TORONTO – Toronto Blue Jays manager John Schneider was sitting in his office on Saturday chatting with reporters about the statistical anomaly that is his team’s offence.
The Blue Jays rank near the top of MLB in hits and batting average, but simply haven’t been able to convert those numbers into runs, with the club outside the top 10 in that category.
“It’s just not leading to the amount of runs that it technically should,” Schneider said. “It is weird. But I think that as long as you’re staying consistent with how you get there, it’s like playing blackjack, right? Numbers will even out sooner or later.”
It took a day, but the cards turned in favour of Blue Jays hitters, especially Cavan Biggio, on Sunday. The first baseman smoked a clutch three-run homer in the eighth inning to lift the Blue Jays to a 7-6 win over the Minnesota Twins in front of 41,673 at Rogers Centre.
The Biggio bomb helped erase what was a rough start for Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman. The first six Twins reached base and by the end of the inning, the club had taken a 4-0 lead on the right-hander. Gausman settled down considerably after that, helping to eat some much-needed innings, but the Twins struck again in the fifth with a solo homer from Donovan Solano and a double from Carlos Correa, who later scored.
In total, Gausman allowed six runs on seven hits over 4.2 innings. He walked four and struck out four while tossing 101 pitches.
The Blue Jays’ offence has been struggling of late, making their prospects look dire after that ugly first inning. However, the lineup showed life in the bottom of the fifth when Biggio walked to lead off against Twins starter Louie Varland and later came around to score on Carlos Correa’s throwing error.
The next batter, Matt Chapman, took Varland deep for a two-run shot — his ninth homer of the season — that cut the Twins’ lead to 6-4. It was the Blue Jays’ only home run during the series and first since Wednesday.
Biggio added to that tally, in the process helping the Blue Jays salvage a game in the three-game set.
The club will now head to Baltimore for a three-game series that begins Tuesday.
