TORONTO, On. – The Blue Jays’ vaunted offence — missing its two best hitters in Joses Reyes and Bautista — couldn’t get to the White Sox’ fifth starter and wasted a very good outing from Josh Johnson. As a result, the team failed to get to the .500 mark and continues to have had a losing record at every point this season since the conclusion of the very first game. Here are three things that stood out to me in the late-inning loss to the Pale Hose:
KEEP THE ROLL GOING
Everything starts with good starting pitching, and in the first two trips through the rotation, the Blue Jays didn’t get that on anywhere near a regular basis. It’s all changed this third time through, though, as Johnson followed strong starts from R.A. Dickey, Brandon Morrow and Mark Buehrle with one of his own.
Johnson became the first Blue Jays’ starter to complete seven innings and allowed just two runs on four hits. He flashed a 94 m.p.h. fastball with regularity, which didn’t happen his last time out in the freezing cold in Detroit.
With one more start to go in this rotational turn, the Blue Jays have had each starter take the game into at least the seventh inning, if not later, and they’ve combined to post a 2.45 ERA and WHIP of 1.208, which is much more like it. Now the bats just have to get going.
WELCOME BACK
Brett Lawrie returned to the Blue Jays’ lineup and provided a big burst of energy as well as a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the ninth and a couple of outstanding defensive plays in the field.
Despite the fact that the Blue Jays wound up losing the game, the return of Lawrie changed the dynamic of the infield defence a great deal. His best play was a hard-charging bare-hand grab-and-throw on a slow roller by Alex Rios to end the top of the 8th, but almost as beautiful was watching him cut in front of Munenori Kawasaki a couple of times, showing off that fantastic range he has to his left.
Lawrie’s ability to make plays in the hole allows his shortstop to cheat up the middle a little bit, and that paid dividends in the seventh inning, when Kawasaki made an outstanding diving grab behind second base to steal a hit from Conor Gillaspie.
DECISIONS, DECISIONS
The BlueJaysTalk crowd (and my Twitter feed) was pretty upset that manager John Gibbons pinch-hit for Colby Rasmus leading off the bottom of the seventh when the White Sox went to lefty Hector Santiago, but I really didn’t have a problem with that.
Yes, you’re taking out your best defensive centrefielder, but you’re also getting an 80-point boost in batting average (career) against lefties with Rajai Davis at the plate and double that in OPS. In a tie game late, you never know when your next best chance to score will be — and you may never even get one — so I think you take the chance to try to get a rally going.
The move did come back to bite the Blue Jays, because Davis got out, his spot in the order came up in the ninth with the tying run on base against a right-handed pitcher and, especially, because Dayan Viciedo’s tie-breaking double was a line drive to centrefield on which Emilio Bonifacio took an odd route and couldn’t make the play. Rasmus may very well have caught the ball.
Of course, the very act of pinch-hitting for Rasmus in the seventh inning created a brand-new space-time continuum, so if Rasmus had hit for himself, none of the things that occurred later would have happened and the Blue Jays might very well have lost 3-2 or won 11-6.
The more curious move, to me, was Gibbons warming up his closer, Casey Janssen, in the bottom of the eighth and not using him in the ninth. Maybe Janssen was only up in case there was a save situation, but once you go into the ninth inning in a tie game at home there’s no longer an opportunity for a save. Gibbons has managed his bullpen backwards before in such situations (closer in the ninth, set-up man in the 10th, etc.) so one expected him to do the same thing here — especially given the fact that the meat of the White Sox order was coming up.
Maybe it’s because Janssen had pitched Monday night, and Saturday night in Kansas City as well, and Gibbons didn’t want to use him three times in four nights, but then why warm him up to begin with?
I was surprised to see Delabar come out of the dugout for a second inning of work, and also surprised when he walked the first two hitters he faced, setting up the game-winning rally.