WASHINGTON – The downpour that caused a one-hour-seven-minute rain delay Tuesday night was so severe that the Washington Nationals not only warned fans about the inclement weather, but also instructed them to seek shelter at the stadium.
By the time the skies had emptied and field readied for play, a storm of a different sort befell Shane Bieber, who lost the zone in unimaginable fashion, walking six of the nine batters he faced during a four-run first he couldn’t escape. That left the Toronto Blue Jays to both muck their way through an 8-6 thumping on the mound, after using six relievers the previous night, and at the plate, where George Springer’s three-run homer in the eighth wasn’t enough to undo the early damage.
Combined with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. leaving after 3½ innings with right hamstring tightness and the inevitable questions Bieber’s outings raise about his trade value ahead of the Aug. 3 deadline, it made for a mostly miserable day at Nationals Park.
Even the Canada-US Friendship Day promotion, complete with a special ticket that provided holders with a cap featuring Nationals script over a Maple Leaf along with a Montreal Expos logo on the side, didn’t help much as a rowdy section of fans among the crowd of 20,775 repeatedly chanted U-S-A and Blue Jays Suck, among less polite things.
Kazuma Okamoto’s 24th homer of the season, a solo shot in the fifth that tied Eric Hinske’s Blue Jays rookie record, was among the few highlights until Springer’s drive in the eighth off Gus Varland, the older brother of closer Louis, made it 8-6. But the Nationals and their shaky bullpen held from there.
Nothing carried wider implications than Bieber’s bizarre outing, as he set a new career high in walks in the shortest outing of his career. Of his 42 pitches, only 15 went for strikes while only three balls were put in play against him, a week Luis Garcia Jr. chopper to first for one out, a C.J. Abrams roller to the 3-4 hole that he beat out to the bag and a Nasim Nunez sacrifice fly to right.
The other three runs crossed on bases-loaded walks, Bieber simply unable to get in the box.
What teams shopping for pitching make of the outing will largely depend on how they weigh the way he fared facing the most productive offence in the majors versus the consecutive strong outings that preceded Tuesday. Scouts for five teams were in attendance so there’s some degree of interest in him and others, and whether they can write this off as an outlier or view it as a red flag will be in the eye of the beholder.
The Blue Jays managed to cover 7.1 innings he left behind with only four relievers, with Brendon Little delivering 2.1 perfect innings with four strikeouts, and C.J. Van Eyk logging 3.1 innings. Mason Fluharty gave up a two-run homer to Garcia in the fourth that extended Washington’s lead to 6-2 after the Blue Jays scratched out runs in the third and fourth, while Van Eyk gave up a solo shot to Dylan Crews later in the fourth and another run in the fifth.