TORONTO — The Toronto Blue Jays made a decision this week to bump Marco Estrada from Wednesday afternoon’s game against the San Diego Padres and give the start to R.A. Dickey on short rest.
The idea was to line up Toronto’s three best starters—Estrada, J.A. Happ and Aaron Sanchez—for this weekend’s important series against the AL East-leading Baltimore Orioles. The thinking was Dickey had only gone three innings his last time out so pitching four days later wouldn’t be an issue. And although every game a team plays is important, Friday’s against a divisional club the Blue Jays are directly chasing took precedence over Wednesday’s against an NL West outfit sitting well below .500.
Whether the move worked out or not will be a discussion for Sunday when the Orioles leave town. But the early returns were less than ideal, as Dickey walked four and allowed two home runs against the Padres, in an 8-4 Blue Jays loss.
“There’s a lot of reasons we did it, and it didn’t work out today. But I don’t regret the move at all,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said. “We maybe didn’t get the result we wanted but I’ve got no doubts about the decision.”
With neither Jesse Chavez nor Roberto Osuna available out of his overworked bullpen, Gibbons needed a strong, deep outing from Dickey on a humid Wednesday afternoon. He looked to be getting it early on, as Dickey breezed through his first two innings, filling up the strike zone and picking off the lone base runner he allowed.
“You pitch when they ask you to pitch. And that’s one of the things I feel like I can give a team, is being able to come back on short rest,” Dickey said. “I felt after the second inning that I had some of the best stuff I’ve had all year. But then I kind of ran into a couple innings where it just got away from me.”
That started with one out in the third, when Dickey plunked Brett Wallace before giving up a 406-foot bomb to Adam Rosales as the Padres went ahead by two. Then, in the fourth, Dickey walked Ryan Schimpf with two outs before surrendering a 109-mph laser beam to the right-centre field wall off the bat of Christian Bethancourt.
Kevin Pillar had trouble corralling the rocket, which allowed Schimpf to score from first, and Devon Travis spiked his relay throw to Josh Donaldson at third, which gave Bethancourt an opportunity to jog home with San Diego’s fourth run.
“Sometimes, when that ball’s in the gap and you know there’s a chance for a triple, it’s tough to slow yourself down and grab that thing. And balls sometimes take that tricky hop, too,” Gibbons said. “But we play better than that. That’s one of those plays that happens every now and then, but that’s rare for us.”
It continued from there, as Wallace opened the fifth with a solo shot to right before Bethancourt drove in a lead-off walk in the sixth to end Dickey’s day. Bethancourt eventually scored, saddling Dickey with a seventh run (although only six were earned) which tied his season-high.
Dickey’s now given up five earned runs or more in his three outings following the all-star break, pitching to a 10.43 ERA over 14.2 innings. Going into the break, Dickey had seemingly settled his season back down to his career norms, as he followed a disastrous April by pitching to a 3.25 ERA in 13 starts from the beginning of May until early July.
“I’ve just been in a little bit of a rut,” Dickey said. “You’ve kind of got to be like a robot in these situations and just keep going forward. It’s not the first time I’ve had a little bit of adversity. It was about this time last year when I took off and felt good. My body feels great. So, there’s no reason to think that I can’t repeat what I’ve been doing the last number of years.”
Dickey says the main issue he’s identified during his recent skid has been an inconsistency in his pitching mechanic.
“That’s something that I want to try to work on between now and the next start,” Dickey said. “The more consistent my mechanic is, the more I can attack that strike zone with a very good knuckleball. I’m able to do that in and out right now.
“I haven’t done it for a complete game in a while. Or at least in the last three starts. I need to get back to, foundationally, how can I have a consistent mechanic where I can produce a good knuckleball throughout the course of the game. If I’m doing that, then I’m going to run off five or six in a row and be pretty good. But I’ve still got to get to that point.”
Meanwhile, Padres starter Luis Perdomo baffled the Blue Jays lineup for most of the afternoon, leaning on a nasty two-seamer he was consistently able to locate down in the zone, and a diving breaking ball. He held the Blue Jays scoreless until the fifth, when Travis’ lead-off walk came around to score on a wild pitch, a ground out and a Darwin Barney sacrifice fly.
“He’s got a great arm,” Gibbons said. “He got great life on the ball. He’d ride it up and he’d sink it and he’s got a nice little breaking ball. I was really impressed, to be honest with you.”
The Blue Jays finally got to Perdomo in the sixth, when Edwin Encarnacion drew a two-out walk and Melvin Upton Jr. singled to the opposite field behind him. That brought up Pillar, who drove a two-seamer to the wall in left field to score both runners.
Travis and Ezequiel Carrera both did their part to extend the rally with singles, which added a fourth run and ended Perdomo’s afternoon. But Brad Hand came on to retire Barney, stranding Travis and Carrera on the basepaths.
The Padres added another run in the eighth, when Alex Dickerson took Franklin Morales deep to left. It was Dickerson’s fourth straight game with a home run. The Blue Jays, meanwhile, mustered just one base runner following their sixth-inning rally—a Josh Thole walk.