Misery continues for Jays
Sloppy play, missed chances deliver Tigers a 6-5 victory
The series win was there for the taking but the Blue Jays were a combination of too sloppy with their defence and just unable to take advantage when the scoring opportunities presented themselves.
It was one loss but it felt like a microcosm of the entire season. Flashes of the kind of baseball this group has thrilled the Toronto fan base with the past few years, but again unable to finish the job, as they dropped a 6- 5 decision in 11 innings to the Tigers.
The Jays lost the rubber match of this series when reliever Lucas Harrell missed wide of the plate on a full count pitch to Miguel Cabrera with the bases loaded and two out, forcing in the winning run.
It’s an awful way to lose, but it’s about what the Jays deserved on this day.
“Really, the way we have been playing we are right where we should be, playing the way we have in all phases of the game,” manager John Gibbons said.
Officially the Jays committed three errors in this one, the winning run an unearned run when Josh Donaldson failed to come up with a tough but makable play on a ground ball directly over the third base bag.
Donaldson appeared to field it but dropped it making the transfer from glove to throwing hand leaving Nicholas Castellanos safe at first. Castellanos would have been the second out of the inning after a leadoff walk to Alex Avila who was then sacrificed to second.
Justin Upton followed Castellanos with the second walk of the inning to load the bases before Harrell failed to find the strike zone with Cabrera.
Twice the Jays had leads in this game opening the game up with three runs in the first inning and after that lead was immediately handed back, getting another one when Jose Bautista went yard for the second time in the series with a man aboard in the fifth.
The second lead stood up until reliever Danny Barnes was taken deep by J.D. Martinez in the eighth on a play that was initially ruled a double and after review changed to a home run.
Jays starter Marco Estrada though gave the first lead back almost by himself as he began the game unable to throw strikes.
Then when he did get himself straightened away his defence let him down.
Estrada came into the game not have pitched in 13 days and it showed early on as he needed 36 pitches alone just to get out of the first inning.
Two walks, two hits and two sac flys later and the 3- 0 lead he was given was back to even.
“It just felt weird to me,” Estrada said. “Once I got out of that inning, I felt great. I felt like myself again. I thought I made a lot of good pitches. Certain things didn’t really go my way after that but I look back and other than Upton’s hit in the first ( a double) I don’t remember much else being hit too hard. I am taking those positives with me and move on to the next one.”
Estrada, after a one- sided talk with John Gibbons who paid Estrada an early visit because he didn’t feel his pitcher was letting the ball go, rebounded with an eight- pitch second inning. He even admitted Gibbons probably got him going with his visit.
The ultimate undoing, though, came in the fourth.
The first hiccup was a total misread on the parts of centre- fielder Kevin Pillar and Bautista, in right, on a ball off the bat of Alex Presley that was headed for the right- centre gap.
Both players began towards the ball but neither was going hard until both realized their mistakes. The catchable ball dropped in for a double.
James McCann, the next Tigers hitter, laced a ball toward the gap in left centre but left fielder Ezequiel Carrera appeared to have a bead on that one. He got to the ball in time and had the ball in his glove but failed to squeeze it before colliding with the outfield wall. That scored Presley from second and put the Jays back in a hole.
Estrada did not survive the inning as Gibbons went to his bullpen with two out and two on.
The bullpen was good from that point on but had to be perfect and Gibbons admitted expecting perfection for five full innings was probably asking a bit much.
“It’s tough to ask your bullpen to go five clean innings there at the end,” he said.
The Jays are six full games back of the wild card and have a fourgame series in Fenway waiting for them against a Red Sox team that has been showing signs of running away from the rest of the American League East.