DETROIT — The 7-1 post all-star break run the Toronto Blue Jays were on entering Saturday’s play, in which the club hit .310 and OPS’ed .870 with a 12.3-per cent strikeout rate straight out of the early-80’s, would have been impressive against anyone, let alone the run of all-stars, ERA champs, and Cy Young winners they encountered.
A week ago Friday, Toronto didn’t let Justin Verlander out of the second inning, tagging him for four runs on nine hits while holding the future hall-of-famer without a strikeout for only the sixth time in his 543-start career. The next night, the Blue Jays got four runs on 11 hits off perennial Cy Young vote-getter Logan Webb, striking out just once. The last time Webb had fewer than three strikeouts in a start was 2023, a span of 59 outings.
A night later, it was Robbie Ray surrendering season-highs in runs, walks, and homers, finishing with his lowest game score (31) since last August when he was returning from Tommy John surgery. The night after that, Carlos Rodon tied his season-low in strikeouts (one of the other times was also against the Blue Jays) while setting a season-high in walks and allowing four runs over an arduous five innings.
And finally, on Wednesday, the Blue Jays handed Max Fried his worst start in two months, bleeding him for six runs over 5.1 innings while going even in strikeouts and walks with three apiece. It was only a marginally better performance than the one they had against Fried earlier this month, when they cashed four runs in six innings with a pair of strikeouts and walks.
“Those are some good pitchers,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said prior to Saturday’s game. “I feel like sometimes when pitchers are big strikeout pitchers and they don't really get that result, it affects the cadence of their outing. Not that it frustrates them, but it's probably a little bit of a different feel."
Saturday, facing yet another fire-breathing demon in Tarik Skubal, the Blue Jays added their latest piece of taxidermy to the mantlepiece. Which isn’t to say they performed as well as they did against those Giants and Yankees starters. They didn’t. Skubal still struck out seven over six scoreless.
But he might just be the best pitcher on the planet. And by the impossible bar Skubal's set for himself, those inning and strikeout totals are below average. So, fighting for three walks (tied for the second-most of any outing in his career), fouling off 23 pitches (tied for ninth-most), and getting him out of the game by the seventh, which let the Blue Jays exploit the Tigers bullpen late to run away with a 6-1 victory, must be graded on a curve.
“Yeah, he's tough. You just go out there and try to grind,” said Bo Bichette, who went 2-for-4 with a walk and was in the middle of some of an intense game’s most pressurized moments. “And everybody did that. Didn't give him any easy outs. And we were able to get him out of there relatively quick — by his standards, at least.”
A substantial help to that cause was Bichette’s unconscious, 13-pitch walk with two runners on in the sixth, which pushed Skubal’s pitch count into the 90’s and all but guaranteed that inning would be his last.
Throughout a plate appearance that felt like it took an hour, Bichette fouled off nine pitches all around the zone, including 100-m.p.h. fastballs, 90-m.p.h. changeups, and even an 84-m.p.h. curveball. An effort like that against any big-league pitcher is ridiculously impressive. But an effort like that against Skubal? Virtually unheard-of. It tied the longest plate appearance of Skubal’s career, a 13-pitch Manny Machado walk (On July 27, 2022, incredibly, almost three years prior to the day).
“Man, that was up there for me when it comes to at-bats for Bo,” Schneider said. “It's so hard to lay off of his stuff with two strikes. He's got three or four pitches that can get you out. So, the degree of difficulty, I can't even imagine.”
It was the kind of resolute, truculent battle we’ve seen from the Blue Jays as a collective throughout the season, which has produced MLB’s highest contact rate (81.2 per cent) and lowest strikeout rate (17.4 per cent). Since 2018, only one team has made more contact over a full season, while no team has struck out so seldomly.
And if you really want to get into the weeds, you can normalize that strikeout rate in relation to the league average, and suddenly you find the Blue Jays tied for the third-lowest since 1949, which is as far back as reliable data goes.
“That was unbelievable. That just shows, one, who Bo is as a hitter, and two, who we are as a team,” said George Springer, who had a trio of hits for a second straight night. “We just fight. Fight, fight, fight.”
Bichette had a big moment in the eighth inning, too, after Joey Loperfido and Springer reached on singles off Tigers reliever Will Vest, and advanced into scoring position on a wild pitch. Facing a pitcher with a 60 per cent groundball rate against righties this year, Bichette took two looks at Vest’s sinker before shooting a third the opposite way through a drawn-in infield to plate the game’s first two runs.
No one had touched the plate to that point thanks to Skubal being Skubal, and Kevin Gausman being vintage Kevin Gausman, allowing only a hit and a walk while striking out 10 over six innings. Gausman ran up a season-high 21 whiffs — 13 with his splitter — while living on the plate with a fastball he located in the zone nearly two-thirds of the time. Even his slider, Gausman’s third-best pitch, was a weapon, getting five whiffs and two foul balls on seven swings.
“His split was vintage Kev,” Schneider said. “It was carrying the zone when he needed it to. It was in and out of the zone when he needed it to. He threw a handful of really good sliders. It looked like three years ago. He was just dominating where he wanted to go with the ball and the split was a difference maker.”
Meanwhile, the Blue Jays did everything they could to combat Skubal, putting runners on in four of his six innings. But none of the eight Blue Jays to reach against him crossed the plate, thanks partly to what Skubal did to the Blue Jays in big spots, and partly to what the Blue Jays did to themselves.
A promising opportunity materialized in the third, as Guerrero lined a single to the opposite field before Bichette rang a double to left, putting two runners in scoring position with one out.
But as Tyler Heineman — pinch-hitting for Alejandro Kirk, who left the game after taking a foul ball off the mask to be evaluated for a concussion — pulled back on a safety squeeze called from the bench in a 2-1 count, Guerrero strayed too far off third and was back-picked by Tigers catcher Jake Rogers. And after Heineman walked, Addison Barger grounded out on a first-pitch sinker to end the threat.
“In hindsight, that's on me,” Schneider said. “I should’ve told [Heineman] to suicide squeeze no matter what, because he's such a good bunter. I think with a safety squeeze, it's me putting Vladdy in a tough spot to make a read. I don't think Vladdy did anything wrong on that play. And I think Rogers made a hell of a throw.”
Another baserunning miscue came in the sixth, following Bichette’s plate appearance of all plate appearances. Springer, caught in between tagging and running home from third on a Heineman looper to shallow centre, was gunned out at home on an awkward play after the ball found grass.
Springer appeared to slow up down the line, foregoing a slide as he was tagged a half-step from the plate. Moments later, Skubal was roaring as he strode off the mound after getting Barger to look at a called third strike, 101 on the outside black.
“At the end of the day, I have to slide,” Springer said. “That's on me. I need to score. Especially off a guy like that. [Heineman] got the job done and I didn't.”
Yet, simply forcing that inning to be Skubal’s last was a victory. It was the same thing the Blue Jays did to Verlander, Webb, Ray, Rodon, and Fried before him, battling to the bitter end, running up a pitch count, and forcing an immensely talented arm from the game.
That let Bichette capitalize with runners on in the eighth, before Nathan Lukes, Springer, and Guerrero blew the lid off with no-doubters against Chase Lee in the ninth, as a “Let’s Go, Blue Jays” chant began ringing around Comerica Park.
Those home run swings have come and gone this season. But what’s been consistent is Toronto’s ability to pack a lunch pail and battle with the best pitchers in the league.
Ace or not, nasty stuff or not, owning the edges or not, a pitcher can’t count on their bat-missing ability to eliminate the impact of defence, ballpark, and luck against the Blue Jays.
Even Skubal, a guy with strikeout, walk, whiff, chase, and hard-hit rates within MLB’s 92nd percentile or higher, was gotten to eventually. Every good offence needs an identity. Call it tenacity, call it belligerence, call it pugnaciousness — the Blue Jays have theirs.
“For us to, again, stay in the fight, scratch and claw the whole game, was awesome,” Springer said. “We fight. Every pitch matters. Every swing matters. Everything matters. Us as a team, we like to scrap and fight and claw. To fight against a guy like Skubal is a fun thing to do. It's fun to be in it with all these guys. I love it.”
