Ryu Rusty, Bullpen Engulfed in Flames, 13-3 O’s

Well, if you’re unhappy with the Jays not having added a bat at the deadline, you can take comfort in the fact that Ted Williams wouldn’t have made a difference in this one (though his unfrozen head would certainly have been an upgrade). The offence was anaemic, Hyun Jin Ryu showed some rust in his first start in 14 months, and the bullpen melted down.

The Jays remain laughably inept against the AL East. Now that the deadline is past, this team is what it is. It keeps seeming like they should be better than this, but they’re running out of time to do it.

Hyun Jin Ryu’s return from tommy john surgery was uneven. He got hit hard in the first inning, giving up two runs on a pair of doubles and a single, all of which were laced. The second was a little bit better. He gave up another double, which came in to score on a seeing eye ground ball single, but the Orioles weren’t teeing off in the same way. He found his groove from there, cruising through the third, fourth, and fifth in a total of 11 batters with the help of a couple of double plays behind him. With his pitch count at only 75, he came back out for the sixth. Gunnar Henderson hit a fly ball that bounced off the top of the wall right at the foul pole in right for a lead off home run, and that was the end of his night.

Four runs in five innings isn’t good, but the overall impression was mostly promising. Ryu was around the zone all night, throwing 54 strikes in 80 pitches, striking out three and walking only one. If you write off the first inning as the product of rust, he looked like himself. His fastball was mostly 89, but he reached back for 91 a few times in the middle innings. His curveball was sharp and induced a few off balance hacks from Orioles hitters. Ryu isn’t going to be the saviour of this team, but he showed enough tonight to hope that he can be useful.

Trevor Richards relieved Ryu in the sixth and mowed the Orioles down, striking out two and getting a pop out.

Genesis Cabrera gave up three insurance runs in the seventh. Jorge Mateo reached on a hard groundball that Chapman couldn’t corral, and came home on a Ryan Mountcastle double. After an Anthony Santander ground out on a great diving stop by Chapman, the Jays intentionally walked Austin Hays to set up a lefty lefty matchup with Gunnar Henderson. That proved to be a mistake. Henderson lined a ball that nearly Charlie Browned Cabrera and skipped off Santiago Espinal’s glove into shallow left field, scoring both Mountcastle and Hays to stretch the lead to 7-3.

The eighth went to Nate Pearson. He retired the first two Orioles he faced but then issued back to back to back walks to load the bases. Anthony Santander cleared them with a monster shot into the second deck in right field, blowing the game completely open.

We got to see Jordan Hicks in the ninth, so that was fun. Henderson lined his first pitch as a Jay back up the middle for a single, and Jordan Westberg followed with a single of his own. He got a ground out from Ramon Urias, but that advanced the runners and then Ryan McKenna brought them home with a ground ball single, extending the margin into double digits.

The offence wasn’t great against Kyle Bradish. They got on the board in the second with a Matt Chapman line single and a Danny Jansen home run, making it 3-2 Orioles. Brandon Belt chipped in a homer of his own, to the opposite field, to tie the game in the bottom of the third. The next four innings were quiet affairs, though, and once Ryu surrendered a second lead they did nothing to respond.

They did no better against the bullpen. Cionel Perez gave up a double down the line to Ernie Clement, but punched out Merrifield and Belt. Joey Krehbiel was brought in to face Guerrero and got him to ground out. He mowed them down in the ninth too to put it away.

Jays of the Day: Jansen (0.122) and Belt (0.221).

Suckage: Ryu (-0.203), Cabrera (-0.265), and Pearson gets one because you shouldn’t get off the hook for stinking that badly just because the game was already mostly over. The whole offense outside Belt, Jansen, and Ernie Clement can also share one.

We’ll be back tomorrow at 7:07pm ET for game three of the series. Grayson Rodriguez (2-2, 6.21) will take on Yusei Kikuchi (8-3, 3.79)