Jays’ silent bats speak volumes
Once-potent offence shut down again as O’s pull even in wild-card chase
TORONTO — Following a demoralizing loss Wednesday, Blue Jays manager John Gibbons maintained his charges were “resilient” and would bounce back in the series wrapper against the Baltimore Orioles.
Gibbons was wrong and Thursday the Jays dropped what might have been the last game played at the Rogers Centre in the 2016 season.
The pitching remained more than capable, but the once-mighty lineup continued its alarming fade to black in a 4-0 defeat, a disappearance threatening the club’s chances of making the wild-card game, let alone hosting it.
Ubaldo Jimenez, he of the unimpressive 5.71 ERA heading in, onehit the Jays through 62/3 innings and the Orioles scratched out a few runs to pull even with the Jays at 87-72 with three games to play in the regular season.
“We are not getting a lot of hits, that’s for sure,” Gibbons said. “You have to give (Jimenez) credit, he basically shut us down tonight. We couldn’t get anything going.”
Coming off of a dispiriting 3-2 loss that featured relievers Roberto Osuna and Jason Grilli both getting rocked, the Jays started off with a single and a walk, but stranded leadoff hitter Ezequiel Carrera at third. Devon Travis got left on third as well in the third inning and the Jays didn’t even get a runner to second base the rest of the way.
Jimenez has been much better in the second half of the season and historically has baffled much of the Toronto lineup (Jose Bautista had hit .086 with one extra-base hit coming in, Josh Donaldson just .192 and former Rockies teammate Troy Tulowitzki .125), but he shouldn’t have looked this good.
Toronto has scored four runs or more only seven times in its last 20 games. In that span, they have been shut out twice with three one-run performances.
The big bats have been silenced by a variety of opponents. The clearest symbol of this futility at the worst possible time is the fact Thursday was the 16th consecutive Jays loss when the team failed to hit a home run. A one-trick pony seldom accomplishes much.
Bautista took his share of the blame and expects things to turn shortly.
“We had seven chances today with runners in scoring position and we didn’t do that and obviously that falls on guys like me to drive the runs in and we’ve got to do a better job,” Bautista said.
“(The starters have) done outstanding, we’ve just got to give them better support.”
Not even the return of Travis could get the Jays going. On the good news front, Travis looked fine fielding a tough early ground ball at second.
He will likely be back in the leadoff spot in Boston for the final three games of the regular season.
The offensive struggles aren’t anything particularly new. Marco Estrada and R.A. Dickey ranked No. 9 and 10, respectively, in the American League in worst run support per start heading into Thursday’s games. The Jays have not given an improving Marcus Stroman much run support either; he is now in the top 20 himself for fewest runs provided by his offence per start and it has only got worse lately.
The Duke University product has now lost his past five decisions (9-10) with the offence only managing five total runs in support over that span.
Still, Stroman and Bautista are confident all is not lost.
“It’s the same mentality we had when we went down 2-0 to Texas (in the playoffs) last year,” Stroman said. “We are hoping that our luck starts to turn and we can go into Boston and get some wins.”