Blue Jays’ Moseby Ends Slump, Delivers the Game-Winning Hit

With George Bell, Lloyd Moseby and Jesse Barfield, the Toronto Blue Jays have what many consider the best outfield in professional baseball.

But for the past three weeks, Moseby, the team’s center fielder, hadn’t done much to enhance the trio’s reputation. The American League All-Star has been playing every day, but his bat has been missing in action.

Heading into Sunday’s game against the Angels, Moseby had just eight hits in his last 58 bats for a .138 average--hardly the kind of figures you’d expect from the No. 3 hitter on a team that leads the majors in runs scored.

But Sunday, Moseby looked like the Moseby of old. He had three hits, including a solo home run in the ninth inning and a tie-breaking RBI single in the 10th to help the Blue Jays defeat the Angels, 6-3, at Anaheim Stadium. Toronto took three of four games from the Angels and now trails Boston by 8 1/2 games in the American League East.

“He had a good day,” Toronto Manager Jimy Williams said of Moseby, who added a first-inning double and raised his average from .273 to .277. “He needed that, and we needed it, too.”

Moseby swears he hasn’t been in a slump. He said he’s been hitting well but that the balls haven’t been falling in. The statistics, however, don’t lie.

And neither does his swing. Williams saw a distinct difference in Moseby’s stroke Sunday from what he has seen the past few weeks.

“He had been using a longer swing, but today it was shorter and more crisp,” he said. “He had good bat speed.”

Moseby hasn’t had the energy to generate such bat speed lately. For the past month, he has been hampered by a virus that also afflicted his wife and two kids.

Moseby would be sick and he’d pass the virus to his wife. Then his wife would pass the virus to the kids, who would pass it back to their father. And so on.

“It’s been a merry-go-round for about a month,” Moseby said.

Moseby tried to compensate for his lack of strength by swinging harder, but his average continued to dip. He didn’t let that bother him, though.

“It (the illness) hampered me a bit, but I didn’t care,” he said. “I don’t worry about my average. I know that just by being out there, I can contribute. There was nothing else I could do but go out and play.”

Moseby said he has finally shaken the virus and is now feeling good physically. He certainly swung a healthy bat Sunday.

In the ninth inning, he smashed a Mike Witt pitch into the center-field bleachers, well past the 404-foot sign, to give the Blue Jays a 2-0 lead.

“Witt threw a curveball down,” Moseby said. “It wasn’t a bad pitch--I just got all of it. I knew it was gone. It was only a matter of how far it would go and where it would land.”

Moseby’s 14th homer provided Toronto with an insurance run at the time, and it proved critical as the Angels came back with two runs in the bottom of the ninth to tie the score.

Then, with runners on first and second in the 10th, Moseby lined a Doug Corbett pitch to right field, scoring Damaso Garcia with the go-ahead run.

Bell, who had three hits, added a three-run homer, his 20th, off Donnie Moore to put the game out of reach. Barfield, who has 21 homers and 65 RBIs, also had three hits, two of them doubles.

So all seems well in the Toronto outfield again. If only the Blue Jays could say the same for their pitching staff, which had a team earned-run average of 4.56 before Sunday.

“I don’t really care about having the best outfield in baseball, because we’re not doing too well as a whole,” Moseby said. “No one is gonna give us credit unless we win the American League or the World Series.

“(Winning three out of four from the Angels) is encouraging, but we’re not overjoyed by it. We’re a good ballclub and we’re expected to win a lot of games. We have a long way to come back.”

Moseby, at least, has returned.