Wildest dreams down in the dirt
Osuna wild pitch opens door for Angels after Liriano’s work ratchets up trade speculation
“It feels like September around here.”
That was manager John Gibbons a couple of hours before the game Saturday.
Don’t think he meant it in a good way — like recent Septembers past with riveting baseball and breathless winning streaks and bite-your-nails tension over playoff wild cards.
“Of course, it’s felt like September since May,” the skipper snorted as he shuffled off to watch batting practice.
The calendar has yet to turn on August and already 2017 hangs limply, a wasted season dribbling towards its conclusion for the always last-place Blue Jays, either all to themselves or shared.
But the games always matter, if you love baseball, if you’re trying to glean what parts of this team will remain for 2018.
Saturday probably mattered most to starter Francisco Liriano, who may have taken the mound for the final time with the club, widely perceived as a trade deadline commodity. Impossible to determine how many scouts were at the Rogers Centre to observe the wares because they don’t sit in the pressbox. They’ve been in situ throughout this late July homestand, though, sniffing the inventory.
And they would have liked what Liriano took to the hill, as the lefty retired 15 of the first 16 Angels he faced. Gave up three runs to Los Angeles in the sixth, but was still in line for the W if Miguel Montero’s two-run homer in the bottom of the frame had stood up. Certainly appeared to be trending that way when splendid closer Roberto Osuna got the ball in the ninth. But for the first time, in his 45th appearance this year, Osuna unleashed a wild pitch, a cutter that Montero couldn’t block on one knee as the ball scooted to the backstop and the tying run came around to score.
Sacrifice fly next and the 6-5 run crossed the plate, which is how it ended, Toronto victimized by two ex-Jays, Ben Revere with an RBI double and Cliff Pennington on that sac fly to centre.
Messy inning for Osuna, blown save and the loss: Single to Kole Calhoun, hit batter, double that scored Revere, the sacrifice and the winning sac RBI.
The Jays struck for walk-off rallies in grand home-run style twice this past week. Not this time, although it looked promising after shredding reliever Troy Scribner, making his major-league debut — and he still ended up as winner of record.
Fresh arrival Rob Refsnyder, pinchrunning for Montero who’d led off the ninth with a walk, moved to scoring position when Ryan Goins also took a full-count stroll and just one out. But with all the pieces in place for Jose Bautista to be a hero, the fading slugger got jammed on a 2-and-0 fastball from Bud Norris and hit into a game-ending double play instead — 14th DP fisting for Bautista this year.
So there was a microcosm of much that has ailed Toronto in this hugely disappointing campaign, leading the majors in double plays against and 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position.
There’s simply no upside to this down-skidding team, awash in injuries since spring training. (No word, as of this writing, on the MRI Troy Tulowitzki — now on the 10day disabled list — underwent Saturday afternoon for the ankle sprain suffered the previous evening.)
A nod for a job well done, still, to Liriano: second consecutive fine start, change-up clicking even better than his bread-and-butter slider.
“Really, he was almost as good, probably, as I’ve ever seen him here,” said Gibbons. “He was under control, sticking it pretty good both sides of the plate, good breaking ball, good change-up.’’
Gibbons stuck with Liriano through a rather turbulent sixth, when the Angels scored three runs to square things up, fleetingly. If the manager was giving Liriano a chance to redeem himself in front of all those scouts, he wouldn’t admit it.
“The reason was because he was strong, he was throwing the ball well, very few pitches. We’ve been looking for a good long (start), at least six innings, out of our starters. Haven’t had many of those.’’
Liriano got Calhoun to pop up as his final out with two Angels on base.
“If he didn’t get him I was going to make a move,” said Gibbons. “I just judge off the stuff, what he’s throwing. He still finished with very few pitches on the afternoon.” Eightyseven through six. “Yeah, that was his game there.”
Liriano could not afterwards be lured into addressing his pending status as a possible former Jay before Monday afternoon’s non-waiver trade deadline.
“I don’t pay attention to those kinds of things,” he claimed. “I try to control what I can control. My main goal is to stay with the team here. I don’t listen to rumours or anything like that.’’
It’s been a bumpy season for Liriano (6-5), who did yeoman work for the Jays last summer after being traded to Toronto from Pittsburgh on Aug. 1.
He’s been hindered by neck and shoulder injuries but seems to be rounding into trade-bait form for a club, useful coming out of the bullpen or as an insurance starter. Why wouldn’t he be pleased to get playoff wind with another club?
“I know I haven’t been here for a long time but I feel great how they treat me here. I like my teammates, the organization. I cannot control what’s going to happen next. I think we have a great team, either this year or next year.’’
The same song and dance all the Jays have been giving since that hideous April but rarely showing it on the field, never putting together a big-hitting streak to close ground in the American League East.
At least Liriano impressed batterymate Montero, who caught him for the first time with Russell Martin given the day off (until summoned to pinch-hit in the ninth). “Today he was getting strike one. Even when he was behind in the count, he made a quality pitch to get back to it. Unfortunately one pitch wasn’t quite as sharp as the others to tie the game.’’
The veteran Montero, who was hitting an anemic 2-for-27 since being picked up by Toronto at the start of the month, connected for his first jack as a Jay, scoring a pair in the sixth. “It definitely felt good especially when they’d just scored three runs, tied the game. It feels even better when you give the starter a lead. But at the end of the day a loss is a loss and it hurts.”
Must have hurt Osuna too, but he didn’t speak with reporters afterwards. So Gibbons spoke for him.
“Osuna — it was one of those days. We don’t see that too often. Move on.”
Move on, move out, but no moving on up.