Blue Jays vs. Orioles: Ex-Jay Chris Bassitt outpitches Max Scherzer in series opener - Toronto Star

Scherzer served up six straight hits in the second inning, accounting for five Orioles runs Friday night.

Blue Jays right-hander Max Scherzer was torched for five runs in the second inning of Friday night’s loss to the Baltimore Orioles at the Rogers Centre.  

It’s not often that old hound Chris Bassitt can be considered the younger pup on the pitching mound.

But such was the case on a forlorn Friday night (forlorn for the Blue Jays) as the rangy, long-in-the-tooth right-hander deferred to his elder and former bump bruh Max Scherzer. Deference only when counting tree rings, however.

Otherwise, 37-year-old Bassitt pitched circles around 42-year-old Scherzer and the Baltimore Orioles dumped the Jays 7-4 at the Rogers Centre. A perfectly dreadful start for the home side, despite a punch-back bottom of the ninth, in a warfare weekend versus a divisional rival with equal, if slightly more far-fetched, aspirations of snatching an engraved invite as an American League wild card.

A year ago they were teammates, Bassitt crucial in luring Scherzer to Toronto. Reamed apart when Toronto declined to re-sign Bassitt and Scherzer, quite surprisingly, got re-upped.

It all went pear-shaped lickety-split for Scherzer on this evening, with a spinless cutter (second pitch of the game) that leadoff hitter Dylan Beavers redirected 375 feet over the right-field wall.

Dylan Beavers quickly gets the Orioles on the board first. pic.twitter.com/XaVDTbvULX

An early shot of deflation for the sellout crowd but not immensely worrisome, the Jays anxious to atone for a mostly flatline performance in Sacramento earlier in the week. But then the game imploded for Toronto as it exploded for Baltimore: Scherzer stung for six consecutive hits in the second, accounting for five runs, as the Orioles just kept rounding the bases.

“I’m accountable for my mistakes,” Scherzer said later, annoyed in particular with the hit by Gunnar Henderson that started the whole maelstrom. “But kind of from then on, I feel like I executed. I wasn’t leaving pitches in the heart of the plate. That’s where I just have to tip my hat to them. They got base hits on pitches that I put in locations that I’m comfortable with.

“It’s frustrating, yeah. That’s baseball. I’m not going to cry about it. Obviously you don’t want to give up those hits, but going back and looking at it with the catchers and the coaches and what our game plan was coming in, they just beat me.”

Scherzer didn’t give up another hit through the fifth, but the trench was too deep for the Jays’ largely mewling offence this year. Kazuma Okamoto thwacked his 31st home run, pouncing on a hanging sinker for a solo shot the opposite way in the fourth, taking the mickey out of Bassitt’s shutout. And Bassitt didn’t actually last much longer than Scherzer, lifted after five and a couple of batters, the last of them Okamoto, whose double scored Nathan Lukes and knocked a chip off Baltimore’s lead.

Incoming Braydon Fisher was a strike away from striking out the side in the seventh until Coby Mayo drilled a slider up in the zone, going yard for the 23rd time.

Sparkplug Brett Bateman made it mighty interesting in the bottom of the ninth, swatting his first career home run with Ernie Clement on base. But the comeback, with George Springer and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at first and second, fell short on a ground out by Alejandro Kirk.

At least Scherzer going five took some of the load off an overstretched bullpen.

“Once you’re in those situations, you’ve got to pitch as deep as you can into the ball game. You’ve got to try to cover the ’pen.”

Especially with a bullpen game on schedule for Saturday.

But hey, there’s this: Scherzer needed 65 innings for his first $1-million (U.S.) bonus to kick in for this season. He got there after 2 1/3 innings Friday.

And $1 million more for every 10 innings from here on in.

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Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno.