Blue Jays takeaways: A rough Berríos start that a struggling offence can’t overcome

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This article was published 24/08/2021 (1522 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The view from Deep Left Field on the Blue Jays’ 5-2 loss to the White Sox on Tuesday:

It was astonishingly similar to his last start.

José Berríos, the shiny new toy acquired by the Blue Jays at the trade deadline for two of their top prospects, gave up a three-run homer before recording the first out.

Last time, in Washington, it was a leadoff single followed by his own error on a comebacker that set the stage for Juan Soto’s three-run jack. Tuesday night, back-to-back singles brought up defending AL MVP José Abreu, who crushed an 0-1 curveball 411 feet to left and once again Berríos had his team in a big hole early.

The Jays were able to climb out of the whole in Washington and actually took the lead before the bullpen coughed it up, but that was back when the Jays were scoring runs. Remember those days?

The Jays went 3-6 on their last road trip through Anaheim, Seattle and Washington, but they scored 44 runs, averaging just a hair under five per game.

In the first four games of this homestand, going into Tuesday night, a Jay crossed the plate a grand total of nine times. Quick math says that’s an average of just 2.25 runs a game. A three-run deficit before the first out of the game is even recorded was, at the very least, suboptimal.

This time, the deficit proved insurmountable.

It’s not as though the Jays didn’t have any fight in them, or were lacking in effort — though when an offence is shooting blanks the way theirs currently is, it can definitely appear that way — they just couldn’t get it done.

The first 11 hitters were retired in order, six by strikeout, before Vladimir Guerrero Jr. singled to right with two out in the fourth. The goose egg on the scoreboard wasn’t cracked until Corey Dickerson went deep in the seventh.

It’s astonishing that the Jays’ all-world scoring machine has hit a speed bump like this but, as rough as the last week has been, there’s no question that they’ll get back to denting scoreboards on a regular basis soon enough.

The question posed by many Jays fans Tuesday night was: “This is what we got for Austin Martin and Simeon Woods Richardson?”

Berríos, who most casual fans hadn’t heard of prior to the deadline deal, started his Jays career with back-to-back brilliant outings against the Royals and Red Sox, but since then has posted an ugly 8.76 ERA in three starts. Not at all what was expected from someone whose arrival was supposed to give the Jays a big four to rival any other rotation in the game.

So were they sold a bill of goods?

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A quick look at, I don’t know, the last five seasons of Berríos’s career, over which he’s been a well-above-average, durable starter who has been to two all-star games, should give a far more clear answer than his last 12 1/3 innings of work.

Things can change, of course, but up to now Berríos has been a pitcher that any team would absolutely want to have near the front of its rotation.

• One chance: The Jays’ dozing offence woke up enough to make things interesting for a minute in the bottom of the eighth, when Marcus Semien followed back-to-back one-out singles by Santiago Espinal and Bo Bichette with a walk to bring Guerrero to the plate as the tying run.

Vladdy worked the count to 3-2 against former Jay Liam Hendriks, then drilled a 105-mph rocket on the full-count pitch.

Unfortunately, he hit it right to shortstop Danny Mendick, who turned it into an inning-ending double play, the Blue Jays’ ninth in their last five games.

• Everybody gets one! In the sixth inning, left fielder Lourdes Gurriel Jr. threw out Jose Abreu trying to stretch a single into a double. In the eighth, centre-fielder Josh Palacios, in his first big-league start in that position, threw out Zack Collins at the plate. In the ninth, right-fielder Teoscar Hernandez threw out Brian Goodwin trying to go first to third on a bloop single.

Mike Wilner is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star and host of the baseball podcast “Deep Left Field.” Follow him on Twitter: @wilnerness