SEATTLE – All too often in this week of struggle, the Toronto Blue Jays have found themselves caught in a vicious cycle. Their starter struggles, leaving behind a big deficit and a bunch of innings for the bullpen to cover. The offence, looking for big strikes to make up the gap, comes out of its approach, becomes overly aggressive and fails to put up crooked numbers. As that plays out, a worn-out bullpen is unable to hold the opposition in check and the game unravels.
The end result is that problems in the Blue Jays rotation have led to bad habits at the plate through a troubling start to July.
“We’ve still got to find ways to get on base, but it is tough to come from behind almost every day,” manager Charlie Montoyo said of his club’s predicament. “This month, we’re (27th) in ERA and that’s why I always talk about pitching. Pitching is No. 1 for me. If you pitch, you have a chance to win. This month, it’s been tough. We’ve been behind a lot and when you’re behind, everybody feels the pressure. And that’s what’s going on. Kind of like early in the season when we were not swinging the bats as well. Everybody feels the pressure. Everybody’s trying to do a little bit more. The only way to stop that is talking to the guys about one at-bat at a time. If you don’t get your pitch, give it to the next guy. That’s what we need to do better.”
Well, the Blue Jays did a lot of things better Friday night but it still wasn’t enough as Eugenio Suarez’s three-run homer in the 11th gave the Seattle Mariners a 5-2 win Friday before a raucous, Canuck-filled crowd of 32,398 at T-Mobile Park.
The winning rally came after the Blue Jays narrowly escaped the 10th, as they intentionally walked Ty France with two out only for J.P. Crawford to single to left. However, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., saved the day with a perfect throw home to easily get Abraham Toro.
But after former Blue Jay Ryan Borucki shut them down for a second straight frame, there was no escape in the 11th as after an intentional walk to Carlos Santana, Suarez hammered a Sergio Romo slider over the wall in left for a 14th win in 17 outings.
Still, this one played out much differently than most of the games during the 1-6 stretch that preceded it thanks in large measure to Ross Stripling, who kept a surging Mariners lineup under control for five innings in another gutty outing.
Key was the way he cleverly limited the damage to two runs allowed during second- and third-inning rallies, striking out Sam Haggerty and Andrew Knapp to strand a pair in the second, while getting Suarez swinging to end the third after Bo Bichette stole a single from Carlos Santana with this gem.
Not buried early for a change, the offence worked starter George Kirby and meticulously built innings, even if it didn’t really fulfil them as another early-season bugaboo — hitting with runners in scoring position –– re-emerged as they went 2-for-13 through the first five innings and 2-for-18 overall.
Perhaps most frustrating was the fourth inning when with two runners on, Santiago Espinal dunked a flare into centre field that Julio Rodriguez charged just aggressively enough to freeze lead runner Gurriel Jr., allowing him to fire a 99.6 m.p.h. strike to third base for a force. After a Cavan Biggio strikeout, George Springer walked to load the bases for Bichette, who got to a full count and then was frozen by this mesmerizing 97.6 m.p.h Kirby heater that was a ball out of the hand before 18 inches of horizontal break caught the outer edge.
Who can blame him for slamming his bat into the ground in frustration?
The Blue Jays eked out runs on RBI singles by Gurriel in the second and Teoscar Hernandez in the fifth but there was no decisive blow, leading to innings of increasingly high leverage until the 11th, when Toronto couldn’t get to Borucki and ran out of leverage arms to give its offence another chance.
