I guess it would be a bit of an understatement to say that Toronto Blue Jays’ designated hitter/first baseman Edwin Encarnacion has been swinging a hot bat as of late. During Toronto’s 15-1 victory over the Detroit Tigers on Saturday afternoon at the Rogers Centre, he slugged three home runs, drove in a franchise-tying record nine runs and extended his career-long hitting streak to 24 games.
Encarnacion hit a three-run shot
in the bottom of the first to give the Jays an early 3-0 lead. His second homer
came in the sixth with a man on to make the score 9-1 and he smashed a grand
slam in the seventh to extend the lead to 13-1. The nine RBIs tied the
franchise mark set by Roy Howell back in the Jays’ first year of existence,
1977.
The hitting streak is the
longest in MLB this season and is four games short of the team record of 28 set
by outfielder Shawn Green in 1999. During the 24 games of the streak, Edwin is hitting .400
with ten home runs and 34 RBIs. His season totals are now 29 homers and 90
RBIs. And as I mentioned in a post three weeks ago, with MVP-candidate Josh
Donaldson at 35 home runs and Jose Bautista at 31, there’s a good chance we
could see three players from the same team crack the 40 homer plateau in the
same season.
But Edwin is not the only Blue
Jay with a hot bat right now (another understatement). Donaldson smacked three
hits this afternoon, as did Ryan Goins. Justin Smoak had two and Ben Revere, one of the trade deadline pick-ups, had four.
As fans, we have to step back
and observe what we are seeing here. It’s not normal, not only for the Blue
Jays, but for any team. In their last ten games, dating back to the two-game
set with the Philadelphia Phillies, they have scored 75 runs. That’s an average
of 7.5 per game and keep in mind they only managed one against Texas on
Thursday.
They’ve touched home plate 709
times this season, easily leading the league with 105 more than any other team.
Saturday was the 21st time they’ve scored in the double digits.
Since the trade that brought Troy Tulowitzki and LaTroy Hawkins from Colorado,
their record is 23-5. They’ve gone from one game under the .500 mark to 17
games above it.
And don’t let the pitching miss
the credit. Saturday’s starter Drew Hutchison, pitched seven innings, allowing
only one run to improve his record to 13-2. Friday night’s winner, R.A. Dickey,
had a record of 3-10 at the All-Star break, causing me to write in my
mid-season analysis that he was the biggest waste of money on the team. Since
then, he’s won six and lost none. And hey, I’m more than happy to look foolish after
writing that statement.
Bottom line is the talent on
this team is showing, has been for over a month now. The trade deadline acquisitions
have injected life into the other players on the team. Bautista and Encarnacion
seem to have turned it up a notch in their quest to play in the postseason for
the first time.
With one more game left against
the Tigers on Sunday afternoon, the Jays will have a chance for their fifth
series sweep in the month of August. The way they’ve been playing, the runs
scored, the pitching, the comebacks, the demolishing of the other team's pitchers, I’ve never
seen a stretch like this in the thirty years I’ve been watching this team, even
the championship years.
September is just days away and
for the first time in more than two decades, September will mean a lot more
than just the start of another football season.
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