Blue Jays takeaways: There are few better ways to serve notice than with a nine-run inning

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This article was published 06/08/2021 (1568 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The view from Deep Left Field on the Blue Jays’ 11-4 win over Boston at Rogers Centre on Friday:

They never saw it coming.

The Boston Red Sox, losers of six of their last seven games, came to Rogers Centre to open a four-game series Friday night hoping to right the ship against a Blue Jays team they’d had good success against this season.

The Jays, winners of seven of eight games, mostly against a couple of easy marks from the American League Central, carried a 17-27 record against playoff teams, with the Red Sox in control of the first wild-card spot in the league despite their recent struggles.

The game started according to the old script, with the Jays struggling to score early against flamethrower Nathan Eovaldi. Alek Manoah matched him zero- for zero through the first three innings, but the visitors broke through with a run in the fourth and added another an inning later.

Going into the bottom of the fifth, the Blue Jays had managed just two hits and had the 7-8-9 hitters due up.

Then the bottom of the fifth happened, and had the roof not been pulled back on a beautiful summer night, it would have been blown off.

It started with a double. Then another. Then another.

The bottom of the lineup struck with back-to-back-to-back two-baggers from Alejandro Kirk, Randal Grichuk and — after two unsuccessful sacrifice bunt attempts — Breyvic Valera and, just like that, it was 2-2.

George Springer moved the runner to third with a fly ball for the inning’s first out, then Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. was intentionally walked and Marcus Semien struck out, so with two on and two out, the game remained tied.

Next was Bo Bichette. He fouled off a 2-2 pitch, then rat-a-tat-tat, three pitches later the Blue Jays had a 7-2 lead.

Bichette hammered a line drive off the top of the right field wall that scored Valera to break the tie. The young shortstop settled for a single because he hit the ball so hard and because he may have spent an extra second admiring his handiwork, thinking he had hit it out. But he made up for it on the very next pitch, scoring all the way from first on a Teoscar Hernandez double into the gap in left-centre.

On Eovaldi’s very next delivery, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. put what we all thought was the exclamation point on the Blue Jays’ big inning by hitting a towering, majestic shot to the left-field corner for his 12th home run of the season.

As the ball snuck over the wall, 335 feet away, 14,719 fans rose as one and made it sound as though there were four times as many.

It was an explosion of sheer, unadulterated joy. One that so many people had been waiting so long to experience in a setting like this, and you could almost feel the old concrete convertible get lighter with the release of a year and a half of everything they had all been keeping pent up inside.

In a big game, against a team they’re chasing in the standings, the Jays got off the mat and just plain beat up a division rival that had been giving them fits all year. The emotion was palpable — the players showed it, the fans felt it and returned it, and a love affair that had laid dormant for a few years was rekindled in full force.

And even with all that, the Jays weren’t done. The Gurriel homer sent Eovaldi to the showers and former Twins closer Hansel Robles came on to give up hits to Kirk and Valera, their second of the inning. In between those at-bats, the righty drilled Grichuk on the left arm with a 95 miles-per-hour first-pitch fastball, causing those emotions to flare up once again.

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Cooler heads prevailed, but those 2015 vibes continued to creep up. It was impossible not to think of that first August series six years ago against the defending AL champion Kansas City Royals, when the benches emptied multiple times in the final game. Surely it was just a coincidence that Jim Wolf was the home plate umpire for both that game and this one.

Springer’s two-run double was the cherry on top of an inning in which 14 Blue Jays came to the plate. Nine of them scored.

The rest of the game was inconsequential, the deathblow already having been delivered in the Jays’ biggest inning of the season, their most prolific since putting up a 10-spot against the New York Yankees in Buffalo last September.

Notice, it appears, has been served.

Mike Wilner is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star and host of the baseball podcast “Deep Left Field.” Follow him on Twitter: @wilnerness