Had 'em all the way...
The Blue Jays match their 2004 win total and get back to .500.
And if I had told you in April that Scott Downs would strike out more hitters in a game than any other Toronto pitcher, you'd have beaten me senseless.
For much of the evening, this looked like it was going to be one of those nights. I think you all know exactly what I mean by that.
Julio Lugo led off the game with a double. And immediately thereafter, Scott Downs locked in to something. He struck out five of the next seven hitters, which announced his presence with authority indeed. But with two out in the third. Lugo hustled his way to an infield single, Crawford lined a second hit, and Jorge Cantu cashed in everybody with Earl Weaver's favourite play. One little mistake... Downs then walked Perez but fanned Aubrey Huff for the second time to end the inning.
People have wondered, from time to time, why the Blue Jays even bother to play Frank Menechino anymore. Does he figure in the team's plans for next year? (Who knows - he's certainly not going to get enough at bats to make his $750 K option kick in.) Don't they have young players they ought to be looking at? Oh, no doubt. But the reason Menechino is playing is because John Gibbons still wants to win some ball games, and believes that Menechino can help him do that from time to time. Gibbons thinks winning is a a good thing for the young players to get used to (and I think it's an especially good thing to do for your fans at home.) And despite his unimpressive batting average, Menechino is still a useful offensive player because of his ability to get on base. Not to mention his ability to hit Very Tall Left-Handed Pitchers. I noted just last week that one of Menechino's all-time favourite opposing hurlers was the biggest lefty of them all - Menechino is the only Blue Jay with two home runs off Randy Johnson. And if Randy Johnson doesn't discourage you... well, what chance does Mark Hendrickson have?
Mouse came up after Alex Rios broke off his 0-14 slide with a leadoff single. Menechino doubled to left, and the Jays had two men in scoring position, no one out, and the top of the order at the plate. Alas! - they could only cash in one run, on Reed Johnson's ground out which scored Rios and moved Menechino to third. Hudson grounded out to the bag at third, and Menechino had to hold his ground. Vernon Wells laid off the first pitch, and the second - but he was fooled by the 2-0 and fouled out to the catcher.
Downs worked his way through the next two innings, striking out his seventh and eighth batters to match his own career high. But Lurch was mowing down the Blue Jays as well, and had retired all eight hitters since the Menechino double when Mouse stepped up to the plate again, with two out in the fifth inning. Menechino came through again, this time with his 4th homer of the season, and the home side had cut the Tampa lead to 3-2. And now Hendrickson faltered - Johnson and Hudson both delivered singles, bringing Wells to the plate. Lurch wanted no part of Vernon, walking him on four pitches. Which brought Shea Hillenbrand to the plate, and the pitching coach to the mound. Lurch doubtless said, "Don't worry - this guy I can get." He'd struck out Hillebrand swinging to end the first inning with one man aboard - this time, with the bases loaded, he got him swinging again to end the threat.
After issuing a leadoff walk to Perez in the sixth, Downs started striking out people again. He got Huff swinging for the third time in a row, and on the same play Zaun gunned down Perez trying to steal for the old strike-'em-out throw-'em-out double play. He ended the inning by getting Johnny Gomes swinging at strike three for the third time in a row, and after the Jays went down in order in their half of the sixth, Downs started off the Tampa seventh by striking out Alex Gonzalez, a familiar sight to all Toronto baseball fans. It was his 11th strikeout, the most by any Blue Jay pitcher in 2005, and the second best total by a Toronto LH ever. But he looked like he was being set up to take a Very Tough Loss. In the Jays half of the seventh, Hendrickson finally figured out how to retire Menechino, and while Sparky managed a two out single, he was stranded after the O-Dog's comebacker. Lurch's evening was through, as it would turn out, and he'd done a fine job.
Downs hadn't needed very many pitches to amass all those strikeouts - he came out for the eighth inning and Julio Lugo continued to torment him with a leadoff triple. Lugo had done the same thing leading off the first inning. That time, Carl Crawford had tried to bunt him over, but instead had popped the bunt up to where Downs could catch it. Undeterred, the Devil Rays tried it again, and Crawford almost popped out to the pitcher again. This time, though, a diving Downs could not make the catch, and Crawford found himself safe at first.
With runners on the corners, Gibbons summoned Pete Walker from the pen to face Cantu. I didn't like it - I don't really want Walker working in the 1st, 2nd, 8th, or 9th innings - but he got the job done. He struck out Cantu swinging and got Gathright, pinch-hitting, to line out to left field too shallow to score Lugo (although Sparky made the play just a little too exciting.) With Aubrey Huff due up, Walker took his leave, and Scott Schoeneweis entered the fray. The SS LOOGY got quickly ahead 0-2, and then it got interesting. Huff hung in there, fouling off three 1-2 pitches, before grounding out to end the threat. Excellent work by the bullpen, a fine game by the starter, and the home side was still losing, but it was still a one-run game.
But at least Hendrickson was gone. Vernon Wells hadn't swung at the first pitch all night. Granted, they hadn't thrown him a first pitch strike yet. (He had swung at the only two pitches they'd thrown him near the strike zone.) Joe Borowski threw a first pitch strike, perhaps curious to see what would happen. Nothing happened. Vernon watched it go by. He then took a ball, and grounded the next pitch back up the middle for a leadoff single. Shea Hillenbrand, very happy to see the last of Hendrickson, followed with a base hit of his own. Russ Adams was summoned to pinch hit for Aaron Hill - his job was to lay down a sac bunt. Adams came through with a good bunt. Borowski fielded the ball and looked at third to see if he could get Wells. He couldn't, and by the time he turned and threw to first, he couldn't get Adams either. Bases loaded, no one out. Who would deliver the RBIs that the team needed?
Nobody.
Corey Koskie, trying a little too hard perhaps, rolled a double play ground ball to second base. Wells scored to tie the game, but now there were two outs. Hillenbrand was on third, but Borowski quickly got ahead of Zaun 0-2. Zaun fouled off a pitch, took ball one, and fouled off another. And then Borowski again tried to do too much, badly overthrowing a pitch that Toby Hall did well to even get his glove near. He couldn't catch it, and Hillenbrand charged across the plate with the go-ahead run. It stood up as the game-winner, although Miguel Batista did his best to make everyone nervous by distributing a leadoff hit, a wild pitch, and a walk before retiring Lugo to end it.
Two runs in the eighth, without an RBI. I recollect a few days ago hearing Jerry and Warren reminisce about that old, briefly tallied relic of the 1980s - the Game Winning RBI. A statistic that no one thought much of - as Sawkiw noted, if you drove in the first run in a game that your team won 10-0 you could get credit for a Game Winning RBI. It just didn't seem meaningful. As it happens, you could drive in the first run of a game that your team wins 10-9, and yours might still prove to be the Game Winning RBI, if you really want to complain...
I suppose a new and official statistic must always be Very Meaningful. We wouldn't have had a game-winning RBI last night in any event. We did have a Winning Pitcher, however. The Winning Pitcher of last night's game was Scott Schoeneweis. The man who pitched to exactly one batter. While his team was losing. If you want to complain about a meaningless statistic, how about that one? This is not to slight Schoeneweis at all - he faced a tough hitter, at an important moment of a close game - there were two men on base in a one-run game - and he did his job perfectly. But I promise you Schoeneweis doesn't care all that much that he was adjudged the Winning Pitcher.
Scott Downs, even if just between you and me, was the winning pitcher last night. Eleven strikeouts! By a Toronto left-hander? You're kidding me!
Of the top eight strikeout performances by a Blue Jays pitcher, seven of them belong to one man. That of course was Roger Clemens during his two year reign of terror in a Toronto uniform. Clemens struck out 18 men once (a 3 hit shutout of the Royals in August 1998); 16 men once (his fabled return to Fenway in July 1997). He also struck out 15 men twice. He struck out 14 batters three times, a feat also performed by Pat Hentgen (in his famous 1-0 duel with Kevin Appier in 1994.)
Clemens had a 13 strikeout game, and so did Ted Lilly in August of 2004. Lilly's game, a 3 hit shutout against the Red Sox, is the most ever by a Blue Jays southpaw.
Before Hentgen's 14 K game, the team record had stood at 12 strikeouts since... well, almost since Day One. Pete Vuckovich struck out 12 in the course of a 2-0 shutout against the Orioles in June of 1977. Over the next 17 seasons that mark was frequently matched but never surpassed. Actually, no one even matched it until Jim Clancy fanned 12 Royals in just 7 innings in April of 1988 - the Jays won 12-3. Later that season, Dave Stieb struck out 12 White Sox, while winning 6-3 (two unearned runs - it was Dave Stieb, after all). In 1991, Tom Candiotti became the fourth co-holder of the record, but the only one who didn't get a win out of it. Candiotti didn't even get the decision - he struck out 12 Tigers in just 7 innings, and left with the score tied at 0-0. Detroit eventually got to Tom Henke for 4 runs in the 14th inning (it was Henke's third inning of work) to win the game 4-0.
After 1994, of course, 12 Ks wasn't the record anymore. Clemens (twice) and Chris Carpenter (once) would subsequently strike out 12 in a game.
Many Blue Jays pitchers have struck out 11 in a game - in addition to most of the names already encountered, it's something achieved by such worthies as Doyle Alexander, David Cone, Juan Guzman, Kelvim Escobar, Roy Halladay, and Dave Bush - as well as such not-so-worthies as Esteban Loaiza and Jose Nunez. But not very often by left-handers. Of all the LH pitchers who have worn a Toronto uniform, only two have struck out 11 hitters in a game before Lilly and Downs - they would be David Wells (twice) and Al Leiter. Jimmy Key and Jerry Garvin, whose best in a Toronto uniform was 10 Ks, are the only other Toronto lefties to hit double figures.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20050902190952649