Aaron Sanchez calls Blue Jays' losses in Anaheim 'f---ing brutal'

It’s safe to say the beginning of the Blue Jays road trip hasn’t gone as planned.

After returning to .500 with a sweep of the Athletics, the Blue Jays have dropped three straight games to the Angels scoring just eight runs in the process.

The ugly series included 12.1 innings of 8.03 ERA ball from the starters, an 0-for-6 for Vladimir Guerrero Jr., a three-error game, and the inexplicable omnipresence of Alen Hanson.

Perhaps it wasn’t a surprise that at the end of it Aaron Sanchez sounded off candidly, saying the following to assembled media:

“It’s just f—ing brutal, to be honest. I mean we play so well, we go out there and we sweep Oakland who’s a pretty good team and we come out here and we just get embarrassed. It’s not fun. I don’t know, guys just weren’t ready to play I feel like. It is what it is.”

When a team falls flat on its face for a series it is probably fair for a guy, especially an established veteran like Aaron Sanchez, to say something like this. The efficacy on a call-to-action like this one is up for debate — and there might have been those in the clubhouse who didn’t appreciate the broadside — but having a veteran call out his team is far from unprecedented.

The reason this statement warrants a little bit of an eyebrow raise is that Sanchez isn’t exactly speaking from a position of strength when it comes to his own performance. In Thursday night’s game he gave the Blue Jays just four innings, and surrendered four earned runs. There’s a pretty good argument that he was the biggest reason why the team lost that particular game.

Although Sanchez has a strong 3.09 ERA this year, even the most cursory glance at any of his other stats reveals that he hasn’t pitched that well. His BB/9 of 5.66 is gruesome and second-worst in the majors to the seemingly-broken Yu Darvish. His K/9 of 7.46 ranks 59th among 82 qualifying starters.

Sanchez’s best-known skill — his ability to induce groundballs — has even been absent this year as his 47 percent rate is right around the league average. His Statcast numbers also suggest that the contact he’s allowed has been on the dangerous side:

Calling out teammates is sometimes necessary, but if Sanchez is going to do it, he might want to make sure his own house is in order first.

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