SEATTLE – There’s a case to be made that the leverage swing between a win and a loss was higher for the Toronto Blue Jays entering Game 4 of the American League Championship Series than heading into Game 5. After all, think of how different Friday afternoon at a rocking T-Mobile Park would have felt if they were down 3-1 instead of level at 2-2. Sure, one of the teams was going to be facing elimination by the end of Game 5 on a felt-colder-than-it-was-15 C day, but this riveting best-of-seven was returning to Canada, either way.
Still, no matter how you contort your way through the mental acrobatics of the post-season, manager John Schneider urges staying off the tightrope. “At this point every game is a series, you know what I mean? And you literally never know,” he said in his office before his team’s latest fateful affair. “Yeah, we’ve gotten to this point, but you still have to keep going. … You’ve got to just worry about today, and then figure out the next day the next day.”
Well, the next day now is Sunday at Rogers Centre and is ever a big one after the Blue Jays, six outs from heading home with a series lead, instead must shake off Cal Raleigh’s game-tying homer and Eugenio Suraez’s grand slam during the eighth inning of a gutting 6-2 loss that left the Seattle Mariners a win away from the World Series.
What looked to be a third straight win unravelled when they took a 2-1 lead into that eighth that was immediately relitigated angrily and is sure to remain a flash point until Game 6 begins, with questions about George Springer’s right knee adding an extra twist.
Still, in contrast to the still and sombre air in the Blue Jays clubhouse after a 10-3 loss left them down 2-0 when the series shifted west, the vibe was far more defiant ahead of this cross-continent flight, from Schneider on down.
“I don’t want these guys to crawl into a hole. That’s not who we are,” he said. “So we’ll get after it on Sunday. We’ll be ready to play. I wouldn’t have it any other way with this group. Our backs are going to be against the wall? Great. We don’t give a (expletive).
“I hope those guys don’t give a (expletive), excuse my language. But it’s going to be fun and … I know they will be ready for it.”
Returning to Toronto, where the Blue Jays posted baseball’s best home record at 54-27, “is right where we want to be,” said Ernie Clement, whose RBI single in the sixth cashed in an Alejandro Kirk double for the go-ahead run. “That was kind of our goal coming here – get back to Toronto. Obviously we wanted this game to go a little different, but we’re in a great spot. We’ve got a chance. That’s all we need.”
Kevin Gausman, who allowed one run over 5.2 innings to put the Blue Jays in position to make it three straight, echoed that sentiment.
“We did our job here,” he said. “We came here, a lot of us were talking that it’s a three-game series, win this series to go back to Toronto, and we did. Tough loss, obviously, to lose the way we did. But these guys are resilient. There’s no other group I’d believe in more than these guys in that room. I know they’re going to come out ready to go for Game 6 and hopefully we can force a Game 7.”
To do that, the Blue Jays will once again make an immense ask of rookie Trey Yesavage, who’ll need to rebound from an uneven Game 2 outing to force a decisive seventh game. The Mariners didn’t announce who will counter, although Logan Gilbert, who allowed three runs, two earned, opposite Yesavage, is on turn.
How different the circumstances around that game might be is sure to dominate the discourse between now and then after an eighth inning that was as invigorating for a Mariners team that had been moribund at home to that point as it was crushing for the Blue Jays.
The shift actually began in the top half of the inning when Clement sent a Gabe Speier slider 363 feet to left where Randy Arozarena made a leaping catch against the left-field wall to steal a likely home run. “I kind of caught it out front and those balls tend not to carry quite as much,” said Clement, “but he made a nice play.”
Worse, though, is that “defence leads to offence in many ways,” added Clement, and that’s precisely what happened in the bottom half.
With switch-hitters Raleigh and Jorge Polanco plus lefty Josh Naylor due, Schneider made a polarizing turn to Brendon Little, the groundball-machine lefty with sometimes erratic command. He fell behind Raleigh 2-0 before leaving a fastball over the plate that Raleigh lofted over the same left-field wall Clement didn’t clear to tie the game.
The troubles compounded when he then walked Polanco and Naylor to end his outing, and Seranthony Dominguez proceeded to hit Arozarena, loading the bases for Suarez, who opened the scoring in the second with a solo shot and then capped it with the grand slam.
“I wanted that part of the lineup to see different guys,” Schneider said of his thinking. “We talked about it all series. Little’s been one of our best pitchers in big spots. Tough guy to elevate. Cal’s a really good hitter. I get it, man. After that, you’ve got to settle down and throw strikes, too. So that’s been part of Little’s game. So has strikeouts. I trust every single guy on this roster. It’s hard. No one feels worse than Little, no one feels worse than Ser right now, or me. But I trust every single guy on this roster. Today it didn’t work out, but we’ve won two games in a row a whole lot this year.”
The appearance was only Little’s second of the series, while both Dominguez and closer Jeff Hoffman had each appeared twice heading into Game 5, including in Thursday’s 8-2 win. Still, Schneider gave Hoffman the heart of the Mariners order during the eighth inning in Game 4, and he mowed them down, perhaps making him a better choice for the toughest pocket of the Seattle lineup.
“I thought about it, for sure,” said Schneider. “Decisions are hard. Being convicted in a process is important. You make a decision and you leave it behind you. It’s part of baseball. Second-guessing is part of it. Thought about it, for sure. And, again, we’ve have relied on every single guy on our roster to get a lot of wins this year. So could have done that, and then you think about who do you want in the ninth inning, who do they have coming up. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out.”
Worse still is that Springer, whose RBI double in the fifth inning tied the game 1-1, was hit on the right kneecap by a 95.6 m.p.h. fastball from Bryan Woo in the seventh and had to leave the game. While initial X-Rays were negative, he’ll undergo further tests once the team arrives in Toronto, although as Schneider noted, “he’ll have to really, really be hurting to not be in the lineup on Sunday.”
Adding to the frustration of the moment is that a sellout crowd of 46,758 cheered when Springer was hit and then booed him as he limped to first base trying to stay in the game.
Schneider, after praising the atmosphere in Seattle, said fans “that were booing him should take a look in the mirror,” while Clement used an expletive to describe the reaction before adding that “I don’t know how you boo somebody who’s down on the ground hurt.”
“I’ve had a lot of respect for all the Mariners fans, especially the ones that I’ve talked to throughout the series – I think they’ve been awesome,” he added. “But that’s a tough moment. That’s pretty classless.”
The next time they take the field, the Blue Jays will be before their own fans and just as they did in levelling the series 2-2, they’ll once again have to overcome some unfavourable, if less daunting, odds. Home teams that win Game 5 to take a 3-2 post-season lead have proceeded to win the series 23 of 37 times, with No. 38 upcoming.
Whether the leverage was higher in Game 4 or Game 5 doesn’t matter now that maximum leverage is here, with their next two outings win or go home.
