Blue Jays flip the script in odds-beating thriller vs. Indians

TORONTO — The story of the Toronto Blue Jays season so far — if there is indeed a coherent strand tying together the 34 chaotic contests they’ve engaged in — is that of a team that simply can’t catch a break.

Not through lack of effort, or really even lack of talent, have the Blue Jays arrived at their 13-21 record. Things just haven’t tilted their way, from injuries, to bizarre team-wide slumps, to unexpected bouts of bullpen frailty. This team has rarely played particularly poorly, but wins have seemingly slipped through their fingers at every turn.

On Wednesday night, the Blue Jays managed to reverse course in an 8-7 comeback walk-off win the likes of which the team has seen far too infrequently so far this year.

“This is similar to the games we were losing earlier in the season,” manager John Gibbons said after the victory. “I think the guys in that room understand that we’ve got a lot of injuries and it’s their chance and they’re kind of feeding off of that.”

It was appropriate, then, that the game-ending heroics came from Ryan Goins — a utility infielder by trade — who stepped up with a 3-for-4 day that included the game-winning two-out single in the bottom of the ninth. Facing off against Cody Allen, who brought a 0.69 ERA and 43.8 percent strikeout rate into the game, Goins ripped the first pitch he saw down the right-field line to bring in Ezequiel Carrera and end the contest.

“I thought he’d tried to get ahead of me,” Goins said of the at-bat. “I was looking for a heater and I got one over the plate.”

The reason he could be so confident that a fastball was coming his way is the Blue Jays had worked over Allen all inning and drawn two walks to go along with a single. Each of the previous five batters lasted at least six pitches in their at-bat, and the worn-down Cleveland closer could ill afford to get behind Goins with the bases loaded.

“Cody’s one of the top closers in the game, when he came in it wasn’t going to be easy that’s for sure,” Gibbons said. “And there were great at-bats, they laid off some tough breaking balls and made him work. Then it was key that Goins ambushed him there — you don’t want to let him get to that breaking ball.

“He’s one of the top guys in the league and normally he doesn’t have to work that hard.”

Not only was grinding Allen down to win an improbable feat for the Blue Jays, it was impressive they got to that point in the first place considering how the game began.

Starter Francisco Liriano’s dismal day was the beginning of the Blue Jays’ troubles. The veteran southpaw seemed to either fill the heart of the zone or lose it entirely in a two-inning, seven-run effort. Liriano faced 14 hitters and recorded six outs — it was the type of start a pitcher with his command issues is occasionally susceptible to, but he never had last year as a Blue Jay.

“Same thing as the last couple of starts, I’ve been missing a lot,” he said. “I was walking a lot of guys and getting behind in the count too much.”

When the Indians departed their half of the third inning with a 7-3 lead, it would have been pretty easy to write off the Blue Jays. Their short-handed lineup had scored eight runs all of three times all season and had only done so with a far healthier offensive group.

There was also the matter of Danny Salazar’s presence on the mound. Although the hard-throwing right-hander made a three-run mistake to Jose Bautista in the first, he didn’t exactly present an easy target. It’s easy to imagine a scenario where he and the Indians’ rock-solid bullpen would take the ball from there and ride off into the sunset.

To their credit, the Blue Jays didn’t let that happen. Immediately following Cleveland’s five-run outburst, they came back with two in the third on a sacrifice fly by Steve Pearce and a two-out Goins knock that chased Salazar from the game after just 2.2 innings with five runs on his tab.

Even at that point, it wouldn’t have been wise to predict a win for the Blue Jays. They were looking at an extended bullpen duel with an Indians team that had them outgunned in that area. They were still down two runs with a lot of punch sitting on the disabled list.

That didn’t seem to matter in the fourth as the Blue Jays found a little comeback thunder in the bat of Carrera, who deposited a Dan Otero sinker over the right field wall. All of a sudden it was a new game — and the game played from there bore little resemblance to the frames played before it.

After 14 runs were scored in the first four innings, the next five were scoreless as both bullpens dominated. After Domonic Leone allowed three inherited runners to score, he combined forces with Danny Barnes, Ryan Tepera, Joe Smith and Roberto Osuna to shut the door on the Indians until Toronto could get to Allen.

From the blown lead, to the inability to get to the Blue Jays relievers, to Allen’s faulty outing, this was a game where the Indians probably felt like everything seemed to go against them. As it happens, that’s a feeling the 2017 Blue Jays are all too familiar with — but for one night at least, they flipped the script.