Blue Jays’ offence missing in action
Eric Thames spent 15 minutes staring into his locker after the game, as though he had made a colossal mistake that cost his team a victory.
All he had done was hit a home run before making a valiant leap at the left-field wall that nearly stole a homer from the Baltimore Orioles.
But for Thames, the one that got away cut deep. In the Toronto Blue Jays’ 2-1 loss, that Matt Wieters blast over Thames’ outstretched glove proved the difference.
“It hit my glove. I looked up and saw it was in the seats,” said Thames, who sat on the warning track for a good 10 seconds as the crowd roared. His immediate reaction? “Intense anger,” he said. Wieters, a left-handed batter, sliced a 3-1 pitch from Henderson Alvarez toward the corner. had it not hit thames’ glove, it might have stayed in the park, manager John Farrell said.
Alvarez pitched one of the better games of his nascent career, allowing two runs on five hits and recording 15 outs via the ground ball. But in 14 bigleague starts, he has only one win.
Thames suggested he was especially miffed at missing the Wieters blast because it seemed another brick in a wall he has been building since the season started. He was 3-for-15 entering the game and said he had been working with hitting coach Dwayne Murphy to clear his head and focus his approach.
“It’s been a pretty rough month for myself,” he said. “I’m lucky I’m around a great bunch of guys and they’re able to pick me up.”
He picked them up in the third inning when he lofted his first homer of the season over the right-field wall and onto the Eutaw Street concourse. But the Blue Jays, fresh from a four-game sweep in Kansas City, turned into the Royals at the plate. They managed just five hits off Tommy Hunter and four Orioles’ relievers and never mustered anything close to a threat, save for the Thames homer.
Alvarez, who went 1-3 with a 3.53 ERA in 10 starts after his promotion from Double-a last season, is 0-2 with a 4.10 ERA so far this year.
Before the game, Farrell announced Edwin Encarnacion, the club’s steadiest hitter in the early going, would take over the cleanup spot, dropping Adam Lind to fifth.
Encarnacion had batted fourth six times against left-handed starters, but this was his first time against a right-hander. He went 0-for-4. It was just his fourth hitless game in 17 this year.
EXTRA BASE: Farrell reiterated closer Sergio Santos will be out of action for at least four weeks while the inflammation in his shoulder subsides and he rebuilds his arm strength.