Blue Jays losses have started to blur together, but this one had the familiar shape: a good first inning, a long quiet stretch at the plate, and one pitch in the eighth that turned the night.
Toronto fell 4-3 to the Orioles after Pete Alonso launched his second homer of the day - and fifth in his last six games - off Tyler Rogers in the bottom of the eighth. Mason Fluharty had opened the inning by allowing a leadoff walk, then recorded a pop out and a fly out before John went to Rogers with Alonso coming up.
It looked like the right move. It just didn’t matter.
Alonso turned on the third pitch and sent it about 400 feet, ending the game.
The Jays had built their three runs right away and then basically shut down. Brett Bateman and Alejandro Kirk drew walks to start the game, Nathan Lukes singled in one run, George Springer followed with an RBI single, and Sean Keys added a sacrifice fly for the third and final Toronto run.
After that, the offense went cold. Toronto had two on with no outs in the third, but Keys flied out and Kazuma Okamoto grounded into a double play.
Outside of that, the innings mostly vanished in quick, clean fashion. The Jays finished with just six hits, all of them singles, and Springer had two of them.
There was also a scare for Bateman in the second inning, when he made an awkward catch and his left knee hit the ground hard. He left the game limping. The word is that nothing structural was found, though he might be done for the season.
On the mound, Trey Yesavage started, or opened, and gave up Alonso’s first homer of the day. That was the only hit he allowed, and he struck out three.
Brendan Cellucci followed with four outs, three of them on strikeouts. Chad Dallas got eight outs and surrendered a Gunnar Henderson home run.
José Rodríguez handled three outs before the late collapse from Fluharty and Rogers.
Rogers’ pitch was supposed to be on, or just off, the inside edge. Instead, it caught too much of the plate.
That’s baseball. Sometimes the pitch isn’t where it’s meant to be, and sometimes the hitter makes you pay.
And sometimes, even if the pitch is a mistake, it still doesn’t leave the yard. This one did.
The other award went to Rogers (-0.62, hardly fair really), Okamoto (-0.13), Keys (-0.11) and Smith (-0.10).
At this point, it’s been a ride. There have been plenty of Jays seasons where September baseball didn’t mean much. This year at least made it this far with something still on the line, and that makes it better than most.
Next up is Max Scherzer (3-8, 6.07) against Chris Bassitt (8-5, 4.64), with a 6:30 Eastern start time if the rain stays away.
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