KANSAS CITY — Asked to sum up his team’s loss to the Kansas City Royals Sunday, John Gibbons quickly turned the question around on the assembled media.
“How many did we score?” the Blue Jays manager asked, to which a reporter accurately responded, one. “Well, there ya go.”
Such is life for the Blue Jays offence of late, which continued to sputter in Sunday’s 7-1 defeat that brought an end to this seven-game road swing through Texas and Missouri. The Blue Jays scored just 17 runs on the trip, or 2.4 per game, and haven’t scored more than four runs since July 30 when they plated nine against the Baltimore Orioles.
Practically every player in the lineup outside of the red-hot Devon Travis struggled to produce over the seven games. Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion each went 5-for-27; Michael Saunders and Melvin Upton Jr. both went 3-for-22. Russell Martin was 4-for-21; Kevin Pillar was 3-for-20; Darwin Barney was 1-for-18.
The Blue Jays mustered just 16 extra-base hits on the trip, six of them doubles and 10 of them home runs, each one a solo shot. They hit .138 (5-for-36) with runners in scoring position and left 48 runners on base over the seven games. You can safely call that a slump.
“Everybody goes through that,” Gibbons said. “But we really haven’t been swinging them good since the beginning of that last homestand. We’ve kind of been in a little rut.”
And yet, the Blue Jay finished the trip with more wins (4) than losses (3), which speaks to how well the club’s starters have been pitching. Toronto took three of four from the Houston Astros earlier this week despite scoring just 10 runs in the series, and edged out a tight one-run victory in the first game of this weekend’s set with the Royals.
But over the next two days the Blue Jays simply weren’t able to keep up with a Kansas City offence that created runs with timely hitting and team speed.
“Today was a little bit frustrating but it’s always tough playing here. They’re the world champs for a reason,” Gibbons said. “They held us in check after we snuck that one out Friday night.”
Royals starter Yordano Ventura looked vulnerable at times Sunday, but managed to contain the Blue Jays through 6.2 innings, stranding six baserunners. He didn’t allow an extra-base hit and was able to erase all four of his walks.
The Blue Jays didn’t get on the board until the seventh when Royals reliever Peter Moylan threw a wild pitch that allowed Barney to scamper home from third. But that was all for the Blue Jays, who will hope a return to Rogers Centre can spark their struggling offence.
“Our guys are some of the best hitters in the league—the drought’s not going to last,” said Marcus Stroman, who started for the Blue Jays on Sunday. “It’s just one of those spurts. I’m sure they’ll break out pretty soon.”
Stroman was mostly fine facing a Royals lineup that didn’t make it easy for him on an overcast afternoon. The Blue Jays starter wasn’t nearly as efficient as he’d like to be, often working deep into counts as Kansas City hitters fouled off tough two-seamers down in the zone. But he allowed only three runs on seven hits in his five innings, striking out four and walking a pair.
“They just kept fouling off and fouling off good pitches that I was making. They kind of spoiled them until they got a good pitch to hit,” Stroman said. “It was one of those days where I felt like I was battling all day.”
The second inning was Stroman’s trickiest to navigate, as the Royals small-balled their way to a two-run lead. Kendrys Morales led off with a walk but was eliminated at second on an Alex Gordon groundball that could have turned two had Stroman not thrown high to Troy Tulowitzki at second base, giving Gordon enough time to reach first safely.
“I just didn’t put it where I wanted to. I can make that play 10 out of 10 times if it happens again,” Stroman said. “But it’s baseball and it’s just one of those plays that I didn’t make in the moment and it ended up costing me.”
Then Paulo Orlando singled; and Drew Butera singled; and Raul Mondesi singled, this time on a bunt back to the pitcher that Stroman threw up the right field line as Kansas City’s second run scored and Butera moved to third. It was Stroman’s second throwing error of the day—he airmailed a pickoff attempt in the first—which brings his career total to three.
“Obviously, Mondesi’s extremely fast, so you’ve got to hurry with him,” Stroman said. “They’re a dynamic team with the speed. They don’t have to beat you with homers. They’re looking to move the ball, move runners. They’re very fast and they put the ball in play. It’s just one those teams that you really need to be able to lock in against and limit.”
Stroman bounced back nicely from that inning, retiring the next four batters he faced and working out of a two-on, one-out bind in the fourth. But in the fifth he left a two-seamer up to Alcides Escobar and watched as the Royals shortstop hit it just over the centre field wall to give the Royals a 3-0 lead. Stroman got out of the inning, but with his pitch count at 95 his day ended there.
This wasn’t an easy outing for Stroman, as Kansas City put up pesky at-bats and drove him from the game much earlier than he would have liked. But he was encouraged by his ability to locate his two-seamer down in the zone, a key factor to his season turnaround since early July. After pitching to a 5.33 ERA through his first 16 starts, the 25-year-old has logged a 3.52 ERA over his next seven, demonstrating much better command of his pitches.
“I feel like my sinker is where it needs to be,” Stroman said. “It’s just a matter of mixing in my other pitches in certain counts. But I’m happy with my fastball and the fact that it’s down in the zone.”
Kansas City’s maddening small-ball didn’t stop when Stroman left, as the Royals started the bottom of the seventh with three consecutive soft singles, one of them an Escobar bunt that rolled perfectly into a Bermuda triangle of Blue Jays defenders. The Blue Jays nearly escaped the jam as Scott Feldman and Brett Cecil struck out Lorenzo Cain and Eric Hosmer with the bases loaded. But then Morales jumped all over a first-pitch fastball from Cecil and crushed it 459-feet to dead centre field for a grand slam that blew the game open.
Still, the Royals never needed those runs as the Blue Jays offence continued to spin its wheels. While it goes down as a winning one, this road trip was still woeful for practically every hitter in Toronto’s lineup. And if the Blue Jays had only gotten a little bit more offensive life in timely situations, the results could have been that much better.
“I think our goal is definitely to win every series. So, winning the Houston series is where we want to be. But I don’t think we’re leaving Kansas City satisfied at all,” Stroman said. “We go into every series looking to win. That’s the only mentality that we have. So, we definitely didn’t get what we wanted in this series.”