With Bats and gloves
Bautista continues hot May while Goins flashes leather again
Ryan Goins was either mock-miffed or genuinely annoyed.
Assuming the post-scrum position, up against the wall in the clubhouse, he didn’t like the query that a reporter had just posed.
“Is that the only question I get, about a dropped ball? Wow.”
Well, let’s just say that it was an interesting dropped ball, charged as an error in the sixth inning of Saturday’s game against the Texas Rangers, and in the estimation of the on-field masked men, not an automatic out on the transfer rule — as in transferring the ball from glove to throwing hand.
And the thing was, Goins actually engineered the out at first anyway, recovering for a nifty 6-4-3 put- out, catching Nomar Mazara scrambling back to first after rounding the base.
But maybe Goins, a role player amidst a hot May — and his contributions notable as the Blue Jays have re-set their season — has become more accustomed of late talking about grand slams and walk-off clutch hits, both on his personal highlight reel.
“We won the game 3-1, hit a homer, pitching was great, defence was good. I dropped a popup. I guess that’s what I got.”
Honestly, we intended to get to the rest of all that, with the weird dropped ball episode out of the way.
“I caught it. Took it out of my glove. They thought I didn’t catch it. I don’t really know what to think about that one. Not on me to say.” OK, but nice put-out Ryan? “Yeah, back hole.” The other side of Goins, his superb defence, was on display later in that frame.
On a full count, Rougned Odor — apparently the most hated player in Jays Nation for felonies past, most memorably sucker-punching Jose Bautista in the face almost exactly a year ago — rattled one toward the hole between first and second with the shift on.
Then Odor stumbled out of the box and only made it halfway to first as Goins, coming hard across a considerable distance, barehanded the ball and nailed the put-out with Odor still some 40 feet from the bag.