TORONTO – Chad Mottola first noticed signs of the offensive renaissance the Toronto Blue Jays are currently enjoying last week in Tampa, and believes the transformation really started taking hold over the weekend in Boston.
Now, after pounding the San Francisco Giants on successive nights, including 11-3 on Wednesday, the Toronto Blue Jays hitting coach believes his batting order is at long last becoming the dynamic and explosive lineup that was expected.
“We’re seeing guys take a better approach at the plate,” he said. “More let’s work as a team rather than everybody individually trying to succeed.”
On Tuesday the Blue Jays banged out 18 hits in a 10-6 win, and broke double digits without a single home run, and while Adam Lind and J.P. Arencibia both went deep in this one, the Blue Jays again displayed what Mottola described as a new “attitude” of working with what pitchers give them and trusting in the person behind them with 11 hits in all.
“That’s what good hitters do,” said manager John Gibbons. “I think early on we were strictly thinking pull, pull, pull, looking for the long ball. I think we’ve changed that a little bit. Now we’re using the whole field, taking whatever they’re throwing us.
“What I think it does too, it keeps you on the off-speed pitch out over the plate. It also allows you to foul off some tough pitches and stay alive. We’re still an aggressive club. We’re swinging at our pitches a little bit more now, too, but you still have to look out over the plate because that’s where most of the game’s pitched.”
The Giants certainly did their part to contribute to the offensive onslaught, with errors by Marco Scutaro on a popper to second by Jose Bautista and Angel Pagan on Arencibia’s fading liner to centre opening the door to a five-run first that effectively settled this affair.
Just like Tuesday, they batted around, marking the first time since April 10-11, 1994 against Seattle and Oakland that the Blue Jays sent at least nine men to the plate in the first frame on consecutive nights.
Some shoddy defence fuelled a three-run second that really opened things up, Hunter Pence misjudging a Melky Cabrera liner that zoomed over his head, with Bautista quickly following with an RBI single before a towering two-run homer from Arencibia.
Since pounding the Seattle Mariners 10-2 on May 5, a span of 10 games, the Blue Jays have scored 68 runs, at last producing as expected.
“We’re not letting them come to us, we’re taking it to the pitcher, we’re taking it to the team,” said Arencibia. “We’re being aggressive out there, and it was going to turn. There were a lot of balls hit hard right at guys, it was kind of weird the way baseball goes. Guys are doing what they’re capable of and hopefully it will continue.”
—
WHERE THINGS STAND: With a season-high fourth straight win the Blue Jays (17-24) completed their first sweep of the season by taking both contests against the Giants (23-17), and have won consecutive series for the first time this season. They also won a series at home for the first time, a good way to head back out on the road for three games against the New York Yankees.
The Blue Jays are just 1-6 against the Bronx Bombers so far this season, and the upcoming series that starts Friday with Mark Buehrle against Hiroki Kuroda offers a good litmus test on their resurgence. Brandon Morrow goes against David Phelps on Saturday and it’s R.A. Dickey versus CC Sabathia on Sunday.
—
RAZOR RAMON: The five innings of one-run ball at Fenway Park last Friday was a nice surprise, but seven innings of one-run ball against the World Series champions may have been even more unexpected from veteran Ramon Ortiz.
The right-hander turns 40 on May 23, but earned his first big-league win since Sept. 11, 2011 in relief for the Chicago Cubs over the Mets with a solid effort against the Giants. His last win as a starter came on April 17, 2007 for Minnesota at Seattle.
“The key right now is I have a lot of confidence in all my pitches – my changeup, my slider, my two-seamer and my four-seamer,” said Ortiz. “When you have confidence you can throw the pitch in any count, and that’s what we do right now.”
He gave up a run in the first on Angel Pagan’s bloop double, Marco Scutaro’s sacrifice bunt and Pablo Sandoval’s sacrifice fly, and for the next six innings kept the Giants off-balance by working down on the edges of the plate and staying away from the trouble areas.
The run support no doubt helped, but Ortiz finished with only the one run on six hits and a walk against, no doubt buying himself another outing next week, when the Blue Jays have a pair of starts to fill.
He looks like a different pitcher than he was during his first stint with the team, when he allowed two runs in 3.1 innings of mop-up duty in a 7-0 loss to the White Sox on April 17. Ortiz believes that planted the seed for his second chance.
“I knew I can pitch, I knew I can throw strikes,” he said. “When I went to the minor leagues, I threw five innings and I knew I had the opportunity of coming back here.”
Even if his impressive run is short-lived, he’s already provided tremendous return for a minor-league depth signing.
—
MENDOZA LINE: With an RBI single in the first and a 1-for-4 night, Emilio Bonifacio became the latest Blue Jays hitter to reach .200 in batting average.
Brett Lawrie went 1-for-3 to push himself over the Mendoza line at .204, leaving backup catcher Henry Blanco at .138 as the only Blue Jays hitter below .200.
