Blue Jays takeaways: Red Sox tear one strip after another off Toronto starter Ross Stripling

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This article was published 19/05/2021 (1639 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The view from Deep Left Field on the Blue Jays’ 7-3 loss to Boston on Wednesday:

It took Ross Stripling a while to find his footing and, by the time he did, the Blue Jays were down a whole bunch.

Enrique Hernandez led off the game with a soft line drive to left field that Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. never saw in the setting sun, but the rest of the Red Sox were full measure in knocking Stripling around. The Hernandez single was followed by back-to-back home runs by Alex Verdugo and J.D. Martinez, putting the Jays down by three just 10 pitches into the game.

Xander Bogaerts then singled and Rafael Devers doubled, giving Boston five straight hits to start the game, with each of the last four over 100 miles per hour off the bat.

After a strikeout of Marwin Gonzalez, Stripling gave up another pair of lasers — a 107-mph double by Bobby Dalbec that made it 5-0, and a 109-mph line drive off the bat of Franchy Cordero that wound up in the glove of Randal Grichuk to end the inning.

Stripling came back out for the second and immediately served up a 391-foot homer to Hernandez before finally settling in and retiring eight straight.

It’s the second straight start in which Stripling has taken a while to find his footing.

• Running out of a rally: The Jays had a chance to climb out of the five-run hole in the first inning when Red Sox starter Garrett Richards gave up two walks and two doubles to the first four hitters he faced.

Only one run came in to score, though, because of a big baserunning mistake by leadoff hitter Marcus Semien.

The veteran infielder started the inning with a walk, and Bo Bichette followed with a double to the gap in right-centre. Semien put his head down and sprinted around the bases. Third-base coach Luis Rivera put up the stop sign, but Semien didn’t see it until he had nearly passed Rivera. He put on the brakes and was easy pickings on his way back to third.

In that situation, down five runs with nobody out and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. coming to the plate, a runner from first has to stop at third unless he’s absolutely sure that he can score. You don’t want to risk killing a potential rally.

Guerrero followed with a double (though the out created a new space-time continuum — there’s no way to know what Guerrero would have done had Semien stopped at third), scoring Bichette and getting the Jays on the board. Teoscar Hernandez drew a walk to put two runners on before Richards finally got Randal Grichuk to ground to third for the first out that he actually recorded.

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The Jays could have had Richards on the ropes but the unnecessary 90 feet Semien tried to pick up took that chance away, and Richards wound up working into the seventh, allowing just two runs.

• Take what they give you: It didn’t wind up factoring into the final score, but Reese McGuire came to the plate in the fifth inning, saw that the Red Sox defence was in the shift, with only one defender on the left side of the infield, and dropped down a bunt to the third-base side for the easiest hit of his life.

McGuire, a career .249 hitter, didn’t get caught up in the “don’t hit it around them, hit it over them” mentality that a lot of batters are taught when facing the shift, instead choosing to take the free single in an attempt to get a rally started.

Semien followed by drawing a walk, but the uprising ended when Bichette grounded into a double play, the third hit into by the Jays over the first five innings.

We don’t see it nearly enough, but you get the feeling that if more hitters would take what’s given to them when the defence decides to leave nearly half the infield uncovered, there would be more offence, more action on the bases and more chances to score. It’s what a lot of fans would like to see.

Mike Wilner is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @wilnerness