A HOLE LOT OF FUN
The Jays’ offence explodes for Jaime Garcia in the opener, and Luke Maile ends things in the nightcap as Jays sweep doubleheader,
Heading into Tuesday’s doubleheader against the Royals, the unfortunate Blue Jays had not played since Friday, due to a couple of rainouts in Cleveland and a rare postponement at home when a chunk of ice slid off the CN Tower and crashed through the roof of the Rogers Centre on Monday.
The freak-of-nature ice ball created a clearly visible hole that was about three feet by five feet, with the shattered residue landing in medium right field just about where Randal Grichuk might be positioned. A building alarm sounded and the field was quickly cordoned off until a decision to postpone was made around 5:30 p.m.
“From talking to people who have been here a long time, since the building opened in 1989, no one had ever seen anything like this,” Jays executive vice-president Andrew Miller said. “We were doing everything we possibly could to try and get the game in. We took as much time as we could to assess the information … the weather. Ultimately we decided to postpone it. We just thought that more informa- tion, more time would help us.”
The truth is that the three straight days without baseball, which created Tuesday’s double-dip and another twinbill on May 3 in Cleveland, may end up helping the Jays more than it hurts. They have starting pitcher depth and are also waiting for Josh Donaldson’s 10 days on the disabled list to expire.
Donaldson may end up missing just seven games before being eligible to return on Saturday at Yankee Stadium. That would allow him, even if he serves as designated hitter some of the time, to reach his goal of 150-plus games as he heads toward free agency while trying to prove he is not prone to injury.
When Monday’s game against the Royals was officially postponed, the plan was to simply push back the Jays pitchers, with Jaime Garcia and J.A. Happ starting Tuesday. But with the ability to add a 26th player to the active roster for the second game of a doubleheader, manager John Gibbons and pitching coach Pete Walker rethought that strategy. Right-hander Joe Biagini, who had not worked for a while at Triple-A Buffalo while the Bisons also dealt with weather issues, was told Monday evening that he would start Game 2, and he was chauffeured up the QEW.
Biagini will return to Buffalo for his next two starts, then can rejoin the Jays for the second game of the doubleheader in Cleveland, two weeks from now.
With no off days on the Jays schedule until April 23, the Jays would have had to make a roster move this weekend if Garcia and Happ both pitched Tuesday. Biagini would likely have gotten the call, but Toronto would have had to clear a roster spot by optioning someone like lefty reliever Tim Mayza, who the team wouldn’t have been able to recall for 10 days.
Instead, Gibbons will have his best pitchers start at Yankee Stadium — Aaron Sanchez, Marco Estrada and Marcus Stroman — with Garcia in the final game on Sunday facing his former team in the Bronx.
Biagini is not, of course, a cure-all for the 2018 season. Given recent history, there is no anticipation that the cur- rent five starters, plus Biagini, will be all the Jays will require to get them through 162 games.
But Biagini is the most majorleague-ready starter at the moment, and if he can fill the Jays’ doubleheader and injury requirements for a sixth starter through the first few months, there’s a good chance at least one of the young starters down on the farm may develop enough to be a major-league possibility. That group includes lefty Ryan Borucki at Buffalo, plus right-handers Sean ReidFoley and Canadian youngster Jordan Romano at Double-A New Hampshire.
In the meantime, the reality is that doubleheaders have been a true rarity at the SkyDome/Rogers Centre since it opened on June 5, 1989, almost 29 years ago. A game was rained out early in the 1989 season at Exhibition Stadium, and made up as part of a doubleheader on July 17. The Angels took both games.
The second doubleheader came on Oct. 5, 2001, against the Indians. The final game for the Jays in Cleveland had been rained out on Sept. 26 so, with the Indians scheduled to play the final series of the year in Toronto, the first game of that series became a twinbill. But this hole-in-the-roof postponement was unprecedented.
“We were doing everything we possibly could to get (Monday’s) game in.” ANDREW MILLER JAYS EXECUTIVE V-P