Estrada extends Blue Jays’ lifeline
TORONTO — The Toronto Blue Jays have nine players on their roster who have been major-league All-Stars. They have two who have won Cy Young awards.
Marco Estrada has been neither in his eight-year MLB career. And yet, it is Estrada who has now saved Toronto’s season. Twice.
Once again he got some help from his all-star teammates in doing it. The 7-1 win in Wednesday’s Game 5 cut the Kansas City Royals’ lead to 3-2 in the American League Championship Series heading back to Kansas City on Friday.
Estrada, the 32-year-old who before this season had never won more than seven games in a year and had thrown more than 150 innings just once, did what David Price and R.A. Dickey, the former Cy Young winners, could not on Wednesday. He shut down the Royals, and with ease.
Through seven innings, Estrada gave up just one hit and one walk, facing just one batter over the minimum during that span. A Salvador Perez solo home run in the eighth was the only blemish on his record, but by that point, the outcome of the must-win game was all but decided.
“It’s the same thing he did for us last time,” Jays first baseman Chris Colabello said, referring to Estrada’s performance in a mustwin Game 3 against the Texas Rangers in the ALDS. “You can’t ask for more than that.”
The Blue Jays, having blown through their bullpen so completely in Tuesday’s 14-2 loss that they needed infielder Cliff Pennington to close it out, didn’t just need Estrada to pitch well, they needed him to pitch deep. He had all the breathing room of a sealed coffin. If he had any wobbles, manager John Gibbons would be forced to get multiple innings from Aaron Sanchez and Roberto Osuna, to say nothing of relief work from Price or Dickey.
Those scenarios would be almost as worrisome as a loss itself. Had they managed to win under those circumstances, the Blue Jays would have two more must-win games in Kansas City with a staff consisting entirely of pitchers who were either tired or had been previously shelled by the Royals. And Marcus Stroman.
Instead, Estrada’s work sends the series back to Missouri with the Blue Jays facing only the difficult task of needing two straight wins, instead of the well-nighimpossible task of securing those victories with a bullpen held together with bubble gum and bailing wire. Price will start Game 6 but wouldn’t have been available if called upon in Game 5.
“Can’t say enough about this guy,” shortstop Troy Tulowitzki said on the podium after the game, motioning to Estrada sitting next to him. “That was the start we needed.”
Tulowitzki provided the game’s key swing, a bases-loaded double in the sixth inning that turned a tight 2-0 lead into 5-0 that felt suddenly in the bag, even with the Royals’ well-earned reputation for cockroach-like resilience. It was the third time in these playoffs that Tulowitzki provided a three-run hit in a game that Toronto had to have. After a quiet last two months of the season, he’s nearing Paul Molitor’s club record for RBIs in a post-season. Molitor had 13 in the Jays’ successful 1993 run. Tulowitzki now has 11 in nine post-season games.
The Blue Jays said they were confident even after Tuesday night’s disaster, and then they went and played like it.
“It’s business as usual,” Gibbons said before Game 5. “Everybody knows what situation we’re in. I really don’t worry about this group. I don’t care what time of year, no doubt right now is much more important than the regular season, but they come to play.”
It did not hurt that the Jays had already won three straight games while facing elimination in the ALDS against the Texas Rangers.
“Really, the last two months of the season, we caught fire and never looked back,” Gibbons said. “It won’t be easy, but there’s always that possibility.”
Dioner Navarro, the backup catcher who became Estrada’s regular battery-mate early in the season and has guided him through the best stretch of his career, said before the game that he needed to pitch from ahead to keep Royals from making life difficult.
“They’re going to put the ball in play. They don’t strike out much. They’re going to make things happen,” Navarro said. “So I think if he gets ahead and works ahead on the count, he’s not going to make it easy, but is going to give us a better shot of finishing their hitters off.”
Estrada did as instructed, throwing just 64 pitches through six innings and 108 in total, 72 of them strikes. He worked ahead in the count, and never let the Royals get in a position to rally. He was brutally effective.
Asked what it felt like afterward to have suddenly become a star in Toronto, Estrada eschewed such talk. He said it was just a game — a big game, but a game all the same. He was just trying to do his job, just trying to pick up his teammates, and assorted other clichés. He’s not a born storyteller, but the Blue Jays don’t pay him for his repartee. And now, Kansas City awaits. “We have to win two games,” said Tulowitzki, who managed to avoid saying he was taking it one day at a time.
Colabello added his own take on the common wisdom: “You can’t try to win three games in one,” he said.
One down, two to go.