Blue Jays takeaways: A long time (27 outs over two days) between Bo Bichette hits

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/04/2021 (1665 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The view from Deep Left Field on Tuesday’s Blue Jays-Red Sox game:

Eduardo Rodriguez made the start for the Red Sox, and wound up with the decision in Boston’s 4-2 win over the Blue Jays. The left-hander gave up a couple of solo home runs over six-plus innings, and not much else.

Rodriguez missed all of last year’s shortened season because of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that was caused by COVID-19, which he came down with prior to the start of last season.

We have become largely numb to the regular announcements of players missing time due to COVID protocols, winding up on the COVID injury list, or testing positive for the virus. The overwhelming majority come back within a week or two with no problems. Rodriguez’s heart problem was a huge smack in the face to the many who believed that young, healthy professional athletes couldn’t be affected by a virus that has shut a large part of the world down for the last 13 months.

It was great to see him back and healthy.

• An unofficial no-hitter: Jays shortstop Bo Bichette led off the fourth inning with his team-leading fifth home run of the season — a 380-foot shot that snuck past one of the light towers in left field on its way to Lansdowne Street.

The round-tripper gave the Jays the early lead and, more importantly, it snapped a streak of nine consecutive innings over which the Jays had failed to get any kind of hit. A no-hitter, albeit over two games.

The last Jays hit before Bichette’s homer came in the third inning of Sunday afternoon’s loss in Kansas City, and that one came off Bichette’s bat, too. His ground ball got past a diving Carlos Santana and into right field for a single. The nine innings that followed featured an Alejandro Kirk walk in the fourth inning in K.C. and a Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. walk in the first inning in Boston. In between the two free passes, 20 Jays hitters were retired in a row.

Bichette also got the Jays’ next safety, a sixth-inning single, giving him every Jays hit over a span of 13 innings. That ignominious streak came to an end in the seventh, when Randal Grichuk led off with a home run.

• One bad inning: Hyun-Jin Ryu had his first rough inning of the 2021 season, and it turned out to be the difference.

The lefty expertly manoeuvred his way through the Boston lineup over the first three innings, limiting the Red Sox to two hits, one of which came on a fly ball butchered by Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. He needed just 29 pitches to record the first nine outs.

But he needed 26 pitches to get the next three, as the Red Sox hit for the cycle against the ace southpaw in the bottom of the fourth.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

The Wrap

Weekday Evenings

Today’s must-read stories and a roundup of the day’s headlines, delivered every evening.

Sign up for The Wrap

Sign Up

I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

The inning started with back-to-back singles by Christian Arroyo, who hit a soft looper to centre, and J.D. Martinez, who rifled a 112 mile-per-hour line drive to left.

Xander Bogaerts followed, and Boston’s cleanup hitter drilled a 91 mile-per-hour fastball deep into the Boston night for a three-run homer that gave the home side the lead for good.

A strikeout followed, but then Marwin Gonzalez shot the left-centre gap with a line drive that Gurriel couldn’t chase down before it got to the wall. That was the double, and Gonzalez scored two batters later as Bobby Dalbec tripled to almost dead-centre, just right of the 420-foot sign.

The four runs that scored in the inning matched the total that Ryu had allowed over his first three starts of the season, and his ERA jumped from 1.89 to an even 3.00.

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