TORONTO -- With each loss, something different is lost in the fire. Daulton Varsho's performance on Tuesday night was like losing a Picasso to the flames.
Varsho homered twice, the latter putting the Blue Jays ahead in the bottom of the eighth and on the doorstep of their fifth consecutive win. A half-hour later, Toronto walked off the field carrying an 11-9 loss to Tampa Bay at Rogers Centre.
Jeff Hoffman allowed the fatal blow, a grand slam off the bat of Junior Caminero. It was a gut punch for the Blue Jays and continued a sudden, surprising week from Hoffman, who has allowed 11 runs over his past five appearances (3 IP) stretching back to the beginning of the Angels series a week ago.
Some losses are heavier than others, though -- even in mid-May -- and losing Varsho’s performance is what makes this one tragic. After the loss, though, Varsho spoke as openly as he has in his time with the organization about how this team feels in the clubhouse and the dugout. He said that he’d hand the ball to Hoffman “100 times out of 100," knowing that his closer would get out of it.
It’s a loss -- and an ugly one -- but Varsho feels the difference in these moments.
“I’m going to take it back to last year,” Varsho began. “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.”
Varsho is certainly feeling something. His two home runs left the bat at 113.9 and 113.6 mph, which were the two hardest-hit balls of his MLB career. It also marked the first time since Statcast was introduced in 2015 that a Blue Jays hitter recorded two home runs with exit velocities north of 113 mph in the same game.
He’s already launched five home runs in 10 games since returning from shoulder surgery. Varsho wants to clean up what’s happening around the power, but he’s clearly found something and manager John Schneider points back to the early days of Spring Training, when this started to build.
“As he goes along in his career, he’s understanding who he is and what he can handle,” Schneider said. “He’s leaning into it. Confidence is a real thing. When you’re at that stage, you make some adjustments and you have confidence. Varsho is as talented as anyone. He makes that catch in left-center look easy, then a couple balls hit at 114? It’s there.”
In the spring, Varsho spoke about trying to “hit down on the ball” an intentional overcorrection in his mind to help eliminate pop flies. That may lead to some more strikeouts along the way, of course, which Varsho still wants to keep under control.
“I want to be around league average, which I think is around 20%,” Varsho said. “That’s cutting 15% of what I’m doing right now. Obviously, if I can do that and hit the ball on a line and show what I can do, it’s going to be really good.”
Tuesday is what “really good” looks like.
On top of it all, Varsho had the catch of the game, robbing Jose Caballero of extra bases in the eighth after covering an incredible amount of ground in left-center and sliding into the wall. This game was the full Varsho experience, perhaps one of his best in the big leagues, but the box score just shows a loss.
“Such is life in the big leagues,” Schneider said. “You can think right now that there’s probably five or six games that, OK, we should have won that one. It’s why we play 27 outs. You never know what’s going to happen. It seems like there’s been a rollercoaster of stuff. It’s fun, but it sucks when days like today happen. I can’t say enough about how I love how the guys went about it. We’re a tight-knit group that’s playing really well.”
In some ways, it’s easier to bounce back from this than a 10-0 loss because they have positives to point to. A performance like Varsho’s is so difficult to leave behind, though, after he did everything in his power to steal a game before the Rays stole it right back.