TORONTO – First Toronto Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista took a chunk out of the dugout wall with his bat, then he tore a strip off home plate umpire Bill Welke, and finally he sent some of his accoutrements out on the field in protest.
For his troubles, he may have earned himself some discipline from Major League Baseball.
Bautista’s blow up came on a frustrating Friday for the Blue Jays, who lost for the fifth time in seven outings, 6-1 to the Tampa Bay Rays.
Though he declined to talk about it afterwards, he wasn’t the only player on his team to struggle with Welke’s zone. Eric Thames went 2-for-4 with a pair of singles against James Shields, but took a questionable strike three in the eighth inning and returned to the dugout muttering under his breath.
“I understood where (Bautista) was coming from just because I was on base for his first at-bat and I saw on video where the umpire was squeezing him and opened up the zone a little bit,” said Thames. “But I was shocked (by the outburst), it was out of nowhere, just a bunch of loud noises and then all of a sudden stuff was flying everywhere.
“Anger boils over sometimes. It’s OK.”
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Bautista had issues with Welke’s strike zone all night, but things came to a head in the sixth, when Bautista struck out for the third time against James Shields, several pitches after a called strike two the right-fielder didn’t like.
He returned to the dugout, pounded his bat into the back wall in an impact audible throughout the Rogers Centre – “Thunder,” was how Rays manager Joe Maddon described it – and then muttered something that didn’t look very polite at Welke, who ejected him immediately after.
Once tossed, he sent his bat, helmet, elbow pad and a water bottle onto the field before heading into the clubhouse.
Acting manager Don Wakamatsu, who was just about to begin arguing with Welke, was left to shift gears and try to calm Bautista instead.
“You always try to protect your players when you go out there and you want an explanation because guys get emotional and they say things in the dugout, we didn’t think anything was directly directed towards (Welke),” explained Wakamatsu. “So I started to go out there and then you see the bat, turn around and try to contain Jose.”
Rays third baseman Evan Longoria watched the whole incident and was reminded of how in 2008 Colorado Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki needed 16 stitches in his palm after he smashed his bat into the ground in frustration and it shattered.
“My first instinct was to worry about him not hurting himself,” said Longoria. “That wall is not too forgiving. I was kind of surprised at him. I’ve known him for a couple of years now and he seems like a calm and collected guy. It happens to all of us, he lost his temper for a second.”
The outburst and the lingering possibility of discipline made a bad night even worse for the Blue Jays (66-65), who fell to 4-8 against the Rays (71-59) this season before a crowd of 20,491.
Brett Lawrie’s fifth homer opened the scoring in the second but it was all downhill from there, as rookie Henderson Alvarez (0-2) surrendered a two-run shot to Desmond Jennings on a hanging slider in the third and solo blasts on poorly located fastballs to Longoria in the fourth and sixth innings.
The developing slider is a key pitch for Alvarez but it remains inconsistent.
“That’s the pitch I’m working on from Day 1 and it’s improving,” Alvarez said in comments interpreted by coach Luis Rivera. “I need that pitch to be consistent in the big-leagues, I’ve got a fastball, I’ve got a changeup which are working well for me and then the sinker, but I really need the slider to be a good starter in the big-leagues.”
John Jaso added another solo shot in the seventh off Joel Carreno to make it 5-1, and Matt Joyce scored on Wil Ledezma’s wild pitch in the ninth.
Alvarez allowed four runs on four hits and two walks in his six innings of work, striking out six.
Shields (12-10), meanwhile, allowed just a run on seven hits and a walk while striking out 12 in his 10th complete game of the season. He’s now 5-1 in his last seven starts against the Blue Jays, which may have helped send Bautista over the top.
“What makes him special is he’s so competitive and obviously he thought some of those pitches were borderline or out of the zone, which put him in a hole against an awfully good pitcher,” said Wakamatsu. “We went into this game aware of what he’s done against us so there was some emotions flying, guys were competitive, and with the strikeouts it got to him a little bit.”
Bautista, who also went down looking in the first and swinging in the third, is the fourth Blue Jays player ejected this season, joining Jose Molina, Jon Rauch and Yunel Escobar.
“I was worried he was going to hurt the bat,” joked Thames. “The bat’s fine, we checked up on it, it’s fine. He was frustrated as we all are at this point.
“We’re not swinging it very well right now. It will turn around.”
