ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Regardless of how this series plays out at Tropicana Field, the Toronto Blue Jays’ perpetual hell place, the wildcard picture will be no less muddled in the final week-and-a-half of the regular season. The gap between them, the Tampa Bay Rays and the Seattle Mariners is just too narrow to rule out any scenarios for now, to ensure there’s at least some drama about who’s playing where, if not who’s getting in.
All of this makes holding tiebreaks so important, which the Blue Jays gave up after a frustrating 10-6 loss on Friday night, leaving them 7-10 against the Rays this season and only two more head-to-heads to go. encounters could catch up.
A back-and-forth was decided in game eight when David Peralta lifted a flyball into shallow right field and pinch-runner Taylor Walls rushed home under a high and wide throw from Teoscar Hernandez to break a 6-6 tie. A Bo Bichette error on a Harold Ramirez grounder later in the inning led to another run before Randy Arozarena’s two-run single cushioned the edge.
Pete Fairbanks wiped out in ninth place as the Rays (84-67) tied the Blue Jays (84-67), losers of three straight games, for first place in the wildcard race, but they’re essentially ahead by that they hold the tiebreaker. The Seattle Mariners (82-68), 5-1 losers in Kansas City, are 1.5 games behind.
“It’s strange here. Whenever things aren’t going well or perfectly, it seems to unravel,” said interim manager John Schneider, later adding: “Tonight was a perfect example of playing to their strengths. You can’t go expecting good things to happen. You want them to hit you with their clubs and tonight we didn’t do that and didn’t take very good care of the ball.”
Under the new rules this year, standings ties between two teams will be broken by a head-to-head match rather than a single-game winner-takes-all contest. A three-way tiebreak decides which team has the best combined win rate against the other two clubs.
The Rays are in the driver’s seat on both fronts and hold the lead over the Blue Jays and the Mariners (5-2) in two-team scenarios and hold the best cumulative mark when it comes to a three-way deadlock. Seattle beat Toronto 5-2 and is second in such a scenario.
Henceforth, the Blue Jays must be at least a game better than both rivals to secure home field advantage without the margin for error that a tiebreaker affords.
Add to that a tough week that began with a botched save against the Baltimore Orioles last Sunday, followed by a chaotic 18-11 win in Philadelphia on Tuesday before another missed chance against the Phillies in a 4-3-10 Inning loss on Wednesday and a blowout loss on Thursday for the Rays.
During that span, the Blue Jays have stopped considering a possible run with the New York Yankees on the AL East, retaining home field for the wild card round.
Schneider spoke of “putting every game individually into a vacuum at this point,” which third baseman Matt Chapman, no stranger to walking the tightrope with high leverage, said was easier said than done.
“It’s hard every day trying not to think too much about what happened, what could have been done better,” Chapman said. “Everyone is a little bit burned this time of year. All have been grinding for a long time. To be the best player and teammate you can be tomorrow, you just have to flush it and let it go. Everyone is tired and it will do you no good trying to figure out why this happened or why you were pitched a certain way or why you didn’t make a play you should have made.
“Obviously, there are a few pieces tonight that I wish I had done, and I’m pretty good at kicking myself for them,” he continued. “But I know it doesn’t matter anymore, and as much as I wish I would do it differently, it’s like, hey, tomorrow I get another opportunity to play for this team and help us, a game to win . That’s what I’m focusing on and I know the guys are doing it too.”
The Blue Jays would have needed to beat the Rays three times in a row to earn the tiebreak, starting with a Friday game that featured the usual array of woes that plague them at trop.
Mitch White, recalled to the start by the Triple-A Buffalo, was bled out for two runs in the first, with Wander Franco dropping a 77.3-mile double just inside the left field line for a run-scoring groundout beforehand by Arozarena to prepare a Manuel Margot Bunt single plated a second run.
Christian Bethancourt’s RBI double in the fourth made it 3-0, but back-to-back doubles from Teoscar Hernandez and Raimel Tapia opened the fifth cut in the lead. Tapia then took third on a Whit Merrifield fly into deep center, Danny Jansen walked and after George Springer slammed, Bichette ripped an RBI single. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. then leveled the game with a bouncer down the middle and Alejandro Kirk, ordered to find his spots after missing time with a left hip strain last week, launched it on the line to avoid a faulty one Isaac Paredes’ throw to beat to put the Blue Jays up 4-3.
The Blue Jays needed a shutdown inning in the bottom half, drawing white for Tim Mayza, who hit Jonathan Aranda before Harold Ramirez folded and Wander Franco walked. Anthony Bass came in and he went up 1-2 on Arozarena, who then slashed the fourth straight slider he saw over the wall in right field to put the Rays back in the lead 6-4.
The Blue Jays parted ways in the sixth with a single from Jansen RBI and a jumper sacrifice fly, but Guerrero struck with two ons to end the frame and things held up until the game broke against Yimi Garcia in the eighth disbanded, just like Wednesday in Philadelphia .
A Ji-Man Choi walk to open the inning sparked the anger before Miles Mastrobuoni followed with a base hit that sent pinch-runner Walls into third place. Peralta’s flat fly followed and the Rays continued pouring it from there.
“I thought (Garcia) Choi made great pitches,” said Schneider. “Really tight 3-2 pitch, really tight 2-2 pitch and you trust that you want the players to hold the result of the game in their hands. That happens sometimes.”
More so than sometimes for the Blue Jays at the Trop, the ballpark, with a warehouse-mall atmosphere, is what Chapman diplomatically said is “an interesting place to play.”
“A little different – just different in every way,” he continued. “It’s pretty hard to say why it’s different. Of course, up until this year I’ve only come once a year. But it definitely takes some getting used to, definitely some getting used to. But it’s a good team we’re playing against. They play just as well on their home pitch as we do. When you’re out here, you know you’re going to have a tough game and you need to find alternative ways to simply win.”
Mantra for the moment for the Blue Jays.
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