Jimenez silences Jays’ hitters
Toronto can only muster 3 hits against righty
This trip to the Rogers Centre went quite a bit better for Ubaldo Jimenez.
Back in October, the righthander surrendered Edwin Encarnacion’s winner- takeall wild card game deciding three- run blast on his first pitch.
On Thursday night, Jimenez, he of the 2-3 record and ugly 7.26 ERA heading in, shut down the Toronto attack in a 2- 0 Orioles victory, surrendering only two hits in eight innings.
Jimenez had complete control of his pitches, rarely getting behind batters and that helped him exorcise the bad memory from eight months earlier at least to some degree. He has actually handled the Jays pretty well in the past, aside from his unfortunate moment against Encarnacion and other issues with the long- ball ( the 13 homers surrendered to Toronto batters were his second-most against any opponent).
He had shut them out for 6 2/ 3 and seven innings in starts since 2015. But when Jimenez has his command ( he only walked one batter, while striking out eight) and isn’t giving up hard- hit balls, he can still resemble the young fire- baller who starred for Colorado years ago.
Toronto’s pitchers are on quite a run — this was the fifth game in a row opponents were held to three or fewer runs, the first time that has happened in several seasons — but without the batters producing, the team has only won twice in that span.
The two hits would have been Toronto’s fewest since Sept. 14 and May 24, 2016.
J. A. Happ was bailed out by his defence at times, but was still good enough to deserve a better fate, giving up only a pair of runs and eight hits in his 6.1 innings, with two walks and a pair of strikeouts.
Happ, a 20- game winner in 2016, dropped to 2-5. Last year, the Jays averaged 6.88 runs per nine innings when Happ took the mound. This year, it’s was just 3.83 — before Thursday’s shutout.
Baltimore had opened the scoring in the top of the third, when Jonathan Schoop plated Ruben Tejada on a sacrifice fly.
Toronto didn’t even manage a single hit until the bottom of that frame, when number nine hitter Ryan Goins laced a ground- rule double to centre field with two outs. Then the bats went quiet again.
Schoop led- off the sixth with a shot that he tried to stretch out into a double, but Ezequiel Carrera made a perfect throw to get him at second.
Later, Mark Trumbo blasted a ball right to the wall in right field. For a moment it looked like it would leave the park, before it landed in the glove of Jose Bautista.
Caleb Johnson, a l ate addition to Baltimore’s lineup due to an injury, knocked in a run later in the inning.
Perhaps the lone highlight for the 37,000 and change on hand, came when Kevin Pillar made his first spectacular catch in some time, a brilliant running grab in the seventh off of the bat of Ruben Tejada.
Pillar extended his arm to barely haul in the ball, just before smashing into the wall in right-centre with crushing force.
The crowd gasped once for the collision and the noise it made, then again when they realized what they had just seen.
An i nning l at e r, Pil - lar lined a two- out double. Again, the Jays could not capitalize.
Russell Martin added a single in the ninth, but got no farther.