TORONTO -- In Keider Montero’s return from the paternity list, he battled a pesky Blue Jays offense and helped keep the score close, but the Tigers’ bats sputtered and their six-game winning streak ended with a 5-1 loss at Rogers Centre on Wednesday.
The 26-year-old righty worked around traffic on the bases in all four innings he pitched, but the dam eventually broke in the fourth as a walk, double and sacrifice fly scored the two runs Montero allowed. Three consecutive errors in the sixth inning -- two by John Peck at shortstop and another from Kevin McGonigle at third -- gave the Blue Jays two more and pushed the game further out of reach. Peck and McGonigle were each eaten up by ground balls, and Peck also bobbled one before throwing it wide of second and into foul territory down the right-field line, allowing the first run to score.
“It's definitely like one of the quicker infields I've played on, just because of the turf, and then the dirt's hard as well,” Peck said before the game. “So those paired together definitely play a little quicker than other fields.”
Montero worked around a pair of line-drive singles in the first by striking out George Springer swinging at a high sinker and getting Kazuma Okamoto looking on a slider at the knees. Two runners reached via line-drive singles again in the second, but Montero escaped unscathed, winning a nine-pitch battle with Brett Bateman by freezing him with a changeup at the knees. All told, he allowed six hits, walked two and struck out four.
Toronto kept fighting, grinding Montero for 89 pitches (55 strikes) as he often fell behind in the count; he threw a first-pitch strike to 10 of the 19 batters he faced. Tyler Holton came out of the bullpen to start the fifth and gave up a pair of hard-hit line-drive singles, and the second from Springer cashed another Blue Jays run.
The Tigers opened the scoring in the first when Colt Keith served a bloop double into left in his return to the lineup after resting a sore thumb for two days. Riley Greene scored Keith with a 105.8 mph line-drive single up the middle. But they were shut down for the rest of the game, as former Tiger Max Scherzer pitched five innings of one-run ball, and Toronto’s bullpen arms Mason Fluharty and Spencer Miles combined for three scoreless frames.