TORONTO – This habit of routinely falling behind is doing the Toronto Blue Jays no favours in this month of struggle, putting undue pressure on an offence all too often unable to deliver when it counts, making an already difficult path to victory even tougher.
Case in point was Tuesday night’s thoroughly dismaying 11-7, 11-inning loss to the Boston Red Sox, as they went 1-for-17 with men in scoring position while things were still close after they were left to scratch and claw out of an early deficit for the seventh straight game.
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The Blue Jays did quite literally scratch and claw their way back into this one after R.A. Dickey gave up three runs, one earned in the first, by picking up single runs in the third, fourth, fifth and seventh innings, the latter immediately after the Red Sox had taken a 4-3 lead.
Yet they still found a disheartening way to lose as Dustin Pedroia’s two-run single triggered a stunning seven-run outburst that decided things in an 11th inning that ranks among the club’s worst frames of the season.
How bad was it? Infielder Steve Tolleson took to the mound for a second time this season to get the final two outs.
"There’s a sense of urgency in here because we know how hard we’ve played all year to be in a pretty good position and then to falter here late, that’s tough," Tolleson said. "Everyone would be lying if they said we weren’t all trying to come up with the big hit instead of just letting the game come as it may.
"That’s the tough part of this game, but everyone that’s played it would understand. We’ve got 30 games left, five weeks, we’re going to give it our best and play it out to the very end and we’ll see what happens."
After Pedroia’s single, Mike Napoli added an exclamation point a few batters later with a three-run shot off Sergio Santos into the fifth deck, just the 17th homer to ever travel that far at Rogers Centre, and Allen Craig followed with a two-run blast that brought in Tolleson, who struck out Will Middlebrooks and got Mookie Betts on fly ball to the wall in left.
"We’re not proud of that," manager John Gibbons said of using Tolleson twice as a pitcher.
Casey Janssen aided the winning rally along by misplaying a pair of sacrifice bunts after Betts’ leadoff single – he went for the lead runner on Christian Vazquez’s bunt but replay overturned an out call at second on Betts, then failed to barehand Brock Holt’s bunt to load the bases for Pedroia.
"It was a lot worse than it should have been," said Janssen, who was thinking second base right away on the Vazquez bunt and had a teammate yell "two" as well. "I was aggressive, I know Betts runs well, shoot, I’d do it again."
The grotesque end underlined how hard every single thing is right now for the Blue Jays (66-66), who are 6-16 so far in August and back at .500 for the first time since they were 21-21 on May 15.
They also fell to 10-5 against the Red Sox (58-74) after going to extra innings for the fourth straight game and in six of their past seven contests. Chances to score were wasted in the ninth and 10th innings, not to mention in many other innings before that.
"I don’t necessarily think the approach is bad, we just didn’t get the results," Gibbons said of his team’s batting with men in scoring position. "I still believe normally, when most pitchers get in jams, they go soft with guys in scoring position. Not all of them, but a lot of them, that’s kind of what they do. If you’re in hook mode, they’re going to get you and we rolled over some balls, if you shoot some balls the other way it might get a different result.
"But there are people out in the baseball world that don’t think RBIs are important. Well (1-for-17 with RISP) … those are RBIs."
Dickey’s first inning was like a microcosm of the team’s recent woes, striking out Holt to lead off the game only for Josh Thole to whiff on strike three allowing the sparkplug shortstop to reach. Pedroia followed with a two-run homer that opened the scoring, and then with two out and a man on, a Craig walk set the stage for Middlebrooks, who doubled in a third run.
The Blue Jays limited the damage on the play by throwing out Craig at home trying to score on the play, but things should never have gotten that far in the first place. But that’s how things are going right now for them.
Also symbolic of how things have been going for them was the bottom of the first, when Jose Reyes and Melky Cabrera reached to open the inning only for Jose Bautista, Adam Lind and Edwin Encarnacion to each fly out and end the inning.
Their first run scored in the third on Cabrera’s RBI groundout, their second on Munenori Kawasaki’s two-out bloop single in the fourth and their third on Encarnacion’s RBI fielder’s choice in the fifth. A bigger inning was at hand each time.
Dustin McGowan gave the lead back in the seventh when he issued consecutive one-out walks ahead of a Yoenis Cespedes RBI single, and after Brett Cecil cleaned up the mess by striking out Mike Napoli and Daniel Nava to limit the damage, Bautista launched his 25th homer of the year to knot things up 4-4.
The Blue Jays didn’t score again until the bottom of the 11th, once things were out of hand, as Dioner Navarro hit a two-out, two-run double and Danny Valencia followed with another run-scoring double, pushing their total to 3-for-20 with men in scoring position.
Too little, too late.
"If we wanted to fold up we would have folded up a long time ago," Tolleson said. "Everyone in here wants to win and everyone wants to win bad, so we’re going to keep coming out whether we win or lose the day before and start again fresh tomorrow."
The Blue Jays are now 20-40 in games when their opponents draw first blood, and 46-26 when they strike first. But no matter how many fresh starts they get lately, more often than not they end up with the same rotten result.