Hutchison bounces back to help blank Mets
Four relievers, five-run eighth-inning help end Toronto’s mini-slide
Drew Hutchison leads the major leagues in run support, with more than seven runs per start, but he didn’t need that Wednesday against the New York Mets.
Hutchison’s five-plus inning performance in a 8-0 win over the Mets was underlined by some cerebral pitching in which he pitched to contact early on, then stepped up his fastball to keep the visitors off the scoresheet and snap a two-game losing skid for the Jays. More importantly, Hutchison bounced back from his shortest start in the big leagues — 21⁄ innings
3 against Boston — when he allowed eight runs on nine hits in the “worst start of my career.”
So, Hutchison needed a reaffirmation start, while the Jays simply needed a win against a Mets team that took two games from the streaking Jays in New York.
Still, the win, while satisfying, did not entirely defuse the lingering notion that the Jays are a monster hitting team with pitching concerns of varying degrees of seriousness, depending on who you talk to.
While Hutchison was stellar in limiting a good Mets team to four hits – and not one of those safeties advanced past second base – his 105pitch outing over 52⁄ innings
3 marked an overly busy night in which he was not sharp with his fastball command early on.
The Mets tonged some balls early on, but Ryan Goins and Kevin Pillar were there with the glove work — and some splendid work at that — to keep the Mets scoreless.
“I wasn’t as sharp as I’d like to be,” Hutchison said. “I had too many pitches to go deep into the game, but I did a better job and it was good to get back into the win column.”
Another question — one more immediate than the pitching — is what the Jays will do with Devon Travis when he returns from his shoulder injury this weekend, or early next week. Goins has been playing superbly in his absence — setting up one of those good problems to have.
Hutchison was mostly at 92 m.p.h., but opened up the throttle a bit more to 94 and 95 in the fourth and fifth innings. Steve Delabar, Liam Hendricks, Aaron Loup, and Ryan Tepera finished up the game on a night where the pitching shouldered a win for an offence that usually does that for the team.
Toronto, in fact, fought hard to scratch out a pair of runs against Mets lefty starter Jon Niese, who had one of his better starts of the season. That wasn’t expected, given the Jays’ offence, which is hitting an MLB-leading .313 against lefties.
Niese bottled up the top of the order – limiting Josh Donaldson and Jose Bautista to three strikeouts and a groundout the first two times through the order – but he couldn’t figure out Pillar. The Jays centre fielder had a pair of singles and a solo home run.
Toronto busted a 3-0 lead wide open in the eighth, with Danny Valencia’s three-run homer keying a five-run inning. Toronto has now scored eight or more runs 16 times this season.
With the Jays expecting starter Aaron Sanchez to miss a third start this weekend, and possibly more, there were rumours Toronto was talking to Cincinnati about the availability of Johnny Cueto.