'No one's panicking' after 'pen skids in 8th

Manager Charlie Montoyo¡¯s message was clear on Friday night. His team isn¡¯t panicking, because it¡¯s not playing bad baseball. It¡¯s simply been raining on Toronto¡¯s parade lately, but the Blue Jays have plenty of umbrellas.

¡°We have played well, just our bullpen has struggled,¡± Montoyo said following Toronto¡¯s 7-1 loss to the O¡¯s on Friday night at Camden Yards. ¡°But it¡¯s about feeling the vibe of the team. ¡­ And the vibe is good.

¡°I¡¯m telling you, we¡¯re going to weather the storm, because they think they will. Not because I think, it¡¯s because they do.¡±

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One thing the Blue Jays absolutely did not need Friday was to have to tap into their bullpen early. A tough series in the Bronx that wrapped up Thursday had heavily taxed Toronto¡¯s relief, and the club was looking forward to workhorse Robbie Ray taking the hill to continue his recent dominant stretch.

It became evident early on that the Orioles had no intention of going along with the game plan. Ray¡¯s pitch count climbed too high too early, and Toronto was forced to turn to its ¡¯pen.

For a while, it seemed as though Friday would spell the end of a miserable stretch of blown leads and bitter tastes. A five-run eighth put the kibosh on any ¡°close but not quite¡± storylines, although the battle was competitive.

The Blue Jays entered the series having lost four straight, all after the bullpen sprung late leaks. Ray has proven able to routinely run his pitch count into the hundreds, and he was fresh off a three-start stretch during which he went 2-0 with a 2.45 ERA. Did he pitch poorly Friday? Far from it. But he was met by an O¡¯s squad hungry to prove it is much better than its 23-46 record suggests, and Ray was in for a rough go.?

Toronto's No. 2 starter needed 25 pitches to get through each of the first two innings and 26 to secure the first out of his final frame.?

¡°It was a grind,¡± Ray said. ¡°I looked up [after the first inning] and was like, ¡®Man, they made me throw a lot of pitches.¡¯ I felt like it was kind of that way the whole game.¡±

Friday¡¯s problem was less a lack of quality pitching than it was that the Orioles simply refused to cry uncle. Time and again, Toronto worked in favorable pitchers¡¯ counts, only to watch Baltimore batters claw their way back. By the end of five innings, the pesky O¡¯s had scored just twice but had also forced the opposing arms to work, fouling off 34 of the 124 pitches they saw.

With so many opportunities, it was only a matter of time before Baltimore converted.

Trent Thornton allowed one single and fanned three in his 1 2/3 frames before making way for Patrick Murphy¡¯s scoreless seventh. It seemed as though the relievers were finally ready to put to rest the recent miserable stretch. Murphy pitched well enough to head back out for the eighth, and that¡¯s when the trouble began.

Murphy allowed three runs in his next one-third of an inning, and Jeremy Beasley was touched for two in his two-thirds. And that, unfortunately, was that.

In a curious twist, Toronto scored just once after entering play with the second-best team average in MLB (.260), remaining mostly stumped against the O¡¯s, who toted the second-worst team ERA in baseball (5.16) into the series opener.

Partly to blame was starter Thomas Eshelman, who made his season debut Friday. The right-hander¡¯s secret weapon was a fastball that lived in the high 80s, plenty slow enough to disrupt the Blue Jays¡¯ timing: Toronto had 4 1/3 frames without a hit before Lourdes Gurriel Jr.¡¯s solo homer marked the club¡¯s lone run.

The lack of offense, Ray noted, was as much of an anomaly as the current losing streak.

¡°We know we¡¯re a good team,¡± he said. ¡°The pitching staff knows we¡¯re going to keep us in ballgames. We know we can do it -- we¡¯ve done it -- and the hitters know that they can come out and score a lot of runs because we showed that we could do that, too.

¡°Everybody¡¯s fine; no one¡¯s panicking. ¡­ Sometimes, you just need to take a step back and trust the process, and I feel like the guys are doing a pretty good job of doing that. I feel like we¡¯re going to turn a corner, and we¡¯re going to hit the ground running.¡±