TORONTO – The morning after stepping on a loose ball sitting in the outfield while taking pre-game grounders, Bo Bichette checked in and told John Schneider that his right knee “felt astronomically better,” which the Toronto Blue Jays manager described as “a good sign.” Bichette went through some work in the cage and while the possibility he could come off the bench wasn’t ruled out, caution was the order of the day. “We've got 16 in a row. Bo plays every single day,” explained Schneider. “We want to just make sure that he's good to go.”
Rightly so, given Bichette’s importance to the club, but helping the Blue Jays be patient in such situations is the way their depth keeps covering any loss of production on the roster. They did that Monday in a 5-4 series-opening win over the New York Yankees and minus their leadoff hitter again Tuesday versus ace lefty Max Fried, they rallied from an early deficit and after surrendering a two-run lead in the seventh, responded with a five-spot in the bottom half keyed by George Springer’s grand slam for a 12-5 victory.
Springer also hit a solo shot to open the fourth, eating into a 2-0 hole ahead of Andres Gimenez’s go-ahead three-run shot later in the inning, and added a two-run single in the eighth for a career-high seven RBIs, capping a remarkable turnaround of his own. He left Monday’s game in the sixth inning after sliding neck-first into Jazz Chisholm’s knee at third base, dry-heaving on his way off the field because his airways were plugged. “What I was trying to do on the field was get the spit out of my throat so I could breathe,” he explained.
While Springer tried to stay in the game, Schneider “basically told me to sit down,” and once he recovered his breath during the next inning, he watched his teammates close out another win, nevermind that he and Bichette were out, further thinning a roster that’s been without Anthony Santander and Daulton Varsho for a month now.
“We believe in each other and we believe in whoever is in the lineup to do what we need us to do as a team,” said Springer. “We've played together. We've kind of embraced that next-man-up mentality. You don't ever want to see anybody go down, no matter who it is, but guys really understand where we want to go and the position that we're in and the really cool opportunity that we have.”
The possibilities around that opportunity keep expanding as Tuesday’s win – after a slate of Canada Day festivities that included players and staff joining 250 Canadian Armed Forces members in holding a massive flag during the anthem, and a flyover of two CF-18 Hornet jets in a franchise first – moved the Blue Jays (47-38) a game back of the Yankees (48-37) for first in the AL East.
While it’s only July 1 and teams are just past the midway point of the 162-game slog, the Blue Jays appear set to factor significantly in the American League playoff picture. To that end, GM Ross Atkins on Monday positioned the club as buyers ahead of the deadline and the weeks ahead will define both their needs as well as what’s available to them.
“We've really battled back this last month and really kind of put a nice race together right in front of us,” said Kevin Gausman, who held the Yankees to two runs in five innings despite six hits and four walks. “The guys are just playing great and they kind of willed that game today. It's been fun to watch.”
That they’re thinking this way is in no small part thanks to their internal depth, which has been tested throughout this season and provided options time and again. The latest example came Tuesday, as with Bichette “banged up a little bit,” in the words of Schneider, infielder Leo Jimenez was recalled from triple-A Buffalo, with Jonatan Clase optioned.
“Good teams have this problem to where you're going to have to shuffle some guys back and forth,” said Schneider. “For now, Bo's doing better, which is a good thing and having the infield help kind of pushes Davis Schneider to more of an outfield role, probably puts (Addison Barger) in the outfield a little bit more.”
Another trademark is roster versatility and Barger, who didn’t start against fellow lefty Fried, hit for Jimenez in the pivotal seventh and reached on a catcher’s interference by J.C. Escarra to load the bases. Ernie Clement – who in the top of the inning missed a Giancarlo Stanton chopper that could have been an inning-ending double-play ball, leading to a pair of runs that tied the game – followed with a go-ahead RBI single before Springer’s grand slam made it a 9-4 game.
Clement also walked with the bases loaded in the eighth before Springer’s two-run single – giving him seven RBIs on the day – taking the leverage out of what had been a tight-rope walk through the first 6 1/2 innings.
Gausman, dominant over eight innings at Cleveland in his previous outing, found himself navigating trouble from the outset against the Yankees, eventually surrendering a two-run single to Jasson Dominguez during a 25-pitch first.
But Gausman recovered enough to get through four more traffic-filled innings, with the bullpen working around the two errors that led to runs in the seventh over the next four frames. Critical there was the work of Braydon Fisher, who came on with two on and one out in the seventh, twice induced balls that should have been inning-ending double plays that instead went for errors that scored runs, but still kept the game 4-4.
“Obviously I was living pretty dangerously there,” said Gausman. “Made some big pitches to get out of it but that was kind of the theme of the day, not really making good pitches until guys were on base and then kind of having to pitch out of it.”
As for Fisher in the seventh, "we gave them about six or seven outs that inning," said Schneider. "And for a young guy, Canada Day, rookie, he didn't budge. This is another little checkmark for him in terms of being thrown into the fire and not budging. So we usually don't do that (make errors). That's really not our M.O. But I love the way that we responded after that inning where we kind of gave them two runs and got right back after it.”
Be it errors on the field, circumstances or injuries, the Blue Jays have consistently done that this season, cutting down what had been a deficit of eight games to the Yankees as recently as May 28 down to one along the way.
