TAMPA – The Toronto Blue Jays are operating on a few different planes as they close in on a post-season berth, an American League East title and a wild-card-round bye, which means at first glance, some of their decisions might look a little funky.
Take the way they closed out Tuesday night’s 6-5 win over the Tampa Bay Rays, for example, when Seranthony Dominguez recorded two outs in the eighth plus another in the ninth before Jeff Hoffman came in to finish things off. Why not simply let Dominguez finish things off if he’s already out there? And why disrupt Hoffman’s usual usage as closer?
“Hoff was coming in at (Brandon) Lowe anyway, even if there were two outs, nobody on – we were trying to just squeeze together the number of pitches,” manager John Schneider explained. “It was kind of risky. If they tied it, (catcher Tyler) Heineman’s pitching the 10th. So it wasn’t ideal. But we tried to piece it together with those two.”
Unusual under normal circumstances, the usage makes more sense when you consider that the two relievers were pitching for a second straight day and the Blue Jays “trying to thread the needle with workload and trying to win” simultaneously, said Schneider. As Chris Bassitt put it, “I’d say there have been a lot of moves done that are just what we need in the moment, instead of pushing full steam ahead and trying to go crazy, so to speak.”
That tightrope walk continued Wednesday night in a 2-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays, when Kevin Gausman went six innings and threw 95 pitches after a 100-pitch shutout in his last outing and Yariel Rodriguez, also pitching a second straight day, surrendered the go-ahead run in the seventh inning.
Lefty Ian Seymour held the Blue Jays to a single unearned run over seven innings of work, helped along by Chandler Simpson’s leaping catch at the centre-field wall that reduced an Alejandro Kirk drive to a sacrifice fly instead of a three-run homer in the fourth inning.
That tied the game 1-1 and there it stood until the seventh, when Carson Williams ripped a two-out double and Simpson, who also led off the game with a double and scored on a Yandy Diaz single, ripped a base hit to plate the go-ahead run.
Edwin Uceta handled the eighth when the Blue Jays used Joey Loperfido and Nathan Lukes as pinch-hitters but not Daulton Varsho, who earlier this season took the reliever deep, while Pete Fairbanks closed things out in the ninth.
The end result, combined with Cleveland’s 4-0 victory at Detroit, left the Blue Jays’ magic number for clinching a post-season berth at three. Bassitt takes on Shane Baz in Thursday’s series finale at George M. Steinbrenner Field before they head to Kansas City for a three-game series with the Royals, where more machinations will take place.
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Watch Blue Jays vs. Rays on Sportsnet
The Toronto Blue Jays play the finale of a four-game series against the Tampa Bay Rays on Thursday. Catch the action on Sportsnet or Sportsnet+, starting at 1:10 p.m. ET / 10:10 a.m. PT.
The rotation for that series isn’t yet set and Trey Yesavage, coming off an electric nine-strikeout, five-inning debut, is “for sure” under consideration to start one of the games, said Schneider. “We definitely want to see Trey again and what the stuff plays a second time out there and go from there. He’ll be pitching in K.C., just don’t whether it’s going to be starting or coming out of the ‘pen. And other guys kind of play into that decision, too.”
Key, he added, is balancing “what everyone needs and you’re trying to cast forward a little bit without getting too far ahead of yourself, and making sure everyone has the appropriate rest, has the appropriate time to prepare.”
