Edwin Encarnacion reacts as he reaches home plate after hitting walk-off home run to beat the Baltimore Orioles on Friday.Fred Thornhill/The Canadian Press
Pitchers these days. They just can't seem to finish what they start.
Take Marco Estrada for example, arguably the Blue Jays' best starter this season, who took the mound Friday night for Toronto's game against the Baltimore Orioles at Rogers Centre.
It was Estrada's 111th start in what has been a solid nine-year major-league career except for one thing. Estrada has never pitched a complete game.
He's come close several times, most recently in his previous outing on Sunday when he took a no-hitter into the eighth inning against the Boston Red Sox only to have it broken up by a Chris Young home run. Estrada was still in there in the ninth with his team leading 5-1. But when he surrendered a leadoff double to Dustin Pedroia, Toronto manager John Gibbons decided to deprive Estrada of his date with destiny and called on the bullpen.
Estrada missed another opportunity on Friday, lasting just six innings in the second of a four-game set against the Orioles.
Estrada departed the game with the Orioles leading 3-2, having given up all Baltimore runs on home runs by Jonathan Schoop and a two-run job by Chris Davis in the sixth.
The Jays won the game in walk-off fashion when Edwin Encarnacion stepped up to the plate in the bottom of the 10th and lined a full-count offering from Baltimore reliever Brad Brach the other way over the right-field wall.
The dramatics provided the Blue Jays (33-30) with a 4-3 victory over the American League East-leading Orioles (36-24).
In an era in baseball where pitch counts are de rigueur and most bullpens have become specialized units usually featuring at least one 100-mile-an-hour flamethrower at the back end, nine-inning outings by starters are becoming increasingly rare.
In fact, Estrada finds himself in select company in his long pursuit of a complete game.
Estrada is one of just 10 pitchers, with 100 or more career starts, in baseball history to have gone without a complete game. It is a list that is populated entirely of players who played from 2008 on.
Of the 10 players, five are still active along with Estrada. The others are Wei-Yen Chen of the Seattle Mariners, Nathan Eovaldi of the New York Yankees, Bud Norris of the Atlanta Braves and Travis Wood of the Chicago Cubs.
Overall, the likelihood of a pitcher throwing a complete game appears to be on the wane.
Last year in the majors there were 104 complete games in 4,858 games over the course of the regular season, a frequency of 2.1 per cent.
Heading into Friday's play there has been 30 through the first 1,796 games, a 1.7 per cent rate.
No Blue Jay has pitched a complete game this season, although J.A. Happ came achingly close on May 10 in San Francisco, getting pulled with two outs in the ninth inning.
Happ, who has pitched four complete games over his 10 years in the game, his last coming in 2010, said that being able to finish what you start remains a strong allure.
"It's just so much more difficult these days to do it with the brand of baseball that's been evolving for several years now," Happ said. "The bullpen is such an integral part of the game with all the power arms. It seems like, just the fact of the scouting reports and teams seeing you three, four or five times through the lineup, it's a huge challenge to accomplish."
The Blue Jays played without the services of Jose Bautista, who left Thursday's game early with a sore upper leg.
Gibbons said he doesn't think the injury is serious and that the right fielder tried to pressure the manager into letting him play. But Gibbons felt at least one game off was prudent.
Shortstop Troy Tulowitzki also had a relapse rehabbing his sore quad muscle in Florida and had to be lifted from a game on Friday in extended spring training.
Gibbons said he has yet to find out how serious a setback it is for Tulowitzki, who the Blue Jays were hoping might be back with the team on Monday.