Kikuchi shows up, bats don’t
Bullpen gets beaten up in extra inning, but help looks like it’s on the way
Yusei Kikuchi claims to go through about four books a week during the season. In the off-season, up to 10 weekly. That’s a whole lot of reading for someone who also sleeps 13 hours a night.
He might want to suggest a couple of tomes to his teammates: “The Science of Hitting’,’ by Ted Williams maybe; or “Hitting is Simple: The ABC’s of Batting,’’ by Blue Jays offensive co-ordinator Don Mattingly.
Because yet again the bats were tepid in Wednesday’s 6-1 loss to Seattle, putting an abrupt halt to Toronto’s modest two-game win streak wherein starters Chris Bassitt and José Berríos had their way with the Mariners.
But for Kikuchi, who has pitched well in his last two starts while bringing his ERA down to 2.30, it all crumbled into another no-decision despite six stalwart innings of onerun ball, lifted after 89 pitches by manager John Schneider though the lefty still clearly had more in the tank. And full credo to Yimi Garcia who followed, on the other side of Nate Pearson, with two clean innings, striking out the side in the ninth, and twice hitting 99.8 m.p.h. on the radar gun.
Except it went pear-shaped after that, from the moment the Jays failed to lure anybody across the plate with the bases loaded in the ninth, then a total bullpen meltdown in the 10th — five runs surrendered between the disturbingly wonky Tim Mayza and Mitch White.
Oh, the Jays did connect for half a dozen hits but most were of no consequence, except for Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s 459-foot bomb into the second deck in the seventh inning that knotted the score 1-1 and enlivened the afternoon crowd at the Rogers Centre. Heck, the Mariners likewise had half a dozen hits but they jammed six runs out of theirs.
After the Jays spotted Seattle those five added runs in the 10th, with Mayza giving up a leadoff firstpitch home run to Cal Raleigh, Schneider explained he had gone to his trusty left-handed reliever to turn the switch-hitting Raleigh around, which indeed did happen, except … KAPOW.
“Obviously it didn’t work,’’ the skipper said.
Methinks I’ll keep a ledger of stuff that didn’t work for The Schneid this season.
In any event, Mayza walked a pair in advance of White and then an outburst of Mariners just kept cartwheeling across home plate.
Kikuchi’s teammates could scrounge up just four hits across his six innings, meagre gruel, even with due credit to Seattle starter Logan Gilbert. Kikuchi allowed only one run on three hits, striking out nine — four of those coming on wicked sliders.
“I put a lot of emphasis on making adjustments with my slider,” said Kikuchi, explaining how he’d focused on the pitch intensely since his last outing, Toronto’s 3-0 triumph over the Yankees last Friday. “I was working on that throughout the week and that played really well today.’’
That snapping slider complements his high 90s fastball, the curveball he incorporated last season, and the changeup. “Sometimes I am a little bit too much trying to aim where I want to throw that slider,” he said. “I was putting emphasis on not tensing up my arm too much. Making sure that I’m relaxed as I’m throwing that slider.’’
Actually, everything Kikuchi throws is hard.
All for naught, though, despite another fine start against his former team. “They know me but I also know them, too.’’
Almost three times through the rotation, the Jays’ first-arms-up have been faring somewhat better at home than on a 4-6 road trip to start the season. Bassitt admitted the other night, in the afterglow of his first win in a 6â-inning performance against Seattle: “To be honest with you, I’ve been pretty disappointed in our starts so far. Obviously this is my third start and two of my starts were terrible, in my opinion.’’
Berríos has been sublime. Kevin Gausman, who had a short runway to the season following elbow soreness during spring training, went weirdly sideways against the Yankees, in his shortest start as a Blue Jay (1â innings, six runs). And who knows how long, or if, the Jays will stay with Bowden Francis (12.96 ERA) as a starter?
But if the bats don’t wake up in a consistent manner, it certainly looks like the Jays will have to lean again on their pitching, hoping to replicate the starters’ ERA of 3.85 in 2023, third-best in baseball. Their collective ERA this season, thanks to Kikuchi, is down to 4.76 from 5.09.
An ailing relief corps hasn’t helped but there’s good news dawning for Toronto, with both Jordan Romano and Erik Swanson scheduled to pitch Thursday in Buffalo.
The pitching should sort itself out. The hitting? The timely hitting? That feels evermore like a hard- scrabble theme and a trend.