Blue Jays Pitching Lets 8-7 Padres Loss Slip Away
Toronto scored 7 and made no errors. The problem was that San Diego kept getting another turn at the wound.
The worst losses are not always the quiet ones.
Sometimes the bats show up just enough to remove the easy complaint.
Sometimes the defense avoids the obvious stain.
Sometimes the scoreboard stays close enough that every pitch feels like it still belongs to you.
Then the Blue Jays lose 8-7 to the San Diego Padres anyway, and everyone is left staring at the same number.
8 earned runs.
That was Toronto’s pitching total on Sunday.
Not a mystery.
Not a riddle.
Just the old blunt instrument, wrapped in a one-run game so it hurts more carefully.
The Padres kept finding the plate
San Diego scored in the bottom of the first.
Then the bottom of the second.
Then the bottom of the third.
Then the bottom of the fourth.
Then the bottom of the sixth.
That is not one bad inning dragging a game into the ditch.
That is the ditch moving alongside the bus.
In the first, with Trey Yesavage pitching, Gavin Sheets walked and Fernando Tatis Jr. scored. Jackson Merrill moved to third. Xander Bogaerts moved to second.
Then Ty France hit a sacrifice fly to right fielder Nathan Lukes, scoring Merrill.
In the second, Manny Machado singled off Yesavage on a line drive to center fielder Daulton Varsho. Sung-Mun Song scored. Merrill scored. Bogaerts went to third.
That was the immediate answer to Toronto’s 4-run top half.
The Blue Jays had done the hard thing.
San Diego made it temporary.
In the third, Sung-Mun Song singled off Adam Macko on a line drive to center fielder Daulton Varsho. Ty France scored. Jake Cronenworth scored.
In the fourth, Cronenworth singled off Braydon Fisher on a ground ball to center fielder Daulton Varsho. Gavin Sheets scored. France moved to third.
In the sixth, France homered off Mason Fluharty on a fly ball to left field.
That was the run that held.
Of course it was.
A solo homer in the sixth, after Toronto had dragged itself level, because baseball has a gift for plain cruelty.
The pitching line reads like a receipt
There is no need to pretend every arm had the same afternoon.
Spencer Miles was listed with 2.0 innings, 0 earned runs, and 1 strikeout.
That is a small patch of dry floor.
The rest of the line had water coming through the ceiling.
Trey Yesavage went 1.2 innings with 4 earned runs and 1 strikeout. Adam Macko went 1.1 innings with 2 earned runs and 2 strikeouts. Mason Fluharty went 2.0 innings with 1 earned run and 1 strikeout. Braydon Fisher went 1.0 inning with 1 earned run and 2 strikeouts.
The team total was 7 strikeouts.
The team total was also 8 earned runs.
Both things can be true, which is part of the annoyance.
Missing bats does not mean much when the scoreboard keeps accepting deliveries.
The Padres finished with 8 hits.
The Blue Jays finished with 8 hits.
The difference was not volume.
It was timing, sequence, and the grim sensation that San Diego always had one more response stored somewhere under the bench.
The offense was not innocent, but it was present
Toronto scored 4 in the top of the second.
Alejandro Kirk doubled off Walker Buehler, scoring Kazuma Okamoto and moving Daulton Varsho to third.
Andrés Giménez grounded out, and Varsho scored.
Jonatan Clase homered off Buehler on a fly ball to right field, scoring Kirk.
There.
A 2-0 deficit had become a 4-2 lead.
The Blue Jays had done the part fans spend whole innings begging them to do.
Later, in the top of the sixth, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. homered off Bradgley Rodriguez on a fly ball to left field. Clase scored. Nathan Lukes scored.
That made Guerrero 2-for-4 with his sixth homer and 3 RBI.
Kirk went 2-for-4 with an RBI. Clase went 1-for-2 with his second homer and 2 RBI. Nathan Lukes went 1-for-4. Ernie Clement went 1-for-4. Luis Urías went 1-for-1.
Again, this was not an empty offensive night.
But the zeros still mattered.
George Springer went 0-for-5. Kazuma Okamoto went 0-for-4. Daulton Varsho went 0-for-3. Giménez went 0-for-3, with the RBI on the groundout.
Toronto left 7 on base.
Enough production to fight.
Not enough to clean up after 8 earned runs.
No error, no comfort
The cruelest line might be Toronto’s error column.
Usually that number gives you somewhere to rest.
Not today.
The Blue Jays made no errors and still allowed 8 runs. The Padres made 1 error and still won. San Diego left 10 on base and still won.
There are nights when the losing team can point to a dropped ball, a wild throw, a single snapped hinge.
This was not that.
This was more general.
More tiring.
The Blue Jays are 45-50, with a .474 winning percentage. Their last ten sits at 5-5. Their streak is L1. Their division rank reads 4.
They have played 95 games. They have 388 runs, 4.08 runs per game, a .244 batting average, a .690 OPS, and 96 home runs.
That is the season in its current clothes.
Capable of scoring 7.
Capable of losing anyway.
Capable of making a Padres afternoon feel like a referendum without ever becoming dramatic enough to excuse the pain.
The bats brought the game back twice.
The pitching gave San Diego too many chances to take it away.
And in the end, the Padres did what opponents keep seeming to do in these games.
They took exactly enough.
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