Blue Jays best Tigers in clash of unlikely American League front-runners

DETROIT — When the 2025 MLB regular season began a mere four months, three U.S. tariff rounds, two Scottie Scheffler majors, and one Pope ago, who could have possibly foreseen this?

The Toronto Blue Jays and Detroit Tigers — two teams that sold at the 2024 trade deadline and didn’t make anyone’s off-season winners list; two teams with opening day World Series odds ranging anywhere from +3,000 to +6,500; two teams that entered the season projected by FanGraphs as having less than a coin flip’s chance of reaching the playoffs — playing a four-game set in late July within a half-game of each other for first place in the American League.

Could these teams meet again come October? That it isn’t totally absurd to consider the possibility is testament to the positions these unlikely front-runners have seized. And Thursday’s game between the two — clean, contact-heavy, and fast-paced at first before turning into a laugher late — which the Blue Jays ended up running away with, 11-4, was an intriguing peek at what that might look like.

“The one-run ball games are stressful as hell. You’ve got to be at your very, very best to win those games at this level. So, if we can do that a little bit more often where we put up 10, 15 runs, I think everybody would be pretty excited about that,” said Ernie Clement, who had two hits and drove in four. “But the fact that we have the ability to win the close ones, that's playoff baseball. That's how you win a championship. So, we're going to keep doing that.”

The game was flying until the sixth, the Tigers entering the inning with a one-run lead as their starter, Reese Olson, used Toronto’s aggressiveness against themselves to record quick out after quick out. But an intentional walk issued to Addison Barger with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. on third — he doubled in a game-tying run earlier — to get to Clement proved disastrous.

Tactically, it was an obvious call. The right-handed Olson vs. Clement, OPS’ing .543 with zero homers against righties entering the game, as opposed to Barger, OPS’ing .893 with 13 homers against them, is a matchup you take all day.

But AJ Hinch had been burned before. When these two teams played on a cool May Saturday at Rogers Centre earlier this season, the Tigers manager intentionally walked Anthony Santander with the game tied, a runner on third, and two out in the bottom of the ninth to get to Clement against the right-handed Brenan Hanifee. Two pitches later, Clement was getting mobbed after hitting an opposite-field, walk-off single.

And after Thursday’s intentional walk? Two pitches later, Clement smoked a hanging slider over the left field wall, carrying his bat more than halfway to first base before flipping it towards Toronto’s erupting dugout and hitting a Vladdy shuffle between second and third. 

“I saw Vlad, he got all excited when I was rounding the bases. So, if I get his approval on the shuffle there, that means the world to me,” Clement said. “I don't know if I'm going to ever do it again. But last time I did, I got a lot of hits after. So, we'll see what happens.”

Joey Loperfido followed with a no-doubter of his own, this time to right off a changeup, as the Blue Jays surged ahead. And from there, the flood gates opened. The Blue Jays put up all 11 of their runs from the sixth through eighth innings.

You know what plays in the postseason, when strategies sharpen, poor-pitching teams disappear, and the run environment grows sparse? Timely homers like those. Performances like Thursday’s when the Blue Jays had 12 of the game’s 14 balls put in play at 100+ m.p.h. 

Not just contact, which Toronto's unrelenting lineup has proven itself the best in baseball at creating, but contact with pop. Like Nathan Lukes’s first-pitch demolition of a Geoff Hartlieb hanger in the eighth for a two-run shot. Or George Springer following it with a 113-m.p.h. rocket off the left field wall.

There’s no denying that the Tigers can thump, having hit the 10th-most homers in the league. But if the Blue Jays want to hang with teams like them down the stretch into October, they’ll need to do better than the 10th-fewest mark they entered Thursday’s game with.

Last year, 40.7 per cent of runs scored during the regular season came via home runs. But in the playoffs, that rate shot up to 47 per cent. In 2023, it went from 41 to 49.1. In 2022, it was 39.8 to 46.8. Year after year we see this effect. It’s exceptionally hard to win come autumn without the long ball.

But damn it if these two teams didn’t make it look like they’re going to try in the early stages Thursday. You like aggressive pitching? Olson and Eric Lauer each threw first-pitch strikes to well over half the batters they faced. You like contact? The teams combined for six strikeouts and two walks through the first six innings. You like crisp defence? No one even came close to committing an error all night.

In the bottom of the second, Lauer threw 11 pitches. In the top of the third, Olson needed only 11 himself. Bottom three, Lauer threw just eight. Top four, Olson threw 11 again. Bottom five, Lauer set a near-impossible mark to beat, getting his three outs on four pitches. Then he flew through the sixth and seventh with only 21.

“It keeps you in a rhythm, for sure. It keeps you on top of the game because you know that it's close,” Lauer said. “You don't want to give up any runs. So, you just keep executing pitches, trying to get guys out as quick as possible. And try to outlast the other guy.”

Close your eyes and you would’ve thought the game was being played at Tiger Stadium in 1980. But if you closed your eyes and you might’ve missed most of it as the teams barrelled through the first five innings in an hour and six minutes. 

The only run to that point came off Jahmai Jones’s bat, as the lefty-mashing Tigers DH turned on an inside fastball in the first inning, sneaking a solo shot over the left-centre field wall. Meanwhile, the Blue Jays stranded base hits in the third, fourth, and fifth, never so much as advancing one to second base.

Yet, Lauer kept his team within striking range by doing what he does, living on the outside edge against the seven righties in Detroit’s lineup with a smattering of four-seamers, cutters, curveballs, and changeups.

It was Lauer’s best day yet in Toronto colours, as he allowed only that Jones homer and four other hits over eight innings, walking none while striking out six. When tunnelled effectively, his fastballs and cutters were deceptively devastating weapons, setting the table for him to plunge down in the zone with breaking balls and changeups. 

Lauer didn’t have his best velocity, sitting 91-m.p.h. with his fastball. And he didn’t have his best ride, averaging less induced vertical break than he typically does. And he didn’t need it.

“I didn't really feel like I had my best stuff today. So, I was really just trying to make sure I was in the zone, making good pitches, and letting my defence work behind me,” Lauer said. “I thought I could still locate well enough to get guys out.”

Only one problem: how dialled in Olson was on the other side, mixing elevated four-seamers and sinkers with changeups and sliders down to keep Blue Jays hitters perpetually in-between. But he finally flinched in the sixth, issuing the game’s first walk to Springer before Guerrero Jr. went way beneath the zone to shoot a changeup into the left field corner that cashed the Blue Jays outfielder all the way from first. 

Then Clement had his déjà vu moment. And an inning later, the heart of the Blue Jays order strung together three hits behind a Lukes leadoff double, cashing three more before Clement came back up and brought home Barger’s triple with a one-out sacrifice fly.

“It's a big swing from Ern, obviously,” said Blue Jays manager John Schneider. “But George scoring from first on a Vlad double and Barge hitting a gap and scoring two. George moving a guy over for Vlad to hit the RBI single. That's what we've been doing. And then Joey and Lukey add home runs, too. It's nice when you can do it both ways.”

The rest was a boatrace, and if there’s a really promising takeaway from this game for the Blue Jays, as they battled a fellow surprise outfit for American League supremacy, it was that. 

We know Toronto's offence can grind. We know it can scratch out a run here and there. But can they thump? Can they tap into their power to beat teams like the Tigers when postseason baseball — a lower-scoring, higher-homering brand of baseball all unto itself — begins? Thursday, they did.

“It's nice to not get pigeonholed into one way of doing it,” Schneider said. “I've heard a lot of talk about us being a gritty team that isn't sustainable. And I think the exact opposite. I think we're gritty as hell. But I think a lot of the stuff we're doing is going to lead to a lot of wins.”