TORONTO – Ubaldo Jimenez took the mound at Rogers Centre Thursday aware that the last pitch he had thrown against the Toronto Blue Jays caught too much of the plate.
At 91 m.p.h. it wasn’t going to overpower most big leaguers, least of all Edwin Encarnacion. He hammered it, raised his arms in celebration and watched. By the time it landed in the second deck at Rogers Centre, the Baltimore Orioles’ 2016 season had ended.
Half a season later, Jimenez returned to Toronto in Baltimore’s beleaguered rotation, but if Blue Jays hitters looked at Jimenez’s 7.26 ERA before Thursday’s start and thought an easy matchup awaited, they were mistaken. The 33-year-old held the Blue Jays to just two hits in eight innings en route to a 2-0 Orioles win.
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“That’s the best game I’ve seen him pitch,” Orioles manager Buck Showalter said.
“Flat-out dominant,” added catcher Caleb Joseph.
Jimenez struck out eight while walking just one on the way to his best start of the season. Joseph compared the experience of catching Jimenez to playing a video game character with both power and accuracy turned up to max.
“It was like the perfect, magic touch on the power and location,” Joseph said. “You hit the buttons and it just shows up there. It’s freaking amazing.”
“It’s what you dream about when you’re young,” Joseph added. “Boy, I tell you. It makes you giddy out there.”
Jimenez acknowledged that his pitches were electric, maybe even as sharp as the stuff he had in 2010, when he threw a no-hitter for the Colorado Rockies. But the right-hander didn’t seem to take any particular pleasure in exacting some revenge on the club that ended his 2016 season. He said the Encarnacion home run wasn’t a motivating factor for him Thursday.
“Not at all,” he said. “I’ve had some good games against Toronto. I’ve had bad games, too. That stays in the past. I never think about those games — there’s nothing you can do.”
J.A. Happ was sharp for the Blue Jays, pitching 6.1 innings while striking out two. The left-hander’s enjoying his best stretch of the season to date, with quality starts in four consecutive outings.
Happ had some help from Kevin Pillar, who made a spectacular catch to begin the top of the seventh inning. Ruben Tejada hit a fly ball to deep right-centre field, sending Pillar toward the video board. Running at a full sprint, Pillar reached up and made the catch before crashing into the wall with a sound that could be heard throughout the ballpark, even on a night with 37,291 fans in attendance.
“That was incredible,” Happ said. “Just no regard for his body at all, you know? You almost get used to that but it’s fun, that’s for sure.”
The Blue Jays bullpen delivered after Happ exited in the seventh inning. Dominic Leone struck out a pair in his 1.2 scoreless innings, and Ryan Tepera followed with a 1-2-3 eighth.
Meanwhile, Blue Jays hitters didn’t do enough — an all-too common occurrence for a club that ranked 26th among the 30 MLB teams in runs scored entering play Thursday. Jimenez was sharp, to his credit, but the Blue Jays managed just five runs all series against an Orioles team that lately has had all kinds of trouble preventing them. If the Blue Jays are going to compete for the post-season they’ll need more offence.
Beyond doubles from Ryan Goins and Pillar and a Russell Martin single, the Blue Jays were hitless Thursday.
“You go into this game thinking Ubaldo Jimenez is statistically the worst pitcher in baseball and he comes out and throws the way he does,” Pillar said. “That’s what makes this game so tough. You can’t necessarily play the game according to the numbers. That’s a big-league pitcher out there who’s had a lot of success in his career.”
With the loss, Blue Jays begin a crucial stretch in disappointing fashion and fall to 37-41. It doesn’t get any easier from here with the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees and Houston Astros on the schedule before the all-star break.
The Blue Jays would love to find themselves playing in another wild-card game this fall. To get that far, they have to win another 50 games or so — no small feat for a club now playing below its potential.
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