The Blue Jays have had trouble with openings in recent years.

Heading into Friday night’s local debut they had lost four straight home openers, showing off a different kind of ineptitude in each year.

Four years ago it was freshly acquired closer Sergio Santos who imploded in the ninth. Then at the outset of the overhyped 2013 campaign, J.P. Arencibia set an inauspicious tone by spending most of the first two innings chasing R.A. Dickey’s knuckleballs to the backstop. In 2014, Dustin McGowan was clobbered by the Yankees, and last year the Jays were nearly no-hit by Jake Odorizzi and the Tampa Bay Rays.

These Jays, the ones who six months ago ended the longest playoff drought in North American pro sports, are supposed to be different. But it happened again Friday night as Toronto blew a five-run lead over the Boston Red Sox to lose their fifth straight home opener, a franchise record.

“Hopefully we don’t lay an egg out there,” manager John Gibbons said in a bit of foreshadowing before the game.

The first game in front of your home fans is not worth any more than any other, but it can be a mood-setter for the season. In 2013 it certainly was. After this year, only time will tell whether the increasingly urgent concern for the Jays’ revamped bullpen is worth all the early season hand-wringing.

After winning the first two games of the season, the Jays have now lost three straight with all three losses charged to the ’pen, which combined to allow three runs on five hits Friday, including a grand slam by Brock Holt, who in the sixth inning got just enough of Jesse Chavez’s second pitch of the game to send it over the wall in right field.

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Home opener had it all, except a Blue Jay win

Gibbons said he isn’t concerned about his relief corps yet.

“We haven’t pitched particularly well, that’s for sure. But they’re good,” he said. “We really anticipate this is going to be one of our strengths, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

Three innings earlier it looked like the Jays’ home-opening curse may be lifted when, with the crowd chanting “MVP! MVP!,” Josh Donaldson — who was limited to designated hitter duties by a strained calf — launched his first grand slam as a Blue Jay into the left-field seats to give the home side a commanding 7-2 lead. But the sold-out crowd was thereafter quieted, first by Holt’s homer and as the lead slipped further away in the hands of Drew Storen and Brett Cecil.

“I’m not really concerned at all about those guys in the bullpen,” Donaldson said. “I feel like they’re going to do a good job. They just have to get acclimated to their surroundings a little bit. I think they’re going to be fine.”

Marcus Stroman, who was betrayed by his typically reliable sinker on Friday, laid the blame at his own feet. He tied his career highs in walks (3) and runs allowed (5) in his 5 1/3 innings.

“We did an unbelievable job swinging the bats and I didn’t do my job in the sense of putting my team in a position to win, so it’s extremely frustrating in that sense,” he said.

So with the season not yet a week old, the Jays are already a game under .500. In another week they could be back atop the division. It’s a long season. But whereas last year was a two-month joy ride through the late summer and into the playoffs, this year — despite Friday’s result — has the potential to be a season-long love-in.

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The Jays have all the makings of a championship team, from a burgeoning ace in Stroman, an MVP-in-his-prime in Donaldson, up-the-middle defence that’s as good as any team in baseball and arguably the deepest lineup in the game.

The new-look bullpen, of course, remains a question mark.

But given the uncertain futures of Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion — not to mention a half-dozen other players on the roster — fans should try to squeeze what they can out of this year.

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