TORONTO — It was more than a little unlikely that the Toronto Blue Jays starting pitching would continue to be as good as it was through the season’s first six weeks. They’re humans, after all. They had to return to earth at some point. But no one was expecting it to be this sudden.
On Tuesday, for the second straight night, the Tampa Bay Rays absolutely rocked a Blue Jays starting pitcher, this time Marcus Stroman, who allowed seven runs on 13 hits—both career highs—as Toronto fell, 12-2.
“It was just one of those days,” Stroman said. “That’s part of the game. That’s baseball. You really have to put it in perspective and know and do everything you can to wash a start, whether it be good or bad, and just focus on the next four days of preparing for the next one. I realize I’m going to have days like that. I never get discouraged, regardless of the outing.”
Blue Jays fans, on the other hand, are more prone to discouragement, and will tell you they have plenty of reason to be pessimistic following four straight losses including back-to-back blowouts at the hands of the Rays.
For most of the season it’s been the Blue Jays bats that have struggled to produce, while the starting pitching has been consistently reliable. But in these past two games, the entire machine has been malfunctioning.
“It’s been a tough two days—pretty ugly,” said Jose Bautista, who drove in his club’s lone two runs Tuesday with a first-inning homer. “But it’s just two days. I see a lot of good signs. I see better at-bats, which I think is ultimately how everything starts.
“It’s not about just going up there and getting hits. It’s bout playing the game of baseball, getting on base, moving runner over, and scoring them. Things will fall in place once we start doing that. Because the pitching’s definitely doing its job.”
After going 19 straight games with an outing of at least six innings and carrying the American League’s best staff ERA well into May, Blue Jays starters have given up 15 runs in their last two games. First, there was J.A. Happ’s two-inning implosion Monday night. And Tuesday, Stroman had one of his own.
Tampa Bay got to Stroman in each of his first three innings, beginning with two outs in the first when Steve Pearce drove in Evan Longoria with a strong double to deep left-centre field off a two-seamer Stroman left up and over the plate.
The Rays got a couple more two-out hits in the second, including a Brad Miller triple on a well-located fastball, to put three more runs on the board. Then, in the third, they strung together two singles and a fielder’s choice to score one more. The five earned runs through three innings matched Stroman’s season-high for any outing this year.
“You know, I thought he had good stuff. The ball was coming out of his hand pretty good,” said acting Blue Jays manager DeMarlo Hale. “They put the bat on the ball. Some well-hit balls. Some choppers that got through. But I thought the ball was coming out of his hand pretty good.”
Stroman steadied during his fourth inning, but the Rays resumed hitting him all over the yard in the fifth, stringing together a double and two singles to plate two more. He allowed his 13th hit with two out in the sixth off the bat of Longoria and then walked Pearce behind him before Hale lifted him from the game.
“They did a great job of putting the ball in play. I fell behind in some counts and they did a good job of capitalizing when they needed to with timely hits,” Stroman said. “They definitely took advantage of me falling behind in counts and did some damage.”
Stroman did fall behind 14 of the 31 batters he faced and was only able to generate eight swinging strikes on the night. He leaned on his two-seam fastball, as he does, using it for more than half of his pitches, but nine of the 16 two-seamers the Rays put in play weren’t turned into outs.
And it’s not like Stroman got baseball’ed or BABIP’ed or was even generally unlucky. He was up in the zone much of the night and the Rays were clearly seeing his pitches well as nine of the 13 hits he allowed came off the bat at 97 mph or faster.
“My stuff felt great. My arm felt loose. I felt like I had a little more velocity than I’ve had in the past. But it was just one of those days,” Stroman said. “I’m not going to over-analyze it by any means. I’ll do everything I can to just wash it and focus on the next one.”
Offensively, as is their wont, the Blue Jays pushed a starting pitcher to the ropes in the first inning before eventually letting him off the hook and bending to his will for the rest of the evening.
On this night, it was Chris Archer. Bautista tagged the Rays ace early, crushing a 95-mph fastball more than 400 feet to dead centre for a two-run shot in the first. Then Edwin Encarnacion and Troy Tulowitzki reached base behind him, but Archer got Kevin Pillar to ground into the third out with his 32nd pitch of the inning.
From there: cruise control. Archer allowed just four more base runners through the sixth, striking out seven Blue Jays in the process. He walked four on the evening, but Toronto never threatened with the bats at any point after the first.
“You’ve just gotta continue to have good at-bats, get men on base, and then figure out a way to drive them in,” Bautista said when asked what the Blue Jays need to do to carry over first-inning success. “We’re a group that has good plate discipline and we’re taking a lot of borderline pitches that just aren’t going our way. But that happens.
“We’ve got to grind those at-bats out and not let it affect us negatively. Any way we can, we’ve got to scrape runs here and there. And when those three-run homers come, they’ll come. We can’t just go up to the plate all the time in search of that.”
The night shifted from mildly depressing to thoroughly soul-crushing for Blue Jays fans in the seventh. Freshly recalled reliever Pat Venditte retired the first two batters of the inning, as he attempted to keep the score somewhat reasonable at 7-2. But then, after Venditte allowed a single on a weak groundball, Josh Donaldson booted a pair of makeable plays at third that should have ended the inning. That’s when Brad Miller doubled to bring both those errors home, pushing the Rays’ lead to eight, which was well more than they’d need on a second consecutive bleak night at Rogers Centre.
“When you look at this game, a lot went well for them,” Hale said. “It’s one of those games. You put it behind you as quick as possible and you bounce back tomorrow. That’s the easiest way that I can look at it. You play this game long enough, and you’re going to have those games and some disappointment. But we’ll put it behind us and we’ll come back tomorrow.”