SEATTLE – Back on June 13, when Santiago Espinal made a throw across the diamond that ripped through the webbing of Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s glove at first base, it was easy for the Toronto Blue Jays to shrug it off as a quirky moment. Things were generally going well at the time, they were up 11-1 on the Baltimore Orioles in the game and all the faulty leather did was delay the inevitable. There wasn’t even a page to turn.
Now, though, amid the crucible of frustration the Blue Jays find themselves in, every mistake, every disappointment tends to get amplified and linger. So, in the fifth inning Sunday, at the end of 31 games in 30 days and a particularly miserable road trip, the Gabriel Moreno relay on what should have been an inning-ending 1-2-3 double play that ripped through the webbing on another Guerrero glove may very well have ripped through far more.
For a team nearing a boiling point, each blip becomes tougher and tougher to overcome. Guerrero’s faulty glove led to one run that cut into a 4-2 Blue Jays lead. Another run followed on an infield single that single, and the Seattle Mariners tied the game in the sixth when Tim Mayza hit Carlos Santana and two wild pitches past Gabriel Moreno led to a Cal Raleigh sac fly.
Bo Bichette hit the rest button with a solo shot that restored the Blue Jays lead in the seventh. But Moreno, struggling against the sun, dropped a J.P. Crawford pop-up to open the eighth and Santana, who had already homered in the second, promptly went deep for the third time in two games, giving the Mariners a 6-5 victory that completed a four-game sweep.
A dagger to end a 1-6 road trip with a ninth loss in 10 outings, the Blue Jays are no longer trying to turn the page on a bad day, but rather trying to shut the book on a maddening stretch.
Facing a bullpen day in the absence on Kevin Gausman, Sunday could not have shaped up much better for them as Max Castillo shoved for four innings despite throwing three frames of mop-up duty Thursday, George Springer went deep on the first pitch of the game, Raimel Tapia homered in the fourth and Bichette opened things up with a two-run single in the fifth.
Even more steadying is that they did against the tough Logan Gilbert, giving another heavily Canadian crowd of 37,694 at T-Mobile Park reason to believe this game would turn out differently.
But trying to extend Castillo into the fifth backfired when Raleigh and Adam Frazier hit consecutive one-out singles. In came David Phelps who walked Justin Upton before Sam Haggerty hit a weak chopper back to the mound, which he promptly relayed home.
Moreno then fired to first and the game, much like Guerrero’s glove, began to unravel under the growing weight of a mind-bending stretch.
The Blue Jays had seemingly fortified themselves by taking two of three from the Boston Red Sox and then winning the first two games of a series against the Tampa Bay Rays. But then Gausman took a line drive off his right ankle in the first game of a doubleheader against the Rays and a building Blue Jays surge has instead become an out-of-control slide.
