MILWAUKEE, WI. — The Blue Jays are going through it. Beginning a nine-games-in-as-many-days road trip that will take them progressively west through multiple time zones, the club has a five-man rotation and four lineup regulars on the injured list, a beleaguered starting staff that last gave its team six innings on the first day of this month and an offence still searching for its slug that has produced MLB’s second-lowest wRC+ with runners in scoring position.
Of course, plenty of teams are going through it. The Rays had an MLB-low 35 extra-base hits through their first 15 games. The 6-10 Red Sox have been regularly booed at Fenway Park. The Orioles, after beginning the season without Jordan Westburg, Jackson Holliday, and multiple relievers, lost Tyler O’Neill, Adley Rutschman and Ryan Mountcastle to injury within four days last week.
And Toronto’s opponents Tuesday, the Milwaukee Brewers, entered the night losers of five straight, averaging only 2.4 runs per game over that stretch. Seeing Christian Yelich — out to a strong .314/.375/.451 start — go down with a left groin strain on Sunday, joining an injured list that already included Jackson Chourio and Andrew Vaughn, didn’t boost vibes.
A 162-game baseball season is a test of depth, resilience and will for everyone, everywhere. And the longer you go, the harder it gets. Which leaves the Blue Jays with no choice but to power forward and find a way to overcome when things aren’t going their way, which is how they began this road trip by snatching a victory out from under the Brewers, 9-7.
Now, it took some time to get there. Down a run entering the ninth, Toronto scored three against Milwaukee closer Trevor Megill with a combination of measured swing decisions, selective aggressiveness, and situational hitting. Toronto’s dugout erupted again and again as each hitter purposefully passed the baton and built a two-run lead.
But Jeff Hoffman couldn’t hold it in the ninth, walking three (one intentional), giving up a pair of hits and letting two runners swipe bases behind him as the Brewers rallied to tie it. It took a piece of increasingly commonplace Louis Varland dominance to strike out Joey Ortiz on three pitches, strand the bases loaded, and force extras.
Undeterred, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. came through in a huge 10th-inning spot, crushing a one-out double off the left field wall to cash the ghost runner. Jesus Sanchez was intentionally walked behind him before Myles Straw of all people — he pinch-ran in the ninth as the Blue Jays emptied their bench — doubled into the left-field corner, plating both runners.
This time, the lead held, as Varland came back out and worked around heavy traffic to earn the final three outs, doing his part to help reverse what was shaping up as a particularly painful night.
Painful for blown leads. Painful for missed opportunities. And painful considering, for a team that got only 11.2 innings (with 19 runs allowed) from its No. 3 through 5 starters over the weekend, Tuesday was staff ace Kevin Gausman’s turn to throw. And that typically means the Blue Jays will be in position to win, come the middle innings.
But this was one of those nights when Gausman didn’t have his best velocity and ran into a plucky lineup with a convicted approach to spit on splitters and swing at fastballs up. Gausman bounced back from an extended, 25-pitch first inning to cruise through the third without issue. But the fourth began with a first-pitch Brice Turang single and a six-pitch Gary Sanchez walk, which forced Gausman to challenge Jake Bauers on the plate. And at this level, those are often the pitches you don’t get back:
Within three-plus innings, Gausman had matched the walk and home run totals of his first three starts combined. And beginning his third trip through the order with a leadoff walk and single in the fifth wasn’t the response he was looking for.
But Gausman showed remarkable mettle working his way out of that situation, gaining early count leverage while striking out Turang on eight pitches, getting Sanchez to pop out and generating a weak groundball to short off Bauers’ bat.
Blue Jays manager John Schneider tried to push Gausman into the sixth, but his fastball was in the low-90’s as he surrendered a well-struck leadoff single to Luis Matos, which ended his night. At three runs over five innings, it was the kind of outing the Blue Jays were desperate for during their last series against the Twins. But it wasn’t peak Gausman, which is what likely would have been required to take an early lead Tuesday, considering who was on the mound for Milwaukee.
A six-foot-seven praying mantis in a baseball uniform, Jacob Misiorowski entered the game with more walks (9) than hits (8) allowed over his first three starts, which says all you need to know about how difficult he is to square up. He can elevate with 99-m.p.h. heaters, work glove-side with sliders he throws harder than a lot of guys’ fastballs, down with biting curveballs, and arm-side with sneaky changeups fading away from lefties. And over seven feet of extension down the mound — a 98th percentile MLB mark — helps everything get on hitters much quicker than they expect.
And the 24-year-old had it all working early, breezing through his first four innings without allowing a hitter to touch second base. But his velocity declined suddenly in the middle frames, from a 99.2-m.p.h. average in the first to 96.2-m.p.h. in the fifth. And Andres Gimenez was able to take advantage, turning on an inside heater and pulling it over the right field wall for his third homer of the season.
Misiorowski’s velocity was down even further in the sixth, and a Blue Jays lefty exploited it again as Daulton Varsho yanked the first pitch he saw into the Blue Jays bullpen to match Gimenez’s team-leading home run total. A Guerrero Jr. single later, Misiorowski was out of the game.
Seeing pitchers who release the ball from atop the mound rather than in front of it was undoubtedly a relief for Blue Jays hitters. But they couldn’t make the most of multiple opportunities with runners on in late innings after the Brewers extended their lead with a towering Sanchez homer off Braydon Fisher in the seventh.
Until the ninth, when the levy finally broke, and the 10th, when the Blue Jays kept pouring over it, finding the swings they’ve been missing for weeks. It’s not supposed to be easy, a baseball season. And while this one has been a grind for the Blue Jays, circumstances are similar in dozens of markets league-wide. Resilient teams find a way. And Tuesday, the Blue Jays found theirs.