TORONTO – Tyler Heineman never wants the Toronto Blue Jays to need him on the mound, although he’s always willing to do it in the hopes an outing one game delivers a payoff during an ensuing night.
That’s exactly what happened Tuesday, when relievers Mason Fluharty, Braydon Fisher and Jeff Hoffman helped lock down the final innings of a 5-1 win over the Colorado Rockies the night after the catcher’s two innings of mop-up duty kept them out of a 14-5 blowout loss.
“That’s the whole reason why I’m like, yeah, just give me the ball, I don’t care if I give up a bunch of runs,” said Heineman, who followed up 27 pitches and five runs against Monday by catching nine innings and collecting two hits. “It sucks, it’s a crappy situation to be in, you’re getting blown out, we hate it, so I don’t like being on the mound. But I will do it 100 times out of 100 to help the team save a bullpen arm. If I can get them an extra day, it’s just massive.”
Combined with six strong innings of one-run ball from Max Scherzer and the bottom of the order helping set the table for the top of the lineup to score some runs, Tuesday’s bounce-back night was filled with examples of the “out-team the other team” ethos manager John Schneider often talks about.
Heineman’s work meant Fluharty was fresh to record two outs in the seventh, Fisher could come on and cleverly pick off T.J. Rumfield at second base to end that inning before throwing a clean eighth while Hoffman closed out the ninth.
A three-run seventh opened some margin for error on a tight 2-1 Blue Jays lead, allowing Tyler Rogers, who’d pitched in three of the first four games, to get at least a partial breather, as he warmed just in case in the eighth but wasn’t needed.
Heineman, meanwhile, also started the day after pitching, helping the Blue Jays match up better in Wednesday’s series finale when Alejandro Kirk will start versus lefty Kyle Freeland.
Weaving such marginal gains into a wider interconnectivity was a fundamental part of the Blue Jays’ success a season ago, a dynamic they’re seeking to maintain and build upon this season.
“Perfect examples,” Schneider said of the above list. “That’s how you can stack some days together and stack some innings together. There was a lot of that today, going back to picking Heinie picking us up and Fish, underrated play is the pick-off at second, we work on it a lot. That kind of flipped the momentum, allowed us to score and up and down the lineup guys did their part. It’s nice that even in the loss (Monday) that was not good at all for a lot of different reasons, they bounce back the way that they usually do and they played their game.”
The starting point, of course, was Scherzer, who signed March 2, looked close to ready then and kept the Rockies in check in the first start of his 19th season in the majors, burned only by a Hunter Goodman solo shot in the sixth that ate into a 2-0 Blue Jays lead.
Scherzer’s approach was dictated, in part, by his understanding that the team needed him to get deep this outing.
“He is so analytical about everything that he does,” said Heineman. “He told me today, ‘I want to throw fastballs up and in because I know they’re aggressive, I know they’re going to swing, I need to get out of innings early so I can pitch into the sixth or the seventh inning.’ He was able to navigate that.”
All while putting up zeroes until the Blue Jays took control in the fifth inning when they loaded the bases against reliever Juan Mejia, subbing in once starter Ryan Feltner left the game after three innings with a right glute contusion from an Andres Gimenez liner.
Jaden Hill took over and Jesus Sanchez ripped an RBI single that opened the scoring before Vladimir Guerrero Jr. worked a bases-loaded walk to bring home Heineman with a second run. Hill kept the Blue Jays from blowing it open, though, catching Kazuma Okamoto looking on a slider that survived an ABS challenge before getting Nathan Lukes swinging.
“I’ll tell you what, the vibes here are unbelievable,” Sanchez, off to a 6-for-13 start with his new team, said through interpreter Hector Lebron. “I never been on a team like this.”
The Rockies threatened in the top of the seventh when Rumfield opened the inning with a single and advanced to second with one out on a passed ball. But Fluharty rallied to strike out Brenton Doyle and Fisher then took over and executed the pick off perfectly after Heineman called it, with Ernie Clement providing a perfect target and clean tag.
“In my opinion, picking someone off is a momentum killer for the team that gets picked off, because it kind of feels embarrassing,” said Fisher. “And then picking someone off, it fires you up, since it doesn’t happen that often.”
The Blue Jays rode the momentum change in the bottom half as Sanchez and Guerrero opened the inning with base hits before RBI singles by Okamoto and Lukes extended the lead. After Okamoto was thrown out trying to stretch to third, Clement’s RBI double made it 5-1.
Fisher added a shutdown eighth, a two-up outing that wouldn’t have been possible without Heineman “going out there and, honestly, wearing it for those two innings, allowing the bullpen to take their days,” he said.
“Especially early in the season, it’s hard to replicate going back-to-back and warming up as many times as we do and all that stuff in spring training, so the first I’d say month is kind of hard on the arm and the body,” added Fisher. “We’re all getting used to it and it helps a lot letting us rest that extra day and then we can go in there today and help us win.”
The way little things add up over time and create a greater whole.
