BALTIMORE – Beating up on the Kansas City Royals and the Baltimore Orioles, thrashed 11-2 Thursday night, is no major cause of celebration for the Toronto Blue Jays. The types of wins they’ve posted over the past four days in matching their longest winning streak of the season must become the baseline, and it’s once they start happening against teams like the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays that real progress has been made.
Really, what’s been on display this week is the wide disparity in talent between the Blue Jays and its fellow rebuilding clubs. “They have a lot of impressive young players,” a Royals official marvelled this week, and against teams still in the talent-acquisition/taking-inventory stage of the rebuilding process, that difference really shows.
“We’re playing very hard as a team, the clubhouse, we’re very tight and together and we’re very happy in there,” Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who went deep twice to give him four homers and 16 RBIs over his past five games, said through interpreter Hector Lebron.
“Pretty much that’s what it is.”
Bo Bichette’s addition to the mix has certainly served as a catalyst, and he continued to sprint out of the gate, opening the game with a seven-pitch walk and adding two other hits, including an RBI single that pushed the Blue Jays lead to 4-0 in the fourth.
Guerrero followed a Cavan Biggio single with a two-run shot to straightaway centre that opened the scoring in the third before a majestic 450-foot solo shot in the eighth, and added a run-scoring double in the sixth.
Biggio kept on cementing his rep as an OBP-beast with two more hits, while Danny Jansen crushed a three-run shot that broke things open. Billy McKinney added two hits of his own, including a two-run homer in the ninth.
The only point of concern came when Randal Grichuk – who homered, singled and walked – fouled a pitch off his mouth in the top of the ninth. He walked off the field pressing a towel to his bloodied lip and while he didn’t suffer a concussion, was taken to hospital for a CT Scan.
The severity of damage wasn’t immediately clear.
“He’s a tough guy,” said manager Charlie Montoyo. “He got up like nothing and was walking out like nothing happened. He got hit pretty good.”
The main highlight of the night for the Orioles was a Trey Mancini solo homer to open the eighth, but the remnants of a Camden Yards crowd announced at 9,716 was distracted by a ruckus over a Trump 2020 banner unfurled from the second deck stands above first base.
“Take it down, take it down,” some shouted, while others booed as Mancini circled the bases.
Whatever gets you through the rebuild, I guess.
Still, there’s some joy to be found when things start turning a corner and the Blue Jays, boasting an average age of 26.5 for position players, per Baseball Reference, seem to be there on the offensive side of things.
“When a team is contributing one through nine, you’re going to have a good deal of success,” said Jansen. “Guys are putting together good at-bats, barrelling some stuff up, playing hard, playing aggressive.”
The primary questions now are on the pitching end, where the average age is now 28.2 and the rotation is pillar-less without the traded Marcus Stroman and Aaron Sanchez, and missing Ryan Borucki, who returned to the injured list with elbow inflammation Wednesday.
Borucki declined to speak about his elbow until he had more information about what was happening, but said the issue felt similar to what he experienced in the spring. Not good.
Trent Thornton, at least, made his own return from the injured list, wore contact lenses on the mound instead of his trademark glasses, and worked over the Orioles for six innings of one-run ball, allowing five hits and no walks with two strikeouts.
While he only generated six swinging strikes, less than usual for him, that was by design, as some conversations with Clay Buchholz while rehabbing in Dunedin, Fla., prompted him to focus on restoring some fluidity to his delivery.
“I said, ‘I catch myself trying to blow it past people sometimes and not necessarily being max effort, but just trying to throw harder and I get tense and end up overthrowing and not hitting my spot,’” Thornton said of his chat with Buchholz.
“What he was telling me was to be loose and the velocity was going to be there and I’d be able to locate better. That’s what I was thinking all day. One, get ahead of hitters and just feel loose, don’t tense up at all.”
Thornton had been hit hard in three of his previous four starts before hitting the IL, allowing 16 earned runs on 22 hits and five walks in 12 innings. In assessing the reasons why, he realized “I was raring back and letting it eat, but it wasn’t where I wanted it to be. If you make mistakes, especially on a consistent basis, big-league hitters are going to do damage.”
Hence, the focus on a cleaner delivery, as well as a renewed emphasis on a cutter he’d used only 13.6 per cent of the time this season but threw 20 in 87 pitches Thursday. The pitch got four whiffs while being put in play three times, twice inducing groundouts, a third becoming a bunt single.
“When I was with the Astros, that was part of my bread and butter,” said Thornton. “A little bit this year I’ve kind of gotten away from it and it’s always been a really good pitch for me, I just haven’t thrown that or my curveball as much this year than I historically do so I’m trying to get in the swing of things with that.”
Jansen described the cutter as “kind of a wild card for him” so far this season, but against the Orioles, really liked how “it opens up away when you go into lefties with it.”
“He can backdoor it, he can front-hip it to a righty perhaps,” continued Jansen. “It’s a pitch that has a lot of ways to open up other stuff. It was on tonight.”
The Blue Jays need the rookie right-hander to steady, as their rotation currently has only three starters behind him – Thomas Pannone, Sean Reid-Foley and Jacob Waguespack.
Friday’s starter is TBA and likely to be covered by the bullpen. There aren’t any many alternatives, although waiver pickup Brock Stewart was in the discussion.
Thoughts and prayers for the relief corps, which is going to wear it a lot and be rotated up and down to triple-A Buffalo often before everyone goes home for the winter.
“The whole time has almost been like bullpen days,” said Montoyo, and since April, he’s not wrong.
“Besides Stroman, everyone else was going five. What I like about now is these kids can show what they can do now, Reid-Foley, Pannone, Waguespack. It’s good so we can find out. I’m glad we’re in this spot right now. Too bad Borucki got hurt but even Trent has got to show what he can do.”
Two months for everyone to show their stuff, the jockeying for 2020 jobs well underway.
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