Blue Jays’ dry spell continues in doubleheader sweep by Yankees
After an 11-2 drubbing by the Yankees in Game 1, Chris Bassitt will be counted on to stabilize things in the night-cap, but the Blue Jays are suddenly out of margin-for-error.
NEW YORK — Doubleheaders tend to be disruptive and their impact can be felt for days, especially on the pitching side. Still, the Toronto Blue Jays looked to be in excellent shape for Sunday’s twin-bill versus the New York Yankees, with workhorses Kevin Gausman and Chris Bassitt lined up to start, a rested bullpen and off-days framing the double-dip.
Cue chaos.
After a clean 12-pitch first and a six-pitch second, the day began unravelling on Gausman during a third inning that was wild both literally and figuratively. The veteran righty suddenly lost the zone, grew frustrated over a few borderline ball calls by home-plate umpire Chris Conroy, issued five walks, two with the bases loaded, and on his jaw-dropping 53rd pitch of the frame, matching a club record, gave up a three-run double to Austin Wells that mercifully ended his afternoon.
For good measure, Gausman was ejected walking off the field after sharing a few thoughts with Conroy – “I kind of let him know I was going to go watch his bad umpiring inside,” he said – with manager John Schneider getting tossed two innings later after arguing a called strike against Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the fifth.
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The game went downhill after the Yankees’ six-run third, as Paxton Schultz, a candidate to help fill Wednesday’s rotation vacancy, needed 57 pitches to get through 2.1 innings, and was followed by Josh Walker and Dillon Tate in what finished as an 11-2 loss.
Bassitt certainly stabilized the situation in the second game, pitching better than his line of four runs over 5.2 innings suggests, but another quiet outing at the plate by the offence doomed the Blue Jays to a 5-1 loss.
Only a three-run ninth against the struggling Devin Williams in Friday’s opener prevented a three-game sweep in the Bronx, where the Blue Jays totalled only seven runs and 23 hits. They scored only two runs on nine hits during a three-game sweep at Houston and will return home with losses in seven of their last eight games.
“Better at-bats with guys on base and taking advantage of mistakes, things that we talk about all the time,” Schneider said in identifying focal points for the team to attack differently next week. “We know that we have the guys in there that can do it. It’s easy to look at it and say the sky is falling, and it’s not. We have good players. When you do it every day, it kind of just bleeds into the next sometimes and that’s what happened this road trip.”
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The capper at Yankee Stadium was 1-1 through five on solo shots by Trent Grisham in the first and Anthony Santander in the third, when Aaron Judge opened the sixth by hammering a cutter away for his eighth homer of the season. A walk to Jazz Chisholm Jr. and a two-out RBI double by Jasson Dominguez on a slider extended New York’s lead to 3-1 and ended Bassitt’s day, but Brendon Little gave up an RBI single to J.C. Escarra to further pad the lead before escaping the frame.
Though it’s difficult to demand pitchers consistently win games 2-1, Bassitt blamed himself for the loss afterwards, replying to a question about the pressure that minimal run-support puts on pitchers by saying, “pardon my French, I don’t give a (expletive) about the offence when it comes to how I’m pitching.”
“I feel like I completely gave the game away in sixth. I feel like I deserved a loss,” Bassitt said, adding later: “Beat Judge with two sinkers (in previous at-bats), so analyze where that pitch was at, maybe too many fastballs to Jazz and then get (Dominguez) to 1-2 and throw my worst pitch and absolutely hang it. At the end of the day, I got to be better. It was bad.”
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Strange as Gausman’s outing was in the first game, the more immediate concern will be whether there are any after-effects from Gausman’s staggering pitch count in that fateful third.
Typically, clubs start pulling the reins on their pitchers once they start creeping toward 40 pitches and crossing that threshold tends to be a no-go zone. But Gausman, pitching on an extra day of rest, kept getting rope and was at 44 pitches when Wells dug in as the ninth batter that inning.
They battled for nine pitches before Wells cleared the bases with his double to make it a 6-1 game, Gausman’s 53 pitches matching Woody Williams’ total during the first inning of an 11-5 loss to Baltimore on July 14, 1998.
“If he wasn’t that efficient the first two, it would have been way earlier, obviously,” said Schneider. “That played into it, doubleheader played into it, off-day (Monday) played into it, where our pitching is. It’s way different when you get to like fifth, sixth inning. (In the third) he’s still relatively fresh and had a really low pitch count. So, a lot of weird factors that led to that number of pitches in the inning, but wanted Kev to keep the game right there.”
With Wednesday’s starter TBD — Bowden Francis pitches the opener of a three-game set at home against the Boston Red Sox, with Jose Berrios starting the finale — the desire to extend Gausman is understandable, especially given the extra day of rest and quick first two frames.
But Schneider said before the game that the Blue Jays would likely give Bassitt, not Gausman, the extra day ahead of their next outings and that may now require a rethink.
What he may need in recovery after the start, “I really don’t know — I’ve never been in this area before,” said Gausman. “Try to do a little bit less, maybe, this time through. But two and two-thirds, 71 pitches, that’s not that great on anyone’s arm.”
Given the lack of starting depth — among their few options, veteran lefty Eric Lauer is on turn for that Wednesday outing and the Blue Jays cleared a 40-man roster spot Sunday by transferring Ryan Burr to the 60-day injured list — ensuring the health of their remaining rotation is essential.
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A series of upcoming off-days gives the Blue Jays a few chances to skip the fifth spot in the weeks ahead and that would be ideal. But they also need to be wary of asking too much from a rotation that’s the foundation for the club’s success this season.
“We prepare ourselves to pitch every five days, that’s the normal thing,” said Berrios. “Usually with the off-days, we take advantage of those days. But whatever the situation is right now for the team, we need to be ready and be able to do whatever they need to get away from us. Off-days, we do take advantage. But mentally and physically, we’re prepared to pitch every fifth day.”
CONROY’S CALLS: Contributing to Kevin Gausman’s wild 53-pitch third were four borderline ball calls, one that led to a full-count walk to Ben Rice, two on first pitches and one in a 1-1 count to Oswaldo Cabrera.
He was visibly frustrated with Chris Conroy on several occasions and pointed out there were “probably at least three pitches that inning I know were strikes.”
Still, “the more frustrating thing is watching what (Yankees starter Max) Fried was getting,” added Gausman. “He’s getting pitches down, so, if you’re not calling it for me, why are you calling it for him? That’s baseball. I let (Conroy) know what I thought about it, but I was already out of the game.”
Here are all the balls and called strikes for each starter:
Definitely rough down and in on the left side of the plate from the catcher’s viewpoint.
VARSHO ON TUESDAY: The Blue Jays opted to make outfielder Jonatan Clase the 27th man for the doubleheader rather than returning Daulton Varsho from his rehab assignment, preferring for the Gold Glove centre-fielder to get one more game in before activation.
Varsho went 1-for-4 while playing all nine innings of triple-A Buffalo’s 2-0 win over Rochester and is on track to return Tuesday against the Red Sox.
Who goes to make room isn’t immediately clear — no decisions were made after the game, and everyone in New York was travelling back to Toronto — but John Schneider made it clear that Varsho “is going to play when he’s here and he’s going to play centre, so start with that.”
“Trying to get (Santander) in the outfield a little bit more, with a little bit more rhythm and regularity to the game and then George (Springer) is obviously out there, too,” Schneider continued. “So, we’ll see what we need, who’s best suited to not play every day and kind of play a support role. Right/left definitely comes into it. We do know that (Varsho) will be in centre and playing pretty regularly. So kind of go from there.”
Clase, a switch-hitter, may factor into the mix, offering the Blue Jays something they lack on the bench right now — an additional right-handed bat. He’s performed well out of the gates with the Bisons, hitting .343/.452/.400 in 22 games, but there might not be enough at-bats for him to justify keeping him up right now.
“Ideally he needs fairly regular reps,” said Schneider. “At the same time, we’re trying to win, so we’ll see how it goes. You don’t want to put all of your answers in today or whatever it may be. But I think he needs to play fairly regularly. He has a chance to be an impact player. So, wherever he is, playing is important.”
