Now, though, in the crucible of frustration the Blue Jays find themselves, every mistake, every disappointment tends to amplify and linger. So in the fifth inning Sunday, at the end of 31 games in 30 days and a particularly miserable road trip, Gabriel Moreno homered into what should have been a double play with a 1-2-3 final that broke the web. another Guerrero glove may well have ripped a lot more. For a team approaching a boiling point, each blow becomes more and more difficult to overcome. Guerrero’s faulty glove led to a run that cut the Blue Jays’ lead to 4-2. Another run followed on an infield single that single, and the Seattle Mariners tied the game in the sixth when Tim Mayza struck out Carlos Santana and two wild pitches by Gabriel Moreno led to a Cal Raleigh sac fly. Bo Bichette hit the remaining button with a solo shot that restored the Blue Jays’ lead in the seventh. But Moreno, battling against the sun, dropped a JP Crawford pop-up to open the eighth and Santana, who had already homered in the second, promptly went deep for the third time in two games, giving the Mariners a win 6-5 that completed a four-game sweep. A dagger to end a 1-6 road trip with a ninth loss in 10 outings, the Blue Jays are no longer trying to turn the page on a bad day, but rather trying to close the book on a crazy run. Facing a walk day in the absence of Kevin Gausman, Sunday couldn’t have gone much better for them, as Max Castillo pushed through four innings despite throwing three shutout innings Thursday, George Springer went deep on the first pitch of the race. , Raimel Tapia homered in the fourth and Bichette opened things up with a two-run single in the fifth. Even more solidly, they came through against the hard-nosed Logan Gilbert, giving another big Canadian crowd of 37,694 at T-Mobile Park reason to believe this game would turn out differently. But Castillo’s extension effort in the fifth failed when Raleigh and Adam Frazier hit back-to-back singles. In came David Phelps who walked Justin Upton before Sam Haggerty hit a weak chopper back to the mound that promptly sent home. Then Moreno fired first and the game, like Guerrero’s glove, began to unravel under the growing weight of a tense tension. The Blue Jays had seemingly rebounded by taking two of three from the Boston Red Sox and then winning the first two games of a series against the Tampa Bay Rays. But then Gausman took a line drive off his right ankle in the first game of a doubleheader against the Rays, and the Blue Jays’ building surge became an out-of-control slide instead.
