TORONTO — How’s this for a way to begin your big-league career?
2018 team offence (MLB rank in brackets)
| Runs | Home runs | AVG | OBP | SLG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Houston Astros | 470 (2) | 117 (6) | .339 (2) | 439 )3) | .439 (3) |
| Detroit Tigers | 366 (22) | 75 (28) | .248 (13) | .307 (26) | .392 (24) |
| New York Yankees | 444 (3) | 147 (1) | .249 (10) | .329 (5) | .462 (1) |
| Boston Red Sox | 482 (1) | 128 (2) | .269 (1) | .335 (4) | .461 (2) |
Those are the first four opponents, in order, 24-year-old Toronto Blue Jays starter Ryan Borucki is being asked to face as he gets his first taste of the majors. Aside from the Tigers, he’s pitching against the class of MLB. The three most prolific offences in the game. A trio of teams that will be playing come October, while the Blue Jays watch from home.
And, three-quarters of the way through that gauntlet, it’s hard to imagine it going much better. Borucki threw seven strong innings of one-run ball against the Yankees Sunday, before New York got to Tyler Clippard in extras and earned a series victory with a 2-1 win over the Blue Jays. Toronto is now 4-9 against the Yankees this season, and has been outscored by 20.
In his MLB debut, Borucki held the defending World Champion Astros to two runs over six innings. He did even better with seven innings of two-run ball against the Tigers his next time out. And now he has a solid start against the Yankees under his belt, which pushed his ERA down to 2.25 over his first 20 major-league innings.
“It’s a confidence boost. These guys are some of the best lineups in baseball,” Borucki said. “I’m just really trying to ride this confidence wave and keep pitching the way I’ve been pitching.”
And while the Tigers, currently 11 games under .500, are decidedly not among MLB’s best teams, the one thing they do well is hit left-handed pitching. Detroit is one of baseball’s toughest offences against southpaws, and all Borucki did against them was strike out eight, earning 15 swinging strikes.
Detroit Tigers vs. left-handed pitching (MLB rank in brackets)
| AVG | .277 (1) |
|---|---|
| OBP | .337 (7) |
| SLG | .443 (5) |
| K% | 19.9 (3) |
| wRC+ | 112 (4) |
So, make that three tough tests passed in less than two weeks. Next will be the Red Sox, who hold baseball’s best record at 61-29. In the few statistical categories in which its offence isn’t leading MLB, the Red Sox are top five. But considering how well things have gone so far, Borucki should roll into Fenway Park with all kinds of confidence.
“It’s good to throw guys into the fire, you know? Especially if you think they’re pretty good,” Gibbons said. “And it won’t surprise me one bit if he went out there and did a heck of a job again. The kid’s got a lot of poise.”
Borucki did surrender some hard contact Sunday, including a 120-mph Giancarlo Stanton single that was the second-hardest hit ball in MLB this season. But, like he did against Houston in his debut, Borucki found ways to pitch out of trouble time and again.
The only run he allowed came in the first, when Aaron Judge singled, moved to third on a double, and came in to score on a Miguel Andujar groundout. Otherwise, Borucki kept the Yankees contained, stranding baserunners in each of the next five innings.
“At the beginning of the game, I didn’t have the command I wanted with my fastball,” Borucki said. “But I definitely got my mechanics a little bit better at the end and felt a little more confident.”
His seventh and final inning was his finest, which is particularly impressive considering he’d already thrown 92 pitches entering it and was finishing his third trip through the order. He started by getting Greg Bird to chase a slider for a strikeout, before using a well-located change-up to strike out Austin Romine behind him. Borucki then earned a groundout at the end of a battle with Brett Gardner to walk back to the dugout having matched the seven-innings he pitched his last time out.
Like most effective pitchers, Borucki’s game is predicated on command and attacking the edges of the plate. And he has to be happy with how his pitch chart looked at the end of the outing:
Borucki pounded the zone with his sinker, while keeping his change-up away from New York’s dangerous right-handed hitters. He threw only one change-up to a left-handed batter, leaning on his slider instead to play off his 92-mph fastball, which he ran up to 94-mph at times.
A couple sliders were left up, but Borucki never paid for it, and he ended his afternoon demonstrating the competitiveness Blue Jays coaches and development staff rave about. That final pitch he threw to Gardner to get the groundout at the end of the seventh? It was 94.2-mph — the hardest he threw all afternoon.
“Sometimes you’ve got to make bigger pitches than other ones,” he said. “And on those big pitches, I really try to bear down and make sure I get the ball there.”
For New York, Domingo German — a right-hander whose name will no doubt come up if and when the Blue Jays and Yankees negotiate a trade involving JA Happ — made the 11th start of his young career, and cruised through to the fourth, when his command wavered and he issued a pair of two-out walks to load the bases for Lourdes Gurriel Jr.
Gurriel quickly fell behind 0-2 before launching a 96-mph fastball up the first base line that fell excruciatingly foul in the right-field corner, just on the wrong side of being an extra-base hit that would have scored at least two. German got Gurriel to chase a filthy breaking ball on the very next pitch to escape the jam.
Domingo German, Nasty 84mph Curveball. pic.twitter.com/WbvreaT9qU
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) July 8, 2018
It was another Cuban Blue Jay who finally got to German in the sixth, as Kendrys Morales turned on a full-count fastball and skied it 373-feet over the wall in right. It was his 200th MLB homer and 10th of the year, giving Morales eight campaigns with double-digits homers over his dozen big-league seasons.
“I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t even know how many homers I had before the season started,” Morales said. “So, I’m just happy that I achieved that number.”
But Toronto’s offence was nowhere to be found the rest of the afternoon. The Yankees, meanwhile, went ahead in the 10th against Clippard, who led off the inning by hitting Bird with a 2-2 fastball. Bird took second on a sacrifice bunt and scored when Brett Gardner served a Clippard change-up into left field. It was the first — and only — hit either team had on the day with runners in scoring position.
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