Javy Guerra (48) of the Toronto Blue Jays celebrates their victory with Luke Maille (21) during MLB game action against the Detroit Tigers in Toronto on March 29, 2019.Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images
Ready, set – analytics.
Charlie Montoyo’s willingness to take deep dives into baseball analytics was one of the attributes that led to his hiring as the new manager of the Toronto Blue Jays.
Friday night’s lineup against the Detroit Tigers, in which the Blue Jays were in desperate need of some offensive spark after their dreary two-hit performance in a season-opening loss the night before, is an example of Montoyo’s mantra.
Billy McKinney was inserted into Friday’s starting lineup in right field because, Montoyo said, he matches up better than the other three Toronto outfielders he has on the roster when facing Matthew Boyd, the Detroit starter.
Funny thing though, McKinney – in just his second major-league season – doesn’t even have a history against Boyd. He had never batted against the lefty.
But as any serious seamhead will tell you, there’s more to these things than just head-to-head pitcher-batter encounters – or so we’re led to believe.
Montoyo must know of what he speaks.
McKinney had an infield hit that helped move along a big four-run fourth inning that was enough to propel the Blue Jays (1-1) to a 6-0 victory. The win was Toronto’s first of the season. It was also Montoyo’s first win as a major-league manager.
Freddy Galvis and Justin Smoak drove in two runs each, before a sparse gathering of just over 18,000 at Rogers Centre.
After the game Montoyo, who beat the bushes in the minor leagues for almost 20 years, arrived at his post-game press conference drenched from head to toe following an emotional celebration in the clubhouse that involved the spraying of alcoholic beverages.
“That’s what makes it more special, how they were for me for my first win in the big leagues,” Montoyo said. “Everybody said congratulations and the first of many and stuff like that. That’s pretty cool.
“And I said I can retire now, I got a win at every level.”
Before the game, in his daily pregame briefing with reporters, Montoyo spoke about devising his lineup.
Brandon Drury, for example, was batting leadoff for the second consecutive game after collecting one of Toronto’s two hits in Detroit’s 2-0 win on Thursday. But in the Montoyo way of thinking, Drury’s spot on the top of the batting order is not guaranteed for any prolonged period of time.
“He’s leading off for now but he could be hitting second, he could be hitting third tomorrow,” Montoyo said. “We’ll see the matchups and stuff. I’m going to go with matchups.”
When asked who he might also like to see hitting leadoff, apart from Drury, the rookie manager hesitated.
“It could be anybody, whoever matches up good with the guy who’s pitching,” he said. “That’s what we’re going to do. So you might see a change in the lineup, you know? It used to be old school that you want to stay with the same lineup. But nowadays it’s in matchups.”
And head-to-head matchups, Montoyo stressed, is not the only metric he uses when filling out his lineup card. “How the guy [pitcher] throws, the bat speed of the hitter, how he swings the bat and all that,” Montoyo explained. “It all goes into that equation.”
Drury may be forcing the leadoff issue a bit after he lined the first pitch of the game off Boyd off the wall in right-centre for a leadoff triple. But then Boyd struck out Randal Grichuk, Smoak and Teoscar Hernandez to deny Toronto a chance to build some momentum with an early lead.
As in Thursday’s opener, the work of both starters on Friday was solid. After surrendering the leadoff triple, Boyd settled in retired the next nine batters, seven by strikeouts, heading into the fourth inning.
Matt Shoemaker, who had two injury-scarred seasons with the Los Angeles Angels before Toronto GM Ross Atkins made him an off-season reclamation project, got the start and he was terrific. Shoemaker (1-0) struck out seven over seven innings and allowing just two hits. Javy Guerra pitched two runless innings of relief to back Shoemaker’s solid performance.
“It chokes you up a little bit,” Shoemaker said of his big win. “You battle for a year and a half trying to get back, feel great, ready to go and come out with a great, exciting time and go out there and just pitch, compete, have fun - and win.”
Boyd’s luck ran out in the Toronto fourth, where Hernandez finally helped jump start what had been a stagnant attack with a solid rap to centrefield that scored Grichuck from second for a 1-0 Toronto lead.
With that run, Toronto ended a 13-inning runless streak to start a season, a franchise worst, eclipsing the runless mark of 12 to start 2004, also against the Tigers.
But the Blue Jays weren’t done yet.
With two out, McKinney beat out a bleeder to the right side to load the bases for Galvis, and the new Toronto shortstop hit a rocket to the power-alley in left-centre that was judged a single.
Tigers centrefielder Mikie Mahtook then bobbled the ball when he finally caught up to it. Two runs were already in but McKinney wanted more and rounded third and headed for home after witnessing the error.
The ball was relayed home but McKinney was safely in with Galvis winding up at third.