TORONTO — The word “bunt” is a contentious one among those who follow the Toronto Blue Jays. Some fans love bunts more than certain family members, crying for the at times offensively challenged Blue Jays to manufacture more runs. Others deride its very concept, arguing that this team, which on Sunday penciled six consecutive 20-homer hitters into its lineup, should be just fine hitting balls over the fence instead of leaving them right in front of the plate.
Ezequiel Carrera has an opinion, too. He loves bunts. Huge fan. If you watch this team closely, you’ve surely noticed that on the occasions he gets into the starting lineup, Carrera tries to drop one down at least once a night. Nearly 100 per cent of the time he does it on his own, with no instruction from his coaches in the dugout.
And that was the situation Sunday afternoon, as the Blue Jays tried to rally in the final inning of a game they trailed by one. Melvin Upton Jr., led off with a walk, and advanced two bases on a well-struck single by Kevin Pillar. That gave the Blue Jays runners on first and third with no one out. As Carrera watched that scenario play out from the on-deck circle, he had but one thing on his mind.
“I knew I was going to [bunt,”] Carrera said. “So, I went out there and did what I thought I was going to do.”
If only we could all be so straightforward. And so, Carrera stood in against Yankees reliever Tyler Clippard as if he was going to swing the bat before he quickly squared up, lunging for a pitch that tailed well out of the strike zone. Somehow, Carrera managed to delicately skip the ball up the first base line, a perfectly placed bunt.
“Zeke,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said, “he can handle that bat with the best of them when it comes to bunting.”
At third base, Upton got a large secondary lead and instinctually raced for the plate as soon as he saw the ball hit the turf. Although a squeeze play hadn’t been called—”You never squeeze with no outs, too many bad things can happen,” Gibbons said—Upton had a pretty good inkling of the choice Carrera was about to make.
“I was kind of expecting it,” Upton said, echoing the thoughts of every single one of his teammates and anyone else who has watched Carrera play all season. “Once I saw it was down it was an automatic break for me.”
The bunt fell right into a Bermuda Triangle of pitcher, catcher and first baseman, with Clippard the only Yankee with a shot at making a play. He probably should have simply gloved the ball, let the run score, and moved on to the task of getting out of the inning. But instead, the reliever tried to flip the ball home with his glove, sending it past his catcher and bouncing to the backstop, which allowed Carrera to advance to second and, more importantly, Pillar to take third.
From there, the Blue Jays win was elementary. Clippard intentionally walked Josh Donaldson to load the bases and set up a force out at any base. But Edwin Encarnacion—underrated for his situational hitting—was next. Encarnacion laced a first-pitch splitter hard on the ground to the right side, which easily brought in Pillar with the winning run. It ended up a 4-3 Blue Jays victory, the club’s third in as many days over the slumping Yankees, and a virtual death knell for New York’s post-season chances. And it was all because of a bunt.
“It just shows that we can create runs when we need to,” said Jose Bautista, who reached base in all four of his plate appearances and drove in a pair. “That situation comes up and it makes us reiterate in our own heads that we’re not a one-dimensional team like a lot of people think we are. It’s good to get it done.”
The Blue Jays nearly won the game creatively in the bottom of the eighth inning as well. Donaldson led off the inning with a six-pitch walk against Yankees closer Dellin Betances, before swiping second as the tall right-hander delivered an 85-mph breaking ball to Encarnacion. Donaldson deftly moved to third on an Encarnacion groundout, and scored when Bautista lined a full count Betances curveball through a drawn-in Yankees infield, to put his team up by one.
But that lead was quickly erased in the top of the ninth when Roberto Osuna did what he so rarely does and blew a save. Mark Teixeira and Billy Butler led off the inning with consecutive weak singles, and both moved into scoring position on a Chase Headley comebacker that deflected off Osuna’s glove. Then, Mason Williams caught up to a 96-mph fastball just above the zone and drove it into left field to cash the tying run.
That brought up No. 9 batter Ronald Torreyes, a stubborn little hitter who fouled off four consecutive tough pitches before lifting a 94-mph fastball into deep-enough centre field for a sacrifice fly that gave his team a one-run lead going into the bottom of the ninth. It was just the seventh time Osuna has blown a save in 62 career opportunities.
“I thought Osuna pitched well. They dunked a couple balls in on him and ended up taking the lead,” Gibbons said. “But he was throwing the ball really well.”
The blown save felt worse that it turned out to be because it came at the end of a tightly-contested pitcher’s duel, as Yankees starter Michael Pineda and Blue Jays right-hander Marco Estrada took turns tossing clean innings as the ubiquitous Goodyear blimp hovered in the sunlight overhead.
Pineda kept the Blue Jays off-balance for most of his outing, striking out six over his first three innings. His lone mistake came in the fourth when he threw a 2-1 fastball middle-in to Bautista, which is seldom a mistake a pitcher can get away with against a hitter who lives on heaters in that location. And thus, Bautista barreled it 398-feet into the left field seats for a 1-0 lead.
“You don’t see many pitches over the heart of the plate like that anymore. And when you do, it’s breaking balls or pitches with a lot of movement,” Bautista said. “That one, I just felt like it was one of his flatter fastballs. Most of the time it’s either moving, two-seaming, or cutting a little bit, with a little bit more life. It seemed like he pulled a pitch before and he was just trying to guide a pitch in there. I don’t know. That’s just my take on it. But I was able to put the barrel on it.”
Meanwhile, Estrada was efficient and effective, leaning on his reliably deceptive changeup and continuing a recent run of brilliant Blue Jays starting pitching. The club has gone 10 games in a row with its starter allowing two earned runs or fewer.
Estrada fell victim to the strange providence of baseball in the second inning, when Teixeira broke his bat on an 86-mph cutter and still managed to bend the ball down the right field line for a double. Similarly hit balls have produced a batting average of exactly .000 this season.
Estrada then walked Brian McCann and watched a Headley flare that came off his bat at only 69-mph fall into no-man’s land in shallow left field to load the bases with one out. But Estrada regrouped, getting Williams to swing over a 76-mph changeup and Torreyes to swing under another one, popping up the Yankees second baseman to end the threat.
“You just don’t let that stuff get to you,” Estrada said. “The pitch to Texiera was a bad pitch. His bat might’ve been broken, but I think he hit it pretty well. Those things happen sometimes. I just told myself, whatever, just don’t worry about it, keep making pitches and it’ll go your way, And that’s basically what happened.”
Estrada didn’t allow another hit until the seventh, when Yankees shortstop Didi Gregorius got just enough of an 87-mph cutter at the letters to carry the ball over the wall in right-centre field and tie the game. It was New York’s first run since Wednesday.
Estrada struck out the next batter, but then surrendered a hard-hit single to McCann, who was lifted for pinch runner Eric Young Jr., who promptly swiped second. Estrada got Headley to chase a changeup for his second out of the inning but then walked Williams to put two runners on for Torreyes, who was going to be Estrada’s final batter, one way or the other.
Estrada and catcher Russell Martin began Torreyes with a curveball, which the No. 9 hitter missed badly, before earning a second strike with a fouled-off cutter. Torreyes then managed to lay off a 1-2 curveball below the zone, but couldn’t resist going after a 78-mph changeup behind it, swinging through Estrada’s best pitch for a momentous third out. The generally reserved Estrada yelled and pumped his fists as he left the mound, returning to a dugout of teammates waiting for him on the top step.
“It was a great feeling. I couldn’t hold back,” Estrada said. “I was excited. I was pumped. It was just a fun game today.”
After that there was the stolen base and go-ahead run in the eighth, the blown save in the ninth, and, of course, the bunt. The game see-sawed in the final innings, but the Blue Jays came out on top, with their seventh win in their last 10 and their fourth win in their last five one-run games.
The club is undeniably playing better over the last week than it was for much of this month, and while the division is likely too far gone, a post-season wild card berth becomes more and more realistic with every passing day. The Blue Jays magic number now stands at four, with seven games to play.
“We’re treating these games as early playoffs,” Bautista said. “I know that in everybody’s mind that’s how we’re playing. And it’s showing.”
