JAYS LOSE GAME, MAYBE TULO
Thumb injury may put slugging shortstop out of commission.
Even the ancient King Pyrrhus would have trouble finding any sign of victory in either the Blue Jays’ battle or the war on Sunday, emerging from a 6-2 loss to the Orioles in 12 innings.
Yes, the Jays still won the series two games out of three, but they also may have lost the services of their shortstop.
They crept closer to the front-running O’s — even becoming kings of the division, if just for one day, before slipping back to second place after Sunday’s result. Winning the series was the battle. But following news that Troy Tulowitzki has suffered a chip fracture in his right thumb, could that be the start of a lost war? The next man up would have to be Ryan Goins, now at Triple-A Buffalo.
“It’s a little sore, obviously got me pretty good,” Tulowitzki, hit by a pitch in the sixth inning, said in a sombre clubhouse as teammates bustled to pack for a seven-game, seven-day road trip. “It’s blown up. They just told me to see how it feels (Monday).
“I’ll get up, come to the field and see how it feels, hopefully get some of that inflammation out of there. And if I can throw, if I can grip a bat — we’ll see how long it takes, hopefully not too long. If I was good enough to (stay in the game), I definitely would have been in there.”
The slugging shortstop — who had been returning to his all-star form with the bat in the 40 or so games since returning from the disabled list on June 17 — lined a monster home run off the facing of the fifth deck in left field in the fourth inning. One at-bat later, a pitch up and in from starter Chris Tillman scored a direct hit on his right thumb. These teams have had issues in the past few years. They don’t like each other. But Tulowitzki was not ready to say it was intentional.
“They got to two strikes. There was a pitch earlier in that sequence that was by my leg,” Tulowitzki said. “I don’t think by any means they were trying to hit me. It was just one of those things where maybe the pitch got away. They could probably answer that question better than I can.”
The Jays’ bullpen had worked four straight scoreless innings in relief of all-star Aaron Sanchez, but in the 12th left-hander Franklin Morales was credited with a walk and a balk before Jonathan Schoop delivered the go-ahead run on a single to left, scoring Pedro Alvarez.
With two men on, leadoff man Adam Jones crushed a three-run homer to left-centre off right-hander Jesse Chavez.
Sanchez recorded yet another quality start, his 17th of the season in 21 assignments. He has allowed two earned runs or fewer in eight straight starts and leads the AL with a 2.71 ERA.
“As far as myself, I feel I did a good job out there,” Sanchez said. “I put the ball where I wanted to. The biggest thing is, I feel strong. I don’t feel fatigued. I haven’t felt fatigued all year.”
Nursing a narrow two-run lead into the top of the seventh, the Jays’ ace right-hander walked the Orioles’ first batter in the frame, Chris Davis. At that moment of release, above the sudden hush of the madding crowd, Sanchez spat a clearly audible F-bomb directed solely at himself. Easily understandable. The 24-year-old, still refining his craft, knew he had broken a cardinal rule of pitching: Make them earn their way on base when you are holding the lead in late innings.
“I thought there was a couple of questionable calls, maybe one or two that at-bat, that changed my approach to Davis there,” Sanchez said. “But with that being said, any time you issue a leadoff walk it always seems to come and haunt you, and for sure it did.”
Sanchez had been efficiently dominant to that point, allowing a walk and three hits with only one O’s runner reaching scoring position, that being Matt Wieters with two out in the fifth. But, oh, those leadoff walks. The next batter, Mark Trumbo, scorched a one-hopper at third baseman Darwin Barney that he contorted to avoid like a slow-motion Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. That put runners on second and third. An RBI grounder and sac fly later, the game was tied.
While Sanchez is patiently, or impatiently, waiting for the other shoe to drop concerning his seemingly inevitable move to the bullpen, the talented starter is making good use of his borrowed time, leaping with both feet to squash opposing hitters and quietly making his case on the field to remain in the rotation. Sanchez allowed four hits and two runs over seven innings with no decision, maintaining his 11-1 record. His only loss came on April 22, 17 starts ago.
“I think going into the year we all knew it was going to be a career high in innings,” Sanchez said. “It’s something that I strove for in the offseason. I feel like I’ve pitched pretty well.”
Sanchez, with 11 starts left if he continued to take the ball every five games, is already at 1391⁄ innings. If
3 he averaged just six per outing the rest of the way, he would accumulate 2051⁄ innings.
3 The problem the Jays see is that in his six previous professional seasons he has never logged more than 1331⁄ in a calendar year. That was
3 back in 2014. Given those figures, the increase in workload would be around 50 per cent. The Jays, how- ever, aren’t governed by the percentages as much as by information supplied from their own people, led by director of analytics Joe Sheehan. And that’s information and analysis the organization chooses not to share.
The MLB non-waiver trade deadline arrives on Monday at 4 p.m. After that there can still be trades in August if the player clears waivers, with mid-rotation rentals likely still available.