Estrada proves mortal against Red Sox
This was not exactly the follow-up performance Marco Estrada had been dreaming of as he returned to the Rogers Centre following two brilliant starts in which he carried consecutive no-hitters into the eighth inning.
The 31-year-old right-hander struggled with command and control on Tuesday against the Boston Red Sox in a 4-3 loss. It was the Blue Jays’ second defeat in a row against Boston.
The Jays hung around for the final six innings and scared the Red Sox, who still must remember the 8-1 lead they surrendered to Toronto back at Fenway Park. But a two-run blast by Jose Reyes in the seventh only narrowed the deficit to one run. Reyes batted right-handed against lefty Tommy Layne. It was his first homer against a left-hander since July 8, 2014, off Tyler Skaggs.
Estrada trailed 2-0 in the first without allowing a hit. Second baseman Devon Travis booted a grounder to his right by Mookie Betts, then Estrada issued four walk — two with the bases-loaded — surrounding two deep fly balls. The wildness scored a pair of unearned runs, but runs nonetheless. He was already 38 pitches into the contest entering the second when Jackie Bradley Jr. led off with a homer to right. David Ortiz then homered leading off the third and two batters later, Estrada was gone.
Somewhere in between results lies the truth about Estrada’s capabilities as a starting pitcher.
“As soon as the game started, I just wasn’t making pitches, that’s all,” Estrada said. “I know these things are going to happen, but I still have to battle through it. Unfortunately, I didn’t give the team a chance to win. I left early, something no starter ever wants to do. I wish I just could have given them some innings, but I struggled, couldn’t locate anything. It’s just a bad day.”
In the meantime, the Jays have a decision to make regarding the immediate future of the injured Aaron Sanchez. He throws his first side session from a mound on Wednesday and is slated for a second bullpen on Saturday, both at Dunedin. The decision that needs to be made is whether to bring him back sooner rather than later, return him as a reliever rather than a starter, try him in a role he filled so well last year or the role he was emerging into as a star this year before pulling a right side lat.
Those are questions regarding Sanchez’s immediate — not longterm — role that can only be answered in the next 31 days by GM Alex Anthopoulos between now and the trade deadline. If the Jays obtain a starter, then manager John Gibbons believes Sanchez can be a key bullpen pitcher.
“Definitely,” Gibbons said. “I say that now because of the injuries he’s got. I really loved what he was doing when he was starting.
“But this little setback, now we’ve got to build him up. And, you know, we’ve looked at the ’pen. So you know we’ve got to make it stronger. We like the way it’s starting to shape up, but you can always make it stronger. And he’s a guy we definitely think can do that.”
At the moment, Roberto Osuna is the Jays’ de facto closer, filling virtually the same role Sanchez did over the final two months of 2014 after being called up in late July. Gibbons is not reluctant to use Osuna for more than three outs in save situations, then will give him a game off to recuperate. Right now, the second man in the ninth is Steve Delabar. Sanchez would be an upgrade.
“That would make us that much stronger down there,” Gibbons suggested. “You can move back everybody down and I think it would help us if somebody needs a breather that night, you’d still have a lot of guys you could go to. That’s where (bullpen) depth out there is so important.”
The Jays’ bullpen is in a better place than it has been all season — except in those gap games in which Osuna is not available. With Sanchez and Osuna serving in the ninth, it would give the Jays a choice of Delabar, Brett Cecil, Aaron Loup, Liam Hendriks and the surprising Bo Schultz.
“You get on a stretch and you’re playing a lot of tight games, the bullpen gets used a lot. Then some nights they can’t pitch. OK, and you’re running in one of those tight games again, you still want some guys to be able to come through for you,” Gibbons said. “If you’re winning games, and hopefully we can from where we’re at, if a team’s winning in the big leagues, bullpens get used. When you’re not winning it’s different. You can rest those guys more, but good teams, winning teams, those guys get used a lot.”
But for any of this to happen, for Sanchez to be a reliever, Anthopoulos has to go out and find another starter before the deadline.
That is likely the plan and likely why he told MLB Radio 10 days ago that at this point, his priority was starting pitching.
Gibbons doesn’t believe it has to be a rent-an-ace situation. He suggests there aren’t that many out there anyway. The GM needs to find a starter to go out every fifth day deep into games and keep the Jays in games. They have Mark Buehrle, R.A. Dickey, Drew Hutchison and Estrada.
“Whoever it might be, if you get him and he makes us better, you get him,” the manager said. “Then you adjust off that, whether it’s the ’pen, rotation or vice-versa.”
The Jays host the Red Sox in a matinee on Canada Day.