After he was shelled in Boston two weeks ago, Marco Estrada went from the mound to the video monitors the Jays schlep around on all road trips. The 31-year-old has had an itinerant, up-and-down career. This was as bad as it's ever been.
"I had no clue where the ball was going," Estrada said.
He'd given up five runs in the fifth inning, and been hooked. Going back to the tape, he saw a few errors in his delivery. He doesn't want to say exactly what.
"If I were to show you video of what I was looking at – between that one terrible outing in Boston and a good outing – you'd say, 'What am I looking at?' They'd look exactly the same to you. It was such little, tiny things. It makes so much difference."
Two days later, Estrada threw a bullpen session in New York. He was trying to incorporate the fixes he'd identified. And it all just came together.
"That's when I told myself, 'I've found it again. Here we go.'"
A pitcher is not great because he can throw accurately, hard or with action. The minor leagues are littered with guys who can do that. A pitcher is great because he can do those things with consistency. Being able to do that inspires the most evocative descriptor in baseball – "painting."
Great ones paint. The guys in the minors may as well be priming the walls of a barn.
Eight years into his big-league career, is it possible Estrada has suddenly gone from a house painter to Picasso?
He shrugs. You can tell he's a journeyman. Established starting pitchers are skittish. They don't like talking about pitching, or much else. By those standards, Estrada is still a minor-leaguer – approachable and totally at ease.
This is a guy who drives a scooter to work. Not a Vespa. One of those little two-wheel, stand-up jobs with a lawnmower-sized engine attached. He parks it at the entrance to the clubhouse, and then carries it up the elevator to street level after every game. This man has no airs.
Over the two starts since Boston, Estrada has been as good as any starter in Jays history, carrying a no-hitter into the eighth against Baltimore, and a perfect game into the same frame against the Rays.
Has it struck him that he's in a historic groove?
Estrada pulls back a bit and smiles: "No, I wouldn't put it that way."
Instead, he'd prefer to play down the past 10 days.
"If it would've been a perfect game or a no-hitter, that would've been cool," Estrada says with a shrug. "If I'd given up that one hit in the first inning instead of the eighth, would we even be talking about this right now?"
Probably. People tend to get excited when they find out they've stolen something. Estrada straight-up for a want-away Adam Lind – the trade that brought him to Toronto in the off-season – is beginning to look like theft.
Meanwhile, the team's putative ace, R.A. Dickey, continues to look suitable to needs, and no more. He was workmanlike against the Red Sox on Monday night, giving up three runs over six innings. He left trailing. Boston won 3-1.
Dickey also has a late-blooming story, though it's come off the rose a bit since arriving in Toronto.
For eight years, Estrada has bounced between the bullpen and the rotation. He's had his moments, but never like this. He says he's felt this good before, but with a difference. This year, he's added a cut fastball to his fastball-curve-changeup repertoire.
"It used to be that when I fell behind a hitter, I'd have to throw my four-seam [fastball]. I don't throw that very hard, so I have to locate it perfectly."
That didn't work out so well last year. Estrada gave up a major-league-worst 29 home runs.
"Now I can throw a cutter, and just keep it around the plate," Estrada said. "It's a huge key for me."
Asked if he'd ever seen a pitcher flip a switch in his early 30s, and go from a jobbing pro to a star, manager John Gibbons couldn't come up with a name. There have been a few, usually soft-tossing lefties in the David Wells/Jamie Moyer mould. After years of erraticism, Randy Johnson becalmed himself in his early 30s. By 35, he was the best pitcher in baseball.
But it happens rarely enough that you can tick off the people who've managed it.
It's far too early to say Estrada has managed the trick. He may still be surprising people with an expanded arsenal. If so, that won't last long. Hitters watch video, too.
That's the likeliest scenario – that the past two outings are an outrageous performance spike in an otherwise average career.
But while we still can, why not have some fun with the "What if?" game.
What if Estrada – who didn't get out of spring training with the major-league team – is now a front-line starter? What if he isn't really a No. 5, but a No. 2 or 3 in the rotation? What if he can keep pitching at this level for the next three months?
If Estrada is really this good, what looked like a profoundly underpowered Jays rotation a month ago suddenly looks postseason-worthy. It will look doubly so whenever Aaron Sanchez returns from injury.
It probably isn't going to be this good for a long time. History's weighing against Estrada. He'll go again Tuesday against Boston. It's probably the team's most anticipated pitching start since Dickey's debut.
And until this run of form proves illusory, why shouldn't we adopt Gibbons's open-hearted judgment on the new Estrada: "He's on to something … Hey, run with it."
Cathal Kelly