TORONTO – Differences in roster construction aside, Jeff Hoffman sees some similarities between his Toronto Blue Jays and the powerhouse Philadelphia Phillies teams he played on the previous two seasons.
“From a clubhouse-meshing standpoint, this is right there,” the closer said Sunday before closing out a 3-2 win over the Los Angeles Angels to cap a 7-0 homestand. “It’s the same type of feels every single day, showing up expecting to win, having fun while doing it. Everybody’s in a good spot. Everybody’s wanting to hang out away from the field, on the field. It’s a good group. And as we go through stretches like this, just like we did in bad stretches and stuff like that, it solidifies those type of bonds.”
The wild everyday-someone-else flow of their current surge continued during their season-high eighth straight win with Joey Loperfido, recalled from triple-A Buffalo with Andrés Giménez placed on the injured list with a sprained left ankle, delivering an RBI single in the fourth inning and Ryan Burr, reinstated from the injured list to refresh the bullpen, delivering four outs of clean leverage relief.
Davis Schneider provided a go-ahead RBI single in the sixth after another everything-is-turning-up-Blue-Jays-moment earlier in the inning, when Alejandro Kirk hit a foul popper toward the home dugout.
Catcher Logan O’Hoppe chased down the tough-but-playable ball but at the last moment, he tripped on the foot of charging third baseman Chad Stevens, and didn’t make the grab. Kirk then singled, allowing Bo Bichette, who led off with a walk, to score on Schneider’s single.
Twists of fate big and small like that one, along with contributions from all corners, have marked their wider 26-10 run, which has propelled them atop the American League East. A crowd of 40,114 roared as Kevin Gausman allowed two runs over 5.2 innings while throwing a season-high 107 pitches, when Bichette scored in the sixth and again when Addison Barger made a diving stab on Jo Adell’s liner to third for the final out.
The Blue Jays (52-38) are now 11-2 heading into a three-game series at the Chicago White Sox starting Monday that caps an incredibly taxing stretch of 16 games in 16 days. It has placed an enormous burden across the entire roster, particularly the bullpen.
“It doesn’t hurt that we’re winning,” said Hoffman, who saved three of the four wins during last week’s sweep of the New York Yankees, part of a stretch of four outings in five days for the right-hander. “Like, it’s hard to go through a stretch of this many games in a row when you’re not winning. So winning the games takes a little bit off, makes it easier to show up the next day, makes it easier to want to get after it again, finish the sweep, that kind of thing.
“We all do a great job preparing in the weight room, preparing in the training room. There’s not enough credit for what they do in the training room to make sure that we’re in a position that we can go out on the field and do our job. The group meshing that I talked about is just as much about the meshing between the training staff and us, the coaching staff and us, strength-staff and us, because it’s all one big spiderweb and it’s been great.”
An integral part of that web is the way the farm system has provided a stream of pitching that’s held other threads together.
Braydon Fisher, for instance, pitched for the fifth time in seven days in Saturday’s 4-3 win in 11 innings, and is now up to 24 appearances and 26 innings. Mason Fluharty made 37 appearances before he was optioned after hitting a wall, Paxton Schultz, who is currently on the IL, covered 23.2 innings in 12 games while Lazaro Estrada debuted Saturday with four outstanding innings before getting optioned to make room for Burr.
Their contributions have been so vital that pitching coach Pete Walker has been texting Justin Lehr, the club’s minor-league pitching director, Rick Meinhold, their pitching development co-ordinator, and other staff members “marvelling at what we’re doing down there right now.”
“They’ve done an unbelievable job preparing guys,” said Walker. “We’ve had great conversations this spring, really the last year and a half, but this group has done a great job with running game, pitch arsenal, fine-tuning things and it’s showing up. Every guy that’s come up here from triple-A so far has done a really, really fantastic job.”
