The Blue Jays were dying for a starting pitcher to get them deep into a game and once again they were left wanting. It didn’t matter this time, though, because the big bats exploded for another double-digit score, highlighted by a sixth inning in which they scored six unearned runs.
Aaron Sanchez delivered five fine innings for the Jays, but the 22-year-old just plain ran out of gas with two out in the 6th, giving up a single then issuing back-to-back walks that forced his exit, even with an eight-run lead. He had thrown 108 pitches, one more than he delivered five days prior, setting a career high both times.
You’d have loved to have seen Sanchez complete six innings, especially with the offence having scored 10 runs for him, but he got close and at least Liam Hendriks needed only four pitches to get out of that bases-loaded jam in the 6th – striking out Jason Kipnis.
Even though Sanchez didn’t finish the sixth, never mind actually being able to throw a pitch in the seventh, there were plenty of positives to take from his fifth career start in the big leagues. For one thing, he only gave up three hard-hit balls to the 27 hitters he faced. For another, he was able to match Corey Kluber, the defending Cy Young Award winner, through the first five innings while the game was still close.
Sanchez did walk six, and even if you take out the last two when he was clearly struggling with fatigue, four is still too many over that short an outing and, of course, the walks contributed to the brevity of the outing.
The walk total is alarming, even though it’s mitigated by the lack of hits, because Sanchez isn’t always going to be able to wriggle out of the jams into which he walks himself. He was on Saturday with big strikeouts of Brandon Moss to end both the first and third innings, each time with a runner in scoring position.
All you’re really looking for at this point out of Sanchez is for each outing to be better than the last, and despite six walks as opposed to the two he issued in his last start, he kept the ball in the park, allowed no extra-base hits and gave up half as many runs as he did last time out. Onward and upward.
IN THE BIG INNING: The Blue Jays scored in double digits for the major-league leading sixth time this season, and the high score was made possible by that six-run sixth. All the runs in that frame were unearned because Indians’ third baseman Lonnie Chisenhall made a poor throw home on Danny Valencia’s one-out pinch-grounder, trying to cut down Kevin Pillar at the plate with the inning’s first run.
A walk to Devon Travis followed, and then Josh Donaldson beat out a double-play grounder to short to score another run. That would have been the third out had Chisenhall’s throw been on target, so the subsequent runs that scored on a Jose Bautista RBI double, a two-run single by Edwin Encarnacion and Pillar’s RBI single were all unearned. Earned or not, it was the ninth time this season that the Blue Jays have scored at least four runs in a single inning.
PILLAR OF CONSISTENCY: The Blue Jays’ one-man highlight reel didn’t have to make any incredible catches on Saturday, though there was that nice sliding grab on Tyler Holt’s sinking liner that ended the eighth inning. The bigger story, though, is becoming Pillar’s bat. He achieved the rare feat of getting two hits in an inning, leading off the big sixth with a double off the left-field wall and then making it to the plate again to deliver that RBI single.
The 2-for-5 day made Pillar 11-for-25 (.440) over a six-game hit streak, which is lovely. Even lovelier, though, is that Pillar has delivered an extra-base hit in every one of those six games – five doubles and a triple. He’s walked once, but has only struck out three times, and two of those were in the first game of the streak.
CANADIAN CONTENT: Russell Martin and Michael Saunders had five hits between them in the blowout win, with Saunders drawing a walk as well to have the pair reach base three times each. They scored three runs and drove in two between them. Martin homered to lead off the fourth, tying the game 2-2 at the time, and added a single and a double as well for his first three-hit game as a Blue Jay.
Saunders had his first two-hit game as a Blue Jay – he came into the game just 2-for-20 since coming off the disabled list – with a bunt single in his first at-bat and an RBI single in his last that drove in the Jays’ 11th run.
Martin also showed off that now-familiar cannon behind the plate, throwing out Kipnis trying to steal second in the fifth. The big-armed catcher has now caught 11 runners trying to steal, a total that leads the major leagues.
HEATING UP: A slow start for Bautista and Encarnacion is nothing new, but they do always tend to heat up and it looks as though that’s beginning to happen. Bautista’s two-run single in the fifth gave the Blue Jays the lead for good and he added an RBI double in the big sixth, while Encarnacion got the Jays going with a first-inning RBI double off the wall in centre field and added a two-run single in that sixth inning.
Bautista is 5 for his last 10 with three doubles and two walks and Encarnacion is also 5 for his last 10, with two doubles and a walk. That’s good news for the Blue Jays and bad news for everybody else