‘Johnny said it last night, but that’s your fault,’ said Kansas City Royals pitcher Edinson Volquez. ‘You’ve got to hide the ball and have better communication with the catcher giving you signs when you’re pitching.’Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
When the Toronto Blue Jays take the field in a must-win game on Wednesday, they'll face the most unhittable pitcher of this American League Championship Series so far.
Kansas City righthander Edinson Volquez had his best-ever postseason outing in Game 1, silencing the Jays bats in the Royals' 5-0 victory at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City. Now Volquez will take the mound with his team up 3-1 in the series, a win away from ending the Jays' season and sending the Royals off to the World Series.
The chatty 32-year-old Dominican also rekindled a juicy old narrative on Tuesday, saying that fellow Royals pitcher Johnny Cueto told him he believes the Jays had someone stealing signs on Monday night.
The claim reignited a controversy that was first stirred in 2011, when an ESPN story quoted opposing player's claims that the Jays were planting a man in the Rogers Centre bleachers beyond centre field to relay pitching signs to their hitters. Back then and this week, the Blue Jays denied the claims.
"I think he said last night, they got a guy in centre field," said Volquez of Cueto, But then Cueto had just been shelled for eight runs on six hits and four walks over two innings Monday in Toronto, one of the worst starts in MLB playoff history.
"You see how hard it is, he look to the centre field and he see somebody do this or do that, it's really hard to do that. I don't know – he said that. But when the guy gets on second base, he said something about that, too, they were giving signs to the hitter. But I don't know."
Volquez said he isn't bothered that such a practice might occur in baseball.
"Johnny said it last night, but that's your fault. You've got to hide the ball and have better communication with the catcher giving you signs when you're pitching," said Volquez. "So it's nothing wrong with it. We just have to hide the ball and give multiple signs to hide it from them."
Still, Volquez said he's heard players from other teams say that someone steals signs in Toronto.
"That's what I hear," said Volquez. "We've got a lot of friends on different teams. They always say that, they give the signs or whatever it is. But I don't go crazy with it. I just want to pitch my own game. You can tell if you're good or not when you're pitching, the way they take the pitches, and maybe the guy moving to second base or whatever it is. But I don't keep that in my mind."
Volquez is oozing confidence after his start last Friday, when he allowed Toronto just two hits over six innings in the Royals' shutout. Before that game, he intended to pitch the Jays inside, but he came out of his bullpen session feeling so good that he and catcher Salvador Perez changed the game-plan, opting to work the Jays down and away – a strategy that killed Toronto.
"The whole story the other day [was] he was just so good, he couldn't have pitched any better," said Blue Jays manager John Gibbons. "He dominated us. Not a whole lot you could do about it. [Wednesday] if he's on, just like he was the other night, it's going to be real tough again. So hopefully he's not quite as good and maybe makes a few mistakes."
Volquez acknowledged that his previous game against the homer-happy Jays was in Game 1 at Kauffman Stadium, a vast park that doesn't easily give up home runs. Rogers Centre, he feels, is more generous.
"It's not like you play in Kansas City, we've got a big ballpark, and the ball doesn't carry much. Here, the ball is flying everywhere," said Volquez. "And they're pretty good hitters, too. They can change the game with one swing. They've got a lot of power. I don't know what is the difference, but I think the ball [does] carry a little bit more here."
Rachel Brady