Written by Jonah Keri at CBSSports.com
The Toronto Blue Jays are headed back to the American League Championship Series, knocking out the Texas Rangers for the second straight season on a mad dash, and a dash of sweet, sweet comeuppance.
Here’s how it all went down…
Edwin Encarnacion came up huge. Again.
Four days after Encarnacion exposed Buck Showalter’s historically bad managerial decision with a titanic walk-off blast, The Parrot Walker was at it again. In his first at-bat Sunday night, Encarnacion crushed a hanging slider from Colby Lewis into the second deck in left-center, giving the Jays an early 2-0 lead.
In his second time up, he smoked a single up the middle, cashing Josh Donaldson to put Toronto ahead 5-2 in the third. Encarnacion’s Sunday night slugfest continued an assault on the league that’s intensified as the stakes have grown. The 33-year-old slugger batted .263/.357/.529, tying a career high with 42 homers and leading the league with 127 runs batted in (if you’re into that kind of thing). Edwing’s first-inning shot marked the first time in the Blue Jays’ 40-year history that a player had hit three home runs in the team’s first four playoff games.
That Encarnacion would blossom into one of the most devastating power hitters in the league is a borderline miracle. Sportsnet’s Stephen Brunt’s 2014 feature details the long and winding road Encarnacion took to get here. In 2009, the Jays traded Scott Rolen to Cincinnati, taking Encarnacion back only at the Reds’ insistence, and only as a straight salary dump. As Alex Anthopoulos, Toronto’s assistant general manager at the time of the trade, told Brunt: “Candidly, we did not want him to be part of the deal.”
From there, the Jays would send Encarnacion to the minors during the 2010 season, place him on waivers at season’s end, watch him get claimed by the A’s, re-sign him a month later when Oakland let him go, and watch him make so many errors at third base that he earned the mocking nickname “E5.” It took offseason instruction from Robinson Cano’s hitting consultant Luis Mercedes, and a call for Encarnacion to eliminate the leg-kick in his swing and to keep two hands on the bat, for the power outburst now five years running to get started.
Since then, we’ve gained a hitter who, according to MLB.com research,crushes baseballs with the barrel of the bat more than almost anyone else in baseball. One who, according to the analysis site TruMedia, saw his OPS against right-handed pitchers jumped 160 points from his 2009-2011 levels to what he’s accomplished in the past five seasons. And one who, according to TruMedia, has drastically improved his ability to lay off bad pitches over the past five seasons
EDWIN ENCARNACION CHASE RATES:
2009-2011 Chase% vs RHP=27.3% (vs LHP=21.7%)
2012-2016 Chase% vs RHP=22.7% (vs LHP=20.0%)
The decisive game of this series would get decided on other, much weirder events. But with Josh Donaldson’s late-season hip injury curtailing his power, even the defending AL MVP can’t claim to be the Jays’ scariest threat. That honor belongs to Encarnacion, fixer of swings, transporter of birds, beater of worlds.
The Jays’ bullpen continued to defy the odds.
With a power-packed lineup, an excellent team defense, and arguably the deepest starting rotation in franchise history, the Jays came into this year’s playoffs as one of the dangerous wild-card teams the game had seen in the two decades since the playoffs expanded.
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