BOSTON – At the beginning of the season, managers are usually content with five innings from their starting pitchers. Spring was short, the loads were carefully managed and the fur was bigger than ever. Everything after the sixth inning is a bonus. Are you expecting eight? Hardly. nine? It literally didn’t happen at MLB this year.
Still, on Thursday afternoon at Fenway Park, Kevin Gaussman took the race in the ninth inning to try at least a full game. One pitch and one single later, he gave way to his nearer Jordan Romano, but not before giving his best performance in the Blue Jays season and one of the best starts of his career.
“It’s funny, I was joking with the boys, if you’re still in the game, when they sing Sweet Caroline in the eighth inning, you did the right thing,” Gaussman said afterward. “It’s such a special place with history. Fenway is simply in its own category. ”
Gaussman attacked the Boston strikers from start to finish on Thursday, allowing just seven singles in eight innings per ball with one run. The result: a 3-2 victory for the Blue Jays, which Romano saved, although it allowed the potential draw to reach third.
The Blue Jays were open to the possibility of a full game, but did not want to ask Romano to come in with two players, so Gaussman left after 88 pitches. Ideally, he would like to continue directing, but he understood the decision made by manager Charlie Montoyo.
“I think it was my game,” Gaussman said. “I would go out there to make three outs. That was my goal… I would like to stay there and that was my thinking, but I also understand that we have really good guys in the bullpen who are itching to put the ball in this place. ”
This is the first of two consecutive starts against the Red Sox for Gaussman, who is certainly not unknown to AL East, after heading to the Orioles in 2013-18. But then he was a traditional starter with a good splitter. Now he is content to let his breakthrough games take center stage, as he did on Thursday, when exactly half of his games were either splitters or sliders.
“He was great,” said Montoyo. “This is an ace for you. This is a good punch lineup. His division sucked and he found all his strike fields. “
The combination was more than the Red Sox could handle. They were out of balance all afternoon, hitting Gaussman eight times without taking a single walk.
Thanks to Gaussman’s strong exit, the Blue Jays secured victory in the series in their first meeting with the Red Sox in 2022, who will visit Toronto next week for a series in which Gaussman will participate, but not Tanner Hawk from Boston, who chooses to stay unvaccinated instead of crossing the border with his team.
So far this season, the Blue Jays have three wins in the series, along with a split of four games with the Yankees. By no means are they playing to their full potential – who made Zach Collins clean this up at the start of the season? Or Gosuke Katoh and Bradley Zimmer rounding out the starting nine? But being 8-5 without Theoscar Hernandez, Danny Jansen and Hyun-Jin Rue is encouraging.
For a while, the Blue Jays worried they would lose another star. George Springer left the game on Wednesday after drifting 94 mph from his right forearm, but X-rays confirmed that he simply suffered a severe bruise and managed to hit with tongs and play in the right field on Thursday – an encouraging sign. given its importance to the team.
Offensively, the Blue Jays did not succeed much against the Red Sox, despite numerous matches by Reimel Tapia, Bo Bischet and Matt Chapman. One run in Toronto happened with an extremely catchy 43-foot bouncing field from Chapman’s bat, and another happened with the sacrifice of Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Blue Jace’s first round was more remarkable because of who scored it. Katoh made the most of his first start in the major leagues by taking a walk from the third inning and then marking the first cycle of his MLB career with a single by Tapia.
When Katoh first joined the Blue Jays, he was a little anxious to join a band that already seemed cohesive. But his locker turned out to be Springer’s, and since then the veteran central player has come up with an idea to ease the rookie’s transition to the big ones on and off the field.
“It’s hard to be in the role I am and to be a rookie to fit in,” Kato said. “But he really tried to let me know that I belong here. Not only in the big leagues, but also in this club. “
“I was one of those (reserve) boys, so I know exactly how he feels. said Montoyo, who received two hits in his five bats in the big league. “It simply came to my notice then. I took the baseball. I hope he gets a lot more, but at least if he gets this one, it will just make his life a lot better. Like, “Okay, I did it, I got a base kick.”
This first goal in the big league will have to wait a little longer for Kato, but there is no doubt that he contributed on Thursday anyway.
From here, the Blue Jays go to Houston, where a game with Justin Verlander awaits us on Friday night. In other words, there are still challenges for the Blue Jays team, which has already seen – and overcome – its fair share of them.
“We expect to win every day,” Gaussman said. “These young boys come to the stadium with little attitude, little life and little self-confidence. It’s great. We feel confident in every series we enter. “
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