BOSTON — Off the bat, the ball shot up high into the cold night, screaming out toward the Prudential Center in downtown Boston at 115.2 m.p.h., landing in the vicinity of the red seat honouring Ted Williams’ 502-foot homer in 1946, revered as the longest ever at Fenway Park.
Rowdy Tellez’s drive was majestic, and it drew awe even before Statcast estimated the distance at a wild 505 feet.
Could it really have gone that far?
“Wow. Unbelievable,” Aaron Sanchez said of his reaction to the homer. “I mean, I even tried to dig back, and I haven’t been here for too long, but I’ve seen Papi (David Ortiz) hit some balls there that didn’t even go that far. To see that, good for him. Hopefully it gives him that little bit of extra confidence moving forward.”
The mighty wallop quickly went viral. Tying for the longest homer since Statcast started in 2015 will get people riled up. Then word filtered out that the measure may have been off. The ball is thought to perhaps have grazed off the upper deck’s facing, disrupting the chances of an accurate count. There was to be no official tally, apparently, save from those who saw it.
“I wish I could hit a ball that far,” said Justin Smoak, who often hits them pretty far, too.
Either way, the Toronto Blue Jays rookie’s drive punctuated two days of offensive revival against the Boston Red Sox, which ended sourly in a 7-6 loss Thursday when Ken Giles gave up a pair in the ninth on Mitch Moreland’s RBI double and a walkoff single by Rafael Devers.
"I've seen Papi hit some balls there and they didn't even go that far" – Aaron Sanchez on that Rowdy Tellez . pic.twitter.com/i50ILPmttC
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) April 12, 2019
The rally, immediately after the Blue Jays squandered a bases-loaded, one-out opportunity in the top half, ended Giles’ streak of 34 consecutive saves. The runs were the first he’d allowed this season. And it magnified the damage from a Randal Grichuk error in the third — assisted by Socrates Brito — that led to three unearned runs right after the Blue Jays built a 5-0 lead.
“Sloppy game, all over, all around,” said Sanchez, who as a result needed 100 pitches to grind through five innings and left up 5-4. “You tend to see a lot of crazy things happen here in Boston, at least the four years I’ve been here. But that game should have been won in the third. It is what it is.”
Smoak, back in the lineup as the DH after missing four of the past five days with a stiff neck, crushed a three-run shot to dead centre in the third that opened the scoring, while in the eighth, a Freddy Galvis solo shot off Ryan Brasier opened up a 6-5 lead.
The three homers marked a new season-high for the Blue Jays, who in breaking out of an offensive slide Tuesday, employed the hit and run, a sacrifice bunt and a straight steal of home in a 7-5 win.
Before the game Smoak joked that, “I like it when they hit homers when I’m on base. I like jogging. I pray for a homer when I’m on base.”
Then he took care of it himself by turning around a 99.1-m.p.h. fastball from Nate Eovaldi. Grichuk walked and then Tellez dropped the hammer. Given the choice, everyone would rather jog home than scratch-and-claw their way there. The 13 runs during the two games at Fenway marked the Blue Jays’ most productive back-to-back games of the season.
“(Chris) Sale and Eovaldi are some of the toughest guys in the league,” said Smoak. “To be able to do it against those guys and be able to put up some runs, the majority of the time we score five or six runs we’re going to have a chance to win.”
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Of course, take nothing for granted at Fenway Park, where errors always seem to bite those that make them in the heinie.
Sanchez’s stuff was electric and he reached triple-digits in pitches for the first time since last June 15, but trouble brewed when he induced a routine fly ball to right-centre from Mookie Betts to open the bottom of the third.
Grichuk and Brito converged under it, and with Brito creeping into his space, the ball glanced off Grichuk’s glove for an error. RBI doubles by J.D. Martinez and Rafael Devers plus a run-scoring single by Dustin Pedroia brought home three unearned runs.
“You’ve got to play a clean game,” said manager Charlie Montoyo. “We didn’t and that’s why they came back and beat us.”
Suddenly it was a ballgame, and things got tighter in the fifth, when consecutive wild pitches allowed Xander Bogaerts to score and make it a one-run game. A Pedroia fly ball to shallow centre followed and Devers unwisely chose to tag, getting thrown out at home on a perfect Grichuk throw by about 10 feet.
The lead held until the seventh, when Biagini, called on early to get the heart of the Red Sox lineup, surrendered a solo shot to Moreland. A leaping catch into the centre-field wall by Grichuk stole extra bases from Martinez and prevented further damage.
That played big in the eighth when Galvis hammered a Brasier changeup into the right-field bullpen to restore the lead.
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But after Brito struck out meekly and Billy McKinney grounded out in the top of the ninth, Giles issued a one-out walk to Betts before Moreland drove a double to deep centre that a leaping Grichuk couldn’t corral.
After an intentional walk to Martinez and walk to Bogaerts, a Devers flare over a drawn-in infield eased the panic meter in Boston.
“Giles has been lights out,” said Montoyo. “We all knew this day was coming. It kind of sucks it happened today. But it happened. He’s been outstanding. Give their hitters credit there at the end.”
And give some credit to Tellez, too, for his home run in the third, even if he was in no mood to celebrate it afterwards. “It absolutely means nothing to me. It’s a number. It’s a home run,” he said. “I know that I’m pretty strong. We’re more focused on that tough loss and bouncing back.”
A moment to savour taken away, like seemingly only Fenway Park can.
