TORONTO – Matt Chapman is right, Shohei Ohtani is the only guy on that, ahem, team who can hit, at least while Mike Trout, Anthony Rendon and Brandon Drury recuperate from injuries, and the Toronto Blue Jays decided to make the other Los Angeles Angels beat them.
Eventually, one of them did. Hunter Renfroe following Chad Wallach’s sacrifice bunt in the 10th with a two-run homer off Yimi Garcia that secured a 3-2 win Sunday and prevented the Blue Jays from completing a three-game sweep.
Ahead of an important week featuring four games against the Baltimore Orioles and three games at the Boston Red Sox, not to mention Tuesday’s 6 p.m. ET trade deadline, the loss was a disappointing one for the Blue Jays, who had ample opportunity to take the finale.
They went 1-for-12 with runners in scoring position through the first nine innings before getting a too-little, too-late RBI single from Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the bottom of the 10th that made it a one-run game before closer Carlos Estevez, in his second inning of work, closed things out.
Still, at 59-47 and with newly acquired Jordan Hicks in the fold, they’ll head into the clashes against their AL East rivals with a chance to close ground on the division-leading Orioles and expand the gap on the wild-card chasing Red Sox.
“I think we’re in a great spot,” said manager John Schneider, speaking shortly before the Hicks acquisition was completed. “I think we’re playing as well as we have. Guys are excited for the next couple of series that are coming up, for sure. And there’s still opportunity for us to continue to be more consistent, but we’re excited for it, and I think we’re in a great spot not only with our pitching but with the way we’re swinging the bats, too.”
Renfroe, who in addition to his two-run homer added a sacrifice fly in the third, did all the damage as the Blue Jays issued two more intentional walks to Ohtani, one in the fourth and one in the ninth.
The second came after Luis Rengifo worked a two-out walk off Tim Mayza and advanced to second on a wild pitch to the two-way sensation but the left-hander then buckled down to get weak groundouts from Mickey Moniak and Mike Moustakas that ended the threat.
Jose Berrios walked a tight-rope through his first four frames, the leadoff batter reaching three times and two men aboard each frame, but he limited the damage to Renfroe’s bases-loaded sacrifice fly that opened the scoring in the third.
In the fourth, the Blue Jays walked Ohtani intentionally after Rengifo’s two-out double and Berrios promptly induced a Moniak pop up to end the inning, the first of seven straight he retired to close out a solid day.
Each walk was notable given the shot captured by Friday’s Apple TV broadcast of Chapman questioning Schneider about why they had pitched to Ohtani after the slugger had homered off Kevin Gausman in the first inning.
Walking him intentionally with the bases empty at the start of a game makes no sense – Gausman missed his spot anyway – but a more deliberate approach played in leverage situations over the rest of the weekend.
“You look at it, there are going to be times where you don’t want to let him beat you,” Schneider explained Saturday. “Score dictates it, whether it’s the first inning or the fifth of the sixth, you kind of pick your poison a little bit for that type of player. He can change the complexion of the game with one swing really quickly.”
The Blue Jays did pitch to him in the seventh when Genesis Cabrera, the left-hander picked up last week from the Cardinals, made his fourth impressive appearance. He got Ohtani to ground out weakly to second in a three-up, three-down frame that included two other weak groundouts a day after escaping a bases-loaded, one-out jam unscathed.
“I trust myself,” Cabrera said of his approach through interpreter Hector Lebron. “My mentality is to attack the zone, try to throw strikes, that’s all I’m thinking when I’m in situations like that.”
With a fastball that sits 97 he complements with a slider and curveball, he’s quickly won Schneider’s trust as a second lefty out of the bullpen to support Mayza. The 26-year-old is no stranger to leverage, having seen plenty of it with the Cardinals, and called the fresh start he’s enjoying with the Blue Jays, “a great opportunity.”
“New team, time to start new relationships with new teammates,” he said. “It looks like it’s a fun team to be on, they’re all together in the clubhouse a lot. It’s great. I’m trying to take advantage.”
Tyler Anderson, meanwhile, worked around some loud outs in holding the Blue Jays to Whit Merrifield’s RBI single in the fifth, cashing in Daulton Varsho’s one-out double. Merrifield advanced to second when Moniak bobbled the ball in left field but was stranded there when Bo Bichette flew out to left and Guerrero grounded out, the first in a series of missed opportunities that followed.
Chapman’s leadoff double went to waste in the sixth, Varsho’s one-out double was left on the bases in the seventh while two more at-bats with a runner in scoring position weren’t capitalized in the eighth.
“They probably are saying the same thing for this series,” Schneider said of the missed opportunities. “You want to try to get a little bit of a cushion, you want to try to separate a little bit and when you get two pretty good teams going at it, sometimes it doesn’t happen. We did that in the first couple of games but you’re trying to just put guys in the right spot and they got the big hit today and we didn’t.”
