Never count these Blue Jays out.
It’s a lesson this club continues to teach its opponents, the league, the media, the snack vendors, and anyone else who gives a damn—Toronto will hack its way to the bitter end, for better or worse. In the latest edition, Tuesday’s 6-5 win against the Red Sox, the comeback kids recovered from a violent bullpen implosion with some shocking extra-inning magic.
A five-man infield drawn in, one out, and the bases loaded in the tenth, Raimel Tapia fouled balls back for what felt like 10 minutes. The slap-hitting outfielder was locked in a deep battle with Boston reliever Matt Strahm, and the tough lefty pounded Tapia with the fastballs, but he stayed alive.
“The moment I saw [Tapia] fouling balls off, I said, ‘Okay, he’s gonna make contact,” Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo said.
Eventually, someone caved. On the ninth pitch of the at-bat, Tapia flung his bat at an outside slider, then started jumping for joy.
“I want to start dropping F-bombs, but I’m not gonna,” Montoyo said, still beaming from the win. “But it’s pretty cool what happened.”
The sacrifice fly to left field walked it it off for the Blue Jays, but the comeback to get that point was the real shining moment of the evening.
On the ninth inning's the final out, down two with a man on, George Springer calmly took his place in the box versus side-slinging left-hander Jake Diekman. The Boston reliever had just punched out the last two batters, and after he fell behind Springer, he looked to sneak a 96-mph heater past the Blue Jays’ leadoff man.
Nope.
Springer sat back, leaned into his swing and the ball took off. 423 feet to center field, the epic blast brought the Blue Jays all the way back to tie it and ultimately set Toronto up for victory.
“Ever since I got here, there’s no real panic,” Springer said after tying the game with his 200th career homer. “There’s always a belief that we’re one at-bat away, one big play in the field, one pitch away from being back in the ballgame. And it makes it fun every day.”
Earlier in the game, before the pandemonium, the Blue Jays starting pitching continued to build off consistent outings.
Kevin Gausman has turned in three straight gems for Toronto, including now two against the Red Sox within a one-week span. Boston’s lineup features some quality hitters, thought that hasn’t mattered to Gausman, who finished Tuesday’s outing with a whopping nine strikeouts through six innings, allowing just one unearned run.
It was a heavenly match-up for the Blue Jays right-hander. Before Tuesday, his 57% whiff rate was the best in the bigs. On the other end, the Sox had the worst plate discipline in MLB, chasing on 36.1% of pitches outside the zone. The splitter was the weapon of choice for Gausman in this one—it always is—and that pitch was flawless yet again.
Gausman ripped off 31 splitters and got 21 swings, 14 whiffs, and a 52% called-strike-plus-whiff percentage. It was just pure dominance from a guy who the Red Sox got a great look at less than a week ago.
“I was going to pitch to my strengths, and kind of see what they were going to do and then adjust my gameplan,” Gausman said. “They definitely took more first-pitch strikes, and I don’t know if that was the plan going in, but overall, still threw fastballs and splits, just had to be a little bit more fine with them in certain spots.”
In the fifth inning, Gausman diced up the side in devastating fashion, using the fastball to get the first man, then snapping two splitters to finish off his other victims. His 95 straight batters faced without a walk to start a season sets a new Blue Jays record, and he’s also remarkably not allowed a single home run this season.
There was plenty of good for the Blue Jays in this one with some bad luck sandwiched in between. Ultimately, 22,611 fans left Rogers Centre happy, which is all that matters for Toronto.
More must-reads: