The meek shall not inherit a playoff spot
Solid pitching isn’t enough to lift Jays as bats fall silent
You know the adage about how pitching and defence wins championships? The Toronto Blue Jays are perhaps taking it a bit too literally.
The Jays and their lineup of sluggers could barely muster any offence for the second straight night at the Rogers Centre, wasting another quality effort from a starting pitcher in a 4-0 loss to the Baltimore Orioles.
The loss drops Toronto (87-72) into a tie with the Orioles (87-72) for the first wild-card slot in the American League and means they will likely need wins at Boston this weekend to avoid having to play the wild-card game on the road or, gasp, falling out of the playoff picture altogether.
After a win over the Orioles in the first game of this series on Tuesday night, Toronto was on a nice little run and set up to clinch a playoff spot before the homestand was over. Instead, the bats went silent, the Jays scored all of two runs over the last 18 innings, and Toronto gave back all of a two-game lead over Baltimore.
The Orioles’ Ubaldo Jimenez, who came into the game with just seven wins on the season and an ugly ERA of 5.71, and who couldn’t get out of the first inning the last time he pitched at the Rogers Centre, was suddenly dealing like he was a Cy Young candidate.
After allowing the first two batters of the game to reach on single and a walk, he set down 12 of the next 13 batters. Through six innings, the Blue Jays had still just mustered that one hit. It’s not like baseball is a game that can really be played with a sense of desperation, but Toronto’s hitters weren’t exactly rising to the moment, especially after a Wednesday night performance in which both of their runs came on sacrifice flies.
The big hit, for an offence that had scored the fourth-most runs in the American League this season, had picked a most unfortunate time to go missing. It was an unexpected ending to what was the biggest series of the season: the Jays didn’t just go down quietly, they went down meekly.
If Toronto doesn’t get back here in the playoffs, this might have been the final home game for pending free agents Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista. Encarnacion doubled in his final at-bat in the ninth inning, then Bautista struck out.
Toronto’s inability to score made a loser out of Marcus Stroman (9-10), who deserved a better fate. The little ball of energy gave up single runs in the third and fourth innings, and though each was earned, the Toronto defence could have bailed him out with better plays.
First, J.J. Hardy scored after a leadoff double on a ball that right-fielder Michael Saunders almost caught, and later Chris Davis scored on a fielder’s choice that could have been a doubleplay ball had Josh Donaldson’s errant throw not pulled Devon Travis off the bag at second base.
In the top of the seventh, Baltimore made it 3-0 on two singles and a stolen base, and then added another when manager John Gibbons left Stroman out for the eighth and the Orioles responded with a double and a single.
The way Toronto’s bats were swinging, or not swinging, it felt like a lot to overcome.
Which is not the way this pennant run was expected to go. After averaging close to five runs a game all season, the Blue Jays have only managed to better that mark twice over their past 13 games. The paltry offence has coincided with a fabulous stretch of starting pitching, and in so doing has wasted a lot of gems.
Stroman’s third earned run marked the first time in those 14 games that the starter had given up more than two earned runs, which was a franchise record. Entering Thursday, the starters had also gone seven straight allowing no more than one earned run, also a franchise record.
And what did they have to show for it? An 8-6 record, which is not what a team with this many big bats would expect to get from a historic run of starting pitching. (The bullpen must also take some of the blame for the less-than inspiring record, with blown saves in the ninth inning of two of the last four games.)
On Thursday, though, it was the complete inability to mount a rally against Jimenez that now has them fighting for their playoff lives. The Baltimore starter, ineffective for much of this season, had managed a sub-3.00 ERA over his last six starts coming into the game, causing Gibbons to warn ahead of time that he shouldn’t be taken lightly.
“He’s a good veteran who’s caught that second wind,” Gibbons said. “If he’s on, he’s going to be tough.”
The Blue Jays are making a lot of pitchers look awfully tough, these days.