SEATTLE – Kevin Gausman isn’t entertaining the idea of shutting things down with the all-star break a mere week-and-a-half away, buying time for his right ankle to be fully healed once play resumes July 22 at Fenway Park.
There’s still a chance he can make two starts before the pause and the Toronto Blue Jays right-hander intends to do all he can to make them, especially after a precautionary MRI confirmed there’s no fracture in his foot, only a bone bruise.
“Listen, we would like to do a little bit of damage, catch some ground before the all-star break. We have a chance to hit the ground running so we can come back and feel good where we're at. Obviously, we're not playing our best brand of baseball right now, but every game is big,” he said Thursday after playing catch on flat ground ahead of a targeted side session Friday.
“So, I'm definitely not going to just take myself out of potentially two starts. We saw with this team at the end of last season how much every game matters. If we were to get in that same position and miss it by one game, and if I were the guy that makes two less starts than everybody else, then I'd feel pretty bad about that. Now it's just about managing the pain and how we can get me at my best to go out there and compete.”
A reminder of precisely how much the Blue Jays need him came hours later Thursday, when opener Anthony Banda and bulk man Casey Lawrence, called on to cover in his place, were blitzed for seven runs over three innings of an 8-3 drubbing from the surging Seattle Mariners.
Buried early along with the offence in this one was their pitching plans for the weekend, which had Maximo Castillo, recalled from triple-A Buffalo as Yusei Kikuchi hit the injured list with a neck strain, slated as the backup starting option Sunday if Gausman isn’t ready to go (the next target date for him would be Tuesday).
But Banda managed to get only one out in the first (he might have had a second but was slow to get to first for what would have been a 3-6-1 double play on a J.P. Crawford grounder), forcing Lawrence to begin his night cleaning up a mess instead of with a fresh inning.
Two runs crossed in that frame, and after the Blue Jays clawed one back in the second, the Mariners went back up 3-1 in the bottom half when Lourdes Gurriel Jr., tracking a Dylan Moore drive to the track, had the ball pop out of his glove and flip over the wall.
Here’s how to say it’s not your night without saying it’s not your night:
The Mariners then unloaded on Lawrence in the third, going Crawford single, Carlos Santana double, Eugenio Suarez two-run single, Cal Raleigh two-run homer and that pretty much forced the Blue Jays into using Castillo to drag them to the finish line. He did just that with three innings of one-run ball, striking out five, before Trevor Richards mopped up the eighth.
All of which means the Blue Jays desperately need Gausman’s ankle to heal enough for Sunday so they’re not back to “an opener and a guy,” as an exasperated Charlie Montoyo put it back in the bad old days of 2019.
“We had to cover the game,” Montoyo said of reluctantly using Castillo, although by limiting him to three innings there’s a chance he can be used later in the series.
As for the club’s opener plan going sideways, “at the end of the day, somebody's got to pitch well to give you a chance,” Montoyo added.
The outcome spoiled what was the first Canadian Invasion at T-Mobile Park since before the COVID-19 pandemic. A raucous mass of hosers helped swell the attendance to 24,998, began a Let’s Go, Blue Jays chant before first pitch and maintained their enthusiasm throughout another grim outing on what’s thus far been a grim road trip.
Gausman, experiencing it for the first time, was struck by how many Canadians he met before even getting to the park “from Calgary and I can't say the other name, it starts with an S.”
Saskatchewan?
“Saskatchewan, yeah,” he said. “Just super cool. Obviously playing for the Blue Jays, super unique playing for one team that represents an entire country. Really cool for me to hear from people that are from B.C., the West Coast of Canada, fans that only see us play once a year in person. Hopefully we can give them a four-game sweep.”
The Mariners, in past years weary of the takeover of their ballpark, leaned into it this time, piecing together a Tale of the Towns video between innings comparing the 1977 expansion cousins. Suggesting the Space Needle was better than the CN Tower was questionable, fair point on Pearl Jam over Justin Bieber and not sure about attributing a bacon mustard roll (uh, wut?) as a Canadian delicacy.
Crawford, one of the few Mariners still here from 2019, said, “yeah, it is weird,” for the Canadians to dominate in the stands and hearing them cheer for Blue Jays successes “definitely sucks.”
“But I find it cool that they have fans all the way over here on this side,” Crawford added. “It's a cool environment. They bring the energy. The games are always electric when we play them here, so it's fun. You’ve just got to not let them cheer that much and hope we have our people cheering more.”
The Mariners certainly gave them reason to do just that, sending the Blue Jays’ pitching plans into disarray in the process.
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