TORONTO — One of the weirdest sequences of the season played out at Rogers Centre Monday night.
With the Toronto Blue Jays leading 2-0, the Boston Red Sox rallied. Anthony Seigler and Connor Wong singled with none out, giving the Red Sox their best threat of the night.
Nick Sogard then grounded into a force out, at which point the Rogers Centre scoreboard showed two outs instead of one. This seemingly convinced some of the Red Sox, as Sogard and Seigler took off from first and third, respectively, when Ceddanne Rafaela hit a lazy fly ball to centre field.
Not the sort of thing you do with one out, but the scoreboard likely confused the visitors. Now, the rules say the scoreboard doesn’t matter, but the sequence of what happened next does.
The Blue Jays doubled off Sogard at first then ran off the field. Initially the Red Sox weren’t awarded any runs but after a long consultation with the umpiring crew and a call to New York for an official ruling, the Seigler run ended up counting and Rafaela was credited with a rare sacrifice fly double play.
If the Blue Jays had appealed at third base before leaving the field and insisted that Seigler had left without tagging, the run likely wouldn’t have counted. But they ran off the field before appealing, potentially impacting their case with the umpires.
Regardless of this odd and confusing interlude, they managed a 2-1 win over the Red Sox to improve to 57-63 on the season.
Still, there are significant questions for the pitching staff since the rotation now faces another injury while the bullpen’s workload just keeps increasing and increasing.
Starter Jameson Taillon was removed from the game with right forearm discomfort, creating another question for an already depleted starting rotation.
Meanwhile, Trey Yesavage met with a doctor to determine the severity of his meniscus injury Monday and Spencer Arrighetti’s dealing with Morton’s neuroma, a condition where skin builds up near a nerve in the foot and creates discomfort.
Under the circumstances, the three innings of one-run baseball from Simeon Woods Richardson were pivotal to the win. He may be asked to take on a bigger role moving forward considering the workload on the bullpen.
The team’s last day off was nearly two weeks ago, on July 30. Since then, their relievers have pitched at least three innings every single day. Lately, the workload has spiked even more with an average of more than five relief innings per day over the last week.
Playing four extra-innings games in a five-day period will do that to a bullpen, and these recent injuries haven’t helped either. To their credit the Blue Jays keep winning, but this pitching staff is overdue for a break.
A few hours before first pitch, the Blue Jays scratched Kazuma Okamoto from the starting lineup because he was still feeling the effects of fouling a ball off his left knee in Philadelphia Sunday.
Charles McAdoo took his place in the starting lineup and made an impact on both sides of the ball, holding his own at third base while homering to right field to open the scoring in the fifth inning.
Later, George Springer would single, steal a base and score the second run of the game. Given the dramatics that unfolded soon afterwards, that insurance run proved essential.
Regardless of the outcome, this demanding stretch of 17 games in 17 days isn’t close to ending. The Blue Jays are still six games away from their next off day and in the meantime, they still have lots of work to do.
