MINNEAPOLIS – Back in 2022, when Andres Gimenez helped the Cleveland Guardians win the American League Central rather comfortably, he could see that the rest of the division would soon be coming.
“Kansas City was trying to build around Bobby (Witt Jr.). We competed against Minnesota for the division. Detroit lost a lot of games but they were building up, they had a sneaky bullpen at that time and now they’re all really good,” the now Toronto Blue Jays second baseman recalled. “Last year, I was like, OK, this division is going to get hard.”
Save for the historically putrid Chicago White Sox, the other four teams did make the Central hard in 2024, with Cleveland again taking top spot while Kansas City and Detroit bumped out rivals from the East and West for wild-card spots, giving the oft-maligned division half of the AL’s post-season berths. And more than a third of the way through this season, the grouping is proving last year was no aberration, as the Tigers carry the best record in the majors, the Twins hold one of the three wild-card spots with the Guardinas a mere half-game back and the Royals 1.5 games off the pace.
Pushing aside a Central contender then is likely to be part of any path to the post-season, which is what made the Blue Jays’ series-opening 6-4 win over the Twins, giving them possession of a wild-card berth, all the more notable.
Not only was it a third straight victory and ninth in 11 outings, one driven by an Addison Barger two-run homer, a Bo Bichette two-run single and a George Springer solo shot to support an impressive bullpen effort, but it also gave them an early leg up in what is an intriguing litmus-test clash.
And with the standings so remarkably clustered this deep into the season – Toronto, Minnesota and Tampa Bay are all 34-29, with six teams within 5.5 games of them – collecting tiebreakers against fellow contenders is a welcomed byproduct of playing good baseball.
“That’s always in the back of your mind,” said Blue Jays manager John Schneider. “You see what their record is, you see what ours is, you can kind of forecast ahead a little bit. But not it's not like it's the be-all, end-all. … That usually matters when you're getting down to it at the end of the season. Now, it's more so just trying to continue to play well, continue to swing the bats and try to win the series, really.”
The Blue Jays did that against Bailey Ober, a nemesis, who was staked to an early three-run lead on Trevor Larnach’s solo shot in the first and an RBI groundout from Kody Clemens and run-scoring double by Christian Vazquez in the second off opener Paxton Schultz.
After getting sliced through the first three innings, the Blue Jays responded in the fourth when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was hit on the right wrist to open the inning and Barger hammered a middle-up fastball over the wall in right field for his seventh homer of the season.
In the fifth, Ernie Clement led off with a base hit, Gimenez followed with a one-out double that put men on second and third and Bichette dunked a base hit into centre for a 4-3 lead.
Springer’s solo shot in the sixth made it 5-3 while an Alejandro Kirk RBI single added on in the eighth, padding that was needed with Royce Lewis delivering a run-scoring single of his own off Brendon Little in the bottom half.
“No matter the score, we believe we have a chance to win,” said Bichette. “That's a great feeling and I would say probably not a feeling we had much last year.”
That was the only blemish on a bullpen that followed Schultz’s two innings with 2.1 shutout innings from Eric Lauer and 1.1 clean innings each from Mason Fluharty and Yariel Rodriguez.
Jeff Hoffman handled the ninth for his 14th save, capping another night of successfully navigating the rotation vacancy created by Max Scherzer’s ongoing absence.
A more lasting solution was supposed to arrive for the next turn in the form of Spencer Turnbull and he made what is slated to be the last outing on a 35-day optional assignment stipulated in his contract Friday for triple-A Buffalo. But he allowed five runs on seven hits and two walks in 4.2 innings and while he got up to 80 pitches, his velocities were down again across the board (at 89.7 m.p.h., his fastball was 2.3 m.p.h. off his average), suggesting he may need more time to build up.
Then again, Lauer could also potentially play a bigger part in filling that gap, as he’s now provided the Blue Jays with 26 innings at a 2.08 ERA and 0.88 WHIP. The 2.1 innings Friday came after he provided four innings of emergency shutout work Tuesday.
“The biggest thing for me is just focusing on executing each pitch,” Lauer said of navigating the different ways he’s been used this season. “I know that when I stay in my mechanics and stay in my lanes, I have some pretty good stuff. So I'm pretty confident to beat any hitter in the box as long as I'm focused on execution and staying in my lanes.”
Of more immediate concern is Kevin Gausman, who has struggled versus the Twins, getting deep Saturday, both to protect the bullpen and keep the edge up against a rival.
While Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said he didn’t give the possibility of winning a tiebreaker “one iota,” of thought, he did point out that “there are a lot of good teams out there right now, there are just going to be a ton of series that you're going to play over the year, regardless of the team's actual record at that moment, where you look across the field and are like, yeah, that's a good, well-rounded team.”
“I don't think about records or playoffs or anything like that,” he added. “That's so far away from where we're at right now that it would be distracting if we were thinking like that. We've been just focusing on the game that day and that's it. … That's it. The simpler, the better for me and especially in June.”
Fair enough, as there’s a long way to go in a season where the American League is deep and balanced and so much can still change in the months ahead. But the margins may very well end up thin and those tiebreakers certainly may end up meaning a lot.
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