Zaun plays part in Blue Jays’ 7th straight loss

Gregg Zaun endured his fair share of losing streaks in five years with the Toronto Blue Jays, and now he’s contributing to one from the other side.

The 38-year-old catcher singled to left field off Blue Jays starter Brian Tallet in the bottom of the fourth inning Monday afternoon, the winning hit in a 4-1 Baltimore Orioles victory on Memorial Day in the United States.

“I left a pitch that Zauney could handle and he hit a single,” Tallet said. “That was the difference in the game, believe it or not.”

It was just the fourth run Zaun has driven home this season to go with a lowly .215 batting average, but it was enough to send Toronto to a seventh consecutive loss, matching its longest skid of 2008.

“You just have to keep playing,” Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston said. “You never know, in this game, what’s going to happen. You win four in a row and then you lose seven in a row. All you can do is show up and play and hope that you get out of it.”

The Blue Jays, having led the major leagues in runs scored as recently as last week, have been outscored 34-11 in dropping the first seven games of a nine-game road trip that has seen their record slip to 27-21.

They entered Monday’s contest hitting .248 during the losing streak — a number that dipped to .143 with runners in scoring position — and averaging 1.7 runs per game and 8.5 hits in each outing.

On Monday, Toronto went 1-for-9 with runners on second or third base (.111) and crossed the plate once. The Jays also had nine hits in 35 at-bats (.257) but left nine runners on base at Camden Yards, one day after stranding 11 men at Atlanta.

The visitors started out strong as leadoff man Marco Scutaro singled and swiped his fourth base of the season. He later scored on a Vernon Wells single to give Toronto a 1-0 lead.

Baltimore began the day with five wins and 14 losses in 2009 when the opposition scores first but didn’t worry much about that statistic Monday as it answered the Blue Jays’ run in the bottom of the first.

Tallet and Orioles right-hander Jeremy Guthrie, who had a 1-4 record and 6.24 earned-run average in his previous seven appearances, then went pitch-for-pitch until Zaun touched the Toronto left-hander for a hit that brought in the go-ahead run in the fourth inning.

It remained 2-1 until the seventh when former Blue Jays closer and one-time Oriole B.J. Ryan took over and allowed the first three batters to reach base as Cesar Izturis singled, Brian Roberts tripled and Adam Jones walked.

A wild pitch and walk followed before Aubrey Huff brought home Roberts on a sacrifice fly to extend the Baltimore lead to 4-1.

Tallet’s record fell to 2-3 but he turned in his fifth straight quality start (three runs or less in six innings), allowing two runs in six innings of work and striking out five.

Tallet has a 2.81 ERA over his last five starts, yet is 1-2 over that span. He allowed two runs in six innings against Boston in his previous start, but Toronto lost 2-1 to start its current slide.

“We’re going through a tough time,” Tallet said. “I started this skid in Boston and I was trying to do everything I could to stop it. I just wasn’t able to today.”

Prior to Monday, the Orioles had been outscored 44-8 in the seventh inning, but Guthrie pitched his way out of trouble.

With one out and runners on first and second, he struck out Scutaro looking and induced Aaron Hill to ground into a force out in a driving rain. Hill had singled in the third inning to extend his hitting streak to nine games.

“I don’t know how he did it. He sure came up with some big pitches,” said Orioles manager Dave Trembley of Guthrie.

Added Guthrie: “It was a real tough little situation there. I could not feel the ball very well. To get that big [strikeout] there and Aaron Hill just missed that pitch enough to get that ground ball, that was huge.”

Guthrie (4-4) allowed one run over seven innings for his second win in nine career starts versus Toronto. His longest start of the season came against the Blue Jays, a complete-game performance in a 4-3 loss on May 3 at Rogers Centre.

Orioles closer George Sherrill served up a leadoff double to Lyle Overbay in the ninth inning but retired Rod Barajas, Jose Bautista and Scutaro to nail his 10th save of the season and cement the Orioles’ fourth win in 18 games against Toronto since last June.

“Toronto has given us some hard times in the last couple years, and certainly they are playing good baseball this year,” Roberts said. “So for us to beat a good team in our own division, yeah, I think that is something we can build on a little bit.”

Baltimore improved to 19-26 with the win but remains last in the five-team American League East Division.

Zaun plays part in Blue Jays’ 7th straight loss

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