Blue Jays take-aways: Not wild about the walks, or Vlad Guerrero’s stretching routine

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This article was published 03/04/2021 (1681 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The view from Deep Left Field on Saturday’s Jays-Yankees game:

After a particularly ugly extra-inning outing from Brad Lincoln many years back, Blue Jays manager John Gibbons met the media and said, plainly, “you can’t walk the world.” That sentiment was correct in 2013, and it’s still bang on today.

Rafael Dolis couldn’t get the free passes under control on Saturday, and left a sixth-inning mess that wound up being the pivotal point in the Jays’ first loss of the season, 5-3 at Yankee Stadium.

Dolis took over in a one-run game and walked three of the five batters he faced, the last pair with two out, and turned things over to Tim Mayza with the bases loaded. At least Dolis worked agonizingly slowly while missing with 14 of the 24 pitches he threw, so that was fun, too.

Mayza, making his first appearance since 2019 Tommy John surgery, came in to face the left-handed hitting birthday boy Jay Bruce and jammed him with a 2-and-2 sinker in on his hands. Bruce popped it up, but into no man’s land in short left field, where it fell in for a two-run single that extended the Yankees’ lead from 3-2 to 5-2. Bad luck? Sure. But it only made a difference because Mayza had been surrounded by pinstripers who didn’t have to earn their way on base.

• Foot fault: Over the first two games of the season, life at first base has not been easy for Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. He’s been absolutely worn out by numerous poor throws from his infielders — especially Bo Bichette and Cavan Biggio — and to his credit has made some eye-popping picks of throws that he’s had to play on short hops.

One thing Guerrero has struggled with, though, is keeping his foot on the bag while stretching to try to shorten the distance a throw has to travel.

It happened in the opener, when he came off the bag reaching for a Biggio throw on a tough grounder by Clint Frazier. That didn’t cost the Jays anything, as the next batter grounded out to end the inning without a run scoring.

Saturday, though, it cost a run. D.J. LeMahieu hit a slow roller to third base with two out and a runner on third. Biggio charged hard, fielded the ball and made a throw off his back foot that he couldn’t get anything on, and Guerrero did the full splits reaching for the ball to try to gain the extra inch or two he thought they needed to get the out. Again, his foot came off the bat as he was stretching. LeMahieu was safe and a run scored.

Guerrero is new to the position and still finding his way. One of the things he’s going to have to learn in a hurry is that if you stretch so far that you can’t maintain a hold of the base, then it doesn’t matter whether you gain those few extra inches, because the runner will always be safe regardless.

I’m not referring to throws that are off line, where the throw would take him off the base. There’s nothing wrong with coming off the bag to get those, because you have to protect the baseball and make sure it doesn’t get away, leading to extra bases for the runners. But if you’re coming off the bag because you’re stretching to go get a throw, that’s a problem.

Yes, the infielders should make better throws, no question. But Guerrero has to learn how to stay on the bag when he’s stretching.

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• Too-easy outs: The Jays lineup is deep, to be sure, but the bottom of the order remains an issue. Rowdy Tellez and Danny Jansen, batting seventh and ninth, respectively, each came up multiple times in big spots Saturday and couldn’t get the job done.

Hitters can’t be expected to come up big on a regular basis, but what stands out is how those at-bats went down.

Jansen came up with the bases loaded and two out in the fourth, against a flagging Corey Kluber, with the score tied 1-1. He grounded to short on the first pitch to end the inning. It was a good pitch to swing at, an 89-mile-per-hour fastball middle-away. The problem is that, as Jansen did so often last year, he tried to pull the ball, so he rolled over on it. I still believe Jansen can be a very good hitter, but he’s been pretty pull-happy the last couple of years.

Tellez was up earlier that inning, with two on and one out, and went out of the strike zone to swing at an 0-and-1 changeup that was up, and popped out. He came up again with two out in the bottom of the eighth, facing Chad Green as the go-ahead run. Green threw four fastballs, none of which were strikes, all middle-up. Tellez swung at three of them, fouling off a pair and missing the last one.

Tellez had success late last season by making pitchers throw him strikes. That ability was definitely not on display Saturday afternoon.

Mike Wilner is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @wilnerness