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Three Years Ago Today
In the 11th inning of the Blue Jays Wild Card game, Edwin Encarnacion hit a 1-out home run to give us a walk-off win of the Wild Card game against the Orioles. We won 5-2.
In the 11th inning, with the Orioles best reliever sitting in the bullpen (Buck Showalter was a genus), the Orioles brought in Ubaldo Jimenez into the game. With one-out we got singles from Devon Travis and Josh Donaldson. At this point I was sure Zach Britton would be coming into the game. But Showalter left Jimenez in there.
This happened:
We owe Buck a present of some sort.
Before that we didn’t do much on offense. Jose Bautista hit a solo home run in the second inning and Ezequiel Carrera singled home Michael Saunders in the fifth.
We hit into 3 double plays (despite only having 7 guys on base all game). From the recap:
The one that hurt the most was in the 9th inning, Josh Donaldson (off a leadoff double) and Edwin Encarnacion (intentional walk) on first and second with one out (Bautista strike out on a check swing) when Russell Martin ground one straight at third for an easy 5-4-3 double play.
Marcus Stroman was great for 6 innings. His one bad moment was a Mark Trumbo 2-run home run.
We got great work from our bullpen: Brett Cecil, Joe Bigini, Jason Grilli, Roberto Osuna and Francisco Liriano pitched 5 shutout innings.
From the recap:
Jays of the Day: Edwin (.126 WPA, I thought it would higher), Liriano (.214), Osuna (.195, please don’t be hurt), Grilli (.106), Donaldson (.284).
We won so I’m not giving any suckage awards, but if I did: Travis (-.240), Martin (-.296) and Tulo (-.134).
Justin Smoak got into the game as a pinch-hitter, he is the only current Blue Jay in the game (unless you count Travis).
I remember thanking Showalter for helping us and someone on Twitter explaining to me that “If you put Britton in there, who gets the save?”. It did amaze me that people still believed you managed to the save.
The Jays would go on to beat the Rangers in the ALDS, three games straight.
Then we lost out to Cleveland in the ALCS in 5 games. That series featured some great pitching. Cleveland’s batters hit .168/.215/.329 and Blue Jays batters hit .201/.251/.283.