Fresh start with a new team just might be exactly what new closer Giles needs ... In need of pitching depth, Blue Jays pick up Hauschild ... Pompey suspended
SEATTLE — They can’t take the World Series away from Ken Giles nor can it be denied that at this time last summer he was establishing himself as one of the more clutch pitchers in baseball.
But that doesn’t mean the newest Blue Jay reliever doesn’t have a thing or two he’d like to take back.
The 27-year-old met his new teammates here at the Pacific Northwest’s baseball gem, Safeco Field, anxious to rebuild his reputation both as a teammate and as an elite reliever and confident in his abilities to do both.
“There are dumb things I wish I did better to conceal,” Giles, who came to the Jays in the deal for Roberto
Osuna, acknowledged in the visitors dugout prior to Thursday’s opener of a fourgame series vs. the M’s. “But sometimes the way things were going it was hard to conceal that stuff.
“But you know what? I know I could do better. I know I could learn something and I’m just going to take it in stride and be a better person.”
The most notable transgression for Giles came earlier this season when he got in a verbal altercation with Astros manager A.J. Hinch that initially got him run out of the major leagues and eventually Houston.
Then there was the game back in May when he was so upset at getting pulled from a game that he punched himself in the face. Hard.
It didn’t help that Giles had laboured late in the Astros post-season run last fall and that he had yet to regain the lethal form when he was at his peak last summer. It could be argued, however, that the Astros never would have been the championship team they were without him.
Since being optioned to triple-A Fresno, on July 11 — following the incident that clearly didn’t sit too well with Hinch — Giles was essentially serving time until a deal was made. He was a perfect 12-for12 in save opportunities with the Astros before the demotion, but had an ERA of 4.99.
“Physically and mentally I’m great,” said Giles, who will likely get an inning of work in a lower leverage situation before he gets the nod to close a game. “I’m happy where I’m at. It’s a fresh start for me and I couldn’t be more happy where I landed.
“All that hard work I put in to establish myself early on and gain the respect for the performances in the past. I’ve got a great track record at what I do and I do it really well.”
Unlike the remainder of the Jays season, this deal certainly has some intrigue, a closer for closer, our baggage for your baggage swap for Osuna. Either Jays management or the communications company that owns the team didn’t want anything to do with the public relations nightmare of using a player charged with assault. Meanwhile, manager John
Gibbons said that nothing will be held against Giles who will get a clean slate to start his tenure in Toronto.
“Those things happen in baseball, I’ve been a part of them,” Gibbons said of manager-player relations. “They don’t happen a lot but there’s a lot of cameras around now too.
“He’s a part of this organization now just like Roberto’s a part of that one. I just told him to make himself at home, enjoy it and go get it.”
Giles acknowledged that he can be “laid-back and sarcastic” off of the field but hyper driven to succeed on it.
That and determined to make the best of an opportunity to re-establish himself as an elite reliever is motivation enough.
“It’s easy to put it behind me,” Giles said. “Once it happens it happens. You can’t change anything about it. All you can do is what you learn from that situation.
HEY, IT’S BULLPEN DAY
For the third time in 10 games the Jays went with a “bullpen day” for their starting assignment here on Thursday.
This time up was righthander Tyler Clippard who got the call in part because there were no other arms available.
The team had tried to fill the void earlier in the day by when it signed Mike Hauschild, who was released by the Astros earlier in the week. The right hander was most recently with the Astros triple-A squad in Fresno. He appeared in four games for the Texas Rangers last season.
At least the Jays are set for the rest of the series with rookie Ryan Borucki getting the ball on Friday, Marco
Estrada to face the M’s Canadian-born star John Paxton on Saturday and Sam Gaviglio to close the series on Sunday.
AROUND THE BASES
Kevin Pillar’s recovery from a sternoclavicular joint injury sustained on July 15 is going faster than expected. Pillar took batting practice on Thursday and there’s a solid chance he’ll see some game action here … Trouble in Buffalo where a reported tiff between Canadian Dalton
Pompey and Bisons manager Bobby Meachem resulted in a suspension for the outfielder.… Rookie sensation Lourdes Gurriel Jr. was named the AL’s rookie of the month for July. Now on the DL, the young Cuban put together an 11-game multi-hit streak and rocked a .431 batting average for the month … The height of the Canadian invasion for the series isn’t expected to the weekend but there was a solid Jays-loving contingent from Western Canada here for Thursday’s series opener. And props to the dude we saw in Jays logo shorts and a John Tavares Leafs jersey … To make room for Giles, Dwight
Smith Jr. was optioned to Buffalo … And how about former Jays outfielder turned Boston Red Sox first baseman Steve Pearce who had three home runs at Fenway on Thursday.