Weird and Wonderful: Blue Jays beat Red Sox again after wild finish

By Anthony On Aug 6, 2023

BOSTON — Baseball’s a crazy sport. For example: Toronto Blue Jays right-hander Jose Berrios was cruising right along in his fourth inning Saturday with a three-run lead. But then Masataka Yoshida chopped a pitch at his neck into left field for a 76.7-m.p.h. single before Justin Turner got jammed up-and-in yet somehow looped a 59-m.p.h. base hit into left. Three pitches later, ahead in the count, 1-2, Berrios spun a slurve at Rafael Devers’ shoelaces. It measured 11 inches from the ground. And it landed 430 feet away.

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That’s Berrios’ best pitch. He entered Saturday’s outing against the Boston Red Sox carrying a +5 run value on his slurve, the second-highest of any season in his career after the pandemic-shortened 2020. Opponents were batting just .207 against it with a .317 slugging percentage and had a 32-per-cent whiff rate.

And that’s despite Berrios landing it off the plate nearly 60 per cent of the time. Which is no accident. Berrios has done such a good job commanding the pitch and disguising it with his fastballs that hitters have been chasing it liberally. Devers certainly did. He just somehow got his barrel to it.

Crazy sport. Consider that last season the Blue Jays went 16-3 against the Red Sox. Boat-raced them repeatedly. Won the final nine games the teams played. After dropping the first seven meetings this year, Toronto is fighting not to contend with its franchise-worst season against Boston, which came in 1977 when the Red Sox won 12 of 15 against the expansion Blue Jays.

This weekend in Boston — so far, so good. The Blue Jays won Saturday, 5-4, clinching a series victory in a wacky, back-and-forth matinee. The ninth inning saw both teams commit outrageous baserunning gaffes, as the Blue Jays ran into a 9-3-6 double play in the top half before the Red Sox ended the game with an 8-4 one in the bottom with former Toronto catcher Reese McGuire making the final blunder.

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Crazy sport. Brandon Belt was in the middle of everything. He reached on an error trying to bunt in the first inning, homered in the third, and drove in the game-winning run with a groundball single in the sixth.

That’s not the first time we’ve seen Belt — Toronto’s second-slowest player per Statcast’s sprint speed — bunt recently. He tried to get one down in the ninth inning of a Detroit Tigers no-hitter a few weeks ago. On Wednesday, he went for one after getting ahead of a pitcher, 3-0. He’s gotten one down in two-strike counts four times in his career. And on three of those instances, he reached first base.

The way Belt looks at it, a bunt’s a free hit if he can execute it — even as a 21st-percentile sprint speed guy. If the infield’s back and he can lay the ball down the third-base line, he has a better chance of reaching first than if he swings trying to drive the ball. Belt can give you the percentages if you’re keen. He’s put a bunt in play 40 times since 2014 and come away with a hit on 28 occasions. He’s a .700 hitter when he gets it down.

Crazy sport. Take Friday, when the Blue Jays won the first game of this series with a seven-run, 14-hit onslaught powered by five homers. Entering the night, the Blue Jays ranked last in baseball with 19 homers vs. left-handed pitchers; and second-last with a .128 ISO against that side of the platoon.

But three homers came in the first two innings off left-handed starter James Paxton. And another came late off lefty reliever Richard Bleier. In one night, the team nearly tied its homer run total against left-handed pitchers for the entire month of July (a whopping five). And yet, in a deft comic stroke, it still found a way to go 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position.

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That brought Toronto’s average with runners in scoring position over its last seven games to .070 (4-for-57). It dropped Toronto’s season-long average with runners in scoring position to .235 — third-lowest in MLB. Only six teams entered Saturday’s play with a higher wRC+ this season than Toronto’s 108. Only one began the day posting a lower wRC+ with runners in scoring position than Toronto’s 85.

Crazy sport. Look at Berrios. This time last season, every Berrios start was a referendum on the trade that brought him to Toronto and the extension he signed to keep him around long-term. But now, with a turbulent 2022 clearly established as a bizarre outlier in an otherwise consistent, effective, and durable career, Berrios is the last thing Blue Jays fans fret about.

Berrios was robotic in the month of July, pitching to a 1.84 ERA — the lowest of any month in his career — over five starts with nearly 2.5 strikeouts for every walk. He allowed only five extra-base hits in the month (a homer and four doubles), completing five innings or more and allowing two earned runs or less each time out. The last time he strung together five consecutive starts matching that criteria was earlier this season from late-May through mid-June. Prior to that, he’d never done it in his career.

And yet, Saturday was a slog. He surrendered his fifth-longest homer of the last two seasons — remember, Berrios allowed 29 last year — on a pitch to Devers less than a foot off the ground. He was tagged for three hits on balls that left bats at less than 80 m.p.h. He left after only 85 pitches having allowed more than two earned runs for the first time since June.

Crazy sport. Ask George Springer. He recently snapped an 0-for-35, jumping up and down at first base with his arms to the skies and a massive grin on his face after a bloop base hit. Saturday, he had four singles off four different pitchers and a walk.

Or Davis Schneider. Friday, he cleared the Green Monster in his first big-league at-bat before earning a base hit on a groundball to second. Saturday, he singled three times and walked once. He has five hits and a walk in his first 9 plate appearances at the game’s highest level. Two years ago, he nearly quit this crazy sport.

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