PITTSBURGH – The relief for the Toronto Blue Jays was evident before Bo Bichette’s three-run double touched green in the left-field corner. George Springer urged trailing runners Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Matt Chapman to follow him home as he approached the plate. Guerrero pointed out toward Bichette as he came in, while Springer hopped up and down with both arms in the air as Chapman raced across. Lourdes Gurriel Jr., who left the on-deck circle for the safety of the dugout after consecutive Bichette foul balls just missed him, emerged and pumped his fists in the air.
That the hit meant so much is a result of both the pressures of playing meaningful September baseball and a collective dry spell hitting with runners in scoring position. Bichette’s 108.7 m.p.h. liner that provided the difference in a 4-1 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates, on the 10th pitch of a grinding at-bat against Duane Underwood Jr., was the Blue Jays’ first in 10 tries Saturday.
In the seven games preceding this one, against the Los Angeles Angels and Chicago Cubs and Friday’s series opener at picturesque PNC Park, they had gone just 9-for-47, a .191 average, with the chance to bring in runs and scored only 22 times.
As the wild-card standings contracted within that same stretch, the weight on each at-bat felt bigger and bigger. On Saturday, they came up empty after putting two men aboard in four separate innings before Bichette broke through, to the delight of a heavy pro-Blue Jays contingent among the crowd of 23,568.
Still, the difficulty in pushing across runs meant a steady diet of higher-than-expected leverage against teams the Blue Jays (72-59) expected to handle more comfortably. Alek Manoah did the heavy lifting for them in Friday’s 4-0 win while the tightrope walk Saturday was far more taxing on a deftly handled bullpen day, with Yimi Garcia inducing a key double play to end the fifth in relief of Yusei Kikuchi and Tim Mayza striking out Jack Suwinski with men on the corners in the eighth. Jordan Romano followed with a clean ninth for his 29th save.
So, credit to the pitching staff for keeping the Blue Jays in games but clear is that the offence needs to start fulfilling more of the innings they’ve created. Small sample sizes are noisy of course and the past week could merely be the work of randomness. In zooming out for a better read, the Blue Jays entered the day 14th in the majors in hitting with runners in scoring position with a .260 average, along with a .342 OBP and .423 slug, and while not elite, it’s not the raging inferno it’s felt like in recent days, either.
Worth noting is that the Blue Jays entered Saturday eighth in the majors with 605 runs scored, better than Houston, Tampa Bay, Baltimore, Seattle and Cleveland. Their hot and cold spells remain enigmatic and there remains a sense of bewilderment around the team about why they haven’t put together the type of extended run they appear to be capable of, but sometimes baseball is weird, winning is hard and the players on other teams drive nice cars, too.
As quickly as the Blue Jays went cold, they can similarly get hot, too, and Bichette’s recent resurgence bodes well in that regard. He came into the day batting .349/.429/.535 in his previous 11 games and while he swung at the first pitch in his first three trips Saturday — resulting in a single and two flyouts — he wore down Underwood until finally whipping around a 91.7 m.p.h. cutter.
