My friends tell me to leave you, that you're bad news, bad news, bad news. That you're bad news, baby, you're bad news, and you're bad news, baby, you're bad news. And you're bad news. I don't care. I like you, and you're bad news. I don't care. I like you.
Jays 5, Mariners 4.
Voodoo Joe's turn to play hero, as he doubles home two runs off Mark Lowe in the bottom of the 10th to give the Jays a 5-4 victory. It's the Jays' fourth win in a row. In their last seven games at the RC, the Jays have walked off three times.
Inglett scorched a first-pitch changeup from Lowe on a line to deep right field, just beyond the reach of Ichiro. You hear all the time about how Cito Gaston demands that his hitters have a plan when they go up to the plate. Well, two batters before, Lowe started Adam Lind with a changeup for a strike and got him to pop up the 0-1. Then he started Brad Wilkerson with a changeup for a strike and quickly got him in an 0-2 hole before walking him. So Inglett probably knew what he was looking for. I'm not sure if the Cito Philosophy is really all that different from what the previous coaching staff preached, but Inglett (presumably) sitting all over a first-pitch change and then unloading on it was pretty awesome to watch.
Inglett's liner was a really difficult play for Ichiro, who had been playing shallow in right field most of the inning, with John McDonald on second representing the tying run. He actually got a hand on the ball after hesitating a bit, and I couldn't help but think that this was a play Ichiro makes more than 50% of the time. So the baseball gods definitely helped the Jays pull it out.
But really, the Mariners deserved unfavorable divine intervention for making the game take forever by shooting through Cesar Jimenez and Roy Corcoran and Arthur Rhodes and Sean Green and J.J. Putz and Brandon Morrow in 3.2 innings, including two pitching changes in the middle of at-bats. When they took the lead in the 10th, they only had one reliever left in their bullpen: Mark Lowe. And since they didn't particularly feel like extending wonderboy Brandon Morrow beyond the 29 pitches he'd thrown in the previous inning, they decided to throw Lowe to the wolves instead.
Here are Lowe's career splits:
vs RH: 164 PA .204/.319/.277 41 K 21 BB
vs LH: 135 PA .296/.391/.470 24 K 16 BB
Which (sample size alert) means he certainly has his uses as a major-league pitcher. But these were the wolves:
Gregg Zaun (S)
John McDonald (R)
Scott Rolen (R)
Adam Lind (L)
Brad Wilkerson (L)
Joe Inglett (L)
It could be worse, but if one of those first three hitters reached... bad news, and nobody to bail him out.
Which brings us to the unsung offensive hero: Brad Wilkerson. Wilkerson was 1-2 with a single and three clutch walks, two of which were instrumental in making the Mariners exhaust their bullpen.
Walk #1 came at the expense of lefty Arthur Rhodes with one out and the bases empty in the bottom of the seventh. Inglett followed with a flyout, but Wilkerson's walk extended the inning so Marco Scutaro got to hit. The M's initially left Rhodes in despite the platoon disadvantage, presumably to stop Wilkerson from stealing second. But when Rhodes threw a wild pitch, the Mariners decided to yank him for funky sidewinding righty Sean Green. Green got Seattle out of the jam, but Wilkerson's walk cost them one reliever, since J.J. Putz was going to pitch the eighth no matter what happened before or who was due up.
Walk #2 came against the flamethrower Morrow, leading off the ninth with the score tied 3-3. Wilkerson fouled off the first pitch and fell behind 0-2 but battled to earn a nine-pitch walk which set the tone for a grueling inning, in which the Jays forced the Mariners' best reliever to throw 29 pitches and rendered him unavailable for the 10th.
And walk #3 extended the game against Lowe in the 10th, again after an 0-2 count. It loaded the bases for Inglett.
So, Wilkerson wound up with a cool .281 WPA and did it about as quietly as possible. Not bad. Stairs had two key game-tying RBIs and Inglett had the big hit, but Wilkerson's heroic walks made it all... slightly more likely.
Other random observations:
Cito Gaston pulled Parrish on 93 pitches, with Beltre, Lopez, Vidro, Cairo, Johjima and Betancourt due up. Six hitters, five righties, one switch. And who'd he bring in to face those hitters instead of Parrish? Camp, the righty-killing sinker-slider guy. Result: 2 innings, 3 strikeouts, 1 walk, 0 hits.
Kids, when you're in the front row and your team's first baseman runs
over to catch a catchable ball, don't intentionally steal it away from him. And if you must intentionally steal it away from him, don't celebrate your achievement. And if you must celebrate, only do it once... You look like a
dildo no matter how confident you are that whichever banjo-hitting Mariner righty is up at the moment has no chance of hitting either of Shawn Camp's pitches. (Although you are right.)
OK, here comes a three-part lineup construction rampage. If you find this stuff dull skip the next three paragraphs. I grudgingly accept that if Marco Scutaro can keep his OBP above .350 he can hit second anytime he wants.
I don't really have a side in the debate over whether Adam Lind batting 8th is ridiculous or not, but I do think it's tempting to cop out by quietly noting that the OBPs in the 6 and 7 holes (Stairs' .332 and Rolen's .361) are higher than those of Scutaro and Rios (.352 and .330) and even more so when you factor in the platoon differential.
Finally, I'd be curious to hear what people think about Rod Barajas being entrenched as the 5 hitter against righties. Obviously, he has high isolated power, and he's not a double play threat against most pitchers due to his strikeout and flyball tendencies. His career splits are small. But his OBP is weak and it always has been. But his at-bat song is pretty solid, and you do want pop immediately behind Overbay. So I'm not sure. If there were no young-slugger-character-building issues with Lind, I'd think batting him 5th behind Overbay would be ideal.
Today: Two exhausted bullpens. One knuckleballer. One guy who hasn't made it through 5 innings in a big-league start yet. Who ya got? Purcey and Dickey, 1:07.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20080726002016443