On October 9th of this year, things did not look good for the Toronto Blue Jays. Despite a remarkable second half that had many observers calling them the best team in baseball, the Blue Jays came out relatively flat against their American League Division Series opposition, the Texas Rangers. The Rangers took Game 1 and Game 2 of the ALDS in the Rogers Centre, the Blue Jays’ home park. Now the Blue Jays had to take the next three in a row, or they’d be watching the rest of the postseason from their couches.
Reasons for the Blue Jays Come Back Against the Texas Rangers
The Jays delivered, completing one of the most exciting baseball comebacks in recent memory. They won both games in Arlington, Texas, by scores of 5-1 and 8-4. Then, when the series came back to Toronto for the decisive Game 5, they won one of the most thrilling elimination games ever. Game 5 had it all: controversy, errors, bat flips, and more. The wild seventh inning alone lasted nearly an hour. When it was all over, the Blue Jays were headed to the ALCS.
Now in the ALCS, the Blue Jays and their fans are getting a terrible feeling of déjà vu. Toronto’s squad is down once again, this time three games to two. Once again, they must win three straight games or else pack it in for the season. So it makes sense to take another look at that wild ALDS series and ask: how did the Blue Jays come back against the Rangers, and can they do it once more against the Kansas City Royals?
Home Runs
Sorry to state the obvious, but the Toronto Blue Jays hit a lot of home runs. They hit more than any other team in baseball this year, and they’re particularly adept at hitting them in their own ballpark, which has more favorable dimensions for the Jays’ particular brand of power hitters than either Globe Life Park (Texas) or Kauffman Stadium (Kansas City). Yet it was an away game in which the Blue Jays got their first multi-homer game: a 3-homer bonanza in Texas that tied up the series. The Jays hit two in their final game, as well.
Another key: home run timing. Putting one over the fence does some good when nobody is on base, but it’s much more of a game-changer when men are on. The Jays hit one home run in each of the first two games, and scored only one run with each. They netted six homers in the next two games, and scored a total of nine runs with those home runs. Three of the six came with at least one man on base.
Finding a New Ace
Is something wrong with David Price? It certainly seems possible. The Blue Jays signed Price to be their postseason ace, the guy that would guide them through the crucial games on their road to a championship. But Price is sporting a 7.02 ERA this postseason to go with his two losses in two starts. So when the Jays took a commanding lead in Game 4, they went to a surprising source for relief pitching: David Price, whose appearance took him out of consideration for the Game 5 start.
Using Price in relief was an admission the Blue Jays didn’t really want him to start Game 5 anyway: they wanted Marcus Stroman, who started Game 2 and probably would have won it if the Blue Jays hadn’t blown it late. Stroman has a 4.19 ERA (pretty respectable for an American Leaguer in the postseason), and he was the man who provided 6.0 solid innings and allowed the Jays to reach that pivotal seventh inning with the game still tied.
Stroman is at it again in the ALCS. He game the Jays 6.1 innings in Game 3, the only game they’ve won so far. That should give him plenty of rest if the Blue Jays want to use him in a possible Game 7. He could even start Game 6 on 3 days’ rest, if that’s the way that Toronto manager John Gibbons wants to go.
That Home Crowd
The Blue Jays had one thing going for them in Game 5 of the ALDS that they won’t have in a potential Game 7 in the ALCS: that home crowd of there at the Rogers Centre in Toronto.
We’re not going to praise the madness that took hold of the Toronto crowd in the seventh inning of ALDS Game 5 – you don’t need a blog post to tell you that throwing beer on babies is not cool – but we are going to mention the crowd’s impact on the game. The Rogers Centre has probably been the loudest stadium in the baseball postseason – no small feat when die-hard and playoff-starved fan bases like New York’s and Chicago’s are in the mix. And the crowd in Toronto during Game 5 was, for reasons both good and bad, absolutely terrifying. Could they have been a factor in Elvis Andrus’ multiple crucial errors in the seventh? It certainly seems likely.
It’s this last factor that has to scare Blue Jays fans a bit. If the Blue Jays get to Game 7 in the ALCS, it will happen in Kauffman Stadium. Can the Jays get the first two parts of the formula right and avoid needing this last key?
Main Photo:
Main Photo: TORONTO, ON – OCTOBER 14: Jose Bautista #19 of the Toronto Blue Jays flips his bat up in the air after he hits a three-run home run in the seventh inning against the Texas Rangers in game five of the American League Division Series at Rogers Centre on October 14, 2015 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images)
