TORONTO — The Tigers scored twice in the top of the fifth inning and took a 2-1 lead, but as it turned out, probably squandered their best chance to win the game, as well.
Teoscar Hernandez ignited a four-run sixth inning with a 424-foot, three-run home run to center field, sending the Blue Jays to a 5-3 win at Rogers Centre.
The runs, all unearned, came against former Blue Jays right-hander Derek Law, making his Tigers debut. It was a rough one.
Law drilled Blue Jays slugger Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the hand with a 97-mph sinker. Then he booted a routine comebacker from Lourdes Gurriel Jr., which loaded the bases with one out.
After a sacrifice fly by Bo Bichette, Hernandez locked onto a 93-mph cutter from Law and put it in orbit.
The Tigers have allowed 12 unearned runs in the last five games.
And yet, while they may grouse about the unclean play, they can also lament scoring just twice in that fifth inning, when they banged out three hits with a walk and a hit batsman.
The Tigers started getting to Toronto starter Ross Stripling in the fourth inning. Down 1-0, Victor Reyes and Javier Báez both singled to start the inning, but Miguel Cabrera hushed the rally hitting into a 6-4-3 double play.
The fifth started just as promising, with Eric Haase and Robbie Grossman ripping singles. And it almost ended just as quickly. Stripling's first pitch to Jonathan Schoop was high and tight and it seemed to hit off the nob of the bat.
Schoop, though, stood at home plate shaking out his left hand, saying the ball hit him. The call on the field was fair ball, which the Blue Jays turned into a 1-5-3 double play. The Tigers challenged and indeed, replays confirmed the ball hit Schoop.
With the bases loaded and no outs, Kody Clemens plated the tying run with a sacrifice fly. Right-hander Adam Cimber took over for Stripling and Riley Greene smacked his first pitch into the right-field corner — an RBI double, sending Schoop to third.
Reyes walked, loading the bases again but the Tigers would come up empty.
Cimber made an errant pickoff throw to third base and Schoop tried to score. But the ball caromed off the side wall back to third baseman Matt Chapman made a quick recovery and threw Schoop out at the plate.
Báez tapped back to the mound to end the inning with lots of meat still left on the bone. Same story in the top of the sixth, when they stranded two more on the bases after an RBI single by Schoop.
While one former Blue Jay struggled, another flourished.
Tigers starter Drew Hutchison delivered his best performance of the season. Once upon a time the opening-day starter for the Blue Jays, he allowed just one run and two hits over five innings. The hits and the run came in the first inning — a single and stolen base by Guerrero and an RBI single by Gurriel.
Hutchison attacked the fierce Blue Jays' lineup predominantly with four-seam fastballs. He threw 32 of them in a velocity range of 91 to 95 mph. More importantly, he was keeping them on the edges of the strike zone.
He was able to induce double-play ground balls after walking a hitter in the second and fourth innings. He got a strikeout-caught stealing double play to get out of the first, with Haase throwing out Gurriel.
