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TORONTO – Trevor Rogers’ early exit from tonight’s game due to left toe discomfort, and the subsequent questions that followed in the brief absence of that injury update, perfectly summed up his recent stretch of dominance.
The lefty wasn’t his sharpest tonight in Toronto. He walked four batters, contributing to more traffic on the basepaths than we’re accustomed to seeing, and had to work through lengthy innings.
He didn’t allow an earned run in five innings of work.
And yet, given Rogers’ standards and the level to which he’s raised the bar, many were left pondering what went wrong.
That’s the luxurious viewpoint that we’re able to have on Rogers, whose mastery on the mound has made elite outings commonplace and merely good outings surprising.
A surprise leaves you looking for answers. Tonight, the answer to why Rogers had some diminished velocity and command issues seems to have stemmed from what the team described as “left toe discomfort,” forcing the lefty to leave the game after five innings of work and 79 pitches.
Still, the Orioles were in a position to win their series opener against the Blue Jays. But a few Baltimore mistakes made the difference in Toronto's 6-1 victory.
After the game, we got some more clarity on what exactly went wrong for their starter.
"Nothing structural, not bone, nothing like that," was the first piece of good news from Tony Mansolino.
"Best way to describe it is just a blister underneath the toenail," Rogers clarified. "That's just a little blood blister underneath there, and it's just been very tough just to try to force it out of the toenail. It's just trying to play a waiting game but also pitch every five or six days and not irritate it, so it's just kind of that back-and-forth game. So get after it in the training room tomorrow, and there's only so much we can do. But I shouldn't see this affecting my next start at all."
That's the good news moving forward.
For tonight, though, it certainly made things difficult.
"Just hard to really push off, and then my foot dragging didn't really help," Rogers said. "I'm not going to say it was an excuse, but I've been doing a really good job of limiting the walks this year, and I had four walks today and it was definitely something that I had to think about. If I'm thinking about something else rather than executing the pitch, it's not very good for me."
Rogers said, too, that he had a protective bandage on the toe leading into the game, knowing that it could flare up. It's an issue he's dealt with over the last few months, but usually, it isn't something that makes much of an impact on his outing.
"I think if we’re in a playoff race right there, I don’t think he’s letting us take him out right there in that spot," Mansolino said. "But I just think in the situation we’re in and for Trev and his health and just being smart, we kind of mitigated any risk and pulled the plug."
Nobody wanted the problem to snowball.
"I think it just got to the point where it wasn’t going away and we just had that conversation that we don’t want to have this little issue affect anything mechanically and it turn into an even bigger issue," Rogers said. "So, very, very frustrating. Felt really good today. Just very frustrating that I couldn’t continue to go out and compete for my guys out there."
Despite Rogers' early exit, Baltimore still had a chance to win tonight's ballgame.
In the third inning, Samuel Basallo got the scoring started. The young catcher didn’t try to do too much with a low-and-away sinker, instead driving it the opposite way into the left-center field gap for a double to begin the frame. Emmanuel Rivera’s productive out pushed him to third and Jackson Holliday drove him home with a single.
But in the bottom half of that frame, Rogers was not as sharp as we’ve come to expect. Myles Straw, the first batter of the inning, walked on four pitches. Two batters later, George Springer did the same.
With runners on first and second and just one away, Davis Schneider pushed right-fielder Jeremiah Jackson all the way back to the wall for a sacrifice fly, moving both runners to scoring position for Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Another walk.
It wasn’t one of the “intentional” variety, but Rogers clearly didn’t want to give Guerrero anything he might hit. All the same, the lefty found a way out, inducing an Alejandro Kirk groundout to escape the bases-loaded jam without surrendering a run.
Sometimes, they don’t ask how, they just ask how many. Or, in this case, how few.
“How,” though, became an important distinction in the bottom of the fifth inning.
After issuing a two-out walk to Schneider, Rogers surrendered a screamer by Guerrero that got under the glove of Colton Cowser, allowing Schneider to score all the way from first base. “Screamer,” in this case, barely does the hit justice, as it was 115.4 mph off the bat, one of the 30 hardest hits of the entire year.
The mistake knotted the game at one run apiece.
"Cowser’s doing a great job of having urgency on the play," Mansolino said. "He just made a mistake, the way an infielder does sometimes, and that’s OK."
One inning later, the story repeated itself.
A throwing error from Rivera at third base put Isiah Kiner-Falefa on second after what would have been just an infield single. Straw’s double drove him home and gave the Blue Jays a 2-1 lead.
Two mistakes, two Toronto runs. Ernie Clement added on with an RBI single past Rivera, scoring Springer and extending the Blue Jays’ lead to 3-1.
Finally, in the top of the ninth, pinch-hitter Daulton Varsho entered the game with runners on first and second and scored both of them with a double down the right-field line. 5-1 Toronto.
Guerrero plated another but was thrown out going for two, thanks to a hose from Cowser. Still, it extended the lead to 6-1.
Meanwhile, the Orioles’ bats hadn’t recorded a hit since Holliday’s RBI-single in the third. That trend continued until Baltimore was down to its final three outs in the top of the ninth.
Dylan Beavers singled to center for Baltimore's first hit in six innings. It was for naught, though, as a Tyler O'Neill popup put the game to rest.
The Blue Jays sit atop the American League East for a reason. You have to play a really good brand of baseball to beat them, and tonight, the O's made a few costly mistakes. Losing their best starting pitcher mid-game doesn't help matters.
Baltimore, however, was right in the fight, and has been able to play spoiler against teams like the Dodgers and Padres in recent series. They are clearly capable of beating some of the league's best teams, and will have two more chances to do so in Toronto this weekend.
