Dickey strong, bats come to life for Toronto,
After years of unsuccessfully attempting to insert themselves into an AL East rivalry with the Yankees and/or the Red Sox, the Blue Jays seem to have settled on a traditional opponent they all agree they can love to hate — the Baltimore Orioles. And the feeling is mutual. While Jays right fielder Jose Bautista is the lighting rod of the nouveau-biche rivalry, O’s manager Buck Showalter is clearly the ring-master. If emotions need ratcheting up, he’s there.
The recent animosity goes back two years ago when, on June 22, 2013, in late innings at the Rogers Centre, side-arming right-hander Darren O’Day struck out Bautista in a key situation, skipped off the hill and said something the slugger did not appreciate.
The next day, again facing the sidearming O’Day, Bautista homered on the way to a 4-2 win and stared out as he crossed the plate, making the universal hand gesture for “hey man, you talk too much.” It has since escalated. The O’s honestly believe that in ’14 when rookie Marcus Stroman threw behind the head of Caleb Joseph it was at the urging of Bautista because of his feelings about the Orioles throwing at him. Later in the series, Bautista was drilled in response to the perceived instigation.
The ill-will continued into this season. On April 12 at Camden Yards, Bautista faced O’Day who backed him off the plate, high and inside. That was followed by another Joey Bats homer and a mocking skip exiting the box. When the series came to Toronto later in April, the Jays pounded out 16 hits in the first game on the way to a 13-6 romp. In the seventh inning, it was rookie Jason Garcia who threw behind Bautista.
Once again Bautista homered and flipped his bat and stared at the O’s dugout as he circled the bases. He definitely should have just left it at that, a clear victory, but didn’t.
On his way back out to right field for the eighth inning of that April 21 game, Bautista and O’s superstar Adam Jones, on the top step of the dugout, exchanged heated words. On the second pitch of the inning, Delmon Young lined a hard onehopper to right field. Bautista charged it and came up gunning to first base. Young barely beat the throw and the next day Showalter suggested Bautista was lucky Young did not continue on into right field and pummel him.
The worst part for Bautista was that as the result of that ill-advised throw to first base, he aggravated an injury to his right shoulder, missed five games and was forced into a strictly DH role for the next 35 days. The silver lining is that it opened a door for Chris Colabello.
When the Jays travelled to Baltimore in mid-May for games 7-8-9, the tensions had settled but now, this weekend the two teams resume the rivalry as two of the hottest teams in baseball.
Will Showalter continue his uncomplimentary observations about the new field surface? Recall that as the O’s were leaving town in April after being swept, the manager let it be known that after seeing the new artificial turf up close he had been thinking of pulling his team off the field for Game 1 and refusing to play after Jimmy Paredes was hit by a bad hop in the pre-game. It hasn’t changed.
But barring any emotional sideshow, the baseball this weekend will be good — if that’s what you’re interested in. The red-hot O’s have won 11 of 14 and are 7-1 with catcher Matt Wieters in the starting lineup since he returned from Tommy John surgery. Jones, their key player in centre field, is scheduled back after an MRI on his sore right shoulder forced him to miss four games.
The two teams are similar in many ways. Their payrolls are within $4.3 million of one another — $126.2M for the Jays and $121.9M for the O’s (RosterResource.com). The two GMs, Alex Anthopoulos and Dan Duquette, like to manipulate the 25-man roster day to day within the rules of the CBA to maximize what they have on hand, sometimes to the dismay of players and agents.
For instance the Jays, knowing Aaron Sanchez would likely need to be DL’d, brought Scott Copeland in for a spot start, sent him back to Triple-A Buffalo, filled the roster spot with someone else for four days, then finally DL’d Sanchez and brought Copeland back because there was an injury. As for Duquette, after left-hander Wei-Yin Chen had pitched an impressive eight shutout innings vs. the Phillies on Monday, the O’s optioned him to Class-A Frederick because they didn’t want him facing the Jays’ lefty-killing lineup on Saturday. Chen and his agent Scott Boras are not happy.
This AL East is wide open for the taking, and the O’s and the Jays are getting healthy and hot at the right time. But it’s the surprising Rays that sit atop the division at the moment.
The Jays, with 10 of the next 13 games inside the division, can’t afford to slump.