Blue Jays infielder Will Wagner, but the hitting hasn’t changed which led…
Another young Jay with great bloodlines, Wagner has not looked at all out of place in the earliest stages of his career.
Will Wagner did not take kindly to his first career 0-fer.
The young hitting sensation, acquired from the Houston Astros in the Yusei Kikuchi trade, had never gone hitless in a game in which he had an at-bat until flying out as a pinch-hitter for Brian Serven in the seventh inning of Wednesday’s 11-7 Blue Jays’ loss to the Cincinnati Reds.
He made up for it Thursday by accomplishing another first in his 11-day-old major-league career.
The 26-year-old came to the plate in the second inning after the Jays took a 1-0 lead on back-to-back doubles by Spencer Horwitz and Alejandro Kirk. He got a 2-and-2 fastball at the bottom of the strike zone and whacked it — at 104.6 miles per hour off the bat — right back up the middle for a single that scored Kirk and doubled the Jays’ lead.
It was Wagner’s first hit against a major-league lefty. He had gone 0-for-7 against southpaws to that point, while hitting a whopping .588 against right-handers.
Ernie Clement followed with his third home run in as many games (and fourth in eight), a two-run shot on a pitch at his eyes. It was the second-highest pitch hit for a home run in the Statcast era (since 2008) at 4.6 feet off the ground.
The Jays raced out to a five-run lead after two innings and rode five innings of three-hit shutout relief from Ryan Yarbrough to a 5-3 win over the Los Angeles Angels at Rogers Centre in the opener of a four-game series.
The visitors didn’t score until there were two out in the ninth when Niko Kavadas blasted a three-run homer off Tommy Nance for his first major-league hit.
Wagner, as he was when he went 5-for-8 in Anaheim last week, was right in the middle of it.
“It’s been a good first week and couple of days,” said the rookie, understatedly, in an interview that airs on the current episode of Deep Left Field, the Star’s baseball podcast. “I’m just looking to build on that and keep going.”
Another young Jay with great bloodlines — his father, Billy Wagner, was one of the greatest closers of all-time and is a near-lock to be elected to the Hall of Fame next year — Wagner has not looked at all out of place in the earliest stages of his career.
“He’s been just so impressive with his consistence in everything,” said manager John Schneider.
One would expect that a kid who ripped the first pitch he ever saw in the major leagues into the right-centre gap for a double would be cool and confident, but the Houston native says otherwise.
“I’m a nervous person,” said Wagner, who had never been to Canada before arriving with the Jays on Sunday night. “So I just got in there and tried to play with a lot of confidence … I think I was more nervous in the locker room just waiting around for the game to start.”
