BALTIMORE – Ryan Borucki is generally the picture of calm, whether it’s sitting by his locker before a game or on the mound competing, no matter the situation. That steely steadiness was there as he navigated through some traffic in his first four innings of work Wednesday night, and he kept his composure even as his outing threatened to unravel in a fateful fifth inning.
It disappeared, however, when Adam Jones turned on a change-up that was both badly located and of poor quality with two outs and the bases loaded in the fifth, sending it over the wall for a grand slam that quickly erased a 4-1 lead. Borucki angrily circled the mound and kicked at the rubber after giving up the drive, before resetting himself, a rare crack in his usual cool.
“I try to keep it together out there, you don’t want to show too much but I was definitely frustrated with myself,” Borucki said after the Toronto Blue Jays finished out a sloppy 10-5 loss to the Baltimore Orioles, who completed a three-game sweep. “My change-up is my go-to pitch, that just wasn’t a good one. I tried to keep my emotions down, but it was definitely frustrating.”
The one mistake sullied what had the makings of another solid performance on a dreadfully hot, humid Baltimore night in which the simple act of existing was enough to work up a sweat.
Despite that, Borucki was largely in control until the fifth, when he surrendered five of the eight hits against him, four of them with two out. The only damage against him prior to that was a Trey Mancini homer in the fourth.
“As the game wore on the ball started coming up in the zone a bit,” said Blue Jays manager John Gibbons. “He’s the kind of guy who’s going to keep you off-balance, he’s got to roll groundballs and he’s got to look down. He can do that.
“No excuses, but it’s a b**** pitching out there in that humidity. Everybody out there is scuffling. But in saying that, the more times he goes out there in situations like that, the better off he’s going to be, it’ll benefit him down the road.”
Up until the mistake to Jones, Borucki’s change-up was very effective. He threw 32 of them among his 84 pitches, generating seven swings and misses, two called strikes and nine foul balls. He threw 48 sinkers, getting one whiff, six called strikes and 11 fouls and just four sliders.
“I had a good change-up, a good fastball-change-up combo and the slider was a little inconsistent,” said Borucki. “I just trusted my fastball-change-up. Looking back at it, I could have used my slider a bit more, when you look back you can second-guess it, but I liked my game plan, it just didn’t work out for me.”
Things didn’t work out for the Blue Jays, either, as good days at the plate for Devon Travis (homer and two doubles), Randal Grichuk (three hits, two of them doubles, and a walk), Justin Smoak (homer and two walks) and Kevin Pillar (two hits, including a homer) went for naught.
They tied the game 5-5 on Travis’ 11th homer in the sixth, but Danny Barnes was charged with surrendering a pair of runs in the bottom half, and a sloppy eighth that included two errors led to an ugly three-spot off closer Ken Giles, who was getting some work, to push the game out of reach.
“Sometimes when things go bad, that’s what happens late in games,” Gibbons said of the errors. “Especially when you’re out of gas. The heat, everybody’s got to play in it, but it’s not easy. We’ll move on. It will be a nice day off (Thursday), put it that way.”
Notes: Back problems are expected to keep Marco Estrada from making his next start this weekend against the Miami Marlins. Rookie Sean Reid-Foley is expected to be recalled from triple-A Buffalo and start Sunday. … Jones’ grand slam was just the second of his career, and first since July 28, 2008.
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