TORONTO – On the flight home from Seattle after a crushing Game 5 loss left the Toronto Blue Jays down 3-2 in the American League Championship Series, John Schneider and his players looked at each other and said, “Good.”
The word had become a mantra for the team, adopted from a clip of Jocko Willink, a former U.S. Navy SEAL turned author and podcaster, who preaches a “Good” mindset as a way to adapt when obstacles arise.
So, their season on the line last October, “it was like, OK, good, what are we going to do?” Schneider recalled Wednesday afternoon. “We've got to find a way to win one game. We won one game in a row 94 times in the regular season; we've got to do it again. And if we do that, we've got to do it again the next day.
“That's where we are right now,” he continued. “We have to go 1-0 once 10 times. That's how you have to approach it when the season's so long. You're not going to get back what's already happened, and you don't know what is going to happen tomorrow or even today, but you can control how you get ready for it. You can control the attitude you have coming into every single game.”
Resetting after a pair of dispiriting losses, including a 10-1 thumping Tuesday night, the Blue Jays proceeded to do precisely that in a timely 5-1 win over the Detroit Tigers, one that comes amid a shifting landscape in the chase for the American League’s final wild-card spot.
Led by five innings of one-run ball from Max Scherzer, who bounced back from a messy six runs in five frames against the Baltimore Orioles last Friday, the Blue Jays (76-77) moved 1.5 games back of the Chicago White Sox (77-75), who fell out of top spot in the AL Central after a 6-3 loss to the new division leaders, the Cleveland Guardians (78-75).
Their next opponent, the Texas Rangers, are lurking in the mix too and hosted the Boston Red Sox later Wednesday, so the standings remain clustered, but the team that handles its own business best, without worrying about what happens elsewhere, will likely find its way to the post-season.
“It's just embracing when (things) get really hard, when things may not be going your way, use it as an opportunity to flip the script or find some good out of the negative that's going on,” Ernie Clement, who plated the first Blue Jays run with a sacrifice fly and later scored, said of the good mindset. “We did a great job today of bouncing back and playing with energy. The last two nights, obviously, didn't go our way at all, a couple of bad bounces, we didn't play our best, but it’s a great opportunity to come back and keep ourselves in it.”
Scherzer helped ensure the Blue Jays handled their end of things, shaking off an avoidable run in the first — a Colt Keith blooper dropped between three fielders and was cashed in by a Riley Greene single — to keep the game under control until the offence could punch through.
Eventually it did, scratching out two runs in the fourth on an Clement sacrifice fly and Myles Straw RBI single to take the lead and adding on with a George Springer run-scoring single in the fifth. The Tigers gifted them two more runs in the sixth, when Clement reached on a Joe Peck error and then scored on another, when he threw away Brandon Valenzuela’s fielder’s choice. The catcher eventually came around on Nathan Lukes’ RBI single, a little dribbler up the first-base line that he beat out.
It wasn’t especially pretty, and the Blue Jays went just 3-for-12 with runners in scoring position, but it was enough for them to get the job done.
“Today was huge,” said Straw. “That was like a must-win, I felt like, but we've got nine more so anything can happen, that's plenty of baseball.”
Added Scherzer: “It's great when you have to come to the field and it's must-win baseball. That's how we've felt for a while now. We know the position that we're in, we're aware of the standings, but at the end of the day … you can't worry about everything else, you've got to worry about yourself. Today we had a good game and everybody did their job.”
Work resumes Friday when the Blue Jays open a three-game series at the Rangers, with Dylan Cease slated to start on regular rest followed by Jose Soriano on Saturday and a bullpen day of some sort Sunday.
Trey Yesavage, who rejoined the club after his rehab outing at triple-A Buffalo on Tuesday, is a possibility for the finale there or the opener in Baltimore on Monday and said, “I feel like I'm ready to go,” but added that “it's up to people that are higher up than me and make decisions. But I think I'm ready to go and take some stress off the bullpen.”
Yesavage said his surgically repaired left knee feels good enough that he didn’t think about it all in the Bisons start, when he threw 34 pitches and didn’t escape the first. While he would have liked better results, his fastball sat at 93.3 m.p.h. roughly a month post-surgery, underlining his current push.
“It's that time of the year,” he said. “I'm sure if this injury happened in June, it would be a little bit slower of a progression. Not that I need a slower progression, but just build me up to a higher pitch count to get me back. But there are (nine) games left in the regular season, we need to win ballgames now to play in October, so whatever's necessary.”
He should have around 45 pitches in his next outing and even two or three innings of Yesavage is helpful given the current state of the Blue Jays staff. Right now, they must both demand a lot of their pitchers while also trying to protect them as best as possible. Cease, Soriano and Scherzer each have two more starts and they must be maximized.
“Physically, I'm great – this is the best I've felt all year,” said Scherzer. “This turn was one of the best turns for me in terms of how I felt throughout the five days. So whatever they ask of me, I am ready to do. I get we're in a bind and whenever they tell me to pitch, I'm ready to pitch. … Everything on me feels great. I don't have anything going on across my body. Give me the ball.”
Great or not, that’s the mental framework needed for the moment, as the stakes each day to continue to rise. More things are sure to go wrong along the way. The Blue Jays must keep finding ways to say, “good” when problems arise and find a way around them.
“We've been through it at really high stakes where your backs are against the wall and you have to win a game,” said Schneider. “So I think we can have that mentality of you have to win a game tonight, no matter what the outcome and then doing it again the next day is really important.”
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