Blue Jays: C’mon Gibby, you’re making this difficult

The Blue Jays dropped the series opener against the Royals on Friday night, blowing a 4-1 lead in the ninth inning, and watched Jason Grilli surrender a walk-off hit while Roberto Osuna went unused.

Let me start out by saying I’ve always been, and likely always will be a fan of John Gibbons. I’ve always felt he was criticized far more than he deserved in most cases, and I’ve defended him in many conversations in my personal life, and in other articles I’ve written here at Jays Journal in the past.

One game won’t change that completely either, but I’m having a hard time coming up with an argument to use in his defence this time around. Friday night’s series opener against the Royals looked like it was all but wrapped up leading into the bottom of the 9th, and then somehow the Blue Jays managed to throw it away.

The disastrous 9th inning was capped by a walk-off hit by Whit Merrifield, sending the Royals to a series opening victory. After Ryan Tepera was unable to finish the game, Gibbons elected to go to Aaron Loup, which is fair enough considering the performance he’s had this season. That didn’t work out either, so Jason Grilli came on to face Merrifield, and promptly surrendered the final blow.

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You could criticize Gibby for the way he handled the 9th inning and I wouldn’t argue with you. However, that’s not what bothers me about what I saw on Friday night. When Gibbons went with a struggling Jason Grilli, every Blue Jays fan wondered why Roberto Osuna wasn’t called upon. Maybe he needed the night off to rest or whatever the case may be, but Gibbons chose not to provide an explanation.

When he was asked about it in the post game interview, Gibbons was clearly frustrated, but didn’t provide much of an answer, saying “he wasn’t feeling good today, so he wasn’t available”. When asked for more details about what that meant, Gibbons responded with something we haven’t seen an lot of before from him, and it wasn’t an attitude I found redeeming at all. Check it out below:

C’mon Gibby, you’re making this very difficult for me. When asked for a little more information, there was no need to pull the “that’s all you need to know” card.

"“He wasn’t feeling good today. That’s all you need to know.”"

He could have made something up very easily, and that would have been totally fine. Say “he was feeling a bit under the weather”, “his arm was a little tired today” or “he had a bit of a stomach thing, so we just wanted to rest him”. Anything really, would have been better than “that’s all you need to know”.

A glance at Twitter will tell you that with the vague answer from the skipper, folks have jumped to all kinds of conclusions ranging from injury to questionable decision making from the 22 year old closer (I’m not going there, but speculate if you must). It’s understandable if Gibbons was frustrated with the outcome of the game and that was reflected in the interview, but that response didn’t help matters at all.

Next: Blue Jays: Outing length an issue for the rotation

The situation with Osuna will be worth monitoring, and hopefully it was something very minor preventing him from being used on Friday night. Hopefully it was just a case of Gibbons going with Grilli to give the veteran a confidence boost, and simultaneously giving Osuna a breather.

In any case, “that’s all you need to know” didn’t earn Gibbons any extra brownie points with the fan base, and on a night where he could use a little more patience from them, it could have been very easy to say almost anything else.