The way the Toronto Blue Jays have been swinging the bats early in 2013, they can hardly afford to be giving the opposition any gifts.
But that’s exactly what they did in Saturday’s 5-3, 11-inning loss to the visiting New York Yankees before a sellout crowd of 46,095 at Rogers Centre, thanks to an inability to catch and throw the ball on two potentially game-deciding plays.
“At this level, you’ve got to play good solid defence and that bit us today,” said Blue Jays manager John Gibbons, who saw his team lose for the fifth time in the past seven games to fall four games under .500 (7-11) with the series finale on tap Sunday.
In the top of the fifth, with Toronto already trailing New York 1-0, Jayson Nix led off with single and Brett Gardner followed up with a double. After striking out Ben Francisco, Blue Jays starter Mark Buehrle – making his 400th career start on Saturday – intentionally walked Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano to load the bases for Kevin Youkilis.
The Yankees first baseman proceeded to hit a high line-drive at Brett Lawrie, with the ball eluding the Toronto third baseman, cashing in two to put the Yankees up 3-0.
The official scorer ruled the play a base hit, but in the eyes of some it should have been ruled an error. Following the game, Lawrie said the Youkilis liner had “knuckled” on him.
"That was a big situation right there," said Buehrle. "When he hit it, I was kinda like, OK there’s an out, but he missed it. I need defence behind me. I’m not a strikeout guy. Guys make errors. It’s going to happen during the course of the year.”
Then in the top of the 11th – after the Blue Jays had rallied for three runs in the bottom of the eighth to force extra innings – the Yankees had runners on first and second with none out and Ichiro Suzuki at the plate.
With Lawrie playing in at third, Ichiro laid down a bunt. Toronto reliever Aaron Loup pounced on it quickly and – following directions from catcher J.P. Arencibia – he fired towards Lawrie at third in the hopes of catching the lead runner.
But Loup was unaware that Lawrie had taken a couple of steps in to field the bunt as well, and as a result, Lawrie was in no position to field Loup’s throw as it skirted up the left-field line allowing two runs to cross the plate.
It’s debatable whether Lawrie could have stopped Loup’s throw from going up the line had been standing on the bag when it arrived and afterwards, Loup acknowledged he rushed the play.
“I felt like we had an easy play at third base and didn’t have enough awareness to realize that Lawrie was crashing into the play and he wasn’t there,” he said. “It was too late and I had already let go of the ball. Just a bad way to lose the game.”
Lawrie, who said he wasn’t going to “throw Loup under the bus,” said he “couldn’t get back to the bag, and by the time I did the ball was already on me.”
The Blue Jays might have been able to avoid extra innings had they been able to muster some offence prior to their three-run eighth.
Toronto began the day ranked 27th in MLB in on-base percentage (.287) and 26th in batting average (.228) and their offensive struggles continued on Saturday as Yankees starter Hiroki Kuroda held them scoreless on one-hit through the first seven innings, before the Jays busted in the eighth, keyed by Melky Cabrera’s game-tying, two-run single.
Buehrle was also sharp, scattering eight hits and striking out seven over seven innings of three-run ball.
Gibbons said Saturday’s loss was difficult because he felt like his team had the momentum following the eighth.
"Those are the games you’ve got to win," he said, later adding, "There’s no doubt — when you screw up the fundamentals, you’re not supposed to win." Vernon Wells hit a solo home run for New York in the second inning, his fifth of the season and fifth in nine games against his former Toronto teammates.
J.P. Arencibia struck out four times for Toronto and now leads the majors in that category with 27. Brett Lawrie had a rough day at the plate in addition to the field, going 0 for 5 with three strikeouts.
DICKEY UPDATE:
Prior to the game, Blue Jays manager John Gibbons had no update on the status of injured starter R.A. Dickey.
Dickey was forced to exit Toronto’s 3-1 win over the Chicago White Sox on Thursday after 5.2 innings of work due to neck and back stiffness.
Following the game, the 39-year-old knuckleballer said he hoped to be able to make his next scheduled start on Tuesday in Baltimore.
Dickey is scheduled to throw a side session Saturday in Toronto, something Gibbons said will give him a better idea of where Dickey is at physically.
“We don’t think there’s going to be any problems, but yeah, that will tell us something,” Gibbons said.
