TORONTO – An early trademark of the young season for the Toronto Blue Jays is that their games involve very late leverage and so far they have thrived with minimal error.
Monday night’s 6-2 victory over the Boston Red Sox, backed after Bo Bischet’s Grand Slam start at the bottom of the round of 16, was the latest example of their lives in the pressure cooker.
Limited to solo strikes by Lourdes Guriel Jr. and Matt Chapman of Nate Evaldi, a similar brilliant Jose Berios made the advantage to seven before getting into the eighth.
Adam Simber, who faces more pressure than any other Blue Jace player except the closer Jordan Romano, as measured by the entry-level leverage index, has been called in to clear up the two-point, dead-end mess. . He allowed an RBI single by Kike Hernandez and a victim of Alex Verdugo after a sacrificial shot by Kevin Plavecchi, but kept the score 2-2.
At the bottom, Santiago Espinal ranked Matt Stram’s single base kick, Bradley Zimmer followed with a single, and after Tyler Danish took over, George Springer’s single loaded the bases.
Bichette then struck a rare blow, breaking the game in front of an audience of 20,981, placing a 1-0 pot over the wall on the right field for a 6-2 lead, giving Julian Meriweder some room to breathe in the ninth inning.
“We all know that we will drop out and have big games that are not so close all the time,” Bischet said. “But to win a championship, you have to win this type of game against really good teams. We are excited about the way we play, we keep playing that way, we keep playing hard and we just keep competing. ”
Not having to sweat in the last three outs was a nice change of pace for the Blue Jays, as six of their previous seven outings were decided by one run. This was only the fourth time in 17 games this season, with the decisive difference being more than three series.
“We will look forward to the days when we will increase by 10, for sure,” right-back veteran David Phelps said before the match. “But good teams play in matches with levers. Here’s what it was. We knew this first part of the season would be a glove for us, and we felt more like baseball in September than baseball in April. It’s fun, but the ups and downs of these leverage games take a little longer to get down, but that’s the exciting part of baseball. ”
The Blue Jays, now 11-6, certainly had their share of excitement.
Seven of their matches were decided by one run, three by two and three more by three. They are 9-4 in these games, including 5-2 in one-run competitions, which was an area they struggled with sometimes last year, especially in May and June, finishing 15-15 overall.
The experience of a year ago was in the minds of this group, especially during the recent series of intense games, which Simber described as a “playoff atmosphere.”
“This probably goes back to the way we finished last year in a playoff match,” he continued. “We realize how important every game is. And when you’re in a close game every night, it’s kind of a playoff for us, knowing that there’s always potentially only one game away. April or September matters. That’s the idea right now. “
Blue Jace, who has made 45 percent of the club’s innings so far, has worn much of the lever that manager Charlie Montoy has concentrated largely around Romano, Simber, Yimi Garcia, Phelps and Tim Maisa.
Here are their leverage index numbers that target the game on Monday.
1.0 is medium pressure
Not surprisingly, Romano’s number is more than twice the average pressure a player faces when entering a game. As a closer, his role is to enter the games when the stakes are highest.
But there were many bottlenecks to get around, especially during a busy period, which can be reflected. This is one of the many reasons why Berios to play seven innings on Monday is so valuable, while Bichette’s breaking move allowed Romano to take a break.
However, he still plays in nine of the team’s 17 games. Simber, Meisa and Garcia are eight, while Phelps and Richards are seven. The Blue Jays entered the game with the seventh highest leverage index in the major, a statistic in which the Red Sox and Yankees led.
For relief only, 1.0 is medium pressure
With the onset of the offense, that number should normalize over time for the Blue Jays – they finished last season at 1.04 – but in the meantime they are building muscle memory in situations of high stress.
“I just feel like I’m in a bigger place, now we’re better prepared to win,” Romano said. “Even in 2020, maybe early last year, we just lost some of those games. Now we will take some of them. This will be big in September. It will accumulate. “
In addition, the influence of the club’s achievements in defense is added.
George Springer made the final contribution to the highlighter reel with a brilliant Plawecki dive catch to end the heel. Three runs in the bottom half Gurriel took Eovaldi deep to find the score.
With Espinal and Chapman tightening the inside, and Springer, along with Zimmer and Raimel Tapia, making a good catch from the left field wall in the seventh inning by Jackie Bradley Jr., swallowing balls in the outfield, the Blue Jace isn’t just making outs. who have to do, but also take away hits.
“It’s easier to just strike” behind a strong defense, Simber said. “You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to try to draw corners. It’s just like, hey, throw it in the box, try to get as little contact as possible and know that someone in the back is ready to play. ”
On the plate, too, the Blue Jays have learned to take what is given to them.
While the Bichette Grand Slam was the deciding blow, crucial to building the rally was Zimmer recognizing the opportunity and delivering a pretty big hit on the first base line in a tough match from left to left against Strahm.
“It’s just situational baseball,” Zimmer said. “Our crime is so explosive, but sometimes you still have to do the basics. In this situation we had an out, we just wanted to keep the line moving. That’s exactly what we did. Espy has a great at-bat, I get a base kick there, so there are two guys, and George gets a base kick, just three good at-bats back to back, resulting in a big hit for Bo. This is great for us. You can only achieve so many stand-alone home runs. Sometimes you have to do the little things. ”
The constant high-leverage baseball diet to open the season reinforces this everywhere for the Blue Jays, who have done the job so far.
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