"Pura adrenalina": Jays walk off the O's after a wild evening of baseball!
On Adam Cimber, Brandon Hyde, Vladdy's heroics, Yimi Garcia, José Berríos, Matt Chapman, Teoscar Hernández, Julian Merryweather, Nate Pearson, Trent Thornton, Blue Jays Happy Hour, and more!
The Orioles’ manager made an utterly bizarre decision in extra innings and one of the Blue Jays’ two Dominican sluggers made him pay with an incredible walk-off hit. The 2016 AL Wild Card game? Well, yes. But also Wednesday night’s bonkers tilt at Rogers Centre!
So let’s talk about it! Here’s Three Up…
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Up: The tenth inning
It feels weird to be starting a look back at this rollercoaster of a game at the very end, and yet I think it would feel even weirder not to. The Jays had a laugher on their hands in this one, until they didn’t. And then, somehow, after taking us to the depths of despair by squandering 5-0 and 6-2 leads, they made it a laugher again — albeit in a different way, and with a little help.
To get there, however, with the game tied at 6-6 going into the 10th, the Jays needed a big pitching performance, and hoo boy, did Adam Cimber ever deliver. With Yimi Garcia, Tim Mayza, and Jordan Romano already out of the game, the Jays were essentially forced to choose between Cimber and David Phelps to try to keep the “automatic runner” on second from scoring and the Orioles off the board. It was a situation where a strikeout would be ideal, and a ground ball potentially disastrous, and yet the Jays — I think correctly — went with the confident-but-generally-strikeout-averse Cimber instead of the somewhat shaky Phelps.
O's manager Brandon Hyde, who many Jays fans may remember from the time he embarrassed himself by dumbly chirping Robbie Ray for no reason last September, chose to have Jorge Mateo bunt the "automatic runner" over to third, thereby giving the Jays a free out. Cimber made a great play to ensure that he got the speedy Mateo at first, but then had to face Ryan McKenna with a runner on third, one out, and a drawn-in infield. It was tense. It was a moment where a strikeout could not have been a better outcome for the Jays. And after six nerve-wracking pitches, Cimber — who had only struck out 19 batters in 25 2/3 innings of work to that point in the season — got the job done, getting McKenna to chase on a high and inside fastball (at just 86.9 mph), which he foul tipped into Alejandro Kirk's glove.
One pitch later and the dangerous left-handed hitting Cedric Mullins had popped out to end the threat. I think it was safe to say Cimber was rather pleased with his performance under pressure.
And so now it was on to the Jays’ hitters to once again come up big, after having already scored six times in this one, and five times in a losing effort the night before. Bo Bichette, because he’d been the last Jays player to get out in the ninth, was placed on second base as the “automatic runner,” and Hyde now had a decision to make: have his excellent closer Jorge Lopez intentionally walk Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and pitch to the red hot Alejanrdo Kirk, or pitch to Vladdy instead.
Just kidding! It would have been insanity to let Vlad swing away with a base open, especially given that Kirk — hot as he may be — has such little speed that he would give Baltimore a perfect opportunity to turn a double play. And in such a situation, a double play would be about as perfect an outcome as possible for the O’s.
Hyde, inexplicably, let Vlad hit.
Vlad! Vlad, who was maybe the greatest prospect in a generation. Vlad, who would have been the American League MVP last year if not for an impossibly historic season from Shohei Ohtani. Vlad, who was already 3-for-4 on the night with a home run and three runs scored.
We all love Kirky and what he’s doing right now, obviously. But lol. Lmao.
Predictably, this bit of strategizing did not go well for Baltimore.
Vladdy tweeted about the moment after the fact, simply writing, “pura adrenalina.” I don’t imagine any of us will require Google Translate to know exactly what he meant.
He said something even funnier to reporters after the game.
Up: Not letting Yimi Garcia waste a good José Berrios outing
Yimi Garcia had gone eight straight appearances without allowing a run prior to this one. But what's more than that, over those eight appearances (7 1/3 IP) he'd allowed just a single hit, and walked only two of the 25 batters he'd faced. Best of all, after mysteriously struggling to strike batters out early in the season, he'd managed 10 Ks over that stretch as well.
Garcia was a great choice to pitch the eighth inning of this one, potentially setting up Jordan Romano for a save. The fucker even got to within a strike of doing exactly that, comfortably getting a couple outs before going up 0-2 on Mullins. But then everything fell apart. Mullins doubled to the gap in right. Austin Hays slashed a double over Lourdes Gurriel Jr.'s head in left. And then Ryan Mountcastle — a first baseman with a 115 wRC+ for his career and a .301 on-base for the season coming into this one, who yet is somehow...
...a literal all-time Blue Jay-killer — smashed his second home run of the night over the video board in left-centre.
Oof.
You think you’re dejected, Yimi? Try having to do a 1 AM rewrite of a whole post you had practically in the can already! Only one of us is making $5 million this year, my dude, and I promise you it’s not me.
Anyway, this unfortunate series of events tied the game, and while it was a pretty severe gut punch at the time, we at least all know that it worked out well. Which is good! Because it would have been an awful shame for the Blue Jays to have spoiled yet another good José Berríos performance.
Was it a perfect performance? No. Two of the three hits Berríos gave up were home runs, meaning he has to own three earned runs over seven innings in this one. But otherwise it was very close to perfect for him. Just one other hit, no walks, eight strikeouts, and only 86 pitches — a total low enough to have him to go back out in the eighth inning, though the wheels seemed to be falling off enough in the seventh that I think the Jays were wise not to allow that.
The strikeouts, of course, are the easy numerical thing to latch on to. I noted on Twitter before the game that you can see quite clearly in this chart from Props.cash — player prop research made easy! — how stark the difference has been between the end of last season for him and the start of this one, in terms of strikeouts.
Adding another high-strikeout game to this chart makes it feel like he's really making steps in the right direction now. But there were other reasons to be pleased with his performance. Berríos had curveball was working so well that he ended up throwing it 43% of the time — well above the 30% rate he's thrown it at so far this season. The curve generated 11 whiffs on 22 swings, plus eight called strikes. Of the 37 he threw, 19 went for either a called or a swinging strike (51%). He CSW% on his fastball was 37%, too. And he seemed comfortable commanding all of his pitches.
Even with the home runs, it was a start that deserved a win. Which, though it won't show up on Berríos's record, I suppose the team got. Keep the ball in the ballpark and it's a brilliant outing. Either way, he's getting back to where he needs to be, and that's huge.
Up: Chappie and Mr. Seeds
Before this game went sideways and started looking like a doomed affair there were plenty of reasons for Jays fans to be jubilant. Alejandro Kirk did an Alejandro Kirk thing in the bottom of the first, giving the Blue Jays the lead with a laser of a two-out double to right-centre that scored Vladimir Guerrero Jr. from first. Vlad, as noted earlier, crushed one to make it 6-2 in the fifth. But it was the four-spot that the Blue Jays put up in the third inning that really seemed to break the game open, and really seemed to put them in control.
With Vladdy again on first base, and the Jays again down to their final out of the frame, up stepped Teoscar Hernández.
"He's the next guy to start driving the ball out of the ballpark," quipped Pat Tabler on the Sportsnet broadcast.
"The average has been there the last two-and-a-half weeks," Dan Shulman added. "We mentioned hitting .348 his last 17 games coming into this one. But you're right, he'd love to start hitting the ball off the wall, over the wall, a little bit more."
"And the best way to do that is just to take a good swing," Tabler responded. You don't want to over swing."
Then, as if perfectly on cue, this happened.
Lmao. I love the fact that it was 114.1 mph off the bat, and I love watching a no-doubter go 461 feet to straight-away centre. But mostly I absolutely love the way Teoscar took a long moment to admire the work he'd just done.
Think Bruce Zimmerman realized it had been hit a loooooong way?
Ah, but Zimmerman’s day wasn’t quite done at that point. Santiago Espinal singled while the Jays' dugout was still celebrating Teoscar's blast. Then Matt Chapman put a charge into one himself. It wasn't quite as impressive as Teo's, at "merely" 105.9 off the bat and 411 feet, but it was another great sign that he's feeling fine after the wrist trouble that bothered him over the weekend.
Of course, he got his own little seed shower, too.
Both of these guys came into the game as slightly below average hitters on the season per wRC+, and both got their marks over 100 during the course of this one, with Chapman now at 101 and Teoscar at 102. Finally!
You love to see it.
Other notes
• Always great to hear an update like this on a guy as beloved and ingrained into the DNA of this franchise. Get well soon, Buck!
• Julian Merryweather was placed on the IL by the Jays on Tuesday, but it wasn’t until Wednesday that they found out the extent of his injury by way of an MRI. According to the club it’s an oblique strain and he’s considered “week to week.” Ugh.
• In better news, the Jays were apparently encouraged by Nate Pearson’s performance for Buffalo on Tuesday night — though not encouraged enough to consider full-on building him up to be a starter just yet, apparently.
• When Trent Thornton was optioned to Buffalo back on May 14th, he wasn't exactly doing terribly, at least in terms of runs allowed. His 3.52 ERA certainly wasn't the reason he was sent to the minors, it was everything else that was just a little bit scary. In 15 1/3 innings before the demotion Thornton had allowed 12 hits and 8 walks, while striking out only 10. A K/9 of 5.9 and a BB/9 of 4.7 are not marks that you often see from successful big leaguers, and it always felt as though that was going to catch up to him.
Since his return, however, not only have the results been better, the peripherals have been much better. After 2 2/3 one-hit shutout innings on Tuesday night, Thornton has now allowed just one run on seven hits over his last nine innings. He's issued just one walk and struck out ten over that span.
Part of what's changed for him is that he's using his slider more — up to 43.2% of the time in June, after being in the 34% range in April and May. The slider is his primary pitch against right-handed hitters now at 56.2%. This is especially notable because last year hitters produced an xwOBA of .355 off his slider, whereas here in June 2022 that mark has gone down to .156. And the thing that makes that somewhat understandable and interesting is that it's not the same pitch it was before. SI's Mitch Bannon tells us in a post from Wednesday that Jays pitching coordinator David Howell "suggested some grip changes that Thornton tried out in late spring training," and that the success has come very quickly.
Not long ago I would have thought that, with the limits on the number of pitchers a team can carry going down to 13 on Monday, Thornton would have been a good bet to be the odd man out. Now I'm not so sure. I'd kind of like to see where this goes, to be honest!
• Lastly, Nick and I were back live on Callin at the conclusion of this one, hosting a new episode of Blue Jays Happy Hour. If you missed it, you can hear us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or your podcast app of choice. But be sure to download the Callin app so that you can join us live next time. We’ll be back at it again early next week!
Next up: Thursday, 3:07 PM ET: Jays vs. Orioles (Kevin Gausman vs. Tyler Wells), TV: Sportsnet, Radio: Sportsnet 590
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If you spent the last few years only watching BJ-Orioles games, you would conclude that Randal Grichuk and Ryan Mountcastle were the best players of their generation. Odd how that goes.
Orioles managers are the best. I meant to add in a comment on your last past that you kind of get the feeling listening to Charlie's quotes and watching Pete Walker's body language during Kikuchi starts that their patience with him seems to be wearing thin.