BOSTON – Over the course of their winning streak, the Toronto Blue Jays have won via rout, won via walk-off and, of course, won via epic comeback. Their regular bludgeoning of opposing pitchers kept them out of any tight bullpen battle games, when teams are tied late and trade zeroes until someone finally buckles.
Well, Saturday afternoon, after the Blue Jays jumped out to an early 4-0 lead they couldn’t hold, precisely such a battle of attrition unfolded, and Liam Hendriks, Steve Delabar and Aaron Loup held the Red Sox down until Russell Martin’s solo shot in the 11th beat Boston 5-4.
Once again baseball’s hottest team found a way to prevail, their win streak at 10 games and counting, moving three games over .500, at 33-30, for the first time this year.
“I’ll tell you what feels good, it feels good to win a one-run ballgame, I feel like we haven’t won too many one-run ballgames this year,” said Martin, and he’s right, although they’re up to 6-12 on the season now. “To get a win like this when we’re rolling — keep the train going. Bullpen has been sharp, bullpen has been the most improved aspect of our team, so we’re going to need them if we want to keep winning and if we want get to where we want to get to.”
The Blue Jays’ relief corps is without doubt their most maligned part and general manager Alex Anthopoulos is working diligently to find some help. They didn’t need it in this one, as Brett Cecil capped off five scoreless innings of work with a three-up, three-down 11th after Martin blasted a 2-0 challenge fastball from Matt Barnes off a light tower in left-centre field.
“We haven’t had the chance to get into too many close games, our offence has been incredible,” said Hendriks. “We did what we needed to do today, we had some clutch outings from some guys, Deli came in there, Loup came in there and Cecil locked it down.
“Once the starter goes our bullpen is ready to go and we’re ready to rumble.”
Against the Red Sox, at least, they have been, despite being a touch short-staffed after allowing just two runs in 6.2 innings of work in Friday’s 13-10 win, when they allowed the offence to climb out of an early 8-1 hole. Cecil, who went over a month without any save opportunities, has now closed out consecutive games, and it underscores the diverse ways the Blue Jays are managing to win during the streak.
“It does feel good and it shows that we’re playing good team baseball, which I think was the only missing ingredient — putting everything together — earlier in the year,” said Jose Bautista, who made the defensive play of the game by robbing Rusney Castillo of a home run at the wall in right. “We were hitting well. We were pitching well at times. We were playing good defence at times. We were running the bases well at times. Right now everything is kind of going at the same time.
“And it seems like we’re getting some breaks our way as well. Before, it seemed like every little mistake cost us a win, and now it doesn’t. It might be in our own heads. It might be perception. But our perception right now is that we’re on a good roll and our confidence is through the roof. So we just want to ride this wave as long as we can.”
That ride looked like it would be easy early on when Kevin Pillar opened the scoring with a run-scoring single in the second and Ryan Goins followed with a two-run single. Jose Reyes’ RBI single then made it 4-0 in fourth.
But R.A. Dickey was hit by some bad luck in the bottom half with a couple of knuckleballs that fluttered away from Martin, helping Xander Bogaerts deliver an RBI single and Pablo Sandoval a chopper up the middle that scored two.
“It’s almost like trying to catch a butterfly with your bare hands,” said Martin. “How many butterflies have you caught in your life? It’s not easy.”
David Ortiz led off the sixth with a solo shot that tied game 4-4, and the bullpen battle was on. Dickey, who allowed four runs, three earned, on six hits and a walk in six innings, continued a recent trend upward since cratering at Houston on May 15.
“Outside of that one kind of tumbler that Ortiz hit out 2-0, I felt like even in the inning when they scored the three runs, they were all singles and rarely do you give up seven base-runners and four of them score,” said Dickey. “So you just want to stay the course and that’s what I want to do, stay the course.”
The Blue Jays bullpen nearly buckled when Hendriks took over in the seventh and gave up three straight one-out singles. With Ortiz up, manager John Gibbons stuck with his righty rather than calling on one of his lefties and Hendriks rewarded him by striking out both Ortiz and Xander Bogaerts to end the frame.
“We were a little bit worn out down there, I wanted to try and extend [Hendriks] right there,” explained Gibbons. “You go to Coke there, then you’ve got to have a righty, you could get in a jam in a tie game.”
Hendriks let out a big fist pump after Bogaerts went down, and then responded with a clean eighth.
“The emotions get a little high in situations like that,” he said with a smile. “You’ve got no room for error so it’s pretty much grip it and rip it. I got the first pitch ball (against Ortiz) and then went fastball by him, and I’m like, ‘OK, here we go. I know I can get this by him.’ I stayed out there and he swung past the last one.”
Against Bogaerts, “you don’t ever want to let off. In the past when I do that, you get two outs and it’s like, ‘OK, here we go, I can get out of this,’ then all of a sudden it’s a ball in the gap and everyone scores. It’s grip it and get after him and was able to make some good pitches there and get out of it.”
The two strikeouts started a run of 14 straight batters retired to finish off the game. Delabar recorded four outs and Loup two outs — including a four-pitch strikeout of Ortiz — to set the stage for Martin and Cecil.
“I feel like in every single facet of the game, we’re doing what we’re supposed to do,” said Martin. “We’re being fundamentally sound, and that’s what it takes.”
The Blue Jays have certainly showed that over the past week and half, responding to each challenge they’ve faced.