PHILADELPHIA – The Toronto Blue Jays began their seven-game, three-city road trip by trading beloved starter Kevin Gausman on the flight to Houston and finished it with a wild 7-6 loss in 12 innings to the Philadelphia Phillies on Sunday. In between, they pulled off a buy-and-sell deadline, took two of three from the American West-leading Astros, let a victory against the Chicago Cubs slip through their fingers in a make-up game before taking two of three from another National League wild-card holder in the Phillies.
As if that’s not enough, layered in on top of that were:
• Two MRIs – one for Trey Yesavage, who visits a specialist Monday to determine next steps for the meniscus injury in his left knee, one for Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who doubled and scored in his second game back after missing three straight with right hamstring tightness;
• A promising debut for centre-fielder Brett Bateman, part of the return for Gausman, who showed enough to get a start at leadoff against fellow lefty Jesus Luzardo, who struck out 12 in seven innings of two-run ball;
• And four extra-inning games in five days, covering each stop on the trip, with the bullpen throwing 400 pitches in 23 appearances over that span, amid 17 games in 17 days, part of a wider stretch of 30 in 31.
So, it’s been a rather eventful and draining week away. Phew.
“I’m tired, so I always gauge it that if me and the staff are tired, I imagine how the players are feeling,” said manager John Schneider. “They’re gassed. They’re leaving it all out there. Yeah, it’s a tough stretch, but we’re playing good. And I like the fact that we won a series against a really tough team in their place. You’ve got to take that home with you.”
There’s precious little time for them to catch their breath as the Boston Red Sox arrive at Rogers Centre for the first of a four-game series Monday, followed by three against the New York Yankees to wrap up this gruelling run. A six-game road trip to Tampa Bay and the Yankees follows right after, and for the Blue Jays to give themselves a realistic chance at bucking their daunting playoff odds, keeping their heads above water the next two weeks will be essential.
“If we can have the mentality, the intensity, and the cohesiveness, just everyone doing their part, I’ll take my chances with these guys,” said Schneider. “You never know when a team kind of finds itself and turns a corner a little bit. And I like what’s going on in the clubhouse.”
At 56-63, they’re 3.5 games behind the Rangers for the American League’s final wild-card spot. And while there are six teams ahead of them in the standings, the Blue Jays still have three games remaining with each of Texas, Cleveland, Detroit and Seattle, as well as six left with Baltimore.
They were as many as 6.5 games out back on July 24, and a 9-6 stretch since allowed them to close some ground, although the coming two weeks are fraught. Still, the schedule will give them some direct opportunities against the clubs they are chasing if they can keep themselves on the fringes of contention.
“It’s like, (shoot), it’s right in front of us,” Schneider mused earlier this weekend. “Is it going to take some things to fall into place? Yeah, sure. That’s baseball. But the fact that we’re playing them is like, this is still really meaningful. It wasn’t a straight sell at the deadline. It’s not like, ‘Hey, let’s look forward to 2027’ or ‘what’s the lockout going to be?’ It’s like, we’ve got some games to play here and we’ve got a way we’ve got to try to play.”
To that end, the Blue Jays are encouraged by the scrappiness they showed on the road, especially while pulling out a pair of gutsy wins in Philadelphia on Friday and Saturday and even in rallying from 5-2 down in the eighth to force extras Sunday, when RBI singles by Bryson Stott and Derek Hill allowed the Phillies to avoid a sweep.
“We’re playing good ball,” said Max Scherzer, who moved past Walter Johnson for 10th all-time with 3,516 strikeouts. “We’re fighting. It’s a total team effort every single (game) it seems like when we win. That’s our recipe. That’s how we play. We grind, we fight … It just seems like we’re playing like that right now.”
The Phillies initially took control Sunday in the third inning, when Alec Bohm and Justin Crawford opened the inning with singles and Kyle Schwarber then sent a Shane Bieber changeup over the wall in left-centre for a 3-0 lead.
A Guerrero double cashed in by an Alejandro Kirk single in the fourth followed by Bateman’s run-scoring single in the fifth – the rookie’s first big-league RBI – pulled the Blue Jays within one. But Bieber, strong in three of his past four outings, couldn’t keep the Phillies down, as Schwarber’s solo shot in the fifth and Bohm’s RBI single in the sixth extended the lead.
Still, the Blue Jays didn’t relent, as Ernie Clement’s RBI double and Andres Gimenez’s two-run single in the eighth off Orion Kerkering knotted the game up 5-5, setting up the dramatic finish.
The Blue Jays missed opportunities to score in the 10th and 11th innings and after Braydon Fisher, pitching for the fifth time in seven days and having thrown 19 pitches Saturday, put up a pair of zeroes, Jesus Sanchez’s double-play ball in the 12th pushed across the go-ahead run.
But Lazaro Estrada, pitching a third consecutive day for the first time in his career after saving Saturday’s win, didn’t have much left and allowed Stott’s tying single before Hill shot a groundball through a draw-in infield before a crowd of 40,398 at Citizens Bank Park.
“There’s a couple of games, today, the one in Chicago (a 3-2 loss Thursday) that, yeah, you want to win obviously, those are tough to get walked off on,” said Schneider. “But I like the way we’re playing and it’s up to us … to enjoy the flight, rest and bring it again (Monday) and bring it again every single day. If they can play like that, not just this series, but the last week or so, I think we’ll be good.”
To keep it that way, the Blue Jays will need Guerrero to have games like the one he had Saturday night, when he had two hits and a homer; George Springer, who missed a second straight day with left shoulder tightness, to recover quickly; for continued widespread contributions like those from Gimenez, Clement, Sanchez and Straw in recent games; for Bateman, who hit the ground running Friday batting ninth against Zack Wheeler, to keep earning the trust that had him batting leadoff.
“The skills are what we thought, but to get to know his process and how he prepares and how he adjusts, how he takes information in kind of in-game and before games, he’s a baseball player, man,” Schneider said of Bateman. “Conversations with him and the hitting coaches and him and myself and (outfield coach Mark Budzinski), they’re really encouraging. It’s an exciting young player.”
One who’s going to be needed, like everyone else, in a busy stretch, at a difficult time.
“You’ve got to get some of the regular guys off their feet,” Schneider said of managing the fatigue. “You’ve got take care of them knowing that there’s still a lot of meaningful baseball to be played. We know who we’re playing. But it’s going to take everyone to contribute here in the next week.”