“Try to shut them out, give these guys a chance to win”. And we didn’t even mention the young Marcus Stroman. Furthermore, the Blue Jays played prolific offensively.
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Marco Estrada is in many ways an unlikely saviour, but he breathed life into the Blue Jays during the American League Division Series with a Game 3 gem against the Texas Rangers, and under even more dire circumstances, one-upped himself with an ace-like performance in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series against the Kansas City Royals.
Really, the way in which the right-hander asserted control from his first pitch on is why the Blue Jays forced a Game 6 Friday at Kauffman Stadium with a 7-1 victory Wednesday evening, before a roaring Rogers Centre crowd of 49,325. And Estrada was just about unhittable. He’s yielded 14 hits, five runs and struck out 15 and walked one in 19 1/3 innings. Kansas City will host Toronto in Game 6 on Friday after the Blue Jays won 7-1 on Wednesday to stave off elimination.
They were held in check here by the Royals’ in Games 1 and 2, scoring just three runs in the first two games before their bats revived upon returning to their hitter-friendly home ballpark.
As Estrada left and walked back to the third-base dugout, the noise was deafening. Kelvin Herrera allowed Troy Tulowitzki to break the game open with a three-run double in the sixth, with all runs charged to Volquez. “It’s the start we needed”.
“It was huge for us for Estrada to have an outing like this”, Navarro said. “But it was extremely loud and it was a great feeling”. Volquez plunked Josh Donaldson with his first pitch, and then walked Jose Bautista following a ten pitch battle that saw Bautista foul off four straight 3-2 pitches. “(But) you’re probably not going to score as many as in our place, that’s pretty obvious”. A single in the fourth – promptly erased by a double play – and a two-out walk in the seventh were the only blemishes on his pitching line in the first seven innings as he retired 21 of 22.
Want a few perspective on that dominance? “We just couldn’t do anything offensively”.
“It’s a do-or-die game for us, ” Toronto manager John Gibbons. Estrada gave them perhaps its best one in Game Five.
That said, the wild cards this time are the starting pitchers.
“So I’m just going to go out there, throw my game, have fun, have good things happen, get good results and good things are going to happen”. Changeup and curveball were there, threw a few good cutters.
“I have to prove that I can pitch at this point in the season in the playoffs”, said Price at a news conference on Thursday. It’s possible. And that’s how we’re looking at it. Win the next game.
And who was this against?
He dominated in Game 5, striking out four batters in the first three innings, and limiting the hard contact that had defined the previous 21 innings for Kansas City.
As he did after the game Wednesday, Estrada continues to deflect questions about his future.
During the regular season, Volquez hummed a fastball clocked at a 93.7 miles per hour average, according to FanGraphs.
“Well, he wasn’t far off”, Gibbons said.
There a few interesting food for thought in the wake of Game Five. It doesn’t seem to affect him on the field – his defence has been strong and he leads the team with 11 RBIs in the playoffs. “But they do it all year”.
The lineup that the Royals used against Price in Game 2 has a combined.
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In the 1985 ALCS the roles were reversed with the Royals rallying from 3-1 down to beat Toronto and again versus the St. Louis Cardinals to win that year’s World Series.
