BALTIMORE – At the dawn of every new season, there’s a vision for how things will play out over the grind to come, before the best-laid plans of players and clubs are inevitably tested, if not altered, by life’s random twists of fate. That’s why no matter how much people like to think they what’s going to happen, they really don’t, which is the beauty of it all.
In that respect, part of the romance of opening day is that after a long winter of buildup and a spring training of anticipation, baseball’s return is the first chance to juxtapose those visions against an often cruel reality. It’s an end to projections and predictions and the start of the only measure that counts.
The Toronto Blue Jays see themselves as legitimate contenders for a third straight trip to the post-season and opened their 2017 adventure with a 3-2 loss in 11 innings to the Baltimore Orioles on a comfortable, 20 C Monday afternoon at Camden Yards. Just as their blueprint calls for, Marco Estrada delivered six strong innings and enjoyed some nice defence behind him – a Welington Castillo lazy fly to left-centre that fell in between Kevin Pillar and Ezequiel Carrera standing as an exception. But their offence wasn’t able to capitalize on the opportunities it created, going 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position, and Orioles relievers outlasted the Blue Jays bullpen.
Things didn’t get settled until the 11th, when with two out, Mark Trumbo turned on a 1-2 offering from Jason Grilli and roped it over the wall in left field to end things.
The rivalry between the clubs, who faced off in last year’s wild card game, picked up from the outset. A sellout crowd of 45,667 loudly booed Jose Bautista during the pre-game introductions, underlining GM Dan Duquette’s controversial off-season take that he couldn’t sign the outfielder because the team’s fans hated him.
Bautista didn’t manage to stick it to the Orioles at the plate, but he did in the field, when he clearly fielded a Chris Davis drive off the right-field wall and threw the slugger out at second base in the third inning. Still a run scored on the single and Trumbo followed by dunking in a double just inside the right-field foul line to open up a 2-0 edge.
In the fifth, up 2-0 in the count with the bases loaded and one out, Bautista was left muttering to himself after popping up an inside fastball off the plate, but new addition Kendrys Morales picked him up with a walk that cut into the deficit.
Another new addition, Steve Pearce, singled and scored from first on Carrera’s double in the sixth to tie the game 2-2. Pearce made his Blue Jays debut at first base with Carrera in left as manager John Gibbons wanted more range in the outfield with Estrada on the mound, but Pearce will also plenty of action in left field with Justin Smoak at first base, based partly on a given day’s matchup.
Joe Biagini picked up where he left off with 1.2 innings of strong relief, and new lefty J.P. Howell took over in the eighth after a two-out Manny Macahdo single and got Chris Davis on a soft liner to left.
Tied 2-2 in the ninth, Orioles manager Buck Showalter went to Zach Britton this time after infamously not using him in the wild-card game last fall, and after a pair of one-out singles he induced a 5-4-3 double play grounder from Bautista.
In the bottom half, Bautista exacted some revenge when he made a diving catch on Joey Rickard’s sinking liner and then doubled off Castillo at first base, sending the game to extra innings.
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