The Blue Jays’ one good inning is not nearly enough to savour with playoff hopes unravelling

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/08/2021 (1520 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Descending on the elevator at Rogers Centre after Thursday’s 10-7 loss by the Blue Jays, I asked a quartet of teenagers what they’d thought about the game.

“Great, man.”

“Lots of hitting.”

“Really exciting.”

“Loved it, even if they didn’t win.”

You know how woke folk — tiresome pundits mostly — are all the time saying we should look at events through a different lens? Racial lens, colonial lens, gender lens, trans lens, blah blah blah.

I was simply wondering if my baseball lens had become blurred, although there’s no disputing that the Jays have gone full-tilt swoon in August.

When the starters are splendid, the bullpen gets mauled. When the pitchers put up seven solid innings of one- or two-hit ball, the bats go cold. When the hitters come to life, the men on the mound — aces included — are tattooed.

Which is what happened to Hyun Jin Ryu in this matinee against the White Sox. Quite un-Ryu-esque, smacked around for three homers and given the hook after merely 3 2/3 innings, as the White Sox built up a quick 4-1 lead, flicking off as if it was utterly inconsequential the opening frame jack by Marcus Semien — a rocket over the wall in left field, his 31st round-tripper of the season.

What was most notable about that: It had been 14 games since Toronto had scored a first-inning run.

And it all went sideways lickety-split.

“I’d have to say it would have been my command today,” Ryu offered in self-assessment afterward, an explanation for why Chicago had hit him with rat-a-tat timpani — tying a season-high seven runs allowed on seven hits. “Even in the home run I gave up, it was a weak contact.”

Not clear which of the three long balls he was referencing, but Ryu was facing an aggressive-hitting team in Chicago. “Not only the White Sox. I feel like everyone throughout the league have been very aggressive. I feel like you have to be cautious from the first pitch all the way to the last.”

Which, for Ryu, was No. 66, slack starter numbers.

“The home runs and hits I gave up, I felt like I pitched to where I wanted to. The hitters were just able to get on top of it. That’s just what it is.”

It is what it is — an annoying phrase they apparently say in Korean too, as Ryu was speaking through his personal interpreter. And, frankly, even the interpreter was having a bad day.

As for Semien, who has so often propelled the offence, he cranked another over the fence in a boisterous sixth inning when Toronto scored five runs and suddenly looked like the jiggy Jays of old, as in through the first four months of the 2021 campaign when they seemed a solid bet to make the post-season.

It’s unravelled very fast.

Till that point, the Jays redux sixth, there’d been little to engage the crowd of 14,958 — the third sellout at Rogers, as per pandemic attendance restrictions, since the vagabond team returned to its home haunt.

So quiet was the crowd that one could clearly hear a leather-lunged paying customer bellowing at Randal Grichuk for a ball that popped in and out of his glove at the wall, although he had made a fine leaping effort to corral it at the warning track, smashing into the video board. Just as audible was the howl from Santiago Espinal at the plate when a 99-mph fastball hit him in the funny bone.

Apart from a handful of such episodes, the most remarkable occurrence through five innings was that rain actually fell on the field, splattering off the dugout, creating small puddles in the dirt, because the stadium roof couldn’t be zippered up fast enough. Which required fast-paced grooming of the mound and the batter’s box by the grounds crew.

It certainly appeared all was lost again and decisively, the visitors en route to a rout of Toronto, a team that has looked scrambly and skittish for an awful long time, completely out of mojo sorts, even though there have been close defeats thrown into the mix, soul-crushing defeats, the kind a baller will take home and obsess over, gnaw to the bone. And the woebegone hitting, of course, especially with runners in scoring position, although let’s not belabour that issue again.

The Jays got down to business in that sixth, after Chicago starter Carlos Rodon was lifted for reliever Michael Kopech. Alejandro Kirk kicked off the fun with a single that split the outfield, Espinal took his very achy hit-batter base, Grichuk singled, a poor throw by Brian Goodwin brought Kirk lumbering across the plate, an infield out scored Espinal, Bo Bichette’s slap to centre scored Grichuk, and Semien brought up the rear with his second homer and, voila, the Jays had put up a five-spot closed the lead to 9-7.

And this is where the Jays of June and July, even the Jays on display in a 9-2 run when they initially returned to Toronto, might have been expected to put the pedal to the metal, all nagging thoughts of a hitting glut dispersed. But they didn’t. The had just one hit through the next three innings, while Chicago racked up its fourth long ball in the top of the ninth.

It ended with a pfft and a series split. Which is not half-bad against American League Central-leading White Sox. And for at least a while there, the Jays, with 10 hits on the afternoon, seemed to be channelling the squad that had rallied so gobsmackingly to edge Boston 9-8 on Aug. 8 at home, then thrashed the Angels 10-2 on the road. Which really was the last whoop-whoop hurrah for the club, before the ruinous stall and the doubts crept in.

Didn’t amount to much, though, that five-run flurry, not through the lens of a wild-card chase.

Seven runs were certainly encouraging. But what, if anything, did that truly signify?

“That’s what I’m hoping, that this game gives us momentum going forward,” said manager Charlie Montoyo, because he’s endlessly upbeat. Somebody has to be. “This was the best offensive game we’ve had in a while and it was good to see that. We came back to make it a game. Not hitting for four straight days …

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“Credit to our team to battle against a good team.”

It was a loss, Charlie. And except for one knockout inning, there was not much here to savour.

Well, that and the fact — stop me if you’ve heard this before — George Springer ran the bases again, without issue. He could be restored to the lineup for the weekend series in Detroit. A bottom feeder opponent that took two of three off Toronto last week.

That soft schedule the Jays were supposed to feast on? Looks to-gag-for through the backwards lens.

Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno