TORONTO -- If the Blue Jays keep playing like this, they could kiss .500 goodbye for the last time.
Thursday afternoon’s 7-6 walk-off win was another snapshot of the Blue Jays at their very best, completing a three-game sweep of the Padres to move to 25-24. This team has been stuck around .500 all season, never straying far from it in either direction, but we haven’t seen them play like this yet.
Nathan Lukes was the hero in the bottom of the 11th with an RBI single through the left side of the infield, saving Jeff Hoffman from the harsh spotlight after the Toronto closer allowed a two-run shot to Gavin Sheets to tie the game at 4 in the top of the ninth. Lukes’ big moment also saved one ugly inning from tainting the three best days of the Blue Jays’ season in which they outscored the Padres, 24-6.
A day after starring in Wednesday’s 14-0 blowout, Lukes was right back in the middle of this one, proving again that he not only belongs in the big leagues but can contribute regularly to a team he’s extremely confident in.
“That was the Blue Jays,” Lukes said Wednesday. “That was the lineup, and those were the hitters that we are.”
What’s important here, even after the wild celebration to cap this series, is how all three of these games fit together. This is what momentum looks like. This is how winning streaks are built, when one game’s dominance spills over into the next.
Bowden Francis wasn’t sharp Thursday, allowing his league-leading 15th home run, but this was a perfect example of skipper John Schneider being able to manage a game with every option in front of him. After Chris Bassitt gave the Blue Jays another great start to open the series on Tuesday and Kevin Gausman was dominant in Wednesday’s win, needing only José Ureña to clean up the blowout behind him, Toronto’s bullpen was as fresh as it’s been all season. That’s why Francis was lifted after four innings and 77 pitches (48 strikes) instead of being asked to trudge through one or two more frames.
In came Yariel Rodríguez, the right move at the right time by Schneider. Rodríguez has been on a roll, but Thursday may have been his finest moment in the big leagues as he struck out the side in the fifth. Most impressive of all? He got Luis Arraez to swing through strike three on a 97.8 mph fastball well inside. It was the type of swing we almost never see from Arraez, baseball’s king of contact who now has Rodríguez to blame for just his fourth strikeout of the season.
Mason Fluharty, Chad Green and Yimi García bridged the gap to Hoffman, so while those decisions all rolled out just as the Blue Jays hoped, Hoffman’s performance was the squeaky wheel. This buildup all started in games one and two of the series, though, leaving Toronto perfectly positioned to call an audible if anything went sideways in the finale.
“We’re playing really well,” Schneider said. “That was a crazy game. You always want to take a two-run lead into the ninth and you feel like you’ve done what you need to do to get there, but it didn’t work out. The guys just kept coming, kept coming and kept coming back. Between that today and the big day yesterday against a really good team, if that’s our best baseball? I don’t know if it is, but it’s pretty close.”
This is what Daulton Varsho and so many others in the Blue Jays’ clubhouse keep talking about. A year ago, a two-run deficit felt like 10 runs at times. This year, the mindset is more cohesive and aggressive. There’s a newfound confidence that they can chase teams down and steal games back from them, even if something went wrong along the way.
“The boys fought through the whole game,” Varsho said. “The defense was great. The pitching was awesome.”
Toronto played one bad inning in this series, but it didn’t let that sink the 28 great innings.
This is how good teams stack wins together, and if the Blue Jays can carry this into Tampa and Texas on their next road trip, the long dance with .500 may finally be over.