Early pitching woes sink Blue Jays in crucial series vs. Rangers

TORONTO -- The Blue Jays have one big, glaring advantage over the Rangers in this week’s series that could decide the postseason picture, but it’s not worth much in a blowout.

Toronto’s bullpen is built to bring leads home, which wasn’t an option in Monday’s 10-4 loss to open the four-game set at Rogers Centre. By the time Chris Bassitt exited in the sixth, the damage was done, and it only got worse from there.

The loss represents a jarring step back into reality for the Blue Jays after 15 consecutive games against lesser opponents, including a recent streak against the last-place Rockies, A’s and Royals. That helped propel the Blue Jays past the Rangers in the AL Wild Card standings, but they now hold just a half-game lead over Texas and one game over the Mariners.

• Games remaining: vs. TEX (3), vs. BOS (3), at NYY (3), at TB (3), vs. NYY (3), vs. TB (3)
• Standings update: Toronto is a half-game up on the Rangers for the second AL Wild Card spot and one game up on the Mariners.
• Tiebreakers: Down 3-1 in season series vs. Texas; Win vs. Houston; Lose vs. Seattle

“It’s a big series, yes, but we’re playing really well, and I love the way the guys are going about it,” said manager John Schneider. “Today is one game. It doesn’t matter if you lose by six or by one. We’ve been doing some really, really good things. You move on to tomorrow, take tomorrow for what it is and then move on to Wednesday. It’s not any easier, but you take it for what it is.”

To earn the valuable tiebreaker over the Rangers, the Blue Jays now need to win the remaining three games of the series, and the blueprint for pulling that off isn’t complicated. If Toronto can keep things close until the middle innings, it's set up to dominate the bullpen battle.

The Rangers’ bullpen leads baseball with 29 blown saves this season and has a 4.88 ERA, ranking them 26th in MLB. This hasn’t gotten much better as the season’s gone on, either. Texas’ bullpen has been at the root of its recent freefall.

Let’s go back to Aug. 15, when the Rangers held a 3 1/2-game lead in the AL West and didn’t look like a club the Blue Jays would be concerned with come September. Between that date and this week’s series, Texas’ relievers have posted the third-worst ERA in baseball (6.31), blown the second-most saves (10) and allowed the most home runs (27).

Those are the pitchers Toronto wants to face over the next three days. The less the Blue Jays see of Max Scherzer, Jordan Montgomery and Nathan Eovaldi, the better.

Toronto’s bullpen, on the other hand, has the talent to take over games.

That must have been tempting Monday as Bassitt -- coming off two brilliant eight-inning outings -- trotted out for the sixth inning. He’d been grinding all day, including a brief battle with his PitchCom device in the first inning and a balk to bring in the first run when he disengaged for a third time and tried to chase down a baserunner dancing off third.

“It was a big shift, and no one was holding him on. I was watching him to see how far he was going to go,” Bassitt said, “and he wasn’t stopping. I’ll have to watch the video and figure it out, but it got to the point where if he breaks, I can get the ball to home.”

Even this deep into the season, you’re seeing the new rules show up in ways they haven’t yet, and with the Blue Jays shifting Cavan Biggio away from third, Rangers manager Bruce Bochy took notice.

“Sometimes, it makes the pitcher get distracted,” Bochy said. “And [Mitch Garver] did a great job there. It was a big lead. In fact, it was so big, I thought he was gonna outrun him to third base and tag him. No, it was a good break. The rule came in handy tonight.”

By the time the game started to slip away from the Blue Jays, they had moved on from Bassitt to Chad Green and eventually Génesis Cabrera, who allowed the grand slam that broke it all open.

That wasn’t the plan, and these are not the games that the 2023 Blue Jays are built to win. This club is at its best when it can hand a lead over to its bullpen with a rock-solid defense behind it, but that can’t happen without a strong start.