BALTIMORE — This chat with Josh Donaldson took place on Wednesday, after he had gone 0-for-4 with two strikeouts in his first game as a Blue Jay. His friend Jose Bautista — Donaldson calls him Bau, pronounced “Bow,” as in genuflect — went 0-for-5 with three strikeouts.
Donaldson, however, came away from that game in an upbeat mood. He and Bautista — two of the team’s big boppers — may have faltered at the plate on opening day, and in the next game too, but batters further down the lineup have been picking up the slack for their more famous colleagues.
“What I was really happy about was that myself and Bau didn’t do really well at the plate, but you had a lot of guys around us who stepped up and did some things,” Donaldson was saying. “And I think that’s what’s going to create danger throughout our whole lineup, because one through nine, I think we can compete. Our lineup’s really long.”
The Yankees, and now the Orioles, can testify to that. By the sixth inning of Baltimore’s home opener on Friday afternoon, their pitchers had allowed the Blue Jays 12 hits, including six doubles. Everyone in the visitors’ starting lineup had at least one hit, except for Edwin Encarnacion.
You’d figure that sort of production should launch a lot of runs, and in this case, you’d be right. The Jays won 12-5, diminishing the orange-tinted pomp and ceremony of the Orioles’ home opener while whacking a total of 16 hits, including three by Bautista, who entered the game 0-for-12 with eight strikeouts.
Bautista also left the game with a reported leg cramp. There was no immediate word on his prognosis.
Mark Buehrle performed as usual: six innings, eight hits, two runs. A breeze.
Donaldson contributed two hits and a sacrifice fly, and a bunch of other hitters were in good spirits too, as you can imagine. But to Donaldson’s point, back there in the third paragraph, consider the following: rookie Dalton Pompey whacked a pair of doubles (his first hits of the season), and his buddy Devon Travis kept up his early-season drumbeat with a double and single, and Kevin Pillar doubled, and Justin Smoak singled twice, and Dioner Navarro, making his first start behind the plate, had a two-run double and a sacrifice fly.
It is a tad early for projecting from a four-game sample, but perhaps the most impressive thing about the Jays’ 3-1 record (it could easily be 4-0 except for one hideous inning in Game 2) is that they have done everything well.
The Jays were expected to hit. By the end of spring training, their young pitchers were creating optimism in the rotation, and also in a bullpen that just about everybody considered suspect. And manager John Gibbons keeps saying his club will be significantly improved on defence.
All of the above have met or exceeded expectations this week. The clutch pitching and opportunistic offence might have overshadowed the defence, but in a short time, the Jays have started to make the sort of plays that were strikingly absent last season.
In New York, first baseman Smoak cut off a relay from the outfield and threw a bullet to second baseman Travis, who had alertly covered first. The unsuspecting runner had made too wide a turn and could not retreat in time.
In Friday’s game, which was a rout after Toronto’s first at-bat, the defence did not dawdle. They completed three crisp infield double plays, with Travis making a lightning pivot in the middle of each, including an eighth-inning play when Delmon Young’s slide left him in a heap.
With a nine-run lead in the sixth, Pillar risked life and limb with a leaping catch against the left-field wall that might have prevented a home run. And in the previous inning, he cut off an apparent double and made a perfect throw to second, where Travis made a perfect blind tag for the out.
No one can be certain where all that will lead, but so far it bodes well for the Jays. They are playing like a good team. And they are displaying the sort of balance and depth that was not apparent when they started spring training.
During his days in Oakland, Donaldson came to understand the importance of those qualities. The A’s relied on every player and every player contributed, included kids who blended and bonded quickly with the veterans.
“We knew that if we were going to be competitive, we had to be strong, one through 25,” Donaldson said. “It’s not going to change here. We have some horses in this lineup and we have some horses on the mound. At the same time, we’re going to need one through 25. Any time you go into a battle, and you’re only at 17, 18, you’re not going to be as strong as a team that’s 25 deep.”
