Extra-Inning Game-Winning Home Run Drama in Toronto
05 Oct, 2016
This is tombstone material: ‘Here lies Buck Showalter who lost a playoff game with Zach Britton waiting in the bullpen for a save opportunity that didn’t come.’
Edwin Encarnacion smashed a three-run home run off reliever Ubaldo Jimenez in the bottom of the 11th inning Tuesday night to send the Blue jays to the American League Division Series with a 5-2 victory, while Britton, the best reliever in baseball this year, sat on a chair in the bullpen, hoping the Baltimore manager might call.
Jimenez, normally a starting pitcher, had given up back-to-back singles to Devon Travis and Josh Donaldson before Encarnacion belted the first pitch he saw into the left field seats.
If they’d been able to script it, short of a blowout, this was exactly what the Orioles would have ordered up.
Tie ballgame. Late innings. Cue the bullpen.
In a 2-2, see-saw Wild Card game, Showalter had his elite corps of relievers lined up, rested and ready to chew threw the Blue Jays lineup. So confident was Showalter in his pen that he was able to gamble and keep all-world closer Britton, 47-for-47 in save opportunities this year, under wraps. But he gambled one inning too long and now he and his Orioles headed back to Baltimore to wonder why.
“Sure, it crosses your mind from about the sixth inning on,” said Showalter. “I like how they all pitched but nobody has been pitching better than Ubaldo. There’s a lot of different ways to look at it. It didn’t work out.”
The Blue Jays will now open the best-of-five ALDS in Arlington, Texas against the Rangers on Thursday afternoon.
In the end it was the Toronto bullpen which was the star of this show as they dealt out five consecutive innings of scoreless baseball. Jose Bautista hit a second-inning homer for the Jays, while Mark Trumbo countered with a two-run shot in the fourth off starter Marcus Stroman to account for both Baltimore runs.
“Both teams played so well,” said Blue Jays manager John Gibbons. “Both teams deserved to win. I felt really good the whole game. It’s a close ballgame but I had a good feeling. Regardless they’ve burned us many, many times. It could have gone either way.”
Encarnacion was 0-for-3 with a walk when he came to the plate in the 11th.
“I was looking for a fastball, just to try to put the barrel on it,” said Encarnacion. “It was a very special moment and a very special opportunity to get it.”
The sellout crowd was in full roar from the moment the starting lineups were announced, blotting out all the normal sounds of a baseball game and it reached a crescendo when Bautista led off the second inning with a home run. Tillman fell behind the Jays slugger. With the count 3-0, Bautista had the green light and bounced a foul ball down the third base line. Bautista connected on the 3-1 fastball and it sailed on a high arc into the netting overtop the Blue Jays bullpen.
Stroman was perfect through three innings – nine up and nine down. In his second at-bat, however, leadoff man Adam Jones reached out and tapped a 1-2 breaking ball on the outside corner, flaring it into right field for Baltimore’s first hit. One out later, Manny Machado ripped a line drive into right centre, but Kevin Pillar laid out and made one of his patented circus catches, forcing Jones back to second base.
But Stroman wasn’t getting out of this inning without paying a price. Trumbo jumped on the first pitch and pulled it down the third base line, a wall-scraping homer that gave Baltimore a 2-1 lead.
After the Bautista homer, Tillman settled in and did not allow another hit until the fifth when the Jays strung three knocks together to score the tying run and chase the Baltimore starter from the game.
With one out, Michael Saunders sprayed a double down the left field line. Kevin Pillar then lined a ball toward the right field corner. Saunders had to hold to see if right fielder Michael Bourn would come up with the catch but when the ball caromed off the wall for a double, Saunders could only advance one base. Ezequiel Carrera followed with an RBI single, leaving runners at first and third with one out. Reliever Mychal Givens took the ball from Tillman, threw one pitch and got a 5-4-3 inning-ending double-play ball from Travis to keep the score tied at 2-2.
With Stroman out of the game in the seventh, Brett Cecil came on and induced a slow bouncer from the bat of Matt Wieters that Donaldson bare-handed and turned into a highlight reel play, nipping Wieters. Cecil walked Chris Davis, ending his stint. Joe Biagini picked up from Cecil and fanned Jonathan Schoop and Bourn to end the inning.
With two outs and nobody on in the seventh inning, pinch-hitter Melvin Upton hit a fly ball to the warning track in left. Just as Hyun Soo Kim caught the ball, a beer can was thrown from the stands by some moron, very nearly hitting the Orioles left fielder. Fortunately he made the catch and the can missed but it had the potential to be an embarrassing, ugly incident for the Blue Jays.
“I hope they find that guy and press charges,” said Jones. “That’s not part of baseball. Throw an octopus. Call me what you want. That’s fine but to put us in harms way that’s not part of baseball.”
The Toronto bullpen was brilliant. Cecil, Joe Biagini, Jason Grilli, Roberto Osuna (who had to leave the game in the 10th inning with an apparent injury) and Francisco Liriano combined to allow just one baserunner, that one on a walk by Cecil. After that walk, the Blue Jays pen retired 14 consecutive hitters.
“We were a little beat up out there (in the pen),” said Gibbons. “We came off a tough series at Fenway and used a lot of guys. This past month has been a grind, with a lot of close games. These guys are beat up and to step up like they did, that says a lot.”
Toronto Sun
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