Games like this, where Vladimir Guerrero Jr. drives the offence, the starting pitcher puts up zeroes and the bullpen locks it down, have been rare of late. But as Saturday’s 1-0 win over the Chicago White Sox showed, that potential still exists.
The question now is how often the 46-52 Blue Jays can find this gear again. Because doing it once is great, but to get out of last place and back into contention, they’ll need sustained stretches of polished performance.
The Blue Jays began the day 3.5 games behind in the American League wild-card race, but their latest win cuts that deficit down to three games pending the result of Saturday’s Rays-Red Sox game. Closing that gap is possible, but there’s a lot of work to do and limited time remaining.
Under those circumstances, Shane Bieber’s performance was pivotal. On a day the Blue Jays unveiled a back-to-back World Series statue of Joe Carter commemorating the 1992-93 championships, Bieber held the White Sox scoreless through six.
While his stuff wasn’t overwhelming, it didn’t have to be because he consistently got ahead of hitters and located his pitches well. Chicago connected for just three hits against the right-hander, who struck out six while generating 13 swinging strikes.
This was easily the best start of the season for Bieber, who needed just 80 pitches before the Blue Jays proactively turned things over to the bullpen, at which point the high-leverage trio of Jeff Hoffman, Tyler Rogers and Louis Varland took over and covered three scoreless innings of their own.
Offensively, it was another quiet day for the Blue Jays, who managed just five hits against Davis Martin and the White Sox bullpen. But they scored once in the fourth when Guerrero Jr. doubled to deep centre and George Springer singled him in.
The Guerrero Jr. double left his bat at 107 m.p.h., giving him four batted balls of 106 m.p.h. or more so far this weekend. Granted, there are no awards for highest exit velocity, but those hard-hit balls are typically a sign of good things to come.
Guerrero Jr. also singled to right and walked Saturday, but he might have earned his biggest cheer of the day when he presented Carter with a customized home run jacket emblazoned with ‘Touch ‘em all Joe’ in tribute to Tom Cheek’s iconic radio call of Carter’s walk-off home run in Game 6 of the 1993 World Series.
Nearly 100 games into the season, Guerrero Jr. has yet to hit a home run at Rogers Centre, but with the way he’s swinging, that could change soon. More to the point, the Blue Jays found their way to a much-needed win.
The challenge from here: build on this performance with a string of wins — and soon.