When it rains, it pours.
The Blue Jays piled it on in Friday night’s 11-2 win over the Indians at Progressive Field that was called in the top of the seventh as the cold, wind and rain made for anything but baseball weather. This unusual game came with an unusual box score, too, as Toronto’s offensive outburst came on a rare quiet night from Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Those will happen. It’s no knock on Guerrero, who’s playing at an MVP pace through his first 50 games of 2021. He eventually chopped an infield single in the sixth, becoming the last of the Blue Jays’ nine starters to reach base, but the young star has spent much of this season with the team on his back. This lineup is built to land punches from one through nine, though, not just wait for a few big swings from Guerrero, so there’s something oddly encouraging about this specific type of win.
Marcus Semien has been one of the best players in baseball in May, and George Springer’s eventual return will only strengthen the top of this lineup, but it’s the heart of the order behind Guerrero that has been most impressive lately. That stretch of Teoscar Hernández, Randal Grichuk and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. is on a tear, and it combined for seven hits in the win.
“It’s contagious,” said manager Charlie Montoyo, who briefly jumped up from his postgame Zoom to watch another Zoom of his son’s high school graduation. “When somebody ahead of you is having a good at-bat, it goes down. That’s what they did today. Great at-bats on a tough day to play. They deserve a lot of credit for the way they played today. Even the fly balls and the plays that we made, this was not easy.”
It wasn’t just the usual suspects, either. Joe Panik, batting seventh, went a perfect 4-for-4 with his first home run of the season and three RBIs. Santiago Espinal drove in three, including a two-run double, and Danny Jansen, who’s slowly moving his average up, reached base three times with a single and a pair of walks. This was, from top to bottom, one of the most complete offensive efforts from the Blue Jays in 2021.
Panik knows tough conditions as well as anyone, too. He broke through with the Giants and played six seasons, often stretching into October, and San Francisco isn’t always sunny and warm.
“As a hitter, you can hang out in the dugout, and thankfully there were some heaters here, so you could hang out and go straight to the plate,” Panik said. “When you’re out in the field and you’re standing around, it doesn’t matter if you have a hand warmer in your back pocket or not. When that ball gets hit to you, it’s going to be wet and it’s going to feel like a cue ball.”
The sloppy weather didn’t seem to bother the bats, but it posed a greater challenge to Hyun Jin Ryu, who held Cleveland to two runs over five physically demanding innings. It’s not easy to throw a changeup in high winds, gusting from pitch to pitch, but that’s exactly what the ace did. It didn’t start out smoothly, though, with Ryu allowing two runs in the first frame, including a pair of walks.
That marked the first time in 2021 that Ryu has walked more than one batter in a game after entering with just six walks over 53 1/3 innings, the lowest rate of his career. Ryu’s velocities were down in the cold weather, topping out at just 88.5 mph, but even though he couldn’t fight the conditions with velocity, Ryu did it the way he knows best: smarts and finesse.
“We noticed the wind was blowing, but I just got ready for the game like I normally would,” Ryu said through a translator. “As you noticed in the first inning, I did struggle a little. If I told you that the weather didn’t impact me at all, that would be lying.”
The Blue Jays found a way, though. It has been a while since they were last protected from the weather under the retractable roof at Rogers Centre in Toronto, but finding a way to make it work has been the motto of their past two seasons. As they round out this road trip in Cleveland with more chilly temperatures expected before heading to Buffalo, they’ll need more of the same.