OAKLAND, Calif. – Something R.A. Dickey has managed to largely avoid this season is the big-blow home run, the type with multiple runners aboard that usually helps decide a game’s outcome. Of the 20 longballs he’d allowed coming into his outing Saturday afternoon, 16 were solo shots, the other four two-run drives. Those can be worked around for offences like that of the Toronto Blue Jays.
The three-run homer struck by Ryon Healy, on the other hand, proved to be a far more difficult obstacle to overcome in a 5-4 loss to the Oakland Athletics. The rookie third baseman, promoted Friday as part of a prospect push, cranked a 66 mph, 2-2 knuckler over the wall in left for his first big-league hit, a drive that came four batters after Khris Davis hit the first of his two solo shots to open the second inning.
The Blue Jays trailed 4-2 at that point and never got level again.
“If you got the ball up in the air today, it was going to go,” said Dickey. “Unfortunately, I left one up, but that’s the first slow knuckleball I’ve thrown in four years that’s gotten hit out, so I thought it was a safe pitch. It just kind of timed him up.”
Dickey allowed at least three homers in a start for the third time this season, and has given up 10 over his past five starts, four of them June 25 in Chicago. Still, he’d won three of his past four outings, so Saturday was a bit of an aberration. The Blue Jays (51-42) won eight of nine heading into the all-star break, but have dropped their first two to the lowly Athletics (40-51) as play has resumed.
“The timing (of the all-star break) wasn’t good,” said manager John Gibbons. “(But) we haven’t pitched – the last two starts haven’t been good, that’s been the difference. We scored plenty (in an 8-7 loss Friday) night and then we scored some today. That’s the way it goes sometimes.”
Added Dickey: “It’s a strange thing, but we’ve been playing well, we just hit a snag here, our starting pitching is limping out of the break, me and (Marcus Stroman), but that’s only one little turn of the rotation, we’ll be there when it matters.”
Sonny Gray deserves some credit for that, as he kept the Blue Jays contained before an Oakland Coliseum crowd of 27,510. Josh Thole opened the scoring in the second with an RBI double – the second straight game in which he’s doubled in a pair – and Edwin Encarnacion opened up the third with a solo shot that cut the Athletics’ lead to 4-3.
“Good for Josh,” said Gibbons. “He’s coming to life a bit with the bat so that’s good to see. He doesn’t play a whole lot, he works his butt off practising, so good for him.”
But the offence withered from there, a two-on, two-out rally in the fourth started by a Thole single petering out when a Josh Donaldson laser to short was picked cleverly by Marcus Semien at short and relayed to first to end the threat.
Dickey was lifted after he issued a leadoff walk to Semien in the seventh, and the Athletics looked set to open things up as Drew Storen hit Jake Smolinski before surrendering a single to Healy that seemed to have scored Semien.
But the Blue Jays challenged and Semien was called out because his front leg was off the plate as he slid into home and Thole tagged his head before his back leg made contact with the plate. Aaron Loup took over and managed to escape the rest of the inning unscathed and keep the deficit at 5-3.
“It happened so fast. It was pretty bang bang. I didn’t know if he got to home plate. He hit my foot and my shin guard. That was the question and then watching the replay you could tell. Really good throw,” said Thole.
Justin Smoak, fresh off signing an $8.25-million, two-year extension, hit a solo shot in the ninth that pulled the Blue Jays within one, but again, solo shots are easier to survive. The big blow they needed on this day didn’t arrive.
