Ranking the 5 best Opening Day performances in Blue Jays history

The Toronto Blue Jays are 22-22 in franchise history on Opening Day games that have featured plenty of memorable moments

Opening Day conjures up images of warm weather, sunny skies, and eternal optimism. For the Toronto Blue Jays, who are preparing to begin their 45th season on Thursday afternoon against the New York Yankees, that hope is shining brightly.

The Blue Jays are coming off their first postseason appearance in four seasons in 2020, behind a young core that boasts Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, and Cavan Biggio. They have a certifiable ace leading their pitching staff in Hyun Jin Ryu, who will take the mound at Yankee Stadium on Opening Day for the second consecutive season. They added free agents George Springer and Marcus Semien in the offseason. For the blossoming Blue Jays, the promising future that awaited them has arrived.

This crop of Blue Jays has little connection with those who wore the uniform in the past; their longest-tenured player, pitcher Ryan Borucki, has only been with the club since 2018. But the Blue Jays do have a rich history in their previous 44 Opening Day games, from dramatic walk-off home runs to a reigning MVP making Major League history.

Here are the top-five Opening Day performances in franchise history.

5. Adam Lind, 2009

The Blue Jays had high hopes for two promising youngsters, Adam Lind and Travis Snider, entering the 2009 season, and for one day before a crowd of 48,000 at Rogers Centre, they lived up to that promise.

Both Lind and Snider were making their first career Opening Day starts when the Blue Jays hosted the Detroit Tigers on April 6, 2009. Two-time World Series-winning manager Cito Gaston was back in the dugout for his first full season as Blue Jays manager in 12 years after replacing John Gibbons midway through 2008. He put Lind, who had never played more than 89 games in three previous seasons in Toronto, fifth in the order behind Vernon Wells and at designated hitter. Opposing him and the Blue Jays lineup was Tigers starting pitcher Justin Verlander.

The Blue Jays got to Verlander early. In Lind’s first plate appearance, he singled to right field, driving in Alex Rios and Wells as part of a four-run outburst in the first inning. In the fourth inning, after Verlander had been lifted for relief pitcher Eddie Bonine, Lind hit a three-run home run to centre field that put the Blue Jays ahead 9-1. He added an RBI single in the eighth inning as the Blue Jays went on to win 12-5. Lind finished the game 4-5 with a franchise Opening Day-record six RBI.

Snider also homered off Verlander in the fourth inning and went 2-4. The two of them, so integral to the Blue Jays future, enjoyed every minute of it. “We were having a good time in the dugout every time one of us came in after a big hit, giving each other some love,” Snider said. “That’s how me and Lindy are, man, it’s a real good working relationship, a good friendship off the field and it should be exciting.”

In the eighth inning, the game was delayed for nine minutes and both clubs sent back to the dugout after fans started throwing baseballs onto the field. But not even that could ruin this day. Verlander was charged for eight earned runs, tying his career-high at the time, in 3.2 innings (his subsequent experience pitching at Rogers Centre has been slightly better).

Lind ended the 2009 season with 35 home runs, 114 RBI, and a .305 batting average, all career-highs. He was one of only three players that season to hit at least 35 homers, drive in at least 110 runs, and bat above .300, along with Albert Pujols of the Cardinals and the Cubs’ Derrek Lee. No Blue Jays player has matched those numbers in a season since.

The Blue Jays rewarded Lind with a four-year, $18 million contract in the offseason. He played for the Blue Jays until 2014, never hitting the heights he reached in 2009, before he was traded to Milwaukee for Marco Estrada.

4. Marcus Stroman, 2019

There were few positives for the Blue Jays to take from an Opening Day loss to Jordan Zimmermann and the Detroit Tigers in 2019, but the performance of starting pitcher Marcus Stroman was one of them.

Stroman, making his second career Opening Day start in front of 45,000 fans at Rogers Centre, went seven shutout innings against the Tigers, limiting Miguel Cabrera, Nick Castellanos, and the rest of the Detroit lineup to only two hits. He took a no-hitter into the sixth inning and left the game after throwing 94 pitches.

He had some assistance. Kevin Pillar made a leaping catch in centre field to rob Jordy Mercer of a hit in the third inning. But Stroman also helped his own cause, making a smooth play on a liner back to the mound by Jeimer Candelario to end the fourth. After striking out the side in the fifth inning, Stroman got two outs in the sixth before giving up a single to Castellanos, ending his no-hit bid.

Stroman finished the game with four walks and seven strikeouts. His outing, though, was overshadowed by Zimmermann’s domination of the Blue Jays lineup. Zimmermann would finish the 2019 season 1-13 with a 6.91 ERA, but on Opening Day against the Blue Jays, he was outstanding. He took a perfect game into the seventh inning, retiring the first 20 batters he faced before Teoscar Hernandez reached on an infield single with two outs.

The Tigers ended up winning 2-0 in extra innings thanks to a two-run home run by Christin Stewart off Daniel Hudson in the 10th, sending the Blue Jays to their eighth straight home opener loss in Charlie Montoyo’s first game as Blue Jays manager.

“He was outstanding. He had no room for error and he gave us a chance,” Montoyo said about his starter after the game. “That’s all you can ask for a pitcher. He was very good.”

Stroman kept it up for the next three months. By the All-Star break, he was eighth in the American League with a 3.18 ERA and earned his first All-Star Game selection. But the problems that plagued him on Opening Day persisted: the Blue Jays couldn’t hit. The club’s .232 average was tied for last in the AL, and Stroman was only 5-9. On July 28, with the Blue Jays 40-66 and 27 games out of first place, Stroman was traded to the New York Mets for Anthony Kay and Simeon Woods Richardson.

3. Tony Batista/Shannon Stewart, 2000

Tony Batista had one of the most unique batting stances in Major League history. He faced the pitcher head-on, completely open as if he was about to start a conversation with him and not hit a 400-foot home run. But hitting home runs, unorthodox stance aside, is something he did a lot of in his 11-year career, and never more so than in the 2000 season. It began on Opening Day.

On a Monday afternoon in April in front of 40,000 fans at the Skydome, Batista hit a two-run home run off Kansas City Royals starter Jeff Suppan in the fourth inning. It put the Blue Jays ahead 3-0, but he wasn’t done there. After closer Billy Koch gave up two runs with two outs in the top of the ninth inning that tied the game, Batista came to the plate in the bottom half of the inning to face Royals relief pitcher Jerry Spradlin.

Spradlin tried to sneak a slider past Batista, who, with his stance, often struggled to reach the outside corner. But he had already seen the pitch and was ready for it. He hit a 404-foot homer to left field that gave the Blue Jays an Opening Day 5-4 win. It remains the only walk-off home run on Opening Day in franchise history.

Batista wasn’t alone on this day, though. Shannon Stewart led off with a home run in the bottom of the first inning and added another in the fifth, both off Suppan. At the time, Batista and Stewart were only the fourth pair of teammates in MLB history to each hit multiple home runs on Opening Day. Stewart played 907 games in a Blue Jays uniform over parts of 10 seasons; this was his only multi-homer game.

“I try to visualize things. I had visualized hitting a home run, so when I hit a  home run, I felt like I was dreaming,” Stewart said about his lead-off home run.

Stewart ended the 2000 season with a career-high 21 home runs. Batista hit 41, one of four times he hit more than 30 in his career. The Blue Jays had four players hit at least 30 home runs that season—Carlos Delgado also hit 41, while Brad Fullmer and Jose Cruz added 32 and 31, respectively—a Major League record at the time. They finished second in the Majors with 244 homers, five behind the Houston Astros.

1. George Bell, 1988

George Bell won the first American League Most Valuable Player Award in Blue Jays franchise history in 1987. So how did he follow it up in 1988? With the best Opening Day performance a Blue Jays player has ever had.

Bell had been named MVP following a career-high 47 home runs and 134 RBI. But the following spring, Manager Jimy Williams wanted Bell to switch from being a full-time outfielder to the club’s designated hitter. Bell balked at the idea, especially after the Blue Jays didn’t give him the money he was asking for. During a Spring Training game, Bell had refused to come out of the dugout to take his turn at-bat.

Bell and Williams weren’t on speaking terms as the Blue Jays prepared to take on the Kansas City Royals to begin the 1988 season. But on a warm, sunny Monday afternoon in Royals Stadium, he let his play do the talking. Bell took the first pitch he saw leading off the second inning over the left-field fence for a home run. In the fourth inning, he hit a 2-2 pitch from Royals starter Bret Saberhagen into the grass in centre for a two-run homer. He added a solo shot, also off Saberhagen, in the eighth, becoming the first player in MLB history with three home runs on Opening Day.

The Blue Jays won the game 5-3, with Saberhagen charged with three earned runs. The two-time Cy Young Award winner started 371 games in a career that spanned 16 years. Bell was the only player to ever hit three home runs off him in a game.

Bell’s relationship with Williams remained strained until the manager was fired 36 games into the 1989 season. Even 25 years later, the ordeal still bothered Bell. “I have nothing bad to say against Jimy. But sometimes when people touch your territory, you have to be a man,” he told the Toronto Sun upon his induction into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2013. “That’s what happened.”

His play on the field, moreover, didn’t match up to expectations. Bell hit just 21 home runs the rest of the season and saw a 23-homer decline from his MVP campaign. A year after leading the division by 3.5 games with a week left, only to lose their last seven, the Blue Jays never seriously contended in 1988. They trailed by as many as 9.5 games in September before winning nine of their last 10 games to finish two behind the Boston Red Sox.

Bell’s feat of three Opening Day home runs was later matched by Tuffy Rhodes in 1994, Dmitri Young in 2005, and Matt Davidson in 2018.