We’re proud of ‘Papa’ Buehrle
Jays starter has opened our eyes to infectious style
My good friend Jimmy used to tend bar at a place called the Press Club on Dundas Street West in Toronto. He grew up on the south side of Chicago, can offer up a cornucopia of tips on outstanding places to stuff your face with food when visiting the city, and sometimes texts me out of the blue about Mark Buehrle’s Hall Of Fame case.
Last week, while baking in the sun of the 500 level on a Wednesday afternoon, watching the Blue Jays and White Sox in what would end up being an extra-inning loss for the home side, another friend came by to chat for a few innings, and told me about his visit to U.S. Cellular Field for a Jays-White Sox game a year or two ago. He went to the park wearing Jays gear, understandably a little on edge as he entered the domain of a rival fan base, unsure of what kind of treatment to expect. But by the time he’d settled into his seats, any apparent tension had dissipated.
“They all wanted to hug me, and told Buehrle stories all night,” he laughed as he concluded his story. “He’s like a god there.”
I don’t know whether that’s a gross exaggeration, but after watching Buehrle this season, particularly in his last two starts, for the first time in the nearly three years since he was acquired by the Blue Jays, you really start to see how it might not be.
That’s maybe a little bit of hyperbole on my part, as well. Buehrle has been a very good pitcher for the Jays. In the first half of last year, in particular, he was terrific, allowing just two runs over his first four starts — 28 innings of work — and followed it up, after a six run blip at home to the Boston Red Sox in late April, with an eight start stretch where he pitched to a 1.96 ERA.
His outstanding performance during that run was certainly noticed by Jays fans, but what’s happening here in 2015 still feels different.
Maybe it’s the fact that the club has so badly needed its rotation to take a step forward, and that you can’t not love that it’s the aging lefty with the slowest fastball in the league (Non-R.A. Dickey Division) leading the way. Or perhaps it’s that, with free agency on the horizon, and rumours this could be his final season, it’s easy to get wistful in advance of life without his stabilizing presence on the mound every fifth day.
Maybe it’s simply that in the year since that early-2014 success, his presence as a valued leader of the club has become so much more acutely understood by the fans. Last season, he took all of the team’s rookies shopping and bought them brand new suits. Marcus Stroman writes mash notes to him on social media. The media have picked up on the way the young pitchers call him “Papa Buehrle.” Buehrle himself, liv- ing up to the moniker, took blame for the incident last year when Stroman threw at Orioles catcher Caleb Joseph’s head, painting it as a miscommunication that he’d initiated. And in talking about leading by example and rejecting the locker-room culture of bullying and hierarchy, he told Shi Davidi of Sportsnet about awesomely telling off a former teammate who expected he could still boss him around like in his rookie days, even when Buehrle was a 10-year veteran, World Series winner, and All-Star.
Something special has happened on the field this year, though, too.
Prior to his last two starts Buehrle hadn’t once recorded an out in the eighth inning in back-to-back starts for the Jays. Now he has two straight complete game victories, the latter a “Maddux” — what baseball types call a game completed with under 100 pitches thrown, named after former Braves and Cubs great Greg Maddux — and the former maybe even more impressive. In his start in Minnesota last week, he gave up four runs in the first inning, prompting manager John Gibbons to have to quickly get relief pitchers warming up in the bullpen, but settled down incredibly well, facing just one batter over the minimum (a Jose Reyes error on a Danny Salazar grounder) from the second inning on.
The Jays, and their fans, are now hoping his season mirrors that incredible turnaround — and it has already begun to. After his first six starts of the season, opposing batters had hit .37 1/.399/.573 against Buehrle, leaving him with an ERA of 6.00, and an uncharacteristic 33 innings pitched. Assuming he’d get to 33 starts on the season — a total he’s reached in only one of the last four years — he was on pace to pitch just a little over 180 innings on the season. His streak of 14 straight seasons with 200 innings pitched wasn’t just in peril — the way he was going, it looked like it was already dead in the water.
Since his ERA peaked at 6.75 on May 1, though, he’s dropped it all the way to 4.35. And in the five starts since those abysmal first six, he’s pitched to a 2.97 ERA over 39.1 innings, with opponents hitting .197/.238/.328 off him.
Those numbers aren’t exactly sustainable, but they’ve been crucial in turning around a season for a pitcher that, at age 36, Jays fans were maybe already starting to count out. Not only that, but they’ve reminded us of just how much fun it is to watch Buehrle pitch when he’s at his best — changing speeds and locations and eye levels, hitting his spots, making batters work and think more quickly than they want, fielding like a Gold Glover, and (when it’s all working, at least) inducing weak contact.
He has now thrown 72.1 innings on the season in 11 starts — a 217-inning pace, assuming he starts 33 times. Like clockwork.
He may not be the most talented pitcher on the staff, or the flashiest, but he’s still special to watch. A throwback. A reason to hug White Sox fans! And awesome for all those other reasons, too. I’m glad we’ve finally started to notice.
They all wanted to hug me, and told Buehrle stories all night