TORONTO – Francisco Liriano may very well be forcing the Toronto Blue Jays into a difficult decision, the type every team wants to be in position to make at this time of the year. Roberto Osuna, meanwhile, is in the midst of the kind of rough spot no team wants to endure as the post-season looms.
The veteran lefty delivered a fourth straight strong outing, this one featuring 10 strikeouts over 6.1 shutout innings, but everything came undone in the ninth, when the sophomore closer blew a second save in three outings as the Baltimore Orioles rallied for a 3-2 victory Wednesday night.
Pinch-hitter Hyun Soo Kim did the damage in this one, fouling off three two-strike pitches, taking Ball 3 to run the count full before lofting a decent down-and-in 96 mph fastball over the wall in right field for a go-ahead two-run shot. On the verge of tightening their grip on a post-season berth, the Blue Jays’ hold loosened a little bit after their third blown ninth-inning lead in four nights.
“This is what September baseball is like, right?” said set-up man Jason Grilli, who surrendered a solo shot to Mark Trumbo in the eighth that cut into a 2-0 Blue Jays lead. “If you see any of the other games, they’re pretty similar.”
Zach Britton locked things down in a drama-free bottom of the ninth, improving to 47-for-47 converting saves this season, as the Orioles gave themselves a boost in the wild-card race. They’re now a game back of the wild-card leading Blue Jays, whose magic number for clinching a berth in the elimination game remained at three as the Detroit Tigers beat the Cleveland Indians 6-3 in a rain-shortened, five-inning game.
Their loss also clinched the American League East for the Boston Red Sox, who lost 5-3 to the New York Yankees. So things were costly all around.
“He just got beat,” manager John Gibbons said of Osuna. “That (Kim) kid is a tough out. Nobody knew anything about him coming into the season but we’ve been watching him all year, he’s got a great ability to foul off tough pitches to stay alive, he uses the whole field, he’s really a nice pickup for those guys over there. They just got him.”
A berth in next Tuesday’s wild-card game seemed almost assured until Osuna got burned, and the race to host the elimination contest is far from over. Still, with the way Liriano is pitching and the way he contained baseball’s best home-run hitting team Wednesday night, there’s a solid case to be made for including him in the Blue Jays’ rotation for the division series, should they get that far.
Aaron Sanchez would be a leading candidate to start a potential wild-card game, and if they win it, J.A. Happ and Marco Estrada are positioned to start the next series. That leaves Marcus Stroman and Liriano to follow before Sanchez’s next turn. With Blue Jays starters on a run of seven straight outings allowing one earned run or less for the first time in team history, right now there’s no wrong choice.
That’s why picking between them won’t be much fun, and that’s a good thing.
“You look back at (Liriano’s) last few starts, he’s on a roll, still has a great arm, a lot of strikeouts, his fastball is going both ways but he’s keeping it in the zone,” said Gibbons. “He may have fallen behind but he’s getting those big outs with it, has that great slider, strikeout pitch, and he’s throwing a pretty good changeup, too, so he’s got it all working right now. He did a super job.”
The tipping point could come down to a potential rival’s platoon splits, although Liriano handled eight right-handed Orioles bats with aplomb before a crowd of 44,668. He did get himself into trouble in spots, working out of a two-on, none-out jam in the fourth with strikeouts of Manny Machado, Mark Trumbo and Trey Mancini. And in the fifth, Nolan Reimold went down swinging with two men on and Chris Davis was called out looking on a rare curveball from Liriano with the bases loaded to end the frame.
“I’ve been working on it since the beginning of the season,” said Liriano. “He fouled off some good pitches and some good sliders so I just tried to throw something different, something he hasn’t seen. … It’s probably a get-me-over first pitch I’m going to use next year. It all depends how well it’s going to work for me next year.”
A pair of groundball singles around a J.J. Hardy strikeout ended Liriano’s night and Brett Cecil did well in coming in to strike out Reimold before Troy Tulowitzki made a beautiful play to his right on an Adam Jones grounder to end the frame.
The seeds of the Orioles rally were planted in the eighth when Grilli surrendered Trumbo’s 46th of the season. One of several chances to add-on for the Blue Jays slipped away in the bottom half as Mychal Givens hit both Josh Donaldson and Russell Martin en route to loading the bases for pinch-hitter Melvin Upton Jr., who went down looking on a borderline pitch from Brian Duensing.
Osuna then took over, gave up a one-out single to Jonathan Schoop, had pinch-runner Michael Bourn steal second, before losing the nine-pitch duel with Kim.
“I was trying to throw the ball to his hands, up and in, and the ball cut a little bit,” Osuna said through interpreter Josue Peley. “I just didn’t execute the pitch.”
The Blue Jays scratched out a pair of runs early before going dry at the plate. Ezequiel Carrera reached on a Davis error on a tough throw from Chris Tillman in the first, advanced to third on an errant pickoff attempt and scored on an Edwin Encarnacion fly ball to deep centre.
In the second, Tulowitzki hit a one-out double, took third on a Michael Saunders single and scored on a shallow fly ball to right by Kevin Pillar, a weak Trumbo throw home cut off by Davis.
A rally in the third was squelched when Carrera led off with a single and had second base stolen before he was tagged oversliding the bag. Donaldson followed with a double and ended up stranded.
In the sixth the Blue Jays put the first two batters on before Tulowitzki sent a soft fly into left centre that Reimold made an unlikely catch on, stretching to collect the ball on a slide. Jose Bautista, who was on second at the time, gambled that it would fall in and was easily doubled off, truncating another rally.
Still, the Blue Jays were two outs away from the win before falling to 2-22 when they score two runs. They nearly put themselves a win away from a party Thursday, but now will go into the final weekend of the season at Fenway Park with some work to do.
