Blue Jays Stifle Red Sox to Kick Off Important AL East Showdown

The Blue Jays set the tone with a 7-2 win ahead of seven upcoming divisional games.

TORONTO — A gander through the American League playoff race tells you all you need to know about the Blue Jays’ task ahead.

With the Yankees still owning a landslide advantage over every other club entering Monday, the Red Sox, Rays, and Blue Jays held the three AL wild-card spots.

There’s no need to remind Charlie Montoyo of his club’s divisional perils, though. The Blue Jays' skipper is quite openly expressive about Toronto’s predicament, especially so ahead of a three-game series versus Boston, winners of seven in a row, then a five-gamer against Tampa Bay later this week,

“You know what it is?” Montoyo said. “[It’s like] playing playoff games every time you play these teams because they're the best in baseball. I don't care what anybody says. Actually, I think baseball already knows this is best division baseball. I think that's a fact.”

Teams in the AL East have combined for 209 wins this season, most by any division in MLB (the NL West is second with 193 wins). It’s a meat grinder of a setup for the Blue Jays, but they’ve risen to the occasion this season. Despite his playful disdain for the harsh divisional competition, Montoyo said he believes his club belongs among the best in the league.

“They're good teams, including us,” Montoyo said ahead of his club's 7-2 win. 

This Red Sox-Blue Jays matchup was an interesting hot-and-cold check for each clubhouse. The Sox had won seven in a row, while the Jays had dropped three straight series and seven of their last 10 contests. With Kevin Gausman starting for Toronto opposite Sox rookie Connor Seabold, who was making his second career MLB appearance, the odds began quite heavily in the Jays’ favor.

George Springer kicked off the ball game with a walk and promptly raced around the bases on a double by Bo Bichette. The early tally breathed a bit of life into Toronto’s bats, but Springer’s second piece of work a couple innings later sparked something even better.

From the crack of the bat, you could tell it was gone. A center-cut slider and a clean swing by Springer sent the ball a Statcast-projected 422 feet over the wall in a heartbeat. The red and white stadium lights flashed; the home run horn sounded, and Toronto went to work. Bichette ripped a single, then Vladimir Guerrero Jr., in devilishly confident fashion, smashed a two-run jack to center that just cleared the wall.

Thanks to that outburst, Gausman started with a padded lead, and he worked flawlessly. The right-hander dialed the fastball up in the zone as well as he had all season. With batters sitting on the splitter down, Gausman pumped the heater past everyone.

When the Red Sox’s offense knocked on the door in the third, Gausman cranked it up a notch. With two men on and two outs, the right-hander buzzed a fastball past Rafael Devers, Boston’s best hitter. The slugger’s helmet fell off during his first wild hack, and he came up empty again on a second cut at a splitter. A couple more tense pitches would pass before Gausman got Devers to bounce out meekly to first base.

Gausman stayed strong as he crept into the later innings, too. He struck out the side in the fourth, then rolled through the fifth and sixth without any legitimate trouble (his 44% called-strike-plus-whiff rate on his four-seamer let his other pitches play well).

By working seven shutout innings on 110 pitches, Gausman dropped his ERA below 3.00. His 10th and final strikeout of the game elicited a little more emotion than usual from the Jays starter, who shouted as he came off the mound, clearly fired up, and chucked his gum as he headed towards the dugout.

"You've got to bring that [fired-up] mentality every time," Gausman said. "I think [Boston is] probably the hottest team in baseball behind the Yankees right now. So just kind of knew that going in, and needed to be a little bit more fine."

It’s now three phenomenal starts for Gausman against Boston—he’s allowed just one earned run in 21 innings—and his latest masterpiece came at a time when Toronto desperately needed a quality outing. For the team as a whole, though, it was a sound effort in all three phases of the game—and the win moved Toronto within a half-game of the Red Sox for the first AL wild card spot. 

"We came off a tough road trip and then we're able to run into a hot Boston team," said Matt Chapman, who homered in the fifth. "So to jump out here, Game One, and put some runs up, pitch well, play good defense, I think that sets the tone, for sure, for the homestand."

The Yankees might be untouchable atop the division (never say never), but if the Blue Jays continue to compete like this on a regular basis, they could be hosting a wild-card playoff series come October.