TORONTO – The man who has saved the Toronto Blue Jays’ season not once but twice started the year without an obvious role on the pitching staff, in need of a chance to find his place. He turned his ankle during spring training, missed some critical build-up time, fell into the bullpen’s dreaded long-man dead zone and then waited, and waited, and waited.
Marco Estrada is in many ways an unlikely saviour, but he breathed life into the Blue Jays during the American League Division Series with a Game 3 gem against the Texas Rangers, and under even more dire circumstances, one-upped himself with an ace-like performance in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series against the Kansas City Royals.
Really, the way in which the right-hander asserted control from his first pitch on is why the Blue Jays forced a Game 6 Friday at Kauffman Stadium with a 7-1 victory Wednesday evening, before a roaring Rogers Centre crowd of 49,325. They now trail the best-of-seven 3-2 with David Price set for a rematch against Yordano Ventura.
“A lot of people don’t understand, this guy is a legit starter, man,” catcher Dioner Navarro said of Estrada. “He’s done a great job throughout the whole year and twice in the post-season when we’ve been facing elimination, he’s done an unbelievable job. You couldn’t expect anything better than what he did today.”
The offence, against a very, very good Edinson Volquez, eventually came in Game 5, with Troy Tulowitzki’s three-run double in the sixth inning allowing collars to loosen and hands to unclench.
But until that breakthrough, it was Estrada who kept things in check, silencing an offence that scored 33 runs in the first four games of the series by allowing just one hit through the first six innings, working around a two-out walk in the seventh and leaving with two out and a 6-1 lead in the eighth after a Salvador Perez homer and Alex Gordon single.
“It’s the start we needed,” said Tulowitzki.
When manager John Gibbons came to get him, Estrada received a thundering standing ovation, one richly deserved. He allowed a run on three hits with five strikeouts this time, having staved off elimination versus the Texas Rangers with 6.1 innings of one-run ball.
“It’s been a while since I pitched here, and I forgot how great our fans were. It was pretty loud today. I had a lot of adrenaline going. That’s the only difference (from Game 3 at Texas),” said Estrada, who took the loss in Game 1 of the ALCS after allowing three runs in 5.1 innings. “The last (elimination) game I was pretty calm and I was just trying to do my job. This time, I still had the same mindset, but the fans got me going a little bit early on, and just made it a little more fun…
“It was an incredible feeling walking off the mound.”
Aaron Sanchez got Alcides Escobar for the final out of the eighth before Roberto Osuna handled the ninth.
“Really, the way our bullpen was lined up today for what we had, it couldn’t happen any better,” said Gibbons. “(Estrada) really rose to the occasion.”
Turning the tide in the ALCS wasn’t going to be easy for the Blue Jays, whose bullpen was left in tatters by Tuesday’s 14-2 thumping in which R.A. Dickey didn’t survive the second. Liam Hendriks and Mark Lowe were both unavailable, LaTroy Hawkins and Ryan Tepera inspired little confidence and Aaron Loup remained away tending to a family matter, leaving Sanchez and Osuna as the only relievers at hand.
Price and Dickey were available in case of emergency, but a good outing from Estrada, a pending free agent who keeps raising his stock, was critical. Five innings was the minimum, six even better. The 7.2 innings he delivered was money, particularly his work in the seventh, when Gibbons strongly considered going to Price if multiple runners were on for Eric Hosmer.
Instead, Estrada got the first two outs of the inning and after walking Lorenzo Cain, Gibbons stuck with him against Hosmer, who flew out to left. Price said he typically doesn’t throw side sessions between starts but was ready for whatever was needed.
“I knew when I was going in. In the bullpen, things kind of change. It’s OK,” he said. “I was just ready to go in the game.”
Price might have ended up in the game if the offence didn’t eventually figure out Volquez.
Chris Colabello got the Blue Jays started by turning on an 0-2 changeup in the second inning and driving it over the wall in left-centre for a 1-0 lead. Things stayed there until the sixth when Volquez walked Ben Revere to open the inning, hit Josh Donaldson on the elbow and then, in a tense 10-pitch duel, walked Jose Bautista on a low and away breaking ball that might have been strike three to load the bases.
Bautista fouled off fastballs at 96, 97, 97,97 and 98 mph before spitting on the 83 mph curve.
“I was in between, that’s why I kept fouling them off,” said Bautista. “If I would have maybe been 100 per cent sitting on fastball I would have squared one of them up, but I couldn’t, I was trying to be careful on both. The curveball he threw me was a pretty good one, it was very close, you could argue that I got the benefit of a borderline credit, bottom line is I ended up on first and Tulo came through.”
How confident was he in his take?
“I wasn’t, but I did,” he replied, “so I was relieved after.”
The Royals didn’t like the call, and were frustrated not to get an appeal at first on Bautista’s check swing on the pitch. The fans were a factor on that one, as manager Ned Yost said he “couldn’t get anybody’s attention because the crowd was so loud.”
Dominant reliever Kelvin Herrera was hot at that point, but Yost stuck with Volquez, who went up 1-2 on Edwin Encarnacion before walking in a run that made it 2-0.
Herrera took over and after striking out Colabello on three pitches, served up a 98 mph fastball that Tulowitzki sent into the gap in left-centre to clear the bases and open things up and all but guaranteed a Game 6.
“As of late I have been swinging the bat better,” he said. “Anytime you can square up 98, obviously you like where you’re at. But tomorrow is a new day and it’s a new challenge and you might not be able to square up 98. You might be fouling off pitches, that just goes to show how difficult this game is.”
Back-to-back doubles by Donaldson and Bautista in the seventh made it 6-0 and Kevin Pillar’s RBI double cashed in a Tulowitzki single in the eighth.
Still, the heavy lifting in this one came from Estrada, who threw 181 innings in a 13-win regular season, and has become a playoff hero twice since.
“He was huge for us to have an outing like this,” said Navarro. “He went deep into the game, saved Price for the next game and let’s see what happens, man. This thing ain’t over, we’ve got a great team, we’re really excited, motivated about ourselves and we’re going now to Kansas City. We can’t get ahead of ourselves, we’ve just got to go out there and play hard, that’s all we can do.”
Once again, they can thank Estrada for giving them that chance.