For the Blue Jays, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. couldn’t be heating up at a better time

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This article was published 04/09/2021 (1663 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It takes more than one player to get an entire team out of an offensive slump, but Lourdes Gurriel Jr. has been giving it his best shot.

During a stretch when runs were hard to come by for the Blue Jays’ offence, Gurriel stepped up to fill in the gaps. One of the streakiest hitters in baseball, heating up just when his teammates need him the most. Now the others appear ready to join the party.

Less than 24 hours after hitting a game-tying grand slam that helped the Jays overcome a six-run deficit, Gurriel was back in the batter’s box inflicting more damage on Saturday. This time it was a 3-for-5 afternoon, which included a solo homer, a three-run double and a pair of runs to secure a 10-8 victory over the Oakland A’s. Even both of his outs came within a few feet of leaving the park.

In what was a must-win series against fellow wild-card contender Oakland, Gurriel provided the spark and he’s been doing it for a while. Over his last 21 games, Gurriel is batting .368 (25 for 68) with four doubles, four homers and 20 RBIs with a 1.022 OPS.

There’s nobody hotter in the Jays’ lineup than the fourth-year outfielder, and the uptick in production began at almost the exact same time a lot of his teammates went cold. Prior to Gurriel’s grand slam on Friday, the Jays had been averaging just 3.86 runs per game over their last 19. The Cuban was directly responsible for more than a quarter of those.

Gurriel’s strong run continued this weekend while other Jays finally began chipping in. Gurriel sparked the turnaround in the series opener with the third grand slam of his career, joining Carlos Delgado, Darrin Fletcher and Edwin Encarnación as the only Jays to hit at least that many. The following day he ensured the momentum remained in Toronto’s favour with a second-inning shot to give the Jays a lead they never relinquished.

“When you feel like that, when you’re on a run like I am now, of course it’s great,” Gurriel said through an interpreter after he became the eighth player in franchise history to record at least four RBIs in back-to-back games. “The expectations for me are very high right now.”

Gurriel’s production is key to the Jays because it lengthens out their lineup. Despite the recent skid, their offence has been among the league’s best throughout 2021, but for the bulk of that time it has been extremely top heavy. George Springer, Marcus Semien, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette and Teoscar Hernández have been great. After that group, there have been long stretches when it was hard to find value elsewhere.

That changes when Gurriel is performing well, and it becomes even better when guys like Danny Jansen and Breyvic Valera, who both homered Saturday, get in on the action. Depth was supposed to be one of the Jays’ biggest strengths on offence this season. It hasn’t been that way for a while, but if Gurriel keeps this up for much longer it will be a different story.

This has been quite the turnaround for Gurriel. He was batting below .200 as late as May 13 before gradually starting to perform up to his career standards. Since the all-star break, he has a .312 average, .380 on-base percentage and 28 RBIs. His season average has jumped all the way to .277 with an on-base plus slugging that is starting to approach respectability at .763.

When it’s all said and done, Gurriel will finish with another productive season. It just so happens that, as it often does with the 27-year-old, it took a roller-coaster ride with equal amounts of highs and lows to make it happen.

“It makes the lineup a lot better for sure, that’s a fact,” Jays manager Charlie Montoyo said of Gurriel’s streak after the Jays guaranteed they’d win a third consecutive series. “The one thing, how he starts (heating up), is not chasing pitches. Whenever you don’t see him chasing pitches, he’s going to get pitches to hit, and now he has been on fire. It has been fun to watch … He has been really good for a month now. He has been hitting for a while.”

Gurriel’s grand slam prompted Semien to call him “one of the most clutch hitters in the game.” The stats seem to back that up as Gurriel entered Saturday with a slash line of .344/.360/.544 with four homers and 47 RBIs when he comes to bat with runners in scoring position. He added another double and three RBIs to that tally with a bases-loaded knock in the eighth off A’s reliever Burch Smith that broke the game open and helped the Jays survive a five-run scare in the ninth.

The second-inning homer that got things started doesn’t fall into that category, but it was still a timely piece of hitting that allowed the Jays to keep rolling as they moved a season-high nine games above 500. The win moved them within one game of Oakland, and they’ll have a chance to pull even and complete a series sweep on Sunday.

That’s a necessary step for the Jays, who have won six of their last seven, but the bigger goal remains catching the Red Sox for the second wild card. After another Boston win on Saturday, the Jays remained five games back with 28 games to play. That’s still a lot of ground to make up with not much time left, but the uphill climb becomes more doable if Gurriel and others at the bottom of the order continue to lend a helping hand.

Gregor Chisholm is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @GregorChisholm or reach him via email: gchisholm@thestar.ca