BLUE JAYS STAY ALIVE
Toronto beats Texas 8-4
The morning after the Toronto Blue Jays had scratched, clawed and ultimately blasted their way to a season-saving Game 3 victory in the Texas heat, John Gibbons sat in his office, in his typical sleeveless shirt, and talked about relief.
“Winning does a lot for you,” the Toronto manager said.
It had taken the Blue Jays 22 years to finally play their way back into the post-season, and when they arrived they played tight. They lost two games at home, then dominated Game 3 in every way except on the scoreboard. But Troy Tulowitzki finally put that game away with a three-run bomb, assuaging the fears that had started to creep into the Jays’ minds.
They got the win, the team’s first in the playoffs since 1993, and they came to the ballpark on Monday replete with positive vibes, like 25 Marcus Stromans, minus the hair.
“I feel good,” Gibbons said before the game. “These guys feel good. That was a big win last night for us to get that one out of the way, keep us alive, and so we feel good today.”
Food tasted better, bags felt lighter, the air felt — no, the air still felt gross. Arlington in a heat wave is like the whole city is situated next to a deep-fryer vent.
But, whatever. The Blue Jays were feeling it, and they played like it. Josh Donaldson belted a two-run home run on Derek Holland’s fifth pitch of the game, and the Texas starter would give up two more homers — to Chris Colabello and Kevin Pillar — before the second inning was over.
Toronto was up 7-0 after the top of the third inning and won 8-4 after some patchy relief work from David Price. The Jays are now safely back to the Rogers Centre for a deciding Game 5 in the American League Division Series.
Oh, yes, these were the Blue Jays we recalled seeing so much over the final two months of the season, the same Jays team that bestrode the American League East like a colossus, that ran up one of the best run differentials in the history of the sport and that played .600 ball against teams with winning records. They mashed the ball, they played solid defence, they pitched well enough to never let the opposition back into it. It was foot-on-the-throat stuff, and it sends the series back to Toronto for the Blue Jays’ third elimination game in a row — only now the Rangers must also win or go home.
Before we go all the way down narrative alley, in which the Blue Jays have squared the series solely because they learned to stop squeezing the bats too tight, let it also be noted that the Texas Rangers lined themselves up nicely for a thrashing in Arlington. They started two lefthanders, Martin Perez and Derek Holland, who were susceptible to right-handed bats against a lineup of righty mashers. And the Rangers hitters, who hadn’t set the world aflame in Toronto, still haven’t.
Intrigue, though, eventually arrived in the form of Gibbons himself, who pulled starter R.A. Dickey with two outs in the fifth inning in favour of Price. The decision was curious on a number of levels: Dickey, the 40-year-old making his first playoff start, needed just one out, with Toronto up 7-1, to be in line for the victory. He had thrown just 78 pitches. And Price, the trade-deadline acquisition and staff ace, was presumed to be the Game 5 starter given his strong season (and career).
But by using Price in relief on Monday, Gibbons makes Stroman, the dazzling sophomore, the Game 5 starter, and avoids making a tough decision about using Price and his 0-6 record as a playoff starter in the series clincher.
There’s a lot to digest there. Was Gibbons looking for a way to avoid giving Price the ball in Game 5? And didn’t he owe it to Dickey to give him the chance for the win?
The short answers: no and no. The slightly longer answers are that Gibbons wanted to throw everything he could at Texas in Game 4, to guarantee a Game 5, and that Dickey, as a pro, would understand that the playoffs are no time to worry about niceties such as who gets credit for the win.
(Whether the pitchers involved would totally agree is another question. If this playoff season has taught us anything, it’s that baseball players have strong feelings about their unwritten rules.)
“One thing I’ve learned over the years, sometimes the best way to win games is don’t let the team get back into it,” Gibbons said afterward.
The manager also said that with Brett Cecil hurt and Aaron Loup tending to a family emergency, Price was the only left-hander available to pitch to Texas’ left-heavy lineup. He said the decision wasn’t easy.
Gibbons said giving Dickey the hook was “probably not a relationship-building move, but a team win, that’s what I was looking for.”
Dickey, the good soldier, said he hated to come out, and said any pro would feel the same way. But he said he wasn’t “going to let it steal the joy” of the seasonsaving win.
Price said the Jays are “a pretty selfless team,” and he had no issue with being used instead of being held back for a Game 5 start. He also said he wished the scorekeeper could have granted Dickey the win, since he pitched better.
It was an odd ending to a crucial win, with everyone sort of half-apologizing to each other. But still: a win.
Gibbons had even addressed the Dickey storyline before the game, with the veteran starter taking the mound in the playoffs in Arlington, the place where he first developed the knuckleball in 2005. Dickey had called it poetic, and he had talked about the “rich experience” of having this happen near the end of his career.
“It would be kind of a cool sto-
One thing I’ve learned over the years, sometimes the best way to win games is don’t let the team get back into it.
JOHN GIBBONS
ry,” Gibbons said before the game of the idea of Dickey shutting down the Rangers. “(He) rises to the occasion in the place where it all started,” the manager said.
And then Dickey did rise to the occasion, and he was pulled early anyway.
Sometimes poems are bittersweet.
But Toronto came here needing two wins to stay alive. If on Sunday morning you had offered John Gibbons two wins and some hurt feelings, there is little doubt he would have taken it.