The Blue Jays got good and thumped out west, falling 9-1 to the Los Angeles Dodgers at Chavez Ravine on Saturday night, ensuring a series loss to the defending World Series champions. Here’s what you need to know:
Blake Snell made his second start since missing four months with shoulder inflammation and looked every bit his two-time Cy Young self, shutting the Jays down on three hits over five innings with 10 strikeouts. The Jays had their chances, but couldn’t cash a Buddy Kennedy leadoff double in the second and a pair of fourth-inning walks.
Chris Bassitt matched zeroes with Snell for the first three innings, but walked Freddie Freeman to lead off the bottom of the fourth and then coughed up a two-run opposite-field home run to Max Muncy.
Shohei Ohtani blasted his 40th home run of the season the next inning — exactly two weeks earlier than he hit his 40th last year, a season in which the three-time MVP wound up with 54 round-trippers — and after Bassitt left, the Jays bullpen collapsed in a six-run sixth for the home side.
The only ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ scoring came on an Ernie Clement home run leading off the eighth. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. went 0-for-4, snapping his on-base streak at 24 games.
Fastballs
But they don’t strike out
The Jays went into Saturday’s game having struck out a major-league-low 770 times, with a 17.1 per cent strikeout rate that was well ahead of the next-best San Diego Padres and Kansas City Royals at 18.7 per cent.
Then Snell happened.
The left-hander began his night by striking out Davis Schneider and Clement on three pitches each on the way to 10 Ks. There’s a reason he’s won the Cy Young Award in every season (two) in which he’s thrown at least 130 innings.
Three relievers finished up and combined for four strikeouts, giving Jays hitters a season-high-tying 14 strikeouts in the game.
Bullpen beat down
For the second straight game, the high-leverage relievers in the Jays bullpen didn’t get the job done in rather extreme fashion.
Friday night it was Brendon Little coming in to pitch the seventh with the Jays trailing 2-1, facing four hitters and not retiring any of them.
Saturday, Yariel RodrÃguez got Teoscar Hernández to pop up to end the fifth inning, pitching out of Bassitt’s two-on jam, then came out for the sixth and didn’t get anybody out. It began with a bloop single by Andy Pages, then a hit batter, a four-pitch walk and a first-pitch two-run single by rookie Dalton Rushing.
RodrÃguez was replaced by Seranthony DomÃnguez, who threw two wild pitches, walked a pair (one intentionally) and gave up a two-run single and two-run double before being bailed out by Braydon Fisher.
Remember this guy?
Right-hander Brock Stewart took over for Snell and pitched a hitless sixth inning: issuing a walk, notching a strikeout and showing off a 98-m.p.h. fastball that was a whole lot faster than it was when he was a Blue Jay.
Stewart made 10 appearances for the 95-loss Jays in 2019, posting an 8.31 ERA and showcasing a fastball that averaged just 91.7 m.p.h.Â
Picking up some ticks on the heater has turned Stewart’s career around. The 33-year-old from Normal, Ill. has a 2.44 ERA over the past three seasons with the Dodgers and Minnesota Twins.
Mailbag
Andrewjd found me @wilnerness on Bluesky and was wondering about Boston’s claim of Jays catcher Ali Sánchez off waivers Friday: “Was catcher a position of need for Boston or is this at all about thinning (the Jays’) ranks while probing him about our team and its strategies?”
I love the tinfoil-hattedness here, Andrew. In truth, it’s a heck of a strategy to claim a catcher from the team you’re chasing in the standings, get all the info you can from them while they’re on your dime, then drop them once you’ve got what you need.
It would probably be more useful for the Red Sox to have done that if they were going to be playing the Jays any time soon, as opposed to not until the final week of the season, but it’s absolutely a galaxy-brain move.
The likelier answer, though, is that Boston’s regular catcher, Carlos Narváez, went down with a knee injury on Wednesday. Narváez hasn’t been placed on the injured list and believes he’ll be back perhaps as soon as Sunday, but Sánchez will report to be the backup. The Red Sox will definitely try to find out as much as they can from him while he’s there, though.
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