KANSAS CITY – In theory, this should have been the ideal place for the Jose Berrios bounce-back season to begin. Facing a winless Royals team in spacious Kauffman Stadium with an improved outfield defence behind him? It’d be tough to ask for much more.
Yet three of the first four hitters to face Berrios scored, and it was a sign of things to come. In total, he allowed eight runs on nine hits. And while last year’s struggles were fuelled in part by some bad luck on batted balls, there was lots of hard contact to go around Monday, with the Royals hitting Berrios’s pitches 100 m.p.h. or more 10 different times.
By night’s end, the Blue Jays had fallen to 1-3 on the season with a one-sided 9-5 loss. Three times already, Toronto’s starting pitching has faltered, creating deficits that put games out of reach early.
"It's tough to crawl out of a hole every night, but we trust these guys," manager John Schneider said afterwards. "It's early... just the first time through (the starting rotation). Hopefully it gets better the second time."
The eight earned runs matched the most Berrios allowed in any game last year.
"It was on me," Berrios said. "I missed some pitches. It wasn't bad, but not the way that we wanted… they did a great job at the plate."
At best, this might be considered a blip. A frustrating blip, but a blip. All teams are entitled to four-game stretches where they look out of sorts, of course. Even the best pitchers falter occasionally. And remember, there are still 158 games left.
Technically speaking, that’s all true. But does it really land? After a season in which Berrios posted a 5.23 ERA, and considering he’s on a $131 million contract that runs through 2028, it wouldn’t feel quite right to brush aside a start like this as small sample noise.
First of all, he allowed lots of hard contact as well as a pair of walks. Plus, on a night the Royals stacked their lineup with six left-handed hitters, Berrios wasn’t locating his change-up as well as he’d hope to. And while his fastball sat in the 92-95 m.p.h. range as usual, there were times his fastball location against the Royals’ lefties caught plenty of the plate:
"I think you probably want to be a little bit more front door to open up outside,” Schneider said. “Middle is never going to be ideal, obviously not what he's trying to do, but hopefully it's a quick fix."
Now, expecting pitchers to have pinpoint command isn’t realistic, but Berrios will need better answers against left-handed hitters as the season unfolds. Last year, left-handed hitters hit him hard, batting .298 with a .865 OPS. Realizing that, teams stack lefties against Berrios, costing him the platoon advantage.
Granted, that was often the case last year and Berrios still looked dominant at times in 2022. Even on Monday there were positives, as he struck out seven while pitching into the sixth inning. In his next start against the Angels Saturday, the Blue Jays will hope he can build on those positives.
"I think just the consistency of it wasn't exactly where we or he had hoped, but his stuff was really good," Schneider said. “Velo was good, all the break and all that kind of stuff was good.”
"I want to take the good results and positive things from this outing and just keep moving forward," Berrios added.
As for the offence? One year after hitting 200 home runs, the Blue Jays may be a slightly less power-centric team, but they did finally hit their first home run Monday thanks to a Bo Bichette solo shot in the ninth inning. So far, the approach has been disciplined, with six more walks against Kansas City Monday.
Still, the Blue Jays did enjoy two-hit games from Matt Chapman and Cavan Biggio on a night everyone in their starting lineup reached base. It was the third multi-hit game of the season for Chapman while Biggio justified the Blue Jays’ choice to start him over Whit Merrifield by reaching base three times.
If the questions around this team revolved only around the offence, their 1-3 record might be a little easier to stomach. Instead, back-to-back poor performances from Chris Bassitt and Berrios have the Blue Jays scuffling as they hand the ball to Yusei Kikuchi for the first time all year.
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