Lukes snaps team drought with first homer of season

HOUSTON -- Silver linings have been hard to find for Blue Jays hitters in their first two games at Daikin Park. Their first home run in six days had to suffice in Tuesday night’s 5-1 loss to the Astros.

Drawing a start against Ronel Blanco, who no-hit Toronto last April in Houston, Nathan Lukes ensured there wouldn’t be a repeat when he took a curveball from the right-hander over the right-field fence with two outs in the third. Blanco, who was staked to a 3-0 lead after one inning, had retired the first eight men he faced.

It was one of only two hits Blanco would allow in 6 2/3 innings, the other being Ernie Clement’s two-out single in the fourth. And Lukes said he was fortunate to get his.

“He had his stuff today,” the center fielder said of Blanco. “His changeup was invisible. He was putting his heater where he wanted it, his slider where he wanted it. I think it was just the one pitch where he probably didn’t get it where he wanted to get it, and I was able to take advantage of it.”

Lukes’ homer, Toronto’s first since last Wednesday, was only the 13th for the Blue Jays in 24 games this season. That ranks 29th in the Majors, ahead of only the Royals’ 12. Toronto has hit just four home runs in 11 road games, and Andrés Giménez leads the team overall with three. With one, Lukes has as many as Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who had been the last Blue Jays player to homer but on Tuesday struck out three times in an 0-for-4 night.

“First one’s always the hardest,” Lukes said. “First hit of the season’s always the hardest. First homer of the season’s always the hardest. They’re gonna come for the team. You see our lineup – it’s gonna happen. It’s the big rave right now that we’re not hitting homers. They’ll definitely come.”

The Blue Jays do rank 11th in the majors in batting (.245) and 14th in on-base percentage (.318), but those figures weren’t helped Tuesday. For the second consecutive night, the Blue Jays totaled four baserunners (one of Monday’s came on a passed ball off a strikeout), giving starter Chris Bassitt little margin for error. That was used up in the three-run first, though the Astros weren’t exactly crushing the right-hander.

Jose Altuve led off with a single that deflected off first baseman Will Wagner’s glove. Yordan Alvarez followed with a flair to left field. After Isaac Paredes’ fly to right got the lead runner to third, Altuve scored on Jeremy Pe?a’s soft ground-ball single down the third-base line. Christian Walker then hit a Bassitt sinker off the second-base bag. That scored Alvarez before Brendan Rodgers plated Pe?a with a sacrifice fly.

“My pitching style is to give up a lot of those weak-contact hits,” said Bassitt, who allowed an additional run in the sixth and saw his ERA rise from 0.77 to 1.88. “You just hope they don’t string them together like they did. I don’t know if I gave up a single hard hit tonight. … It’s a weird game sometimes.”

Blue Jays manager John Schneider concurred.

“I thought he did a great job after the first,” Schneider said of Bassitt. “The swinging bunt, a ball hitting second base, you know, weird inning, and I think he did a great job of keeping the game there and a great job of navigating the rest of the way.”

The problem was finding answers to Blanco, save for Lukes’ home run that made it a 3-1 game.

“It is nice to see Nate have that swing. Couldn’t get much going after that,” said Schneider, who saw an Astros bullpen trio of Bryan King, Bryan Abreu and Josh Hader retire all seven hitters they faced.

“There wasn’t a whole lot to hit,” Schneider said. “[Blanco] was kind of living kind of down and away. A lot of offspeed in fastball counts, which we kind of expected, and then kind of flipped it later, fifth and sixth, more fastball heavy. … But you’ve got to be ready to hit mistakes, and he didn’t make many of them.”

Bassitt said he felt no extra burden from the Blue Jays’ power shortage to start the season.

“I understand the offensive numbers and things like that,” he said, “but the quality of pitchers that we have faced to start this year is pretty much a gauntlet. Just keep grinding. Don’t panic about these little stretches.”

Schneider, whose team fell back to .500 (12-12) with its fourth consecutive loss, believes his hitters will come around.

“They understand there’s a game tomorrow,” he said. “The guys are going about it the right way. They’re just not getting results, and we know that’s going to come soon.”