Adam Linds homer saves day for Jays
It was an often laborious three hour and 47 minute affair that featured 11 pitchers, some boneheaded plays, and a huge walk-off home run by Adam Lind that won it for the Toronto Blue Jays in 12 innings.
For Toronto manager John Farrell, who had to parade a total of five relievers into the game before the 6-5 verdict was reached over the Baltimore Orioles at Rogers Centre on Tuesday night, it was all worth it in the end.
“Winning a Major League Baseball game is not that easy,” said Farrell, who should know.
His Blue Jays came into the contest losers of four in a row, including three to the division-leading Boston Red Sox who outscored Toronto 35-5 over the weekend set in Toronto.
The Blue Jays had an off-day on Monday and had plenty of time to try to sooth their ravaged baseball souls after the Boston shellacking, or so the thinking went.
And when Lind stroked his home run to right field leading off the 12th inning off Baltimore reliever Koji Uehara to finally win it for Toronto, it must have been a huge lift of the team’s collective backs, right?
“They way we won tonight I thought was great,” said Lind, who now has 12 home runs on the year. “Any win you get in the division is going to be big.
“But in our world this past weekend was a long time ago.”
The Blue Jays received another solid outing from relief-pitcher-turned starter, Carlos Villaneuva, who continues to impress since assuming the spot vacated by the injured Jesse Litsch.
In his fifth start in place of Litsch, Villaneuva was effective, allowing three Baltimore runs off seven hits over six-plus innings of work.
He left the game with Toronto leading 4-3 and Aaron Hill made it 5-3 when he drilled his second home run of the year for the Blue Jays in the seventh.
But the bullpen couldn’t make it hold up as Marc Rzepczynski surrendered a two-run home run shot off the bat of Matt Wieters in the eighth that tied it up.
Rzepczynski, a lefty, entered the game in the eighth with Vladimir Guerrero the leadoff batter, followed by Wieters, who is a switch hitter.
Guerrero came to the plate with a 1-for-6 career head-to-head mark against Rzepczynski while Wieters was 0-for-2.
Guerrero promptly drew a walk and Weiters, who came into the game hitting 60 points higher (.321) against lefties than righties, promptly deposited a home run shot to left on a 2-1 Rzepczynski offering.
Farrell’s other option was to go with Casey Janssen, a right-hander who sported a 2-for-2 mark against Wieters over his career while Guerrero was 2-for-14 with a home run.
Farrell decided to go with the lefty and Wieters made him pay by knocking his sixth home run of the season.
The Blue Jays were also guilty of a couple of boneheaded mental miscues, the most grievous committed by shortstop Yunel Escobar.
With the score knotted at 5-5 in the eighth inning, Escobar singled leading off — his third hit of the game.
Corey Patterson was up next and he laid down a nice sacrifice bunt, or what would have been a nice sacrifice if Escobar had of been running hard all the way from first.
But Escobar slowed noticeably as he got closer to second, expecting Baltimore pitcher Jim Johnson, who fielded the bunt, to make the play at first.
Instead, Johnson gunned a throw to second that forced the non-sliding Escobar out.
“He didn’t go in hard,” Farrell said when asked if he was disappointed in Escobar’s effort on the play.
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