TORONTO -- The Blue Jays want to start hunting teams down, no matter the distance.
They’ve been fine fishermen in recent years, able to reel in wins when their starting rotation kept them in the game long enough to get a nibble, but no one would confuse the recent iterations of the Blue Jays with being comeback kids.
They want to chase teams and have opponents feel their footsteps, though, a threat in the distance growing closer. This will need to be a total rebrand for an offense that’s been everything but threatening at times, but we’re seeing glimpses of what the Blue Jays’ hitters have been talking about. Wednesday, with one swing, Alejandro Kirk closed that gap and pounced.
Kirk’s three-run home run in the bottom of the sixth gave the Blue Jays a 3-1 win over the Rays, a bright spot on a dreary Toronto night while the Maple Leafs flopped down the street at Scotiabank Arena. If the Leafs complete their annual playoff collapse this weekend, the eyes of Toronto will quickly shift to the Blue Jays, who need to show the city a different team than the one they turned to in 2024.
“I’m very happy, just very happy and very proud,” Kirk said through a club interpreter. “Our team is going through a good time right now and everybody is doing their part. I’m very happy that I could hit that home run for my team.”
Comeback wins are one of the best ways to grab a fan base again, and even in Tuesday’s 11-9 loss, we saw an offense that’s suddenly capable of doing that -- it was just the bullpen that eventually got in the way of the narrative. What made those postseason teams of 2015 and ‘16 so exciting was the constant threat of a comeback, each game vibrating with opportunity even when they were down. Those days are long gone now -- so is the 2021 season that might still be the great tragedy of this era of baseball in Toronto -- but this team wants to recapture a piece of that magic.
Last year, the Blue Jays had just 25 comeback wins, the second fewest in baseball ahead of only the White Sox (12). Wednesday’s was already their 11th of the season, and while few have been as dramatic as Kirk’s -- or the near-comeback Tuesday -- it’s a start.
In the Blue Jays’ clubhouse, they feel the pieces are in place to change this.
“I’m going to take it back to last year,” Daulton Varsho said after homering twice in Tuesday’s loss. “When we were in those situations, I feel like everyone in the lineup was down on themselves. This year, there’s no panic at all. We’re going to come back and, whether you like it or not, we’re going to have good at-bats. There’s just a different mojo through our dugout and we have confidence in everybody. There’s a different way of feeling this year.”
Kirk agrees.
“It has nothing to do with talent, comparing it to last year,” Kirk said. “But with the way we’re playing this year and our chemistry, not just in the clubhouse but in the dugout and during the game, we’re together regardless of the situation or the score. We support each other. We back up each other. That allows us to come back in games like this.”
Kirk, himself, can be a major part of this. The 26-year-old catcher is finally driving the ball again. He’s always been a contact machine, but too much of his 2024 season was defined by soft contact. His at-bats feel threatening again.
This is what Toronto needs more of, because nothing flips a game quicker than power. The Blue Jays are digging their way out of that basement, now tied for 26th in MLB with 35 home runs after launching four in Tuesday’s loss.
To a man, everyone in that clubhouse keeps saying they feel it coming.
“It’s a real thing,” manager John Schneider said. “It’s a really close-knit group that’s done a great job of staying together during roller-coaster, up-and-down games. When you do it, you feel more confident that you can. It’s a feel thing that guys have.”
Teams with an identity for coming back to steal games have the right combination of a good clubhouse, power and a little luck. This is who the Blue Jays want to be now, to rediscover a long-lost identity as a team that makes the other team nervous.