NEW YORK -- When Trey Yesavage is pitching like that, the offense just needs to get one inning right. Finally, the Blue Jays did.
With Yesavage holding the door shut for six dominant innings, the Blue Jays finally broke through in the seventh to pick up their first win of this series in New York, 2-1, after a rain delay pushed back first pitch by over two hours.
This is what mattered from the offense in Wednesday’s win:
1. THE GRINDER: Andrés Giménez
Giménez’s 11-pitch walk with the bases loaded in the seventh inning was one of the best at-bats of the Blue Jays’ season. Giménez was perfectly stubborn, fouling off four of the first six pitches he saw from Cam Schlittler before finally watching ball four.
When a manager, teammate or broadcaster calls Giménez a “ballplayer”, this is what they’re talking about. He may not be lighting the league on fire offensively, but he has a tremendous feel for the game and knew exactly what his job was once he got into a two-strike count on just the third pitch from Schlittler. Eight pitches later, he was exhaling and jogging to first.
Manager John Schneider called it “the at-bat of the year” multiple times. Giménez, always humble and quick to deflect praise, just kept smiling and shaking his head.
“It was a chance for the team to score a run, and I was just really focused, competing and trying to get a good pitch to hit. I was just trying to have a good at-bat,” Giménez said.
That type of at-bat from Giménez will earn him more praise from teammates and coaches than any home run ever could.
“You’ve got to grind. That was him understanding Cam’s stuff and knowing George [Springer] is behind him,” Schneider said. “That was about as professional as it gets. You need stuff like that against a tough pitcher.”
2. THE BUNTER: Brandon Valenzuela
If you’re a backup catcher in the bottom third of the Blue Jays’ lineup, you’d better learn how to bunt. Those are the rules.
Valenzuela dropped a sac bunt in the third inning to advance Jesús Sánchez, which felt early and aggressive at the time, but his at-bat just ahead of Giménez in the seventh was a prime spot to bunt. The rookie nailed it, dropping a perfect, slow-rolling bunt up the third-base line, so well-placed that he got a single out of it to load the bases.
“The first one was a little mix-up between him and Carlos [Febles, third-base coach]. The second one, you couldn’t roll it any better,” Schneider said. “Against a pitcher like him, you need to apply some pressure. We wanted to get some traffic there when Valenzuela did bunt the second time. That was about as Mark Budzinski ‘textbook’ as you can get.”
Valenzuela has already done a dozen different things to earn the trust of the Blue Jays’ coaching staff. Dropping bunts like these in big spots will rank high on that list.
3. DREAM BIGGER: Expanding the offense
Wednesday’s offense worked because of Yesavage, period.
The Blue Jays’ offense still needs to be more consistent, more explosive, more… everything.
“If it’s not going to be continuous hits, productive at-bats and adding on, there needs to be some slug,” Schneider said earlier in the series. “There needs to be some extra-base hits or home runs with guys on. It’s figuring that part out. That’s where we are. I never question the guys’ effort or their prep. It just seems like we’re stuck in the middle there. You can either get a little separation or add on in a different way. When you get all singles, it’s tough to make that sustainable.”
An inning like the seventh on Wednesday could be one that snowballs, though, finally a glimpse of this lineup working together and “playing in sync”, as Schneider likes to say. Some power needs to follow this, though, unless they plan on cloning Yesavage.