NEW YORK — Drenched from the third Toronto Blue Jays‘ champagne soak-and-spray in 2½ weeks, Bo Bichette paused amid the chaos inside the visitors’ clubhouse at Yankee Stadium and marvelled at his team’s latest accomplishment.
“We can win in any way,” he said, wiping the bubbly from his eyes, after a 5-2 victory that clinched a place in the American League Championship Series and eliminated the New York Yankees in the American League Division Series. “The fight this team has, the ability to win in any way, to turn the page as quickly as we do, it’s special to watch these guys. … What this team has done all year is get the job done, whatever that job is, get it done.”
The Blue Jays, of course, have done the job done without their star shortstop since a fateful Sept. 6 slide into Austin Wells’ shinguard led to a PCL sprain in Bichette’s left knee.
But they’ve now gotten deep enough into October to make his return a real possibility.
Before Wednesday’s win, Bichette ran on the field, building on the at-bats he took against Max Scherzer and Chris Bassitt during a simulated game Tuesday in Toronto. Along with an improving Anthony Santander, who went 2-for-10 with two RBIs in three starts versus the Yankees but looked far more like himself, the foursome offers the potential of a boost in the American League Championship Series, which opens Sunday at Rogers Centre versus the winner of Friday’s Game 5 between the Seattle Mariners and Detroit Tigers.
Bichette still needs “to make sure I can run the bases,” and he has three days to clear that threshold before ALCS rosters are due, but, “I’ve made some huge progress the last few days. I’m really optimistic about where I stand,” he said. “I’ll do everything I can to get ready. I have a positive mindset, for sure.”
Adding Bichette, even if limited to DH duties, would give the Blue Jays their cleanup hitter back, one who finished tied for second in the majors with 181 hits and 44 doubles and led the team with 94 RBIs despite missing the final three weeks of the regular season.
There will be obvious usage questions if he is indeed available, and one consideration is that if for some reason, even a minor one, he can’t play for part of the series, replacing him partway through the series due to injury would rule him out of a potential World Series appearance, too.
Either way, the Blue Jays are looking at a wider roster recalibration for the ALCS, which is a best-of-seven series rather than a best-of-five like divisional round, and is more demanding on pitching staffs with the potential of three straight days of play in Games 3, 4 and 5.
“No doubt. In a best-of-five, it’s a little bit of a wild, wild West shootout, you know what I mean?” said pitching coach Pete Walker. “The days off, how you use your starters, it’s a little bit different. The best-of-seven is a little bit more traditional, sometimes. But we’ll think things through and come up with the best group to give us a chance to win.”
Scherzer is physically built enough to jump into a rotation spot after throwing five innings and 90-plus pitches during Tuesday’s sim game. Bassitt, who finished the season on the injured list with lower-back inflammation, threw three innings and 45 pitches, so he’s not quite as lengthened out, but is adaptable enough for creative deployment.
“Chris is definitely feeling a lot better physically. And Max is in a position to help us out as well,” said Walker. “We’ll re-evaluate how we’re going to do this, but they’re both ready to roll if we need them.”
Santander, who missed most of the season with a left shoulder injury, is already on the roster and while he managed only two hits in the series versus the Yankees, one helped fuel a three-run seventh in Game 1 that stabilized what had been a 2-1 lead and the other was a two-run single in the third inning of Game 3 that opened a 6-1 lead.
He also saw 64 pitches across his 10 at-bats, helping to chew up Yankees pitchers, and described his swing as “better than before,” but not totally where he wants it to be.
“Knowing that I’m not 100 per cent in my shoulder, I’m not trying to do too much, even though my swing looks better than before,” said Santander. “I have to control it and don’t swing too hard, just keep putting the ball in play. That’s the (style of play) we have, we don’t strike out much, so I have to keep having good ABs and at some point the homers are going to come, hopefully.”
Watching the Blue Jays’ success without him during the regular season “gave me the strength to keep working hard, to be in this position to try to help the team,” he said, reaffirming his decision to join the club as a free agent. “I signed here for a reason. I knew what kind of talent, what kind of players we have.”
The depth they relied upon allowed the Blue Jays to overcome his absence, as well of those of Scherzer, Andres Gimenez, Yimi Garcia, Bowden Francis and, more recently, Jose Berrios, among others, at different points of the season.
“It’s a credit to our players — you never felt like they were traumatized by it,” said Blue Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro. “They had the next-man up mentality. We have stars, and our biggest stars shined on the biggest stage. But it’s taken every guy for us to be here. We’re not riding one or two guys. That’s kind of the way they’ve approached it. And that’s what makes it so fun.”
And now Bichette might be ready to become a part of it again.
“When you kind of look back at and realize that so many guys have had such a big part in winning games, up and down the roster, everybody, literally, you start to see that and think, Oh, man, we might have something special here,” he said, adding later: “We’ve wanted to win a World Series our entire careers. Obviously, we’re not there yet, but this is a huge step. It’s really a blessing to be a part of this group.”
