Blue Jays takeaways: Power surge catches A’s in the loss column after another edge-of-your-seat finish

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This article was published 04/09/2021 (1559 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The view from Deep Left Field on the Blue Jays’ 10-8 win over the Oakland A’s at the Rogers Centre on Saturday:

The A’s tried to flip the script on the Blue Jays with a huge late-inning rally, but fell just short in the end.

The Jays seemed home and cooled after a three-run homer from Teoscar Hernández in the seventh (the 100th big fly of his career) and a three-run double from Lourdes Gurriel Jr. in the eighth turned a one-run lead into a seven-run advantage, but the visitors did not go quietly.

While the Jays scored six with two out in the eighth Friday night to tie the game, the A’s had five runs in the ninth before an out was even recorded.

Joakim Soria came on with the huge cushion, but got smacked around to the point where he had to give way to closer Jordan Romano with a man on and the score 10-6. The tension ratcheted up a few notches when Romano gave up a two-run homer to the first batter he faced, Mark Canha, slashing the lead to 10-8.

The Markham native settled down from there, retiring the next three hitters in order, and the Jays caught Oakland in the loss column. They’ll have a chance for the sweep on Sunday after scoring double-digit runs in each of their last two games and needing pretty much every one of them.

• Springer dinged: You knew there would be retaliation from the Oakland side for Jays starter Alek Manoah hitting Josh Harrison and Starling Marte on back-to-back pitches Friday night, and it happened in the eighth inning Saturday.

And you knew the target would be George Springer, since the A’s have had some tense battles with his former club in Houston over the past few years.

With the Jays (relatively) comfortably ahead by four runs, Springer led off the eighth against righty Lou Trivino, who had walked a pair and hit a batter in Friday night’s eighth inning, lighting the spark for the Jays’ miracle comeback in the series opener.

After missing badly with a cutter down and away on the first pitch, Trivino followed up with a 96-mile-per-hour fastball that dotted Springer on the left hip. It was very difficult to see it as anything but intentional.

To his credit Springer didn’t react, simply dropping his bat and heading to first. A couple of batters later, Trivino hit Bo Bichette but with a 76-m.p.h. curveball, almost the exact same pitch he’d hit Bichette with the night before.

With Springer getting dinged, one would think there will be no carryover of the nonsense into Sunday.

• Out of position: Both the Jays and A’s made an interesting defensive choice to start the game, using players in positions they weren’t exactly used to playing.

With Randal Grichuk mired in a two-month slump and Springer limited to the DH spot, at least for now, Corey Dickerson got the start in centre field for the Jays. Dickerson won a Gold Glove as a left-fielder in 2018, but the last time he played centre was 2015, when he made two starts there for Colorado.

Dickerson fielded his first three chances flawlessly, even making a nice running catch of a hard-hit line drive by Tony Kemp in deep right-centre in the fourth.

He did get beat in the seventh, though, as Matt Olson led off with a drive off the wall. Dickerson leapt, but couldn’t get it and the leadoff double kicked off a two-run inning that got Oakland back in the game, if only momentarily. To be fair, the ball was hit at 108.2 m.p.h. and had an expected batting average of .920. It would have been an incredible catch.

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It was only one game, but Dickerson showed he can play an adequate centre field. The bat makes it worth playing him out there, at least against right-handers, down the stretch.

On the Oakland side, Harrison started at shortstop for the third time this season. The 34-year-old, who became the man Jays fans love to hate after his reaction to getting hit by a Manoah pitch early in Friday night’s game, has been a jack-of-most-trades throughout his career, but shortstop hadn’t been one of them since 2014.

Frustrated by Elvis Andrus’ .532 OPS since the all-star break, the A’s have started to sprinkle Harrison in at short the past couple of weeks. He wasn’t challenged until the bottom of the eighth, when he had to dive to knock down Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s 116-m.p.h. rocket up the middle. He kept it in the infield, but couldn’t corral what wound up being the hardest-hit ball of the game.

The single kept the inning alive for Hernández’s home run, which ultimately provided enough cushion for the win, though it didn’t seem necessary at the time.

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