Springer dinger caps comeback
The view from Deep Left Field on the Blue Jays’ 11-10 win in the first game of Saturday’s doubleheader in Baltimore:
It was painful to watch George Springer at the plate on Labour Day in New York. Willing himself into the lineup while still recovering from a strained ligament in his knee, he scuffled through his first three plate appearances before hammering a foul ball of that busted knee in the eighth inning.
Springer refused to come out of the game, finished the at-bat by striking out, and then sat and healed for the rest of the sweep of the Yankees.
He was back Friday night as the Jays opened up in Baltimore, but didn’t appear to have his legs underneath him early on, going hitless in his first four trips. That made him 0-for-hislast-13 until a single in his final at-bat.
There was a hint that things were looking up when Springer led off Saturday’s first game with a slow roller to second and busted it down the firstbase line, smelling an infield hit. He didn’t beat the throw, but the 90-foot sprint was an indication that he didn’t feel like he had to take it easy on the knee.
A hard-hit line single to rightcentre in sixth showed that the timing was back, and it was hero time in the seventh.
With the Jays down to their last out, having shaved a 10-5 Baltimore lead to just one run, Springer got an 0-and-1 slider middle-away from Tyler Wells and hammered it to deep left, right down the line. It nestled in the seats just 353 feet away.
Springer’s 17th home run as a Blue Jay — in just 58 games — capped their second massive come-from-behind win in a week.
Everything’s Jake: Since being picked up on waivers, third baseman Jake Lamb hadn’t made much of an impression, going 0-for-11 over his first six games. But Friday night, the lefty slugger hit two balls to the warning track in centre field. Saturday, they started to fall in.
A double off the wall in dead centre in his first trip, then a walk in his next one. Third time up, Lamb came to the plate with the bases loaded in the fifth and his team down by five. He singled up the middle to score a pair. A sacrifice fly in the seventh, ahead of Springer’s game-winning homer, capped a perfect day at the dish.
This one’s for Ryu: It seemed apparent to everyone watching by the second inning of Game 1 that it wasn’t Hyun-Jin Ryu’s day.
The lefty, coming off six brilliant shutout innings against the Yankees in his last start, gave up a monster two-run homer to Anthony Santander in the first inning and another to Austin Hays in the second.
A lot of factors went into Ryu having a longer-than-normal leash, the biggest of which was that it was the first of two on the day, with minor-league call-up Thomas Hatch scheduled to start the second game. With Robbie Ray failing to make it through five innings the night before, the Jays were going to look for any reason not to go to the bullpen after just two innings.
Ryu has been one of the best pitchers in baseball over the past three seasons, and there have been many, many games over the years in which a good starter has been roughed up for an inning or two and then found his footing and managed to get through five or six innings without much further damage.
It’s justifiable that Ryu was sent back out to start the third inning, with the Jays down 5-3 and the game still very winnable.
But then Ryu walked Trey Mancini on just four pitches. Santander followed with a hard line single to left. He wasn’t getting back on track and it was painfully obvious.
Even with all the outside factors, the Santander hit should have been it for Ryu. The desire to save the bullpen with a dozen innings still to be played should have been overridden by the fact that there was a serious risk of the game getting out of hand in a hurry, given how badly Ryu was struggling.
Manager Charlie Montoyo, in constant communication with pitching coach Pete Walker, never moved from his post in the dugout and, to his credit, Ryu struck out the next hitter. The southpaw was a ground ball away from getting out of it, and he got that ground ball off the bat of Pedro Severino — but it found the hole between first and second for a single to load the bases.
Montoyo popped out of the dugout and went to the mound. A batter or two too late, perhaps. But Ryu talked his way into staying in the game, confident in his ability to get out of the jam. He couldn’t. Ryan McKenna took him into the left-field corner for a tworun double and Montoyo was right back out there to get him.
The fact that the bats wound up coming through at, very literally, the last minute got everybody off the hook.