MORALES BOOSTER
Kendrys Morales launches the Jays’ first walk-off homer since last June to beat Orioles — the offence is still sluggish, sure, but it’s a start.
That bum-slapping, pogo-hopping, hair-mussing pile-on celebration at home plate was off the charts, even for a walk-off home run.
But it had been a freaky long time since the Blue Jays put a W on the board.
On Saturday afternoon at the Rogers Centre, they found a way to snap a seven-game losing skid.
“A good day, a big day, for the boys in blue,” said John Gibbons, after bounding into his press conference, or at least as close to bounding as the shuffling and shambolic Toronto manager gets. “I didn’t mean the Leafs.’’
With just about every Toronto major-league team in action — NHL playoffs, NBA playoffs, TFC in Columbus — the Jays did their bit, Kendrys Morales corking a firstpitch curveball over the centre-right fence, snatching a 2-1 decision over the Orioles.
For Morales — grand slam and walk-off in this otherwise brutal fortnight of baseball — they were equally savoury swings of the bat so he wasn’t picking a favourite.
“We got a win in both of them, so they’re both pretty good.”
(And just as a by-the-way, Edwin Encarnacion is currently hitting .194 in Cleveland.)
Not to say that the Jays have figured out what’s been ailing them at the dish. The bigger numbers re- main ugly crooked: just 30 runs in 11 games, 11-for-71 with runners in scoring position, minuscule team batting average of .155 and, most significantly, 2-9 in the win-loss column.
A blown save for closer Roberto Osuna too, which had the Rogers Centre crowd maxing out in apprehension. He got credited with the W, though, on account of Morales’s bottom-of-the-ninth heroics.
And just a half-dozen hits, half of them off Alec Asher, making just his 13th major-league start.
But a couple of rare clutch hits: Darwin Barney off the bench for a stalwart single up the middle in the seventh, scoring Jose Bautista, who’d been hit by a pitch and moved to second by Troy Tulowitzki, finding a hole through the infield. Still, a close thing it was at the plate, Bautista racing home on the throw from Adam Jones that Welington Castillo couldn’t hang on to off a high bounce.
Sometimes the little things amount to a big hill of beans. Considering the hard luck Toronto has sucked up — to go along with bizarre hitting ineptness — it was damn time a lick of good fortune went their way.
So what had been a glum clubhouse — don’t buy this hooey about veteran calm as the club sank further into the American League basement — was transformed into jolliness. Russell Martin, lugging his own anemic average and sitting out the day-after-night game with Jarrod Saltalamacchia starting, warned a locker-room attendant: Don’t you dare turn down the volume on that music. Meanwhile, a group of players were being immensely entertained by Tulowitzki’s 3-year-old son Taz, smacking waffle balls in the corner tossed by Josh Donaldson and Ryan Goins. The kid’s got his dad’s batting stance. He’s also a pretty good mimic, as his father directed him to “hit like Goins” and “hit like Bautista” — bat wiggling overhead, leg high-kicking.
See, this is the stuff of ease and good spirits; what makes the season go ’round month after month because a team can’t function in a constant state of keening anxiety, certainly not this early in the schedule.
The Jays still don’t look at all like the powerhouse banging club that’s been the core DNA over the past few years. They got a reassuring start from Marco Estrada, however — held Baltimore to just four hits through seven — and another sturdy relief appearance from Joe Biagini before Osuna came out of the bullpen for the first time since Tuesday’s home opener.
“It’s been a long skid,” said Gibbons. “You go through things like that during the season, but to be honest I don’t remember one like this. Hopefully that’s the start of something. You feel that way the last couple of games. But they’re a team in our division. You got to start beating them sooner or later.’’
Estrada wasn’t pleased with how the changeup was behaving in his first two starts and worked on it in an extended bullpen.
“I was just glad we were able to pull it off today. It’s another nail-biter but we pulled it off — that’s all that matters. We’re all excited and happy and hopefully this is the start of a long winning streak for us.’’
Estrada was already in the clubhouse getting iced when Morales jacked the offering from reliever Tyler Wilson.
“A sigh of relief,” Estrada said, watching that ball clear the wall. “I just wanted to win today. Not me, I mean the team. Seeing him hit that first pitch was awesome. I wish I could have been out there to celebrate with the boys.”
Baltimore’s only, and tying, run in the ninth ensued after Castillo’s comebacker to the mound glanced off Osuna’s ankle, Barney — playing third, the infield position with which he is least familiar — static on the pitch and too late to cover. Craig Gentry, pinch-running for Castillo, stole second, and scored on a sac fly by Jonathan Schoop.
Handing off to Osuna, Biagini had given up a leadoff single but induced a double-play, turned off an agile 4-6-3 recovery by Tulowitzki. Biagini threw just seven pitches in that eighth: “I would have preferred three pitches. But you can’t always get what you want.’’
Gibbons never considered sending him back out for the ninth. “I told Roberto before the game he’s pitching no matter what. That’s his inning.”
And the seventh was Barney’s clutch inning, his drive to centre on a1-and-0 changeup from Donnie Hart bringing Bautista home on a hard slide.
“In that particular situation, I’m just looking for something I can stay within myself on, and something over the plate,” Barney said afterwards.
“The hardest thing to do is sit and watch the game and try to stay in the flow, and then come in and know your at-bat is the most important at-bat of the day.’’
Gibbons: “Barney’s really tough on left-handers and he’s got a shorter swing. He’s got a good idea of how to use the whole field. Most of the time he’s not going to overswing. He knows what this guy’s trying to do to him and he’s not going to come out of his swing.”
Toronto can even up this series — they’ve lost all of them so far — in Sunday’s finale, with J.A. Happ on the hill.
Not much to hang your hat on. But look at it this way: After an opening 10-game segment that beggared belief, they’re 1-0 breaking out the next 10-pack.
Can hardly get worse. Could it?