TORONTO – Seven blown saves. Nearly 41 percent of inherited runners allowed to score. Just two victories in 22 tries when the offence puts up four runs or less.
This is how a season of promise is slowly dissolving for the Toronto Blue Jays, who once again failed when it was close and late in a 4-3 loss to the Los Angeles Angels on Wednesday night.
They coughed up a one-run lead in the seventh inning for a second straight night, pissing away a solid effort from Drew Hutchison in falling to a season-worst six games under .500 at 18-24. If not for the garbage pile the AL East has been so far, they’d be far worse than 4.5 games off the division lead.
Regardless, the Blue Jays have lost seven of their last eight games, and are 2-8 in one-run contests.
What a recurring mess.
“We need to win and I need to go out there and give us a performance for us to win,” said Hutchison, admirably trying to take ownership for the loss. “The offence did their job again, we’re not doing ours, and we need to do a better job or the offence goes out the window when they give us what they need to do. They gave us plenty [tonight] and we didn’t get the job done.”
Pity manager John Gibbons, as no matter what he can’t find the right buttons to push to nurse a slim lead home — especially on days when Roberto Osuna isn’t available, like Wednesday.
A toddler mashing a keyboard has as much chance of landing on the right combination as he does right now.
“These are our guys and I’ve got confidence in all of them, we’re just in a little rough patch right now,” said Gibbons. “These are our guys and we’ll ride it out with them. We’ve seen every one of them good at one time or another in their careers here, so just keep going after it, keep attacking.
“That’s all you can do. Things turn. In this game you get on those roles good and bad, maybe something like a little walk-off win every now and then might help, get everybody feeling good about themselves again.”
Changing the vibe is important, although this current stretch of adversity offers the Blue Jays an early test of their character and resolve. Will they manage to trudge through the current morass to eventually fight on higher ground, or will they wilt amid the struggles?
Adding to the challenge is a starting lineup stripped down to four regulars, two backups and three minor-leaguers. Even still, the Blue Jays built a 3-1 lead against Jered Weaver on a Chris Colebello RBI double, an Ezequiel Carrera run-scoring single, and a Danny Valencia RBI double, while Hutchison brought them to within seven outs of victory with a 3-2 edge.
Burned in Tuesday’s 3-2 loss when he gave Aaron Sanchez extra rope to come back out for the eighth inning, Gibbons decided to pull Hutchison with two on and two out in the seventh and Marc Krauss due. In came Steve Delabar, who promptly delivered a wild pitch that advanced the runners, before his 1-2 splitter to Krauss was lined into the left-centre field gap to put the Angels up 4-3.
Prior to that decisive at-bat, left-handed hitters were 0-for-8 with three walks against Delabar in the majors, and 1-for-21 with four walks at triple-A.
“I thought we had the perfect matchup there with Delabar, especially with the way he’s been getting lefties out,” said Gibbons. “Krauss came into the game replacing [Albert] Pujols (who left with a hand contusion), you don’t want to pitch to Trout there. [Krauss] hung in there, got a split, got the big hit to put them up. It’s still a one-run game, but we just couldn’t mount anything late.
“You just deal with it.”
Erick Aybar and Mike Trout became the 25th and 26th inherited runners the Blue Jays bullpen has allowed to score out of 64, the worst strand rate in the majors.
You can’t win games like that, and the Blue Jays haven’t been.
“It’s a part of the game, we can look back at this in a couple of months and just laugh at it when things turn around,” said Delabar. “Right now, it’s not a lot of fun. The starter’s out there doing his job, and then we come in and end up giving it up. It’s not a lot of fun, especially when you come in the clubhouse and it’s kind of … it’s not a good feeling.”
The real shame is that Hutchison deserved a better fate in this one, allowing four runs on six hits and two walks in 6.2 innings with five strikeouts.
It was his third straight start and he kept a tight grip on this one throughout the outing, falling behind 1-0 on Matt Joyce’s bases loaded walk in the fourth, and then allowing a Trout solo shot in the fifth after being staked to a 3-1 lead.
Hutchison held it there until the seventh, when with two out and a runner on, he pitched around Trout to set the stage for Delabar-versus-Krauss.
“I went back and looked and it was a pretty good pitch, but it wasn’t the right pitch,” Delabar said of the fateful splitter. “We could have set it up differently, but like I said it was a good one, [Krauss] was just kind of leaning out and got a barrel on it.”
That Hutchison delivered a third straight strong outing is good news, but that the Blue Jays continue not to capitalize on it is worrying.
He left after six with a 4-2 lead in his last start in Houston and ended with up a no-decision after the bullpen coughed up that one. The same thing happened a couple days later against the Astros in a game Marco Estrada started, prompting Josh Donaldson to say afterwards, “This isn’t the try league, this is the get it done league.”
The Blue Jays aren’t getting it done, and they may not have the weapons to change that, even once they’re healthy. Their bullpen is healthy and consistently ineffective, and that’s something much trickier to fix.