If you’ve been watching closely over his first four outings for the Toronto Blue Jays this month, you’ve no doubt noticed something’s been a little bit off with Hyun-Jin Ryu. Call it a lack of sharpness. A slight decrease in the fine command and control we’ve come to know him for. We’ve seen him irritated with himself on the mound, displaying rare frustration at crucial pitches he’s struggled to land in the zone. He walked nine through his first four starts this month, a glaring juxtaposition to the eight he walked through 10 starts this April and May. As a guy with MLB’s second-lowest walk rate since 2019 — 3.9 per cent — Ryu doesn’t have stretches like this often.
His strikeout rate dipped in turn, from 25 per cent over the season’s first two months to 11 per cent in June. Meanwhile, his home runs allowed had gone in the same direction, with six balls leaving the yard through his first four starts this month after allowing the same amount over 10 outings prior. Missing off the plate — producing all those walks — and over it — leading to the homers — is antithetical to how Ryu’s put up ace-like production every season since 2017.
And full credit to him for continuing to find ways to get outs and pitch deep into ballgames despite not feeling his best. Ryu entered Saturday’s start against the Baltimore Orioles having gone at least six innings and allowed no more than three runs in each of his last three outings. Often, the separator between pitchers that last in MLB and those that can’t cut it is an ability to minimize damage and give their team innings on days when they don’t have their best stuff. Ryu hasn’t only done that on those inevitable down days all pitchers experience — he’s thrown quality starts.
Still, it was worth keeping a close eye on how Ryu looked facing the Orioles for a second consecutive outing, not 24 hours after his club’s latest bullpen implosion, trying to work through whatever he’s working through amidst a palpable understanding that his manager, Charlie Montoyo, was in dire need of a deep outing, lest he be forced to turn back to a beleaguered relief corps that’s fluctuated between unsteady and utterly unreliable over the last six weeks.
And, through six innings, he couldn’t have looked much better. Taking the mound for the seventh having thrown only 62 pitches, Ryu appeared on track to throw the Blue Jays’ first nine-inning complete game since Marcus Stroman spun a 99-pitch gem against the Los Angeles Angels more than four years ago. But a couple pitches left elevated, a walk, and some shoddy batted-ball luck sabotaged that possibility, forcing Ryu to settle for a line featuring four runs allowed over 6.2 innings that doesn’t do justice to how well he pitched.
On another day, when the Blue Jays bats weren’t alive, when runner after runner was being stranded in scoring position, the four spot Ryu allowed in that seventh could have led to a second-straight night spent soul searching after another dispiriting loss. But with Toronto’s explosive offence performing like it’s intended to, as it did in a 12-4 blowout of the Orioles, Ryu’s rough landing will merely be a quickly forgotten tailend to an otherwise stellar performance.
Saturday, Ryu worked up with four-seamers, down with curveballs, in with cutters, and away with changeups, painting all four edges of the zone to keep pitches off the barrels of Baltimore bats. Everything was working, but Ryu’s changeup was particularly effective, as the big left-hander tunnelled it off his four-seamer and cutter, which let him get away with a couple missed locations thanks to disrupting hitter timing alone.
That’s encouraging, as Ryu’s changeup command had been spotty during his struggles earlier this month and he admitted after his last start — a seven-inning, one-run performance against the Orioles — to lacking feel for the pitch. He certainly appeared to lose confidence in it during that outing, throwing it only 17 times — a season low. But Saturday Ryu went to it 26 times, 18 of them for strikes.
His velocity was back, too. After a slight yet noticeable dip over his last half-dozen starts, Ryu sat 90 m.p.h. with his fastball and 87 m.p.h. with his cutter, both a tick higher than his season averages. That’s an encouraging indicator from a 34-year-old veteran who spent 10 days on the injured list earlier this month with a right-glute strain.
After Freddy Galvis singled in the second, Ryu retired the next 14 batters he faced, 12 of them with four pitches or fewer. He threw just seven pitches in that second inning, nine in the third, eight in the fourth and nine in the fifth. The 13 pitches it took him to carve up three Orioles in the sixth qualified as a stressful inning on a day when Ryu was in complete command of proceedings.
Ryu didn’t allow another baserunner until the seventh, when things quickly unravelled as the Orioles strung together a walk and two soft singles with two out. With a huge lead, Montoyo gave his ace every chance to work out of the inning, but was forced to go get Ryu after his 29th pitch of the frame — an elevated changeup Cedric Mullins drove to right for a two-run double. It was perhaps the only bad changeup Ryu threw all day.
Meanwhile, it took exactly one trip through the lineup for Toronto’s offence to figure out Baltimore starter Keegan Akin, as leadoff hitter Marcus Semien ripped a two-strike, two-out double to left in the third before Bo Bichette sent the next pitch into the right-centre field gap for a double of his own. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Teoscar Hernandez followed with back-to-back home runs, as the Blue Jays put up a four-spot in the blink of an eye.
P L A K A T A
Is it really a @BlueJays game these days if Vladdy doesn’t hit a home run? #BlueJaysOnSN pic.twitter.com/NPRqD0RMQo
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) June 26, 2021
Another run came with two on and two out in the fifth, as George Springer’s flare up the left-field line popped in and out of Pat Valaika’s glove, cashing Bichette — the 23-year-old had doubled earlier in the inning, his 76th extra-base hit through 150 career games — from second. That extended the inning for Randal Grichuk, who got a 2-2 cutter on the inner half and launched it beyond the left field wall for a three-run shot.
Grich CRUSHED this pitch!
@RGrich15 pic.twitter.com/xecvo5PogW
— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) June 26, 2021
And they just kept going from there, as one of the game’s most potent offences did what you’d expect it to against Konner Wade, a 29-year-old career minor-leaguer featuring a 90-m.p.h. sinker that doesn’t sink, in his MLB debut after spending 2019 in independent ball and not pitching an inning in 2020. Santiago Espinal singled, Semien doubled, Guerrero walked, Hernandez singled, Springer singled, Grichuk singled and things quickly got out of hand.
Zooming out, Saturday’s performance was exactly the kind of dominant response you want to see from a club after a demoralizing and avoidable loss a day prior. And it was typical for these Blue Jays, a club that has made a habit of bouncing back strong from adversity. And, boy, there’s been a lot of adversity. That’s why Toronto’s spent the entire season hovering just to either side of .500.
Eventually, the Blue Jays will need to go on a run and push their winning percentage closer to the .600 mark. That’s the only way the team will qualify for the post-season in its hypercompetitive division. But it can only win one game each day, so now the focus turns to Sunday, when there’s an opportunity to take three of four from a lousy Orioles side the Blue Jays really ought to be taking three of four from.
