S-mothered!
Jays bullpen, quiet bats taint a special day for Alek Manoah's mom
CLEVELAND — It was a half-hour before first pitch on Sunday afternoon and Susana Lluch was fighting back tears.
When your son is one of the top young pitchers in baseball and you get a chance to see him work in the big leagues on Mother's Day — live and in person — the emotions are going to bubble to the surface.
“For me, this is something I've dreamed of, to be able to spend the day at the park with my son taking the mound on Mother's Day,” Lluch said before watching her boy, Alek Manoah, make his sixth start of the season — an ultimately frustrating outing at Progressive Field as the Jays fell 4-3 to the Guardians.
“It's Mother's Day every day, but when you have a son who is an athlete, who you don't really get to see much unless you travel … to be able to sit her knowing I'm his mom and I'm here. It truly is wonderful.”
In the five innings that followed, it might have been even more wonderful had the Jays offence provided some run support for her son, but such has been the lean production of late.
And as an added bonus — if the slippery baseballs at the disposal of the big righthander were easier for his powerful right hand to grip.
Ultimately the laggardly bats were again the Jays' undoing, as was a late collapse from the bullpen.
The Guardians scored a pair of runs in the eighth for the come-from behind victory that ended a gruelling stretch of 20 games in 20 days for the Jays.
It was the third loss in four games here near the shores of Lake Erie as the Jays fell to 17-13. They've dropped five of their past seven and are in third in the AL East with a road series coming up this week against the two teams above them — the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays.
It was an emotional day for Manoah, who vowed he was going to do something special for the person who has had the most significant impact on his burgeoning career.
But his sixth start of 2022 certainly wasn't Manoah's most efficient of the season, but the bulldog mentality that has defined the 24-yearold in the 11 months he has been in the big leagues was again on display.
The fact that he allowed only five hits, despite dealing with baseballs so slippery he had trouble gripping them, was testimony to his competitiveness.
“They're terrible,” Manoah said afterward. “Those balls were right out of a box. Some laces were huge. Some were fluffy. They were brand new white balls.
“There's no excuse but definitely the balls need to be better. I was out there trying to (rub them down) myself.”
Time after time, Manoah tossed balls to the dugout, hoping to get one with less sheen. And manager Charlie Montoyo even complained to the umpires about their condition at one point.
It was a struggle for control from the outset as Manoah needed 46 pitches to get through two innings. He hit two Cleveland batters and threw a third pitch several feet above catcher Alejandro Kirk to the backstop.
“I'm not here to make excuses,” said Manoah, who went five innings, allowing just two earned runs while hitting a season-high of 95 pitches through those five innings. “A lot of (bleep) went wrong today. This team is going to fight no matter what. I'm going to fight no matter what.”
While the Jays continued to have difficulty cashing in with runners in scoring position, they had a chance to sneak out yet another win when George Springer's sacrifice fly in the sixth scored Santiago Espinal and gave them a 3-2 lead.
But when Tim Mayza allowed a solo home run to Own Miller in the eighth and Adam Cimber allowed an RBI single to Oscar Mercado later in the inning, the Jays had a rare blown loss.
And a frustrating end to what may be the toughest stretch on their 162-game schedule.
WHERE'S THE O?
The only streaks the lukewarm Jays offence seems capable of lately is the unproductive kind. After scoring a pair of runs in the first inning — thanks to a bases-loaded single from Teoscar Hernandez — they didn't record another hit until Espinal's go-ahead run in the seventh … The Jays were quiet late in games here, batting a combined .421 in the first inning of the four contests and .171 (19 for 111) from the second inning on … “Runners in scoring position — we're last in the American League right now — but I know we're going to get better,” Montoyo said. “I always believe in people, but our offence is better than that. I don't know when it's going to come, but it's going to come.”
AROUND THE BASES
Manoah's three strikeouts were his fewest in a game since Aug. 16 … Despite the loss, the Jays are still 20-6 in Manoah's starts dating back to his big-league debut last May … Springer's sac fly RBI was his team-leading seventh go-ahead run driven in of the season … In all three of their wins in the series, the Guardians were trailing at some point in the game … The Jays offence certainly showed signs of heating up when it started with a Springer double, a Bo Bichette walk and Vlad Guerrero Jr., single. Hernandez made it four hits in a row, but rather than securing a big inning, Guardians rookie pitcher Konnor Pilkington got out of the jam.