Jays look at game outside the game
Tulowitzki takes final rehab steps, with Price’s help
ST. PETERSBURG, FLA.— The tall left-hander stared in at the hitter, rocked into his abbreviated windup and delivered. The hitter in the batter’s box at Tropicana Field waved his bat menacingly then took a fastball for strike three on the inside half of the plate and the hitter walked away from the plate shaking his head. A scene from the Blue Jays vs. Rays? No, it was a simulated game with a pair of Jays teammates, lefthander David Price facing ready-for-prime-time shortstop Troy Tulowitzki.
“Bad call on the 0-2,” Tulowitzki smiled as he gathered up equipment and readied to go plead his case with John Gibbons to play a real game. “David is a good friend of mine, obviously. He’s a great competitor. Even when we’re out there playing a sim game, to be honest, you want to perform well. That’s what we’re going to be talking about in the clubhouse, so we’ll have fun with it. To get a chance to face someone like David, I’ve faced him before during the season but to get another chance to face one of the best pitchers in the game is always fun whether he’s on your team or not.”
Tulowitzki won his argument and was in the lineup on Friday. The plan was that he would skip the Saturday game and then play again in the season finale and be ready to go when the division series starts on Thursday. As for Price, he is slated to throw another simulated game on Sunday and be ready to go.
Price threw about 40 pitches and two innings, using his entire repertoire, as his contribution to the Tulowitzki rehab show. The simulated game that started at about 2 p.m. on Friday also featured two youngsters brought down from Dunedin, 2015 first round draft pick Jon Harris, from Missouri State, and eighth-rounder Daniel Young, who attended the University of Florida.
“I didn’t go through the motions,” Price said, as he was heckled mercilessly by teammates reminding him that the season is 162 games, not 159. “I got after it and I felt good. That’s not why this is going on. If you can take some days off at the end of the season, it’s huge. Back in the day, there were a lot of guys who would go on the phantom DL for two weeks. That’s not what this is. I’ll throw a bullpen in two or three days and then I’ll be ready for my start on Thursday.”
Even with two hitless at-bats vs. Price, the unofficial boxscore on Tulowitzki’s day was 4-for-7 with a walk and a homer deep to left at an estimated 400 feet.
“It was obviously fun out there, regardless of what I did,” Tulowitzki said. “It’s nice to go out there. Probably the most important for me was the swings and misses. That’s the time when you’re letting it go and it’s one thing to have it simulated, just because we don’t swing and miss in the cage or in BP really, so that was nice to really let it go and not feel any pain.”
Manager John Gibbons has been taking some heat from fans and some media for fielding a less-thanstellar lineup for the final two games in Baltimore, both losses, then shutting his best pitcher down while the Jays were still battling the Royals for the best overall record. Research by the Jays showed that Price will be the first pitcher to open a postseason with 11-or-more days of rest since Red Ruffing in 1939.
“I think it’s smart to do,” Gibbons said. “We could have pitched him a couple of innings and bagged it (Friday), but hopefully he makes a few starts from here on out. He’s not concerned about it. Hell, we saw Stroman make two abbreviated minor-league starts and look what he’s doing,
“I basically told him, ‘Hey, I’d rather you not (pitch).’ He’s 215 innings right now. In my mind, I thought we’d really like to see him win the Cy Young. But he said, ‘I don’t care about that anyway.’ That’s really what it came down to. He’s more concerned about this, which showed me something too.”
The bottom line is that for Thursday’s Game 1 of the ALDS, the Jays will feature a rested Price on the mound and a healthy Tulowitzki at shortstop. It’s the lineup they traded for at the deadline. But the question has become, if they play the Royals in the ALCS, who will have the extra home game? And if it’s the Royals, will it be because of Gibbons’ strategies of resting his lineup twice and his best starter?
For Blue Jays fans, the bar has been raised, and expectations are sky-high.