TORONTO — As he arrived in Dunedin, Fla., for spring training, Josh Palacios was well down the depth chart for outfielders with the Toronto Blue Jays, with no realistic pathway to the big-league roster. No matter, the 25-year-old tore it during camp, caught everyone’s attention with his play and when COVID-19-related chaos struck the roster, he was suddenly in the majors.
“(Friday) I woke up thinking I was going to be in the minor-leagues,” Palacios said, “and then I went to sleep being the right-fielder for the Toronto Blue Jays, which was an amazing, amazing experience.”
Things sure can change fast amid an ongoing pandemic, as the Blue Jays have discovered over the past couple of days. A day after Teoscar Hernandez landed on the COVID-19 injured list after having close contact with a positive case, opening up a roster spot for Palacios, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., was sidelined after experiencing side-effects after receiving a coronavirus vaccine.
Santiago Espinal joined the roster as another emergency reinforcement and teamed with Palacios to spark the Blue Jays in a 15-1 rout of the Los Angeles Angels on Saturday night. The game finished at 1:06 a.m. Sunday thanks to a two-hour 45-minute rain delay, ending a long day at TD Ballpark that began with players needing a negative rapid-result test to enter the stadium.
Randal Grichuk delivered a three-run double that broke things open in a seven-run second inning, Bo Bichette drove in a career-high five runs with a bases-loaded walk and a pair of two-run doubles in consecutive innings, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., also knocked in three.
But Espinal, 3-for-5 with an RBI and two runs scored, and Palacios, 4-for-4 with a walk, an RBI and four runs scored — all career firsts — helped set the table in the bottom half of the lineup, helping to end a frustrating four-game losing streak.
Along with Jonathan Davis — whose just-within-the-rules slide at second base forced shortstop Jose Iglesias into a pair of errors on a potential double-play ball from Danny Jansen — the down-roster contributions underlined the value of 40-man roster depth, especially when COVID-19 can quickly and indiscriminately disrupt the roster.
Now, more than ever, opportunity can arrive suddenly, at any moment.
“We saw last year with what happened with the Marlins, what happened with the (Cardinals), at a snap of a finger, everything was thrown off,” said Palacios. “Guys were sick. There were things going down. We saw what happened with the Nationals and Mets having to postpone (at the start of this season). So it seems like it may be far away, but you know in the back of your mind, like, hey, there are a few things that can happen that’ll put me right in the show so you’ve got to be ready. Since we’ve seen it happen, it made a little more real.”
Espinal is more of a known quantity for the Blue Jays after he appeared in 26 games last year, filling in admirably when Bichette was out with a knee injury. In the lineup at third base against the lefty Jose Quintana, he opened the second with a single, and scored on the Jansen fielder’s choice when Iglesias both missed the bag at second as Davis barrelled in on him and threw the ball away. Espinal later capped the inning with an RBI single, also led off the fourth with a double, scoring on Palacios’ RBI single, and started a pretty double play on an Anthony Rendon smash in the sixth.
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Palacios, meanwhile, collected his first big-league hit by beating out a bunt in the second inning, walked in the third, ripped his run-scoring single in the fourth and added base hits in the sixth and eighth innings.
Talk about seizing the moment.
“He probably never thought he was going to be here this early, but that’s baseball and that’s a good example of how this works,” said manager Charlie Montoyo. “When you have a good spring training, you show people what you can do and then people have no problem calling you up when we have a chance. And because of what he did in spring training, it was easy for us to call him up during this time.”
All the offence made things easy for Steven Matz, who stranded a one-out Shohei Ohtani triple in the first and then cruised through the next five innings. The biggest challenge he faced was staying sharp through long layovers before his third, fourth and fifth frames.
He allowed five hits, one of them a Rendon solo shot in fourth, and three walks with five strikeouts, his six frames helping spare a worn Blue Jays bullpen.
Tanner Roark is likely to start Sunday, Montoyo said before the game, with “a good chance” that Robbie Ray returns from the injured list to start during the upcoming series against the New York Yankees. The lefty is lined up for Monday’s start, allowing the Blue Jays to push back Hyun-Jin Ryu and give him an extra day of rest.
More patient, tenacious at-bats like the ones they dropped Saturday on the Angels, who threw a combined 194 pitches, will help. The seven runs the Blue Jays scored in the second inning were not only the most productive inning of the season, but also matched their offensive output from the previous 31 frames. The 15 runs were four more than the 11 they totalled during the four-game losing streak.
That it happened without Hernandez, without Gurriel and while already down George Springer underlined just how much depth matters, and how fast things can change, especially during a pandemic.
