TORONTO – This is when the mettle of the Toronto Blue Jays truly gets tested. They’ve pissed away a month of strong starting pitching, an erratic bullpen flushed away a few hard-fought games and an offence supposed to carry the load is instead adding to the burden. Right now there are no simple answers to be found, no panaceas to cure all, no option but to grind and fight and stay afloat through a tidal wave of frustration.
Some relief, at minimum, if not a breakthrough, finally came for them in the ninth inning Tuesday night, when Justin Smoak launched a game-tying solo shot before clubbing a two-run homer in the 10th for a 3-1 win over the Texas Rangers. The Blue Jays had been 0-13 when trailing after eight innings until their first walk-off win of the season, only their fifth victory in the past 13 outings.
“I think it’s just a matter of time,” said Smoak. “Everybody in this clubhouse knows how good we are offensively, and we’re not panicked about anything, you’ve just got to get it done. If we can win games while we’re going through this, when we get hot it will be even better.”
Edwin Encarnacion broke out of an 0-for-20 slide with a single to open the 10th and after Troy Tulowitzki struck out, Smoak hammered Phil Klein’s first pitch over the wall in left field, sending his teammates pouring out of the dugout and charging up the remnants from a crowd of 24,437.
“We needed it,” said Marco Estrada, who overcame two shaky frames to throw six innings of one-run ball. “We just haven’t really been putting up big hits and (Smoak) ended up having two of them in one game. It was incredible to watch, something we really needed.”
Up until Smoak’s homer in the ninth off Rangers closer Shawn Tolleson, there were plenty of dour faces among the Blue Jays as another winnable game appeared set to slip away, and the misery about to mount.
Twice the Blue Jays opened an inning by having the first two men reach, only to come up empty. Josh Donaldson was called out looking on a pitch that looked like ball four at the end of a nine-pitch at-bat with men on second and third in the fifth. Darwin Barney failed twice to get a sacrifice bunt down, fought like hell to atone, and then got called out looking on the 15th pitch of his at-bat in the seventh. Jose Bautista muttered to himself up the first-base line after ripping a line drive directly at Nomar Mazara in right field on the first pitch he saw from Sam Dyson in the eighth, and then flew out with the bases loaded to end the ninth, leaving him in an 0-for-14 rut.
As a team, the Blue Jays went 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position and stranded 11 men before Smoak won it. Little wonder so many Blue Jays looked about ready to dismember somebody for most of the night.
“Everybody’s feeling it, naturally,” said manager John Gibbons. “We’re known as a big offensive team and we haven’t been getting that, but we all feel it’s a matter of time. But you get in those battles, sometimes, too, where you run into a good club, they’re pitching well, they got some key double plays early in the game, so we did have some missed opportunities, but you always overlook some things when you win. And you don’t have to answer certain questions when you win about why you didn’t do this, or what happened here. It doesn’t matter, you won.”
Amid the missed opportunities, there was enough good to give the Blue Jays a chance to rally late.
Estrada, who was rubbing his shoulder on the mound during his previous outing, allowed only two hits, one of them Rougned Odor’s leadoff homer. Russell Martin, wearing a scowl all day, singled, walked and should have had Elvis Andrus thrown out trying to steal second in the seventh but the runner’s hand popped the ball out of Tulowitzki’s glove. Barney turned a phenomenal double play in the eighth with two on, ranging into short right to make a basket catch on Adrian Beltre’s bloop before spinning and throwing to third to easily nail an inexplicably tagging Odor for the third out. Barney saved a run at home plate in the ninth when he fielded Mitch Moreland’s grounder with the infield in and threw to Martin, who made a strong tag on pinch-runner Hanser Alberto.
“Moving backwards and to my left, I prefer a basket catch just because it’s easier to keep your feet under you and when you have to turn your whole body on that kind of a play, it’s a lot harder to (align) yourself,” Barney said of the play in the eighth. “For me, that’s the way I’m going to make that catch more often than not, and fortunately I got enough on that throw to get him.”
That play pulled the Blue Jays out of a two-on, one-out jam that Gibbons used closer Roberto Osuna to escape, underlining how much he wanted to keep the game close. When the Blue Jays didn’t take the lead in the bottom half, he sent Joe Biagini in for the ninth, and after he escaped a men-on-the-corners, none-out jam thanks to Barney, he followed with a clean 10th to earn his first career win.
“I just wish the Raptors weren’t playing so we could have all the attention,” quipped Biagini, who in a serious moment added later: “I appreciate the trust in me in that situation.”
The win was also the first of the season for the Blue Jays bullpen, prompting Gibbons to half-kid that, “we were overdue.” Even after a stirring comeback win, that still holds true all around the roster.