ONE-HIT WONDER
Sure, it was the 37-win Orioles, but 40,000-plus fans didn’t care — Pannone flirted with a no-no in his first big-league start. Sweet.
The end result might have meant more for the Blue Jays — a 6-0 win on Wednesday at the Rogers Centre — if only the opponent had not been the rebuilding, borderline pathetic Baltimore Orioles.
More might have been gleaned from the impressive performance by rookie lefthander Thomas Pannone for a three-game sweep by the Jays, after being swept out of the Bronx by the Yankees earlier in the week. Take both with a grain of salt.
“We’d seen him a couple of times in relief,” Jays manager John Gibbons said of Pannone. “I didn’t really expect that, but he’s sneaky. The ball jumps on you. He did one hell of a job. It’s a great way to make your bigleague starting debut.”
The 24-year-old Pannone opened eyes in his first majorleague start and fifth appearance for the Jays. He had recently been recalled for a second time from Triple-A Buffalo after a brief demotion. He began the season serving an 80-game suspension for a PED violation. Room for the roster move was created by the disablement of starter Marcus Stroman with a blister.
Somehow it seemed fitting that these struggling teams, which entered action a combined 81 games out of first place, would have to go 30 batters in before the first hit by either side: a ground-ball single to centre field by Kendrys Morales against rookie righthander David Hess.
But it was Pannone’s no-hit bid into the seventh inning that had 40,595 fans buzzing in this Camp Day matinee.
“That seventh inning, once the crowd stood up and they got loud, that was an experience I’d never felt before,” Pannone marvelled. “Just a crowd that much behind you and rooting for you that much, it was amazing.”
The Rhode Island native, acquired from Cleveland, had his unlikely bid for a no-hitter prolonged in the sixth inning when centre fielder Randal Grichuk, filling in for Kevin Pillar, raced into left-centre and dived to snag a line drive off the bat of Orioles catcher Austin Wynns for the first out.
“It was pretty obvious to me in the sixth inning that I hadn’t given up a hit,” Pannone said. “The play by Grichuk was unbelievable. That’s a lot of momentum right there. You look at all the perfect games and no-hitters that have ever been thrown and there’s always that one play that’s just like, ‘Oh my God, that play was amazing.’ I was saying to myself maybe that’s it. But I wasn’t really wrapped up in it too much. My main goal was to continue to execute pitches.”
With the no-hitter still alive, the next batter, Cedric Mullins, laid down a bunt in a bid for a hit, but Pannone threw him out at first. Normally bunting for the first hit would be considered an assault on the unwritten rules of baseball, but it’s a different game now. After six no-hit innings, Pannone had thrown 88 pitches.
“It’s one of those games, he was chalking up a lot of pitches early,” Gibbons said. “It gets to the point in this day and age when nobody throws 140 pitches. You don’t ever want to get in the way of the baseball gods, but — I won’t say I was rooting for him to give up a hit, but it didn’t bother me when he did.”
Leading off the seventh, Trey Mancini singled on the ground to left field, followed by a line drive near the warning track that Teoscar Hernandez Teoscar-ed into a two-base error, placing runners at second and third with nobody out.
It was then that Pannone officially submitted his bid for consideration as a starter the rest of the season and beyond.
With the two O’s in scoring position, Russell Martin made a nice backhand play at third base to hold the runners. Craig Gentry then checked his swing and bounced one back to the mound, and Renato Nunez popped up to seal Pannone’s great escape. That was it for the left-hander after seven innings of one-hit ball, with two walks, three strikeouts and a hit batter.
“Good composure. He was calm at all times,” said his rookie catcher, Danny Jansen. “His fastball plays a lot higher than 89 to 92 (m.p.h.). It plays like 92, 93. I think he hides it really well. He uses his changeup off that.
“He throws inside. He can throw it up in the zone, down in the zone. He was good today, good command. He earned it. He’s an ultra-competitor, an awesome dude. He works his tail off.”
Morales slammed a two-out solo homer to right off Hess that put Pannone in position for his first major-league win. Morales homered for the fourth straight game (a total of five home runs), the longest streak of the Cuban-born slugger’s career. His 18 home runs place him one behind Justin Smoak for the team lead. Hernandez also has 18.
The Jays added five insurance runs in the eighth against former Jay Miguel Castro, after Hess had allowed just one run and three hits in his seven innings. Castro allowed three hits, walked two and threw three wild pitches.
The three-run homer to cap off the inning by Devon Travis was his 34th as a second baseman, tied for third in franchise history with Orlando Hudson. The homer also snapped a hitless streak of 18 at-bats.