Blue Jays takeaways: Hyun-Jin Ryu gets his groove back against Orioles. Bo Bichette climbs the ladder

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This article was published 07/07/2021 (1885 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The view from Deep Left Field on the Blue Jays’ 10-2 win over the Orioles in Baltimore on Wednesday night:

It had been a rough few weeks for Hyun-Jin Ryu, to whom the Blue Jays gave $80 million (U.S.) a couple of winters ago to be the ace of their staff.

The big lefty paid off the first part of the investment last season, finishing third in American League Cy Young voting, and started off this season very well with a 2.62 ERA over his first 10 starts. But since the calendar flipped to June, it had been a different story.

Ryu had allowed at least three runs in five of his last six starts going into Wednesday night, allowing eight home runs in just 35 1/3 innings and posting a 5.35 ERA.

Things looked as though they were starting to turn around on June 26 in Baltimore, when he took a two-hit shutout into the seventh inning, but the Orioles got to him for four runs in the seventh and then Seattle knocked him out after just four innings on Canada Day, scoring five runs on seven hits in Ryu’s worst start of the season.

Wednesday night, though, the 34-year-old was starting to look like his old self: keeping hitters off balance, pitching out of trouble when he needed to and, for the first time in a long time, striking people out.

Ryu struck out the side around a one-out double in the first inning, with each whiff coming on a different pitch. He got leadoff hitter Cedric Mullins on a cutter, Trey Mancini on a changeup and Ryan Mountcastle on a curveball. The southpaw wound up with seven punchouts in his five innings of work — a night cut short by the combination of the sweltering Maryland heat and a very comfortable Jays lead.

The seven Ks matched his season high and were the most for Ryu in eight starts, a strong sign that he might be getting back on track.

• RBI guy: Bo Bichette singled in a run in the Jays’ three-run fourth, then clubbed his 16th home run of the season off former Jay Cesar Valdez in the sixth and in so doing reached a major career milestone.

In just his 159th career game, Bichette notched his 99th and 100th runs batted in. No Jay had ever reached 100 that quickly at the start of his career. Carlos Delgado, the Jays’ all-time leader in pretty much every offensive category, had held the record previously, having picked up his 100th RBI in his 164th game.

The home run was also the 200th hit of Bichette’s young career — no Jay has ever reached that mark more quickly, either — and his three hits gave him a major-league leading 30 multi-hit games this season.

Those hits also lifted Bichette’s batting average to .295 on the year, which is pretty good since exactly a month ago he was hitting only .262.

• The fifth elements: All-star Teoscar Hernandez got to show off several facets of his game in the fifth inning alone.

He led off the frame with a little looper to right field and hustled it into a double, went to third on a groundout and scored on a medium-depth fly ball to left.

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With his wheels — Hernandez is in the 89th percentile among major leaguers in sprint speed — he turned what should have been a single into a run. A runner with less speed never makes it off first base.

In the bottom of the inning, Hernandez contributed with his throwing arm, firing an absolute laser from deep right field to double up Austin Wynns at home plate.

Lourdes Gurriel Jr. tends to get the lion’s share of the attention as far as the big arm goes, and with eight outfield assists he has twice as many as Hernandez, but Teoscar’s arm isn’t to be taken for granted. He hasn’t had the chance to show it off that often this season, but he sure did in erasing Wynns, capping a very productive inning for the Jays right fielder.

Tune into Mike Wilner’s weekly Blue Jays podcast, Deep Left Field, wherever you get your podcasts.

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