TORONTO – Facing baseball’s hottest team, a Tampa Bay Rays squad off to a modern-era-record-tying start, Jose Berrios found command of his fastball and over five dominant innings, perhaps rediscovered himself in the process. The right-hander effectively controlled the zone with his four-seamer, cleverly utilized the run on his sinker, locked up righties with his slurve and kept lefties off-balance with his changeup. It was optimal Berrios.
The only problem Friday related not to his stuff, the execution, or the results, but rather the status of his left knee, which absorbed a 111.8 m.p.h. comebacker to end the fifth and ended his night prematurely. His status wasn’t immediately known and was the only down point on an otherwise buoying night for the Toronto Blue Jays, who ended the Rays’ 13-game winning streak with a 6-3 victory.
After a three-up, three-down first by Berrios, George Springer sent Drew Rasmussen’s second pitch of the game, a 95.5 m.p.h. fastball, 440-feet to left-centre to open the scoring with his 53rd career leadoff homer, tying Craig Biggio for third most all-time.
A Bo Bichette RBI double in the second was his 500th career hit – which, in 407 games, made him the fastest player to reach the milestone in franchise history, ahead of Vernon Wells and Shannon Stewart in 432 games – and after a Luke Raley RBI single in the fourth, the Blue Jays broke the game open in the fifth.
Bichette started the rally with his fourth of five hits on the night, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. followed with a base hit and Daulton Varsho, who in the third robbed Diaz of extra bases with a leaping catch into the left-centre field wall, walked to loaded bases. Rasmussen rallied to strike out Matt Chapman but Rays manager Kevin Cash decided to pull him for Colin Poche to face fellow lefty Brandon Belt, prompting John Schneider to respond by pinch-hitting Alejandro Kirk.
Poche walked Kirk on four pitches and then Santiago Espinal on five pitches to force home a pair of runs, and then when he appeared to have escaped further trouble when Danny Jansen hit a grounder to short, Brandon Lowe whiffed on Wander Franco’s relay, two more runs scored and the Blue Jays were up 6-1.
At that point the 20-0 start by the 1884 St. Louis Maroons, whom Cash joked that he didn’t “want to say anything bad” because he didn’t know anything about them, was safe.
The real threat to the Rays on Friday was Berrios, who came into the game with an 85th percentile whiff rate, a 64th percentile strikeout rate and an 11.17 ERA in spite of that. The issue, as it was so often last year, was the way his fastballs were getting pounded, with 10 of the 14 hits he’d allowed in his first two starts coming on heaters.
The issue, Schneider said, was “not so much up and down, but horizontally, where are they? If his sinker is really running, great, start it off and get it on the plate as opposed to on-to-on. … It’s really harnessing that sinker, whether it’s back door to a righty or front hip to a lefty, you’ve got to make sure it’s in the right part horizontally in the zone.”
Berrios was more four-seamer early but textbook use of his two-seamer came in the fourth, when with a full count, he started one down and away to Randy Arozarena and watched it run back onto the corner for a called third strike.
The damage on Berrios’ fastball has been “kind of weird,” said Schneider, who added “it’s been a conversation amongst many people for a while. Just living on the edges of the plate a little bit more is what he needs to do.”
That he did, although topping out at 95.8 m.p.h. with his four-seamer, he was able to flat out beat some Rays hitters in the zone, too. On the Diaz comebacker, Berrios calmly found the ball, pounced on it and threw to first for the inning-ending out before limping off.
