PHILADELPHIA — The Toronto Blue Jays began their seven-game, three-city road trip by trading beloved starter Kevin Gausman on the flight to Houston and finished it with a wild 7-6 loss in 12 innings to the Philadelphia Phillies on Sunday. In between, they pulled off a buy-and-sell deadline, took two of three from the American West-leading Astros, let a victory against the Chicago Cubs slip through their fingers in a make-up game before taking two of three from another National League wild-card holder in the Phillies.
Throw in two MRIs — one for Trey Yesavage, who visits a specialist Monday to determine next steps for the meniscus injury in his left knee; one for Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who doubled and scored in his second game back after missing three straight contests due to right hamstring tightness — and a promising debut for centre-fielder Brett Bateman, part of the return for Gausman, and it’s been an eventful week away.
Things don’t slow down at all for them Monday, when the Boston Red Sox arrive at Rogers Centre for the first of a four-game series, followed by three against the New York Yankees to wrap up a gruelling stretch of 17 games in 17 days, part of a wider run of 30 in 31. A six-game road trip to Tampa Bay and the Yankees follows right after, and for the Blue Jays to give themselves a realistic chance at bucking their daunting playoff odds, keeping their heads above water the next two weeks will be essential.
At 56-63, they’re four games behind the final wild-card spot, pending the results of Sunday’s other games, and while there are six teams ahead of them in the standings, the Blue Jays still have three games remaining with each of Texas, Cleveland, Detroit and Seattle, as well as six left with Baltimore.
They were as many as 6.5 games out back on July 24, and a 9-6 stretch since has allowed them to close some ground, and the coming two weeks are fraught. But the schedule will give them some direct opportunities against the clubs they are chasing if they can keep themselves on the fringes of contention.
“It's like, (shoot), it's right in front of us,” manager John Schneider mused this weekend. “Is it going to take some things to fall into place? Yeah, sure. That's baseball. But the fact that we're playing them is like, this is still really meaningful. It wasn't a straight sell at the deadline. It's not like, 'Hey, let's look forward to 2027' or 'what's the lockout going to be?' It’s like, we've got some games to play here, and we've got a way we've got to try to play.”
To that end, the Blue Jays will look to carry over the scrappiness they showed on the road, especially while pulling out a pair of gutsy wins in Philadelphia on Friday and Saturday and rallying from 5-2 down in the eighth to force extras Sunday, where RBI singles by Bryson Stott and Derek Hill allowed the Phillies to avoid a sweep.
The Phillies initially took control in the third inning, when Alec Bohm and Justin Crawford opened the inning with singles, and Kyle Schwarber then sent a Shane Bieber changeup over the wall in left-centre for a 3-0 lead.
A Guerrero double cashed in by an Alejandro Kirk single in the fourth followed by Bateman’s run-scoring single in the fifth — the rookie’s first big-league RBI — pulled the Blue Jays within one. But Bieber, strong in three of his past four outings, couldn’t keep the Phillies down, as Schwarber’s solo shot in the fifth and Bohm’s RBI single in the sixth extended the lead.
Still, the Blue Jays didn’t relent, as Ernie Clement’s RBI double and Andres Gimenez’s two-run single in the eighth off Orion Kerkering knotted the game up 5-5 in the eighth, setting up the dramatic finish.
Bateman, who made an impressive debut Friday batting ninth against Zack Wheeler, had earned enough trust by Sunday to hit leadoff against lefty Jesus Luzardo, who struck out 12 over seven innings of two-run ball.
But in the ninth, the 24-year-old failed to get a sacrifice bunt down against Jhoan Duran after Josh Smith and Nathan Lukes reached to open the inning, and after he struck out, Guerrero bounced into a double play to end the frame.
They missed opportunities to score in the 10th and 11th innings, and after Braydon Fisher, pitching for the fifth time in seven days, having thrown 19 pitches Saturday, put up a pair of zeroes, Jesus Sanchez’s double-play ball in the 12th pushed across the go-ahead run.
But Lazaro Estrada, pitching a third consecutive day after saving Saturday’s win, didn’t have much left and allowed Stott’s tying single before Hill shot a groundball through a drawn-in infield before a crowd of 40,398 at Citizens Bank Park.
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