CINCINNATI \u2013 With Jeff Hoffman, Seranthony Dominguez and Louis Varland all unavailable Monday, the Blue Jays knew they\u2019d have to get creative if a save situation arose.<\/p>\n
Thanks to Bo Bichette<\/a>\u2019s go-ahead, two-run homer in the top of the ninth inning, the Blue Jays had a chance to do just that. Bichette\u2019s home run \u2013 his fourth hit of the day \u2013 gave the Blue Jays a lead that was as exhilarating as it was short-lived.<\/p>\n Yet Tommy Nance allowed two of the first three hitters he faced to reach, leading the Blue Jays to turn to Brendon Little<\/a>, who promptly allowed a TJ Friedl double followed by a Noelvi Marte<\/a> walk-off single. Just like that, the Reds had secured a 5-4 win and the Blue Jays were left contemplating another frustrating day for the bullpen.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s just how baseball goes,\u201d Bichette said. \u201cGood teams weather the storm.\u201d<\/p>\n The blown save comes after a month of August in which Blue Jays relievers combined for an MLB-worst 14.2 per cent walk rate with a 4.76 ERA and five blown saves.<\/p>\n “I know there’s probably a lot of hatred, so to speak, on the bullpen,\u201d said starter Chris Bassitt. \u201cBut I mean those guys are tired.”<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m never going to doubt the guys,\u201d said manager John Schneider. “The life of a reliever is tough. You’ve got to have a short memory. This is the big-leagues, man. This is no joke.\u201d<\/p>\n With the loss, the Blue Jays fall to 79-59 on the season. They\u2019ve lost three of their last four games with Jose Berrios slated to take the ball Tuesday.<\/p>\n Bassitt pitched well, recovering from some early lapses in command to cover six-plus innings while walking two, striking out six and allowing two earned runs. On a day the Blue Jays were short-handed in the bullpen, the extended outing by Bassitt helped keep the game close into the late innings.<\/p>\n He faced Ke\u2019Bryan Hayes to open the seventh, but gave way to an effective Yariel Rodr\u00edguez when Hayes singled.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m more so just mad that I didn\u2019t get that out,\u201d Bassitt said. \u201cI feel like I cost us the game not getting that out there. I feel like I could have gotten through the seventh there and set us up a lot better. I know our bullpen is really worn down right now. We need length out of our starters.\u201d<\/p>\n But as well as Bassitt pitched, Greene was even better, allowing just one run while striking out seven and sitting 99.5 m.p.h. with his fastball. Offensively, Bichette was the only Blue Jays hitter who seemed comfortable against Greene, as he added to his MLB-leading hit tally with four hits on the day for a season total of 176.<\/p>\n \u201cI haven\u2019t felt amazing every day, but I\u2019m just competing every day, putting up numbers and trying to help the team win,\u201d Bichette said.<\/p>\n From his vantage point in the third base dugout, Schneider was impressed by Bichette\u2019s approach and his swings. But while the shortstop collected four hits, the rest of the lineup combined for just four more, leading to a quiet day at the plate.<\/p>\n Before the game, the Blue Jays reshuffled their rotation again while promoting two players to take advantage of newly expanded rosters for September. By adjusting their starting rotation plans, the Blue Jays assured themselves of a Shane Bieber start here at Great American Ballpark Wednesday instead of at Yankee Stadium on Friday.<\/p>\n While Schneider acknowledged it\u2019s \u201cvery enticing to line him up against New York,\u201d he cautioned that the Blue Jays don\u2019t want to look too far ahead and must prioritize wins against the Reds first. With that in mind, Bieber starts in Cincinnati this week, Eric Lauer moves back to the bullpen and Kevin Gausman, Max Scherzer and Bassitt line up to start against the Yankees.<\/p>\n Now that they\u2019re back to a five-man rotation, the Blue Jays\u2019 best pitchers will pitch more often, providing a slight edge at a time that the Yankees and Red Sox are making the AL East race all too interesting. After Monday\u2019s game, Bassitt expressed confidence that the Blue Jays\u2019 starters can help save the bullpen by absorbing more innings.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, it\u2019s just getting these guys rest, and I just put it all on our starters,\u201d Bassitt said. \u201cI think our starters are that good where we can go deep into games. It’s not really getting through six. It’s trying to get over six. We have off days, so we can go over 100 pitches. We’ve got to figure out a way to go deep.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Blue Jays also added right-handed reliever Dillon Tate and utility player Isiah Kiner-Falefa to the roster. Tate provides depth out of the bullpen, while Kiner-Falefa can play all over \u2013 anywhere from second, third and shortstop to the outfield and even catcher, where he last played at the MLB level in 2019.<\/p>\n Given the depth down the stretch of a baseball season, Tate and Kiner-Falefa will likely have chances to contribute. With 24 games to play, the Blue Jays\u2019 goals are still in reach \u2013 but they’ll need to recover from this recent skid to make it happen.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got to win a division,\u201d Bichette said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to get in the playoffs (first), but we\u2019ve got to win the division. We have an opportunity and we haven\u2019t done it yet. So we\u2019ve got to keep playing well, and we\u2019ve got some important games coming up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CINCINNATI \u2013 With Jeff Hoffman, Seranthony Dominguez and Louis Varland all unavailable Monday, the Blue Jays knew they\u2019d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-113477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}