TORONTO – For Marco Estrada, the changeup is everything. It’s his best pitch and his most reliable weapon when he needs a strike in a bad way. But on nights like Tuesday, when he doesn’t have a feel for it and can’t put it where he wants to, things can go awfully awry.
“I go through these things at times. That’s the one pitch that I need. And when I don’t have it, it’s tough,” Estrada said after a 4-3 Toronto Blue Jays loss to the Boston Red Sox. “Normally I’ll go to something else, like my curveball, but I didn’t really throw those for strikes either.”
No, Estrada didn’t throw much of anything for strikes Tuesday night, as he struggled through his worst outing since joining the Blue Jays rotation in early May. That it came on the heels of back-to-back starts where Estrada took a no-hitter into the eighth inning — the first pitcher to do so since Dave Stieb in 1988 — was merely happenstance. Although he threw nearly 250 pitches over those two outings, Estrada said he felt physically fine coming into Tuesday’s start. He simply didn’t have his command.
“As soon as the game started, I just wasn’t making pitches. That’s all. I know these things are going to happen but I’ve still got to battle through it and unfortunately I didn’t give the team a chance to win tonight,” said Estrada, who took his first loss since May 22 against Seattle. “I left early — something no starter ever wants to do. I wish I would’ve just given them some more innings but I struggled. I couldn’t locate anything. Changeups were bad today. It was just a bad day.”
Estrada’s command, like any pitcher’s, can be a capricious thing. When he went out to left field to throw his pre-game bullpen session he felt fine. The ball was coming out nicely — he was making good pitches. However, as soon as he took the mound, something changed.
He walked four batters in the first inning, including two with the bases loaded to stake the Red Sox to an early two-run lead. He escaped the frame and tried to come back out for the second and bear down, giving his team some length so as not to tax the bullpen. But that’s when things started to snowball.
Estrada fell behind a few hitters, and instead of trying to locate a perfect pitch on a day he knew he didn’t have his command, he chose instead to attack the heart of the plate, telling himself to let the batters hit it and hopefully make an out. They didn’t, as Jackie Bradley Jr. and David Ortiz hit home runs in the second and third innings to extend the Red Sox lead.
The return of the long ball was especially concerning. Estrada was homer prone in 2014, giving up an NL-leading 29, but had managed to allow just two in his last six starts, carrying a streak of 16.2 homerless innings into his start against the Red Sox.
Tuesday night was a different story, however, as Estrada surrendered several long fly balls, including Ortiz’s shot which smacked off the facing of the third deck in deep right field. Two batters later Estrada was out of the game, after needing 73 pitches to record seven outs.
“It was just one of those days. It’s not the first and it won’t be the last, I’ll tell you that,” Estrada said. “But we battled. The bullpen came in and did a great job today. They did everything they could.”
He’s right. The relief corps was terrific. Todd Redmond was up and warming in the Blue Jays bullpen in each of the first three innings and when he eventually did enter the game he provided 3.1 innings of admirable mop-up work, allowing just three base runners and holding the Red Sox lead in check. Bo Schulz picked up where Redmond left off, throwing 2.1 innings of one-hit, shutout ball, before giving way to Steve Delabar.
In all, the Blue Jays bullpen combined to hold the Red Sox off the board from the time Estrada left the game until the final pitch.
“They were great. They gave us the shot. They held the game in check. It was one of those games where, with the way it started, it could’ve gotten out of hand quick,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said. “We just weren’t able to get anything going.”
Toronto’s offence came into the game batting .311 with an .872 OPS against left-handed pitching but was unable to get anything started against southpaw Red Sox starter Eduardo Rodriguez, who went six innings and allowed just one run — a hard-hit Chris Colabello single that scored Edwin Encarnacion from second base.
“He’s got a good arm. A good, live, easy arm. Probably one of the better ones you’ll see,” Gibbons said. “He’s out in front. Great extension. The ball just jumps on you.”
Red Sox manager John Farrell decided to stick with what was working in the seventh inning, handing the ball to another left-hander, Tommy Layne, who surrendered a two-run shot to Jose Reyes, which brought the Blue Jays to within one. It was Reyes’ first home run batting right-handed since July 8, 2014.
But that was all the Blue Jays would get, as they dropped their second straight to the visiting Red Sox and were held under four runs in four consecutive games for the first time this season. Notably, Jose Bautista went 0-for-3 with a walk to extend his hitless streak to 24 at-bats, tying his longest-ever drought with the Blue Jays, set in 2010.
But after the game, it was Estrada who wore the blame for his team. The 31-year-old has been incredibly reliable for the Blue Jays since joining the rotation in place of the demoted Daniel Norris two months ago, and it’s not like the damage against him Tuesday night was significant. He did use far too many pitches and delivered his shortest outing as a starter since 2012, but he’s now held the opposition to three earned runs or less in six of his last seven starts.
Still, Estrada owned this one and said he wasn’t good enough. He said he had to get deeper into games — had to be better. Said he’d do everything he could to get back to what worked so well for him in his two dominant starts leading into this one.
“By the time I get home I’ll forget about this game. I don’t like to ever think about them, good or bad, to be honest,” Estrada said. “By the next day it’s a whole new clean slate. It’s a new page. You just have to forget about it and work on a few things in your bullpen. That’s it. I’ll be ready for the next one.”