BLUE JAYS HAMMER FOUR HOME RUNS TO TOP RANGERS AND HEAD HOME WITH 2- 0 LEAD IN THE ALDS.
BLUE JAYS TAG DARVISH FOR FOUR HOME RUNS TO TAKE COMMANDING 2- 0 LEAD IN ALDS WITH RANGERS
The Toronto Blue Jays came to Texas saying t hey j ust wanted to pl ay some baseball. They didn’t want to talk about bat flips or hard slides or brawls or playing the game the right way. They would let their play do the talking.
Two days later, their play has said a lot.
A day after opening the American League Division Series with a 10-1 thumping of the Texas Rangers, the Jays roped four home runs on the way to a 5- 3 win in Game 2, giving them a 2- 0 lead and three shots at a return to the ALCS. Teams that win the first two games of best- of- five series move on about 88 per cent of the time.
“I learned something last year,” said manager John Gibbons, whose team was in that other 12 per cent when it turned around an 0- 2 deficit against these same Rangers in 2015. “You know what, you gotta win three games.” Still: two down. It was a different game from the laugher of an open- er, but Friday’s affair was just as daunting for Rangers fans. Texas started Yu Darvish, the second of their high- end starters, who had never given up more than three runs to Toronto, and they touched him up for five, beginning with a two- run home run from Troy Tulowitzki in the second inning and then solo blasts from Kevin Pillar, Ezequiel Carrera and Edwin Encarnacion in the fifth. It was the first time in 102 major- league starts that Darvish, 30, had given up four home runs.
This was the type of offence that was expected of Toronto after they returned most of t he l i neup t hat scored 891 runs last season. Instead, they scored 759 in the regular season, but were among the lowest- scoring teams in baseball in September. Only their impressive and deep starting rotation kept them from plummeting out of the playoff picture altogether.
It has been a mantra all year and especially in the season’s final month: if only this team starting hitting like it had been known to do, it would be scary. Like Trump presidency scary.
Six different Blue Jays homered over the two days at Globe Life Park. And though Toronto didn’t get many hits off Darvish Friday — just five of them — it mattered little when so many of them cleared the fence. Texas, having the luxury of not having to play in the wild-card game because they won the AL West, lined up its two best starters to face the Jays at home and Toronto bludgeoned them but good: Cole Hamels has a 16.20 ERA for the ALDS and Darvish is carrying a 9.00 ERA after his five innings of work.
The Blue Jays now head back to the Rogers Centre with Aaron Sanchez, their best starter all season, on the mound Sunday night to face Colby Lewis, who was hurt most of the summer and hasn’t won a start for the Rangers since mid-June.
In short, this trip to Texas could not have been more fruitful for the Blue Jays. They came in as a team that had stumbled through September, but did just enough to eke into the playoffs, while the Rangers cruised into the post-season with the best record in the American League, but with an historically good record in one-run games. The numbers said the Jays had underperformed relative to their talent, while the Rangers weren’t nearly as good as their record suggested.
So far: check and check. Toronto is now 5- 0 in October and has beaten the Rangers in five straight playoff games over two seasons.
Before the game, Gibbons was asked if finishing the season with a bunch of tough games — first Baltimore, then Boston with their season on the line the whole time — might have given his team a battle-tested edge over a group like the Rangers.
“You never know,” he said. “You hope so.”
After the win, he was less equivocal.
“It helps, t here’s no doubt,” he said. “These last few weeks we’ve been playing a lot of games like this … so you kind of get tested and you really get used to it. That’s kind of the way it’s been the last few weeks. But it’s definitely gotta help.”
That resilience showed up late, when Texas scored twice in the eighth off Francisco Liriano, including a run- scoring single that hit him in the back of the head. Roberto Osuna, returning from a shoulder injury himself, came in to secure five huge outs for the save. Starter J. A. Happ hung tough, too: he gave up nine hits and a walk over five innings, but escaped from many jams and allowed just one run.
With all the talk of the bad blood between these teams before the series began, the Jays can comfortably say they focused on what happened on the diamond.
“We came here to play baseball,” Pillar said. “We came here to get some wins and we took care of business.”
Tulowitzki said the adversity they went through — losing in the ALCS last year and then this year’s struggles — was useful on Friday.
“Experienced players, there’s something to be said about that,” he said.
Two games isn’t enough to conclude whether this team has coalesced into something more fearsome than last year’s edition. But if September didn’t kill the Blue Jays, it might just have made them stronger.