TORONTO — Mike Bolsinger did what he could. Making his first major league start of the season, the 29-year-old right-hander provided his club with exactly what they asked for: a decent outing. The issue: while Bolsinger was effective, the guy on the mound for the other team was unhittable. And that’s how you end up with a 6-0 Blue Jays defeat to Cleveland Tuesday night.
“I thought he did a great job,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said of his spot starter. “Of course, we got shutout. But I was definitely impressed.”
Recalled earlier in the day from triple-A Buffalo, where he’d pitched to a 1.46 ERA across 12.1 innings, Bolsinger became the ninth starting pitcher the Blue Jays have used this season through their first 33 games, which is about as good of a barometer as to how the year’s been going at Rogers Centre as any.
With Aaron Sanchez throwing an incident-free, 60-pitch outing in extended spring training Tuesday ahead of his anticipated Sunday return to the Blue Jays rotation, and club brass raving about the work of Joe Biagini as a starter, Bolsinger’s rotation turn was likely to be a one-and-done regardless of results. At the risk of sounding insensitive, Bolsinger was a guy doing a job.
And, all things considered, the job done was pretty solid. Outside of a rocky second inning, and some at-times spotty command that led to four walks, Bolsinger limited a dangerous Cleveland lineup and pitched more than effectively enough for the Blue Jays to win.
He cruised through a three-up, three-down first inning on 16 pitches, with 15 of them being strikes. But his second inning couldn’t have begun any differently, as he walked the first two batters he faced on nine pitches.
“Kind of lost it a little bit,” Bolsinger said of his command in that inning. “That’s the thing I’ve been doing well in triple-A, is not walking people. And when you do, it kind of seems to bite you in the butt.”
The back-to-back walks brought up Lonnie Chisenhall, who Bolsinger challenged with a fastball over the plate in a 2-1 count. The Cleveland outfielder didn’t miss, driving the pitch to left-centre field, plating a run, and putting two in scoring position with none out. Yandy Diaz then drove in another on a fielder’s choice that erased Chisenhall between second and third base, but nonetheless gave Cleveland an early two-run lead.
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But Bolsinger held things right there, pitching into the sixth inning when he walked Edwin Encarnacion and gave up a loud two-out double to Chisenhall, which put runners on second and third. That brought manager John Gibbons out of the dugout to summon Dominic Leone from the bullpen and end Bolsinger’s night at 92 pitches. Leone quickly induced a flyout from Diaz to end the threat and preserve Bolsinger’s two-run line.
“I’ve been teammates with [Bolsinger] in the past with LA, and that was typical him today. He keeps guys off balance,” said Blue Jays third baseman Darwin Barney. “They’re sitting off-speed but they can’t pull the trigger because he has two or three off-speed pitches that look the same.
“So, he’s very effective at this level. Unfortunately for him, a couple walks hurt him. And he’ll tell you that. But if he commands the fastball just a little bit better, his day’s gone from good to great. I think he did a good job today under the circumstances. That’s promising.”
Of course, you need to score to win, which was not a simple task for the Blue Jays Tuesday, as they faced Cleveland right-hander Carlos Carrasco, who was precise, unpredictable, and overpowering throughout his seven innings of work.
As it happens, perfectly located, 95-mph fastballs at the kneecaps followed by 84-mph breaking balls that start at a hitter’s thighs before plummeting to his shoelaces present a considerable challenge for most major league lineups, especially the one the Blue Jays are currently running out, which features intended fourth outfielder Ezequiel Carrera in the two-hole and Ryan Goins’ .599 career OPS batting sixth.
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So, no surprise then that the Blue Jays mustered only two singles through their first six innings and failed to advance either runner as far as second base. When he wasn’t striking out two batters an inning, as he did in the second, third and fourth, Carrasco was getting Blue Jays hitters to tap the top of low fastballs and change-ups, inducing seven groundball outs through his first six innings, with four more coming in the air as he faced only one batter above the minimum.
“He’s a guy that has pretty good command of four pitches,” said Barney, who hit a single off Carrasco in the third inning. “The biggest thing is he can keep lefties off balance with the split, or the change, whatever you want to call it. And against righties his fastball command is good. Guys that can command the fastball, it makes their other pitches better whether they have command of them or not.
“I felt like he commanded the pitches he needed to. He left some pitches over the plate. He gave us opportunities. We just didn’t take advantage of them. He did a good job of mixing it up on us.”
And while Carrasco was dominating, the Blue Jays bullpen was affording him more rope to work with. After Leone got his team out of the sixth and struck out Abraham Almonte to open the seventh, he walked No. 9 hitter Yan Gomes on five pitches, which spurred Gibbons to bring in left-hander J.P. Howell to turn around Carlos Santana and Francisco Lindor at the top of Cleveland’s lineup.
Well, that didn’t work out. Howell walked Santana on five pitches before Lindor sent the first pitch he saw—an 86-mph sinker on the plate—screaming down the left-field line for a ground rule double, scoring Gomes and putting runners on second and third with one out. Howell then got Jason Kipnis to pop out before giving way to Jason Grilli, who stuck out Encarnacion to keep the Blue Jays within three.
The Blue Jays mustered a faint glimmer against Carrasco in the seventh, as Jose Bautista snapped an 0-for-21 skid with a single to left-centre before becoming the first Blue Jay to advance past first base by swiping second. But Steve Pearce, hitting in place of Kendrys Morales, who left the game with left hamstring tightness, flew out to right before Justin Smoak went down chasing a nasty curveball to end the inning.
Blue Jays reliever Aaron Loup tried to keep things close in the eighth, erasing a leadoff single with a double-play grounder. But he then hit Brandon Guyer in the leg with a slider, before his next two pitches thrown were hit very, very hard. The first was a single to right field and the second a 372-foot, three-run homer to left off the bat of Gomes, which gave Cleveland more runs than they’d ever need.
The Blue Jays didn’t threaten from there, as, in an unnecessarily cruel move, Cleveland brought in buzz-saw left-hander Andrew Miller to work a clean eighth on only eight pitches, all of them strikes. Nick Goody then earned the final three outs in the ninth to bring Toronto’s night to a merciful conclusion.
But as the evening ended, Bolsinger’s time with the Blue Jays may have not. The right-hander likely doesn’t have a spot in the club’s rotation going forward, with Sanchez due back this weekend. But the Blue Jays could keep him in their bullpen as a long reliever, moving one of their other optionable pitchers to Buffalo to make room for Sanchez’s return.
If the Blue Jays try to sneak Bolsinger to the minors, it’s very possible another team would pluck him off waivers. And that point aside, he pitched more than well enough Tuesday night to warrant an opportunity to stay in the majors.
“I thought he was really, really good,” Gibbons said. “Really good breaking ball. I think if he can get to the point where he can spot that fastball a little bit better, he can be really, really tough. So, he should feel good about that. He gave us a chance.”
