罢丑别听Blue Jays聽fell back to the break-even mark, dropping a 5-1 decision to the Houston Astros at Daikin Park on Tuesday, extending their losing streak to four games.
The good news is that while 海角社区官网has struggled to stand out, the same could be said about almost every other ballclub in the AL, Gregor
The Jays鈥 offence continued to sputter deep in the heart of Texas, as for the fourth time in their past five games in Houston they managed no more than two hits.
The game was essentially over after a first inning in which the Astros nickel-and-dimed Chris Bassitt for three runs.
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Fastballs
A thousand cuts
You鈥檝e heard of innings where even the outs are hit hard? In the bottom of the first, Chris Bassitt had an inning where聽only聽the outs were hit hard.
The Astros got two infield singles, a hit that bounced off the second-base bag and a bloop single in the opening frame, leading to three runs, which is one more than Bassitt had allowed in his previous four starts this season combined.
New Dad power
The Jays鈥 only run came in the third inning when Nathan Lukes 鈥 who welcomed a baby boy on April 14 鈥 crushed a Ronel Blanco curveball into the seats in deep right field.
The no-doubt shot was Lukes鈥 first home run of the year and only his second in the big leagues. Blanco had retired all eight hitters he鈥檇 faced before Lukes, then got 12 of the next 14.
No RISPy issues this time
The Blue Jays came into the game hitting .247 as a team with runners in scoring position and came out the same way because there was not a single Blue Jays baserunner in scoring position all night. The three runners who made it to first base all stayed right there.
Mailbag
Jessica found me on Bluesky @wilnerness and asked 鈥how worried should we be about the lack of home runs?鈥
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I don鈥檛 think you should be worried. Frustrated? Discouraged? Disappointed? Absolutely. I mean,聽power is low-hanging fruit, after all, so one would expect that the Jays would have hit more than 13 home runs over the first 24 games of the season. Only the Kansas City Royals have hit fewer among all major-league clubs.
But worried? Nah. The home runs will come. It鈥檚 not unreasonable to believe that by the time the season is done, the Jays will have gotten somewhere in the neighbourhood of 120 homers from the foursome of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Anthony Santander, Bo Bichette and the soon-to-return Daulton Varsho.
Right now, that quartet has a grand total of three.
But Santander hit 40 homers after May 4 last season and Guerrero hit 25 from June 4 on. These are hitters who should heat up along with the weather. Bichette has looked like his old self in every way but power, and there鈥檚 no reason to believe that won鈥檛 come.
We should also be able to count on double-digit dingers from Alejandro Kirk, Andr茅s Gim茅nez, George Springer and Alan Roden. Heck, even Ernie Clement hit a dozen last year.
The good news is that even without the power, the Jays are 12-12 having played a very tough schedule so far.
There will be home runs. One only hopes Jays fans won鈥檛 have torn all their hair by then.
Mike Wilner is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star
and host of the baseball podcast 鈥淒eep Left Field.鈥 Follow him on
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