Blue Jays takeaways: How a seventh-inning walk led to a ninth-inning walk-off

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This article was published 02/06/2021 (1626 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The view from Deep Left Field on the Blue Jays’ 6-5 win over Miami on Wednesday:

Bo Bichette had been struggling at the plate recently, and not looking especially good while doing it.

The 23-year-old has a ferocious, violent swing, and likes to use it. When he’s not going well, those big swings look wild and uncontrolled, and he often finds himself behind in counts because of that aggression.

After his third strikeout Wednesday night, Bichette came to the plate in the seventh inning with just eight hits in his last 48 at-bats, a .167 batting average over his last dozen games.

As has been the case so often lately, Bichette found himself behind in the count 0-2 while facing former teammate Anthony Bass. But he battled — he took a slider in the dirt, fouled off a hanging sinker, took two more low fastballs, fouled another sinker, and took ball four down and away for a walk.

The Blue Jays’ rally stopped there, but that was a big plate appearance, and it paid off the next time up, when Bichette smacked a 1-2 fastball from Yimi Garcia down the right-field line for a game-tying two-run triple, setting up Joe Panik’s walk-off sacrifice fly.

• No repeat performance: Alek Manoah gave himself an awfully tough act to follow by throwing six shutout innings in his major-league debut at Yankee Stadium last week.

The rookie phenom wasn’t as sharp in his encore, with his fastball down a tick or two, topping out at 95 miles per hour. and without the great command of his changeup. The Marlins took advantage.

Manoah left a changeup high in the strike zone to Corey Dickerson in the second inning, and the Florida left-fielder belted it 421 feet to left-centre, the first run allowed by the right-hander in the embryonic stages of his big-league career. Jazz Chisholm and Jesus Aguilar homered off Manoah the next inning, both to left and both off the changeup.

Manoah had only given up two home runs in his entire professional career, which had covered all of 42 innings, before giving up three in an eight-batter span.

To his credit, the 23-year-old didn’t appear to let the blasts get to him. A young pitcher will often lose the plate after giving up a home run, or start to nibble and shy away from contact, but Manoah followed the Dickerson and Aguilar homers by striking out the next batter on three pitches and, after Chisholm’s shot, he got an 0-1 pop-up from the next hitter.

Manoah issued a pair of walks around a hit batsman in the fourth inning, loading the bases with one out and ending his night.

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It looked as though the young righty fell into the trap that so many pitchers do in the early part of their careers — giving hitters too much credit. Manoah walked Isan Diaz, hitting .123 at the time, on a 3-1 slider, and threw Jose Devers, the No. 9 hitter, back-to-back sliders on 2-2 and 3-2 pitches, instead of challenging a pair of weak hitters with his fastball. Lessons that many other pitchers learned in the minor leagues are being taught to him at the highest level.

• Nice job by the new guy: Carl Edwards Jr. made his Jays debut in the pouring rain of the eighth inning, facing four batters and allowing a Dickerson single.

Edwards’ contract was selected from Triple-A on Sunday and the Jays are hoping he can help fill the late-inning bullpen void caused by injuries to David Phelps and Julian Merryweather, among others.

The 29-year-old has pitched parts of seven seasons in the majors, and posted a 3.03 ERA — plus a 1.063 WHIP and a whopping 12.4 strikeouts per nine innings — as a Cubs reliever from 2016 to 2018. He hasn’t reached those heights since, but the Jays are hoping it’s still in there.

Edwards battled the elements in his 16-pitch frame, featuring a fastball that touched 96 miles per hour and dropping in the occasional curve. He induced a couple of pop-ups and a soft line drive.

Mike Wilner is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @wilnerness