Dickey delivers in win over Royals . . . with 60 Minutes on deck,
Knuckleballer sharp in team’s first game without injured Reyes
KANSAS CITY— Alex Anthopoulos built this revamped Blue Jays roster from the mound out and they will live and die with their starting five.
That was the message the 35-year- old general manager reiterated on Saturday, after he delivered the news that shortstop Jose Reyes, arguably the team’s most important position player, will miss the next three months with a “severely sprained” left ankle.
“We’re going to go as far as our rotation is going to bring us,” Anthopoulos said. “That’s really what it comes down to. I think it starts there. No question Reyes is a big loss offensively, but I do think we have enough depth from an offensive standpoint to be fine. We just need to get the rotation going. I think once they get going with quality starts, we’re going to be fine.”
Starting pitching was Anthopoulos’s primary target for off-season upgrades as he remodelled the Jays’ rotation with the acquisitions of Josh Johnson, Mark Buehrle and reigning NL Cy Young winner R.A. Dickey.
So far in this young season, the big-name hurlers have underachieved. As such, so have the Jays.
But if they are going to survive this latest setback with Reyes, it will be on their starters’ shoulders.
On Saturday, Dickey, the staff ace, responded to his boss’s call with his best performance as a Blue Jay and his first win of the season, throwing 6.1 innings and giving up just one run as the Jays defeated the Kansas City Royals 3-2 to secure their first series win. It was the kind of outing Jays fans have been waiting for from the heralded knuckleballer, who was looking to bounce back after a disastrous performance last week in Toronto against the Boston Red Sox, when he was booed off the field after giving up seven runs in 4.2 innings. Against the Royals, Dickey’s knuckleball looked good as he allowed just five scattered hits and a pair of walks. Dickey looked surprised when manager John Gibbons came out to remove him in the seventh inning after his 100th pitch. He had just given up a double to Royals centre fielder Jarrod Dyson — who advanced to third on a passed ball — but he had yet to allow a run. “I just didn’t want Gibby to have to go to the ’pen that early when I felt like I had handled what was going on fairly well and I had a pretty good knuckleball there at the end,” Dickey said. “But it’s all right. We won the game and that’s what’s most important — and it’s his decision.”
Lefty Darren Oliver took over in relief and gave up a bunt single, which broke the Jays’ shutout. Sergio Santos, Brett Cecil and Casey Janssen — who allowed another run in the ninth — combined thereafter to secure the victory.
The Jays managed just two hits against Royals starter James Shields — Kansas City’s own marquee off-season upgrade — who threw a complete game. Fortunately for the Jays, one of their two hits was a two-run homer by Jose Bautista, who stepped in admirably at third base as the Jays juggled their injury-riddled lineup.
“You don’t win many games when you only get two hits, but homers win,” Gibbons said. “Games like that, when you play those tight ball games, you win those and it does wonders for you.”
It’s tough to overstate the loss of Reyes, who had been leading the Jays in hits and stolen bases.
He was on a nine-game hitting streak, batting .395 with five stolen bases, when he suffered the injury on a late and awkward feet-first slide into second base in the sixth inning of Friday’s 8-4 Jays win.
But Dickey said it could end up being a rallying cry for the club.
“It certainly hurts to lose a player of Jose’s calibre, personality, etc.,” he said. “But I think it also provides us an opportunity to really come together and collectively shoulder the burden that we will miss with his absence. Sometimes a situation like that can really cause a team to gel and rally around that. Hopefully that will be the case for us.”