Jays Lose, Now Tied For First

Jays 1 - Red Sox 7

I tend to be a pretty even keeled guy. Don’t take the highs too high, don’t take the lows too low. Don’t put a lot of stock into a handful of bad games. But by Great Muppety Odin, do the Jays look bad right now! The pitchers can’t keep traffic off the bases and the hitters haven’t seen a shallow popup or ground ball into a double play they didn’t like. To be fair, Garrett Crochet is one of the best pitchers in the game but still… the road to the championship goes through the best pitchers in the game and the Jays have looked outmatched more often than not lately.

Scherzer started the night with a four pitch punch out of Duran, but a pair of singles put two on for Yoshida to double in the first run. Gonzalez drove in two more with a single into right and another single put two on. After that, Scherzer settled down, scattering three hits over the next three innings before giving up a home run on a high fastball to Yoshida, who has already turned into a Jays killer over the last two games.

Little pitched a clean sixth and Berrios came on for the seventh in relief. As far as I can tell, it was his first relief appearance since 2017, and only the second one of his career. He pitched a clean inning, helped out by a nice defensive play on a slow hopper by Gimenez. Unfortunately, in the bottom of the seventh, Vlad got tossed immediately for questioning a strike call, along with Dave Popkins. You know it’s been painful when it seems important to point out the Santander hit an absolute rocket down the line that Bregman was able to somehow snag.

In any case, the Berrios reliever experiment went sideways when with two on and two out, he allowed a three-run shot to Narvaez. The Jays at least didn’t go quietly… er, any quieter, as Kiner-Falefa hit a solo home run in the ninth that barely cleared the wall. With a man on first, Kirk hit what should have been a single into right but was thrown out at first by Abreu to end the game.

Scherzer went five innings, giving up 4ER on 10 hits, with 5Ks and no walks. While five straight hits in the first will make any line look bad, he looked very hittable on the mound, which is not what you want to see from a potential playoff starter.

At this point, the Jays went from laughing their way into the postseason to a 1-6 record in the last seven days, looking like they might fulfill the worst-case scenarios to finish out the season.

Jay of the Day: When Myles Straw has the highest number at (.022), I think it is safe to say there’s no one who deserves this.

The Other Award: Scherzer owns it with (-.199) but four runs shouldn’t have been too big of a hill to climb for this offense.

The Jays face Brayan Bello (11-8, 3.34 ERA) tomorrow against TBD at 7:07PM due to Bieber’s start being pushed back by a day.

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