BALTIMORE – On the morning of Oct. 3, 2021, Major League Baseball sent out a plan to bring order amid potential chaos. The possibility of a four-way tie, along with different combinations of three-way and two-way ties for the American League wild-card spots were in play ahead of Game 162, leaving a dizzying array of scenarios for the Toronto Blue Jays that fateful Sunday.
“There was a lot going on, we were trying to just take care of the game against Baltimore,” John Schneider recalled of that 12-4 win over the Orioles a year ago that put them in position to advance to the playoffs before victories by the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees ultimately left them one measly game short. “You were trying to check things off the box as they went, inning by inning in our game, and then inning by inning after our game was over. So you went from being really excited to the exact opposite in about 40 minutes. A lot of moving parts for sure.”
Precisely one year later, the situation was much more straight-forward for the Blue Jays as they once again met the Orioles, this time at Camden Yards on a miserably cold and rainy Monday night. Their wild-card berth already clinched this time, a 5-1 rain-shortened win lowered their magic number to one over the Seattle Mariners for the right to host Friday’s series opener.
Whit Merrifield continued to deliver impact big and small, ripping a two-run single in the second and then dropping a bunt single in the fifth that forced a throwing error that put him on second, advancing to third on a groundout and scoring on a wild pitch. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., clubbed a monster 422-foot homer in the third and Matt Chapman tacked on an RBI single in the eighth, when play was halted with the bases loaded and two out, to support Jose Berrios, who allowed one run on three hits and three walks in six solid innings.
The Blue Jays, at 91-69, matched their win total from a year ago and pushed their lead for the first wild-card to three over the Seattle Mariners (87-71), who were hosting Detroit.
Once that gets sorted, all that will be left is figuring out whether Lourdes Gurriel Jr. – who did fielding work, plans to run the bases Tuesday and is aiming to “be ready to pinch hit and then we’ll take it from there,” for Friday’s playoff opener – and Santiago Espinal – who hit off the velo machine again – will be healthy enough for the post-season roster.
Kevin Gausman, meanwhile, who left Sunday’s start with a cut on his right middle finger, is feeling better and there are “no real concerns with him at this point,” said Schneider, peeling another item from the to-do list.
Hence, the focus on home-field and the math is a whole lot more manageable compared to the spreadsheets needed to sort through the permutations last fall, which began with the Blue Jays needing a win and one of the Yankees or Red Sox to lose.
“I remember knowing the scenarios, for sure, and feeling pretty good going into the day. It’s baseball, somebody’s going to lose, right? Like, it can happen,” said Ross Stripling. We didn’t like the matchups. I guess if you were to pick one, you’d probably would’ve guessed the Rays to beat the Yankees. But the Rays weren’t playing for anything because they already had the division. And the Nationals were the Nationals, but they were playing at home. So it was like, man, someone’s going to get one for us, right? To come all this way and come up a game, short? That’s not going to happen. Then obviously it did.”
The Blue Jays jumped out to an early lead against the Orioles that day, which made scoreboard watching “much easier to do,” remembers George Springer. “I remember turning back to look quite a bit that day and that’s not something that I would normally do.”
The Yankees beat the Rays 1-0 first, leaving the Nationals as the Blue Jays’ only hope. Once they wrapped up their win over the Orioles, the Red Sox game was put on the videoboard at Rogers Centre just in time for Rafael Devers’ go-ahead, two-run homer in the ninth, turning elation to dejection in an instant.
“It was just like, wow, we did everything that we could possibly do to put ourselves in the position and it just didn’t happen. It was deflating. It sucked,” said Springer. “You look back at everything that you’ve been through. This was our third city, finally getting a chance to be home. The ups, the downs, not really being projected to be where we were and ended up being in a really good spot at the end of the year. And just knowing that you fell one game short in the standings, you can look back on any game that you lost and say, well, if I had done this or if this had happened, you might not be in this position.
“But you learn from it and here we are now.”
Where they are now is on the verge of securing their first home playoff date since a 3-0 loss to Cleveland in Game 5 of the 2016 ALCS.
