Stieb Pitches Blue Jays to Impressive 6-1 Win Over Lackluster Royals

It was 63 degrees when the American League’s championship series opened on the often frozen artificial tundra of Exhibition Stadium Tuesday night.

The box score would suggest that the unseasonable weather was accompanied by an uncharacteristically warm performance by the Toronto Blue Jay hitters.

Dominated during the regular season by Charlie Leibrandt and his fellow Kansas City left-handers, Bud Black and Danny Jackson, the Blue Jays built a 5-0, three-inning lead off Leibrandt en route to a 6-1 victory.

A crowd of 39,115 watched Dave Stieb restrict the Royals to three hits in eight shutout innings before Tom Henke allowed a meaningless run in the ninth.

Dick Howser, 0-10 as a playoff manager, knew he was in trouble again when the Blue Jays scored two runs in the second, then three more in the third, Leibrandt’s final inning.

The Royals won only one regular-season game after trailing by four or more runs.

Stieb, a consistent victim of poor support, responded to the unfamiliar advantage by striking out eight and retiring 12 straight batters through the heart of the game.

The Royals have advanced to postseason play seven times in the last 10 years, but it was the Blue Jays, making their playoff debut, who showed more poise and aggressiveness.

They also showed that they can beat a Kansas City left-hander, but Howser isn’t sure it was conclusive. He implied that the box score may be misleading.

“They got a lot of seeing-eye hits and broken-bat hits,” he said of the Blue Jays’ early assault. “I don’t think Charlie’s stuff was bad, but they pinged him to death. They’re a good-hitting team and they found the holes. Charlie might go out with the same stuff tomorrow night and pitch a shutout.”

It’s left-hander Black today, then left-hander Jackson Friday night in Kansas City.

Leibrandt, Black and Jackson were 5-0 against the Blue Jays during the regular season.

Leibrandt, 17-9 overall with the league’s second-best earned-run average, was 2-0 against the Blue Jays, allowing just six earned runs in the 31 innings of four starts. He allowed five runs and seven hits in pitching to just 17 batters Tuesday night.

Seeing-eye hits? Broken-bat hits?

“Who said that?” Toronto right fielder Jesse Barfield asked. “Sure, we had some bloop hits, but we also drove the ball hard. We swung the bat good.”

The Blue Jays got four singles in the two-run second, including Barfield’s leadoff single to center. Leibrandt then hit the left-handed-hitting Willie Upshaw with a pitch and ultimately yielded a single to right by Ernie Whitt, a single to deep short by Tony Fernandez and a single to right by Damaso Garcia.

Cliff Johnson, the right-handed-hitting designated hitter reacquired by Toronto on Aug. 29 to strengthen the attack against left-handers, opened the third with a stinging double to right center.

Leibrandt walked Barfield and yielded an RBI single to Upshaw on which onrushing center fielder Willie Wilson, who couldn’t quite get to Barfield’s similar hit in the second, again came up short.

Leibrandt was replaced by right-hander Steve Farr, who was released by the Cleveland Indians in the spring and showed why in this first big game of fall.

Rance Mulliniks, the left-handed half of the Blue Jays’ third base platoon, batted for Garth Iorg, the right-handed half, and slapped a bases-loaded single to center, again frustrating Wilson.

Whitt walked, forcing in a run. Fernandez then followed with a fly to right, producing his second RBI and a 5-0 lead.

Toronto got its sixth and final run in the fourth when George Bell singled and never stopped running on Johnson’s ensuing grounder to short. Bell was halfway to third when first baseman Steve Balboni responded with a wild throw across the diamond, allowing Bell to continue home, much to the crowd’s pleasure.

The displeased Leibrandt sat at his locker later and said:

“I’d rather have seen some line drives, some bullets, but that’s part of the game. When you’re pitching poorly you give up all kinds of hits, and I was pitching poorly. The box score will confirm it.

“Toronto is vulnerable to any kind of pitcher who does his job, but I didn’t have a pitch I could go to tonight, a pitch I could rely on. I don’t know whether it was stuff or location, but I didn’t really have either.

“A key to our success is holding the other team early, keeping the score down. I didn’t do that. Stieb got some momentum with the early lead and became unbeatable.”

Barfield had predicted Monday that the Kansas City left-handers would see a different group of hitters in this series. Patient hitters. Hitters willing to hit the ball up the middle and go the other way.

“The pitchers we’ve always had trouble with,” he said, “are junk pitchers, finesse pitchers like Leibrandt. He’s one of the best in the game at changing pace, but when you lay off their bad pitches, you force them to throw strikes.

“Leibrandt didn’t look any different to me tonight than he always does, but we made adjustments. We were patient. We laid off pitches we were chasing before. We waited. We got ahead in the count. We made him throw strikes.

“I mean, Leibrandt reminds me a lot of Tommy John. It took me a year and a half to learn how to hit Tommy John.”

The left-handed hitting Whitt, who singled in the first Toronto run, agreed.

“We threw some flares out there, we found some holes,” he said, “but that’s the type of hits you get off a pitcher like Leibrandt. He doesn’t give you anything hard. He keeps it on the corners. He dares you to try and pull him. We proved a point tonight. We proved we can hit a pitcher of his type. We proved we can beat a left-hander. Now the Royals have to prove they can hit our pitching.”

The Royals won the season series from Toronto, 7-5. They were 3-0 against Stieb, but the scores were 2-0, 2-1 and 4-2.

“Three, four, five runs. That’s all I was looking for tonight,” Stieb said. “I felt great from the start. I felt better once it was 5-0.”

Displaying the form that enabled him to win the league’s ERA title at 2.48, Stieb allowed only a first-inning double by George Brett, a fourth-inning single by Brett and an eighth-inning double by pinch-hitter Dane Iorg, Garth’s brother.

Stieb made 101 pitches and was removed because he will next pitch on three days rest and because Henke, who delivered 13 saves after his July 28 recall, needed the work.

A Wilson single followed by a Brett single, his third hit, led to the only Kansas City run.

Said Brett, who raised his playoff average to .357: “Stieb was setting us up with a slider that broke two inches, and striking us out with a slider that broke two feet. What the hell, it’s easy to pitch with a 6-0 lead.”

The Blue Jays will start their own left-hander, Jimmy Key (14-6) today. It’s a best-of-seven series, and both sides acknowledged that a win in Game 1 doesn’t carry the impact it did when it was a best of five.

“Pressure?” Jesse Barfield said. “The hardest part was getting here. The hardest part was beating the Yankees. We won 99 games. Now it’s 100. The pressure’s off. We know we can play.”

And they know they beat a left-hander named Charlie Leibrandt.

A.L. Playoff Notes

The availability of Hal McRae, who started only three of the Royals’ last 16 games because of a muscle pull in the area of his left hip, remains uncertain. “I even try to keep from sneezing, it hurts that much,” McRae said. Daryl Motley will replace Jorge Orta as the Royals’ DH against left-hander Jimmy Key if McRae can’t play. . . . The Tuesday selection of Royal executive Dick Balderson as Seattle’s general manager is said to have stemmed, in part, from the demand of Angel scouting director Larry Himes for a guaranteed contract. Himes and Milwaukee Brewer personnel director Ray Poitevent were the other finalists. . . . Among the names that have already surfaced as possible successors to fired Houston Manager Bobby Lillis is that of Joe Torre, who did color on the Angel telecasts this season. The Houston situation may hinge on Joe Morgan’s possible appointment as GM, which would enhance Frank Robinson’s managerial candidacy. . . . John McNamara will reportedly shake up his Boston coaching staff, adding ex-Texas Manager Doug Rader. . . . It’s rumored here that Seattle is willing to trade left fielder Phil Bradley to the Angels for a package that would include pitcher Ron Romanick, but an Angel official branded it as merely speculation.