Vladimir Guerrero Jr.<\/a> leaving after 3\u00bd innings with right hamstring tightness and the inevitable questions Bieber\u2019s outings raise about his trade value ahead of the Aug. 3 deadline, it made for a mostly miserable day at Nationals Park.<\/p>\n\u201cTo follow up what was maybe my best start as a Blue Jay with what was definitely my worst, nobody’s more frustrated than me,\u201d said Bieber, who struggled with grip issues due to sweat amid the humidity. \u201cI let the guys down tonight and so I’m going to wear that one wholeheartedly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even the Canada-U.S. Friendship Day promotion, complete with a special ticket that provided holders with a cap featuring Nationals script over a Maple Leaf along with a Montreal Expos logo on the side, didn\u2019t help much as a rowdy section of fans among the crowd of 20,775 repeatedly chanted “U-S-A!” and “Blue Jays suck!” among less polite things.<\/p>\n
Kazuma Okamoto\u2019s 24th\u00a0homer of the season, a solo shot in the fifth that tied Eric Hinske\u2019s Blue Jays rookie record, was among the few highlights until Springer\u2019s drive in the eighth off Gus Varland, the older brother of closer Louis, made it 8-6. But the Nationals and their shaky bullpen held from there.<\/p>\n
But the Nationals (55-53), one game back of the final wild-card spot in the National League, and their shaky bullpen held from there, dropping the Blue Jays to 49-59, even as they remained 5.5 games out of the final wild-card spot in the American League.<\/p>\n
Manager John Schneider said Guerrero tweaked the hamstring beating out an infield single in the third and \u201che wanted to stay in, but it was my call just to be careful with him and not have anything worse happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guerrero \u201cchecked out pretty good\u201d after the game and Schneider didn\u2019t rule out that he\u2019d be in the lineup for Wednesday afternoon\u2019s series finale, although with an off-day Thursday, resting him with an eye to Friday might make more sense.<\/p>\n
Either way, nothing carried more immediate wider implications than Bieber\u2019s bizarre outing, as he set a new career high in walks in the shortest outing of his career.<\/p>\n
Of his 42 pitches, only 15 went for strikes while only three balls were put in play against him, a weak Luis Garcia Jr. chopper to first for one out, a C.J. Abrams roller to the 3-4 hole that he beat out to the bag and a Nasim Nunez sacrifice fly to right.<\/p>\n
The other three runs crossed on bases-loaded walks, Bieber simply unable to get in the box.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was falling behind hitters, not executing pitches even when they were in the zone, coming out of my delivery trying to throw strikes,\u201d said Bieber. \u201cWhen you lose the zone, then the zone shrinks on you, too, and you don’t get those borderline calls and things kind of snowball. And that’s what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
What teams shopping for pitching make of the outing will largely depend on how they weigh the way he fared facing the most productive offence in the majors versus the consecutive strong outings that preceded Tuesday. Scouts for five teams were in attendance so there\u2019s some degree of interest in him and others, and whether they can write this off as an outlier or view it as a red flag will be in the eye of the beholder.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While Bieber wasn\u2019t ready to simply dismiss Tuesday as a bad night \u2014 \u201cI would hate to discredit how big of an outing that could have been, big of a game that could’ve been for us,\u201d he said \u2014 he noted that he felt strong physically and was \u201cdefinitely determined going into my next one.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s slated for Aug. 3 at Houston, just after the deadline passes, making it one of several uncertainties to loom over the club.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was unique tonight, I guess, but I just need to find a way to get through that inning and adjust from there,\u201d said Bieber. \u201cI’m certain if I get out of that first inning and limit the damage, then I’m able to actually provide some innings and provide some value for my start, whether I give up runs or not. That’s what I’m most frustrated with.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Blue Jays managed to cover 7.1 innings he left behind with only four relievers, with Brendon Little delivering 2.1 perfect innings with four strikeouts, and C.J. Van Eyk logging 3.1 innings. Mason Fluharty gave up a two-run homer to Garcia in the fourth that extended Washington\u2019s lead to 6-2 after the Blue Jays scratched out runs in the third and fourth, while Van Eyk gave up a solo shot to Dylan Crews later in the fourth and another run in the fifth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew we had CJ for length and we were just trying to get through certain parts of the order,\u201d said Schneider. \u201cLittle did an outstanding job coming in there in the first inning. Best he’s been in a long, long time, so hopefully he can build off of that. Just trying navigate certain spots in the order and then you know when CJ gets in, you’re going to use some pitches there and you knew you had to score. He did his part, the offence did its part getting back into the game and just ran out of outs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 The downpour that caused a one-hour-seven-minute rain delay Tuesday night was so severe that the Washington…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":830651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-831807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/830651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}