Kikuchi fires shutout, but luckily Vlad injury is ‘nothing major’
Wipe the bajiggity sweat from your brow, gentle baseball readers.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has only a minor knee owie. All exhale.
If that were the Blue Jays saying so, there might be reason for suspicion. Management has played fast and loose with injury disclosures — apparently drawing a line between “liar, liar, pants on fire” and “don’t tell” withholding.
But it was the big kid himself who gave reassurances about the state of his left hinge prior to Seattle’s 7-0 whack job of Toronto on Sunday, relaying results of an MRI from the previous evening after discussions with the team’s medical and coaching staffs.
“There’s nothing major, just a little bit of inflammation on my knee,” the precious cargo 20year-old told reporters through team interpreter Hector Lebron. “I feel a lot better today. We’re just going to be cautious about it. When I’m ready to go, I’m ready to go.”
Guerrero came out of Saturday afternoon’s game midway through the third inning, due to knee discomfort arising from an attempt to field the ball on a play earlier in the game where he ranged to the left for a ground ball in front of shortstop Bo Bichette.
“I felt a little twinge on that play,” he explained. Consulted with trainer Nikki Huffman. “I just decided in that moment, I should stop, I should talk to the trainer, just to be on the safe side.”
Agreed that it would be prudent to remove himself until a doctor had an imaging look-see. Not at all like the knee shudder — a patellar tendon strain — that cost him five weeks last year.
“That was totally different. I wouldn’t have been standing here if it was like the one from last year. I couldn’t even walk last year, pretty much. I didn’t feel that uncomfortable (Saturday) because I knew it wasn’t that bad.”
While Guerrero wouldn’t put a date on his restoration to the lineup, it’s hoped he could play as soon as Tuesday in Los Angeles. And get his cranked-up bid for rookie of the year back on track. Bo and diddly: When the offence shrivels, it doesn’t leave much to entertain a hometown audience. A losing team thwacking home runs is one thing; a losing team held to two hits and zero runs is quite another. Which might explain the howling boos (from left-field territory) that came raining down on the Jays as Sunday afternoon at the Rogers Centre ground on.
However — at least for those who took no joy in watching the Mariners go deep on four separate occasions — there was the nice little defensive sideshow put on by rookie shortstop Bo Bichette, particularly on a pair of double plays turned.
In the fifth, Seattle had runners on first and third with just one out, when un-starter Thomas Pannone, desperately seeking a ground ball, got exactly that from Austin Nola. But it wouldn’t have happened if Bichette hadn’t scooped the ball up neatly and hurling a peg to Justin Smoak, who needed to stretch his long legs to turn the DP, getting Pannone out of the jam.
Ditto the play between Bichette and Smoak to throw out rookie Dylan Moore in the seventh. On that occasion, Bichette was moving hard to his left, had to throw between steps, still in motion, nice piece of athleticism. And this was the kid who some thought was not defensively fit to play short.
C worthy: As in complete. As in complete game. Which is so rare an event from a starting pitcher these days that the lovely lads on Toronto’s PR staff who usually provide pitch counts at the end of a starter’s performance plum forgot to share the deets as the curtain fell on a quite brilliant nineinning turn on the bump by Seattle’s Yusei Kikuchi.
A long-in-the-tooth rookie, the 28-year-old Kikuchi arrived in the major leagues after seven seasons with the Saitama Seibu Lions in Japan’s Pacific League, where he was three times an all-star. In his first career complete game and first shutout, the lefty struck out eight Jays. Pitch count: 96/65 “I’ve never actually thrown a complete game under 200 pitches in Japan, so I’m really happy that I was able to do that here,” Kikuchi said through his translator. “I kept it simple and it started to click from the fourth inning on. I felt like I found something today.”
Westward ho: The Jays left immediately after the game for L.A. where they open a three-game set against the Dodgers on Tuesday, with a full day off Monday to trip the light fandango. Or whatever. Sean Reid-Foley is set to make his ninth appearance and then … your guess is as good as anybody else’s. But the Jays will have their hands full against a probable 1-2-3 starter combo of Walker Buehler, Clayton Kershaw and Hyun-Jin Ryu.