TORONTO — Marcus Stroman hasn’t been at his best of late. It began three weeks ago, when he surrendered career highs in hits (13) and runs (7) to the Tampa Bay Rays. Then, after a terrific bounce back outing in Minnesota against the Twins, his struggles resumed in back-to-back starts against the Boston Red Sox that saw him allow 20 hits and 13 runs in 11 combined innings.
And, really, it’s tough to say if his eight-hit, four-run performance against the Baltimore Orioles Thursday night—in an eventual 6-5 Blue Jays loss—was a step in the right direction for Stroman or not. Sure, he was better than he’d been in three of his previous four. But he also allowed some very hard contact, with an average exit velocity of 91.6 mph on the pitches the Orioles put in play, with nine of them coming off the bat north of 100.
One of those nine was the final pitch Stroman threw on the night, a 92 mph two-seamer up in the zone that Orioles DH Pedro Alvarez hammered over the left field wall. That brought Baltimore within a run of tying the game, and brought John Gibbons out of the Blue Jays dugout to end Stroman’s night. As the 25-year-old marched briskly back to the Blue Jays clubhouse, television cameras caught a raw moment of physical frustration that tells you everything you need to know about where Stroman’s at right now.
“Our boys did enough to get a win. I’m extremely frustrated with not being able to go out there and do my job, and get this victory,” Stroman said. “This is not where I want to be. And it’s not where I will be going forward. It’s just at a point now where I’ve had a couple bad starts back to back and I have to do everything in my power to make that next one good and hopefully get rolling from there.”
One of the biggest hurdles Stroman’s had to overcome during this stretch has been staying on top of his pitches. He throws his two-seamer more than half the time, and when it isn’t sinking down in the zone the way it should be, hitters have a much better opportunity to put the barrel of the bat on it.
For Stroman, it comes down to his release point, and ensuring he’s consistently throwing his pitches from the arm slot that allows his two-seamer—which he used 61 per cent of the time on Thursday—to be effective.
“It’s about making sure I’m staying in my lane each and every time. I’m not worried about it. I know that when it’s there, the pitches are doing exactly what they need to be doing. It just leaves me at times and that’s when the pitches get kind of flat in the zone,” Stroman said. “But when my sinker’s where it needs to be, I feel like I can get anybody out with that pitch.”
Fortunately for the Blue Jays in the early going, Baltimore starter Tyler Wilson wasn’t any better, allowing five runs on seven hits in his 5.2 innings. It was a laser show from the start, as the Blue Jays tagged Wilson for three runs in the first inning, powered by a pair of doubles off the bats of Jose Bautista and Michael Saunders. Bautista drove in a fourth run in the second and then gave the Blue Jays another two innings later, when his two-out walk came all the way around to score on a Josh Donaldson triple.
But, as has been a theme this season, the Blue Jays bullpen couldn’t hold the one-run lead Stroman left behind, as Aaron Loup watched Chris Davis hammer a 3-1 fastball 401 feet in the opposite direction for a seventh-inning solo shot to tie the game.
Then, in the ninth, the typically reliable Roberto Osuna left a fastball up to Hyun-soo Kim, who drove it to left-centre field for a leadoff double. Joey Rickard pinch-ran and the Orioles neatly brought him in to score with a Manny Machado groundball and a Davis sacrifice fly. That was all they’d need, as Orioles closer Zach Britton pitched a perfect ninth for his American League-best 20th save.
“I’m really disappointed with myself about tonight’s game. I feel that I could do better,” Osuna said. “The plan was to attack [Kim] up and in, right on the hands. But I missed right in the middle. He did a great job to hit the ball the other way. That’s my fault. I should’ve gotten there.”
And if that’s not enough demoralizing news for you, get this—Bautista left Thursday night’s game in the sixth inning with what the team called right thigh tightness and what Blue Jays manager John Gibbons described as a hip flexor.
Bautista opted not to speak to the media after the game, so it’s unclear exactly when the injury occurred. But he did have to sprint home from first on the Donaldson triple, and Gibbons said that going into his next at-bat Bautista told him “he didn’t think he could run much.” Bautista will be reevaluated Friday and is considered day-to-day.
But it’s Stroman’s recent stretch that has to be the foremost concern for the Blue Jays. After posting a 3.54 ERA in his first eight starts of the season, the young right-hander has pitched to a 7.58 ERA in his next five, allowing 25 earned runs over 29.2 innings.
“I did think he was a little better tonight than last time,” Gibbons said. “But I did see him getting on the side of his two-seamer a little bit, so he wasn’t getting that good downward action.
“He’ll be fine. He’s just going through a tough stretch right now. He’s a tough kid. He’ll survive that.”
Stroman’s inability to stay on top of his sinker is causing him to make mistakes up in the zone more often, which is never a good thing for a pitcher. He left 7.37 per cent of his pitches in the top third of the strike zone during his four-game skid coming into Thursday night’s start, after locating just 3.73 per cent of them in that danger zone during the 11 starts prior.
He also hasn’t been getting away with those mistakes, as his batting average on balls in play on those pitches he left in the upper third rose from .375 in his first 11 starts to .700 in his next four.
So, that’s a combination of untimely missed location and bad batted ball luck, which can make a pitcher seem a lot worse than he is. But Stroman didn’t do himself any favours early on Thursday night, falling behind half of the 16 batters he faced through his first three innings, needing 56 pitches to record nine outs.
His fourth inning was terrific, as he pounded sinkers down in the zone and induced three weak-contact outs from the heart of the Orioles order. But by the fifth the hard contact had returned, and two batters into the sixth his frustrating night was through.
“In the fourth, I was just down; my pitches were doing what they needed to do. I was more in my lane. It was where I need to be,” Stroman said. “I tried to find it in the fifth but I just kind of got away from it. I’ll wash it. I’ll look forward to my next start and do everything in my power to take the positives out of this start and carry them forward to the next one.”
