BOSTON – The final tally from the Toronto Blue Jays’ opening month tour of the AL East is a 9-10 record after Wednesday night’s 4-1 loss to the Boston Red Sox, very much reflective of what’s been a feast or famine beginning to the new season.
A solid start from R.A. Dickey, in which he allowed four runs on nine hits and no walks over seven much-needed innings, went to waste as an offence that blasted Clay Buchholz the previous night was totally contained by Rick Porcello.
The end result leaves the Blue Jays 1-5 so far on their road trip heading into Cleveland for four games with the Indians, having been swept over the weekend in Tampa Bay and dropping two of three at Fenway Park in their first meeting of the season with the Red Sox.
They’re 10-12 overall.
“As a team we haven’t hit our stride yet, we’re showing flashes, then we’re backing off it,” said Dickey. “We’ve got a lot of good things in this team going forward, there are a lot of things that are right there on the edge. Once we start putting it together, I think you’re going to see us make a pretty significant run. We’ve battled through some injuries here early, if we can just keep our head above water for a little while, we’re going to hit our stride and be really good.
“We haven’t consistently pitched well. We’ll pitch well, and then we won’t pitch well, and there’s a consistency there that we’re really striving for that I think’s there. We’ll get to it.”
Some bad luck meant the Blue Jays’ lone rally, when they loaded the bases with none out in the second, resulted in just a single run, as Josh Thole’s liner went off Xander Bogaerts’ glove to bring Kevin Pillar home.
But Michael Saunders was thrown out at third by centre-fielder Mookie Betts after retreating to second in case Bogaerts caught the ball at short, and Ryan Goins followed by hitting into an inning-ending double play.
The Red Sox, whose pitching has been as off-and-on as that of the Blue Jays, rolled from there.
“Saunders did everything right on that play,” said manager John Gibbons. “Line drive in the infield, no outs, you head back there because you don’t want to get doubled up. Give credit to Betts, hustling over there and getting that force out at third base.”
Dickey gave up three runs in the decisive third on a David Ortiz RBI single and Hanley Ramirez’s two-run homer off a flat 0-2 knuckler, and another in the seventh on Mookie Betts’ RBI single. But he was in the zone far more than he was in his previous outing in Tampa, when he surrendered eight runs in 4.2 innings.
More importantly, he also struck out four, getting some of the swing-and-miss he’d been lacking back in his game.
“Everything was better tonight,” said Dickey. “Mechanically I was better, my body felt better, the ball was reacting well, perhaps in this climate, but it was a better night physically for me, too. You’re going to have those games like Tampa, hopefully you only have one or two a year, and you have a lot more games where you look back and have gone six, seven or eight innings and given up two runs or less. That’s the kind of consistency I hope for for my team.”
The loss extended the Blue Jays’ mixed bag of results against their AL East rivals. Apart from being 1-2 against the Red Sox, they’re also 1-6 against the Tampa Bay Rays, but are 5-1 against the Baltimore Orioles, and 2-1 versus the New York Yankees, who visit Toronto on Monday.
“It’s lumped up,” Gibbons said before the game. “It might be like that all year in the division, a lot of parity, it seems to be, anyway. It takes some more games before you find out really who you are.”
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OUT AT HOME: The Blue Jays and Red Sox suffered through a six minute 20 second replay delay after Boston manager John Farrell unsuccessfully challenged an out call at home in the seventh inning.
Xander Bogaerts tried to score from second on Mookie Betts’ RBI single but a strong throw from right-fielder Michael Saunders to catcher Josh Thole easily beat him. The Red Sox argued that Thole didn’t give the runner a lane, and the umpire crew had to go down the tunnel into the Blue Jays clubhouse because the headsets on the field didn’t work.
“To overturn that would have been a mockery of the game,” said John Gibbons. “He did everything right, the throw kind of took him in there a little bit, he backed up on the hop, he was dead out. They weren’t going to overturn that one.”
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NATURE OF THE BEAST: The flat 0-2 knuckler that Hanley Ramirez pounded over the monster for his 10th homer was R.A. Dickey’s one major mistake of the night. And while the pitch underscored the knuckleball’s volatility, in his eyes it was still a mistake.
“You have to surrender to the outcome once you let it go,” he said. “If it would have been either of the first two pitches I threw to him to get to 0-2, it probably would have been another strikeout or a weakly hit ball. Sometimes that’s what you have to accept with the nature of the pitch – it may remain flat. I went back and looked at it, I threw it the same way I did the previous two pitches and that one just didn’t take. I’m not using that as an excuse, that’s why I say I made a mistake.
“It was a mistake because it was in the hitting zone, there are certain things I could do like bury it away, when I have 0-2 I could hang on to it a little longer, I could make sure that if did miss, I missed for a ball, things like that. That’s in my power to do, and I did not execute that. I want to own that, but you do sometimes have to say it’s a knuckleball, you know?
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HUTCHISON STRUGGLES: The seven innings from R.A. Dickey were especially important after Drew Hutchison managed just four frames the previous night. It’s the second time this season the young right-hander failed to make it through five on a big offensive night for his club.
“Obviously I need to be better, I expect to be better and I don’t have any doubt I will be better,” said Hutchison. “It comes down to fastball command and my arm slot, I was searching for it the whole time. Inconsistent fastball command leads to everything else. …
“You just need to make an adjustment, it’s that simple. Do it. We can talk about everything we want to talk about, but I just need to be better, be what I’m capable of being and be what I need to be.”
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SAUNDERS FINDING RHYTHM: Michael Saunders was breathing easier Wednesday after collecting his first two hits with the Blue Jays on Tuesday, following up that effort with a walk, a reached on an error and an outfield assist before being pinch-hit for in the ninth.
“I was maybe pressing a little too hard for a result instead of getting good quality at-bats,” Saunders said before the game. “Now, that (first hit) gives me a chance to relax a little bit. With everything involved, coming off knee surgery, traded to a new club, I definitely wanted to get off to a good start and I feel like I was putting too much pressure on myself.”