Jays victory sets up Wednesday showdown
Early runs, head-scratching pitching moves, make for a captivating Game 4 victory
Toronto’s Josh Donaldson and Jose Bautista celebrate their 8-4 win against the Rangers in Texas in game four of the American League Division Series on Monday. Wednesday’s game in Toronto will determine the winner.
The scene was staged, as in a political campaign, only this was about the politics of a baseball game. So the two pitchers, both Tennesseans and both 2010 Cy Young Award winners, walked into the post-game media session together, sat side-by-side and talked about fidelity to a cause bigger than themselves.
Some of it was well-scripted, which is not to say insincere. Occasionally, emotions emerged. There were plenty of emotions beneath the surface.
A few minutes earlier, Blue Jays manager John Gibbons manager had been blunt: in the fifth inning of Game 4 of the American League Division Series, he worried that R.A. Dickey might stumble and let the Texas Rangers back into the game.
The Jays’ revived offence had struck early, generating a six-run lead. Dickey had two outs and a runner on first. He was one out away from qualifying for a win.
Gibbons saw a rally waiting to happen. So he took out Dickey and brought in David Price.
It did not work out exactly as Gibbons projected, but it worked out. Price got the last out of that inning, and later gave up three runs, but the Jays won 8-4. And now the ALDS is tied 2-2, to be decided in a onegame playoff at the Rogers Centre at 4:07 p.m. on Wednesday.
Dickey wanted to stay in Game 4. He had thrown only 78 pitches, allowed five hits and a run, and walked none. Price, the amazing ace of August and September after a celebrated deadline trade, had envisioned starting Game 5 with the series on the line.
Instead, the pitcher the Jays prefer for that job, 24-year-old Marcus Stroman, will get the ball. Stroman has pitched better than Price in recent starts. That’s one reason why Price was a long reliever in Game 4, and after throwing 50 pitches, why Gibbons says the league’s ERA leader will be unavailable Wednesday, even though Price says he will be.
In the media session, Dickey balanced his sentiments on the head of a pin.
“No competitor would or should want to come out of a game like that, OK?” he said. “So everybody understands that. Gibby’s the manager and when he says go, I’m an employee … Sometimes you don’t necessarily like what your boss wants you to do, but I respect him.
“And at the end of the day when you look over your shoulder and you’ve got a guy like this” — he nodded toward Price — “coming in behind you, it makes it a whole lot easier to give the ball to Gibby.
“So am I disappointed? Sure, I think any competitor should be. But at the end of the day, I’ve said this before and I mean it, it’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t care who gets the credit. And we won today, and so we’re going back to Toronto with a chance.” The Blue Jays’ offence, which began to stir in Game 3, erupted early in Game 4. Josh Donaldson, Chris Colabello and Kevin Pillar hit homers. Pil- lar eventually got three hits and drove in three runs. Texas pressured Price, but it was an impressive win, a familiar sort of win for a team that in the first two games had behaved in unfamiliar fashion.
With all that, Gibbons knew what the first question would be when he met the media afterward, and he was prepared.
“It wasn’t an easy decision,” he said. “It was hard for me to do, but I thought that was the best way to win the game, keep them from coming back … A team win, that’s what I was looking for.”
He said he knew some would criticize the decision. But he did not want Dickey to face ShinSoo Choo, a left-handed batter who already had two hits. Price was his only lefty in the bullpen because Aaron Loup had to leave the team to attend to a family matter. There was a runner on first. Gibbons had seen what the Royals did in the late innings against Houston earlier in the day, and he was determined not to let the same thing happen to his club.
“I care as much as anybody about individual accomplishments, whether it’s a save or a win or home run, whatever it is,” Gibbons said. “When it comes down to it, my job is to manage the team and try to win the game.”
He added, in a thinly veiled reference to Dickey, that it was “probably not a relationshipbuilding move, but a team win.” Later, when asked about that relationship reference, he said it was sarcasm, in case anyone had missed the point earlier.
Price retired Choo on a long fly ball to end the inning. He did not pitch particularly well after that and had to leave in the eighth inning after Texas scored twice.
“(Dickey) threw the ball fantastic,” Price said. “I wish the scorekeeper would just give him a win because he’s the guy that deserves it, not me.” Dickey and Price are Nashville natives and have the same agent. Each won a Cy Young award in the same year. Dickey, who’s always talking about narrative, knows a good story line when he sees one.
“Has there ever been a game where one Cy Young has handed the ball to another one? “he wondered.
And Price offered his own take on a narrative that every Blue Jays player has offered up at one time or another in the past few months.
“This is a pretty selfless team,” he said, “and whenever you’re a part of something like this where 25 guys on that active roster and everybody else in that clubhouse has one common goal, that’s special. You don’t get that a lot.
“There’s always always somebody that cares more about what they do than what the team does. That’s not the case here, and we have our fair share of big-name guys. We want to win and that’s the bottom line every day.”
Gibbons insisted Price is done for this series. But in keeping with the narrative, Price said simply: “I’ ll be ready, you know? Whatever they need me to do.”