Blue Jays’ struggles continue as costly errors, quiet bats hand series opener to Rays

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Remember on Sunday, after the Baltimore Orioles scored five times in the 11^th inning for an 8-3 win over the Toronto Blue Jays and John Schneider said “enough is enough” about his slumping hitters afterwards?

“It wasn’t like, ‘Hey, you guys figure it out,’” he explained Monday afternoon inside the visiting manager’s office at Tropicana Field. “It was kind of (Sunday) in a nutshell, like, damn, all right, it’s going to turn, like, what else can happen?”

Plenty, it turns out, as hours later his team’s bizarre period of struggle continued against the Tampa Bay Rays, a pair of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. errors leading to four unearned runs that both ended Chris Bassitt’s shutout innings streak at 28 and provided the difference in a 6-4 loss.

First, Guerrero dropped a low Whit Merrifield relay after the second baseman scooped Christian Bethancourt’s grounder up the middle, allowing a run to score and the second inning to continue, with Jose Siri hitting a two-run homer right after.

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Then in the third, Wander Franco’s 96.1 m.p.h. smash short-hopped Guerrero and hit off the heel of his glove right to Bassitt, who relayed the ball back to the first baseman, who scrambled to his feet, never got set on the bag, dropped the throw and had his foot clipped by Franco.

A two-out RBI single by Isaac Paredes reinforced how, right now, no Blue Jays error goes unpunished, opening up a 4-0 Rays lead that was far too much for a struggling offence to overcome.

Those mistakes muted the impact of all the good the Blue Jays did before a crowd of 8,857, starting with Alejandro Kirk catching Franco stealing in the first. There was George Springer’s diving catch to rob Luke Raley to end the second, the right fielder’s leaping grab against the wall to rob Randy Arozarena of extra bases in the third and Kevin Kiermaier, making his return to the Trop, throwing out Franco at home after catching a Brandon Lowe popper to end the fourth.

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With the offence grinding through another dry night at the dish, it didn’t matter. 

A two-out Guerrero double was stranded in the first and then in the second, in a play symbolic of the club’s recent woes, Merrifield ran into the third out at third base when a Danny Jansen dribbler arrived at the bag at the same time he did, leading to a Paredes tag. 

Merrifield broke through against bulk pitcher Josh Fleming in the fourth, cashing a leadoff Matt Chapman single with a two-out homer, but a Springer single in the fifth and walk in the eighth were both followed by Bichette double-play balls, any inning they began to build immediately crumbling apart. 

They didn’t really look dangerous until the ninth, when Daulton Varsho went deep and Brandon Belt added a pinch-hit RBI single, but by then, it was too little too late.

“I feel like everything that could go wrong for us lately has and that’s the way baseball goes. At the same time, we create luck for ourselves and we’ve got to be better, plain and simple,” Kiermaier, who was feted with a videoboard tribute after the first inning, said before the game. 

Turning things around is “easier said than done,” he added, “but just try to get confidence back. We don’t have a whole lot of guys playing with the greatest confidence right now. And that happens. … We’re pressing a little bit right now, putting a lot of pressure on ourselves because we know we’re better than what we’ve shown as of late. But it seems like we’re facing a nasty pitcher day in, day out. This game is so hard. People forget that. And we’ve just got to have one of those offensive outbursts to really get us going. Hopefully that can happen soon.”

If ever it seemed like it might, Monday certainly felt like the day for it, with the Rays starting opener Trevor Kelley, the funky-throwing righty cropper, ahead of the lefty Fleming against Bassitt, who’d ended Blue Jays losing streaks the past three times he’s started. 

Instead, they lost a fifth straight and seventh in eight games, the good vibes from a sweep of Atlanta replaced by the pain of an extended slide that one swing different here and there could easily be a steadying run. 

Only it’s not, a pair of miscues digging a hole and solo shots by Arozarena in the sixth and Raley in the seventh helping to push the game out of reach by the time the Blue Jays rally fell short in the ninth.

“The effort is there, the enthusiasm is there, it’s just not really happening,” said Schneider. “You acknowledge that. And it’s easy to say that things will turn around because we’re a good team. We’re still a good team. We’re not going to get worse, you know what I mean? So I think it’s just making sure that the prep is right and it’s not just saying, ‘Oh, it’ll turn.’ You’ve still got to do what you’re good at. That’s been the common conversation in the last couple of days. Confident that it’ll turn.”

The wait continues.

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