Long Weekend Up (Part I): The Jays show some steel in Pittsburgh
A quick look at the Pittsburgh series as the Jays quickly move on to a — [deep breath] — big September series against the Orioles. On dominance from Romano and Manoah, bullpen day, Pearson, and more!
“The crowd going nuts as your team wildly embarrasses themselves in the bottom of the ninth in a nominal home game should make any normal human owner feel shame, but” — @whygavs
There may be no greater contrast in baseball than the sad sack Pittsburgh Pirates and their gorgeous home, PNC Park. In Sunday’s finale, though, the difference between Jays closer Jordan Romano and mere mortals seemed no less stark.
With the Jays up only by a run, the kid from Markham, Ontario, looked destined for a fluky blown save when the Pirates’ Jack Suwinski and Cal Mitchell started the bottom of the ninth inning with a pair of soft singles. The pull-heavy right-handed hitting Suwinski upped his average to .199 by dinking one into left field through a gaping hole in the shift, then Michell hit what would have been a perfect double play ball had it not taken a deflection off of Romano and bounced into shallow left. The Jays’ defenders could only watch helplessly as both runners took an extra base. Runners on second and third with no outs.
At this point a tough luck loss seemed almost inevitable. Jays fans know all to well that it’s certainly possible for a team to fail to score in a situation like that, but far too often it has felt like they’ve been on the other side.
Instead, Romano did something very few Blue Jays players have been able to do this season. Something you’re not really supposed to be able to do in this sport. Something only the best of the very best can accomplish. He willed it not to happen.
Here’s Weekend Up!…
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Up: Friday: Blue Jays 4 - Pirates 0
Alek Manoah was easily the story of Friday's game. In an affair that, through no fault of his own, was much more tense than one should be between a playoff-bound AL East beast and the lowly Pirates, Manoah pitched into the eighth inning, allowing no runs on five hits, with just one walk and six strikeouts.
Those numbers tell us the outcomes of his night's work, but I think the story of his game can be told even more simply. It can be told in just two pitches.
Manoah's first pitch of the game was a fastball that young Pirates shortstop Oneil Cruz popped into shallow right field. The radar gun reading on the pitch: 92.0 mph.
Manoah's 96th pitch and final fastball of the night was a called third strike to Tucupita Marcano, the penultimate batter he'd face. Its radar gun reading? 94.8 mph.
Manoah grew into the game considerably. His three hardest offerings of the night all came in either the seventh or eighth innings. His three softest fastballs were thrown in the first or second.
The image below doesn’t quite do this phenomenon justice, as he was mixing in sinkers with his four-seamers, meaning the final few of those came late in his outing as well. He definitely left something in the tank.
And it was a damn good thing he did, too. Not only did the Jays need a big pitching performance because of their continuing struggles to scratch out runs, by the time Manoah took the hill the Jays knew that Saturday would be a bullpen day. The team wanted to push its best available starters away from the Pirates and into this week’s — [blarghhhhhh] — big September series with the Orioles.
On that account, Manoah was masterful. He turned the ball over to Tim Mayza — who, incidentally, has five strikeouts and no walks while allowing four hits in 3 1/3 innings over seven appearances since coming off the IL — who needed just nine pitches to strikeout Pittsburgh's 1-2 hitters. Bo Bichette hit a two-run shot in the bottom of the frame to make it academic, and Adam Cimber closed it out to put the bullpen in the best possible position for Saturday's main event.
(Incidentally, the Blue Jays scored just the 19th-most runs in baseball in August. The number of home runs they hit also ranked 19th. In the first half of the season the Jays had the sixth-most home runs, and scored the ninth-most runs (though they were just three runs shy of being ranked sixth there as well). Something to keep in mind next time you hear someone complain about the Jays swinging for the fences too much!)
Up: Saturday: Jays 4 - Pirates 1
They did it! I'm still not entirely sure how, but the Jays managed to overcome a whole bunch of self-imposed obstacles to come away with this one. Trevor Richards got the start, and went two innings. Yusei Kikuchi followed him — by design! — and dragged them into the fifth with the score still tied. Four times in the first five innings the Jays had two runners on, yet they began the seventh inning with only a single run on the board.
But the thing about the Blue Jays and having a bullpen day is that their bullpen, despite being a point of consternation throughout the season, is actually going pretty good right now. Yimi Garcia did a great job of inducing a double-play ball to clean up Kikuchi's mess in the fifth, then pitched a clean sixth as well. Adam Cimber took care of business in the seventh. Anthony Bass allowed a couple of singles and then was yanked, despite being terrific of late, for Mayza to face Suwinski, who he struck out swinging. Then Romano was Romano.
As a unit they've looked pretty good, and here on Monday they've got Zach Pop back up as the 29th man for the doubleheader, Julian Merryweather on the taxi squad potentially ready for a return to the majors as soon as game two, and Nate Pearson as far down the road to rejoining the big league club as he's been all season (more on this later). It could be worse.
Meanwhile, Bo Bichette — who has slashed .289/.336/.482 for a 134 wRC+ since August 1st — finally made the breakthrough the Jays had been threatening to all day with a two-out, three-run double in the seventh.
Easy peasy!
Up: Sunday: Blue Jays 4 - Pirates 3
We talked about this one in the preamble, so I won’t belabour it too much, but I can’t not marvel just a little bit more about Jordan Romano. What Alek Manoah has been doing each game, growing into the late stages when it really matters most, Romano has been doing as the season has gone on.
It’s a little narrative-y to talk about a velocity rise as being the result of will and spirit and desire and all that, but if now isn’t the time for a little bit of narrative flutter, I don’t know when is. Plus, this kind of thing doesn’t just happen. So we might as well use it to create some heroes, eh?
His in-season improvement hasn’t just been about velocity, either.
There was, of course, quite a game before Romano arrived in this one. Once again the big inning proved elusive for Blue Jays hitters, they scratched out a few, Ross Stripling was pretty good minus a costly wobble in the fourth and an absolute Oneil Cruz laser shot in the fifth, David Phelps held it together through a nervy seventh, and Bass was once again terrific. But all their performances really did was set the stage for Romano.
And all his effort did, really, was set the stage for what’s to come: a completely — [sigh] — massive September series with the Baltimore Orioles.
Other notes…
• “They’re right behind us and we have to bury them behind us. We have to win those games.”
That’s what Anthony Bass told reporters, including the Sun’s Rob Longley, after Sunday’s game in Pittsburgh, referring — of course — to the Baltimore Orioles. It sounds like a good idea!
Especially when you get a load of a thing like this.
Yikes.
Let there be no doubt that this is, indeed, a — [ughhhhhhhhh] — huge September series against the Baltimore Orioles.
• Rob’s piece also featured a great quote from Ross Stripling, which got some Baseball Understanders on both sides of the border rather excited.
• Starting to think that following mediocre teams in MLB’s even-more-watered-down-playoffs era is really going to do a number on some fans over the next few years. (Tweet below unrelated).
• As I mentioned above, Nate Pearson is inching toward a return to the majors. Apologies to those who refuse to believe he can be useful, or who think that saying the most negative thing they can think of is a substitute for a personality, but this is good news!
Pearson pitched a clean inning for Dunedin on Sunday, and though the competition was facing wasn’t exactly big-league-calibre, the radar gun tells no lies. Nor does, to be precise, Statcast’s Hawk-Eye tracking system.
The image above comes from the great Future Blue Jays, who have procured some insight into Pearson’s progress. They write:
“A Florida source says the organization is thrilled with Pearson’s outing. The Blue Jays understandably would prefer to keep the buzz around Pearson to a minimum for now, but that performance gives him something to build on. Apparently, that’s the best he’s looked in some time.”
I completely understand the reticence to get excited about Pearson simply as a sort of defence mechanism — nobody wants to have their hopes dashed, especially when it feels like it’s predictable that they will be — but you only live once! Be happy that they dang pitcher is coming.
Also, maybe remember that a good chunk of Pearson’s checkered health history is down to freak things — a broken arm on a comebacker, a case of mono, a hernia it took them forever to diagnose — and that he was going to be ready to pitch in the playoffs last year, just like he did in 2020. It’s almost like some of the timing here has been deliberate.
• Lastly, there will be more news and notes and links in part two, after Monday’s games — or game, depending on how the weather goes. I might even have this week’s Blue Jays Happy Hour schedule sorted by then! Enjoy the — [blorffffffffffffff] — big September series against the Orioles!!
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I will never forget watching that last KC game on my phone in the car and telling my wife who was driving and totally not interested ‘2nd and 3rd with none out - it’s almost impossible not to score’. Almost….I did feel a lot of sympathy for Pittsburgh fans.
Good stuff. Nail Jackie Bradley Jr. inside a wooden crate and ship him directly to the bottom of the Boston Harbour, though.