Blue Jays takeaways: Erratic pitching lets Red Sox pick their spots

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This article was published 20/05/2021 (1639 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The view from Deep Left Field on the Blue Jays’ 8-7 loss to the Red Sox on Thursday night in Dunedin, Fla.:

Steven Matz rolled through the first inning on just seven pitches, then needed eight more to retire the first two batters he faced in the second. After that fifth out, a grounder to short by Rafael Devers, there appeared to be a glitch in the matrix or something.

With two out in the second, the lefty gave up seven straight hits, including a three-run Bobby Dalbec home run and RBI singles by Enrique Hernandez and J.D. Martinez. Some were hit hard, some got caught up in the jet stream that was blowing towards the right-field corner, one went off the glove of a diving Santiago Espinal at third. Whatever it was, Matz couldn’t get anybody out for about 15 minutes.

Matz finally struck out Devers in his second at-bat of the inning to end the frame, leaving the bases loaded with five runs having crossed. Strike three came on Matz’s 41st pitch of the inning, which meant that after getting the first five outs of the game on 15 pitches, he needed 33 more to get the sixth.

Had Matz not been able to retire Devers, he would have come out of the game — Joel Payamps was warming in the bullpen, and asking a pitcher to throw more than 40 pitches in an inning can get pretty dangerous. But not only did Matz stick around, he turned his entire night around.

The southpaw needed only seven pitches in the third and just six more to finish the fourth. He started the fifth with a 10-pitch battle against Martinez, ultimately striking him out and putting up another zero, then finished his night with a perfect sixth inning that took eight pitches.

It was one of the strangest starts ever: Matz needed 33 pitches to get the third out of the second inning and 60 pitches to get the other 23 outs he recorded. Credit to him for righting whatever went wrong and getting deep enough into the game to put himself a position to get the win, if not for the blown save in the ninth.

• Setting the table: With the Jays having come back from the early deficit caused by Matz’s momentary lapse, it was the bottom of the order that got things moving in the sixth to give them the lead.

Danny Jansen, the eight hitter, greeted reliever Hirokazu Sawamura by hitting a hard line drive to deep right-centre. It kept slicing away from Hernandez as he chased it toward the gap and ultimately fell in beyond the centre-fielder’s dive for a double. Hunter Renfroe, the right-fielder, bobbled it on the warning track and Jansen wound up at third. Boston had to pull the infield in for Jonathan Davis, and he lined a single over the drawn-in shortstop, scoring Jansen to put the Jays on top. Davis would work his way around the bases and later score on a single by Randal Grichuk.

The Red Sox returned the favour, though, as their eight and nine hitters led off the ninth inning with singles off Rafael Dolis, putting the tying runners aboard for the top of the order. Dolis was an out away from closing it out, but he hung an 0-and-1 slider to Martinez, who hit it into the party deck in right field.

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It was the first blown save of the season for Dolis and the Jays’ fourth, but third in the last seven games. Martinez doesn’t ever get to the plate if Dolis takes care of the bottom of the order, but turnabout, as they say, is fair play.

• Shift this: The Jays built their game-tying rally in the fifth inning by taking advantage of holes in the Boston defence.

With a runner on first and one out, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit a bouncing ball to the right side, where the second baseman ordinarily would be standing in a normal defensive alignment. The Red Sox were shifted to the left, though, and there was nobody there. Guerrero got an easy single and the Jays had runners on the corners.

An error by Devers allowed a run to score to get the Jays back within one, and after Grichuk beat out a double-play ball to third there were runners on the corners again with two out for Cavan Biggio.

Boston stacked the right side against the lefty-hitting Biggio, and he poked a ground ball of his own through the vacated shortstop position to score the tying run.

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