Blue Jays’ Three Errors Make 6-5 Loss Feel Worse
Toronto had 9 hits, three late runs in the seventh, and a ninth-inning homer. It still ended with the Athletics walking away and the Jays staring at their shoes.
Some losses arrive with a clean explanation.
This one brought a stack of paper.
The Blue Jays lost 6-5 to the Athletics on Tuesday, and the score alone is not quite enough to describe the smell in the room.
Toronto had 5 runs, 9 hits, 3 errors, and 6 left on base.
The Athletics had 6 runs, 6 hits, 0 errors, and 6 left on base.
There it is.
The whole miserable little postcard.
The Jays hit enough to stay in it. They pitched enough in the middle to keep it from getting completely away. They even found a ninth-inning homer from Andrés Giménez, which should have been the part where the night briefly stopped being made of wet cardboard.
Instead, the final line still belongs to the Athletics.
It usually does in games like this.
Not because of destiny.
Because 3 errors are not a mood. They are an invoice.
The line score had a bruise
The Athletics put 2 runs on the board in the bottom of the first.
The listed damage included Zack Gelof hitting a ground-rule double down the left-field line with Dylan Cease on the mound, scoring Henry Bolte.
Toronto answered in the second with Alejandro Kirk homering to right center off Jacob Lopez.
A decent response.
A little proof of life.
Then the third inning arrived, because baseball is legally required to test every small optimism for structural weakness.
Gelof reached on a fielder’s choice fielded by Kazuma Okamoto, with Bolte scoring. Carlos Cortes followed with a single to right fielder Nathan Lukes, bringing in Gelof.
In the fifth, Bolte homered to right field off Cease.
By then, the game had become one of those Blue Jays nights where the score is close enough to keep you watching and messy enough to make you resent your own loyalty.
Cease finished with 5.0 innings, 4 earned runs, and 6 strikeouts.
There were useful pieces in there.
There was also damage, and in September a team sitting at 72-73 does not have enough extra season lying around to romanticize damage.
The comeback was real, which made it worse
The seventh inning was the trap.
Kazuma Okamoto homered to left field off Jacob Lopez. His 29th.
Giménez doubled to left, scoring Nathan Lukes and moving Ernie Clement to third.
Josh Smith lifted a sacrifice fly to left off Luis Medina, and Clement scored.
Three runs in the inning.
A real rally.
Not one of those moral-victory smudges where everyone pretends a late single changed the texture of the evening. This was an actual baseball comeback taking shape in public.
Kirk had already homered. Okamoto had gone deep. Giménez had delivered the double.
Then Giménez homered in the ninth off Hogan Harris, a fly ball to right center.
He finished 2-for-4 with a home run and 2 RBI.
Kirk went 2-for-4 with a home run and an RBI. Lukes had 2 hits. Okamoto had his homer.
The Jays did not spend the whole night wandering around with a lantern.
They found things.
They built something.
Then they watched it fall through a soft spot in the floor.
The last play was almost too tidy
The bottom of the ninth had Louis Varland on the mound.
Jeff McNeil hit a soft ground ball to shortstop Andrés Giménez. Donovan Walton scored. Alika Williams moved to third. Henry Bolte moved to second.
The Blue Jays challenged the play at first.
The call on the field was upheld.
That is a brutal little sentence.
Not overturned.
Not rescued.
Upheld.
Baseball does not always choose poetry, but it does enjoy irony when the Blue Jays are available. Giménez had helped drag the game back with his bat, and the final recorded scoring play still had his name in it, because the sport has no sense of mercy.
That is not blame.
It is just the shape of the night.
The Jays had 3 errors. The Athletics had none.
In a 6-5 loss, that is not background noise. That is the ceiling giving way.
The standings do not soften it
The Blue Jays are 72-73.
Their winning percentage is .497.
They are 4th in the division, 7-3 in their last ten, and now carrying an L2 streak.
That last-ten line should feel encouraging.
It does not.
Not after a game where Toronto had 9 hits, got homers from Kirk, Okamoto, and Giménez, and still lost to an Athletics team that needed only 6 hits and a cleaner sheet.
This is what losing seasons, almost-winning seasons, and maybe-not-dead seasons all have in common.
They teach you how to mistrust the good parts.
Tomorrow brings the Athletics again, with José Soriano listed for Toronto and Jack Perkins listed for the Athletics.
Fine.
The schedule keeps offering another game like a nurse offering another paper cup of water.
Drink up.
The taste is familiar.
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