TORONTO – Up as the potential tying run during a sudden attempt at a seventh-inning rally, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., dug in for a fourth time against Shane Bieber and with the count 1-1, let a middle-down fastball at 93.5 m.p.h. go by.
The ball barely popped Austin Hedges’ glove when the Toronto Blue Jays slugger whipped his bat through the zone, frustrated he didn’t swing. Bieber’s next pitch was a slider to the same spot, inducing a weak ground ball that ended the inning and preserved the lead.
It was a plate appearance symbolic of the Blue Jays as a whole right now, a team stuck between speeds, and the results are showing it. A 7-2 setback to the Cleveland Guardians on Sunday afternoon was a sixth loss in eight outings, with defeats in consecutive series after splits in a pair of sets beforehand, all against fellow contenders.
The Blue Jays, now 61-52, haven’t won back-to-back August games and another tough week looms with the Baltimore Orioles, against whom they’re 2-4, arriving for three games beginning Monday. A four-game set at the New York Yankees, whom they’re 4-8 against, is right after.
“That at-bat, in a nutshell, if you look at what Beiber was doing over the course of the game, it wasn’t too many back-to-back heaters, so he probably had Vladdy in between,” interim manager John Schneider said of the pivotal seventh inning confrontation. “And overall, if you have a pitching staff like (Cleveland’s) that locates, we have to make an adjustment. We have to be able to either lay off pitches or when they are in the middle of the plate, do some damage and get on base. So I think that’s the adjustment going forward and looking forward to doing it against Baltimore.”
A boost is expected Monday when George Springer is likely to be activated from the injured list. Ross Stripling is due to return for a start Wednesday, pushing Jose Berrios back a day to the opener in the Bronx.
Neither will right things on their own.
Sunday’s loss, before a crowd of 41,002, was among the more frustrating recent setbacks, the Blue Jays bled by a Cleveland team adept at delivering perpetual papercuts.
Kevin Gausman fell victim to that, allowing five runs in 4.2 innings, the four that followed Amed Rosario’s solo shot in the first inning each the by-product of BABIP blues.
Austin Hedges’ go-ahead RBI single in the second, for example, came on a blooper that dropped just in front of Raimel Tapia in centre field and then bounced over his head allowing Owen Miller to score from second.
In the third, a throwing error by Alejandro Kirk on Tyler Freeman’s stolen base put the third baseman on third and allowed him to score easily when Cavan Biggio didn’t get to a Hedges fly ball down the right-field line for a double.
In the fifth, a single by Josh Naylor of Mississauga, Ont., off a diving Whit Merrifield deflected into centre and allowed Rosario, who’d advanced on a wild pitch, before a Miller double brought home the fifth run.
With tighter defence, the damage could easily have been far more limited and the game not quite as out of reach.
“Sometimes it’s the way the game goes, it’s baseball,” said Gausman. “Once the pitch leaves your hand, you can’t determine the outcome a lot of times. It’s frustrating at times, but that’s the way it goes. You just kind of realize that it’s going to change at some point. I’ve had a lot of bad luck this year, but at some point it will turn.”
The Blue Jays did have their chances, tying the game 1-1 in the first on a Teoscar Hernandez RBI double that left men on second and third with one out, but Bieber recovered to strike out Matt Chapman before Naylor swallowed up a Tapia smash at 105.6 m.p.h. at first base.
Another chance to put up a crooked number came in the fifth when the Blue Jays again put men at second and third with one out, but Guerrero waved at a first-pitch slider before again swinging at the pitch for a run-scoring groundout. Kirk then lined a ball to right-centre but Myles Straw just chased it down to end the inning.
At 0-for-4 on the day, Guerrero’s hitting streak came to an end at 22 games. Lourdes Gurriel Jr., whose stay in the leadoff spot will end with Springer’s return, had three of the Blue Jays’ eight hits Sunday. Over the weekend, they managed just four runs on 17 hits while having their approach tested by Cal Quantrill, Triston McKenzie and Bieber.
“Overall, guys over the course of the year are doing a good job of deciding which pitches to swing at – right now, probably in a little bit of a rut,” said Schneider. “And when you’re facing a pitching staff that locates well, it just compounds that a little bit. But what we preach all the time is get a good pitch, don’t miss it and lay off the ones that are edge, edge off.”
The improved Orioles’ pitching staff won’t offer quite the same test but as they hang around in the increasingly clustered wild-card standings, taking them lightly would be a mistake. Building some momentum against them would offer a good springboard into the looming clash with the Yankees, the first meeting for the rivals since June, when New York took two of three here.
“Obviously, we’re not playing our best baseball right now, but we’ve got the Orioles coming into a new series,” said Gausman. “We’ve got to be able to just turn the page and realize that you can’t dwell too much on it, especially this time of year. We’ve put ourselves in a good spot now. We’ve just got to kind of keep our head down and really just kind of focus on ourselves and not really focus too much on what’s going on around the league.”
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski and New Zealand’s Erin Routliffe remain undefeated in women’s doubles at the WTA Finals.
The 2023 U.S. Open champions, seeded second at the event, secured a 1-6, 7-6 (1), (11-9) super-tiebreak win over fourth-seeded Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in round-robin play on Tuesday.
The season-ending tournament features the WTA Tour’s top eight women’s doubles teams.
Dabrowski and Routliffe lost the first set in 22 minutes but levelled the match by breaking Errani’s serve three times in the second, including at 6-5. They clinched victory with Routliffe saving a match point on her serve and Dabrowski ending Errani’s final serve-and-volley attempt.
Dabrowski and Routliffe will next face fifth-seeded Americans Caroline Dolehide and Desirae Krawczyk on Thursday, where a win would secure a spot in the semifinals.
The final is scheduled for Saturday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Nov. 5, 2024.
EDMONTON – Jake Allen made 31 saves for his second shutout of the season and 26th of his career as the New Jersey Devils closed out their Western Canadian road trip with a 3-0 victory over the Edmonton Oilers on Monday.
Jesper Bratt had a goal and an assist and Stefan Noesen and Timo Meier also scored for the Devils (8-5-2) who have won three of their last four on the heels on a four-game losing skid.
The Oilers (6-6-1) had their modest two-game winning streak snapped.
Calvin Pickard made 13 stops between the pipes for Edmonton.
TAKEAWAYS
Devils: In addition to his goal, Bratt picked up his 12th assist of the young season to give him nine points in his last eight games and now 15 points overall. Nico Hischier remains in the team lead, picking up an assist of his own to give him 16 points for the campaign. He has a point in all but four games this season.
Oilers: Forward Leon Draisaitl was held pointless after recording six points in his previous two games and nine points in his previous four. Draisaitl usually has strong showings against the Devils, coming into the contest with an eight-game point streak against New Jersey and 11 goals in 17 games.
KEY MOMENT
New Jersey took a 2-0 lead on the power play with 3:26 remaining in the second period as Hischier made a nice feed into the slot to Bratt, who wired his third of the season past Pickard.
KEY RETURN?
Oilers star forward and captain Connor McDavid took part in the optional morning skate for the Oilers, leading to hopes that he may be back sooner rather than later. McDavid has been expected to be out for two to three weeks with an ankle injury suffered during the first shift of last Monday’s loss in Columbus.
OILERS DEAL FOR D-MAN
The Oilers have acquired defenceman Ronnie Attard from the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for defenceman Ben Gleason.
The 6-foot-3 Attard has spent the past three season in the Flyers organization seeing action in 29 career games. The 25-year-old right-shot defender and Western Michigan University grad was originally selected by Philadelphia in the third round of the 2019 NHL Entry Draft. Attard will report to the Oilers’ AHL affiliate in Bakersfield.
UP NEXT
Devils: Host the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday.
Oilers: Host the Vegas Golden Knights on Wednesday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2024.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Patrick Mahomes threw for 291 yards and three touchdowns, and Kareem Hunt pounded into the end zone from two yards out in overtime to give the unbeaten Kansas City Chiefs a 30-24 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Monday night.
DeAndre Hopkins had two touchdown receptions for the Chiefs (8-0), who drove through the rain for two fourth-quarter scores to take a 24-17 lead with 4:17 left. But then Kansas City watched as Baker Mayfield led the Bucs the other way in the final minute, hitting Ryan Miller in the end zone with 27 seconds to go in regulation time.
Tampa Bay (4-5) elected to kick the extra point and force overtime, rather than go for a two-point conversion and the win. And it cost the Buccaneers when Mayfield called tails and the coin flip was heads. Mahomes and the Chiefs took the ball, he was 5-for-5 passing on their drive in overtime, and Hunt finished his 106-yard rushing day with the deciding TD plunge.
Travis Kelce had 14 catches for 100 yards with girlfriend Taylor Swift watching from a suite, and Hopkins finished with eight catches for 86 yards as the Chiefs ran their winning streak to 14 dating to last season. They became the sixth Super Bowl champion to start 8-0 the following season.
Mayfield finished with 200 yards and two TDs passing for the Bucs, who have lost four of their last five.
It was a memorable first half for two players who had been waiting to play in Arrowhead Stadium.
The Bucs’ Rachaad White grew up about 10 minutes away in a tough part of Kansas City, but his family could never afford a ticket for him to see a game. He wound up on a circuitous path through Division II Nebraska-Kearney and a California junior college to Arizona State, where he eventually became of a third-round pick of Tampa Bay in the 2022 draft.
Two year later, White finally got into Arrowhead — and the end zone. He punctuated his seven-yard scoring run in the second quarter, which gave the Bucs a 7-3 lead, by nearly tossing the football into the second deck.
Then it was Hopkins’ turn in his first home game since arriving in Kansas City from a trade with the Titans.
The three-time All-Pro, who already had caught four passes, reeled in a third-down heave from Mahomes amid triple coverage for a 35-yard gain inside the Tampa Bay five-yard line. Three plays later, Mahomes found him in the back of the end zone, and Hopkins celebrated his first TD with the Chiefs with a dance from “Remember the Titans.”
Tampa Bay tried to seize control with consecutive scoring drives to start the second half. The first ended with a TD pass to Cade Otton, the latest tight end to shred the Chiefs, and Chase McLaughlin’s 47-yard field goal gave the Bucs a 17-10 lead.
The Chiefs answered in the fourth quarter. Mahomes marched them through the rain 70 yards for a tying touchdown pass, which he delivered to Samaje Perine while landing awkwardly and tweaking his left ankle, and then threw a laser to Hopkins on third-and-goal from the Buccaneers’ five-yard line to give Kansas City the lead.
Tampa Bay promptly went three-and-out, but its defence got the ball right back, and this time Mayfield calmly led his team down field. His capped the drive with a touchdown throw to Miller — his first career TD catch — with 27 seconds to go, and Tampa Bay elected to play for overtime.
UP NEXT
Buccaneers: Host the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday.
