TORONTO – More often than not it takes a clean, crisp game to beat the Tampa Bay Rays. And after a couple of days with relative breathing room against their longtime nemesis, the Toronto Blue Jays once again found an all-too-familiar frustration when things got tight in the margins.
The chance to make a good series a great one with a sweep disappeared in the sixth inning of a 5-1 loss, when Teoscar Hernandez misjudged an Austin Meadows line drive that allowed the go-ahead run to score. That came two batters after wunderkind Wander Franco got just enough of a down-and-away slider to send it over the right-centre-field wall and tie things up, marring yet another brilliant-but-hard-luck outing for Robbie Ray against the Rays.
In three starts against Tampa Bay, the left-hander has allowed just six runs in 20 innings with 22 strikeouts, but the Blue Jays have lost all three times. Sunday, he gave up just the two runs over seven dominant innings in which he erased a pair of early jams to position his team for a sweep.
“Against any team you have to play clean and we didn't do that today,” lamented manager Charlie Montoyo. “Robbie Ray was outstanding, of course, he gave us a chance. It's been fun to watch because even after 100 pitches he's still throwing 96-97. That's not easy to do. It seems like he gets stronger the longer he's in the game. But you have to play clean games against good teams and we didn't do that.”
Instead, the Blue Jays couldn’t overcome their costly hiccup as Collin McHugh took over from the always crafty Ryan Yarbrough in the sixth and retired eight straight after a Bo Bichette leadoff single, promptly erased on a pickoff by the right-hander.
He kept the game at 2-1 until the ninth, when Bichette threw the ball away after ranging left to scoop up Yandy Diaz’s infield single and Meadows followed with a run-scoring double off Rafael Dolis. The right-hander, just activated off the injured list, couldn’t keep the inning from unravelling after that, as Taylor Walls added an RBI double to end his afternoon and Tayler Saucedo gave up a Mike Brousseau sacrifice fly before escaping the frame.
The close-‘til-end finale came after the Blue Jays took the opener 11-1 on Friday and clinched the series with a 6-3 victory on Saturday, a solid rebound after the Rays swept four games in Dunedin, Fla., during their last meeting from May 21-24. Three of those games were decided in the last at-bat and the Blue Jays blew leads in two of them.
A win Sunday would have pushed them back to a season-high six games for the first time since May 18, before a series of bullpen implosions sent them all the way down to 33-35. They’ve still won 10 of 14 since to undo that damage, and have three games at Baltimore starting Tuesday and then three more at Tampa Bay to gain further ground before the all-star break.
“We've done what we've done this year and we haven't clicked on the same cylinder all at once yet,” Bichette said. “We had some moments this series and this homestand, but we can definitely be better. We're really confident. We know we're better and we'll just continue to work hard and play hard and see what happens.”
Yarbrough gave them precious little to work with on Sunday, as aside from Randal Grichuk’s solo shot in the second inning, only one batter reached second base in his five innings – Vladimir Guerrero Jr., on a two-out double.
George Springer then struck out to end the inning and Yarbrough allowed just two singles after the Grichuk homer — the Blue Jays never got the chance to build a big inning.
In 11 career starts against the Blue Jays, Yarbrough has a 2.25 ERA over 52 innings.
“He not only does it to us, he does it to a lot of teams,” Montoyo said. “And you would say, ‘Well, you've got pretty good hitters, you should make an adjustment.’ But he deserves credit because... he keeps you off-balance and you don't know what's coming. He deserves credit for that.”
Ray, on the other hand, just keeps shoving the ball down opponents’ throats, feeding steady 95 m.p.h. fastballs to Rays hitters. Of his 104 pitches, 81 were heaters and it was just the one slider to Franco that was really costly.
Home runs have been his bane this season, as Franco’s drive was the 20th he’s surrendered thus far. Of those, nine have been when he’s facing an order for the third time through, and his stats coming in before the game in that realm stood at .349/.360/.723.
Ray described the homers as “baffling,” apt given how consistently well he’s pitched all year.
“I feel like I made a decent pitch, I could probably execute it a little bit better than I did,” Ray said of the slider to Franco. “But other than that, I feel like I was in the zone, keeping them off-balance, able to go into the seventh inning, finish the seventh inning strong and give the team a chance to win. I mean, that's all I can really do. Go out every time and try to put up zeros and keep us in it.”
He certainly deserved a better fate in this one and any chances of a late game comeback disappeared when Dolis couldn’t hold the deficit at one. His return is important and Montoyo intends to give him more run because they need him to be a leverage option, but his command needs to be reined in first.
That left the Blue Jays happy for a series win, greedily wishing for more.
“Coming into this series I was thinking, the whole team was thinking we have to take at least two or three. And we did, so I'm really pleased because that's one of the best teams in baseball,” Montoyo said. “For us to get to where we want to get, we've got to beat them. Today wasn't our best game but I'm pleased with the two out of three we took from the Rays, for sure.”
