BOSTON – American Independence Day at Fenway Park in 2002 was a scorcher. The first-pitch temperature was 35 C and felt closer to 40 C once the humidity was factored in. Pete Walker drew the starting assignment for the Toronto Blue Jays that sweltering afternoon and with his family in the stands, he was stoked. But French toast for breakfast was a bad choice and the resulting churn in his stomach made it hard to properly hydrate. He still managed to throw five innings and took a no-decision in an eventual 9-5 loss, but it was misery.
“Brutal,” he said, the sweltering heat still vivid 20 years later. “Just brutal weather.”
The conditions were pretty similar during Sunday’s 8-4 victory over the Boston Red Sox, completing a three-game sweep sure to send the Fenway faithful deep into tantrum-land. A heat advisory was in place, the temperature was 35 C at first pitch and peaked at 37 C, although the humidity, mercifully, was only at 29 per cent.
Still, the heat was severe enough that Blue Jays players, especially starter Ross Stripling and catcher Danny Jansen, began pre-hydrating the night before, water and cooling ammonia towels were stocked in the dugout and the up-and-downs for pitchers were closely monitored.
Stripling, for instance, went only four innings of two-run ball on 62 pitches, which given the heat were as draining as far more.
“The difficulty when it’s this extreme, you can’t go to any part of your jersey to dry off. Everything is wet and it affects grip on the ball,” said Walker, now the team’s pitching coach. “Long innings can be detrimental because if you’re out there, 25 to 30 pitches, it can have an adverse effect for the following inning. So you want to try to have quick innings. You want to limit your warmup prior to the game. You want to try to stay cool between innings. But it is not easy.
“One hundred pitches in regular conditions is probably 75 to 80 in these kinds of conditions,” he added. “It definitely takes it takes its toll on a pitcher.”
Also taking a toll on Red Sox pitching Sunday, and all weekend for that matter, were Blue Jays hitters, helped along by a touch of circus-music Boston defence.
They jumped Brayan Bello for five runs in the first, with Cavan Biggio’s two-run single and Raimel Tapia’s bases-loaded triple accounting for the damage. Another three spot came in the fifth, helped along by third baseman Jeter Downs fielding a Danny Jansen chopper and hitting Matt Chapman between the numbers with his 93.1 m.p.h. relay home, a Downs throwing error and Hirokazu Sawamura awkwardly falling as he searched for first base after taking a Bobby Dalbec relay, which forced Vladimir Guerrero Jr., to hurdle him like a track star for an RBI single.
The end result of a 40-run weekend, a club record for a three-game series, is that the Blue Jays (53-43) may have pushed the Red Sox (48-48) out of the buyer’s market before the Aug. 2 trade deadline, while firming up their own grip on a post-season berth.
They are now 7-1 since interim manager John Schneider replaced Charlie Montoyo and 8-1 in their past nine, capitalizing on the border-rules depleted rosters of the Philadelphia Phillies and Kansas City Royals before the break, and a beat-up Red Sox club out of it.
Following an off-day Monday, more opportunity awaits as they host a two-game miniseries against the St. Louis Cardinals, who will be without MVP candidates Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt, among others.
Jose Berrios (versus Andre Pallante) and Kevin Gausman (versus Adam Wainwright) are due to start those games, buying the Blue Jays some time to figure out when to drop lefty Yusei Kikuchi back into the rotation, should they deem him ready.
Either way, the club is nearly out of runway to decide whether he’s reliable enough to be counted on for the remainder of the season, or if they need to augment the rotation in a more significant way. The bullpen is a clear area of need although Michael King’s season-ending injury may prompt the New York Yankees to become more aggressive in that market, complicating the trade landscape.
Regardless, the Blue Jays are in a much better position to deal from now than they were a couple of weeks ago, when they were reeling from a 1-9 stretch and set for a managerial change.
A dominant weekend in the Boston sweatbox is a big reason for that. Weather aside, they wanted to come out of the all-star break hot and they certainly did.
