When the Blue Jays woke up on May 4, they were 13-17 after losing 11 of 16 games, many in extraordinarily ugly fashion. The last loss in that run came the night before, when Sergio Santos gave up two ninth-inning home runs to give the Pirates a walk-off win in a game the Jays had led 6-2 in the seventh.
When he woke up that day, Edwin Encarnacion was hitting .243 with two home runs. He had struck out 27 times against only 16 walks, and as he struggled, Jose Bautista was getting walked in front of him like the proverbial Egyptian.
Since then, not only have the Blue Jays righted the ship with 12 wins in 17 games to move into a virtual tie for first place in the American League East, but Edwin has earned a promotion to a higher league. He is clearly hitting too well at the moment to be contained by mere humans, major-leaguers though they be.
It took Encarnacion another two games to start heating up. After his third straight 0-for-4, his average at end of day on May 5 was just .228, his OPS just .700.
And then, magic.
Encarnacion homered in his first at-bat in the Blue Jays’ win in Philly on May 6, and it feels as though he hasn’t stopped since. Two homers against the Red Sox in each of the first two games of the series, the Jays now find themselves in a position to sweep. The home runs gave Encarnacion a Blue Jays record of 11 in the month of May – all of them over a span of 15 games.
Since that 0-for-15 that ended May 6, Encarnacion is hitting .305/.349/.915, those 11 homers contributing mightily to that ridiculous .915 slugging percentage. He has 18 hits in those 15 games, and only four of them have been singles.
As Encarnacion has heated up, the walks to the man who hits ahead of him have been drying up. Bautista walked 33 times over the season’s first 32 games, but he has drawn only 10 free passes over the last 16.
Encarnacion is a guy who can get hot, but this is something else entirely. Twice he has hit five home runs in a series – once in Minnesota at the pitcher-friendly Target Field and once in Arizona, both in 2010. This time around, he’s become the first Blue Jay ever to have four multi-home run games in the same calendar month (and three of them have been in the last six games). He’s also only the second-ever to have back-to-back multi-homer games. The other one was Jesse Barfield, who did it in September of 1983.
It’s an incredible hot streak to which we’re bearing witness at the moment. While it’s hard to imagine that streak will last much longer, it’s served to get Edwin back to where he should be – an OPS around .900 and among the league leaders in home runs. And it’s where he should stay for the rest of the season. But wow, has it ever been fun to watch him progress to the mean, and it may not be over quite yet.
