The Blue Jays managed to stop a three-game skid Wednesday and split a two-game home series with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
The split helped Toronto keep pace with Baltimore and gain on Boston (losers of three straight) in the AL East. The team is now 40-34—2.5 games back of the Orioles and a half-game behind the Red Sox heading into an off-day and a weekend series in Chicago versus the White Sox.
Here are five takeaways from the Diamondbacks series:
Wasted effort
The Jays can look back at Tuesday’s game as one that got away for a couple reasons. One, they got a good starting-pitching performance from Marco Estrada. Despite giving up a few hard-hit balls to the track (and an absolute moonshot to left off the bat of Yasmany Tomas), he gave up only two hits and three walks while striking out eight over six innings.
And two, they managed nine hits and three walks versus Arizona starter Patrick Corbin, but left a ton of runners on. Given how tight things are at the top of the AL East standings, the Jays can’t afford to let winnable home games against sub-par teams (despite the recent five-game win streak, the D-Backs are now just 34-40 and sitting fourth in the NL West) slip away like that.
Troy story
Troy Tulowitzki continued to impress at the plate. After an 0-for-4 performance against the Orioles in his first game back from the DL, he’s hit in three straight games and put up two homers. Against the Diamondbacks, he went 3-for-6 with a walk and two runs scored.
Hump-day hit party
After an outing Tuesday in which the Jays managed to get on without bringing anyone in, the team’s hitters did all their scoring Wednesday with long homers. Each of the Jays dingers—from Tulowitzki, Russell Martin and Edwin Encarnacion—exceeded 410 feet.
Room for improvement in right
Getting peak offensive production from the Jays’ stars is all the more important now as the team continues to play without Jose Bautista. In the first four games that the Jays played without their star right-fielder, backup Ezequiel Carrera went 3-for-14. Then with Carrera out Wednesday with an Achilles injury, emergency fill-in Darrell Ceciliani (a career .197 hitter in just 71 career at-bats) went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts.
Bautista is currently on the 15-day DL while Carrera is day-to-day with his Achilles injury.
Escape artist
J.A. Happ didn’t have as nice a performance as Estrada the day before, giving up five more base-runners and throwing 19 more pitches in one less inning. But he managed to keep runs off the board, and the Jays as a team left nine Diamondbacks runners on base—a mirror image of the previous day.
