BACK IN FLIGHT
Bautista’s 3-run homer turns the tide for Jays as they continue their mastery over Mariners
It was like a shock paddle to the heart. Defibrillating. THWACK on a 1-and-1 fastball and suddenly what had been a fairly tedious affair was cracked open by Jose Bautista’s fifth home run of the season.
Or maybe it shouldn’t have been so startling — his third jack in four games, this one pulled to left-centre, scoring three runs to put the Blue Jays up 5-2 in what would eventually play out as a 7-2 victory over Seattle, fourth W in a row for Toronto, six of the last seven, in the incremental claw-back towards respectability. The slugger has found his wallop again. Which elicited no more than a meh shrug afterwards.
“I’m just getting good pitches and I’m not missing them.”
This one, from reliever Nick Vincent, was fat and fetching over the middle of the plate.
As Bautista had tried to explain last week, before his bat heated long-ball up, the pitches he should have been turning on and smoking had been there all along, yet the batting average had sunk down to an ignominious .174.
“That’s the way baseball goes. Some- times you can have perfect swings and hit ’em and people catch ’em. Sometimes you can have a decent swing and hit it badly and it finds a hole. In baseball you never know. For the most part, if you have good at-bats you get good pitches to hit. If you put good swings on them, in the long run, eventually everything will take care of itself.”
From the outside — where the Bautista-bashing had reached fever pitch — it wasn’t as if he’d been sweating the fallow start to his season. Veterans tend not to panic but his reassurances that all would be well, in time, hadn’t persuaded the keening mob.
Perhaps, however, the situation had been discussed within the clubhouse, between Bautista and his teammates.
“He’s showing up at the right time,” said Kevin Pillar, who’d been an exception to the club-wide hitting dregs of April, stroking two singles and a double Saturday afternoon at the Rogers Centre, scoring a couple of runs and leading the American League in hits at game’s end with 47.
“We, as his teammates, keep reminding him: It’s not what you’ve done, it’s about what you’re going to do for us today.
Don’t worry what the batting average says up there. Every day you’ve got an opportunity to help this team win.
“I think you’ve seen that over the past couple of days. He’s not trying to get his batting average back up, not trying to get three hits in one at-bat. He’s just taking his at-bats one by one and really just trying to help this team win.”
Here’s another view, from Devon Travis, who added his own jolt of electricity by stealing home an inning later on a double-pilfer.
“It’s coming, it’s coming. He’s a guy that can carry a ball club singlehandedly. These past few days it’s been closer and closer and closer.’’ The Jose of old, he means. “The biggest thing for Jose’’ — Josey, he pronounces it — “is, for a long time he’s driven balls. He goes up there with the mindset of driving balls. He knows himself better than anyone here.
“You can see it in his face, you can see it in his eyes. You can see it in his walk-up to the plate. I’ve been looking at that a lot. Those eyes are telling me he’s there.”
A double also for Bautista, in the opening frame, before he got around to ushering Pillar and Ezequiel Carrera home.
About that rare steal of home: Instructions from third-base coach Luis Rivera to giddy-up for the set play took Travis aback.
“I got to third and Luis said, ‘He’s running right there, you’re going when his arm goes.’ ” The “he” was Luke Maile, who’d arrived at first after getting hit by a pitch. Ryan Goins had singled to left; Travis reached on a throwing error. Goins stole third and was brought home on a sac fly by Pillar.
So, runners at the corners with Carrera batting.
Travis was nonplussed by Rivera’s directive. “I looked at first and it was Luke. No offence against Luke, because he can run pretty good for a catcher. I turned around and said, ‘Right now?’ (Rivera) said, ‘Yeah, right now.’ And I did it. I saw the arm go and I took off.”
Not since Russell Martin stole home on June 2, 2015, had the Jays pulled off that trick.
“It’s not a play that you see a ton, really,” said Travis. “With that and the fact that it was our guy Luke over there . . . it definitely surprised me. Got it done, though. That was awesome.”
Seattle catcher Carlos Ruiz tried to nail Maile at second, which bought Travis a bit of extra time as Taylor Motter missed the mark back to the plate by a few feet on the throw.
Maile: “My job is to make sure that I can stay either in a rundown long enough for the guy to score from third or, if they choose not to throw, just to take second base. If they were to choose to start attacking me and get myself into a rundown, hopefully I can just stay in it long enough (for Travis) to score.”
The upshot: Maile was safe and Travis beat the tag.
“I just kind of always tell myself when I’m stealing that I’m running for my dear life,” said Travis. “I saw a little opening at the plate. I knew it was going to be close, just tried to sneak it right in there and thankfully I did.”
Kendrys Morales, who’d been iffy to play with his strained hamstring, connected for his team-leading seventh home run in sixth, a solo shot to tie the game 2-2, trotting laboriously around the bases.
Otherwise, there hadn’t been a great deal to liven these proceedings beyond the nine strikeouts (for the second time this season) posted by starter Marcus Stroman, though he reached the 100-pitch plateau through six before handing off to a bullpen that collectively kept the Mariners from any further scoring.
“I felt pretty good. The fact I was able to put my team in a position to win. At the end of the day that’s my job, to go as deep as I can and to keep my team in a position to win.”
That win was actually recorded by reliever Dominic Leone.
Manager John Gibbons has been praying for a winning streak and maybe this is it.
Toronto has strung together four in a row amidst a slew of injuries, with the likes of Josh Donaldson, Troy Tulowitzki, Martin, J.A. Happ and Aaron Sanchez on the DL, though Sanchez is scheduled to start Sunday.
And for the first time since April 11 — when the Jays were a pitiful 1-6 — Toronto is back within five games of .500.
Baby steps and big bops.