Save for an astounding 20-4 run in late May and early June, the Toronto Blue Jays haven’t been making things easy on themselves this season, and they continued to do so Saturday evening in St. Petersburg.
After rebounding from a seventh-inning blown save to win the series opener on Friday night, Toronto was buoyed by the news that Rays’ ace David Price wasn’t going to be able to pitch Saturday because of a stomach virus. The Jays couldn’t take advantage. A win would have given them their first road series victory against the Tampa Bay Rays since 2007 — with a chance to sweep — but now they’ll have to take the finale in order to get that done, possibly against Price.
Even though the final score wasn’t close, a first-inning run by the Rays told the story of the current 11-22 run on which the Blue Jays find themselves. Kevin Kiermaier led off the bottom of the first with what should have been only a ground-ball single to right field, but he ran hard out of the box and when he saw Anthony Gose playing it rather routinely, was able to hustle it into a double.
Kiermaier moved to third on a Ben Zobrist fly ball to centre – Colby Rasmus made a terrible throw, but a good one probably wouldn’t have gotten the speedy Rays’ leadoff man anyway. Matt Joyce followed with another fly ball to centre, scoring Kiermaier to give Tampa Bay the early lead.
If Gose — playing in his first game since being recalled from triple-A Buffalo for the injured Nolan Reimold — had been hustling on defence as much as Kiermaier was on the bases, the Rays’ outfielder never never would have thought about taking second and wouldn’t have been able to advance on either one of those fly balls.
It was just another one of those plays that we’ve seen too often lately: a lack of hustle on defence goes onto the list along with a bad decision to try to steal third, a base rounded too far to get back, throws to the wrong base. These are the kinds of things that no team can overcome on a regular basis, let alone a team missing one-third of its starting lineup.
And, of course, the walks.
Going into Saturday’s game, only two teams in the majors had issued more walks than the Blue Jays’ 314, and the Jays added eight more to that total in the loss, Drew Hutchison handing out five of them.
Hutchison escaped damage from back-to-back one-out walks in the third inning, wriggling out of it with a couple of ground balls, but the free passes were his undoing in the pivotal sixth. He walked James Loney and Yunel Escobar around a single by Brandon Guyer, loading the bases with nobody out. Left in to face Jose Molina, Hutchison struck him out only to walk pinch-hitter Cole Figueroa and force in the go-ahead run.
The floodgates opened from there.
Hutchison gave way to J.A. Happ, the lefty having been available out of the bullpen because R.A. Dickey was moved up to start the final game of the “first half,” and Happ came on to get three straight ground balls. Two of them found the hole between short and third, the other was chopped over Juan Francisco’s head into left field. By the time Happ popped up Evan Longoria to end the inning, a close 3-2 game had become an 8-2 rout.
Everyone needs to pick it up when a team is hemorrhaging and playing the back-ups’ back-ups. That’s when it’s most important to tighten things up and control what one can.
No pitcher can control what happens once a batter puts the ball in play, but he can make sure every batter he faces has to earn his way on base. No batter can control what happens once he puts the ball in play, but he can control what he does once he gets on the bases – how far he strays and when he chooses to attempt to nab an extra base in order to make sure he’s not giving away any outs. No defender can control whether or not the ball is hit to him, but it’s well within his power to make sure he gets on the ball as quickly as he can when it is, throw to the right base and hit the cut-off man.
The Blue Jays are failing to execute what they have the ability to control, and that has much more to do with them losing two-thirds of their games since their high-water mark of 38-24 than it does injuries.
Amazingly, Toronto is just three games out of first place in the AL East and a win away from 50 victories at the all-star break.