The Toronto Blue Jays went into Seattle to face the best pitching team in the major leagues and learned just why that staff holds the position it does.
The Mariners, who share the American League’s second wild card with the Detroit Tigers, boast the best ERA, WHIP and opponents’ OPS in the major leagues, and their pitchers combined to hold the Blue Jays to just four runs on 16 hits in sweeping them right out of the Pacific Northwest in three straight.
Felix Hernandez was incredible in the opener, holding the Jays to a run on three hits over seven innings, while Chris Young was just about every bit as good in the middle game. The 6-foot-10 righty only lasted six innings, but gave up just one run as well, on only two hits.
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In the finale, sinkerballer Hisashi Iwakuma held the Blue Jays scoreless over 6.2 innings of work before turning it over to a tough Mariners bullpen to finish it off. The Jays managed just three hits against Seattle relievers not named Brandon Maurer (he faced three hitters Tuesday night, and all of them reached) in 7.1 innings in the series.
The Blue Jays couldn’t come up with a big hit Wednesday night, but it’s not as though they gave themselves a bunch of opportunities. Five of the Jays’ seven hits on the night came with two out, and none of those in the same inning. Only three times in the game did a Blue Jay come to the plate with a runner on base and fewer than two out.
It was another solid start wasted. Not that that was the case in the earlier games in Seattle, but R.A. Dickey deserved better both on Wednesday night and in his last start, in the opener against the Tigers last Friday night. The knuckleballer gave up just two runs over six innings in each of those two starts. This time, it was a two-out, two-run home run by Kendrys Morales in the very first inning – his second in as many games. And that was it. Dickey shut the Mariners down over the next five frames, and Brett Cecil came out of the bullpen to work a pair of perfect innings of relief.
After winning back to back games started by Cy Young Award winners on the weekend, the Blue Jays hit the road and the road hit back awfully hard.
What’s the good news in this? Despite the sweepness in Seattle, the Blue Jays are only three games out of the second wild card spot in the American League. Lind is back, and picked up a couple of hits Wednesday night, and Edwin Encarnacion is set to return for Friday night’s series opener in Chicago.
Important to remember in riding the roller coaster that has been this Blue Jays season is that the final fortnight of the schedule has the Jays facing the Orioles, Yankees and Mariners. It will be very tough for the Jays to fall completely out of a race with that opportunity before them. Of course, they’re going to have to start winning some ballgames soon. But the 3-9 run on which they currently find themselves isn’t much different than the 5-11 and 4-12 slumps they had earlier in the season. They came out of that first one with a five-game winning streak, and emerged from the second by winning 11 of 13.