers pulling off the same play in 2012 spring training with the Twins. “I wanted to keep him in front of me so the whole time I was moving forward to try and tag Hamilton. The priority at that time was keep the runner from scoring. We were able to get two on it.”
Donaldson, back in the lineup after leaving Game 1 having taken Rougned Odor’s knee in the head breaking up a double play, electrified the crowd by pummelling a 3-2 Cole Hamels fastball over the wall in centre field, and after Odor used a clever slide to score on Alberto’s sacrifice fly in the second, the Blue Jays knotted things up in the bottom half on Martin’s RBI single and Pillar’s double play ball, which allowed Colabello to score.
“I felt fine,” said Donaldson. “Especially once the game got started I felt pretty good. I was able to give everything I had today. … It’s never fun, but at the same time, you’ve got to grind it out for your teammates, and that’s what I tried to do.”
Things stayed there until the fifth when Pillar opened the inning with a double, moved to third on a Goins sacrifice bunt and scored on Revere’s single through a drawn-in infield.
But the Rangers tied things up in the eighth when DeShields opened the inning with a single, took second on Choo’s bunt against Cecil, and after a Fielder strikeout, pinch-hitter Napoli poked a game-tying single to right. He had been 2-for-17 versus Cecil, who sounds lost for the rest of the series, if not the season.
Aaron Loup, the club’s only other lefty, steps into the void after getting Hamilton on a fly ball to strand a pair in the 11th, and will see more high leverage spots now.
“He’s going to have to,” said Gibbons. “We’ve got our back against the wall anyway, but they can run so many good left-handed hitters out there, you’re naked if he doesn’t come through for us. He deserves a shot. He’s been a big reliever around here for a couple years, this year was kind of an up-and-down year, he kind of got lost in the shuffle, but perfect opportunity to kind of bounce back.”
That counts for the Blue Jays as a whole, too.
“We had plenty of chances,” said Bautista. “They made good pitches, they got us out. We’ve just got to get it done with men on base and we’ve got to shore up our defence. We made a few errors in those first two games which is not typical for us. We’ve lost those games, not anybody else for us. Have they been the easiest games to play? Perhaps not. But we could’ve won if we played better.
“It’s a short series. We knew what we were getting into. They played better. You’ve still got to win three to advance, so we’re still in the same position.”
Only now, their margin for error is gone, and their first trip to the post-season since 1993, is teetering on the brink.