TORONTO — Ho-hum. Another day, another four home runs, another dominant victory for the Toronto Blue Jays.
This time it was a series-sweeping, 9-2 victory over the Detroit Tigers, who were chased out of town after being throttled 29-6 over their weekend visit to Canada. The AL East-leading Blue Jays played the game in cruise control, and have now won 24 of their last 29 and have scored nine or more runs in six of their last nine games.
“If this isn’t the feel of a championship team, I don’t know what is,” said catcher Russell Martin, who went 2-for-3 with a walk and a home run Sunday. “We’re great offensively; we’re great on defence; we’re pitching great; our bullpen has depth. I like the way we’re going right now. We’ve just got to keep pushing, keep playing the game the way we play, and I think we’ll do great things this year.”
It’s hard to argue with that. There hasn’t been a hotter team in baseball since the start of the month (the Blue Jays are 21-5 in August) and Sunday’s game was a perfect encapsulation of how Toronto has done it, with the team getting offensive contributions up and down the order in support of a fine outing from Mark Buehrle and three scoreless innings of relief from the bullpen. Blue Jays manager John Gibbons says it’s impossible not to feed off his team’s confidence.
“I think it’s about as high as it can get. We’re playing great baseball. Everything’s really clicking,” Gibbons said. ” You feel like you’re good and you can win—that’s the roll we’re on right now. There’s some pretty good players in there that have good track records. It’s all come together to this point.”
Of course, the Tigers were asking for trouble by sending 34-year-old junkballer Alfredo Simon into the Colosseum on Sunday to wage battle with the pack of agitated lions that is the Blue Jays offence of late. By the end of the first inning the Blue Jays had already homered twice, with Josh Donaldson swatting his 36th and Edwin Encarnacion his 30th, and Simon was not taking it particularly well, throwing a purpose pitch up-and-in to Troy Tulowitzki, which bounced off the backstop and spurred home plate umpire Bob Davidson to warn both dugouts.
In the second Kevin Pillar sent a two-run rocket into the left field seats, before Martin sent a two-run bomb of his own to exactly the same spot in the fourth, and by the next batter, Simon was literally flat on his back on the mound after Pillar sent a screamer straight back in his direction. In the fifth, faced with the unappealing scenario of pitching to the red-hot Encarnacion while behind in the count, Simon lobbed a 47-mph eephus pitch in the direction of the plate that tapped Encarnacion on the shoulder and awarded him first base. It was that kind of afternoon.
“It just seems like everything we’re doing, we’re doing right,” Buehrle said. “I mean, shoot, if we don’t score eight runs, we had a bad day.”
Buehrle sailed through six frames, as he does, scattering five hits and allowing just one earned run while another went unearned as it came after a Donaldson throwing error in the sixth. He came out for the seventh but allowed the first two runners to reach and was lifted by Blue Jays manager John Gibbons at 89 pitches.
There has been some speculation as to whether Buehrle has grown fatigued and generally beat up as the season has worn on, and the pitcher admitted after Sunday’s game he wasn’t feeling his best. Gibbons has been careful to manage the 36-year-old’s workload in the second half, as Buehrle has now thrown less than 100 pitches in nine consecutive outings. Buehrle did seem to be working with diminished velocity—even for him—on Sunday, as his normally 84-mph fastball hovered in the 80-82 mph range throughout the afternoon.
“I don’t know what it is. I’m searching,” Buehrle said. “I don’t know if it’s dead arm or whatever. I don’t know. But I’m going out there trying to give everything I’ve got.”
Both Buehrle and Gibbons praised Martin’s work behind the plate on Sunday, as the catcher got creative with his game calling to get the most out of Buehrle and keep Tigers hitters off balance. Of course, Martin wasn’t eager to accept the plaudits.
“I’m always creative when he’s out there because he can throw so many different pitches with different types of movement on both sides of the plate,” Martin said. “Maybe his fastball was a couple miles an hour shy of what it normally is, but his command was great and he was creating deception with his other pitches. The hitters never really seemed like they were comfortable.”
Buehrle’s ability is a situation to be monitored over the rest of the season, but none of that will matter if he continues being as effective as he has been of late. Buehrle has now gone at least six innings in 18 of his last 20 starts, allowing just three earned runs or less in 16 of them.
“It’s getting to be that time of year where I battle through every start I go out there. You have good days and bad days. I’ve been having more on the bad side than the good side,” Buehrle said. “But I’m still going out there trying to give us a chance to win. We’re still scoring runs. When these guys are out there scoring that many runs, it makes it a lot easier.”
And, really, none of the side stories to this season, whether it’s Buehrle’s arm or Martin’s hamstring (which the catcher says is feeling much better) or who’s batting leadoff, will matter if the Blue Jays continue to win the way they have been. With Sunday’s victory, the team extended its league-best run total to 718 (over 100 more than the second-place New York Yankees) and edged it’s borderline unbelievable run differential to +193.
A little more than a month ago the Blue Jays were in direct competition with these Tigers, the Minnesota Twins, the Los Angeles Angels and the Texas Rangers for one of the two American League wild card spots. In the time since, they’ve played a series against each of those teams and won every single game save for a lone loss to the Rangers on Thursday.
Download it now: iOS | Android | Windows
The wild card is, of course, now well in the rearview for the Blue Jays who have a 71 per cent chance of winning the AL East, according to Baseball Prospectus, and a 99.6 per cent chance of reaching the post-season in general. If the team simply plays .500 ball for the rest of the season, they’ll reach 90 wins.
“It just seems like everything we’re doing, we’re doing right. We’re playing defence, we’re moving the guy over, obviously we’re hitting home runs,” Buehrle said. “I think it’s one of those things where you just look at the whole picture and in every aspect of baseball we’re doing pretty good.”
Yup, just another typical day for the Blue Jays.