Batters not much help to Stroman as Jays lose to Royals,
Batters provide little help for Stroman against Royals, with zero extra-base hits
KANSAS CITY— Marcus Stroman wasn’t his best in Sunday’s rubber match against the Kansas City Royals. It was the third-shortest outing of his season — five innings — while the usually sure-handed pitcher made a pair of throwing errors.
But the 25-year-old right-hander was hardly the leading culprit in the 7-1 loss, in which the Jays’ offence continued to sputter.
“He pitched good enough to win,” manager John Gibbons said.
His teammates, however, did little to aid the effort, scoring their lone run on a wild pitch in the seventh inning, while failing to register even a single extra-base hit. With that kind of meagre production it mattered little how Stroman pitched.
In fact, the Jays’ offence has been stymied for much of their week-long road trip. Despite winning four of the seven games against the Astros and Royals, they scored just 17 times, an average of 2.4 runs per game. Heading into the road trip, they were averaging 4.9 runs per game on the season.
“We really haven’t been swinging it good since that last homestand,” Gibbons said after Sunday’s loss. “We’ve been kind of in a little rut, so we’re due to explode.”
The Jays managed just six singles on Sunday — five off erratic righthander Yordano Ventura — marking the 15th time in their last 16 games they have notched fewer than 10 hits.
Gibbons suggested it was just the regular ebb and flow of the season, a sentiment Stroman echoed.
“There’s 162 games,” Stroman said. “It’s baseball and it’s hard to be hot for162. Our guys are some of the best hitters in the league — we’re aware of that — and the drought is not going to last. It’s just one of those spurts and I’m sure they’ll break out soon.”
Stroman, meanwhile, is still working his way out of a midseason slump and he saw some progress in his fiveinning, three-run outing on Sunday.
“I didn’t feel bad,” he said, adding that the resilient Royals’ lineup ran up his pitch count by fouling off and spoiling enough good pitches until they could get ones to hit. “Just one of those days when I felt like I was battling all night.”
The two throwing errors — and a third misfire on a would-be doubleplay grounder — were surprising for Stroman, who entered the game having incurred just one error in his career.
“I’m usually great with those,” he said, adding that they were partly due to the Royals’ team speed — particularly Raul Mondesi, who was a speedy thorn in the Jays’ side all weekend — but the throws also just got away from him.
One play in particular, when he could have erased a leadoff walk if his throw to Troy Tulowitzki had allowed the shortstop to turn two, led to the Royals’ opening run. “I can make that play 10 out of 10 times if it happens again,” he said. “But it’s baseball and it’s just one of those plays I didn’t make in the moment and it ended up costing me.”
Stroman, who earned eight of his 15 outs on ground balls, took some solace in the fact that he was able to locate his sinker, his most-important pitch, down in the zone. But he also gave up his 17th homer of the season and sixth in his last five starts. “They made him work and they beat us at their game,” Gibbons said.
With Stroman in the dugout, the Royals piled on in the seventh, loading the bases on reliever Scott Feldman before Kendrys Morales put the game out of reach with a grand slam off lefty Brett Cecil.
With Sunday’s loss, the Jays fell back into second place behind Baltimore. They return home Monday for a three-game series against the lastplace Tampa Bay Rays, a prime target against whom to reignite their offence.