Sanchez sharp but offence falters
Tuesday night was the kind of start the Blue Jays have been hoping for from Aaron Sanchez all season.
The rookie right-hander was aggressive and efficient, hammering his mid-90s sinker down in the strike zone and letting his infielders feast on ground balls. For the first time in his young career, he pitched into the eighth inning. But it wasn’t enough. The Jays fell 3-2 to the L.A. Angels inside an echoey and cavernous Rogers Centre with an announced crowd of 15,062.
The Jays have now lost eight of their last 10.
“Obviously, it’s a tough loss,” Sanchez said afterward. “But a lot of good things happened out there for me today.”
The 22-year-old cruised through his first six innings on Tuesday, his only hiccup a solo home run to Kole Calhoun. He ran into trouble in the seventh, however. With the Jays holding a 2-1 lead, he allowed a leadoff walk to Calhoun and issued an- other free pass two batters later. The base on balls has been Sanchez’s biggest obstacle this year. He entered the game leading the majors with 29 walks allowed. But prior to the seventh, he hadn’t walked a single batter and had been in just two three-ball counts.
“It was nice to see him throw the ball like that today,” said catcher Russell Martin, who said Sanchez’s combination of command and velocity was the best he’d seen from the young pitcher.
“That really shows what he can do when he’s throwing strikes,” manager John Gibbons said.
“It was fun to watch: ground ball after ground ball.”
Fourteen of Sanchez’s 22 outs came on the ground, but he was still undone by his walks. The free pass to Calhoun to lead off the seventh eventually scored on a seeing-eye single, and a base on balls to his final batter in the eighth pushed the go-ahead run into scoring position. The Angels won it on a sacrifice fly.
In spite of the result and the way his outing ended, Tuesday was a step in the right direction for Sanchez, who is still finding his major-league legs. The Jays’ offence just wasn’t able to help him out.
The biggest reason the Jays are five games under .500 is because they have not pitched well. Their offence is among the best in the league and, despite Tuesday night, shouldn’t struggle to score runs. Whether they can find a way to work themselves back into contention will depend on how well they pitch.
In many ways Sanchez’s early-season struggles have mirrored the entire staff: he has walked too many batters and not pitched deep enough into games.
The fact that he showed significant improvement in both of those areas on Tuesday night has to be taken as a positive.
At the same time, the Jays — whose record in one-run games is now a dismal 2-7 — have to find a way to win when their bats are not pummelling the opposition into the ground. They have won just twice this year when scoring four or fewer runs.
Asked what that says about his club, Gibbons was succinct: “We’re not very good, I guess you could say.”