Blue Jays: Chien-Ming Wang’s resurrection dovetails - 棒球

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Blue Jays: Chien-Ming Wang’s resurrection dovetails nicely with
team’s surge: DiManno

http://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/sports/bluejays/2013/06/22/blue_jays_chienming_wangs_resurrection_dovetails_nicely_with_teams_surge_dimanno/chienming_wang.jpg.size.xxlarge.promo.jpg
Given his solid performance over three starts for Toronto since
signing with the club June 11, Wang deserves interim top billing
among the Jays’ starters.

Steve Russell / Toronto Star

Toronto starter Chien-Ming Wang deals to an Orioles batter during
his stellar seven-inning stint against the Baltimore Orioles on
Saturday. The Jays extended their win streak to 10 games with a
4-2 victory.


By: Rosie DiManno Columnist, Published on Sat Jun 22 2013

Don’t know the identity of the wise guy who had T-shirts made up
that several Blue Jays have been wearing in the clubhouse lately.

It reads, a tad sophomorically: Dickey, Johnson, Wang, each
starting pitcher’s name a euphemism for male genitalia —
the all-phallus rotation squad.

Perhaps it should be Wang-Dickey-Johnson. Given his solid
performance over three starts for Toronto since signing with
the club June 11, Chien-Ming Wang deserves interim top billing.

The 33-year-old made it into the seventh inning again in Saturday’s
4-2 victory over the Baltimore Orioles as the Jays extended their
win streak to 10 games, tying the second-best run in team history
and steadily nudging above .500. Wang had a 2-1 lead in his pocket,
looking poised and confident when manager John Gibbons called for
Aaron Loup from the ’pen to face dangerous lefty Chris Davis. Loup
promptly hit the batter and in the eighth inning Darren Oliver gave
up a tying dinger so Wang had another no-decision for his efforts.
But the pride of Taiwan — trailed by a posse of journalists who’ve
made the long hike overseas just to document Wang’s resurrection
from the minors — has now gone 16.2 innings without allowing an earned
run, thanks to a correctly corrected scoring decision that turned
Baltimore’s first run into an error for Emilio Bonifacio, before Jose
Bautista’s 16th homer put the Jays ahead for keeps.

Simultaneous with Toronto metamorphosing through June into the team
they were expected to be when this fitful season began, Wang has also
redrawn the parameters of his career. He’s actually turned into a
good problem for the Jays to have because they will need to make some
interesting decisions when Brandon Morrow and J.A. Happ come off the
disabled list.

This is not the starting quintet Toronto had envisioned, with Wang
and Esmil Rogers snatching spots, each making valuable contributions
during this W-surge. Wang, in particular, seemed little more than a
footnote addition, a cross-your-fingers-and-hope-for-the-best stopgap
acquisition who’d been toiling in Triple-A as a Yankee discard, far
removed from his hard sinker glory days and back-to-back 19-win
seasons in New York, 2006 and 2007.

Gibbons was asked after the game by a Taiwanese reporter to confirm
that Wang had well and truly entrenched himself in the rotation.
“Morrow and Happ are a ways away so it’s way too early to even look
at that. Let’s enjoy what he’s doing. He’s got no reason to look over
his shoulder.”

Wang had been looking over his shoulder at what might have been,
wondering if it would ever be again, since a baserunning injury in
2008 followed by what seemed an irreversible slide towards baseball
oblivion. The slowing sinker no longer discombobulated hitters and
Wang’s pitching arsenal was thin after that. His Jays debut, against
the White Sox, was not an eye-opening revelation for the coaching
staff either. Wang was thereafter urged to reinvent himself,
lickety-split, as a junk-ball thrower, going more frequently to a
decent curve and breaking stuff.

The mix kept the Orioles guessing on Saturday, eliciting a series
of grounders, pop-ups and fly-ball outs as Wang scattered five hits.

“That’s three really good ones,” Gibbons said of the right-hander’s
trio of starts (1-0, 3.14). “He’s a part of it now. He’s given us
a big boost, that’s for sure.”

So why remove him after only 83 pitches, the Taiwanese contingent
demanded to know. As, indeed, the move very nearly bit Gibbons in
his posterior, though a double-play ball orchestrated by Neil
Wagner in relief ended that threat.

“We’re looking at a 2-1 game, we don’t have many hits. At that
time, we’re eight outs away against a good-hitting ball club and
Davis is probably the MVP in the league right now. He can change
a game in a hurry. We wanted to give him a different look with a
left-hander.

“How much did (Wang) have left? He was still pretty strong but we’re
looking for outs there. It was a no-brainer to me, and that’s no
insult to Chien-Ming Wang.”

The ensuing circumstances — Oliver surrendering a home run to Taylor
Teagarden, who entered the game hitting, um, 0.69 — made it a taut
finish, at least until Bautista shook off his recent doldrums,
lighting up Darren O’Day, nice payback for whatever the reliever
had said after striking out Bautista the previous evening. There
was some serious jawing there, the Jays slugger displeased with
what he’d heard or not quite heard.

Bautista got the last word in as he crossed the plate, Rajai Davis
just ahead of him.

“I told him just to keep talking like he was yesterday, because he
kind of ran his mouth a little bit after he struck me out. I don’t
know where that came from but I didn’t appreciate it. I let him know
that yesterday and that’s a little reminder today.”

Not talking much in the clubhouse afterwards was Wang, who’s quiet-
spoken in both Mandarin and English.

“I had the sinker down, a lot of control.”

He assessed what has been going right lately. “I don’t think too much.
Before, every time I wanted to be perfect.

A Wang-dang-doodle standing ovation escorted him off the mound.

“Pretty happy, it’s been a long time.”



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