Rally to Restore Sanity
Two posts for the price of one! Here are your links to a new episode of Blue Jays Happy Hour and details on when you can hear us next, plus thoughts and images from Monday's amazing Jays comeback!
1.
The Blue Jays dug themselves a 4-0 hole on Monday night, which would have been worse if not for some outstanding defensive work all over the diamond. José Berríos gave up a lot of hits and loud contact, the bats struggled badly once again, and it looked for a long time like another ugly defeat was in the offing.
Then the rally caps came out, Danny Jansen stepped to the plate, and the course of the night — and maybe even the Blue Jays season — was changed.
On the latest episode of Blue Jays Happy Hour we talked about all that, Jansen’s playing time, Jordan Romano, Ross Atkins’ weird comments, the re-acquisition of Bradley Zimmer, Marcus Stroman’s return, unionizing the minor leagues, and more!
Be sure to get the Callin app and follow us on there so you can tune in live when we’re back at it next: Thursday evening (Time TBD)!
And for those that couldn’t catch us live here on Tuesday, as always you can listen to the show on the podcast app of your choice! Including…
Apple Podcasts…
…as well as Spotify, Google Podcasts, or your podcast app of choice!
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2.
It would maybe be a bit of a stretch to say that the screengrab of Matt Chapman sliding into home to score the winning run on Monday night that I used as the header image for this post looks like a Bosch painting or something, but there sure as hell is a lot going on there. From the crouching Cub, to the perfectly positioned home plate umpire, to Chapman's textbook slide, the third base ump signaling a fair ball, the anticipation — or resignation — on the faces of the Cubs players, the fans in the corner behind them already holding their arms up in victory, Springer motioning to his teammate to slide, the catcher futilely positioned to receive the ball and swipe at the runner... it's quite a tableau! You could frame it.
And it was hardly the only striking visual moment of a night that featured three run-scoring innings late on — the seventh, eighth, and eleventh — that along with some truly gutsy relief performances absolutely pulled this one out of the fire. And that I'm sure made a lot of Jays fans regret having turned their TVs off early.
Here are some of my favourites…
7th inning
I’m not sure you can ever call a lead-off walk innocuous, even if you’ve got a fairly comfortable lead and the number eight and nine hitters coming up. And I’m positive that you can’t call the one Cubs reliever Erich Uelmen issued to Matt Chapman to start off the bottom of the seventh that. Chapman worked it. Finally, it seemed, a Blue Jays hitter meant business.
With his team desperate to start something, Chapman saw 10 pitches, battled back from going down 0-2 to start the at-bat, and absolutely owned the zone. A well-deserved free base.
Said number eight hitter was Raimel Tapia, who smacked a 103.2 mph single up the middle, past a matador-like move from the second base umpire, and into centre field.
Chapman went to third on Tapia’s poke, and finally the Jays had something cooking — and I don’t just mean the pretend Jiffy Pop the guys in the dugout were cooking up with their rally caps.
Silly as it was, as I’m sure you already know by now, the damn things worked! Chapman’s first-to-third scamper was rendered merely academic, because after getting Danny Jansen into a 2-2 count with four straight sliders, Uelmen went back to that particular well again, and it turned out to be one time too many.
The fifth slider Uelmen threw to Jansen was a little firmer and broke a less, both horizontally and vertically, than the previous two. It was decently located at the bottom of the zone, but at 84 mph, after four pitches to the same area in a row, Jansen was ready and able to go down and get it.
Not only did he get it, he absolutely clubbed it — 105.5 mph out to left field. After six innings of “here we go again” failures to score runs, the Blue Jays weren’t just on the board, they were back in the game with the score 4-3 Cubs.
Needless to say, the boys in the dugout were delighted.
Rock and roll, baby! Danny Bats!!
Bottom of the eighth
Because the night would ultimately belong to Jansen, I think it's maybe easy to miss the importance of what happened in the eighth, when Cavan Biggio and Matt Chapman produced a two-out mini-rally to tie the game.
First up was Biggio, who looked at a belt-high slider over the plate at 1-0, then got the exact same pitch in the exact same location at 1-1 and made no mistake with it, sending it over and around the shift for a double.
Following him was Matt Chapman, who has cooled a little bit after a fantastic June and July at the plate, but still has a strong case for being the Blue Jays’ best position player this season — though that probably says as much about the performance (or health) of his teammates as it does him.
Regardless of where you rank him, with the club desperate for a win, desperate for a run, and in the middle of a putrid 1-for-19 stretch with runners in scoring position, the Jays needed something from Chapman here, and he duly delivered. Manuel Rodríguez threw him a first-pitch 97 mph fastball that was at least four inches inside, yet Chapman managed to turn on it and muscle it into left.
With there having been two outs, Biggio was running on contact. He was able to easily score on the play, and offered his appreciation to Chapman afterwards…
…as did the Rally Boys in the dugout.
(As an aside, kudos to Alek Manoah for sticking with the blue threads despite the team — and José Berríos specifically— choosing to go with the stupid red jerseys.)
11th inning
We'll skip straight over some fine relief pitching from Jordan Romano and Yimi Garcia, and a trio of key defensive plays involving Bo Bichette — his huge unassisted double play to start the tenth, his receiving of a great throw from Jackie Bradley Jr. to get Franmil Reyes at second after a lead-off single in the eleventh, and his solid play to hold Seiya Suzuki at third on a Nico Hoerner grounder for the second out of that frame — and skip right to the bottom of the 11th. Rally mode hadn't quite gone as well in the ninth or tenth, but that was going to change. Eventually.
Cubs pitcher Mark Leiter Jr. intentionally walked Chapman to start things off, and with just a single run needed, the Jays decided to try a bunt.
I don't love a bunt at the best of times, but I don't exactly hate it in that situation. A properly executed one would push the "free" runner (in this case Jackie Bradley Jr.) to third, and would give the Jays two cracks at pushing him across the plate — the first of which could come via a simple fly ball. Giving away outs is dumb, but less so when you only need a single. I’ll give the Jays’ bench that.
Unfortunately, "properly executed" are the key words there. Much to the particular chagrin of Buck Martinez in the broadcast booth, Santiago Espinal was unable to do that.
The situation called for the ball to go up the third base line, forcing the third baseman to play the ball and throw to first. Instead, Espinal's bunt went to the first baseman — and, frankly, though TV angles can be tricky sometimes, it didn't really look much like he was even trying to nudge it down the other line.
The lead runner was thrown out a third base, leaving the Jays in the same situation they started — runners on first and second — only with one fewer out.
Were the demons that have so haunted the Blue Jays’ bats the last few days, and at so many occasions this season, about to rear their ugly heads again? In a word: no.
Once again Danny Bats was the man of the hour, and once again he came through. Only this time it didn’t take five pitches.
Jansen got one slow curve from Leiter and smacked it into left field at 99.9 mph.
Chapman knew instantly that it was a hit, but it got into left so fast that he had to hustle.
As he rounded third base and steamed toward home plate, Chapman found another gear. Literally.
Cubs left fielder Ian Happ got the ball in as quickly as he could, but as we saw in our Bosch painting above, his effort was in vain.
The Jays had completed the comeback. Cue the walk-off celebrations.
3.
This was obviously a big win for the Jays after a tough stretch, but given the position they’ve put themselves in they’re pretty much all going to have to be big from here on out. Tuesday’s game is another that feels must-win, as Kevin Gausman takes the hill against our old friend Marcus Stroman, who returns to the Rogers Centre to pitch for the first time since he was traded to the Mets in 2019.
Stroman will be trying to shake off a rare poor outing in this one, as in his last time out he gave up five earned runs to the Cardinals while striking out only one, which you can see in the charts below from Props.cash — player prop research made easy!
You can also see in these charts that Stroman continues to do very Stroman-y things, not necessarily racking up tons of strikeouts every night (left), but continually keeping runs off the board (right). Should be a fun one! By which I mean we’ll all probably want to puke from the tension at some point!!
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