KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Every shake-and-spray celebration in baseball is hard-earned and deserved. The toll a 162-game season takes on players, coaches, staff, an entire organization is steep, and even in an expanded post-season world, only 12 of 30 teams make the cut. So when success comes and an October berth is secured, especially after a remarkable turnaround from a crash-and-burn season a summer prior like the one produced by the Toronto Blue Jays in 2024, the emotion understandably bursts out.
“This is one to celebrate,” manager John Schneider shouted to his players at the end of his post-game speech, “let’s go!”
A maelstrom of Grandial champagne corks and Budweiser beer streams whipping around the visitors' clubhouse at Kauffman Stadium ensued, an 8-5 win over the Kansas City Royals – tormentors of post-season Blue Jays teams in 1985 and 2015 – propelling this edition to 90-66, locking them into the tournament to come.
They remain two games up on the 88-68 New York Yankees, 7-1 winners in 10 innings over Baltimore, with six games remaining, so winning the American League East for the first time since 2015 remains on the to-do list. But after a four-game losing streak delayed the party and narrowed their division lead, closing out a gruelling stretch of 13 games in 13 days and a trying seven-game road trip with a victory emblematic of their play this year felt fitting.
All season long, this version of the Blue Jays has been a 40-man roster collective rather than a top-heavy group, with the clinching game started by rookie Trey Yesavage, their first-round pick a year ago who surged through five levels this season, included key hits from up and down the lineup and included a key inning of leverage work from Eric Lauer, whose late April arrival was vital in stabilizing the pitching staff at a difficult time.
“I'm just so happy for them,” said Schneider. “It's hard at this level for everyone to just put their egos aside and play for one another. It's so cool to see these guys genuinely happy for one another when they get the job done, no matter who it is. This is the most fulfilling team I've ever been a part of, with different characters, different skill-sets, guys coming together for one common goal, which is what’s important now, what's it going to take to win right now. And they're all doing their part, man. This is fun. This is something to celebrate. But you've got to continue to do the things we've been doing.”
After a needed off-day Monday, that resumes Tuesday against the Boston Red Sox, who are trying to hold down their spot as the second wildcard. The Blue Jays meanwhile, have two series to clinch the East, sort out their playoff rotation, get their players – especially Anthony Santander and Bo Bichette – as healthy as possible and determine how best to deploy Yesavage as they seek their first playoff win since 2016.
“The job’s not finished,” said Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Certainly not, but the 11th post-season berth in franchise history is still an important achievement, especially on the heels of last year’s 74-88 mess.
Guerrero started to believe something along these lines was possible back on the first day of spring training, “when everybody was together, everybody was laughing. When you see a team like that, you've got to believe. …
"We believe in each other. We trust in each other,” he added later. “For me, if you don't believe in your team, you don't believe in anything. I always believed in this team and thank God we did it.”
Bichette, the star shortstop who on Friday began light hitting after suffering a PCL sprain in his left knee, feels “a lot of the guys that probably weren't counted on to start the year” were vital to the club’s revival.
“Guys have been amazing in every single situation, every player in every role has done you so much to help us win,” he continued. “When you start to look around and every single player had a part in winning not just one game, multiple games, that's when I think everybody started buying in and getting confident in each other.”
Daulton Varsho pointed to “the love and playing for each other, knowing that when someone's not going well, somebody's there to pick them up.”
“That's the cool part about this team,” he added. “When things are not going our way, someone's going to pick us up.”
Of the 90 wins so far, 47, or more than half, have involved some degree of comeback. They’ve won 15 times when trailing after six innings, 12 after seven, five after eight. They are 10-4 in extra innings. They’re 27-20 in one-run contests.
“What I appreciate the most is our DNA – we win in so many different ways,” said closer Jeff Hoffman, who locked down Sunday’s win. “Every night it seems like it's something different and it's really hard to beat teams like that. You see that in the success we had this year. That’s what I’m most proud of.”
The injury to Bichette, who was at 94 RBIs at the time of his injury, means the Blue Jays won’t have anyone who breaks the century mark, but they have remarkable balance between Guerrero’s 83, George Springer’s 80, Addison Barger’s 73, Alejandro Kirk’s 69 and Nathan Lukes’ 61.
They’ve mixed and matched lineups and played for platoon advantage in leverage at-bats to such high effect that the entire lineup has produced key moments.
“If it's not me, it's someone else, and if it's not them, it's someone else and trickle on down the line,” said Lukes. “It's been that the entire year. It's fun to watch.”
The formula in Sunday’s win was a familiar one, as they opened the scoring with the type of opportunistic inning that’s been a staple.
Davis Schneider opened the inning with a walk and Lukes followed with a grounder to second that Adam Frazier didn’t field cleanly, preventing a double play. Ernie Clement followed with a bloop single, both runners advanced on a wild pitch and Andres Gimenez ended an 0-for-15 dry spell with a single that opened the scoring.
Tyler Heineman followed by executing a safety squeeze, his perfectly placed bunt up the first-base line allowing Clement to scamper home, as the Blue Jays put together their first multi-run inning since a three-run second Tuesday. Springer then matched that output by lashing an RBI double to left-centre.
A messy fourth narrowed the gap to 3-2, as Carter Jensen dunked a two-run single to right after Barger cut in front of Gimenez and deflected a weak Frazier chopper, loading the bases on what should have been the third out.
But the Blue Jays responded in the fifth when Guerrero ripped a two-run double – his first extra-base hit since Sept. 7 – and Barger followed with an RBI double of his own, ending an 0-for-14 skid.
Yesavage came back out for the bottom half to face the top of the lineup a third time, with Mike Yastrezmski leading off with a single before Bobby Witt Jr. sent a liner to centre that a sliding Varsho seemed to pick off the ground. But, crucially, it was ruled a single on the field and the call stood upon review, as replay officials must have felt it’s possible the ball touched grass as Varsho’s glove rolled over.
Either way, that was it for Yesavage, with Brendon Little allowing RBI singles to Maikel Garcia and Salvador Perez that cut the Blue Jays lead to 6-4.
The Royals added another in the sixth but a two-spot in the eighth, on a Clement RBI single and run-scoring triple by Gimenez, restored some breathing room that Lauer and Hoffman locked down.
Yesavage wasn’t as overpowering as he was during his sensational five-inning, nine-strikeout debut, as he averaged 94.1 with his fastball and was up to 95.9, but also down as far as 90.7, which came in the fifth inning. He got just one swinging strike with his fastball this time, with the other six all on the splitter.
Still, he showed that he’s capable of handling weighty games – starting on a potential clinch day – which is all the remarkable considering that “I was in Rochester, New York, 12 days ago and now I'm playing for a professional team and being able to win championships, hopefully, and secure a playoff spot. It's great.”
“I tried not to worry about it too much,” he said of the stakes at play Sunday. “It's always a little bit in the back of my head, but I went out there and tried to perform the best for my team. Today I let the defence have more work just because I didn't have the heater, so it was slider, splitter and they were putting a lot of balls in play. So I relied on the defence and they handled everything pretty good.”
The same applies to the way the Blue Jays have handled the season, too.
“Selfless is the word I always use,” said Schneider. “We've got some big-name guys in here. Vladdy has said, 'I'm hot when we're winning,' things like that. We saw this coming. We were confident in the players we had in the room and the players that we added at the deadline, too. Really cool to have them experience this.”
With the real fun just getting started.
