Blue Jays' bullpen game blows up in drubbing from White Sox

TORONTO — Bullpen days are what they are — a last resort that’s great when it works, awful when it doesn’t, and it sure was awful Friday night when the Toronto Blue Jays ran through seven pitchers during a 7-1 drubbing from the Chicago White Sox.

Spencer Turnbull, starting for the first time this season, provided only two frames while digging his team into an early hole. Mason Fluharty, taking over in the third with a runner aboard and already facing a 3-0 deficit, grinded through a 35-pitch inning that both allowed the game to unravel and will take him out of the mix for the rest of the weekend. Every reliever save for Paxton Schultz, who logged 2.2 innings of mop-up duty Thursday, and Yariel Rodriguez, was pressed into duty, making a deep Jose Berrios start Saturday essential.

"You want to try to avoid that for sure,” lamented manager John Schneider. “But it's a fine line between planning for the next day and trying to keep the game that you're competing in kind of at bay.”

Add in only seven hits — three by Bo Bichette — and a first-pitch double-play ball by Tyler Heineman, the one time the Blue Jays threatened a big rally, loading the bases with one out in the fifth, all against a team that had lost eight straight, and it was a good outing to immediately flush.

“That was embarrassing tonight. It was really bad,” Turnbull said of his performance. “Hopefully, we don't have any more of those.”

That being said, some bigger through lines passing through an otherwise forgettable night remain, primarily, how the Blue Jays intend to piece together their rotation, and what exactly they have in Turnbull.

On the first front, this game reinforced the notion that the Blue Jays should simply let Eric Lauer, a crucial stabilizer for them, continue to start in one of the club’s uncertain rotation slots, while awaiting for Max Scherzer, tentatively set to start Tuesday at Cleveland, to take hold at the other. 

Scherzer is scheduled to throw a side Saturday, and a final determination on that outing versus the Guardians is expected Sunday. While one possibility is that Lauer starts on turn Tuesday with Scherzer pushed to Thursday, as the Blue Jays want to keep Kevin Gausman between those two spots, one way or another, some clarity on Scherzer’s viability as a starter appears to be coming soon.

“If Scherzer's ready to come back, awesome, he's one of the best to ever do it, he'll help the team a lot when he gets up here,” said Turnbull, whose role will be impacted by how all that plays out. “As far as my routine and all that stuff, I'm going to stay doing what I've been doing last couple weeks. I'm sure we'll talk about that as we go along.”

As that plays out on one thread, Turnbull looms on another.

The 32-year-old signed May 5, and the Blue Jays planned to build him up into a starter within a 35-day option period included in his contract, but the process went slower than expected. The length hasn’t been there and his stuff has been down to boot. 

Against the White Sox, his fastball averaged 90.3 m.p.h. and topped out at 91.3, while the hardest pitch he threw was a sinker at 92.3. 

Andrew Benintendi opened the scoring in the first by sending an 89.4 m.p.h. four-seamer over the wall in right. While in a messy second – partly fuelled by Lenyn Sosa’s one-out triple that had a 90 per cent catch probability but clanked off Jonatan Clase’s glove in centre – an inability to close out the inning led to two-out RBI singles from Austin Slater and Benintendi.

The damage might have been worse, too, had Addison Barger not thrown out Jose Rojas at home to end the frame.

With the Blue Jays already in a hole, Schneider pulled Turnbull after a leadoff walk to Miguel Vargas in the third, even though the right-hander was only at 45 pitches, as the manager was “trying to keep the game close right there.”

“You've seen it over the past couple of years with guys, with either short or no spring training, it's tough,” said Schneider. “He's even said he still feels like he's still building up, and it's not a perfect spot really for a pitcher. We know that he's thrown 80 pitches in the minors and can offer that. But at the same time, you're in the business of winning games every single night. It's kind of up to him to dictate what we're going to do. … It wasn't what we expected from him tonight. I thought he was kind of trending in a better direction, and hopefully that's the case, hopefully you can chalk it up to a guy who's had a really weird buildup to the season so far.”

The early pull didn’t matter in the end as Fluharty surrendered a 441-foot, two-run homer to Luis Robert Jr. and a two-run double to Josh Rojas later in an inning that unravelled.

The game did as well, an unusual outcome for the Blue Jays on the bullpen days they’ve been running regularly since Scherzer hit the injured list on the season’s opening weekend.

“It's been a little bit of a challenge. I don't want to make any excuses. I was off tonight. Kind of going back and forth from being in the bullpen and then back to a starting routine and stuff, it's not the easiest thing,” said Turnbull, who second-guessed focusing on his sweeper between starts rather than working more on better maintaining his delivery.

“But it's also not an excuse. I was terrible tonight. I got to be better than that. Physically, I feel fine. I just I was a little off mechanically, fighting myself a little bit, and then just a couple bad pitches, some balls hit pretty hard, got lucky a couple of times and I didn't get lucky a couple of times. I just wasn't making any good pitches.”

Before this outing, Schneider said the primary challenge of carrying an open spot in the rotation “is holding guys out certain days before to kind of cover innings that you may need to and really just trying to find the sweet spot of pitches and spots to bring guys in based on the score.”

“We've done a good job of scoring in those games,” he added. “I feel like scoring is always important, it gives the leash a little bit more length for each guy. But it's the days before and after that get a little tricky.”

Sometimes the day of does, too.