NEW YORK -- The big hit always wins, especially if there’s a little “damage” involved.

Big hits come in all shapes and sizes, but home runs play the role best, and in the Blue Jays’ 8-3 loss to the Yankees on Sunday, it was Giancarlo Stanton’s mammoth grand slam. Even someone standing on the street corner outside Yankee Stadium would have known what happened after that bat crack.

In the top half of that very same inning, the Blue Jays had the bases loaded themselves, the same script laid out in front of them. The difference, of course, is that Cavan Biggio watched a called strike three, and Stanton watched his ball slam into the left-field bleachers.

Now the Blue Jays fly home to Toronto -- finally -- coming off a series loss to the Yankees with a 4-6 record. There have been moments when we’ve seen exactly what Toronto spent all offseason talking about, from internal improvements to a better approach, but we’ve also seen a lot of the 2023 offense again. That team finished 16th in the Majors in home runs, too middle-of-the-pack for a lineup with so much talent.

“As an offense, to this point, we’ve been a little wavy,” said offensive coordinator Don Mattingly. “We’ve had some games where we score, then other games where we don’t look as good.”

The bad games tend to lack the big hits, of course, which brings us back to “damage,” the early frontrunner for Word of the Year in baseball. You’ll hear some players talk about “impacting the baseball” or “putting their ‘A’ swing” on the ball, but “damage” is truly having its moment.

See ball, hit ball … hard.

“We want guys to do damage,” manager John Schneider said back on Opening Day. “Getting three or four hits in an inning consistently is hard to do at this level, so it’s about the guys at the top, and we want them to do damage. We want them to get into good counts and drive the ball. From that, guys throughout the lineup can complement it.”

That sounded so encouraging at the time, especially after watching Vladimir Guerrero Jr. launch a ball a Statcast-projected 450 feet to lead an 8-2 win over the Rays. It was the perfect blueprint for the Blue Jays, with the top half doing damage and the bottom half stringing some things together. It looked like an offense with two very complementary identities.

Damage comes with its caveats, though.

“I think damage is kind of a scary word,” Mattingly said, “because when you’re trying to hit home runs, they usually don’t happen. For us, you want to get your best swing off and make sure you’re working in your zones.”

This is the language echoed by the Blue Jays’ hitters, who are now getting their message from a more singular voice in Mattingly.

“I was probably trying to do too much damage,” Bo Bichette said, reflecting on some at-bats he didn’t like earlier in the series. “That’s not me. That happens by accident. I’m a hitter first.”

Ernie Clement is a fine example of this balance, too -- the “spark plug,” as Schneider calls him -- in his recent surge. Clement isn’t out there trying to hit 40 jacks, but he’s trying to find his moments and drive the ball more consistently. It has been working.

“For us, it’s about getting balls that you can hit hard,” Mattingly said. “Hopefully, within that, there’s some home runs. I don’t really see us as a huge power club, but we do have a chance to have four or five guys hit 20 or above, and that would be good for us.”

The Blue Jays feel like they have so much power potential, though. It’s not just Guerrero and Bichette but George Springer, Danny Jansen, Daulton Varsho, Justin Turner, Davis Schneider and others. Their top hitting prospect, Orelvis Martinez, has the best raw power in this organization outside of Vladdy.

It may be years until we see an offense as powerful as that brilliant 2021 group again, but this lineup still has the talent to be one of the better power-hitting teams in baseball. It feels like “power” points directly to home runs, while “damage” is a bit broader, but we’re getting lost in a dictionary at that point.

A simpler definition? Big hits. You just know them when you see them.

The Yankees had a few more this weekend in the Bronx, and it’s those big, damaging hits that will get the Blue Jays back on track back home in Toronto.