TORONTO_It was almost fitting that the Baltimore Orioles' postseason path took them through the Toronto Blue Jays, an all-too-familiar opponent. But when the division rivals met for the 20th time this season, much more was on the line.
The Orioles fought for 11 innings Tuesday night at Rogers Centre, and manager Buck Showalter worked a chess match with his bullpen to get that far _ albeit without using All-Star closer Zach Britton. But the Orioles' season ultimately ended in a sudden and cruel way.
Edwin Encarnacion's three-run homer to left field off Ubaldo Jimenez with one out in the 11th inning was the dagger that ended the Orioles' season with a 5-2 loss.
With one swing, Encarnacion sent the Orioles into the offseason. Left fielder Nolan Reimold could only turn and watch the ball sail over his head as players slowly walked off the field while the crowd went wild.
"I considered a lot of things during the course of the game, but our guys did a good job getting us to that point," Showalter said of the bullpen. " We just couldn't finish it off. ... I liked the job that Darren (O'Day) could do, I liked the job that Brad (Brach) could do, I liked the job Mychal (Givens) could do, I liked the job (Brian) Duensing could do. It looked like it was going to be one of those more-than-one-inning (situations in extra innings). Nobody has been pitching better for us than Ubaldo, too. So there's a lot of different ways to look at it, so that's the way we went. It didn't work out."
Before the game, each manager echoed the same sentiment, that there would be no secrets between these two teams. They know each other too well, have played each other too many times, and over the past few years have developed a rivalry that became so intense that every once in a while emotions boiled over.
There's no love lost between them, mainly because they were fighting for the same thing: to bring baseball championship glory to cities that haven't experienced it for too long. But the Orioles and Blue Jays are more alike than either would probably like to acknowledge, their success built on power and defense.
"I know our guys deserve to get something out of this season, but so does Toronto, so do the other eight teams in it," Showalter said before the game. "That's why it's so fascinating for people to watch because you've got all these good things that meet, and someone's going to go away."
And the Blue Jays sent the Orioles home, thanks to Encarnacion.
At home plate, a celebration ensued as the crowd chanted "Ed-die! Ed-die!"
Jimenez, the Orioles' seventh pitcher of the night, allowed all three batters he faced to reach base. The team's season ended with Britton, who was 47-for-47 in save opportunities, unused.
"There's so many different things that go on. You can use Zach Britton in the seventh and eighth and not have anybody to pitch the last inning," Showalter said. "So there's a lot of risk taken every inning, every pitch. You take that on when you get in this format."
Said Britton: "It was frustrating, but that's not my call. The guys ahead of me threw really well. Ubaldo has thrown great recently, so there was no doubt in my mind he was going to go out there and throw some zeroes. They've got the best part of their lineup coming up and you knew eventually one of these teams were gonna score. Let's be honest about it, with the numbers we've put up, both sides."
The energy _ and the strategy _ contained in the wild-card game is unlike anything else in baseball, playing a 162-game schedule to play in a do-or-die game to advance to the division series. Because of that, there was no playing for tomorrow.
It was a chess match, and as a tie game went deeper, Showalter's next move was warming up beyond the right-field fence in the Orioles bullpen.
That was obvious throughout. Right-hander Chris Tillman was pulled from the game in the fifth inning after 74 pitches. Givens entered the game in the fifth _ usually a late-inning arm, he pitched the fifth just four times in 66 regular-season appearances.
Not all of Showalter's moves were conventional, but they worked out. He stuck with Brach for a second inning in the bottom of the ninth. Josh Donaldson opened the inning with a double down the left-field line, but Brach walked Encarnacion intentionally and struck out Jose Bautista. Showalter then turned to O'Day, who needed just one pitch to escape the inning, inducing a 5-4-3 double play from Russell Martin.
Playing in the first postseason game of his seven-year career, designated hitter Mark Trumbo launched a two-run homer over the left-field fence on the first pitch he saw from Marcus Stroman in the fourth inning, extending the best season of his career _ he led the majors with 47 homers _ to the playoffs.
Trumbo became the first Orioles player to homer in his postseason debut in nearly two decades. The last to do so was Geronimo Berroa in 1997.
Trumbo's blast gave the Orioles a 2-1 lead and silenced a deafening sellout crowd, part of a revived fan base that saw postseason baseball for the second straight year after 21 years without.
Tillman could only watch as Orioles nemesis Bautista's towering leadoff solo homer landed in the first deck of the left-field stands in the second inning. It was the only hit Tillman allowed in his first 4 1/3 innings. He retired 13 of the first 15 Toronto batters he faced.
But after allowing three straight hits in the fifth to the bottom third of the order _ including Ezequiel Carrera's RBI single to tie the game at 2 _ Tillman was removed from the game in favor of Givens.
And Givens, who was also making his postseason debut, entered with runners at the corners with one out, and needed just one pitch to escape, inducing an inning-ending 5-4-3 double-play ball.
Toronto manager John Gibbons' peculiar decision to stack the top of his lineup with six right-handers, especially in a game in which matchups were inevitable, played into the Orioles' favor as Givens (who had held right-handers to a .156 batting average during the regular season) pitched 2 1/3 perfect relief innings on just 19 pitches.
After Showalter turned to left-hander Donnie Hart with two outs in the seventh, Melvin Upton Jr. hit a fly ball to deep left field that Hyun Soo Kim caught on the run, but not before a beer can was thrown in Kim's direction from the stands above, prompting center fielder Adam Jones to yell into the stands as Showalter trotted into left field to talk to the umpires.
"I was trying to catch the ball and I thought that was actually a ball, so I thought I missed the ball," Kim said through translator Danny Lee. "And then I found out it was a beer can, which was thrown perfectly (at) me. It never happened to me before, so it was surprising. I was kind of shocked."
Jones came to the defense of Kim.
"Someone threw a beer down at my player. First and foremost, that was about as pathetic as it gets between the lines," Jones said. "You don't do that, I don't care how passionate you are, how you think you're passionate. You don't do that. Yell, cuss, scream, we suck, we're sacks of (expletive). We know, we're horrible. We get it.
"We're the opponent. We completely understand that, but to throw something at a player; that's just as pathetic as it gets, and I hope they find the guy, and I hope they press charges. He's not looking. You could hit him in the back of the head. You never know what could happen. That's a full beer that's been thrown. That's not just part of the sport, man. Call us what you want. I've been hearing that for the past year, but to put us in harms way when all we're doing is focusing on the game, that's not part of the game. Throw an octopus. Throw hats."
It wasn't the first time an Orioles outfielder was nearly struck by something thrown from the left-field stands at Rogers Centre. During a regular-season game in 2013, a beer can was thrown behind Nate McLouth as he made a diving catch in foul ground.
In the end, the Orioles come home disappointed after another tightly contested matchup with the Blue Jays.
"It was a battle. We knew what they were all about and we knew what we had. It was a chess game after that," third baseman Manny Machado said. "... We left it out on the field. We did everything we could and we came up short. There's nothing more to it. There were a couple innings that they put runners on base and we got out of it. We thought we were going to go up there (and hit), but we couldn't get anything started. They did and they came out on top."
