Toronto Blue Jays New Star Pitcher Suffers First Major Setback in Friday Night Loss

The Toronto Blue Jays have been red hot as of late, but they were not able to continue that momentum on Friday night and dropped their second game in a row.

This time, the victor was the Chicago White Sox in the series opener.

Though it's never fun to drop a game to one of the worst teams in baseball, the uglier reality is how they lost, and a recent signing who looked to be a steal proved potentially too good to be true in his first start with the team.

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Toronto signed longtime veteran right-hander Spencer Turnbull to a big league deal back in May after he went the entire winter unsigned, and he spent some time building up with Triple-A Buffalo.

When he was finally called up this month, he was essentially asked to man a long reliever role, and his first two appearances were excellent.

Over two innings back on June 11 in his season debut against the St. Louis Cardinals, Turnbull allowed just two hits and no runs along with no walks and two strikeouts. Four days later, he came into a game against the Philadelphia Phillies and struggled a bit, but allowed just a run in 2.1 innings.

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On Friday night, Turnbull was asked to start for the first time this year with Bowden Francis getting shelved, and things did not go well.

In the loss, the 32-year-old Alabama native got chased after just two innings and gave up five hits and four earned runs including his first home run of the season with two walks as well. Given the small sample size, the shelling brought Turnbull's ERA on the year to 7.11.

The Blue Jays brought Turnbull in to be a steadying veteran presence and someone they could go to with injuries in the back end of their rotation, however clearly that is not the case right now.

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The former Phillies and Detroit Tigers standout has suffered numerous injuries in his career, and it's possible his best days are behind him.

If Toronto can get some quality bullpen innings out of Turnbull, this will have been a solid deal.

The version of him that showed up on Friday night though is going to have a tough time being trusted to get the ball very often over the second half of the season.

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