The silence of the whams
Despite cold bats and down 0-2, Encarnacion is upbeat: ‘I know we can hit’
CLEVELAND— The breeze blew out, and the air was warm, and that didn’t matter. The Toronto Blue Jays were facing a fly-ball pitcher with a slow fastball, and that didn’t matter. They’ve been a simple team all season, really: Would they hit? And sometimes they did, and sometimes they didn’t.
In Cleveland, the bats have been wrapped up and placed somewhere safe. After a 2-1 loss in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series on Saturday, the Jays are down 0-2 in this best-of-seven series. They have scored one run in the first two games here, and only one of those games came against something resembling an ace. What was it Oscar Wilde said? To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
“I believe in this team,” said first baseman Edwin Encarnacion. “I know we can hit.”
“I don’t think anyone’s down on themselves,” said catcher Russell Martin. “We got beat; we didn’t get destroyed or anything.”
“We lost two tough ball games, and they have a tough team. We’re going to play tough, but we have our work cut out, definitely.”
“We’re an experienced bunch, we were here last year, obviously,” said shortstop Troy Tulowitzki. “There’s no quit in us. We’re going back home, that’s huge for us, three games back home. We’ll definitely make it interesting, I promise you that.”
Maybe they will. Baseball is a game that can turn on one pitch, if you can turn on one pitch. Cleveland won Game 1 with one two-run home run swing and great pitching. In Game 2 they got a Carlos Santana homer in the second, and in the third Rajai Davis reached on a fielder’s choice, stole second, reached third on a wild pitch, and scored on a single. The Jays got one run, in the third, driven in by Josh Donaldson. It was the only hit they lifted in the air all day.
But it’s one thing not to hit Cy Young candidate Corey Kluber, and another not to hit soft-tossing precision man Josh Tomlin. Some post-season numbers are suddenly gruesome. Jose Bautista, since his screw-you home run against Texas in Game 2, has gone silent: he is 3-for-21 with 10 strikeouts. Russell Martin, dropped from the five spot to the six spot, is 2-for-23 with nine strikeouts. Kevin Pillar is 2-for-22. Ezequiel Carrera has cooled, as he does. Devon Travis is gone for the playoffs with a knee injury, and his replacements, Darwin Barney or Ryan Goins, aren’t big bats.
Maybe they are swinging for the fences too often. Maybe they’ll come around. But none of it’s working, either way.
“The fact of the matter is I think we need to do a better job of having a better plan and a better approach, and I think we will,” said Donaldson, who is 12-for-26 in the playoffs, and 3-for-8 in two games here. “We don’t face these guys a lot in the regular season, but now we’ve faced them two times in a row, and we should have a pretty good idea going into the third game.”
Donaldson is the lone Jay to get a hit off crucifying reliever Andrew Miller; hell, he’s one of two to put a ball in play against Miller. Of the 12 Toronto batters the six-foot-seven left-hander has faced, he has struck out 10. His slider is murder, and his fastball merely manslaughter. Clos- er Cody Allen has nailed both coffins shut. If Toronto doesn’t get to Cleveland’s starter, it’s a short, cold night.
So here they are, this team we know so well. The biggest reason this season was strange was because the big, bad, bashing Jays sometimes wasted their great pitching. Late in the season there was that players-only meeting in the Boston series, and things were apparently said about approaches, and it didn’t change much, until they won those last two games in Boston.
Afew days ago Pillar said, “Obviously, you want to go out there and win games, but at the end of the day, it is an individual sport and guys are looking out for themselves sometimes. Obviously, with the team in mind, you’re trying to impact the game with the team in mind. But in the playoffs no one cares about numbers, no one talks about numbers.”
He talked about how late in the season “guys swallowed their pride and did things that maybe they’re not comfortable doing. Like, guys trying to lay down bunts because they understand how important baserunners are, and how important moving runners along are.
“You’d like to do that for an entire season, but it’s really not realistic.”
Maybe that’s it. Maybe there are too many guys trying to be heroes. Maybe too many guys don’t have that option. And maybe they’re just missing against a team that’s good at this, too.
But the numbers are adding up, slow then fast. They are one swing away, maybe. But they need that swing.