TORONTO — The Toronto Blue Jays were considering several options to nurse home a two-run lead during the bottom of the seventh inning Monday when Danny Jansen’s two-run homer changed the calculus.
Suddenly blessed with breathing room, manager John Schneider opted against sending Yimi Garcia back out for a second inning of work, going with Genesis Cabrera instead. When Cabrera got into trouble with two outs in the eighth, Jordan Romano quickly warmed but wasn’t needed when the lefty escaped trouble. Jansen then added a two-run single in the bottom half to open a six-run lead, Romano stood down and Erik Swanson mopped up the ninth in a 9-3 win.
“It all just depends on where you are in the game and what the score is,” Schneider explained. “The Jano single, Jano homer allow you to not go to those guys. That was huge.”
The sequence reinforced how add-on runs can help teams not only win the game in which they’re scored, but also better position them the next day, too. Rather than being down due to extended outings, Garcia and Romano were both available if needed Tuesday, which they weren’t in a 5-0 loss to the Chicago White Sox in which the Blue Jays managed just two hits.
As lacking as add-on runs have been this Blue Jays season, scoring in general continues to be problematic for them, a key reason why they failed to reach three straight wins for just the second time this season.
Four days after Tyler Alexander was perfect through his first 22 batters against them, electric lefty Garrett Crochet sat down his first 13 batters before Justin Turner ended an 0-for-30 drought with a one-out double in the fifth.
Turner was stranded there and the Blue Jays left on an Ernie Clement single and Jansen walk in the sixth, as Crochet worked six shutout innings in his third straight start without allowing a run.
Having game-planned so well for Erick Fedde on Monday, the Blue Jays couldn’t apply the same pressure to Crochet, who allowed four hit balls but was never really under pressure.
The lack of runs also highlighted every single mistake made by Yusei Kikuchi and the teammates behind him, although the lefty deserved better after allowing only three runs in six innings before a crowd of 28,176.
The White Sox opened the scoring in the second when Clement bounced a throw across the diamond on Korey Lee’s grounder for an error. Zach Remillard then sacrificed him to second, even though it looked like Kikuchi had ample time to get the lead out, and Nicky Lopez followed with a two-out single.
Then in the fifth, Kikuchi issued a one-out walk to Andrew Vaughn, Eloy Jimenez crushed a double to left-centre at 109.8 m.p.h. and after a Paul DeJong strikeout, Corey Julks snuck a single up the middle to make it 3-0.
The White Sox further lowered their leverage in the eighth when Danny Mendick ripped a two-run double off Tim Mayza, who came on with two outs to face lefty Dominic Fletcher but instead walked him.
