Guerrero Jr.’s clutch homer seals series win as Blue Jays rally past Red Sox again
One month in, the Blue Jays look to be pulling out of their first extended bout of adversity this season, getting a three-run homer from Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the eighth inning to pull out a second straight comeback win over the Red Sox.
TORONTO – Max Scherzer dropped some real talk at the end of spring training, cautioning the typical optimism that builds over the course of a camp is nice, but it takes the regular season’s grind and inherent challenges to really get a sense of what a team is made of.
Well, one month in and the Toronto Blue Jays look to be pulling out of their first extended bout of adversity this season, getting a three-run homer from Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the eighth inning Thursday night to pull out a second straight comeback win over the Boston Red Sox, this one 4-2.
Coming on the heels of Wednesday night’s rally from a 6-0 deficit, they’re now 15-16 thanks to consecutive wins after eight losses in nine outings, and for the first time this season, they’ve hit multiple homers in back-to-back games. A three-game series against the Cleveland Guardians begins Friday night and the Blue Jays suddenly have a chance to head out west for a six-game swing to Anaheim and Seattle at, or above, the break-even point.
“There’s a lot that I appreciate about the way they go about it,” manager John Schneider said of how his players handled the slide. “It’s easy to just let things snowball. (Wednesday) night’s game was big and the way they work, the way that they’re conducting themselves, whether it’s in meetings, in the clubhouse, they’re sticking together and it’s hard to do that when things are tough. This group is really good at it. …
“Hopefully a couple good wins like this get you going.”
A strong Jose Berrios gave up a two-run double to Alex Bregman for a 2-0 Red Sox lead — the 18th time this season the Blue Jays’ opponent scored first — but Daulton Varsho picked his team up off the mat with a solo shot in the seventh off Tanner Houck.
Then came the fateful eighth, started by a one-out Nathan Lukes single and a Bo Bichette double to right that twisted up Wilyer Abreu.
Up came Guerrero with a base open, forcing the Red Sox to pick their poison by either facing the four-time all-star first baseman or intentionally walking him to face Anthony Santander with the bases loaded. They chose wrong as the electric-armed Justin Slaten tried to pitch him carefully, but Guerrero hammered a full-count curveball diving out of the zone over the wall in left field to put the Blue Jays up 4-2.
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“We know there was an open base, I know I had Santander hitting behind me, he’s been swinging the bat well,” Guerrero, speaking through interpreter Hector Lebron, said of his thought process. “So I talked to myself, I said I’m going to look for a pitch the whole at-bat. If I get it, good, I’m going to connect. If I don’t get it, I’ll take my walk and let Santander do the job.”
His 404-foot drive, ripped at 111.8 m.p.h., sent the crowd of 24,198 into a frenzy after the Red Sox had been forced into the type of dilemma the Blue Jays hoped to force opponents into by putting Santander behind Guerrero.
“I wouldn’t want to pitch to either of them,” is what Lukes thought to himself as he was standing at third base, which is precisely the way the Blue Jays drew it up.
Said Schneider: “Vlad’s one of the best hitters in the game and you’ve got to take your shot with him or Tony, you know what I mean? I think it may have been easier two weeks ago (when Santander was slumping). Having Varsh right there, too, makes that decision a little bit tougher and that’s how you envision it, where you have a good little one-two punch there.”
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One part of another good one-two punch for the Blue Jays, Yimi Garcia, pitched a clean ninth for his second save, with Jeff Hoffman down after two dominant innings Wednesday.
It’s in games like the past two nights, against an AL East rival that arrived in Toronto playing well, that a vision of what the Blue Jays could be is clear to see. But it’s in the two weeks prior that a grimmer possibility shone through, which is why before the game, Scherzer said, “you’ve seen us play some pretty good ball, seen some pretty good things at times, but you’ve also seen some inconsistencies in us, not playing up to our potential.”
“That’s the major leagues. That’s going to happen,” he added. “Maybe it’s happening a little bit more than we would like and figuring out how that’s going to manifest itself throughout the team, from the coaches to the veterans to the arb guys to the rookies. How we handle failure determines how we’re going to handle success.”
The issues that led to the run of eight losses in nine games, of course, haven’t entirely disappeared.
While the offence may finally be emerging from an extended power outage, Scherzer’s ongoing thumb woes continue to stress the Blue Jays’ threadbare pitching depth, with no steady plan yet for how to backfill his rotation vacancy.
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An off-day next Monday allows them to skip the open spot’s next turn Tuesday, but Schneider said that’s not on the table as the club wants to give everyone in the rotation an extra day of rest. Eric Lauer, who allowed two runs over four innings behind opener Yariel Rodriguez on Wednesday, is a candidate to start, but the team plans to see how the weekend plays out before making a call.
Scherzer, meanwhile, continues to feel better with his thumb and is eying more bullpens after throwing off the mound, but still feels the need “to temper that optimism here.”
“I’m not out of the woods until I’m actually in games and I’m getting past that 50-pitch threshold and then to the 75- and 90-pitch thresholds, coming out of those starts and my thumb is recovering out of those starts. I can’t be optimistic until that happens,” he said. “I’m not going to sit here and celebrate a bullpen because I’ve been able to do that this whole time. It’s coming out of starts that’s the issue. Until I’m in that position, I can’t make a full judgment.”
Getting to that point will take time, and in the interim, Scherzer’s heard all kinds of ideas on how to mitigate the pressure on his thumb, including suggestions that working as a reliever might reduce or eliminate his recovery process after outings.
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But, “I don’t think that’s the answer because, A, pitching out of the ‘pen, those are max effort throws, especially in big spots, so that’s going to be super-high intensity stress to the thumb,” he explained. “And that’s only going to make it worse, especially if you start compounding that on multiple days, three out of five days you’re in game speed, not getting a chance to truly recover.”
Since making nine relief appearances as a rookie in 2008, Scherzer hasn’t pitched out of the bullpen during the regular season, although he’s done it five times in the post-season.
“I got my relieving fix in the playoffs,” he quipped, but on a more serious note, believes, “my value is to be a starter. I can carry my velocity deep into games. I have multiple pitches to be able to get you out three times through the lineup. If you can do those things, you get more value as a starter. Even though the (relief) point is valid and on the surface it makes sense, under more scrutiny, I don’t think it’s the solution.”
That leaves Scherzer to work his way back as a starter to a Blue Jays team that is trying to figure out not just a way back to .500, but well beyond it, too.
