in a laborious Friday performance<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0things have looked better.\u00a0<\/p>\n“We’re still positive. Doesn’t matter the result, we’re still positive,” said Blue Jays starter Jose Soriano, who was unluckily tagged for all six runs (five earned) his team allowed. “We’re not going to win every game we play. The other team’s trying to win, too. So, we try to control what we can control and play one game at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Days ago, most conceivable Blue Jays post-season paths likely included winning the four games Cease and Soriano started. Now, they\u2019ve lost the first pair in resounding fashion. Of course, prevailing in a wild-card series certainly includes winning Cease and Soriano days. And if the Blue Jays can\u2019t win them now, what makes you think they could win them then?<\/p>\n
For his part, Soriano wasn\u2019t Toronto\u2019s primary issue Saturday, pitching efficiently over five innings before hitting rocky waters in the sixth. He threw an unusual number of curveballs \u2014\u00a0typically a secondary offering, it was Soriano\u2019s most-thrown pitch on the night \u2014\u00a0using it early and late in counts against both sides of the platoon.\u00a0That was a direct result of how Rangers hitters approached him, hunting the sinkers he\u2019d been utilizing so effectively of late.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had good results throwing the curveball today,\u201d Soriano said. \u201cSometimes the team you face is going to let you know what pitch you can use the most that day.\u201d<\/p>\n
The biggest adjustment Soriano\u2019s made since joining the Blue Jays is vastly upping his sinker usage while deprioritizing his four-seam fastball, which hitters slugged .505 against through the end of July. It isn\u2019t a coincidence that Soriano\u2019s groundball rate has shot up in turn, sitting above 60 per cent through his first three September starts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Soriano-sinkers-and-four-seamers.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
He\u2019s traded in some strikeouts to do it, but Soriano\u2019s found a way to get deeper into outings and give his team more innings. In June and July with the Angels, Soriano pitched into the seventh inning just once across 10 starts. Over his first eight outings with the Blue Jays, he\u2019d already done it three times.<\/p>\n
Yet, Soriano can pitch for days \u2014 it doesn\u2019t matter if the Blue Jays can\u2019t score. And MLB\u2019s least productive offence (4.01 runs per game, dead last in the majors) has lived up to its billing so far in this series, scoring three times on 11 hits and three walks over 18 innings. Only two of those hits have gone for extra bases.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you’ve got to slug a little bit more and force the issue a bit,\u201d Schneider said. \u201cIf you’re not doing that, you’re trying to string together four or five hits in an inning. I think that’s been the theme so far.\u201d<\/p>\n
As they have in 35 of 59 games since the all-star break, the Blue Jays coughed up an early lead as Josh Jung sat on a first-pitch Soriano sinker and shot it 356 feet over the right-field wall in the first. An inning later, the Rangers added a pair without getting the ball out of the infield thanks to a walk, hit batter, throwing error, and wild pitch sequence that \u2014 trust us \u2014 was as painful to watch as it was to read.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels like the last couple games you’re down early, and it makes it a little bit tougher to come back,\u201d Schneider said. \u201cYou’re looking for a big swing, a three-run homer or a base hit to score a couple to get back into it. I think falling behind early makes it a little bit tougher.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Blue Jays appeared to catch a break early when Rangers starter Cal Quantrill, who retired his first four hitters with a dozen pitches, left the game with one out in the second inning due to a lat issue he\u2019s been managing since his last outing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Quantrill\u2019s been on a baffling run of strong results \u2014\u00a0he entered the night with six consecutive quality starts \u2014 that belie both the quantity and quality of contact he\u2019s allowed, producing an ERA over a full run lower than both his xERA and FIP. But he put himself in the running for August\u2019s pitcher of the month\u00a0(1.45 ERA over six starts) by seldom walking anyone and off-balancing hitters with a six-pitch mix, which profiled as precisely the class of pitcher Toronto often struggles with.<\/p>\n
So, all things considered, getting into the Rangers bullpen before the game was even 20 minutes old was a gift. But the Blue Jays had constructed the bottom half of their lineup for a right-handed starter and instead found themselves facing the left-handed Jordan Montgomery before most of their lefties even came to the plate.<\/p>\n
That meant Nathan Lukes, Josh Smith, and Andres Gimenez all took their first plate appearances of the night with a platoon disadvantage. They all made outs. Then Brett Bateman, Toronto\u2019s leadoff lefty, began the fourth inning with a soft groundout to second.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYou’re trying to always beat the starter and then you try to pick out certain spots to where you don’t want to get locked into something. But you want to save some moves for later in the game,\u201d Schneider said. \u201cBut, at the same time, when you’re behind in the game, it sometimes forces the issue a little bit earlier.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don’t want to force things. You don’t want to wait too long on some things. So, you’re just looking at the leverage of the inning. But, yeah, it’s always tough facing a guy you’re not really prepared for.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the sixth, when Nathan Eovaldi took over from Montgomery, the Blue Jays remained hitless. Bateman and Alejandro Kirk finally broke the levee with a pair of hits in the inning to scratch across a run. But the Rangers immediately responded in the bottom half with two hits of their own, re-establishing their lead while chasing Soriano from his start.<\/p>\n
Davis Schneider<\/a>\u2019s first-pitch homer in the seventh was a nice moment for him \u2014 his first in the majors since June 16 \u2014\u00a0that changed little other than a lone number on that tall, red scoreboard column high above the centre field batter\u2019s eye. The one that was difficult for the Blue Jays to miss on Saturday for more reasons than one.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARLINGTON, TX. \u2014\u00a0The out-of-town scoreboard at Globe Life Field is difficult to miss: a tall, red column high…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":854394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":["post-854393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=854393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/854394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=854393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=854393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=854393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}