Now THAT is how you start the second half of the season. The Blue Jays came back from the All-Star break and welcomed the Red Sox with a 28-5 beatdown at Fenway Park. It’s safe to say that this game was worthy of a mercy rule, and everyone in the ballpark would’ve been okay with it. Red Sox fans were booing in literally every single inning, even to cover up some “Let’s go Blue Jays!” chants.

It would be hard to mention every run scored by the Blue Jays tonight because it would simply have as many words as the United States Constitution. Tough night for those who took the under!

The best and most comical of the 28 runs came from Raimel Tapia, who hit an inside-the-park grand slam. Randal Grichuk could never! On a 0-0 offering from Red Sox reliever Austin Davis, Tapia skied a ball into deep center field, and judging on his body language, Tapia assumed that he would be out. On what should have been a routine fly ball, Red Sox CF Jaren Duran never saw the ball, and instead, stood completely still as the ball landed in front of the center field wall. Tapia went from “Damn, I’m out” to 355 mph in no time, and he cleared the bases for his fifth home run of the season.

There is a bit of irony with Duran here, as he hit an inside-the-park home run against the Blue Jays last season off of Steven Matz.

If you’re somehow not amused by that, in the 5th inning, Matt Chapman popped a ball up between home plate and the pitcher’s mound with a hit probability of 1% (per Shi Davidi of Sportsnet), and it fell in front of Rafael Devers and Kevin Plawecki for an RBI single. Hahahaha!

The 28 runs scored in tonight’s game is a Blue Jays franchise record for runs scored in a single game, surpassing a 24-run performance against Baltimore in 1978. Furthermore, the 28 runs broke a Red Sox franchise record for most runs allowed in a game (both stats per Sarah Langs of MLB.com). Pretty much the only record they didn’t break was the MLB record for runs in a game, which is 30, held by the Texas Rangers in 2007 against the Orioles.

Hm, good opportunity to point out that the Rangers have never won a World Series and the Orioles are the teams many teams can set records against! Anyways, back to tonight’s game…

To continue with the records, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. tied a franchise record with 6 hits in a single game (Frank Catalanotto, 2004).

This type of game allowed the Red Sox to run through several relievers, setting the Jays up for more offensive success throughout the rest of this series.

Getting lost in the headlines was Kevin Gausman, who earned his 7th win of the season. Perhaps his biggest feat was winning with umpire Doug Eddings behind home plate, the same umpire who had a 64% Called Strike Accuracy on June 21st during a Blue Jays-White Sox game. Ironically, Eddings pissed off Boston starter Nathan Eovaldi in the 3rd inning with his calls in a Teoscar Hernandez at-bat.

Alek Manoah is slated to start tomorrow for the Jays, who looks to keep the good vibes rolling. Kutter Crawford will go for the Red Sox.

While this game truly was a team effort, here are several Jays who had fabulous contributions tonight:

Let’s do it again tomorrow, eh?