Jose Bautista converts single mistake into Blue Jays win
TORONTO — When starters like Marco Estrada and Yu Darvish are on the mound, it often takes just one mistake to decide a game. The better the pitching, the slimmer the margins.
That was certainly the case on Saturday afternoon, when a single errant pitch from Darvish allowed the Toronto Blue Jays to top the Texas Rangers 3-1 at Rogers Centre for their fifth consecutive victory.
With runners on first and third and two outs in the fifth, Jose Bautista got a hold of a slider up and over the plate and turned on it to give the Blue Jays their only runs of the day.
The pitch was not one you can often get away with throwing to power hitters of Bautista’s calibre. Simply put, this is not where 83 mph breaking balls are supposed to live:
“He just messed up,” Bautista said of the pitch after the game. “I was lucky enough to get enough of it to hit it out of the park.”
To that point, Darvish had kept Toronto off the board, matching Estrada pitch-for-pitch in what had the makings of a great pitching duel. The Japanese hurler mixed his diverse repertoire effectively, and although he lost his command at times — hitting two batters and walking three — he kept the Blue Jays hitless until a Kendrys Morales double in the fourth.
“He’s one of the elite in the game, maybe top five,” John Gibbons said praising Darvish. “He was on, but we made him work really hard.”
Early on, it looked like Estrada was going to be the one to commit the fatal error. His first pitch of the game was a fastball down the pipe plastered by Shin-soo Choo to straight-away centre field.
“Actually Luke [Maile] called a changeup first pitch and it kind of caught me off guard,” Estrada said. “I thought he was kind of joking with me. I probably should have thrown it.”
The colossal knock measured in at 434 feet, but it did not foreshadow the outing to come. Estrada dominated the Rangers from there, giving the Blue Jays six-innings of one-run ball. Of the 18 outs he recorded 13 came by either strikeout or harmless popup as he gave the Rangers little opportunity to string together hits.
“He was great, really typical Marco. Leadoff home run first pitch of the game then he did his thing,” Gibbons said. “He ended up giving us six innings against a very good offence that’s tough to shut down. I can’t say enough good things about him, I just end up repeating them every time he pitches.”
The right-hander also endeared himself to denizens of Rogers Centre further by seemingly getting the upper hand on local villain Rougned Odor. Though Odor did manage a fourth inning single, Estrada had him swinging out of the batter’s box on multiple occasions, including his first-inning strikeout. He also recorded his last out of the day on a weak ground ball from the Rangers second baseman, who lost his footing running to first — much to the amusement of the Blue Jays faithful.
When Estrada’s day was over, it was up to Aaron Loup, Ryan Tepera, Joe Smith and Roberto Osuna to shut the door, and that’s exactly what they did to the tune of a trio of scoreless innings. The relief quartet was also backed by some outstanding defence.
In the seventh, Ryan Goins slid into the hole to snare a grounder off the bat of Mike Napoli, whipped it over to Devon Travis who made the turn and delivered to Justin Smoak, who made a lunging stretch to punctuate the play. It didn’t hurt that the runners involved were Napoli and Joey Gallo, but the team managed to turn what looked like a probable infield single into two outs.
“I was thinking about going to first when he first hit it,” Goins said. “Then instinct just told me to go to second and good things happened from there. Devon had a good turn and Smoakie had a good stretch over there at first.”
On the second last out of the game, Goins robbed the Rangers again, moving swiftly to his left on a grounder and flipping the ball from his glove to first just ahead of a sliding Odor. Osuna put Texas to bed in the next at-bat on a three-pitch strikeout of Ryan Rua.
