HOUSTON — Over the last week, the Toronto Blue Jays have withstood an onslaught of sick, wicked, and nasty starting pitching.
Last Tuesday, it was Spencer Schwellenbach, who works at 97-m.p.h. with five secondaries and has a 2.56 ERA over his first five starts. The next day, Spencer Strider, who finished fourth in National League Cy Young voting two years ago.
From there, it was the Mariners, who may have MLB’s best rotation, and started Bryan Woo, Logan Gilbert, and Luis Castillo as they held the Blue Jays to 10 runs over three games. And Monday in Houston, it was Hunter Brown whipping a pair of high 90’s fastballs up, spike curveballs and fading changeups down, plus sliders to righties and cutters to lefties — he earned at least one whiff with all six of those pitches — as he extended his scoreless streak to 24 innings.
Say what you will about Toronto’s scuffling offence this season — it entered Tuesday averaging 3.7 runs per game with the second-fewest home runs across MLB — those are some extremely imposing starters.
Ronel Blanco, however, is not. Sure, he may have thrown one of the most improbable no-hitters you’ll ever see in his eighth career start last April against these very Blue Jays. And, yes, those Toronto hitters got another crack at him later in the season and mustered only four hits, ultimately batting .087/.157/.130 in 51 plate appearances against the right-hander across those two outings.
But this is not a Schwellenbach, a Strider, a Gilbert, a Brown. This is a Blanco, who entered his Tuesday start against the Blue Jays having allowed 28 baserunners over 16.2 innings this season — 10 of them via walks. That’s an average of 15 baserunners per nine innings. His ERA through four starts was 6.48.
Alas. Blanco, spamming breaking balls to righties with a mix of fastballs and changeups to lefties, threw 6.2 innings of two-hit, one-run ball Tuesday as the Blue Jays languished through their fourth loss in a row, 5-1.
Prior to the game, Blue Jays manager John Schneider emphasized the need to be patient against Blanco’s heavy off-speed approach — he leaned on his changeup throughout his no-hitter and his slider over 5.2 innings of two-run ball the second time he faced Toronto last season — laying off anything spinning or fading around the edges of the zone and forcing him to give in over the plate with his fastball.
“You’ve got to see that thing up and you’ve got to hit pitches that you can hit,” Schneider said. “It’s a guy that we know, he’s had success against us, and you’ve got to really not be in a hurry in your at-bats.”
How’d that play out? Well, Blanco went three up, three down on 12 pitches in the first and 11 in the second. Then he got two quick outs on only six pitches in the third before Nathan Lukes snuck a 2-1 breaking ball over the right field wall, hitting the second home run of his MLB career, Toronto’s 13th of the season, and the team’s first in 42.2 innings.
But Blanco settled right back in from there, retiring his next three batters on 10 pitches before George Springer worked him for a two-out walk and Alejandro Kirk put up the plate appearance of the night, ultimately grounding out on an elevated, full-count fastball — the eighth pitch of the at-bat — to end the fourth.
It took Blanco 14 pitches in the fifth and 10 in the sixth to keep Lukes as the only Blue Jay to touch second base. And so it remained when Blanco’s night came to an end at 93 pitches following a two-out Alan Roden walk in the seventh.
In all, 14 of Blanco’s 20 outs came on four pitches or fewer. Springer and Kirk were the only Blue Jays to see over six in a plate appearance. Toronto hitters chased 30 per cent of the pitches Blanco threw outside the zone, including a third of his sliders, a third of his changeups and 63 per cent of his curveballs.
Remember, the plan was to be patient, lay off secondary pitches and hunt fastballs over the plate. And Blanco pitched the way the Blue Jays expected, throwing a secondary pitch 63 per cent of the time.
Yet, of the 20 fastballs Blanco threw in the zone, Blue Jays hitters swung at only 12 of them. They did make contact 11 times — but they didn’t muster a hit off Blanco’s heater all night. And the only ball put in play over 100-m.p.h. was Lukes’s 102.3-m.p.h. homer that travelled just 366 feet.
So, it didn’t really matter if Blue Jays starter Chris Bassitt continued his early-season excellence or not — he needed to be perfect for the Blue Jays to win. And while his process on the night was consistent with how sound it had been over his first four starts, results didn’t follow.
Bassitt’s first inning was a mess, as the Astros used four singles — one off Will Wagner’s glove at first, another blooped into left at 78-m.p.h., a third that barely made it halfway up the third base line, and a fourth that went under Bassitt’s left foot, bounced off second base, and ricocheted into right field — plus a sacrifice fly to cash three early runs.
But he cruised through his second with a trio of groundballs vacuumed up by Ernie Clement and worked around a single and two hit batters to strand the bases loaded in the third. A quick flip back to the hockey game and suddenly it was the sixth as Bassitt worked halfway through his third trip while holding the Astros to only those three first-inning runs.
But things unravelled quickly as the bottom-half of Houston’s lineup led off the sixth with a single, walk and double to plate a fourth run. A strikeout later, Bassitt was out of the game.
Ultimately, Bassitt allowed four earned over 5.1 innings pitched, striking out three. That’s a tough line for a guy who didn’t allow a ball in play with an exit velocity over 100-m.p.h. all night. Still, the outing raised his ERA to only 1.88, a reflection of how well Bassit’s pitched since undergoing a suite of adjustments late last season. He now hasn’t allowed a homer in his last 44 innings, dating back to Sept. 3, 2024.
But he’d need to be Nolan Ryan to do enough for a Blue Jays offence that has only four hits and three walks through the first two games of this series. Lukes and Springer are the only Toronto hitters to touch second base over the team’s last 20 innings. The Blue Jays haven’t plated more than four runs in a week. The team’s struggles to score are understandable against a Schwellenbach, a Gilbert, a Brown. But tougher to write off against a Blanco.
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