Josh Donaldson did not get much sleep Monday night. On Tuesday, he woke up his teammates, and in the nick of time too.
His message: We’re not going home yet. Follow me.
“If we were to lose today, there was no way that I was going to leave this series and not feel like I had an impact on it,” he said.
Advertisement
Donaldson’s exceptional talent and fiery passion for winning have become legendary among Blue Jays fans during his two seasons in Toronto. On Tuesday, the myth grew.
Before Game 4 of the American League Championship Series, Donaldson revved up his teammates after calling them together and shutting the clubhouse doors. Then he hit a homer, saved a run with a dazzling defensive play and drew a critical walk in a 5-1 win that kept the Jays alive against Cleveland.
If this sounds like something a novelist might conjure, so be it. The Jays still face long odds to win the series – only once has a team rebounded from three games down – but their swagger was back after Tuesday’s win, and Donaldson had a lot to do with that.
It started with a restless night after a 4-2 loss Monday. The Jays had scored three runs in three games. Inertia gripped their offence.
“I’m not going to give too much away of what I had to say,” he said of the clubhouse meeting. “But just more so getting everybody’s attention and focus and understanding. I mean, everybody knew coming into today how important (Game 4) was. But at the same time I just wanted to kind of reiterate that, and let the boys know that I was coming to play today.”
As he spoke, he was sitting at the podium in a post-game news conference, with winning pitcher Aaron Sanchez at his side.
“Yeah, just to second that, he just showed his emotion,” Sanchez said. “He said understanding it’s a must-win game, just to go out there and give everything you’ve got. You may not be able to play again tomorrow.”
It was a statement of the obvious, of course. But Donaldson punctuated it in his inimitable way, then went out and walked the walk.
***
Perhaps the Jays would have won without Donaldson’s pre-game theatrics. Desperation has a way of focusing the mind of a team facing elimination via four straight losses. And he had plenty of help, starting with six masterly innings by Sanchez.
Advertisement
As well, Cleveland’s pitchers were not quite as sharp as they had been in the first three games, when their pinpoint performances humiliated Toronto’s hitters. On Tuesday, their ace, Corey Kluber, pitching on three days’ rest, left a few more pitches in the strike zone than he did in Game 1, when he blanked the Blue Jays over 6.1 innings.
One of those pitches was a curve ball in the heart of the zone, which Donaldson clobbered over the left-centre-field fence in the third inning to give his team its first lead of the series. As the ball cleared the wall, he punched the air over and over again and bellowed his way around the bases.
The next inning, Sanchez retired Cleveland’s third, fourth and fifth hitters on nine pitches.
“Right there, I think that was the turning point,” Sanchez said. “Let’s go. Don’t look back now.”
In the Cleveland fifth, with Toronto up 2-1 and a runner on second base, Carlos Santana hit a two-out scorcher to the shortstop hole, with the defence shifted to the right. From his perch behind the plate, Russ Martin saw an RBI single in the making and prepared for a play at the plate.
“I thought it was going to get through right off the bat, and then Donaldson took an incredible first step and angled himself a little bit going towards the outfield and made just an unbelievable play,” Martin said.
From his belly, Donaldson leaped to his feet and uncorked a perfect throw to first at 79 miles an hour, then jumped up and down three times, boxed the air again and roared in unison with 49,142 incredulous fans.
“Big-time players make big-time plays in big-time games,” Sanchez said. “There’s nothing more I can say about J.D.”
***
Donaldson frequently varies his hairstyle and the cut of his facial hair, but he showed up clean-shaven at the Jays’ workout on Sunday. Someone asked whether his new look was designed to change the team’s luck.
Advertisement
“Actually, no,” he said. “I got a new beard trimmer the other day and I went to trim my beard down a little bit and whenever I trimmed it I kind of nicked it. So I had to go with it, just had to shave everything off.
“With that being said, I kind of believe you make your own luck and you go out there and create your own destiny.”
After his brilliant stop in the fifth, the Jays did just that. Sanchez worked a 1-2-3 sixth. Brett Cecil, Jason Grilli and Roberto Osuna retired the final nine batters in order.
In the seventh, with runners at the corners and no outs, Cleveland skipper Terry Francona ordered Donaldson intentionally walked. Maybe he figured Donaldson had done enough for destiny by that point, but the move backfired when Edwin Encarnacion hit a two-run single up the middle to give Toronto a 4-1 lead.
During Monday night’s loss, the famously loud crowd at the Rogers Centre sat quiet and gloomy for most of the night. On Tuesday, Donaldson ignited the audience with his homer, brought them back to their feet with his diving stop and gave them hope that the Jays might do something almost unheard of. Maybe, they thought, Toronto could snatch the broom from Cleveland and wield it themselves over three more games.
Donaldson acknowledged that they still have a mountain to climb. But he is determined to lead the expedition.
“I try to invest as much of myself as much as I can in my teammates, and really not only just preparing for this game for myself but trying to help other people prepare as well,” he said. “And go out there and give them an understanding of what they’re about to face, and kind of giving them some information and just kind of being that guy that they can try to lean on.”
It worked on Tuesday. In Game 5 on Wednesday afternoon, their starter will be the dispassionate Marco Estrada, the yin to Donaldson’s yang. Cleveland will start rookie left-hander Ryan Merritt, who pitched 11 innings over four games during the regular season.
Advertisement
The Jays’ heavily right-handed lineup has to like its chances. Estrada threw eight innings of two-run ball in Game 1. Another hot and heavy crowd will be on hand. And Donaldson will be out front.
“Josh is a very emotional guy,” manager John Gibbons said. “He’s vocal. He’s a lot like (Jose) Bautista. He’s going to say what’s on his mind, good and bad. But that’s really his personality. He’s a fun-loving guy before a game starts, but when a game starts he flips that switch and he’s all business. Really, I’ve never seen anybody like that, because he is so very intense.”
Until last year, most Blue Jays fans had never seen anybody like that either. Now they’re craving for a couple more weeks of Donaldson drama.