TORONTO — The abyss comes fast in the postseason and one afternoon after returning in October, the Toronto Blue Jays suddenly find themselves facing a two-and-out.
That it would come to that, their fate dependent on a rebound in Game 2 Saturday afternoon behind starter Kevin Gausman shouldn’t come as a surprise for a team that’s spent the 2022 season doing things the hard way. Alek Manoah stumbled in the first inning of an otherwise strong game and with Luis Castillo sitting 98.6 mph with both his four- and two-seam fastballs, the Seattle Mariners were able to go 4-0 to an early stand-up win by scoring three points.
To force a crucial third game on Sunday, the Blue Jays need to recover against their old friend Robbie Ray, who won the American League’s Cy Young Award for them last year before signing a five-year, $115 million deal with Seattle . That he’ll be up against Gausman, who took $110 million from the Blue Jays over five, will only add to the intrigue as one has replaced the other, a moment that comes full circle for the off-season work that helped both teams reach this point.
“I’ve never played in an elimination game before. But I started the last game of Season 16 (with the Baltimore Orioles) and we had to win that game,” said Gausman, who allowed two runs in 7.1 innings of a 5-2 win over the New York Yankees to clinch the win to win a wildcard slot. “I’ve thrown a lot of significant games in my career… I’m just going to go out there and play to my strengths.”
That the Blue Jays are at this point after a strong end to the season, however, has given them the best wildcard spot and the right to host the series, drawing a crowd of 47,402 that was announced to be staggering for a group better expected, although now there is little time to think about it.
“Just keep going,” Bo Bichette said of the mindset for Saturday. “We have no other choice. Get out there and compete as best we can and see what we can do. We have another challenge ahead of us tomorrow, which we will face head-on and do our best.”
Manoah, the right pick for Game 1, came out a little too hot and got himself into an early jam by hitting Julio Rodriguez on the hand with his fourth pitch of the game, an 0-2 four-seamer.
A soft grounder to the first from Ty France put the electric Rodriguez into second and he scored easily as Eugenio Suarez followed across the plate with a right double to a left four.
Cal Raleigh then fought the count full and hit a sinker right over the wall to make it 3-0.
“I don’t know if he was a bit on fire, but he had a bit of a bike and only a few bad pitches,” said interim manager John Schneider. “It was a good job from him and an atypical first inning for sure.”
The Raleigh homer silenced a crowd whipped up by a rousing pre-game show that included a nightclub-esque light show, highlights video, player introductions and a ceremonial first pitch from 2016 wildcard walk-off hero Edwin Encarnacion included. who climbed the hill and fired a punch from the rubber.
Castillo then kept his energy down by coming out hot, with seven of his 11 pitches coming in a three-up, three-down first at 99 mph or higher, including two at 100-plus. With that kind of stuff, nearly two mph above his season average, GM Jerry Dipoto’s precious deadline extension, recently extended over five years for $108 million, would definitely be some tough sledding, which makes rally racing all the more so made more difficult.
“He’s got a sinker that hits your hands at 99-100, and then he’s got the four-seam he throws up and away, it doesn’t have that dive, it’s more of a real carry,” said Whit Merrifield, who countered Castillo had one of the six hits. “You have to make a decision about what you want that 100mph pitch to do and that makes it difficult. credit to him. He did a good job of keeping that four-seam away and keeping that two-seam on your hands all game. Didn’t give us a lot of work, didn’t make a lot of mistakes.”
The Blue Jays really only had one left-hander – Raimel Tapia – to face Castillo, while the Mariners used switch-hitters Raleigh and Carlos Santana and left-handers Jarred Kelenic, Adam Frazier and JP Crawford against Manoah.
The disparity in draw flexibility between rosters is something Dipoto noted ahead of the series, saying, “Our ability to play right-handed and balance the lineup with left-handed bats will be key for us to compete in this series and hopefully that’s coming.” out the other side.”
Left-handers did the most damage against Manoah during the season, batting against him at .237/.313/.367 with 11 home runs compared to .159/.211/.249 and five home runs for right-handers. To counter the disadvantage, he worked on a front hip two seamer that returned to the plate and the left-handers hit just .215 and hit .252 against the court, but he threw four of those to Raleigh in the first and four in the last, the seventh of the bat, the catcher sent him 362 feet to the right, an early dagger.
Manoah retired 12 of his next 14 batters before the Mariners scraped a fourth run in the fifth when he re-hit Rodriguez, who eventually scored after picking a Suarez fielder.
“It was quite a long fight with Cal and ended up missing the front hip sinker,” Manoah said. “I just kept saying to myself, ‘Keep executing.’ They beat me because of my mistakes and I felt like I could start executing afterwards.”
The Blue Jays built rallies on two-out singles from George Springer and Bichette in the third before Vladimir Guerrero Jr. flew to the middle and in the fifth when Merrifield and Springer made singles before a Bichette groundout, but Castillo didn’t back down over 7.1 shutout innings.
Still, they haven’t let up in front of him and Ray needs to be just as overwhelming to contain an offense that’s still netted seven total hits and made life difficult for one of the game’s dominant arms.
Given how many times they’ve shrugged off tough losses and struggled their way out of tough stretches this season — including a July 7-10 four-game sweep in Seattle that resulted in Charlie Montoyo being fired as manager, and Mariners skip Scott Servais said it was “crucial for our season to move in the right direction” – it would be foolish to count against another rebound.
“We’re playing in a division where we’re battle-hardened every day,” said third baseman Matt Chapman. “Just dismantle today. Everyone felt what it was like to play in a playoff game, what it was like to lose a playoff game, and we fought. I think we will be ready to respond.”
The Blue Jays being allowed to play another day is a result of the extended playoffs stemming from the collective bargaining agreement negotiated to end the owners’ lockout of players. The wildcard format of the past was a one-game win-or-go home affair that made for spectacular theatrics but a hard-to-swallow way to end a season.
Asked before the series which format he prefers, Schneider said: “Definitely the three.”
“Baseball is tough and anything can happen over the course of 162 any night,” he continued. “And having it in a vacuum of a game is a bit odd. So it goes right into what we’ve been saying all year, you’re trying to win a series. And I think your team’s overall strength, your team’s talent, it’s a lot easier to show that over the course of a three-game series than it is in one. It makes decisions a bit more consistent. It slows the game down a bit if you will, as opposed to playing with your hair on fire in a game. So the three-game streak is pretty good.”
Especially now that the Blue Jays are on the precipice instead of over it and have a chance to pull back off the ledge.
#Blue #Jays #season #brink #format #keeping #dream #alive
Leave a Comment