Video review bites Blue Jays as disappointing road trip comes to an end

Toronto-Blue-Jays;-Josh-Donaldson

Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Josh Donaldson. (Chris O'Meara/AP)

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — With two on, two out, and two strikes in the top of the fifth inning Thursday, Josh Donaldson served a Steve Cishek slider up the left-field line. The ball drifted beyond third base, beyond the infield dirt, beyond the home plates of the Blue Jays’ on-field bullpen, and landed right on the precipice of fair and foul before skipping into the left-field corner. Third base umpire Lance Barrett pointed emphatically to his right indicating a fair ball, as Donaldson cruised into second and two runs scored.

Except they didn’t. Upon video review, the ball was determined to be just barely foul. The runs came off the board, the base runners returned to their stations, and Donaldson shuffled dejectedly back to the batter’s box to try again. Two pitches later, he walked. And six pitches after that, Justin Smoak lifted a bases-loaded flare into shallow right-centre field that would have blown the game wide open.

But there was Kevin Kiermaier, the Rays centre-fielder, sprinting a good 30 metres and laying out headfirst to make his second spectacular catch of the inning after he snagged Steve Pearce’s 103-mph liner — which carried a hit probability of 64 per cent — right before what looked like a Donaldson double came up just short. Sometimes baseball really is a game of inches.

That was it right there. The Blue Jays couldn’t muster a run from that point on. They barely mustered a hit. Ezequiel Carrera had to do some tap dancing around first base to leg out a pinch-hit, infield single in the seventh, and Kendrys Morales added another single in the ninth. But there was nothing more, as the Blue Jays fell 2-0 to the Rays, petering out at the end of a 1-5 road trip.

“[Donaldson’s] foul ball, they must have better cameras up there — I would expect, hopefully — because that looked like it caught something. But that’s why they have replay,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said. “And then Kiermaier — unbelievable. The first one and then, of course, to come in and get Smoak’s ball — that’s what he does, you know? With [Kevin] Pillar we get the same stuff. Having those guys wins you games.”

Coming up so short was too bad for the Blue Jays because right-handed starter Tom Koehler — making his first big-league appearance for a team not named the Miami Marlins after Toronto traded for him on Saturday — was more than serviceable in his debut as he contributed five useful innings. Considering he came into the outing with a 7.92 ERA across 12 starts this season, that has to be encouraging for his new coaching staff.

“I thought Koehler was really, really good. That was good to see,” Gibbons said. “He attacks and he’s got a really nice curveball. Real nice curveball. He showed us a lot today.”

Koehler allowed a run in the second inning when he loaded the bases and gave up a sacrifice fly to No. 9 hitter Daniel Robertson, but otherwise he went untouched. Koehler flirted with disaster here and there, both in that second inning and the fifth, when he loaded the bases with two out. But he got Corey Dickerson to fly out to left to strand all three runners.

“To get through [the fifth inning,] I was very happy with that,” Koehler said. “You don’t want to come out before the fifth. You’re not giving yourself a chance to win. You’re not giving the team a chance. You hate to turn it over to the bullpen there. It possibly could have been a 3-0 game or something with other guys on. That’s where you want to limit damage.”

Koehler leaned on his 93-mph fastball, throwing it 47 per cent of the time and dialling it up to 95 mph when he needed it. From there he mixed and matched with curveballs and change-ups, keeping the Rays off balance to strike out seven. It was easily his best outing of 2017 and Koehler was especially happy with how his curveball was coming out of his hand.

“A lot of times we kind of split the duties with the curveball and the slider. But today the curveball was pretty sharp,” Koehler said. “[Catcher Miguel Montero] did a great job just sticking with it. I don’t think I shook him all day. It came out pretty good, it was feeling good.”

Although he burned through too many pitches early and his command was spotty at times — he walked a pair and hit two others — Koehler was certainly good enough to earn himself another turn in the Blue Jays rotation.

“Early in the game, I had a lot of adrenaline. It had been a while since I’d pitched and pitching for the first time for a new team, there was definitely some excitement,” Koehler said. “But I was able to settle down later and get some quick outs as the game went on.”

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Meanwhile, Rays starter Alex Cobb held the Blue Jays off the board during his 4.1 innings before giving way to his bullpen, and Kiermaier’s defensive brilliance, in the fifth.

Of course, no one was particularly upset to see Cobb exit the game. Perhaps motivated by a desire to boost alcohol sales at sparsely attended Tropicana Field, or merely getting into the spirit of Senior Special Thursday, which offered discounted tickets to those 60 years of age and older, Cobb worked with the pace of global warming, playing possum with the strike zone and using 70 pitches to record his first nine outs.

Once Cobb was gone, the Rays bullpen took over, as four relievers combined for 4.2 innings of two-hit ball to complete the shutout.

If you’re looking for positives, Dominic Leone and Tim Mayza were both very good out of Toronto’s bullpen, striking out three apiece and keeping the Blue Jays within a run of tying the game. Danny Barnes allowed a solo shot to Dickerson in the eighth, but the Blue Jays were never out of striking distance all afternoon. Yet sometimes, in this game of inches, you come up just short.

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