TORONTO -- The roar of a Canada Day miracle was quickly and cruelly cut short Saturday in Toronto.
With two on, two out and a two-run hole in the bottom of the ninth, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. scorched a single to Red Sox outfielder Alex Verdugo. George Springer trotted in from third, but when Bo Bichette rounded and tried to tie the game, it was clear the moment the ball left Verdugo’s hand that he’d be out by a mile. Well, a kilometre.
Coming from second, Bichette was getting the wave home from third-base coach Luis Rivera, but the stop sign came up as Bichette was rounding the bag. He hesitated, just for a moment, but didn’t have a chance. It was a walk-off for the Red Sox and a 7-6 loss for the Blue Jays that cut deeper than most.
“It’s a fine line because you want to be aggressive against a really good pitcher [Kenley Jansen],” said manager John Schneider. “Hits are hard to come by. At the same time, with how hard Vladdy hit that ball, I think it makes it a really tough decision to send a guy there. Looking at the video briefly, I think Luis’ hand was up and Bo’s hauling [expletive]. Bo’s trying to score. It’s a bang-bang play. It’s really nobody’s fault.”
Bichette was moving at top speed in front of a roaring, sell-out crowd at this point. In that blur, he was trying to decide on the fly just how aggressive he wanted to be, all while trying to catch the proper sign.
“I knew the situation. If we could score the run I needed to be aggressive and get there, but I also knew the ball was hit to their best thrower,” Bichette said. “I kind of assumed I’d be stopped, but I didn’t really see anything.”
The Blue Jays tend to do things in bursts lately. They sprint a mile, walk a mile, sprint a mile and then walk another. Schneider wants this club to find a comfortable pace to jog at.
This loss felt like they’d found that, or something close. After scoring runs in just four of their 34 offensive innings over their last four games, this was a step in the direction of spreading their offense out across a full, complete game.
“It’s been a weird stretch,” Schneider said. “You throw a five spot on a really good pitcher in [Giants starter] Logan Webb, then you kind of stall. Yesterday, we ran into a good pitcher and couldn’t get much going. That ebbs and flows, and I think we spend a lot of time harping on runners in scoring position. That changed in one inning the other night. It’s going to come and go.”
Even elite teams have it come and go. World Series winners can look terrible for a week in the middle of the season. These things happen every year.
It can’t always come and go, though. Eventually, it needs to stick around for a while, which is what the Blue Jays are trying to build towards here. They’re now 0-6 against the Red Sox, which has let Boston hang around on the fringes of the AL Wild Card race, and 7-19 within the AL East. That’s bad news for their overall record and worse news for potential tiebreakers after Game 162.
“The one thing we do know is that we have some really good players who are going to end up scoring some runs,” Schneider said. “Right now, it’s not happening consistently. In a perfect world, it’s happening, and it allows pitching decisions to be a little easier. That’s baseball.”
That’s the $1 million question, then. Is this an individual issue, where the Blue Jays simply need a couple of stars to step up their game, or a team-wide issue with their approach? The boring answer is that it’s a little bit of both, but a couple of hot streaks isn’t a bad place to start.
Timing is everything, too. One hit in one spot and this all goes away, at least until the next night’s game.
“We inconsistently have gotten that big hit, no matter who seems to be up,” Schneider said. “The fact that the traffic is out there and late in the game, I thought that was very encouraging. It’s just about having those at-bats in the middle of the game. I think that will be the difference maker for us.”
This loss will sting. These tight games are about being on the right side of a “bang-bang play,” and the Blue Jays landed on the wrong side of the biggest one.