BOSTON — To say the Toronto Blue Jays played well against the Boston Red Sox in 2022 doesn’t really do it justice. Toronto boat-raced Boston. Again and again. The Blue Jays finished the season series 16-3 with a comical +70 run differential. They swept the final three sets the teams played, posting a .988 OPS with 14 homers across 9 games. As Red Sox manager Alex Cora put it: “They just dominated us — I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Um, sorry?” Blue Jays manager John Schneider responded, sheepishly, from his office in the visitors’ clubhouse at Fenway Park Monday afternoon before his club began a fresh season series with their division rival. “I think guys like hitting here. It’s a good environment to play. And it’s a division team. You look forward to series like this.”
You do. Even in a more balanced schedule world, which will see the Blue Jays play each AL East foe a mere 13 times this year as opposed 19 in seasons past. If anything, these divisional clashes have only taken on more importance. Toronto has fewer opportunities to do direct damage to the four teams they’re in competition with for one division title and, thus, one potential postseason bye.
And the rest of baseball hasn’t exactly been helping out. The Blue Jays, Red Sox, Tampa Bay Rays, and New York Yankees all finished April above .500. Entering Monday’s play, three of MLB’s top-six winning percentages belonged to AL East clubs.
The division’s .623 winning percentage to start the season was the highest by a five-team division in the sport’s history. Its collective +146 run differential was fifth-highest. Within a division that has long been an absolute gauntlet, we are seeing things happen that have seldom happened before.
“It’s tough,” Schneider said. “Tampa’s off to a historically good start. We know Baltimore has gotten a lot better — they’ve shown that. New York and Boston never really go away. So, [we need to be]taking care of our own business and taking care of our own game for a good part of the season until you really have to start looking at standings.”
Which brings us to Fenway Park, where the Blue Jays certainly took care of their own business in 2022, but fell in their first meeting with the Red Sox a season later, 6-5 in a wild one.
Jose Berrios coughed up five earned on 11 hits, including a pair of loud homers in his final inning. A Bo Bichette five-hit night — the third of his career and his second in 18 days — went to waste. Enrique Hernandez allowed the Blue Jays back into the game with a pair of eighth-inning throwing errors. Alex Verdugo ended it in the bottom of the ninth with a solo shot off Jordan Romano into his team’s bullpen. And the only ground gained in the division, on a night the Yankees lost while the Rays and Orioles sat idle, went the Red Sox way.
Berrios ate punches early, as Alex Verdugo and Masataka Yoshida led off the first with hard doubles before Justin Turner took an elevated fastball into the right field corner. Following a seven-pitch walk of Rafael Devers, Blue Jays pitching coach Pete Walker was out for a visit with two runners on base, two runs on the board, and Berrios still looking for his first out of the game.
But Berrios bobbed and weaved out of trouble, sandwiching a pop-up between a pair of strikeouts, and held the Red Sox to those two runs through five. He allowed baserunners in each of his innings, but evaded harm again and again, beginning a slick 1-6-3 double play off a Verdugo comebacker in the fourth before watching Matt Chapman initiate a 5-6-3 twin-killing off a Devers short-hop in the fifth.
And yet, damage wasn’t evaded in the sixth as Berrios laid a first-pitch slurve down-and-in to Jarren Duran’s happy zone, which left the yard in a hurry at 109-m.p.h. off the bat. Three batters later, with a runner on first, it was a fastball out and over the plate that Enmanuel Valdez hammered 427-feet to centre. Berrios allowed twice as many homers that inning as he did in his first five starts of the season.
The haymakers were being lobbed in the opposite direction early, as the Blue Jays teed off on Red Sox starter Corey Kluber. All eight of Toronto’s balls in play over the game’s first three innings came off bats at 95-m.p.h. or harder. That included Bichette’s seventh homer of the season, a 105-m.p.h., 396-foot, three-run blast over the Green Monster. But Toronto let Kluber settle in, strike out seven, and escape with only those three runs allowed over his 5.1 innings.
There was an opportunity against the Red Sox bullpen in the seventh, as Whit Merrifield drew a walk to load the bases with two out. With Brandon Belt, who’d struck out three times in three trips, due up, Schneider went to his bench for Alejandro Kirk against Chris Martin. But Kirk grounded the second pitch he saw right back to the Red Sox reliever to end the threat.
And then, in the eighth, it was the holidays on the first of May, as Enrique Hernandez committed a pair of throwing errors moving to his left — he chucked one wide of first and another over his dugout — allowing the Blue Jays Jays to tie the game with a pair of unearned runs. But that lead didn’t stand long, as Romano entered for the bottom of the ninth, left a 94-m.p.h. fastball up, and watched the Red Sox mob Verdugo at home plate.
Just another night in the AL East. It’ll be like this all year.
