Three things are certain in life: Death, taxes, and the Toronto Blue Jays going scoreless in the first inning.
At least it’s felt that way of late as the Jays’ woes continued, failing to score in the first for the 29th straight game despite going up against the hapless Oakland Athletics on Friday night.
With yet another zero tabbed on the scoreboard, Toronto now holds sole possession of second place on the all-time leaderboard for first-inning scoreless streaks, per SportRadar.
They’re only two away from tying the 1937 Boston Bees, who set the mark to beat at 31 straight.
Luckily for Toronto, to avoid that historic mark they’ll get to face off against the Oakland Athletics this weekend, who give up the second-highest rate of first-inning runs in MLB, allowing a run 40.63 per cent of the time. Toronto, however, has only scored in the first inning in 12.9 per cent of games this season.
Those numbers didn’t work in their favour on Friday night though as the top three went down in order to A’s lefty Hogan Harris.
Davis Schneider struck out, Justin Turner grounded out and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. followed suit, resulting in a quick opening frame that’s become all-too-common for Toronto this season.
They last time they saw a first-inning tally on the scoresheet was on May 4 against the Washington Nationals. They broke the franchise record on May 29 against the Chicago White Sox.
Friday was the opening game of the Blue Jays’ weekend series, with Sunday set to be the decisive mark that could see them potentially tie up the 1937 Bees’ all-time record.
To pass them, they’ll have to get blanked by the Milwaukee Brewers on Monday, June 10.
History awaits.