ANAHEIM, Calif. – What’s super fun about baseball is the way it can take the most data-driven, logic-based game-and-scenario-planning and just rip it to shreds, leaving improvisation amid chaos in its wake.
The Toronto Blue Jays’ wild weekend in Anaheim, capped by Sunday’s off-the-rails 11-10 victory over the Los Angeles Angels, offered a prime example of that. While Thursday’s 6-3 win was relatively straightforward, the three games that followed were leverage-filled affairs in which both teams dug deep into their bullpens and benches, used players out of role and grinded the hell out of one another.
One-run wins Friday and Saturday turned out to be amuse-bouches for a truly crackers finale, in which Jose Berrios lasted only 2.1 innings as Shohei Ohtani took him deep twice, the Blue Jays worked three bases-loaded walks, the teams blew seven leads, 11 relievers appeared in the game and only five didn’t give up a run, and all that was just the starting point.
Luis Rengifo tripled and scored when Santiago Espinal took a relay from the outfield and threw it into the stands. Raimel Tapia knocked in a pair on a seeing-eye grounder that slipped through starter Patrick Sandoval and then hit second base and bounced up and over the two middle infielders. Matt Chapman hit a roller up the first-base line that spun fair and he eluded a tag Matrix-style as he slid into first to load the bases for a pivotal three-run rally in the seventh. Adam Cimber gave up his second homer in 23 appearances but was one of four Blue Jays relievers to appear three times, along with Jordan Romano, Yimi Garcia and David Phelps. Ross Stripling got the final out for a save Saturday and then threw another 1.2 innings of long relief Sunday. The Blue Jays went 7-for-17 with runners in scoring position — a week’s worth of hits earlier this month.
At the end of the day before a crowd of 36,568 on a picturesque SoCal day, the Blue Jays improved to 27-20 with their fifth straight win and ninth in 12 outings, capping a 5-1 road trip. A day off Monday comes at a good time before six at home against the Chicago White Sox and Minnesota Twins begins Tuesday.
Highlights for the Blue Jays from the series include the emergence of Lourdes Gurriel Jr., who collected two of the bases-loaded walks and plated the winning run with a double in the eighth and finished with five RBIs, and Alejandro Kirk, who reached four times Sunday and continues to mash everything in sight.
If they continue to produce at the bottom of the lineup, the club’s offence will better start to resemble the unit it was expected to be.
On the flip side, Berrios’ outing was concerning and extended an all-or-nothing pattern that’s emerged in his outings. He’s now lasted less than three innings twice, the first that’s happened since 2017. He allowed six hits in this one and had no answer for Ohtani.
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