Here are three things that stood out to me about the win over the Rays:

JOSE, JOSE, JOSE, JOSE, JOSE, JOSE

The Blue Jays picked up their first walk-off win of the season, and not only was the winning run driven in by Jose Bautista, but so were the three runs the Jays scored over the first nine innings of the game.

Bautista, who has taken a lot of heat from the fan base for what many perceive as him trying to hit a home run with every swing he takes, did actually hit a pair of big flies in the game, but it was his desperation throw-the-bat-at-a-two-strike-pitch single to right field with two out in the bottom of the 10th that cashed the winning run.

It was a beautiful piece of hitting, and it was almost exactly the same thing that Evan Longoria did to Casey Janssen to lead off the ninth with a double – just exactly what was needed to get the job done.

It was the second straight inning in which Bautista got the job done, too. In the ninth, he led off by taking Fernando Rodney deep to left field for the second of his two homers, forcing the extra frame.

THE REAL MARK BUEHRLE IS STANDING UP

Buehrle had a brutal April, posting a 6.35 ERA and 1.518 WHIP, allowing six home runs in just 28 1/3 innings of work, prompting many Blue Jays’ fans to write off the 34-year-old as unfit to pitch in the A.L. East, at least, and just simply done at worst.

He appeared to hit rock bottom in the third inning of his May 6 start against these Rays in St. Petersburg, when he allowed seven runs including a Grand Slam to Evan Longoria.

Buehrle stayed in that game and threw three shutout innings, helping buy time for the Blue Jays to come back and win, which they did. He followed that with a start in Boston in which he threw seven shutout innings then allowed two runs over six innings in The Bronx against the Yankees.

At Fenway, Darren Oliver allowed one of his runners to score in the eighth, and in New York Buehrle came back out for the seventh and put three straight hitters on, with Aaron Loup coming in to have the last two score.

In this game, Buehrle gave up just two runs on four hits over seven innings of work, and if not for a botched play by Maicer Izturis on a slow roller by Ryan Roberts in the third, it might have been seven shutout frames.

Buehrle has turned things around completely, as one could have expected he would, given his dozen years of 200+ innings with the White Sox and Marlins, so now all the Blue Jays need is for Brandon Morrow to straighten things out and have Josh Johnson come back to have the strong rotation most of us expected this season.

Morrow can get started Thursday night against the Orioles, while Johnson will make his second rehab start Saturday when he takes the mound for the Buffalo Bisons.

HIGHLIGHT IN THE BOOTH

I’m in my 12th season as part of the Blue Jays’ radio broadcast crew, and visitors to the booth – from the north side, at least – are few and far between. But in the bottom of the fifth, Munenori Kawasaki sent a foul pop-up back towards our booth, and your faithful reporter managed to make the grab – although it was a trap against the front ledge and would never have been called a clean catch.

It’s only the second time in those dozen years that there has been a catchable foul ball come my way, and I’m happy to report that I made a successful grab on the other one as well, just last season.

The fact that Kawasaki’s foul ball happened to arrive during an inning in which I was doing play-by-play, though, that was legitimately ridiculous. It’s been a dream come true to make a living in baseball and to be on my hometown team’s broadcast, and now to be doing play-by-play on a regular basis is almost unimaginable.

But to actually catch a ball while calling a big-league game? Seriously. Nuts.

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Here are three things that stood out to me about the homestand-opening win over Tampa Bay:

BIG HIT, BIG SPOT

There have been many, many times this season when the Blue Jays have been dying for a big hit in a big spot and it hasn’t come, but on a beautiful Victoria Day afternoon, Edwin Encarnacion rewrote that story.

Encarnacion came to the plate in the bottom of the seventh with two out and the bases loaded in a tie ballgame against a shaky pitcher and got the job done in rather emphatic fashion. He took a strike from a wild Josh Lueke, then hammered the next pitch off the left-field wall. Encarnacion hit the ball so hard that Sam Fuld couldn’t corral the carom, and three runs scored easily.

It was only the Blue Jays’ second hit this season with the bases loaded and their first since April 10, a span of 36 games.

WALKS WILL KILL YOU

R.A. Dickey was cruising along, enjoying a two-run lead with two out and nobody on in the third inning when he issued a four-pitch walk to Matt Joyce. That opened the door for the Rays to tie things up, as Ben Zobrist followed by bouncing a single to left and Evan Longoria then hit a fly ball to right field on which Jose Bautista got a bad break. The ball landed on the warning track (Bautista likely wouldn’t have been able to catch it even with a good jump) for a two-run double and the game was tied.

The walk to Joyce was a big part of the Rays’ game-tying rally, but walks were an even bigger part of the Blue Jays’ game-winning rally.

With the score still tied in the bottom of the seventh, the Blue Jays took the lead thanks to that big swing by Encarnacion, but that was their only hit of the inning. Lueke had a lot of trouble with the strike zone, walking three of the first five batters he faced (and one of the other two, Henry Blanco, bunted) to bring Encarnacion to the plate with the sacks juiced.

Rays pitchers issued five unintentional walks to the Blue Jays in the game, and four of them scored.

WORKING THE PITCHER (AND THE BASERUNNER!)

Adam Lind had a spectacular plate appearance in the bottom of the first inning with one out and runners on the corners. Lind, who has an OPS over 1.000 in his terrific month of May, worked a full count against Rays rookie starter Jake Odorizzi and then fouled off six straight pitches until he found one he liked and drove it to left field for a sacrifice fly to give the Blue Jays the early lead.

It was a great job of hitting by Lind, and the only one who didn’t appreciate it was Encarnacion, who happened to be the runner on first base.

With Lind not a big strikeout guy, Blue Jays manager John Gibbons wanted to stay out of a double play had Lind hit the ball on the ground, so he had Encarnacion running on each of the seven 3-2 pitches that Lind faced, sprinting for second only to have Lind foul the pitch off half a dozen times.

Encarnacion was on fumes by the time Lind hit the sac fly, but he had to race back to first base because the Rays had a shot at doubling him up. Yunel Escobar’s wild relay throw went into the Rays dugout, though, which meant that Edwin was granted free passage to third base. As he had every right to do, he took his sweet time walking those 180 feet, which no doubt left him with enough energy in reserve to be the hero in the seventh.

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Blue Jays Talk

Here are three things that stood out to me about the latest loss to the Yanks:

PAY ATTENTION

The Blue Jays are looking for any kind of spark to get them going against the Yankees, a team they’ve had a terrible time with this season having lost eight times in nine tries. With two out in the very first inning, they might have had one against a struggling David Phelps, who had walked a pair, thrown 24 pitches and was behind in the count 3-1 to Adam Lind.

Phelps didn’t have to throw that critical pitch to Lind, though, because he spun around and picked Jose Bautista off at second to end the inning.

At best, that’s a deflating mental mistake by the Blue Jays’ on-field leader. At worst, it’s an unforgivable lack of focus that came at a huge time, though very early in the game. Any way you slice it, though, the Jays had a chance to take the early lead against a team that is 9-16 this season when it doesn’t score first, and having a runner picked off at second base seems to be about the most avoidable way to end an inning.

A MOMENT’S HESITATION

Brandon Morrow, making his first start in almost two weeks because of back spasms, retired the first six Yankees he faced on just 22 pitches then gave up a leadoff single to Jayson Nix in the bottom of the third.

The next batter was rookie David Adams, and he hit a comebacker to the mound that Morrow bobbled. The righty still had time to make a throw to second to start a double play, with shortstop Maicer Izturis waiting at the bag, but he eschewed the opportunity (perhaps needing to make sure he had a good grip and wasn’t going to throw the ball away) and took the sure out at first instead.

Austin Romine then flied out, which would have ended the inning had the double play been turned, but the inning continued for Brett Gardner to open the scoring with an RBI single to centre. Robinson Cano followed with a Yankee Stadium Special two-run homer, the first of his two two-run bombs on the day.

UGLINESS AT THE END

Edwin Encarnacion had a Yankee Stadium Special of his own in the eighth inning to draw the Blue Jays back to within three, but the Bronx Bombers put the game away in the bottom of that frame with a lot of help from the visitors.

Darren Oliver came out of the bullpen for his first appearance in exactly a week, and got started by striking out Cano and getting Vernon Wells to hit a grounder to shortstop. Izturis didn’t field the grounder cleanly, though, and then airmailed his throw over Lind’s head at first base for an error. The next hitter, Travis Hafner took Oliver deep.

Following the Hafner homer, Lyle Overbay hit a weak dribbler up the first-base line and Lind went over to field it but went to tag Overbay before he had the ball in his glove and wound up leaving the ball on the ground. The next hitter was Curtis Granderson, who hit a grounder to Lind that was fielded cleanly and Lind made a good, strong throw to second in an attempt to start an inning-ending double play.

Izturis made a return throw to first, but there was really no point because Oliver was late getting over to cover. Granderson would have been safe even had Oliver been standing there waiting for the throw, but that’s not the point. The point is that it had been a couple of weeks since "Yakety Sax" was the background music for the Blue Jays, but there was it was once again on Saturday afternoon.

Just remember: baby steps. Long, slow climb.

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Here are three things that stood out to me about the Jays’ season-high fourth straight win:

Blue Jays Talk: May 15

THESE GUYS WERE THE WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS?

The San Francisco Giants brought back memories of the Blue Jays’ first couple weeks of this season, looking just awful right from the get-go, leading to five unearned Toronto runs in the very first inning.

Ryan Vogelsong, who brought a brutal 7.78 ERA into the game, should have had a perfect frame.  He got leadoff man Melky Cabrera to hit a line drive to right field that Hunter Pence had a hard time with but hauled in with a leap.  Jose Bautista followed with a pop-up behind first base, Edwin Encarnacion walked and J.P. Arencibia hit a line drive right to centrefielder Angel Pagan.

And yet, when Adam Lind followed Arencibia to the plate, there was still only the one out.  That’s because Marco Scutaro dropped Bautista’s easy pop fly and Pagan had Arencibia’s line drive tick off the end of his glove.  Lind made the Giants pay for those mistakes by belting his third home run in just over a week, and the rout was on.

SERIOUSLY, IT WAS THESE GUYS?

The Giants’ miscues had a whole lot to do with most of the half-dozen runs the Blue Jays scored after the first inning, as well.

In the second, Pence again misplayed a Cabrera line drive, but this time couldn’t haul it in and it went for a double, and Bautista then hit a hard grounder pretty much right through Scutaro at second for what was scored an RBI single.

The next inning, Chad Gaudin came on to replace Vogelsong and, after getting a first-pitch out on a fly ball, issued back-to-back walks.  Both those walks came around to score — one on an absolute rocket double by Bautista into the left-field corner, the other on an Arencibia sacrifice fly.

In the sixth, the Blue Jays tacked on an extra run as, with Brett Lawrie on first, Colby Rasmus hit a ground ball down the first-base line that kicked off the glove of Giants first baseman Brandon Belt and went almost all the way down into the right-field corner.

Giants’ coaches talked before the game about how playing on turf for the first time had a detrimental effect on the team defence in the series opener, but you can’t blame turf for dropped pop flies and misplayed line drives.

REGRESSION TO THE MEAN IS FUN:

For the first month and change this season, pretty much everything that could go wrong did go wrong for the Blue Jays, but things were bound to turn around and they have — in rather a big way.

The Jays have now won seven of their last 10, and have scored in double digits in three straight games.

Their offence, dormant in April to the tune of a .231 team batting average and .294 on-base percentage, is at .271 and .344 in those categories, respectively, in the month of May.  They’ve gone from the bottom three in the major leagues to the top 10.

Along with all the Giants’ mistakes early in the game, the Blue Jays had a pair of broken-bat hits in the first inning.  They’re catching breaks that didn’t come their way early on, and they don’t seem to have as many bloops and bleeders falling in against them as they did in April.

More importantly, while they’re still making some mistakes in the field, they’re not making as many of them, and the ones they are making aren’t nearly as costly both because they haven’t been opening floodgates as they did before and because they’ve actually been scoring some runs to give their pitching and defence some margin for error.

As much as many fans threw in the towel on the Blue Jays in the first few weeks of the season out of sheer disappointment and frustration, they were never as bad as their record.

This is not a 52-win team, which is the pace the Blue Jays were on after R.A. Dickey got roughed up on Star Wars Day (May 4).  Since then, the Jays are 7-3, which is a 113-win pace over a full season.  Quite obviously, they’re not that good, either.  But the truth is closer to 113 than it is to 52, and I’m confident that will be borne out over the course of the rest of this season.

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The Jays extended their winning streak to three games (tying a season high and now have the opportunity to win a series at home for the first time all season.

Here are three things that stood out to me about the Jays’ giant victory:

Blue Jays Talk: May 14

IN THE BIG INNING:

Rat-a-tat-tat went the Blue Jays’ bats in the very first inning, as they sent 11 men to the plate and scored six runs to pretty much put the game on ice right away.

It all started with Melky Cabrera hitting a ground ball in the hole between third and short and Giants’ third baseman Pablo Sandoval making a great play to reach out to his left and snare it, but threw the ball away.

Jose Bautista walked, and his teammates followed with three straight singles before Maicer Izturis hit a ground ball that would have been a double play had second baseman Nick Noonan been able to pull the ball out of his glove and make a throw to first.  Instead, it was merely the first out of the inning — six batters in.

Three of the next four Blue Jays smacked RBI singles before Bautista lined hard to third to finally end the team’s biggest inning of the season so far.

MAGIC MELKY:

Cabrera celebrated receiving his 2012 World Series ring with a four-hit night against his former team, belting three singles and a double — all hard line drives.

He drove in a pair and scored twice, but showed the effects of a hamstring issue that has been plaguing him for weeks now.  He was lucky to score on Edwin Encarnacion’s first-inning single, managing to do so only because Hunter Pence’s throw home was off-line.

Later on, Cabrera had a really hard time putting the brakes on going first-to-third on a Bautista single, and he wasn’t going to try for second on his fly ball off the right-field wall in the seventh until he saw the throw was coming home.

Cabrera will go for an MRI on his hamstring Wednesday afternoon, and one hopes that the news is good enough for him to continue to be able to play through it rather than having to spend some time on the disabled list.

He looked awful trying to get around the bases Tuesday night — not awful as in really slow (although he was), but awful as in he appeared to be in quite a bit of pain.

Melky’s hot streak has coincided with the current run which has seen the Blue Jays win six of their last nine.  Over those nine games, Cabrera is hitting .410/.415/.615.

LINCOLN LOG:

The Blue Jays had the game in cruise control from pretty much that first inning on, with R.A. Dickey striking out 10 over six strong innings and the Jays adding on with a three-run rally in the sixth that started with two out and nobody on and saw them pick up five straight hits.

Brett Cecil came in and threw a perfect seventh, and John Gibbons gave the ball to Brad Lincoln to drive the bus on home with a seven-run lead.  It was Lincoln’s first outing since coming in with two on and two out in the 10^th inning in a tie game in Tampa Bay and walking both batters he faced to force in the winning run.

Lincoln got a couple of quick outs, then gave up a pair of hits, allowing a run to score before striking out Gregor Blanco to end the eighth.

In the ninth, he struck out the first two batters he faced and had the easy win in his grasp, but then walked Andres Torres and gave up a broken-bat single to Marco Scutaro.  Pablo Sandoval was next, and he went deep for a three-run homer.

At that point, Esmil Rogers had to come in to bail him out, and the game was over two pitches later.

That’s two rough outings in a row for Lincoln — one with a lot of pressure on him, given the game situation, and one with absolutely none.  With the Blue Jays looking to make room for an extra outfielder and to drop their bullpen back down to seven men, he may be the next one asked to make the drive back to Buffalo.

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As the Blue Jays head home to enjoy two days off in their next four — with a two-game series against the defending World Series champs in-between — here are three things that stood out to me about the rubber-match win:

THE BIG BAT OF BONI

Emilio Bonifacio has gotten off to a terrible start this season, hitting .157/.193/.265 with 27 strikeouts in only 83 at-bats coming into Sunday’s game, so it was a bit of a surprise that John Gibbons had him in the starting line-up for a second straight day – especially after his 0-for-4 Saturday that included two whiffs and a double play ball, a game that dug even deeper the trough he was in to 3-for-39.

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Gibbons, though, figures that the only way to get a guy going is to keep running him out there, and Bonifacio responded by hitting a two-out double in his first at-bat, setting the stage for Munenori Kawasaki’s two-run single, going deep his second time up and tossing in a single (and stealing third) in his next trip. A triple shy of the cycle, Bonifacio popped up against Craig Breslow in his final at-bat, but the three-hit day bumped his batting average up almost 30 points to .184 and finally gave us a glimpse of the exciting, young player we thought the Blue Jays were getting as the final piece to the big off-season trade with Miami.

JENKINS DOES THE JOB

Chad Jenkins was the latest emergency airlift starting pitcher for the Blue Jays this season, with Brandon Morrow’s back acting up on him. The call to Jenkins was completely unexpected, what with him having made only one minor-league start this season after straining a lat muscle in the spring and throwing only 75 pitches in that game.

Surprise or otherwise, Jenkins was sensational through five innings in picking up just his second major-league win. He threw strikes, got quick resolutions to at-bats, walked only one and got ground balls when he needed them. Jenkins gave up a two-out double in each of the first two innings, but followed them both up by inducing a grounder to shortstop each time. In the third, the Red Sox had two on and one out, and Jenkins got another grounder to short, one that was turned into an inning-ending double play.

Jenkins needed just 80 pitches to get through five innings — an average of 16 pitches per inning, which is terrific, especially against this Boston team. He went back out for the sixth, unexpectedly, given the pitch count and the fact that the Blue Jays had extended their lead to 10-1, and gave up a couple of hits before handing things over to the bullpen.

With the Blue Jays desperate for a fourth starter right now, never mind a fifth, Jenkins seems to have moved ahead of Ramon Ortiz in the race for next Saturday’s start in The Bronx.

BIG BOTTOM

John Gibbons shook up his line-up before Saturday’s game, moving Melky Cabrera, Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion up to the top three spots, but it was the bottom of the line-up that ruled the day in the Blue Jays’ easy Sunday win.

Bonifacio’s big day had a lot to do with it, but it was Kawasaki’s two-out two-run single that opened the scoring, and Emilio’s home run came with a Colby Rasmus walk aboard.

In all, the 7-8-9 hitters in the Blue Jays’ line-up combined to go 4-for-10 with two walks, five runs scored, four RBIs and a pair of stolen bases, and that’s one heck of a day’s work.

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BIG, BAD BUEHRLE

Blue Jays fans have been waiting for Mark Buehrle to deliver a big-time start this season, and the veteran came through for them in a huge way on Saturday afternoon.

Buehrle pitched ahead, hit his spots, and didn’t make those one or two big mistakes that have plagued him in his prior starts. The lefty took a shutout into the eighth inning, leaving after issuing a leadoff walk to ninth-place hitter Dave Ross. He wound up allowing a run on five hits, walking two and striking out five, retiring 13 in a row at one point. Buehrle got a no-decision because of the blown save behind him.

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Only six weeks into the season, Buehrle is the last man standing in the Blue Jays’ rotation — R.A. Dickey has been fighting a tight neck, back and shoulder, Brandon Morrow had to miss at least one start with back issues, Josh Johnson and J.A. Happ are on the disabled list and Ricky Romero is down in Buffalo. Chad Jenkins has been called up to start Sunday’s series finale, after having had just one minor-league start to rehab his strained lat muscle.

With the rotation once again in shambles, the Blue Jays needed a strong start from Buehrle, and they got way more than they could have expected.

LINE-UP SHAKE-UP

John Gibbons continued to do everything in his power to get his struggling ballclub going. He’s been searching for a leadoff hitter since Jose Reyes went down with a severe ankle sprain, having used Emilio Bonifacio, Rajai Davis, Munenori Kawasaki and Brett Lawrie at the top of the line-up with limited success.

Saturday, Gibbons decided not to even bother looking for a leadoff man, and instead just pushed everybody up a spot. That meant Melky Cabrera hit first, Jose Bautista second and Edwin Encarnacion third.

It was definitely an interesting look, bringing the Blue Jays’ best hitters to the plate as often as possible, and it factored into the first run the Jays scored, as Cabrera came to the plate with two out and a man on second in the third inning — instead of Kawasaki or a struggling Lawrie — and singled to left to drive the run in.

It was the only hit Cabrera would get, which was one more than Encarnacion. Bautista went 2-for-3 with a walk out of the two-hole.

CASEY JANSSEN IS REALLY GOOD

With the Lind homer having given the Blue Jays the lead back in the top of the ninth, Janssen came sprinting out of the bullpen to lock it down. A perfect inning would have given Janssen even more than a perfect game — he had retired the last 25 hitters he had faced, a streak that stretched over nine appearances.

That streak ended two outs short of virtual combined perfection, though, as Janssen gave up a leadoff double to Will Middlebrooks. It was a line drive to shallow left that Cabrera decided to gamble for with a dive. The gamble lost, and the ball skipped by Cabrera to give Middlebrooks the extra base.

That was the first hit that a right-handed batter has managed to get off Janssen this season – they’d been 0-for-18 to that point. Unfazed, Janssen broke the bats of Stephen Drew and pinch-hitter Daniel Nava, getting weak little loopers from both of them, then retired Jacoby Ellsbury on a little nothing dribbler that didn’t even make it to the mound to end the ballgame.

Janssen has been a perfect closer for the Blue Jays this season, having saved 10 of their 14 wins in 10 opportunities. Since he took over the job from Francisco Cordero just over a year ago, he’s converted 32 of 34 save chances and has finally given Jays fans a reason to feel confident with a lead in the ninth.

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The Blue Jays had a one-run lead going into the bottom of the seventh when Yunel Escobar greeted Steve Delabar with a solo home run to tie things up, and it stayed that way until the 10th when with two out and nobody on Evan Longoria doubled off Aaron Loup. Loup then issued an intentional walk to left-handed hitter James Loney and handed things over to Brad Lincoln, who walked Ryan Roberts to load the bases then walked Luke Scott to force in the winning run.

Casey Janssen, who has been the best reliever in baseball this season (three baserunners and 13 strikeouts in 12 innings), never got into the game.

This sparked debate on both The BlueJaysTalk and Twitter as to closer usage and whether managers should run a game based on a statistic. That is, is it better to save your closer for a potential save situation that may never arise or to use him in a high-leverage situation earlier in the game?

The answer, at home, is simple. In a tie game, your closer pitches the ninth inning, period. That’s because once you get past the eighth inning in a tie game and you’re the home team, there can never be a save situation for your team in that game. There will never be a lead to protect, because once your team takes a lead, the game is over.

Anyway, that’s why there should never be any hesitation for the home team to use its closer (presuming, of course, that the closer is the team’s best reliever — or at least the manager believes he is) in the ninth inning of a tie game. But it’s different on the road. On the road, you hope that at some point you might have a lead to protect, and there’s a temptation to save your closer for that spot. Of course, it would be easier to extend the game to the point at which you’d be able to take the lead if you were to use your closer early, getting the shutout inning (or two) you hope he would provide. Hence the dilemma for the road manager.

In the two extra-inning games the Blue Jays have played on the road this season, John Gibbons has chosen to hold back Janssen for a potential save situation. The first time, it worked, the second time, we watched Lincoln issue back-to-back walks to hand the Rays a win.

The problem is that even if Gibbons had used Janssen in the highest-leverage situation Thursday night — space-time continuum considerations aside — the result of the game would have been the same. That’s because the highest-leverage situation is the bottom of the ninth of a tie game. You give up a run, you lose. No higher leverage than that. And the ninth is the highest leverage, because there’s no guarantee the game will get beyond it. Once you get past the ninth, the tenth becomes the highest-leverage inning, and so on, but if the point is to avoid managing for a situation that might never arise, the ninth inning is when you use your best guy.

So in the world in which the best reliever is used in the biggest spot in a road game, Janssen pitches the ninth, Loup comes out for the 10th (there’s no chance Janssen will pitch more than one inning, given the Blue Jays’ desire to be careful with him coming off off-season shoulder surgery), and the game ends the same way.

It was pointed out to me that the ninth inning wasn’t as high-leverage a spot as the 10th would have been, since the Rays had the 8-9-1 hitters due up in that inning, but honestly, you can’t have it both ways. Don’t forget that the ninth-place hitter had homered in his previous at-bat, and if one of those three reach base, you’re moving into the Johnson/Zobrist/Longoria meat of the Tampa Bay order. There was no bigger spot in the game than the bottom of the ninth, and if the closer pitches there, nothing changes as far as the ultimate result is concerned.

Given that he’s already done it twice, it seems reasonably safe to assume that Gibbons will continue to hold Janssen back for a potential save situation in tie games late on the road, and I’m looking forward to picking his brain about that. For me, I’m not sure I wouldn’t do the same. It’s sort of a pick your poison thing — use a less-trustworthy reliever to maintain a tie so that your more-trustworthy reliever can nail down a win, or use your more-trustworthy reliever to maintain the tie and hope that your less-trustworthy reliever can hold the lead you hope to eventually get him.

Of course, the most important thing to do is to get to the situation where you can take the lead — that is, keep an extra-inning game going — but if you’re not going to be able to hold that lead once you get it, then what’s the point of getting it? Then again, it’s probably better to give your less-trustworthy reliever some margin for error. Then again, you’d hate to use your best reliever in a game that still might have lots of innings left in it. Then again … I’m not sure. The more I think about it, the more I would lean towards using the best reliever in the highest-leverage spot, and that spot is a tie game in the ninth inning — top or bottom. But I can’t fault a manager for wanting to have his closer on hand to lock down a win.

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Here are three things that stood out to me about the Blue Jays’ first loss of the week:

HAPP-Y TO SEE YOU

After watching J.A. Happ crumple to the ground as a result of taking a line drive off the head Tuesday night, we never expected to get a chance to talk to him on Wednesday, but there Happ was, walking into the Rays’ news conference room under his own power, crutch- and bandage-free, having miraculously escaped major injury.

Happ said he remembered letting go of the pitch that Desmond Jennings drilled right back at him, an immediate buzzing in his ears, and nothing in between. It’s kind of funny, I remember the same thing happening to me when I was hit in the face by a hard slapshot playing hockey way back when (I was wearing a mask, of course, but I have always remembered that buzzing starting even before I got hit, which couldn’t really have happened).

Happ was more concerned about his right knee, which he sprained on his way down, than he was about his fractured skull (the knee won’t require surgery, as it turns out). The lefty maintained his sense of humour, too. When he mentioned that he’d seen a replay of the play that sent him to the hospital for the night, he was asked what he thought as he watched it. Happ answered: “I thought I made a good pitch.”

It’s still too early to know how much time he’ll miss, and even Happ himself said he’s not sure he’s out of the woods yet — he’s likely not going to be allowed to fly on to Boston with the rest of the team after Thursday’s game — but it appears as though he dodged a major bullet, and we’re all thankful for that.

OH, RICKY

After Happ got knocked out of Tuesday night’s game in the second inning, the Blue Jays could have used a strong outing from Ricky Romero. Instead, they got the spring training version. Romero didn’t make it out of the first, retiring only one of the seven hitters he faced, allowing four singles and walking a pair.

Romero didn’t get hit hard — not at all. Only one of the four singles was hit well. But the walks cost him, and he’d thrown 29 pitches (only 16 strikes) and had the bases loaded with only one out, the Blue Jays’ two-run advantage having flipped to a one-run deficit. He had to be removed at that point, and he was.

Romero was sent down to Dunedin at the end of spring training because the Blue Jays felt that his mechanics needed to be changed, so that he could be the pitcher he was the first three years of his career as opposed to the guy who had the worst ERA among qualified pitchers and led the major leagues in walks and runs allowed in 2012.

Romero worked hard for a month, to the point where he was able to carry his new mechanics through bullpens and live batting practices and into simulated games, and when he finally got an opportunity to start a real minor-league game, he was brilliant. So good, in fact, that when the door opened to bring Romero back to the big club — after only that one start — that he got that call, and started last Friday night against Seattle.

That night went brilliantly for three innings, and Romero fell apart in the fourth. This time, Romero had a rough time from the very first pitch.

With the Blue Jays down two starters in Happ and Josh Johnson, they may have no choice but to keep Romero with them and let him try to work things out at the major-league level. A couple of off-days coming up mean that they don’t have to start him again for almost two weeks, until May 21.

BASEBALL FOLLIES

As the game got away from them, it appeared as though the Blue Jays’ focus did as well, with a couple of huge errors on the basepaths in the seventh inning.

With Tampa Bay up 10-2 going into the inning, Melky Cabrera led off with a walk and Jose Bautista was hit by a pitch. The runners moved up on a passed ball, putting Blue Jays at second and third with nobody out.

Edwin Encarnacion followed with a sacrifice fly to left that scored Cabrera, with Bautista holding at second, and that’s when the fun began.

J.P. Arencibia was next, and he hit a ground ball to Yunel Escobar’s right — in front of Bautista — and Bautista took off for third, likely thinking that Escobar would just throw to first for the sure out with the game so far out of hand, but Escobar took a shot at third and Bautista was a dead duck.

After a Rajai Davis single moved Arencibia to second, Mark DeRosa grounded a base hit up the middle. Arencibia was off like a shot, but surprisingly was held at third by coach Luis Rivera. Davis was surprised by this as well — he’d just assumed Arencibia was going to score and kept on trucking right into third base, which turned out to be a bit of a problem.

As the throw came in, Arencibia was trapped halfway between third and home with Davis standing on third base, but luckily for the Blue Jays, Rays catcher Jose Lobaton wasn’t able to corral the short-hop and the ball bounced away from him, towards the mound, allowing Arencibia to score.

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I can tell you that as I type this, hours after J.A. Happ was hit by a Desmond Jennings line drive — apparently on the left side of the head, just above the ear — I still have a sick feeling in my stomach as I’m sure many others do.

We see line drives whizzing by pitchers’ heads and think “that was close” or “wow, he got Charlie Brown’d” or “that’s how you answer an inside pitch” and sometimes even “if that was two inches to the right…” but I’m not sure we ever really think about those two inches, or about a pitcher lying face-down on the mound in a pool of his own blood, as Happ was Tuesday night.

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When Happ was struck, all the air was sucked out of Tropicana Field as the crowd of just over 10,000 watched him writhe in pain, watched trainers and doctors come out to tend to him, and watched paramedics secure him to a backboard, place him on a stretcher and then take him off the field.

A shaken Jennings, who raced to third when the ball caromed off Happ’s head and down the right-field line, walked off the field into his dugout during the delay, and crossed paths with Melky Cabrera, who pointed to the side of his head to show the stunned Rays’ outfielder where the ball hit Happ.

We didn’t know it at the time, but Happ was communicating with his teammates, doctors and trainers as he lay face-down on the mound, and with the paramedics as they stretchered him off. He did manage to raise his right hand as he exited the playing surface, though, signaling those watching that he was conscious, at the very least, if not OK. Of course, we won’t know for a couple of days if Happ Is going to be OK — Brandon McCarthy, then of the Oakland A’s, was hit in the head by a line drive late last season and walked off the field under his own power despite having suffered a skull fracture. McCarthy would later have an epidural hemorrhage and spend a week in hospital. He’s now with the Diamondbacks, and was preparing for a start against the Dodgers in L.A. when Happ was hit.

As they did when McCarthy got hurt, calls immediately began to find a way to protect pitchers’ heads when Happ went down. There have been discussions about Kevlar liners for caps and there is a device made of a hard foam that’s been developed that fits over the brim of the cap to protect the temples and front of the skull.

It goes without saying that head protection for pitchers should be mandatory. They’re often sitting sucks out there on the mound, and we saw Tuesday how little reaction time there can be — Happ couldn’t even get his glove up to protect himself. But pro sports are slow to change, and we’ll hear the same sorts of things we did about hockey helmets — they’re uncomfortable, they look stupid, a “tough guy” doesn’t need it — whatever the ridiculous excuse is. I’m sure J.A. Happ would rather have looked weird on the mound than be going through what he’s going through right now.

Athletes can never be fully protected from serious, traumatic injury, but certain steps can be taken to protect them as much as possible without changing the game that they’re playin. However, if McCarthy’s injury didn’t lead to any changes, I have a hard time believing that Happ’s will.

Here’s hoping for a speedy and complete recovery for J.A. Happ, we’ll worry about the baseball later.

The post Wilner on Jays: Pitchers need protection appeared first on Sportsnet.ca.