Talk about getting the barrel on it.
Blue Jays first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. technically squared up his RBI single in the seventh inning of Friday's 6-5 win over the Reds at Rogers Centre, but he did it in quite an unusual way.
On an 0-2 sinker from Cincinnati reliever Luis Mey, Guerrero chopped a ground ball toward the middle, breaking his bat in the process. Then, pure baseball magic took over.
Slow-motion replay showed exactly what happened: The severed barrel of Guerrero's bat connected with the baseball several feet in front of home plate, redirecting the ball toward the right side of the infield. It rolled through a hole in the Reds' defense and into right field for a single, scoring Andrés Giménez from second base.
Guerrero's hit, which brought in the first run of a pivotal four-run seventh to give Toronto the lead and eventually the win, was far from the first base hit on which a player hit the ball twice. In fact, it was at least the sixth this season -- including two on the same day.
While it surely wasn't the hard contact Guerrero envisioned, Friday's double-hit allowed him to "hit 'em where they ain't" in a truly ingenious way.