Blue Jays far from sharp in loss to Mariners

A poor decision to leave Aaron Loup in to face a right-handed batter in extra innings completed the collapse by the Blue Jays as a solo blast allowed Seattle to walk it off.

SEATTLE – The Toronto Blue Jays gave away outs in the field, pitched under duress for most of the afternoon, surrendered a late lead, and ended up in one of the strangest triple plays you’ll ever see.

All that and more made for a mess of a game, one that ended with a frustrating 6-5 loss in 10 innings to the Seattle Mariners on Sunday afternoon, matters settled on Franklin Gutierrez’s walk-off homer to cap a 3-3 West Coast swing that should have been much better.


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An at-bat here and a pitch there and the Blue Jays would have pulled out both Wednesday’s 4-3, 10-inning loss to the Oakland Athletics plus the finale against the Mariners, and returned home riding high.

Instead, they’re exactly .500 after 100 games, 6.5 games back of the AL East leading New York Yankees, the mountain to climb before them getting taller.

“Time is not on our side, man,” said manager John Gibbons. “We’re chasing some pretty good teams. The baseball gods, they remind you sometimes in this business.”

The Blue Jays jumped out to leads of 1-0, 4-1 and 5-3 – the latter on a solo shot from Ezequiel Carrera, who played a starring role in the triple play, to open the seventh – but the lockdown bullpen they’ve envisioned couldn’t, well, lock things down.

Bo Schultz came on for Mark Buehrle with two out in the sixth and was lucky when Carrera made a leaping grab of Mike Zunino’s rocket against the wall in left to end the frame. But Schultz had no such fortune in the seventh, when he walked Kyle Seager and then served up a game-tying homer to Nelson Cruz.

Things stayed there until the 10th when Gutierrez ripped an 0-2 Aaron Loup fastball over the wall in centre.

Dagger.

“I don’t think today was a very crisp game all around, but you’re going to have games like that where certain aspects of it aren’t on top of its game,” said Buehrle, who gamely grinded through 5.2 innings of three-run ball and would have gone deeper with better defence behind him. “A 3-3 road trip isn’t the best we could have asked for, but it’s better than going 2-4, so we’ve got to take the positive out of it.”

For most of the day the Blue Jays looked headed for an actual victory, not a moral one.

Up 4-3, they looked set to add on runs in the fourth when Carrera opened the inning with a walk and took third on Kevin Pillar’s single. Then things got whacky when Ryan Goins hit a grounder to Mark Trumbo, who stepped on first for one out and then relayed to Brad Miller to trap Pillar in a rundown. Carrera broke from third to try and score, or perhaps lure a throw to prevent a double play, but strayed too far and got caught in a rundown himself when Miller relayed to Zunino. The catcher then ran Carrera back to third as Pillar reached the bag, and Zunino tagged both at the base.

Pillar was out because the bag belonged to Carrera, but Carrera slipped off bag with both Zunino and third-base coach Luis Rivera around him, and umpire Jim Joyce called him out.

Poof, a potential rally disappeared.

“There’s no excuse,” Pillar said when asked about Joyce’s communication called out. “We’ve all played this game long enough, we know what to do in that situation, we just didn’t execute. Whether or not (Joyce) made it clear, there’s no need for either of us to leave the base there. In that situation we’re better off both standing there and making them force one of us off the base.”

Said Gibbons: “We had a chance for possibly a big inning right there, we’ve got the right guys starting to come up – that’s how you lose.”

Josh Donaldson opened the scoring in the first with a solo shot off Taijuan Walker, but Buehrle served up a leadoff homer to Austin Jackson that knotted things up in the bottom half.

A three-spot in the second on a Walker balk, a Carrera RBI single and Donaldson sacrifice fly opened up a 4-1 lead, but the Mariners quickly made it 4-3 in the third on RBI singles by Jackson and Cruz.

Until that inning, Buehrle hadn’t issued a walk since June 26, a span of 127 batters, while his streak of allowing two earned runs or less ended at eight games. He also failed to pitch six innings for the first time since May 6, but with the Blue Jays defence giving away at least outs behind him, he sort of did.

“I made some pitches at times, I didn’t feel it was the best game I’ve had, missing some locations, got away with a lot of stuff,” said Buehrle. “I told Pete (Walker, the pitching coach) in the first inning, if I kept that up, the whole game was going to be a long day. For the most part, it was.”

Still, he left with a lead but the Blue Jays couldn’t hold it, even after Carrera gave them some insurance.

Their bullpen, having carried a heavy load thanks to back-to-back four-inning starts by Marco Estrada and Drew Hutchison, eventually buckled when Loup, the fifth Blue Jays pitcher, served up an 0-2 heater that leaked back over the plate to Gutierrez.

He’s now allowed six homers in 83 at-bats versus right-handed hitters this season, but with Roberto Osuna reserved for a save situation and Loup the last fresh arm left, Gibbons’ hands were tied.

“I don’t know exactly what it was or where it was, but it wasn’t good, I’ll tell you that,” Gibbons said of the decisive pitch. “Frustrating, tough game. We did some things early, we also played like crap a few times.”

That’s a pretty apt summation of the Blue Jays’ first 100 games, too, and 62 contests remain for them to show that they’re more than a break-even team.

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