TORONTO – About 30 minutes before Game 4 of the American League Championship Series, the Toronto Blue Jays formed a circle in the centre of their clubhouse. In the middle stood Josh Donaldson and he had some things to say. He said them with conviction, with fire, with inspiration. The reigning AL MVP wasn’t ready for the season end. Despite a 3-0 deficit in the best-of-seven series, he still believed they could go all the way. And if they were going to go out, he wasn’t going to let them go out quietly.
“It just brought a lot of life into the clubhouse in a very quick and very aggressive way,” said Brett Cecil. “If you weren’t ready to play, you were ready to play after that.”
Said Troy Tulowitzki: “It doesn’t take a genius if you follow this team to know the guys that this team leans on and JD is obviously one of those guys. He’s the guy that a lot of people in this locker-room, if they don’t, should turn to during times like these.”
Added Edwin Encarnacion: “When you lose three straight games, you’ve got to do something to change things around and Josh spoke with us and motivated everybody and everybody went out there and gave it all we had.”
The Blue Jays did, and they earned themselves another game with a stirring 5-1 victory over Cleveland that cut the AL Central champion’s lead in the best-of-seven to 3-1. The margin between them and Cleveland remains painfully short, and the odds before them still very, very long. But all-star Marco Estrada is due to start Game 5 against rookie Ryan Merritt, and well, following in the footsteps of the 2004 Boston Red Sox in erasing a 3-0 deficit seems a bit less unlikely than it did after Game 3.
“If we were to lose today, there was no way that I was going to leave this series and not feel like I had an impact on it,” said Donaldson. “I believe in each and every one of those guys that are in there. That’s why I’m so passionate – if I didn’t feel like we had a chance, I would roll over and just say, ‘All right, guys, go ahead.’ But I feel like we have the team. And I feel like we have the players in the clubhouse to be able to win the series.”
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The task remains daunting. The Blue Jays needed a playing-like-a-possessed-madman Donaldson, a brilliant Aaron Sanchez, a clutch-as-usual Encarnacion and the catalyst Ezequiel Carrera to keep Corey Kluber and the crew from ending their season.
“It’s nice knowing what’s going on in one of your best players’ head right before such an important game,” Jose Bautista said of Donaldson’s speech. “It kind of puts things in perspective for some of the other people that might not necessarily know how to feel and potentially could be pressing and be lost in their approach or preparation.”
Added Cecil: “That’s one of the best things about him. He has, one, the ability to talk in front of that many people, and, two, the ability to do that to guys, get them fired up. Sometimes it takes the first base hit or the first double or the first run to get guys fired up, but I feel like he did it before the first pitch was even thrown. He was definitely on a mission today.”
Donaldson’s homer in the third gave them their first lead of the series, while Sanchez held Cleveland to a run on two hits over six outstanding innings. Yet the Blue Jays, up 2-1, were a mistake away from trouble until precious breathing room arrived in the seventh, helped along by a Cleveland error and the first debatable decision made by manager Terry Francona this series.
Ryan Goins opened the inning with a single and Bautista followed with a little squib up the third base line that Bryan Shaw fielded and threw away. That brought up Donaldson, who Francona ordered walked intentionally to load the bases. As he took his four, the crowd chanted “Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.”
“It felt good,” Encarnacion said of watching Donaldson get walked in front of him. “Who doesn’t like to hit with the bases loaded? I love to hit with the bases loaded so it was a good thing that happened to me and I helped my team to win.”
Encarnacion took ball one, fouled off strike one and then shot a groundball up the middle to score two runs, the crowd exploding even as Donaldson was thrown out at third, drawing a throw away from home. The single gave the Blue Jays more runs than in their first three games combined.
Encarnacion had a message of his own to his teammates in the dugout before they took the field.
“I said, ‘Are you guys ready to go home?’” recalled Encarnacion. “They said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘So, let’s go.’”
Another run came in the eighth, when Carrera tripled with one out and scored on Kevin Pillar’s sacrifice fly to a diving Brandon Guyer in right field.
The outburst provided some rare low leverage innings of work for Jason Grilli in the eighth and Roberto Osuna in the ninth, after Cecil delivered a crucial and clean high-leverage seventh.
“In the playoffs, these games aren’t going to come easy to win,” said Donaldson. “They’ve played great defence. They’ve pitched well and had timely hits. And the fact of the matter is, the more balls that we can put in play that are with a purpose and going up there and having quality at-bats, grinding at-bats out, that’s when you’re going to start getting your breaks. You’re not just going to go up there and just run into one every now and then and that’s the game. It’s not going to happen that way. Both teams are going to fight back and forth with each other, and you’ve got to be able to withstand it.”
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Sanchez, with his curveball a major weapon, set the tone for the Blue Jays. A pivotal sequence came in the third, when Tyler Naquin opened the inning with a double and was promptly sacrificed to third by Roberto Perez for the top of the Cleveland order. The Blue Jays brought the infield in and Carlos Santana grounded out to Goins, who made a clever pick on the smash, before Jason Kipnis rolled over a curveball to Goins for the final out.
That kept the game scoreless and in the bottom half, Donaldson fouled off a 2-2 curveball in the upper part of the zone before pummelling a low curve over the wall in left-centre. Even better, Sanchez followed with a clean, nine-pitch fourth to hold things there.
“From pitch one in a must-win game you’ve got to be ready to go,” said Sanchez. “But when he got us on the board and I was facing three, four and five and it was a one, two, three inning, right there I think that was the turning point, like ‘Let’s go, don’t look back now.’”
The Blue Jays tacked on another run in the bottom of the fourth as Tulowitzki and Russell Martin walked to open the inning and Carrera dunked a ball into centre for an RBI single. Tulowitzki read the ball perfectly, allowing him to score easily.
Cleveland got on the board in the fifth as Coco Crisp worked a one-out walk, took second on a wild pitch and scored when Roberto Perez rocketed a meaty fastball off the wall in left-centre at 105 mph. Santana followed with a grounder headed to left field that Donaldson snared at full extension diving to his left before throwing to first for the out.
It was brilliant.
“You could see the intensity just by the look in his eyes,” Martin said of Donaldson. “You could tell that nobody wanted it more than him today.”
The Blue Jays nearly padded their edge again in the sixth when Tulowitzki opened the inning with a smash off the top of the right-field wall that went for a long single. After a Martin fielder’s choice and a Michael Saunders single, Carrera rocked a ball to the track in right field where Lonnie Chisenhall chased it down for the out.
They continued to press and eventually they broke through.
“When you get down three games to none, there is some frustration that’s involved in that,” said Donaldson. “And the fact of the matter is I’m not ready to go home. And I feel like our team is capable of winning this entire thing. But that’s more of the bigger picture. Where we have to focus more right now is taking it from pitch one and into the final out.”
The Blue Jays bought themselves another 27 outs to work with Tuesday, and a chance to board their planned flight to Cleveland on Wednesday night for 27 more.
