THE ORANGE RUSH
Martin gives the Blue Jays their second straight walk-off win
Blue Jays catcher Russell Martin gets a celebratory shower from teammate Darwin Barney after a long ninth-inning single over the glove of Texas’s Nomar Mazara brought in the winning run.
Blue Jays manager John Gibbons was suddenly picky on Wednesday about the seating arrangement of the gaggle of writers and broadcasters who assemble in his office before each game. “That’s Shulman’s seat,” he barked at the Toronto Sun’s Bob Elliott, who had just slid into an empty chair. “Is Dan here?”
Dan Shulman, the play-by-play man, was just making his way in, and was now very confused.
“Bobby, you move right here,” Gibbons said to Elliott, pointing to an office chair by his desk.
Shulman then tentatively took the now-vacant seat and Gibbons nodded. That’s where the two men were sitting 24 hours earlier, before the Jays won their first walk-off game of the season. Gibbons didn’t want to change a thing.
“We got a W,” he said, by way of explanation. “We barely got a W, but we got one.”
Chances are Gibbons will be just as picky on Thursday, after the Jays pulled off another walk-off against the Texas Rangers on Wednesday night.
This time it was Russell Martin, who has struggled badly through the season’s early going, who came through with the game-winning drive, sending a bases-loaded fly over the head of Rangers’ right fielder Nomar Mazara to plate the go-ahead run in the bottom of the ninth.
Martin, like his manager, is also practising a little superstition. He shaved his beard this week, leaving behind a trimmed pyramidal mustache.
“Just trying to change something up just to see what would happen,” Martin said after it was over and he had cleansed himself of the traditional Gatorade bath. “And so far so good. So the mustache is staying.”
That’s kind of where things are for the Jays at this point in the season. Mystified by their inconsistent offence and shaky bullpen, they’re appealing to supernatural forces in hopes of catching a good wave.
Martin, who is now fully healed from the nagging neck spasms that had been bothering him, was in the midst of describing how coming up with the bases loaded and one out — knowing all he needed was a sacrifice fly — relieved some of the pressure of the big moment when Jose Bautista yelled from beyond the scrum: “Tell ’em the truth — it’s the ’stache. It’s the ’stache.”
Gibbons and his charges didn’t seem to practise any superstitions last season when they were pounding opposing teams into submission. But right now these Jays aren’t much like those Jays, even if most of the names haven’t changed.
Aaron Sanchez got off to a lousy start on Wednesday, as Texas tagged him for three runs on six hits in the first two innings. But that hardly should have been an intimidating lead for the Jays’ power-laden lineup, particularly against a mediocre starter like Colby Lewis, the middling likes of whom the Jays regularly demolished last year. Lewis, who has one of the league’s lowest strikeout rates, still whiffed the Jays seven times in his seven innings.
Sanchez looked more like himself after the rocky start and settled in to keep the game close. He put up five straight zeroes after the second inning, seeing just two batters above the minimum from the third through the seventh.
There are signs the tide is turning for the Jays. Martin’s game-winning hit, for one, but also the game-tying moonshot Edwin Encarnacion, a.k.a. Mr. May, sent into the second deck just inside the foul pole. The offence is improving, with 19 homers in the last dozen games. The starting pitching, meanwhile, continues to be dependable, giving the team a chance to win almost every night. But a third of the starting lineup is still hitting below .200, the bullpen can hardly be described as steady and they’re still a game under .500.
So if the Jays need a little voodoo to put a winning streak together, right now they’ll take it.