Article: The Greatest Opening Day Performances in Blue Jays History

[Mack Longpre]

Using Win Probability Added to determine the most valuable Opening Day players in franchise history.

Joyeux Noel baseball fans! Opening Day is upon us! Every year I make the not-really-a-joke to my family and friends that this is the only holiday I care to celebrate, and this year is no different. I will be taking the afternoon off to watch with friends over hot dogs and beer, doing the usual prognosticating and finger-crossing for the season to come — predicting lineups, call-ups, rotation variations, bullpens, over- and under-performers, and figuring out any way to overly-optimistically arrange the Blue Jays into first place in the fantastical, subjectively theorized division race I've played out in my head. Opening Day is also a fun occasion to look back on all of the Opening Days of my past — to fondly remember the thrill of a new season and the eagerly felt hope of the fresh starts baseball fans get to enjoy every spring.

I remember some pretty fantastic Opening Days (and some pretty lousy ones). And there are plenty I don't remember or for which I was not yet online. As this is a season of celebration and happiness, I thought it might be a good time to revisit some of the best individual Opening Day performances in Blue Jay history. To do this, I'll be looking at players' Opening Day WPA (win probability added) to find out who contributed the most to the Blue Jays' chances of winning game number one. In case you're not familiar with WPA, FanGraphs has a primer here, but the gist is that a WPA shows how much an individual player (or even an individual play) changed the team's win expectancy. Below is a top-ten list of Blue Jay Opening Day performances ranked by WPA in ascending order. All the numbers in this article came via the indispensable Stathead.

Before we dive in, maybe it's a good idea to calibrate expectations and look at the highest Opening Day WPAs of all time. On the pitching side, Walter Johnson shows up twice in the top three, with WPAs of 1.552 during a fifteen-inning complete game shutout in 1926, and 1.163 during a thirteen-inning complete game shutout in 1919. On the offensive side, the highest Opening Day WPA was generated by former Blue Jay Raúl Mondesi while he was with the Dodgers. He set a mark of 1.056 in 1999 by going 4-5 with two homers and a walk, while collecting ten total bases in an 8-6 win over the Diamondbacks. With that, now that our brains are tuned to great Opening Day WPA marks, let's dive in.

10. Jim Clancy – 1984 (0.362 WPA): Opening Day 1984. Hope is in the air. The Blue Jays finally fielded a winning team the year before and are expected to keep that momentum rolling and compete for the division. The 1984 Jays started on the road in Seattle and, spoiler alert, lost the game, 3-2, in 10 innings. But Jim Clancy twirled a gem. He went 7 2/3 innings, allowed just five hits and one run (a Ken Phelps solo shot in the seventh), walked three, and struck out five. Aside from the homer, Clancy pitched around four singles and didn't allow a runner to get past second base. Poor Dennis Lamp was the goat for the Jays. He was tagged with a blown save and the loss. He came on in relief of Clancy, allowed the Mariners to tie the game in the ninth, then gave up the game-winning single in the 10th. Lamp's WPA for the game was -0.551.

9. Roberto Alomar – 1994 (0.376 WPA): The reigning World Series champions took on their ALCS nemeses from the year before, hosting the White Sox for the season opener. Cito Gaston fielded essentially the same squad from 1993, with the addition of young phenoms Carlos Delgado and Alex Gonzalez. On the bump, Juan Guzmán faced off against Cy Young Award winner Jack McDowell. Alomar's first-inning single led to a caught stealing, but it was his lead-changing three-run home run in the seventh that netted him all of that WPA and helped the Jays trounce the Sox, 7-3.

8. Teoscar Hernandez – 2022 (0.402 WPA): After a 2021 season that may have been the strongest this current core has seen, but without a playoff appearance to show for it, the 2022 Blue Jays were out for blood. They opened at home against the Rangers. José Berrios lasted all of one out before getting yanked, having been tagged for four runs. Down 7-0 in the fourth, Hernandez's walk kept the line moving during a three-run inning. In the fifth, he followed a Vladimir Guerrero Jr. RBI single with a three-run, game-tying blast off of Josh Sborz. With the game knotted at 8-8 in the seventh, Hernandez drew another walk before scoring from first on a Lourdes Gurriel Jr. double. A Danny Jansen homer in the eighth put the game away, and the Jays came out on top, 10-8.

7. Jack Morris – 1992 (0.435 WPA): Making his first start since arguably the greatest pitching performance in World Series history (during which he accumulated 0.845 WPA and 77.59% cWPA), Jack Morris was one of two shiny new toys for the Blue Jays heading into 1992. The other, Dave Winfield, was DH'ing and batting fourth in this game, which was played at Morris's old office in Detroit against the Tigers. Bill Gullickson started for the Tigers and surrendered three runs. That was more than enough for Morris, as he allowed only two runs on five hits, walked three, struck out seven, and pitched a complete game. The only two Tiger runs came in the ninth inning on solo home runs by Cecil Fielder and Rob Deer, as the Jays cruised to a 4-2 Opening Day victory.

6. George Bell – 1988 (0.443 WPA): The reigning American League MVP wasted no time showing out for the 1988 season. This may be the Opening Day performance most fondly remembered by Jays fans. The Jays beat the Royals, 5-3, in Kansas City. Jimmy Key, David Wells, Mark Eichhorn, and Tom Henke took care of the mound duties for the Jays, while Bret Saberhagen pitched eight innings before giving way to Dan Quisenberry. Saberhagen's only real blemishes were created by George Bell. Bell led off the second inning with a solo home run, clobbered a two-run shot in the fourth to take the lead, then hit a third homer in the eighth to put the Jays up 5-3. Bell became the first player in Major League history to homer thrice in a season opener, a feat which has been equaled only three times since.

5. Julian Merryweather – 2021 (0.451 WPA): Remember the promise of Julian Merryweather? This feels like a baseball lifetime ago. He really made his mark on this day in New York and had Yankee fans shaking in their boots. I remember the chatter from Yankees fans. They were legitimately scared of this guy! Hyun Jin Ryu and Gerrit Cole toed the rubber in this game and left with almost identical box scores, each having given up two runs over 5 1/3 innings pitched. The game was tied at two heading into the tenth. With the zombie runner rule in full effect, Randal Grichuk's leadoff double put the Jays up 3-2. Jordan Romano was used in the ninth, so the bottom of the tenth belonged to Merryweather. Aaron Judge was the Yankees' zombie runner, and Aaron Hicks, Giancarlo Stanton, and Gleyber Torres were due up. Merryweather set them down in order in the most decisive fashion. That inning was near-immaculate, and certainly one of the most dominant innings of pitching I've ever watched - one strikeout looking and two swinging and the Jays had their Opening Day victory.

4. Marcus Stroman – 2019 (0.456 WPA): The 2019 was one to forget, but at least Marcus Stroman started off strong. The Tigers came to Toronto for the season opener and threw Jordan Zimmermann against a pretty limp Blue Jay lineup. Stroman and Zimmermann matched zeroes (and WPAs) over seven innings. Both packed it in after that and allowed their bullpens to sort things out. The Tiger bullpen only allowed one hit the rest of the way. The Jays' bullpen allowed two hits, both coming in the 10th inning, the second a home run by Christian Stewart to put the Tigers in front for the final score of 2-0. Over his seven innings, Stroman only allowed two hits, while striking out seven and walking four. Stroman would become a Met in July and net the Jays Anthony Kay and Simeon Woods-Richardson.

3. George Springer – 2023 (0.501 WPA): After their death-defying comeback against the Rangers in the season opener the year before, the Blue Jays enjoyed yet another absolutely bizarre season-opening victory. The Jays started the year on the road in St. Louis, providing the first glimpse of a faltering Alek Manoah. Adam Wainwright sang the national anthem. All of that was bizarre enough. But this back-and-forth game just kept delivering oddity after oddity. George Springer was the leadoff man and he went 5-for-6 with one RBI and one run scored. He led off the game with a single and scored on a Daulton Varsho double as the Jays jumped out in front, 3-0. He singled again in the second and again scored on a double, this time from Bo Bichette, putting Toronto up 4-1. Springer singled again to lead off the fourth and came around later on a sacrifice fly, making it 5-3 Toronto. Trailing 7-6 in the eighth, he led off that inning with his fourth single and scored his fourth run two batters later on a two-run single from Vladdy, flipping the score to 8-7. Yimi García blew the save in the eighth, allowing two runs to score. Down a run in the ninth, and with the first two batters on base, Springer collected his fifth single of the day to tie the game, before Guerrero put the Jays ahead for good, capping a 10-9 Opening Day victory.

2. Tony Batista – 2000 (0.599 WPA): Perhaps you remember this one from yesterday. Jim Fregosi's 2000 Blue Jays were a respectable team, playing in a bad era to be anyone but the Yankees or Red Sox. They opened the season at home against the Royals, featuring Johnny Damon, Carlos Beltrán, Jermaine Dye, and the Blue Jays' current third base coach, Carlos Febles. David Wells started for the Jays, while Jeff Suppan went to the hill for the Royals. Third baseman Tony Batista batted sixth and his three hits and three RBI helped the Jays win the game, 5-4. He padded the Jays' lead to 3-0 with a two-run homer in the fourth. He led off the seventh, trying unsuccessfully to stretch his leadoff single into a double. In the ninth, with Toronto leading 4-2, Royals' pinch hitter, Gregg Zaun, tied the game with a two-run single off of Billy Koch. In the bottom of the tenth, Batista came to bat with the game tied, two out, and none on. On the second pitch of the at-bat, he drilled his second home run of the game, this one a walk-off, to deep left field. Batista's 0.599 WPA in this game is the 33rd-most valuable Opening Day performance by an offensive player in AL/NL history.

1. Luis Pérez – 2012 (0.732 WPA): Luis Pérez played parts of three seasons in the big leagues, all with the Jays. He was a middle reliever tucked away on the team's depth charts. And his performance out of the Toronto bullpen during game number one in Cleveland netted him the top Opening Day WPA in Blue Jay history, which is also the 26th all-time for pitchers in Opening Day history. This contest was the longest season opener by duration in the history of the game. The sixteen-inning affair looked like it should have ended in a tidy Cleveland win in regulation, but a Blue Jay rally in the ninth scored three runs and deadlocked the game at four. This tie held through six extra innings before JP Arencibia knocked a three-run homer in the sixteenth to put the Jays ahead for good. Pérez entered in relief of Carlos Villanueva in the bottom of the twelfth with two on and one out. He walked the first batter he faced to load the bases, then induced a double play into the teeth of a five-man infield to end the inning. He worked around a one-out walk for a scoreless thirteenth, pitched a clean fourteenth, then pitched around another walk en route to a scoreless fifteenth. After the Arencibia home run, Pérez started the bottom of the sixteenth by getting a groundout before relinquishing the ball to closer Sergio Santos to lock down the save and the Opening Day victory. All told, Pérez earned the win with four innings of scoreless, no-hit ball, including three walks and three strikeouts. It was a masterful relief performance, and it kept the Jays in the game for a lot longer than what this uninspiring 2012 squad deserved.

There are a handful of surprising and not-so-surprising names and performances on this list. George Springer and his 5-for-6 day in 2023, Tony Batista with his walk-off homer in 2000, and George Bell, with his history-making three-homer game are all no brainers. Jack Morris, Jim Clancy, Marcus Stroman, and Julian Merryweather, though dominant in their outings, maybe flew under my personal WPA radar. And in particular, one might think that JP Arencibia, with his sixteenth-inning homer in 2012, would have taken the WPA crown for that game. Seeing that the honour went to little-known reliever Luis Pérez is a fun discovery. Maybe we'll see another name added to this list after Opening Day 2025. While you're tuning in and tucking into hot dogs and beer, keep an eye out on both sides of the ball for valuable contributions in either a winning or losing effort. If we've learned anything from this WPA top-ten, it's that Richard Lovelady is as likely to make history as Guerrero this Opening Day.

View full article