Blue Jays offence bails out Buehrle in win
TORONTO — Everything seemed normal with his wind-up, when Mark Buehrle drew the ball from his glove and reared back to throw with his left hand. And for a moment, everything seemed normal with his delivery. Then his right foot came down and it all fell apart.
“My cleat caught,” he said, “and I ate sh--.”
The Toronto Blue Jays pitcher did more than that, falling from the mound while the bases were loaded against the worst team in the American League. Buehrle kept the ball tight in his hand as he twisted down into all fours in the dirt and he was called for a balk.
A run scored. Buehrle surrendered a two-run single moments later.
His three-run lead had vanished, along with the hope of earning his first win in more than a month. The 35-year-old got out of the sixth inning, but did not return for the seventh.
Toronto staged a rally, buoyed by Melky Cabrera, who followed his solo home run in the seventh with a two-run single in the eighth to help the Blue Jays to a 9-6 win at home on Sunday. It was a shaky win, but it still sealed a win in the team’s first series back after the allstar break.
The Rangers, it might be mentioned, were dead last in the AL West before the game, and remained there afterward.
Texas is now 20 games under .500 — 20 games — for the first time in more than a decade.
Buehrle, meanwhile, was the first pitcher in baseball to win 10 games this season, but has gone without a win since June 1. On Sunday, he allowed eight hits and five runs over six innings, the most runs he has allowed since April, and the secondmost he has allowed in a game all season.
The dry spell has reached eight starts.
Unlike many of the previous seven, run support was not the main issue on Sunday. The Blue Jays had five runs on the board when he left the game after the sixth inning.
Catcher Dioner Navarro gave Buehrle a 1-0 lead with a solo home run over the fence in right field in the second inning. It was one of nine hits the Blue Jays managed off Texas starter Nick Tepesch over 4 1/3 innings.
Toronto had only been averaging 8.57 hits a game in July, second-lowest in the American League. Not sur- prisingly, the Blue Jays were also near the bottom of the list in runs, with an average of 3.14 in July, which was, again, second-lowest in the league.
They scored twice after Navarro’s home run in the second. Dan Johnson, in at first base, doubled and Steve Tolleson was hit by a pitch. Jose Reyes scored them both with a shot through a hole in the right side of the infield.
The Rangers answered right back in the third when Leonys Martin singled, Adam Rosales walked and both scored when Dan Robertson singled to right.
Staked to a 5-2 lead in the sixth, after striking out the leadoff hitter (Jake Smolinski), Buehrle conceded backto-back singles (to Geovany Soto and Martin, who was called safe after a video review) and loaded the bases on another single from Rougned Odor.
Buehrle then stumbled on his delivery, stumbling off the mound.
Soto scored on the balk.
“It’s embarrassing,” Buehrle said. “But I guess it’s all part of it.”
“Yeah,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said. “It’s gonna make the bloopers.”
Robertson followed that quickly with a single to centre, scoring another two that tied the score 5-5.
Buehrle picked Robertson off at first to end the inning. And that was his final play of the game.
The fall, he said, happened because a space off the rubber was “deeper” than it usually was, which is why his cleat caught. “Obviously, I haven’t been as sharp as I’ve wanted to be the last few times I’ve been out,” Buehrle said. “I don’t know. A couple of days that, you don’t want to have them, but they’re going to come through the course of a season.”
There was a flare of drama in the ninth inning when closer Casey Janssen, who has been working his way back from illness, allowed a run and three hits. He was pulled with two outs to set up an unusual showdown between Aaron Loup and former Blue Jays catcher J.P. Arencibia, who represented the tying run with two out.
Arencibia popped out to end the game.
Loup got the save. Todd Redmond got the win. Buehrle got his third no-decision in four weeks.
“He’ll be fine,” Gibbons said. “It’s too bad that he hasn’t had a win in so long, because he’s definitely pitched well enough to have a few more under his belt, you know? But that’s the way baseball is sometimes.
“There’s no justice in the business.”