Insult and a painful injury as Jays three-game streak comes to an end

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The script flipped in the worst possible way for the Jays Monday night.

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Not only did their three-game winning streak to begin the year come to a crashing halt in a 14-5 drubbing by the visiting Colorado Rockies, but one of the Jays’ prized off-season acquisitions left the game on a golf cart in a ton of pain.

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Cody Ponce was looking to extend the good fortune the Jays starting rotation had provided Monday night when he took the mound against a rebuilding Rockies squad.

Ponce, though, was driven off the field in a golf cart after just 47 pitches after his right leg locked up as he attempted to field an infield hit while running towards first base. Ponce went down and did not get back up.

The hit, by leadoff man Jake McCarthy drove home Kyle Karros who had walked earlier and was balked into scoring position when Ponce fell awkwardly on the mound attempting to deliver a pitch. He got up after that one smiling sheepishly but was not so fortunate the second time around.

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Ponce was getting an MRI post-game as his manager John Schneider addressed the media.

“He kind of felt it hyper-extend. That’s what he told me on the field,” Schneider said. “So we’ll wait for the MRI results and hope for the best. It sucks, his first outing you know and his journey, what he has been through, so hopefully it’s the best news possible (on Tuesday).”

Ponce had not pitched in the Majors since 2021 with the Pittsburgh Pirates. A rough season then led Ponce to take his game overseas where he felt he could work on his game with an aim towards getting back to the Majors. A stint in Japan was followed by a move to Korea where it all seemed to come together for Ponce who was both the MVP and earned the league award for the best starting pitcher.

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The Jays signed him to a three-year $30-million deal this off-season and after a solid spring training were looking forward to seeing what he would do back on the biiggest baseball stage in the world.

“You feel for us, but you feel more for him,” Schneider said. “He gets back here and he’s throwing the ball really well. There’s a lot of emotion that went into today for him. He was really excited, so it just sucks to see that happen to him.”

The Jays actually tied the game at one after Ponce left the game on a George Springer home run before the Rockies began to pull away again, this time for good.

They got one in the fourth and then broke it open with a seven-run sixth scoring three times off Rule 5 reliever Spencer Miles and then roughing up hard-luck reliever Brendon Little for four more to take a 9-1 lead.

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Catcher Tyler Heineman came on in the eighth and ninth to finish things up and save the Jays bullpen some pitches in a game that had already got out of hand. Heineman’s eephus pitch, which clocks in about 50 miles an hour, didn’t fool too many of the Rockies though the handful of fans who stuck around seemed to enjoy it..

Colorado padded its lead with four in the eighth and one more in the ninth for a 14-5 final while the Jays bats got in on the action a little as well with Andres Gimenez and Davis Schneider both chipping in with home runs in the eighth before Kazuma Okamoto hit one just over the padding above the left centre field wall for his second home run in as many games.

The Jays will try to get back on the winning side tonight when Max Scherzer makes his 2026 season debut against Rockies right-hander Ryan Feltner.

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THE HUMAN SIDE OF THE ABS SYSTEM

Far be it from a pitcher to have a soft spot for an umpire, but that is what is actually happening these days with the Automated Ball/Strike system that puts every umpire in the Majors on full public notice on a nightly basis.

The new system, well, new to the Majors, allows pitchers, hitters and catchers alike to challenge two pitchers per team, per game. They can keep challenging until Kevin Gausman, like every pitcher who has been around a while, has had his moments with umpires. But Gausman can’t help but feel for umpires these days as they become accustomed to having entire stadiums cheering when their call gets so publicly overturned.

“It’s unfortunate because it really is such a hard job and now all of a sudden you have fans cheering if they get it wrong,” Gausman said. “

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Gausman’s empathy is because he knows how much better the pitching is today.

“Listen the guys in the big league’s now, they have the best stuff they have ever had,” he said. “Stuff is moving more than it ever has. So, it’s harder for them than it has ever been for them to call strikes and now every person (they’re umpiring) kind of has an opportunity to question them if they have the challenges left.”

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ARMS APLENTY WILL BE HERE EVENTUALLY

At some point the Toronto Blue Jays are going to have a stash of starting pitching so big they will have no place to start them all … and that’s factoring in whatever happens with Ponce who left last night’s game on a golf cart.

Of course, how all those arms fit is a conversation for another day as Trey Yesavage, Jose Berrios and Shane Bieber are all still finding their way back to Toronto.

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On that topic, all three, as well as reliever Yimi Garcia will make strides towards their returns this week.

Berrios and Garcia will throw bullpens on Tuesday and then Berrios will throw a live bullpen Saturday as well.

Yesavage will throw a three-inning, somewhere in the vicinity of 45-pitch simulated game on Friday and Bieber will throw off the mound for the first time in Florida on Saturday in a get-your-feet-under-you 20-25 pitch effort.

For Yesavage, the progress has been slow but steady. Until this weekend the program he was on saw him pitching just every eight or nine days but after this weekend that will ramp up to five or six days in between.

“I’m pretty encouraged by what he has been doing,” Jays’ manager John Schneider said of Yesavage, “and I think he is too.”

Berrios, meanwhile, is dealing with a stress fracture in his elbow and as bad as that sounds, he’s making it sound like a much smaller deal.

“The feedback from him has been ‘I feel perfectly normal’,” Schneider said. “So, I think you want to be careful with it but also make sure he doesn’t have any hesitation throwing. I think if we thought it would be detrimental to him long-term, we wouldn’t be having him continue to go, so smarter people than me … and him … making that decision.”

mganter@postmedia.com

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