Blue Jays look to regroup after tough SoCal set

ANAHEIM -- After sweeping the A’s at home, the shoe was on the other foot as the Blue Jays dropped all three of their games at Angel Stadium, ending with a 6-2 loss on Thursday.

Here are three takeaways from Toronto’s set at the Big A:

The bullpen was relied upon heavily

Abbreviated starts from Clay Buchholz on Tuesday (five innings), Marcus Stroman on Wednesday (3 1/3 innings) and Aaron Sanchez on Thursday (four innings) meant Toronto had to use its bullpen more than it would have liked. Blue Jays relievers accounted for 11 2/3 innings in the three games.

The bullpen posted an altogether strong performance, charged with two runs on four hits and five walks while tallying seven strikeouts. The runs, however, both came on solo homers: Brian Goodwin’s game-winning shot in the eighth off Ryan Tepera on Tuesday, and Mike Trout’s sixth-inning blast off Sam Gaviglio on Thursday.

Fortunately for the Blue Jays, heavy bullpen usage hasn’t been a recurring trend; starters have pitched 158 1/3 of the team’s innings this season, which is around league average. But an uncertain fifth starter situation -- spurred by the loss of Matt Shoemaker for the season -- with no off-day between series means the short outings have created a fairly immediate issue.

“Now we need a starter for Saturday, so it has to be a bullpen guy,” Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo said. “I won’t be able to name [Thomas] Pannone yet, because I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. It’s a day-to-day deal.”

The offense was ineffective

Over the course of the series, Blue Jays batters had a .172 average, going 17-for-99 and walking seven times while recording 42 strikeouts. Only eight of those hits went for extra bases (five doubles, two home runs). The lineup was also just 4-for-24 with runners in scoring position. Paired with the unsatisfactory starting pitching performances, that simply wasn’t going to get the job done.

Randal Grichuk, who homered Wednesday and had five hits in the series, feels the club is capable of course correcting against the Rangers.

“Just knowing how well we were playing coming in here,” Grichuk said of how the Blue Jays can bounce back. “We had some good wins against some good teams, and just knowing what we’re capable of, taking a step back and breathing and just understanding, ‘Let’s get back to the fundamentals in Texas,’ and play hard.”

The defense slipped up

The Blue Jays’ 24 errors are third-most in the American League, but you shouldn’t judge their defense solely on that. Another defensive metric, defensive efficiency, ranks them as third-best in baseball, with a score of .740.

There are several reasons for the dissonance between errors committed and a high defensive efficiency ranking. For one, scoring errors is subjective, and some scorekeepers may be tougher on defenders than others. Defensive efficiency, on the other hand, accounts for the defenders’ rate of converting balls put in play into outs, something the Blue Jays have done at an impressive clip.

Still, five errors in the span of three games -- including the first of Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s MLB career -- isn’t going to help. Luke Maile and Danny Jansen were both charged with catcher’s interference, with Jansen’s on Wednesday putting on a runner who eventually scored. Billy McKinney and Alen Hanson made errors in the outfield on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, that allowed runners to score. Neither was the difference in the game, but each made the deficit wider than it needed to be.

“We just didn’t play good. They outplayed us,” said Montoyo. “We didn’t play good these three games, and the errors cost us.”

As the Blue Jays close the book on this series, they will focus on trying to shape up in the next one, something they’ve already had to do several times during a rather erratic 2019 season. Montoyo chalks that up, in part, to the team’s inexperience.

“We’re going to have our ups and downs, for sure,” said Montoyo. “With a young team, that’s what happens, you know. Hopefully, it’s going to be more ups than downs, but right now, we’re going through a down.”