CHICAGO — Kevin Gausman spent Monday sorting his affairs after being dealt to the Chicago Cubs the night prior, but he still kept up on what was happening ahead of the trade deadline. He sent Daulton Varsho a “Go ‘Stros” text when the centre fielder was sent to Houston and followed, with understandable interest, everything else the Toronto Blue Jays did. By the time pencils were down, he was impressed.
“I thought they did really well for the future,” Gausman said Thursday morning, before his new team beat his old one 3-2 in 11 innings in the makeup of a June 21 rainout.
“They got controllable starters, guys who have really good stuff, obviously, (Jose) Soriano, the biggest name that they got. I've always said the pitching department over there is great and I think Pete (Walker, the pitching coach) is going to do wonders for those guys, so that's cool, that's exciting for them. I thought they did a great job of taking advantage of the market and unfortunately the situation that we put ourselves in. Listen, if a couple of us that got traded would have had good years, we’re probably not getting traded. That's just the reality. But I thought they took advantage of what they had to, and you can't blame them for it.”
The awkward space the Blue Jays found themselves in as Aug. 3 arrived led them to walk opposite tracks at the deadline, and how that approach plays out in the short-term will be especially intriguing over the final two months.
They arrived at Wrigley Field winners of three straight series for just the second time this season and were on the verge of a seventh win in 10 games behind Dylan Cease’s latest dominant effort. Instead, Alex Bregman tied the game with a two-out, two-run shot in the ninth off Louis Varland and after a wild 10th-inning escape by Chase Lee, the Cubs won it in the 11th when a Brandon Valenzuela throw to third on an attempted steal hit off Josh Smith’s glove and trickled to the outfield, allowing Pete Crow-Armstrong to score.
Cease’s seven shutout innings and two game-saving plays, one by Ernie Clement in the 10th, another by Myles Straw in the 11th, weren’t enough to overcome going 1-for-19 with runners in scoring position.
“The guys are playing their asses off,” said manager John Schneider. “There are some great plays mixed in between Myles, Ernie. Dylan was outstanding — that's about as good as you can get against a really patient, good lineup to do what he did. You want get the offence going. You want to either get some timely hits or add some slug, like we've talked about a lot. The other phases of the game, I like what they're doing. I like the way they're competing. And you've got to brush this off, leave it here and get on Philly.”
The Blue Jays head off to face the Phillies, with Soriano debuting Friday, at 54-62 and even still, they began the day only three games out of the final wild-card spot. And though there are six teams ahead, they have series remaining against five of them.
The objective playoff odds aren’t promising, with Fangraphs projecting them at 5.7 per cent Thursday morning, but how might that look if the Blue Jays had added Soriano, Spencer Arrighetti and Smith while keeping Gausman and Jeff Hoffman? When Soriano was acquired Monday morning, Varsho thought he’d be staying, but Gausman didn’t have similar thoughts about why he’d been traded after the fact.
“I'm not going to say anything like that,” said Gausman. “I'm happy for them over there. I do think they got better. They definitely got younger, getting rid of me, so that helps. I wish nothing but the best for that organization and especially those guys. … It's weird but part of the business, it's kind of what we signed up for.”
Better or not in the short term, the Blue Jays have more layers of pitching to handle uncertainty in the rotation like they're facing with Trey Yesavage. Schneider said that an MRI on the rookie right-hander’s left knee revealed a meniscus injury and that he’ll visit with a specialist Monday to determine next steps.
Surgery is a possibility “whenever you're seeing a specialist,” said Schneider, adding “we're obviously hoping to avoid that.”
Regardless, the runway on Yesavage’s rookie season, at minimum, just got shorter, but with Soriano in place, Arrighetti nearing a return, Jameson Taillon now in the rotation and Matt Waldron set to join the team in Philadelphia, they’re deeper than they’ve been at any point since spring training started.
Cease’s emergence into a Cy Young-calibre ace helps on that front, too. Over his last six starts, he’s allowed just four earned runs on 17 hits and 12 walks with 56 strikeouts in 43 innings.
He feels he’s better able to execute to different areas of the strike zone more consistently, for a number of reasons.
“Some of it is just we're deep into the season, I have a lot of reps, I've had a lot, in that sense, practice, experience, so my body's in a good spot,” said Cease. “Mechanically I'm in a good spot and then I'm taking the days in between serious, so I'm just focused and trying to take that into every start.”
The primary collective challenge for the Blue Jays remains scoring runs, and with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. sitting for a second straight day as he continues to deal with hamstring tightness, they let opportunity after opportunity slip away.
David Peterson balked home a run in the first when his third pickoff attempt at first base didn’t produce an out and then Alejandro Kirk, who had a four-hit day, singled home a second run in the seventh for all the runs they could eke out.
Cease made that stand up into late leverage, when Varland gave up a two-out wall-scraper to Bregman. The Cubs had runners on second and third with one out in the 10th, but Lee struck out Dansby Swanson with a five-man infield and then Clement made a leaping grab on Carson Kelly’s liner to end the inning.
There was no escape in the 11th, however, as after Straw threw out Kelly at home on Crow-Armstrong’s single in a second game-saving defensive play, the Blue Jays defence allowed the winning run to cross.
Gausman had originally been slated to start against the Blue Jays and while he said he “didn't necessarily ask” to be pushed back, “I was like, could we please not?”
“I just know it would be a lot,” he continued. “I just want to focus on trying to win a game and pitching against them, I think I could do it, I know those hitters pretty well over there, their strengths, their weaknesses, but I think it would a lot mentally. For them, too. Really close with all those guys. Wish them nothing but the best. Looking forward to watching us play them today and seeing those guys again, but definitely glad I'm not facing them.”
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