Offensive woes pay a visit to Toronto’s lineup once again, Brewers steal game two 4-2

In front of 42,205 fans (the largest crowd of the season thus far at Rogers Centre), the Blue Jays were unable to push their winning streak to three as they fell to the Milwaukee Brewers 4-2. Toronto’s offence couldn’t capitalize on several opportunities, with the biggest hit on the night for Milwaukee doing just that with a two-run single in the 7th. This proved to be the difference in the ball game.

Daulton Varsho led off the 9th with a double off of Brewers closer Devin Williams, but Toronto failed to even advance him to third. Alejandro Kirk looked to have an RBI single in the works, smoking a ball back to Williams with two outs in the inning. Unfortunately, it found Williams’ glove, and the ball game was over.

We were incredibly spoiled to see Chapman have an MVP-level May. While he hasn’t been as unearthly of late, he has still been good in the fourth or fifth spot of Toronto’s lineup. That included tonight as he went 2-for-4 with a pair of doubles. Those were Chapman’s 20th and 21st doubles of the season, trailing only Freddie Freeman for the MLB lead in that category.

The Blue Jays had another treacherous case of the “RISP disease”, if you will – the team was 1-for-13 with RISP. One out Chapman double in the 2nd? Nothing. Leadoff Cavan Biggio double in the 3rd? Zero. Runners on first and third with one out in the 7th? Just one run. Varsho’s double to lead off the ninth? Nope.

The Jays were opposed by veteran Julio Teheran, who is mostly known for spending nine seasons as a member of the Atlanta Braves. Teheran had a rough go of it throughout his career against the Blue Jays coming into tonight; for his career, he was 0-1 with a 7.66 ERA in five starts entering Wednesday. He is also the pitcher who allowed Marcus Stroman to hit a home run off of him.

Although he possesses under-powering stuff, Teheran silenced Toronto’s bats through six low-stress innings.

Kevin Kiermaier was back in the lineup tonight after missing two full games with a lower back injury. Kiermaier made a nice, quick recovery, and he was 1-for-3 with an RBI triple. The hit was a product of a misplay by Brewers OF Brian Anderson, who couldn’t position himself well enough to field the short hop on Kiermaier’s pop-up. Kiermaier was going 100% (or close to it) out of the box, so he was able to make it to third with ease.

There were some ups and downs tonight for Alek Manoah and his 12th start of the season. The good news is that Manoah only allowed two earned runs on the night, as well as three scoreless frames. The bad, unfortunately, is that he only went four innings, labouring through them throwing 89 pitches. But it was the same ol’ story from that point on – he walked three versus striking out two, getting into deep counts and failing to get them out effectively. Again, this isn’t the worst Manoah start ever, but he still has not given us a taste of what we know he can be.

Trevor Richards followed Manoah and worked two scoreless innings, and he was part of a nifty play between himself and Vladimir Guerrero Jr in the 5th inning. Christian Yelich grounded a ball to Guerrero at first, but it appeared as if the ball was stuck in his webbing. Instead of trying to pry the ball out of the glove, he tossed his entire glove to Richards who was covering the bag.

An Abraham Toro home run paced the Brewers early, but one of the bigger moments of the game is when Milwaukee well-executed a double steal in the top of the 7th inning. Joe Siddall referenced this as a massive play, and it paid off as Owen Miller doubled them both in off of Tim Mayza shortly after.

Having the largest crowd of the season was a good thing for everyone…except Anthony Bass. Just a day after publicly apologizing for sharing an anti-LGBTQIA+ post on social media, Bass was hounded by several boos from his home crowd. Although pitching a scoreless inning toned those down a little, it will be interesting to see if those boos last longer than just tonight.

Toronto missed a nice opportunity tonight to make up some ground in the AL East, as the Orioles and Red Sox both lost. They will look to claim the series tomorrow afternoon with Kevin Gausman on the mound against Freddy Peralta.