TORONTO – Periodically over the course of 162 games every team drops a stinker, a really bad one that everybody tries to get away from as quickly as possible.
That was Tuesday night for the Toronto Blue Jays in a 9-2 thumping from the Tampa Bay Rays. They played a total dud, and were fortunate to have only allowed nine runs. They built enough rallies to counter that total but didn’t see them through.
Basically, there was nothing redeeming to be found before a crowd of 43,134. The fans actually booed the home side on a couple of occasions.
“It’s just one of those days,” said Marco Estrada. “That’s a good team over there, but we didn’t play as well as we could have.”
No, pretty far from it, actually.
Estrada – making his first start in a week due to the club’s six-man rotation and wondering if next time he should through a longer bullpen in between – managed to break the century mark in pitches for the first time since aggravating his lower back June 15 at Philadelphia. But his 113 pitches came over five innings of high-wire walking.
Still, the Blue Jays looked like they might climb back into the game when Estrada got out of a bases-loaded jam in the top of the fifth by striking out Luke Maile and responded with a sacrifice fly by Melvin Upton Jr., and a Devon Travis RBI single cut the Rays lead to 3-2 in the bottom half.
And even after the Rays tacked on a pair of runs in the sixth off rookie Danny Barnes, who was optioned to triple-A Buffalo for a fresh arm after the game, the Blue Jays promptly loaded the bases with none out in the bottom half.
But Drew Smyly recovered to pop up Troy Tulowitzki on the first pitch, strike out Michael Saunders on a vicious curveball, and pop up Justin Smoak to emerge unscathed.
“That’s the difference-maker right there,” said Blue Jays manager John Gibbons. “You come back and put a couple more up, who knows how things change. … We’re putting guys on base, we’ve got some traffic, we’re just looking for that big blow.”
The Rays delivered those big blows in the seventh when they dinged Scott Feldman for a four-spot, and it was off to garbage time.
Smyly, who came in having allowed only five earned runs over his previous three starts, pitched well over his six frames but was also gettable at times. In the first, Jose Bautista’s one-out double was followed by a Josh Donaldson walk before they came up empty.
The two-run rally in the fifth started when the Blue Jays loaded the bases with none out and after they pushed two across, ended when Bautista’s one-hop smash to second was fielded cleverly by Logan Forsythe and turned into an inning-ending double play.
“I wanted to go right at him and challenge him, I was going to go fastball in,” Smyly said of his approach to Bautista. “He put a good swing on it … luckily Bautista hit it right at Logan.”
Then, of course, there was the sixth, when their recent issues hitting with runners in scoring position continued. Saunders had two career homers in eight at-bats against Smyly coming in and added a single in the fifth before the pivotal strikeout.
“I think both times he got me [for home runs] it was a fastball out over the plate so in that situation, I was going to throw him something soft, make him earn it, hopefully get a groundball, but I’ll take the strikeout,” said Smyly. “When I got to Smoak, I just wanted to go right at him and challenge him and I was able to get that pop up.”
The Blue Jays finished the game 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position and since July 31, they’re 10-for-65, or. 154. Meanwhile, the Rays went 6-for-14.
“Maybe a little bit overly aggressive,” Gibbons said of his team’s approach with men on base. “But I’ve seen that before everywhere you go, everybody goes through it. You get in those ruts where you have trouble scoring a lot of runs and that’s kind of what happens. People don’t want to hear it but that’s baseball, and if you’ve been around baseball a while you’ve seen that. You’ve just got to battle your way through it.”
Making matters worse is that the Blue Jays had a rough day in the field, too.
In the third, Bautista stumbled after fielding a Kiermaier single and getting ready to throw to third base, then wildly flipped the ball to cut-off man Travis, allowing the lead runner to take third.
Estrada worked out of that spot unscathed, but a Travis error on Forsythe’s single off the mound – he dropped the ball on an attempted throw – allowed Corey Dickerson to trot home with a second run.
In the fifth, Estrada caught Steven Souza Jr., taking off from first with a pickoff throw, but Smoak threw to third when Mikie Mahtook broke for home but fled back to the base and no out was recorded.
Estrada allowed seven hits and walked four, matching a season-high, while allowing three runs, two earned, over his five innings. Of his 113 pitches, only 64 were strikes.
“I wasn’t missing by much,” said Estrada. “Certain at-bats I was all over the place, but a few I didn’t think I missed by much. I guess because I was wild I didn’t get those calls. That’s my own fault. I’ve got to pitch better than that. These things are going to happen once in a while.
“We were in the game, we had Smyly on the ropes and he put it together and got out of some big jams. Tip your hat to him.”
After a night like that, not much else they can do.