BOSTON – At the same time the Boston Red Sox were roughing up Mark Buehrle at Fenway Park, the triple-A Pawtucket PawSox were doing the same thing to Marcus Stroman 80 kilometres south at McCoy Stadium, muddling a rotation picture the Toronto Blue Jays hoped to clarify Monday afternoon.
Instead, they’re faced with more questions after an 11-4 thumping from the drastically improved AL East cellar-dwellers in which Buehrle lasted only 3.1 innings in his shortest start of the season, while Stroman gave up four runs on eight hits and four walks over three innings in a rehab start for Buffalo.
One of the two is slated to start Saturday in New York against the Yankees – now a half-game back for top spot in the AL East after an 8-6 win over Baltimore – and at this point it may be a coin flip as to who represents the better option.
On the one hand there’s Buehrle, who is 0-7 with a 6.22 ERA over nine career starts at new Yankee Stadium and fighting through more “aches and pains” than usual over the past month.
On the other there’s Stroman, the electric-armed phenom with only two rehab starts under his belt after an astonishingly quick recovery from a torn ACL in his left knee suffered in spring training. He was 92-94 against Pawtucket and his stuff was sharp, but he didn’t get results.
Add in that the weekend tilt against the Yankees is a game of significant importance and this becomes a tricky and intriguing call for the Blue Jays, who have multiple rotation scenarios mapped out for the rest of the season.
“I have some concerns,” manager John Gibbons said of Buehrle. “We’ll see. He’s one of our five. Just the minute you think something’s up, he responds. He always has. Hopefully he can do that again.”
Should Stroman get the nod Saturday – that may be the lean but the Blue Jays planned to discuss the matter post-game – Buehrle would be pushed back to the Atlanta series that follows.
“I felt better today than I have in the last couple,” said Buehrle. “Go out there and make some pitches in the next couple of starts and whenever that next start is, if it’s on Saturday, if it’s on Tuesday, if it’s two weeks from today, I don’t know when that will be, but when I make my next start I’ll go out there and give it my all.”
Pitching on seven days of rest this time out, Buehrle picked up some velocity from his previous outing – his fastball averaged out at 83.9 mph and topped out at 85, compared to a season-low average of 81.17 on Aug. 30 versus Detroit, according to Brooks Baseball – but the Red Sox, winners in 21 of their past 35 games, had little trouble knocking him around.
A Rusney Castillo sacrifice fly that followed David Ortiz’s double and Travis Shaw’s single in the second erased an early 1-0 lead supplied by Josh Donaldson’s 37th homer this season, and was followed by deuces in the third and fourth innings.
Xander Bogaerts’ run-scoring groundout and Ortiz’s RBI double opened up a 3-1 lead, while RBI singles from Jackie Bradley Jr. and Mookie Betts extended the advantage to 5-1.
Buehrle didn’t walk a better, but neither did he strike anyone out, the first time he’s done that in a start since April 1, 2011 for the Chicago White Sox at Cleveland. Of his 39 strikes, he managed just four swings and misses.
“I felt pretty good, I felt like I made some pitches,” said Buehrle. “The results weren’t there but I don’t feel as bad about today as I have in previous few starts. It’s one of those days, again, made some pitches at times and they were putting the ball in play and then hit one off the wall.”
Ryan Tepera kept things from getting away in the fourth and delivered a scoreless fifth after Justin Smoak’s solo shot, before giving up a three-spot in the sixth on Bradley’s two-run homer and Betts scoring on a two-run double by Bogaerts off Liam Hendriks.
Bradley added an RBI double in the seventh while Shaw negated Jose Bautista’s two-run single in the eighth with a two-run homer in the bottom half of the frame.
“We just couldn’t get anybody out really,” said Gibbons. “All the way through that lineup, they just kept coming at us. Tough day all the way around.”
The offensive onslaught from the Red Sox was a rare dose of their own medicine for the Blue Jays, who must now make a difficult call without an obvious answer.