How was your day under the Rogers Centre roof on a chilly Saturday afternoon?
“I’m not hurt, I just have some forearm soreness that I’m trying to work through,” said Brian Tallet, lifted after five innings and 88 pitches, with the Blue Jays trailing the Los Angeles Angels 4-2.
“If we’re going to be an aggressive base-running team, you can’t bottom-line results,” said third base coach Brain Butterfield after he waved Alex Gonzalez home with the Jays down 5-2 in the eighth.
Catcher Mike Napoli took Reggie Willits’ throw, blocked the plate and applied the tag ending the inning, leaving the Jays’ hottest hitter, Vernon Wells, heading to the dugout, bat in hand, instead of having a chance to tie the game with one swing.
Yet this loss, a 6-3 verdict to the Angels, did not come down to one risky eighth-inning, play.
Had Angels third baseman Brandon Wood not committed back-to-back, two-base errors in the third, the Jays would have been down 5-0 and worrying only about Tallet, who allowed two doubles, two homers and four runs in the first three innings.
The Jays managed two doubles, an infield hit and nary an earned run in the first seven innings against lefty Joe Saunders, who brought a 7.26 earned-run average into the game.
Now they have the routine things to worry about:
— When will the Jays begin to make more contact? As a team, they led all of baseball with 99 strikeouts in 11 games heading into Saturday’s play. That’s nine whiffs per game, an average of three innings of strikeouts per game. Think of that for a second. The Jays struck out four times Saturday. John Buck has 15 Ks on the season, followed by Adam Lind and Lyle Overbay (14 each), Travis Snider (11) and Jose Bautista (10).
— When will Overbay’s bat arrive from Dunedin? Overbay followed Wells’ ninth-inning double with an RBI-double to break an 0-for-18 subterranean experience and is 3-for-46 (.085) to start the season.
“I felt better on an earlier at-bat when I hit an inside pitch (to the edge of the track in deep left),” Overbay said. “There has been some panic the last few days, but I managed not to take it on to the field.”
— When will the fans return? The Jays drew 17,187 fans, including family and dear friends, giving them a six-game average of 18,635, down from 2009 over a similar time period when they averaged 22,038. When do the NHL playoffs end? Oh, they just began, never mind.
– How will this team bounce back Sunday afternoon against Ervin Santana? The loss gives the Jays consecutive defeats for the first time this season, but they have now dropped three of four and four of their previous six. The 5-1 start is evaporating quicker than smoke from the annoying fireworks that used to be set off after Rogers Centre homers.
— Who besides Gonzalez knows where to stay if the Jays move to Caracas, Venezuela, as suggested on the weekend?
The Angels expanded their 4-2 lead with a single run against Jason Frasor in the eighth. Gonzalez hit a two-out double, Lind followed with a single to right and Gonzalez slid, his extended hand catching the bottom of the left shin guard, rather than the plate.
“(Gonzalez) beat the play,” said manager Cito Gaston, who came out to argue with plate umpire Marvin Hudson. “Most times you see a guy called safe. But he didn’t get to the plate. It was a great play on their catcher’s part. I saw the replay, the umpire got it right. That was a big loss because it would have kept the inning going.”
Right now, the Jays have to cut down on strike outs, get Overbay going and win some games to expect an increase at the turnstiles.
bob.elliott@sunmedia.ca
