TORONTO -- The final pitch of Matthew Boyd’s second inning sent Billy McKinney’s bat flying into the box seats behind first base as the Blue Jays swung and missed at the fastball out of the zone. It was Boyd’s fifth strikeout in six batters, and he added two more in the third, flummoxing old teammates while continuing his stingy pitching from 2018.

“The first three innings is probably some of the best stuff I’ve ever seen him have,” catcher John Hicks said.

As Boyd walked back to the dugout in the fourth inning, he had a four-run deficit on his way to a 6-0 loss to the club that drafted him and dealt him in the David Price trade four years ago.

After a 2018 season in which Boyd emerged as a front-line starter, it was a frustrating debut that had hints of his old struggles with the big inning. At the same time, he didn’t need to search far for ways to get past it.

“It’s unfortunate that inning cost me the game,” Boyd said. “It’s not like I’m sitting here with my tail between my legs or anything. Just look at it for what it is: I threw the ball pretty well and then I made some mistakes, and that was what cost me the game today.”

Boyd’s breakout 2018 season included a bump in his strikeout rate by a full strikeout per nine innings, from 7.3 to a career-high 8.4. By relying less on the fastball in favor of more offspeed pitches, Boyd became more deceptive. But rarely had he looked as deceptive as he did for his first few innings Friday.

After Brandon Drury drove Boyd’s first pitch off the fence and past center fielder Mikie Mahtook for a leadoff triple, Boyd stranded him at third by striking out Toronto’s next three batters swinging at three different pitches. Randal Grichuk chased an 0-2 slider in the dirt. Justin Smoak swung out of a 3-1 count with back-to-back curveballs. Once Teoscar Hernandez chased an 0-2 fastball up and out of the zone, Boyd was out of trouble.

Boyd induced swings and misses on 13 pitches through three innings, nearly half of them out of the strike zone. He had induced 13 swinging strikes in just two of 31 starts last year, according to Statcast. Once Grichuk drew a five-pitch walk to lead off the fourth, however, the Blue Jays found a better approach.

“Boyd was dealing,” Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo said. “He was throwing his breaking ball for strikes. But we made an adjustment, we started going up the middle and that was big in the game.”

Three of the four hits that followed were through the middle and into center field. Two of them came with two strikes.

Smoak fouled off a 2-1 curveball to put Boyd within range of his eighth strikeout, but made Boyd pay for a 2-2 fastball in the zone.

“We had him set up right,” Boyd said. “I just kind of fought myself, overthrowing a little bit instead of just trusting it. That was the difference.”

Hernandez did the opposite, shrugging off the 1-2 fastball off the plate before Boyd hung a slider that he laced up the middle for an RBI single.

That ended Detroit’s shutout streak at 13 innings -- but it shouldn’t have decided the contest. Boyd retired the next two batters and nearly kept the damage at a lone run. Up came McKinney, who had lost his bat striking out a couple innings earlier.

McKinney fell into an 0-2 count and ended up chasing a 1-2 slider out of the zone. But he got enough of it to hit a slow grounder to second for an infield single that extended the inning for Freddy Galvis.

Like with Smoak, Boyd looked again to use the curveball to set up the fastball. But after dropping the curveball into the middle of the zone, he left the fastball over the heart of the plate. Galvis lined it back through the middle for two runs. Mahtook bobbled the ball for another tally.

Boyd threw 34 pitches that inning. He returned for the fifth and struck out two more batters for 10 strikeouts on the night, one off his career high.

On the scorecard, the fourth inning looked like a blip in an otherwise dominant inning. On the scoreboard, it was the difference in a loss. Boyd is no stranger to big innings, but they usually turn on a home run. This time, it turned without an extra-base hit in the inning.