TORONTO — Despite the chaos that surrounded the Red Sox as they arrived in Toronto, they’re still a talented team.
On Saturday, they dismissed their manager and five other coaches. The next morning, players expressed frustration at the decision — and the way president of baseball operations Craig Breslow explained it.
And the aftershocks of the shake-up were still being felt Monday as the Red Sox scrambled to fill out a new-look coaching staff that now includes 26-year-old interim hitting assistant Jack Simonetty, 28-year-old interim first base coach Pablo Cabrera and Drew Ehrhard, a double-A player who promptly retired as a minor-league player to become the team’s new bullpen catcher.
It’s been hectic. And yet, this team can’t be overlooked, as they proved with a tidy 5-0 win over the Blue Jays, who fell to 12-16 on a night they had no answers for Ranger Suarez.
“Every team is dangerous,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said Monday afternoon. “And whenever you make a huge change like that, I think it just heightens the awareness of everybody.”
Those words certainly applied to Suarez, who was in peak form, holding the Blue Jays hitless until the sixth inning on his way to a dominant performance in which he allowed just one hit and one walk while striking out ten over eight scoreless innings. A Jesus Sanchez double gave the sellout crowd a little hope to lead off the sixth, but otherwise the Blue Jays’ bats were mute on a day Andres Gimenez and Daulton Varsho were on the bench.
“Give him credit, man. He’s good for a reason and he definitely pitched a good game,” Schneider said. “He was just really stubborn in not living in the middle of the plate, so that was kind of the story tonight.”
With George Springer’s broken big toe healing well, the Blue Jays could be a day or two away from getting back one of their most dangerous bats. The 36-year-old ran the bases before the game, one of his final tests before returning to DH duty atop the batting order.
“I watched him hit and he looked normal,” Schneider said. “And he's been feeling fine after running.”
With 23 home runs on the season, the Blue Jays rank 25th among the 30 MLB teams. That’s partly due to injuries to the likes of Springer, Addison Barger and Alejandro Kirk, but the resulting lineup hasn’t had as much power as usual all month. In games like this one, the absence of that power and experience becomes a little more apparent than usual.
“I thought some guys worked (good) at-bats,” Schneider said. “Just when you did, (Suarez) just didn’t give in. He’s not really predictable.”
On the pitching side, a frustrating fifth inning undermined a Dylan Cease start that first looked promising. The right-hander cruised through three scoreless innings, but ran into trouble in the fifth when he walked Caleb Durbin, hit Willson Contreras, made a throwing error, struggled to field a ground ball single and watched a double bounce off Sanchez's glove in right field.
“I'm just trying to execute pitches and I didn't do a very good job of it,” Cease said.
With better defence from Cease and his teammates, that fifth inning could easily have played out differently, but his command lapsed, too, and that ended up costing him.
“He just lost feel for it for whatever reason,” Schneider added. “It was one of those battles for him.”
Two runs and 30 pitches later, the game’s complexion had changed and Cease, who had once seemed likely to give the Blue Jays six innings or more, ended up going 5.2 innings while allowing four earned runs and striking out five.
“I didn't give us a real chance today,” Cease said. "Looking back, I wish I'd focused a little more on powering the ball and maybe less on trying to be so pinpoint.”
Ideally, the Blue Jays would have gotten more length from the right-hander since Trey Yesavage still isn’t fully stretched out and Wednesday’s starter remains TBD. Following Cease’s exit, right-hander Chase Lee helped cover 1.1 innings of relief after taking the roster spot of Max Scherzer, who hit the injured list with right forearm tendinitis and left ankle inflammation.
"Maybe you can pitch with one of these, but I'm not in the best spot to probably pitch with both of them,” Scherzer said. “So this is a point in time where it's smart to take the rest, take the week, and come back."
On Tuesday, Yesavage will make his 2026 season debut, but he won’t be the only young pitching phenom taking the mound. Opposite Yesavage will be Payton Tolle, the 23-year-old left-hander with an elite fastball who struck out 11 Yankees just last week.
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