TORONTO -- Robbie Ray lost his first battle of the game, a seven-pitch saga against Enrique Hernández that ended in a walk. In past seasons, that might’ve snowballed into greater problems -- walks have long been a prominent nemesis for Ray, the Major League leader (45) a season ago.

Present day Ray is different, though. He’s in attack mode at every turn. So that leadoff walk didn’t give way to further trouble -- it was followed by 13 straight batters retired, as Ray helped lead the Blue Jays to a 1-0 win in Game 1 of Saturday’s seven-inning doubleheader at Rogers Centre.

“Early on in my career, I might’ve let [the walk] get to me,” Ray said. “A battle like that, where you throw a lot of pitches and then a guy ends up getting on first with a walk. But I feel like throughout my career, I’ve done a pretty good job of just letting that go and just kind of turning the page and saying, ‘OK, he’s on. There’s nothing I can do about it now. Let’s refocus, get back in the zone and go after the next guy.’”

Marcus Semien broke the scoreless tie in the bottom of the seventh, sending Matt Barnes’ first pitch up and over the left-field wall. Semien's walk-off homer was just the second hit of the game for Toronto, but it provided the decisive blow in a gritty pitchers’ duel.

Maintaining his typically high diet of mid-90s fastballs -- with enough sharp sliders mixed in -- Ray worked six innings of two-hit, scoreless ball while striking out five. That goes down as his 11th quality start in his past 13 outings; he has a 2.30 ERA in that span.

Ray’s only near-problematic inning came in the sixth, when another leadoff walk threatened to smear his stat line. He issued a free pass to Bobby Dalbec and Jonathan Araúz followed with a single. After Ray froze the next batter for a strikeout, he appeared to produce the double play needed to escape. Alex Verdugo did not touch first base, but upon replay review, he was ruled safe regardless. No harm for Ray, however, as Xander Bogaerts popped out in the following at-bat.

“It was taking a long time for them to make a decision on it, so something just didn’t seem right to me,” Ray said. “But I just tried to stay focused, threw some extra warmup pitches to try to get my focus back. And when they called him safe, at that point, I was already locked in and ready to go.”

Ray exited without a lead. So did B.C. native, Nick Pivetta, who pitched for Boston and made his second ever start on home soil, and kept the Blue Jays scoreless in six strong innings.

Enter, Semien.

He wasted no time turning on an inside heater from Barnes, and the 361-foot fly ball had just enough to leave the yard and end the game. Barnes, Boston’s closer, had allowed just two homers in 100 at-bats against right-handed hitters this season. Semien is on a bit of a power surge now, as each of his hits over his past three games have gone for extra bases (three doubles and a home run).

“​​It was amazing,” Ray said of Semien’s winner. “Everybody was screaming and yelling. It was a fun little experience, for sure.”