Blue Jays’ offence trending upward
John Gibbons was in a playful mood Wednesday evening after his club’s 5-2 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Clad in the latest Blue Jays’ giveaway swag — an “Edwing” T-shirt, commemorating Edwin Encarnacion’s trademark one-winged homerun trot — Gibbons even held his arm aloft, in the style of his soft-spoken slugger, as he answered post-game questions.
The Jays’ merry manager may not have hit a homer with every one of his answers, but it was a nice tribute to Encarnacion, who clubbed his 19th long ball of the season on Wednesday while collecting his MLB-leading 62nd RBI.
But it wasn’t just Encarnacion’s ongoing offensive surge that had Gibbons in good spirits; Russell Martin and Troy Tulowitzki are also both trending upward at the plate, which bodes well for the Jays going forward.
In Wednesday’s victory, the trio provided all of the Jays’ offence, each homering in front of the sold-out crowd as Toronto snapped a threegame losing streak.
The homer hat trick backed a goodenough outing from J.A. Happ, who notched a season-high eight strikeouts despite only throwing five innings. It seemed a throwback performance for the lanky lefty, who has mostly evolved away from the highstrikeout inefficiency for which he was known in his first go-round in Toronto from 2012 to 2014.
But with the Jays’ bullpen — which, like the offence, has been more reliable of late — throwing four scoreless innings, Happ’s outing was more than enough.
But the most encouraging part of Wednesday’s game was the continued resurgences of Martin, who opened the scoring for the Jays with a three-run homer in the first inning on Wednesday, and Tulowitzki, who added a solo shot in the sixth.
One of the big reasons why the team got off to such a mediocre start to this season, of course, was their underwhelming offence. In particular, they were hurt by early-season slumps from Encarnacion, Martin and Tulowitzki, who were all expected to play key roles in the middle of the Jays’ talent-laden lineup.
At the end of April, all three were producing below league-average levels, let alone anywhere near their allstar expectations.
But as the season has worn on, all three have started to round into form, and with them, so have the Jays. The resurgence is especially important at the moment, with Jose Bautista on the disabled list.
Encarnacion was the first of the three to turn, ramping up his production in May before going on another one of his unstoppable tears.
Martin and Tulowitzki were slower to get going — due in part to respective minor injuries — but they, too, are showing signs they are now hitting like their old selves.
Since hitting his first and second homers of the season at Yankee Stadium on May 25, Martin has hit .293 with six homers and 20 RBI.
Tulowitzki was starting to turn his season around towards the end of last month when he landed on the DL with a strained quad. In the four games since coming off the DL, he has five hits, including two homers.
“They’re a big part of our team,” Gibbons said. “We knew (their slow starts) were not going to last forever. They’ve been too good.”
Even with Josh Donaldson more or less picking up where he left off last season, and Michael Saunders surprising as one of the American League’s best hitters, the only way the Jays can replicate their success is if they can flex the offensive depth that made them such a force in 2015.