SEATTLE — Off-day, after two American League Championship Series losses in 24 hours were followed by a cross-continent flight that arrived not long before sunrise Tuesday morning, and the Toronto Blue Jays clubhouse at T-Mobile Park is the same as ever.
At one end of the room, Myles Straw and Brendon Little sat at a table playing cards, while Addison Barger and Davis Schneider leaned on a nearby couch leafing through an old draft book, debating some of the best classes of all time. Others weaved in and out between rounds in the batting cage, or throwing on the field, trading jokes and barbs with the usual joviality they’ve shared all season.
They may be down 2-0 to the Seattle Mariners in a best-of-seven series that resumes with Game 3 Wednesday night (Sportsnet, 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT), when Shane Bieber starts against George Kirby, but the hard realities of such a deficit did little to shake the bond they’ve built over 8½ months together.
“Yeah, we do everything together, off-nights even, when everybody’s trying to stay away from baseball, we’re all going out and getting dinner together,” said closer Jeff Hoffman. “The teams like this one are the ones where you don’t really want the season to end because these are the guys that you’ve literally spent all your time with for the duration of the season. A lot of guys on this team I’ll keep in touch with for the rest of my life, no matter what goes on from this point on.”
-
-
Watch the Blue Jays in the ALCS on Sportsnet
The Toronto Blue Jays will face the Seattle Mariners in Game 3 of the ALCS on Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT. Catch the game on Sportsnet or Sportsnet+.
The Blue Jays, of course, aren’t ready to bow out from their joyful ride through an AL East championship and division series win just yet. They were thoroughly outplayed by their AL West counterparts through the first two games at Rogers Centre and Hoffman said the key to pulling themselves back into this clash, something several of teammates repeated as well, is “how well you can execute your game plan.”
No doubt, and that applies both at the plate, where Mariners pitchers have attacked the safe parts of the zone and avoided dangerous contact, and on the mound, where Seattle hitters have pummelled mistakes. But an ephemeral intangible also driving the Blue Jays is a connection several described as unique and a collective desire to earn more time together.
“I think it factors in when your backs are up against the wall and there’s only one way out, and that’s to start throwing punches,” Hoffman explained. “I think that’s exactly the type of group that we have in the clubhouse. I’m looking forward to the way that we respond.”
Rallying against the Mariners is, without doubt, the stiffest challenge yet for this group of Blue Jays, which overcame a destabilizing 12 losses in 16 outings at the end of April into early May; injuries to Anthony Santander, Max Scherzer, Andres Gimenez and Yimi Garcia, among others; and losses in six of seven during the final week-and-a-half of the season. Their big-league best 49 comeback victories during the regular season helped fuel a 20-win year-over-year gain that’s the best in franchise history, along the way building “relationships that are strong and that are genuine and real,” said manager John Schneider, which “makes it a little bit easier to go out and execute, perform, play for one another.”
Those relationships created a clubhouse in which “everybody loves each other,” said centre-fielder Daulton Varsho, providing what he feels is a key ingredient in how this season has played out.
“There’s not one bad apple in here — it’s like Semi-Pro when they all come together and Jackie Moon’s yelling out of the back,” Varsho continued. “Everybody here pulls for one another. Everybody trusts in one another. It’s one of those rare groups. I’ve been on so many different teams now, year-to-year where guys are coming in, guys are going out, especially in Arizona, we had new teams every year and it was like, all right, how is everybody going to gel? You’re trying to find ways to come together. It’s not like this group, where everybody does love everybody.”
Within that love is trust, in themselves, in one another, in the team, “knowing we are going to get the best version out at some point,” added Varsho. “You think about the lineup we have right now, if everybody just saw that at the beginning of the season, they would have been like, ‘Wow, there’s no way that’s possible.’ We make it work because you don’t know who’s going to produce every night, but we do, we just find a way to try to win every game. The first two games didn’t go our way, but that’s why it’s a seven-game series.”
Veteran starter Chris Bassitt, one of the cohesive forces binding this Blue Jays team together, described this Blue Jays team as “the perfect scenario where everyone’s not too worried about themselves anymore,” and that dynamic has helped underpin their success.
“We have a lot of older veteran guys that are blessed enough they’ve made enough money in the game where worrying about the contract, arbitration, individual numbers doesn’t really matter at all — all they care about is how to win games,” Bassitt continued. “And then all the younger guys, they bought in where it was like, listen, the game is going to take care of itself, don’t worry about your numbers, play the game the right way and your numbers are going to be there. The closer you can be where you care about the team more than yourself, the closer you’ll be.”
To that end, the right-hander believes that if the Blue Jays can “just get back to being us” Wednesday, they can pull themselves back into the series.
“When we don’t make mistakes and execute our game, it’s really hard to beat us,” he said. “So it’s not having to completely change how our team plays, it’s more so tweaking things to stay out of mistakes or put ourselves in better positions.”
Ace Kevin Gausman, who like Bassitt is part of the glue that holds the club together, noted that winning helped foster the club’s closeness — “If we were losing, we wouldn’t be talking about how close we are,” he said — but connected that success with a team-wide belief.
“You see it on the field by everybody just being completely engaged and having faith in the next guy up,” said Gausman. “It’s never like we’re waiting for one guy to save the day, it’s all hands on deck and that’s been our mentality from Day 1.
“Yeah, we’ve dug ourselves in a hole here, but we know that if we keep playing smart, fundamental baseball, we’re going to give our team a chance to win and feel really confident with all these guys in here.”
They’ll need to be at their very best to overcome the 2-0 deficit and outfielder Myles Straw feels the team game they’ve played all season is essential to making that happen. Typically, he said, he loves all his teammates, but on this club, “there are more true, genuine friendships here.”
“It’s huge because you actually you want to play for each other,” Straw continued. “That’s how you have to play to win baseball games. You can’t play this game selfishly. Like for myself, I’ve never really put so much pride into bunting just for George (Springer) in the one-hole to produce as much as he has this year, seeing the year he’s had, moving guys over, believing in others. And I feel like I’ve believed in this team more than I’ve ever believed in any other player or team in my life. And I’ve been on some really good teams. The 2019 Astros, I thought I’d never even come close to a team like that. And this team’s right there with that team, if not better relationships. That can push you to another level.”
To extend this Blue Jays team’s time together, it’s going to have to, starting Wednesday night.
