TORONTO — Who says the Toronto Blue Jays can’t win close games?
As the Blue Jays continue their run of strong performance since shocking the baseball world with a blitzkrieg approach to the trade deadline, Toronto took a good whack at the argument that they can score in bunches but don’t get the offence when they most need it.
Tuesday night’s 3-1 victory over the Minnesota Twins was a tidy, efficient, almost innocuous baseball game, but one where the best team won and, at the same time, proved they have the mettle to prevent runs on a night when they struggle to create them.
It was the fifth time this season that the team has won a game in which they scored three runs or less, and the sixth time in their last eight they’ve held the opposition to less than four runs.
“What I’m enjoying is I’m seeing these guys compete, night in and night out,” said DeMarlo Hale, the Blue Jays acting manager Tuesday night while John Gibbons served a one-game suspension. “There’s a reputation and there’s a perception that this team is going to play hard every night and be in ball games and the good teams have got that. When teams come in or when we go on the road, they know they’re about to play a good ball club and that we’re going to compete every night.”
Coming into the evening it seemed like the Twins, pitching Phil Hughes — who entered the game having allowed an AL-leading 25 home runs — against this lineup in this ballpark, were asking for trouble. And early on it certainly looked like that was how things would play out.
In the first inning Josh Donaldson pulled a laser to left that was hit so hard Minnesota outfielder Eddie Rosario simply turned around and watched it fly into the seats. Then In the third, Troy Tulowitzki barreled a 2-1 fastball 450 feet in the same direction, with Rosario this time at least feigning pursuit of a ball he would’ve needed a billboard-sized glove to catch.
But Hughes survived a tricky fourth and was fine in the fifth. He never made it through the sixth, as a pair of doubles by Edwin Encarnacion and Dioner Navarro drove him from the game, but he also wasn’t the launching pad that some may have expected him to be. He then gave way to a Twins bullpen that was equally adept at holding Toronto’s high-powered offence in check.
Fortunately for the Blue Jays, Donaldson and Tulowitzki gave them all the runs they’d need. Toronto starter Marco Estrada was perfect through three, before getting into trouble with a lined single off his cleat and a couple walks to load the bases with one out in the fourth. Torii Hunter plated one of the runs with a deep sacrifice fly, but Estrada dropped a filthy 78-mph curveball on Rosario to walk away from any more damage.
“It’s not a pitch I use very often and obviously I don’t think he was expecting it,” Estrada said. “I’d been going up and away for two pitches. And I might have thrown that curveball in the exact same spot — and it kind of dropped in. He probably thought it was another fastball.”
Estrada cruised from there and left after 6.2 innings, allowing just the one run on two hits while striking out five and walking two. He’s now allowed two earned runs or less in eight of his last nine starts.
“He’s got that change-up that he can add and subtract with his fastball. He mixed in his curveball a little bit more tonight. It’s just a pitcher who knows how to pitch,” Hale said. “And when you’ve got a mix of those pitches, you can get those kind of performances.”
Interestingly, Estrada got most of his strikeouts with his 90-mph fastball Tuesday night, a pitch that he usually utilizes to set up his much more dangerous off-speed offerings.
Estrada mixed and matched his pitches well all evening (in all he threw 69 fastballs, 23 changeups and 11 curves), occasionally using his changeup — a pitch he feels batters are beginning to sit on as the season wears on and scouting reports become more thorough — to set up the heater.
“I guess guys were sitting off-speed. Obviously, I don’t throw very hard. I just try and locate as best as possible,” Estrada said. “But sometimes it’s going to happen. If guys are sitting on a changeup, a fastball’s probably going to look just like [a changeup,] and next thing you know, it’s by them.”
Estrada’s fastball, which he works up in the zone to set up his fading changeup, has gotten him into trouble in the past, especially in 2014 when he led baseball with 29 home runs allowed, but the 32-year-old has done well to limit the long ball this season, giving up just one homer in his last six outings, despite pitching three of them at the hitter’s haven that is Rogers Centre.
Part of Estada’s success, of course, deserves to be attributed to Dioner Navarro, the Blue Jays bench piece who has become Estrada’s personal catcher since he joined the rotation in early May.
“Navvy called a great game again,” Estrada said. “I’m just trying to follow him. Trying to locate, trying to hit the glove as much as I can.”
Estrada gave-way to Toronto’s freshly stocked bullpen, with Mark Lowe stranding a runner in the seventh, Aaron Sanchez pitching a clean frame and Roberto Osuna earning his eighth save of the year.
Osuna took the mound without his best stuff, topping out at 95 mph on a fastball that he’s thrown at 96 and 97 throughout the season. He walked a batter and didn’t strike anyone out for just the second time in his last nine outings.
The 20-year-old has carried a tremendous workload in his rookie year, throwing 48.2 innings, more than any other Blue Jays reliever (save for Aaron Sanchez, who made 11 starts) and among the top-20 relievers in baseball. However, he knows he’ll have many more outings like this in August and September, especially if the Blue Jays continue to contend.
“It’s part of the job, pitching a little bit tired,” Osuna said. “It was just one of those days where you don’t feel 100 per cent, but I’ll feel fine tomorrow. I did my job, so I’m happy.”
With wins in six of their last seven, everyone in Blue Jays land is pretty happy. The hitters are hitting, the pitchers are pitching, and the bullpen is as strong as it’s been all year. And while the Blue Jays may have baseball’s best offence, if they’re going to reach the post-season they’ll have to win the low-scoring affairs, too.
Tuesday night, they proved they can do just that.