Blue Jays miss opportunity to gain on rivals as bats go all too quiet

BALTIMORE – Late Wednesday afternoon, the day seemed to be going the Blue Jays’ way.

On the pitching side, they had ace Kevin Gausman on the mound and a fully available bullpen. Meanwhile, the Orioles made a late change to their pitching plans, going with Dean Kremer over Jack Flaherty, who needed “a little bit of a break” due to "a little bit of soreness,” according to manager Brandon Hyde. And perhaps best of all, the Mariners had already lost. 

Within a few hours, the opportunity in front of the Blue Jays disappeared. Kremer out-pitched Gausman, Anthony Santander hit two home runs and the visiting hitters were all too quiet. As a result, the Blue Jays lost 7-0, falling to 70-57 on the season and missing a chance to gain ground on the streaking Mariners team they’re chasing.

"One of the hardest things about baseball, but also one of the easiest is that we play every day," Gausman said. "(In football) if you have a really bad game, you're sitting around for a week whereas these guys are going to be in the batter's box tomorrow at 7:00 p.m. ready to go. 

"We're just waiting for that big stretch. We've kind of been waiting for it all year. Is it going to happen? I don't know. I hope it does. I hope it starts tomorrow, but we can't keep sitting back and waiting on that. We've got to go now and we need a little bit more sense of urgency."

To his credit, Gausman was effective against his former team, pitching six innings of two-run ball while walking just one and striking out eight. He touched 99 m.p.h. with a fastball that averaged 95.8 m.p.h. and his splitter was effective, as usual.

"I thought he used his fastball really, really well, had good life to it," manager John Schneider said afterwards. "And he pitched out of some tough spots that we didn't really help him with."

Gunnar Henderson scored Baltimore's first run after hitting a loud double to left to open the third, while Santander hit the first of his two home runs with one out in the fifth. Otherwise, Gausman pitched effectively, even working around a couple of early errors by Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Whit Merrifield to prevent rallies in the first and second.

"Back's against the wall, you go straight to the A-plus stuff," Gausman said. 

(Later, Trevor Richards would throw a wild pitch and Danny Jansen would make a throwing error on a sloppy defensive day for the Blue Jays. As Schneider noted: "You can't give a good team extra outs.”).

Yet Kremer was even more effective, limiting the Blue Jays to five hits over six scoreless innings just one day after learning he’d be making the start in place of Flaherty. From there, the Orioles' bullpen took over, and aside from a drive to the wall Cavan Biggio hit for a long out, the Blue Jays couldn't generate any offence against Jacob Webb, Yennier Cano and Shintaro Fujinami.

All told, the Blue Jays’ bats combined for just five singles on a night they got only one runner into scoring position and didn’t walk once. So even on a night their pitching kept them in the game until Richards allowed five in the eighth, their bats didn’t do their part. Rarely do big-league teams win on days their offence consists of five singles and this night at Camden Yards wasn't an exception.

As well as Wednesday’s outing went for Gausman, the Blue Jays may also want to consider how much Gausman's catcher impacts the results on the field. Before Wednesday's outing, both Alejandro Kirk and Danny Jansen had caught the right-hander 11 times. But where Gausman had a 2.96 ERA with 98 strikeouts compared to 13 walks with Jansen catching, he had a 3.76 ERA with 72 strikeouts compared to 21 walks with Kirk catching.

There was also a difference of 101 OPS points between Jansen's starts (.626 OPS) and Kirk's (.727). Both have their defensive strengths and both are certainly required to get through 162 games, but it’s at least worth investigating the difference as the season progresses and the importance of each game grows.

With the win, Baltimore’s AL East lead expands back to 8.5 games and the Blue Jays’ already remote chances of winning the division look a little more distant. But missed opportunity or not, there’s little for the Blue Jays gain by focusing on what happened Wednesday or the resulting gap in the standings.

With another game on the schedule tomorrow, their energy is now best spent making sure they generate more offence Thursday. 

"Every game matters," Gausman said. “You look at not just the AL East but obviously the American (League) wild card, there's five or six teams within a two or three game difference. As a player, that's what you want. You want to be in this spot with a month left with an opportunity to punch a ticket and control your own destiny. We haven't necessarily played great baseball all year, but we're in a situation now where we're right there and we’ve just got to keep going.”