1 week Ago By Shi Davidi
BOSTON – Four days of shiver-inducing freeze made simply staying loose, let alone gripping a baseball, swinging a bat or besting an opponent, hard. Amid the miserable conditions and a correlated power outage at the plate, the Toronto Blue Jays won three straight before falling short of what would have been their second four-game sweep of the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, the only one coming June 2-5, 1988. A remarkable turn of the rotation – with Chris Bassitt throwing 5.
2 innings of one-run ball after the dominant performances by Jose Berrios, Easton Lucas and Kevin Gausman in the three previous games previous – put the Blue Jays in position to take all four outings. But Thursday afternoon’s 4-3 finale featured a wild finish in which the Blue Jays rallied back from a 1-0 deficit with an opportunistic two-run seventh, surrendered the advantage in the eighth on two errors and a wild pitch, retook the lead in the top of the 10 th on a George Springer sacrifice fly but it let it slip away in the bottom half on Jarren Duran’s RBI single and Trevor Story’s groundout, which Andres Gimenez couldn’t field cleanly enough for an out at home. Nick Sandlin looked to be in good shape after Tyler Heineman threw out Duran trying to steal after his game-tying base hit, but a Rafael Devers single followed by pitches that hit Alex Bregman and Triston Casas loaded the bases and set up the fateful grounder.
The Blue Jays managed a mere three extra-base hits across 166 plate appearances in the four games, underlining how they managed to scrape by on sound execution, entering play tied with Kansas City for the fewest homers in the majors at six. “I know we have them. We have homers.
Homers are things that come, they come in streaks, they come in bunches,” said Bo Bichette, who drove a couple balls during the series that probably clear the fence in warmer conditions. “Good teams, good players are able to hit and be productive when they're not there. We've done that.
” Bregman’s RBI single off Bassitt in the sixth opened the scoring but the Blue Jays responded immediately in the seventh on Heineman’s RBI single and a run-scoring fielder’s choice by Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who entered the game as a pinch-hitter. The lead held until the eighth when pinch-hitter Rob Refsnyder opened the inning against lefty Brendon Little and reached on an error by Will Wagner at third.
Little then walked Duran before rallying to strike out Devers, ending his outing. In came Yimi Garcia, who induced a grounder to third which the Blue Jays couldn’t turn two on, and a wild pitch to Casas, the next batter, allowed Refsnyder to score, with a Garcia error on the relay moving Bregman to third. Garcia got Casas to end that jam and then escaped another in the ninth, when Trevor Story opened the inning with a single.
He then stole second and was left there..
