CHICAGO — Max Scherzer can’t identify the longest win streak he’s been a part of during his 18 big-league seasons and, “I don’t even care to know,” he points out.
“I know right now we all want to talk about streaks and the streak that we’re on is great,” continued the Hall-of-Fame-bound right-hander. “And don’t get me wrong, we’re enjoying the absolute living daylights out of it. But it is less about the streak and more about how we’re playing good baseball. We’ve been playing good baseball for the past six weeks. So to me, when you want to talk about the streak, I’m like, no, no, no, we’ve been playing good baseball. And I’d rather talk about that.”
Interesting perspective, as always, and we’ll get to that. For the record, Scherzer was twice part of 12-game win streaks with the Detroit Tigers, once in 2011 and again in 2013. When he won the World Series with the Washington Nationals in 2019 and the Texas Rangers in 2023, the longest runs for those teams were eight straight.
So, the 10-game win streak for his Toronto Blue Jays, which ended one game short of tying the club record Wednesday afternoon with a 2-1 loss to the Chicago White Sox, isn’t new, but neither is it a regular occurrence, even for good teams.
That being said, Scherzer’s wider point, about the club’s wider turnaround, is what’s really relevant, since all streaks eventually end and meaningful conclusions can only be drawn from wider sample sizes.
To that end, two arbitrary starting points the Blue Jays point to are an 8-5 comeback win in May at Anaheim against the Angels and a 2-0 win on May 28 at Texas, decided by Bo Bichette’s pinch-hit home run in the ninth inning. Since the first, they are 38-19, since the second, they are 28-11, catapulting them into the AL East lead at 54-39.
And it’s the traits they’ve shown during that span, emerging out of a cold April, that need to be sustained over the final 2 ½ months of the season to keep the good times rolling.
“The common theme you see right now,” said Scherzer, “is that when somebody makes a mistake, somebody picks them up; somebody makes an error, somebody makes a big pitch; somebody doesn’t get the run in, somebody gets a big hit; reliever struggles, offence comes alive. We’ve always had an answer for any adversity right now.
“Hitters aren’t going to get every hit. Fielders are going to make some errors. Pitchers are going to give up home runs. That’s the way it goes,” he added. “But when we’ve had something bad happen, other guys find a way to cover up for that mistake and do something better. To me, that’s the team stuff, an ‘it’ factor. It’s hard to measure it, hard to describe it. But when you see it, you know it.”
The finale at Rate Field marked a rare recent outing when the big moment didn’t come.
Eric Lauer, so vital to the team’s turnaround, shook out his hand on his final pitch of the third, a slider that Chase Meidroth flew out to centre on, and then grinded through a difficult fourth that included an Edgar Quero RBI double and Lenyn Sosa RBI single.
Lauer came out after that inning and then in the seventh, Ryan Burr came out of the game after missing with a 2-2 slider and showing some discomfort. Catcher Tyler Heineman signalled to the dugout after the pitch and the status of Burr, only activated from the IL July 5 after opening the season on the injured list with a shoulder injury, wasn’t immediately known.
The Blue Jays’ offence, meanwhile, was kept in check over seven solid innings from Adrian Houser, who managed to prevent a second-inning rally after Heineman’s safety squeeze base hit that plated Will Wagner with the game’s first run.
Leo Jimenez then sent a 105.5 m.p.h. liner right at first baseman Tim Elko, who doubled Myles Straw off at second to escape the jam, and the Blue Jays tried to build a couple more innings but couldn’t.
Grant Taylor in the eighth and Jordan Leasure in the ninth, after surrendering a two-out pinch-hit single to Alejandro Kirk, closed the game out.
A full bullpen, something manager John Schneider quipped he didn’t remember having since “March 28, opening day,” came in handy due to the short Lauer outing, with Braydon Fisher, Brendon Little, Burr and Yariel Rodriguez jumping aboard.
After an off-day Thursday, the Blue Jays play three in Sacramento against the Athletics before the all-star break.
