Maile delivers in 12
Walkoff HR sinks Red Sox
TORONTO — Chris Sale pitched mad on the mound last night, and he might have had good reason to be.
After allowing two runs in the first two innings, Sale received a mound visit from pitching coach Dana LeVangie, then two batters later went on to retire 15 in a row and 21 of the next 22 while pitching through the ninth inning.
The Blue Jays have been accused of stealing signs at the Rogers Centre several times before, and for the rest of the game the Red Sox were putting down multiple signs before Sale threw a pitch, something that was pointed out early in the game by NESN broadcaster Jerry Remy.
After the mound visit, Sale was as dominant as he’s been all season, tying a career high with 15 strikeouts. However, he gave up a game-tying homer to Luke Maile in the eighth inning, and Brian Johnson served up a walkoff homer to Maile in the 12th as Toronto defeated the Red Sox, 5-3.
It might have been the weirdest game of Sale’s tenure with the Red Sox.
Teoscar Hernandez led off the bottom of the first inning with a hard-hit double to left-center. He scored when the next hitter, Josh Donaldson, smoked another liner to center. Two more balls were hit for rockets to score another run in the second.
That’s when LeVangie emerged from the dugout to talk with Sale. Catcher Sandy Leon then began putting down multiple signs and Sale turned into a strikeout machine.
He needed 39 pitches in the first two innings, then just 77 pitches over the next seven innings, finishing with 116 pitches (85 strikes) in total.
If the Blue Jays were stealing signs and knew what was coming in the first innings, it wouldn’t be a new story out of the Rogers Centre.
The Kansas City Royals suspected the Jays of stealing their signs in Game 3 of the 2015 ALCS, when Johnny Cueto gave up eight runs. Cueto’s teammate, Edinson Volquez, said sign-stealing happened more here than at any other park.
“That’s what I hear,” he said, according to the Toronto SportsNet. “Most of the teams come here — we’ve got a lot of friends on different teams — they always say that.”
That incident only brought back memories of the one presented in a widely discussed 2011 ESPN story, which claimed a man dressed in white was sitting in center field and raising his arms when offspeed pitches were coming.
It would explain why Sale was so dominant once the Sox started switching their signs. He struck out six in a row in the fourth and fifth innings and earned his 15th strikeout in the ninth.
He’s now struck out 27 in his last two games, and it’s the first time this year he’s reached double digits in consecutive games. Last year he had eight doubledigit strikeout games in his first nine starts.
Matt Barnes and Carson Smith combined to keep the Jays off the board in the 10th and 11th until Johnson gave up the winner in the 12th.
The Sox went up 1-0 in the first when Mookie Betts and Andrew Benintendi put runners on the corners to start the game and J.D. Martinez drove in Betts with an RBI groundout.
Xander Bogaerts homered in the fourth and then the Sox scored the goahead run on a bizarre play when Leon struck out and Maile, the catcher, dropped it. He then threw the ball into right field when trying to get Leon out at first base and Brock Holt scored all the way from first.
Maile got the run back when he homered off Sale in the eighth to break the lefty’s streak of batters retired.
Before this game, Maile had not homered since last May. He hit just two last year.