After defeating the Red Sox, playoff baseball is close again in Toronto

TORONTO — Even after ending their regular-season home schedule with one of the more crucial sweeps you’ll see, the Blue Jays have no guarantees of returning to the Rogers Center.

They’ve secured a playoff spot, yes, but a road wildcard streak in Seattle remains in play with no guarantees of a return home. That means the Blue Jays will fly to Baltimore for their final regular-season series, not knowing whether they’ll host playoff games again next weekend, stay on the road until the middle of the ALDS, or head into the winter only to be back on March 11. to return April , 2023 against the Tigers.

Sunday’s series finale — a 6-3 win over the Red Sox — put the Blue Jays further ahead in their quest for top AL wildcard berth, though Kevin Gausman would be out after just three innings with a cut to his right middle finger not prevent him from making his next start.

Still, the Blue Jays are certainly well-positioned to return home this year, and if they do, they have a chance to bridge some of the split that has occurred after a rebuild and pandemic. After all, it’s been six years since the Blue Jays last played a home playoff game here — a not inconsiderable amount of time. Inevitably, should the Blue Jays get a chance to play at home regularly, the buzz around the team would extend far beyond where it is now.

“Multiply that by about ten,” said Blue Jays president Shapiro. “And that’s what it’s going to feel like when we get to play post-season games here. So yeah, it’s an important part. The next step is to fix what we’ve seen over the last few years – it was nobody’s fault. There was a certain distance. And that was the nature of what we went through…so getting those games here would be a big part of it.”

One of those games would ideally be Gausman, whose first season as a Blue Jay ends after 174.2 innings with a 3.35 ERA and team-leading 205 strikeouts. He now has between five and seven days to make sure his finger is ready, depending on how the Blue Jays line things up.

After Gausman departed, the Blue Jays’ bullpen was stellar with Zach Pop, Adam Cimber, Anthony Bass, Yimi Garcia and Jordan Romaon collectively allowing for just a six-inning run to give the Blue Jays a 16-3 that year. record against Boston .

“With the postseason coming up, I didn’t want to make it any worse,” Gausman said. “It’s unfortunate that it happened in my last regular season starts, but now I’ve got some time to get it right.”

In the coming days, Gausman expects laser treatment of the cut next to the fingernail. The irritation comes when he throws his shrapnel, but he said he would have stayed in the game if this had been the playoffs.

“I’m just trying to be safe,” added manager John Schneider. “We’re not too worried.”

After Gausman left, the Blue Jays’ bullpen was stellar with Zach Pop, Adam Cimber, Anthony Bass, Yimi Garcia and Jordan Romano collectively allowing for just a six-inning run to give the Blue Jays a 16-3 that year. record against Boston.

The Blue Jays were led offensively by Teoscar Hernandez and Whit Merrifield. Hernandez hit a homer on each of his first two trips to the plate, giving him 25 on the season, along with an .811 OPS.

As for Merrifield, he hit his 11th^th Homer of the season in the third before adding an RBI singles and a doubles. Sunday also marked his ninth straight start at second base after beginning his tenure with the Blue Jays in a part-time role. Even if Santiago Espinal returns from the injured list in the coming days, the second base job seems to be Merrifield as long as he keeps batting.

“It’s not about whether I’m comfortable, it’s about winning games,” Merrifield said afterwards. “I’m just happy to be able to contribute.”

“He shows the player he was throughout his career,” said Schneider. “He was exactly what we were hoping for… a huge spark.”

43,877 spectators attended the regular season finale at Rogers Center, bringing the season average to 32,763. That’s the seventh-best average in MLB and significantly more than the 1,750,144 the Blue Jays made in 2019, their last full season in Toronto, but still down from 2015 (2,794,891), 2016 (3,392,099) or 2017 (3,203,886). .

The crowd on Sunday watched the Blue Jays celebrate their 90th birthday^th Game with three games left against the Orioles starting Monday. That gives the team a chance to surpass last year’s 91 total, but this is the second time in franchise history that the Blue Jays have had a string of 90-win seasons (they did). from 1991 to 1993). .

Aside from the fans, there’s an advantage for the players, who experience the full intensity of Toronto’s home crowd. As Gerrit Cole can attest, that intensity still comes through at times, but there’s a reason the likes of Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion have reached out to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to tell him there’s more to come.

“This is another big step in re-engaging the fanbase and making our players feel what the true meaning of home can be,” said Shapiro. “We’ve had some pretty incredible moments over the past few years that have reminded us of what home can mean. But even this week we haven’t really felt the power of this building. I want this group of players, who are either mostly young or have never been in this environment, to feel that. And I want to include town and country again like we did six or seven years ago. That will be the next step.”

Soon we will know when this next step can take place. After all the patience Blue Jays fans have shown over the past few years, let’s hope the wait for Toronto’s playoff baseball games isn’t long now.