Blue Jays takeaways: It’s Robbie Ray and a home-run day against the Braves

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This article was published 30/04/2021 (1656 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The view from Deep Left Field on Friday’s Blue Jays-Braves game:

When the Blue Jays brought Robbie Ray back as a free agent in the off-season, they knew they were getting a hard-throwing left-hander with outstanding stuff. If they could help him through his control issues, they felt like they could get him back to the form that made him an all-star as recently as 2017.

In their wildest dreams, though, they didn’t think they were getting the guy they saw in his four April starts, capped by a dominant performance in Friday night’s 13-5 win over Atlanta.

Ray had the visitors eating out of his hands for six innings, facing the minimum 18 batters while allowing only one hit — a Travis d’Arnaud double in the second. The southpaw was astoundingly efficient, needing only 72 pitches to get through the first six innings, striking out five without issuing a walk.

He finally flagged in the seventh. With two out, still having faced the minimum, Ray just couldn’t get that third out. Marcell Ozuna doubled to right-centre — his first hit against a lefty this season after posting a 1.330 OPS against them last year — then Ozzie Albies belted a two-run homer to spoil the shutout bid.

Ray picked up his first win of the season, his second as a Blue Jay, and finished April with a sparkling 2.78 ERA and, maybe most importantly, having issued no walks over his last 16 innings of work.

• The gang’s all here: The Blue Jays fielded a healthy position-player group for the first time this year and they responded by scoring in double digits for the second time this season.

The return of Teoscar Hernandez from a bout with COVID-19, coupled with George Springer’s return Wednesday night, put the Jays at full strength and they didn’t wait long to get the party started.

Springer, who singled in the first inning for his first hit as a Blue Jay, began the second trip through the order against Drew Smyly by reaching on catcher’s interference. Bo Bichette followed by hammering a baseball 420 feet into the party deck in right-centre, tying Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. for the club lead with his seventh home run of the season. That was the first of six big flies the Jays would hit on the night, including two by rookie catcher Alejandro Kirk. Ironically, the other time this season that the Jays scored in double digits, a 15-1 win over the Angels on April 10, they did it without hitting a single homer.

It was reminiscent of the early days of spring training, where seemingly all the Jays needed to do was roll out Springer and six or seven other regulars and they would score 10 or 12 runs without breaking a sweat.

The Blue Jays came into the game hitting just .236 as a team against lefties, but got to Smyly and relievers Tyler Matzek and Sean Newcomb for nine runs on 11 hits over their 5 2/3 combined innings of work.

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• Opponents are learning: Guerrero drew a career-high three walks in the blowout win, mostly because teams are coming around to the idea that there’s really no reason to pitch to him.

That’s no slight on Hernandez and Randal Grichuk, both of whom homered Friday. It’s just that with Guerrero having seemingly blossomed into the star slugger he’s been touted to be since he was a teenager, giving him a free pass and taking your chances with whomever is hitting behind him is the better strategy.

Grichuk has been the Jays’ second-best hitter through the first month of the season, but he came into Friday night’s game with an OPS over 300 points lower than Guerrero’s team-leading 1.141. He has followed Guerrero to the plate most nights, but Hernandez returned after a three-week absence and was placed right into his customary cleanup spot.

Hernandez made them pay for preferring to pitch to him, following Guerrero’s three walks with a single, a groundout and his second home run of the season.

Once the game got out of hand, with the Jays up 11-2 in the seventh, there was no longer a reason to walk Guerrero. Newcomb pitched to him, and he drilled an RBI single to left.

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