Blue Jays bats stay silent against Correia, Twins

If there was ever a night to expect offensive fireworks at Rogers Centre it was Tuesday. Soft-tossing right-hander Kevin Correia drew the unpleasant assignment of facing a Toronto Blue Jays lineup that leads MLB in home runs. The combination of Blue Jays hitters and Correia’s 6.11 ERA seemed potentially explosive.

But Blue Jays starter J.A. Happ was the one who got hit hard early and Correia held the Blue Jays scoreless through six-plus innings, as the Minnesota Twins won 4-0 and Toronto’s bats were shut out for the third time in four games.

“That’s baseball if you want to know the truth,” manager John Gibbons said. “You didn’t see that coming, but naturally as hot as we were you figure we’d cool off a little bit.”

Correia was far from dominant — he struck out just one batter and allowed many hard-hit balls — but it was enough to keep the Blue Jays at bay. And while the St. Louis Cardinals will shut down plenty of lineups this year, it’s discouraging for the Blue Jays to put up a zero against the Twins, who entered the series with the worst ERA in the American League.

“We had a good run there the last couple of weeks,” Happ said. “Stuff like that’s bound to happen. We ran into some good pitching, but I don’t expect it to last long.”

Chad Jenkins, who pitched 3.1 innings of scoreless relief, agrees that the lineup will come around.

“You can’t put up seven runs every game,” he said. “It’s just impossible. But there’s no doubt that these guys will come back and we’ll start scoring more runs and start winning more ballgames.”

In the big picture, the 39-27 Blue Jays have an elite lineup. They’re still averaging 4.8 runs per game and will continue putting plenty of runs on the board as long as they’re healthy. This offence will make the likes of Correia pay more often than not.

Happ wasn’t able to make up for the Blue Jays’ lack of offence in front of the 20,681 in attendance. He walked the first hitter he faced and allowed a home run to the second batter of the game, Brian Dozier. That set the tone for a poor outing from the left-hander, who lasted just 3.2 innings while allowing six hits, three walks and four runs (three earned).

While Happ was disappointed with the results of his start, he said the outing felt a lot better than it seemed.

“I felt like I was locating pretty good for the most part,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter, (since) they had two balls through the five hole and two infield hits. All that matters is the results.”

The results certainly weren’t there Tuesday. As Gibbons remarked after the game, Happ often got ahead in the count only to allow the Twins to reach base.

“He was getting hit and couldn’t put anybody away,” Gibbons said. “He had to work way too hard tonight. They worked him pretty good. That’s the key to pitching — you want to get ahead and once you’re ahead you’ve got to put them away.”

If there’s one positive the Blue Jays can take away from the game it was the relief work of  Jenkins. The right-hander struck out three and kept the game relatively close through the middle innings.

“He came in and held them in check,” Gibbons said. “We thought we’d have the chance to score some runs, since there was plenty of game left. He kept us there.”

The performance was reminiscent of Todd Redmond’s fine five-inning relief outing Sunday, but, unfortunately for the Blue Jays, both relief appearances were made possible by the ineffectiveness of a starter.

For a long while, everything went according to plan for the Blue Jays as they climbed to the top of the American League East standings. The lineup would pick up the pitching staff and vice versa. That didn’t happen Tuesday, and the Blue Jays fell flat against a sub-.500 team as a result.