Blue Jays’ offence remains dormant in loss to Rangers

Nomar Mazara hit a home run in the eighth and the Jays could not answer as Toronto fell to the Texas Rangers 2-1.

TORONTO – The matter of greatest import for the Toronto Blue Jays on Monday night was not whether the Texas Rangers would throw at Jose Bautista in some petulant attempt at avenging the right-fielder’s epic bat flip from Game 5 of the American League Division Series last fall. Sam Dyson had the chance to deliver any potential message personally in the eighth inning, settling instead for a loud lineout to right field. The playground narrative was never going to happen in a game of consequence between adults.

Really, the burning issue for the defending American League East champions remains the same one that’s raged all season long – how to get their dominant but dormant lineup going. The lineup moved no closer to the awakening the Blue Jays so desperately need, managing just seven hits in a 2-1 loss before a rowdy crowd of 25,323. An eighth inning rally against Dyson fizzled when Michael Saunders was thrown at home trying to tag up on Troy Tulowitzki’s fly ball to medium right, Nomar Mazara’s laser home easily beating him to the plate and surviving a Hail Mary replay review.

Justin Smoak’s leadoff single in the ninth gave the Blue Jays another chance but Ryan Goins failed to sacrifice pinch-runner Darwin Barney over to second, nearly bunting into a double play, and Shawn Tolleson promptly closed things out.

What happened to an offence that was easily best in the big-leagues last year?

“Some guys have an approach but they’re not committed to it,” hitting coach Brook Jacoby said before the game. “If I’m up and out over the plate, and he throws me one in and I swing at it and get jammed, to me that’s not committing to your approach 100 per cent. Last year, early on, this team hammered fastballs and then the other teams would run to their breaking stuff. A lot of guys I think are looking for the breaking stuff right now and not getting to the fastball. That’s what I’m seeing. You’ve got to trust in your ability to hit the fastball and stay on it.”

R.A. Dickey pitched well over 6.1 innings, and Gavin Floyd escaped trouble in the seventh when Rougned Odor flew out to centre with the bases loaded and Kevin Pillar threw out Delino DeShields at second before Mitch Moreland crossed to end the inning, replay overturning the initial safe call on the field.

But the Blue Jays couldn’t recover after Floyd coughed up a leadoff homer to Mazar in the top of the eighth. A.J. Griffin allowed one run over six before relievers Tony Barnette, Dyson and Tolleson locked things down.

“Bottom line in these close games, we’re just not executing good enough to win, it’s pretty simple,” said manager John Gibbons, who could point to failed bunts by Josh Thole in the third and Goins in the ninth plus Saunders’ failure to tag and take third on Bautista’s liner in the eighth, among other concerns in this one alone. “Base-running has been a little shoddy, we haven’t been getting the bunts down like we should, in tight ballgames you don’t win that way.”

Jacoby is urging his hitters over and over to be ready for the fastball and then adjust as needed, and the Blue Jays did that in spurts against Griffin, who attacked the zone and kept batters at heel with a nasty 69 mph curveball. In the third, after Brett Nicholas’s solo shot to open the top of the frame opened the scoring, Pillar doubled, took third on Thole’s groundout and scored on Saunders’ single through a drawn-in infield.

Both hits came on 90 mph fastballs.

The second of Pillar’s three hits also came on a fastball, the other on a slider. All that was good. The bad came in an inability to create any sustained offensive pressure, and to bring their few opportunities to fruition.

“We saw it early last year in New York, guys coming out throwing 97, 98 and we were all over it, and then they ran and went soft. This year, some of the guys are sitting soft and not getting to the fastball,” said Jacoby. “Basically, you’re chasing hits instead of good pitches to hit. We’ve got a lot of guys that are very good in the strike zone but they tend to expand a little bit too much, especially early so far.”

Amid the drought, the Blue Jays have lost eight of their last 12 games, and are now 2-7 in one-run games, 0-13 when trailing after eight innings and 1-11 when scoring three runs or less.

“It’s very unlikely that this trend is going to continue,” said Dickey. “Very rarely do you have four, five guys in the lineup not going at the same time. That’s rare. But we can all sit up here and say it’s going to turn until it does, there’s no guarantee, so everybody is going to have to put in the work they know they need to do in order to turn the page. We can fall back on the professionalism in this room. A lot of guys are taking it personally and we all should. We’ll see where it goes from here, but I’m optimistic.”

When submitting content, please abide by our submission guidelines, and avoid posting profanity, personal attacks or harassment. Should you violate our submissions guidelines, we reserve the right to remove your comments and block your account. Sportsnet reserves the right to close a story’s comment section at any time.