HOUSTON – Jose Berrios‘ outing against the Tampa Bay Rays last week felt like a bit of a breakthrough, for reasons beyond the results. The pitching line was certainly good, five innings of one-run ball with six strikeouts in an outing cut short by a comebacker off his left knee, but it was the way he got there that really mattered.
There was an assertiveness to him that had waned amid his inconsistencies, evident from the jump when he challenged Randy Arozarena with consecutive four seamers over the heart of the plate, the slugger swinging through both in a strikeout. Berrios maintained that aggressiveness for the rest of the night, full of trust and conviction in his stuff, pitching like the guy the Toronto Blue Jays believe him to be.
“It’s a side to Jose that we’ve seen before and hasn’t been there a little bit,” said Blue Jays manager John Schneider. “But you know it’s in there, so it was great to see. He’s probably had some conversations with guys about it, other pitchers. I hope it stays like that.”
Against the Houston Astros on Wednesday night, it very much did over seven innings of three-hit, two-run ball in what finished as an 8-1 loss. Much as he did against the Rays, Berrios was once again forcing the issue against the defending World Series champions, using his slurve alongside a near-equal mix of his four-seamer and sinker to keep a powerful lineup off balance before a Minute Maid Park sellout crowd of 40,545.
Only a third-inning blip, in which a Jeremy Pena hit by pitch and David Hensley walk were cashed in by a Jake Meyers double, and an even more dominant performance by a resurgent Luis Garcia, who struck out nine over seven innings of two-hit ball, kept the Blue Jays from a series win.
“Life is sometimes hard, baseball obviously is really tough, sometimes we forget that we had it,” Berrios said of his recent forcefulness on the mound. “Then when we start doing it well and we start getting that confidence back, that’s when you can see that confidence and energy. The commitment to every pitch, I’ve had it, and I want to keep building on top of that.”
The Blue Jays nearly capitalized on his performance as once freed from the treachery of Garcia’s cutter — they missed it 19 times on 34 swings — they made things interesting in the eighth, pouncing on Rafael Montero on a Whit Merrifield RBI double that made it a 2-1 game before loading the bases with none out.
In came Bryan Abreu, who was fortunate that George Springer’s 102.4 mph line drive with a 70 per cent hit probability sizzled directly into Alex Bregman’s glove at third base for the inning’s first out. Bo Bichette, called for a pitch clock violation at the start of his at-bat, then struck out before Abreu survived a nine-pitch duel with Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who lashed a fly ball to centre for the third out.
“The pitch timer on Bo there and kind of all night was weird,” said Schneider. “It seemed like it was going quick. Nothing crazy. We haven’t had a violation in so long we kind of stopped looking at the clock and then it kind of came, Vladdy with the strikeout (on a clock violation in the first) and then Bo getting behind the 8-ball there. You want that spot, you want those three dudes up against anybody at any time with bases loaded and no outs. Just didn’t go our way.”
The Astros blew the game open in the bottom half when with two out, they loaded the bases off Zach Pop and Jose Abreu dropped a two-run single into centre. Once Adam Cimber took over, Kyle Tucker added an RBI single before Pena clubbed a three-run shot — exactly the type of knockout blows the Blue Jays didn’t get.
As frustrating as the ending was, a second straight strong start from Berrios offered some bigger-picture solace for the Blue Jays, who have been looking to steady their rotation.
While Alek Manoah is looking to get untracked and Kevin Gausman needs to rebound after a rare clunker, Chris Bassitt delivered his best outing yet Tuesday night and appears to have righted himself after a debut blip, while Yusei Kikuchi aims to build on his progress Friday in the opener of a three-game series at Yankee Stadium.
Continued success from Berrios would certainly elevate the rotation into the force it’s capable of being and he looked the part Wednesday.
“Stuff. Conviction. I mean, everything really. Tempo. Attack,” Schneider said of what he liked. “I feel like a broken record, stuff is there, execution, all that kind of stuff, but he just really was on the attack. He can strike you out, get a weak ground ball, he did a little bit of everything. The way he really just went out with the competitive mindset of attacking hitters was what stood out to me.”
And to Berrios as well, who limited a hard-hitting team to an average exit velocity of 80.7 m.p.h. on 20 balls in play. He had 10 whiffs — seven on his slurve — and induced two double-play balls, one on a changeup to Tucker in the fourth and another on a slurve to Bregman in the sixth, each successful inning reinforcing to him that he’s doing the right things.
“I like the way I attacked the hitters,” said Berrios. “I’ve been keeping the hitters off balance, mixing the fastball with the breaking pitch, having a good spread between fastballs and off-speed. That’s been the big key for me so far and obviously executing quality pitches down in the zone.”
Work remains, Berrios concedes, but for the first time in a while, he appears to be on a path back to his old dominant self.