MILITARY PRECISION
West Point grad Chris Rowley on point for Blue Jays and wins first big-league start vs. Pirates,
From the waist up, Chris Rowley looked every bit the Blue Jays’ starting pitcher after Saturday’s 7-2 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates, sweaty locks pulled back with the club’s logo across his chest.
But the Buffalo Bisons emblem on his shorts was a tell-tale reminder that while he looked every bit at home on the Rogers Centre mound, allowing just one run on five hits over 51⁄ innings, the victory came in his 3 major league debut.
“Once I got out there, it’s the same game,” Rowley said. “These guys are obviously very, very good, but I like to think that I am, too. And I just had confidence in myself and managed to keep emotions, for the most part, under control.”
Those emotions were tested in the second inning after a leadoff triple by Josh Bell, who would later score. But he regrouped and got the job done before an announced crowd of 46,179 at the Rogers Centre, including several family members. Leaving the field to a roar of applause with one out in the sixth was a moment he won’t soon forget.
“Walking off and all those people standing, that was something really special to me,” Rowley said. “I don’t think anybody really expects to experience that in their life, but it was pretty special.”
Blue Jays manager John Gibbons expected a few jitters from his man on the mound, but saw anything but.
“We’ve been looking for that,” Gibbons said of Rowley, the West Point military grad who turns 27 on Monday. “First off, I thought he looked very confident out there. He had good life on his fastball, good on his fastball, threw some good breaking balls. He’s athletic. A debut’s never easy, but I thought he did a tremendous job.”
Help on the mound has been a constant need for the Jays this season with a string of injuries and Aaron Sanchez still on the disabled list, plus Francisco Liriano traded away to Houston.
Gibbons says Sanchez isn’t far away from pitching in a game, as he recovers from the latest occurrence of a blister problem on his right middle finger. But with time running short in the regular season — in MLB and the minors for a rehab stint — the manager adds that the 25-year-old Sanchez might need to work out of the bullpen to get back up to speed.
“I do think it’s important he finishes the season pitching, one way or the other,” Gibbons said. “I don’t know if he could really do it as a starter, because we’re running out of time, but I think it would be good for his psyche going into the off-season.”
In the meantime, Rowley, who started the year with the Double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats, made a case for more work in the rotation.
The lone run off Rowley in the second had tied the game after Steve Pearce’s RBI groundout cashed in Jose Bautista in the bottom of the first. Toronto struck again in the bottom of the second, taking a 2-1 lead on a bases-loaded, two-out walk to Josh Donaldson that plated Kevin Pillar.
The Jays went up 4-1 in the fifth, when pinch-hitter Kendrys Morales — who had missed two games because of illness — managed to beat the throw to first on a potential double-play grounder with the bases loaded, allowing Bautista to score. Donaldson would cross the plate on a wild throw to first by Pirates second baseman Adam Frazier.
After paying for some costly errors in Friday night’s loss to the Pirates, the Jays capitalized on some sloppy Pittsburgh defence on Saturday. They scored two runs in the seventh inning after third baseman Josh Harrison couldn’t handle a dribbler down the line by Mike Ohlman, who wound up on third.