TORONTO – Fortunes can change fast in this 60-game season and with the groundwork for the Aug. 31 trade deadline well underway, decision time is coming for a bubble team like the Toronto Blue Jays.
Consider that at the beginning of the week, coming out of that dreadful Sunday in which they dropped two winnable games to the Tampa Bay Rays and lost Bo Bichette to a right knee sprain, FanGraphs projected their post-season odds at 22.2 per cent.
Since then, the Blue Jays swept three games from the Baltimore Orioles before coming back in both games Thursday for a doubleheader sweep of the Philadelphia Phillies, including a remarkable rally from a seven-run deficit to win the nightcap 9-8. Rowdy Tellez keyed the comeback by starting the sixth with a solo shot that at 117.4 m.p.h. was the second-hardest hit ball of the season, and capped it with a two-run single that pushed across the go-ahead run.
Lourdes Gurriel Jr., who delivered a walk-off single to win the opener 3-2, added a three-run homer in the decisive sixth, and suddenly the 12-11 Blue Jays are holders of the second wild-card, their playoff odds at 49.6 per cent ahead of a four-game set at the Rays this weekend.
“We know going into any inning where we’re in a deficit that it can change any second,” said Tellez, back in action after taking an elbow to the head at first base Monday. “We’ve talked a lot amongst our staff, amongst our players that we have a lineup top to bottom that can hit 30 homers apiece. We believe we can break the home run record, we believe that when we get to the box, one swing can change a game. With that mindset and that kind of confidence, there’s not much that’s going to hold us back.”
Between that swag and the wild swing in the standings, that’s a lot of volatility to factor into the decision-making process for today’s often uber-cautious baseball executive, counterbalanced by opportunity of an expanded eight-team post-season.
Assuming there are no postponements, the Blue Jays will have played 33 games by the time Aug. 31 arrives, “a small sample size” that makes it “more challenging to determine” exactly what a team is really working with, said general manager Ross Atkins.
Still, “we’re going to be thinking about how do we make this group better? How do we add to it? How do we complement it?” he added. “That doesn’t mean that we won’t consider some level of subtraction, but it is something (where) we’re thinking about making this foundation stronger for 2021 and ’22. And the calculus in the equation is different this year.”
Put through the GM-speak to English dictionary, the Blue Jays must show something in the next 10 days or players on expiring contracts could be on the move.
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Even that wouldn’t be easy, as the industry faces a number of challenges beyond simply keeping everyone healthy amid the pandemic. The vast majority of prospects, for instance, aren’t playing, and properly evaluating and valuing the deadline’s prime currency is going to be a mixed bag, as even in the best of times minor-leaguers fluctuate like a venture stock.
Then there’s measuring out how legitimate the contention opportunity is, and how much simply making the playoffs to be fodder for the beasts of the American and National Leagues is worth. Both will be measured differently by the fringe contenders.
Finally, there’s also the financial piece amid the current economic realities, which has led to speculation that there will be more traditional baseball trades, although some teams may simply be seeking salary relief, too. The Blue Jays, with a relatively small number of commitments on the books for 2021 and beyond, have more flexibility than most that could allow for some creativity, although Atkins sounded a cautious note on that front.
“We are in a good position that we feel like we can make the organization better,” he said. “It’s hard to say how exactly all teams are viewing (the financial piece). We certainly ask those questions and there is still a lot of uncertainty there. We’re just thinking about things we can control. We’re fortunate that we’re in the position that we know if we have a deal that makes sense for this organization, that we can take it to Mark (Shapiro, the president and CEO) and Mark can take it to ownership.
“Ultimately, it’s not something that we can just unilaterally do and decide, but we do feel confident that we can take that information and those opportunities to Mark to present ownership. And we’re excited to be in that position.”
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The Blue Jays do expect to get some reinforcements in the coming weeks as Atkins is “extremely optimistic” that Bichette, who is to undergo a follow-up evaluation this weekend now that the swelling in his knee is gone, “is going to be helping this team again in 2020.”
His value can’t be overstated, and extends well beyond the terror he’s quickly instilled in opposing pitchers.
“He’s our leader, our guy that everyone turns to, he’s the guy we ride every night to carry us but it shows you we have 28 guys right now,” said Tellez. “And he’s been great. It’s painful not to have him in the lineup but the way he handles it in the clubhouse, how he keeps everyone’s spirits up, he’s still such a part of the team that it’s really like he’s not missing anything. It was a tough blow, but we’re holding our own, playing well and if we’re doing this without him, can’t imagine what we do with him.”
Similarly, Nate Pearson, who hit the injured list Wednesday with elbow tightness, underwent an MRI Thursday morning and while the results were pending, Atkins said “we’re not initially overly concerned.”
While the Blue Jays haven’t ruled out a role switch upon his return, “the most optimistic and more likely scenario is that he comes back into a starting role. … But it really depends on when and when he comes back.”
While the offence did the heavy lifting in both comebacks Thursday, strong relief pitching set the stage for both victories. Chase Anderson went a season-high 3.2 innings and allowed two runs, one earned in the opener, while Julian Merryweather, in an impressive big-league debut, Wilmer Font and Jordan Romano locked things down as the offence erased a 2-0 deficit.
Then in the nightcap, after Trent Thornton came off the injured list and got blitzed for six runs in a first inning he didn’t escape, Jacob Waguespack, Shun Yamaguchi, Anthony Kay and A.J. Cole provided 6.2 innings of two-run work.
Manager Charlie Montoyo said his players kept talking about how they were going to rally after falling behind 7-0, and that “for us to have that feeling, you’ve got to have good pitching and the pitching has got to keep you in the game, even if you’re losing by so many runs. That’s what happened.”
In the first game, a Santiago Espinal sacrifice fly in the fourth, and Cavan Biggio’s two-out RBI double in the sixth tied things up before Teoscar Hernandez singled with one out in the seventh, narrowly took third when Roman Quinn bobbled Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s bloop single to centre, and scored on Gurriel’s chopper over a drawn-in infield.
In the second, Hernandez’s two-run shot in the first got them on the board before Tellez opened the sixth with a 429-foot drive that, in terms of exit velocity, trails only a Giancarlo Stanton rocket at 121.3 m.p.h.
Hernandez followed with a single, Guerrero walked and Gurriel mashed a three-run shot that pulled the Blue Jays within one. After Danny Jansen reached on a Scott Kingery error, Biggio walked and Didi Gregorius booted Randal Grichuk’s grounder before Jansen scored the tying run on a Hector Neris wild pitch.
Tellez then dropped a two-run single to centre that made it 9-7, as the Blue Jays capitalized on the type of costly mistakes they’ve made at points earlier this season.
“That relieved some pressure, no worrying about trying to tie the game up, and peace of mind that we’re going to have the last at-bat, no matter what,” said Tellez, who also fought off a leg cramp in the fourth he figured was a by-product of drinking creatine and other drink mixtures to help him recover from the concussion. “We’ve got to tighten up our defence, pitching staff has been phenomenal, guys have been swinging the bats, Grich is hot, Teo’s come back around, everyone is swinging it good, it’s a whole team effort and we got a good squad going right now.”
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The Phillies scratched out a run in the seventh before Cole nailed down the save, and the Blue Jays are now over .500 for the first time since they were 3-2 on July 28.
“That was pretty awesome,” said Montoyo.
So too is how quickly fortunes can change in only five days, underlining not only the stakes of each game in this shortened season, but also all the attached risk and reward, too.
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