TORONTO - A home run on his first big-league pitch. A double, single and another homer in the at-bats that followed. A curtain call where fans showered him with adoration. The crowd of 24,168 chanting his name.
That's the stuff of fairy tales when it comes to a debut in the majors.
That was J.P. Arencibia's afternoon Saturday.
The 24-year-old catching prospect made an instant impact, fitting right in on a memorable day of home-run derby for the Toronto Blue Jays in a 17-11 rout of the Tampa Bay Rays.
Aaron Hill also homered twice while Jose Bautista, Adam Lind, Edwin Encarnacion and Lyle Overbay went deep too as the Blue Jays (58-52) mashed eight longballs for just the second time in franchise history. The other was Sept. 14, 1987, when they hit a major-league record 10 against Baltimore.
The eight homers allowed set a new franchise low for the Rays (67-43) while a shellshocked James Shields became just the eighth pitcher in the modern era to give up six bombs in a single outing.
The game was a stat geek's dream, with seemingly every hit having a footnote attached to it. Among the other highlights:
-- The last pitcher to get rocked for six homers in a game was R.A. Dickey for Texas by Detroit on April 6, 2006;
-- Arencibia is the first Blue Jays player to homer in his first at-bat since Junior Felix did it May 4, 1989 against the Angels. Felix, who took Kirk McCaskill of Kapuskasing, Ont., deep, also did it on his first pitch;
-- The last player to collect hits in his first three big-league at-bats was Kaz Matsui with the Mets on April 6, 2004;
-- According to baseball-almanac.com, Arencibia is the 26th player to homer on their first pitch in the majors;
-- The last big-leaguer to homer on his first pitch was Boston's Daniel Nava on June 12, 2010.
In short, it was a good day not to be a pitcher.
It was, however, an excellent day for Arencibia, a 2007 first-round pick whose arrival in the majors has long been anticipated.
The Miami native has been smoking hot at triple-A Las Vegas all season after struggling last year with vision problems caused by an astigmatism and a kidney issue. Both were corrected with off-season surgery and he returned to clubbing minor-league pitchers until getting called up Wednesday, after all-star John Buck's right thumb was caught by an Alex Rodriguez foul tip.
Arencibia will get the bulk of the catching duties until Buck returns, but all bets are off after that. The coming days do, however, give him a chance to provide the front office a first-hand look at his progress calling games and handling a pitching staff, the two areas he most needs to develop.
Few catchers could have helped the pitchers in this one.
Brad Mills, taking over in the Blue Jays rotation for surgery-bound Jesse Litsch, was handed an early 8-2 lead but couldn't escape the fourth and ended up surrendering five runs. He left the bases loaded for Brian Tallet (2-4), who allowed two of the runners to score but escaped the jam up 8-5 and held things together from there.
Shields (10-10) had an even more miserable performance, giving up eight runs in four frames on nine hits and four walks. And that scoreline was fortunate given he worked out of a bases-loaded, none-out jam in the first.
Yunel Escobar opened the scoring with an RBI double in the first, Arencibia's two-run shot in the second made it 3-0, and after B.J. Upton's RBI double and Dan Johnson's run-scoring single made it a one-run game in the third, the Blue Jays took control in the bottom half on homers by Lind, Hill, and Encarnacion.
Bautista and Hill added solo shots in the fourth and after Tampa Bay's three-run fifth, an RBI single by Vernon Wells, a two-run single by Lind and a two-run double by Hill, who matched a career-high with four RBIs, made it 13-5.
Arencibia's second homer came in the sixth and Overbay added a three-run blast in the seventh after Johnson ripped a two-run shot in the top of the frame.
Reid Brignac's sacrifice fly scored one run and Travis Snider's throwing error allowed another to come home in the top of the ninth off David Purcey, while Gabe Kapler added an RBI double and Willy Aybar a run-scoring groundout against Casey Janssen.
Notes: Bautista has now homered in 10 straight series, matching Carlos Delgado's franchise record. ... Jose Molina will catch Brandon Morrow in Sunday's series finale, as he has exclusively for most of the season, but the right-hander has no problems with manager Cito Gaston's desire to break up the pairing at some point. "That's fine," he said. "Having Mo back there has been extremely beneficial in learning how you have to approach pitching a game. The way her calls a game has really kind of opened my eyes to what kind of pitches I need to be throwing." ... Arencibia and Mills met with Molina, Buck and pitching coach Bruce Walton before the game to go over the game plan.
