TORONTO, Ont. – The Blue Jays opened the month of May the same way they played most of April – poorly.
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Here are three things that stood out to me about the Red Sox’ rout:
NO SUCH THING AS MOMENTUM
If there was, the Blue Jays would have beaten the Red Sox pretty easily Wednesday night. They had a huge, emotional win in the series opener and carried that "momentum" by managing all of two hits and only getting one runner past first base against Boston ace Clay Buchholz.
The great, long, grounded-out at-bats of the night before were gone, though Buchholz probably deserves quite a bit of credit for that but it was just a different Blue Jays’ team – as we’ve seen after each of their prior big, emotional wins.
The Jays rallied from 6-1 down to beat the Tigers on April 10, but lost 11-1 the next day. On April 24, they beat the Orioles 6-5 in 11 innings, fighting off a Baltimore comeback and throwing out the winning run at the plate in the tenth, then went to New York and jumped in front of the Yankees 3-1 in the second inning of the opener, before getting only one hit the rest of the way in a 5-3 loss and then went on to lose the next three games to get swept.
Hall of Fame Orioles’ manager Earl Weaver famously said that momentum is "the next day’s starting pitcher," and he was right. As emotional a game as baseball is, you can’t win with grit, hustle and by outworking the other guy, since – unlike the other major sports – you can’t ever take the ball away from the other team; you have to wait your turn. "Wanting it more" doesn’t help, and even a team that’s on fire can be methodically taken apart by a great starting pitcher.
Not that the Blue Jays were on fire or anything.
KEEP THE DOOR CLOSED
It seems every time the Blue Jays have given their opponents an opening this season, they’ve taken advantage. This game was no different.
Mark Buehrle gave up naught but an infield single through the first six hitters he faced, and he had two out with nobody on in the top of the second with a 1-2 count on .194 hitter Will Middlebrooks when he hit Middlebrooks on the foot, giving him free passage to first base. The next hitter, Stephen Drew, took Buehrle into the 200 level down the right-field line for his first home run as a Red Sock, giving Boston the lead they would never relinquish.
Buehrle was fine the rest of the way, taking the game into the seventh inning, save for back-to-back homers by Mike Napoli and Daniel Nava leading off the fourth. Again, as most Blue Jays’ pitchers have this season, he had no margin for error with which to work.
REALLY, MELKY?
Melky Cabrera is off to a rough start this season, and he came up to the plate in the bottom of the seventh hitting .236/.286/.282 and already 0-for-2 on the night. There was a runner on first, one out and the Blue Jays’ deficit had just gone from four runs to eight.
Cabrera ripped a Buchholz offering into the right field corner, off the wall on a hop, and Melky was just getting to first base when Red Sox right fielder Daniel Nava played the carom.
For some inexplicable reason, Cabrera decided that he was going to get himself two bases on the play – even though every other person in the ballpark knew he had no chance to get to second – and Nava threw him out by what felt like 100 feet, even though it was probably only ten.
I have no idea what was going through Cabrera’s head. Was he on auto-pilot once he saw the ball go off the wall? Was he thinking about the fact that he’s only had one double so far this season and needs to get his numbers up? Was he trying to "get something going" with his team getting throttled? Surely he couldn’t have imagined that he was fast enough to beat a throw to second base.
At best, it was a really, really poorly thought out decision. At worst, it was a selfish play by a player looking to pad his numbers at the expense of his team’s success. One certainly hopes it wasn’t the latter.