TORONTO — Drown-proofing is a U.S. Navy SEAL water-training exercise that tests the ability of recruits to remain composed under extreme duress, requiring them to complete multiple tasks in the deep end of a pool with their hands and feet tied. Avoiding panic, managing the situation and utilizing energy effectively are essential to success in the moment, survival in the field, eventually. And it’s an apt analogy for the Toronto Blue Jays that John Schneider has been using with his players in recent days.
“You can either go to the bottom and bob back up for air, or you can just start (expletive) thrashing and you're going to die,” the manager explained. “And I don't want them to start (thrashing around) because it’s easy to do that, and hard to do the other thing.”
The Blue Jays, in the deep end after surrendering their AL East lead, began doing the hard thing Thursday night, fighting through their frustrations at the plate until Daulton Varsho released them with a sixth-inning grand slam that keyed a 6-1 win over the Boston Red Sox.
Up until the decisive frame, the Blue Jays managed to stay calm in the water even as opportunities to break free came and went. In the first, Nathan Lukes’ one-out triple was stranded on consecutive groundouts by Vladimir Guerrero Jr. – on a Brayan Bello cutter that ran in on his hands – and Addison Barger. And in the third, Anthony Santander missed a grand slam by mere feet foul before taking an inning-ending third strike two pitches later.
But in the sixth, after Guerrero reached on a Trevor Story throwing error, Barger walked and Santander was hit by a pitch, they were not to be denied. Lefty Justin Wilson took over from Bello with Varsho coming up, went up 0-2 and then watched the centre-fielder maul a middle-up fastball and send it 371 feet to right field.
A crowd of 42,129 roared, perhaps louder than any other at Rogers Centre this season, and the Blue Jays, their heads above water, inhaled. They breathed in even deeper four batters later, when George Springer cashed in an Andres Gimenez double with his 31st homer of the season, making it 6-0.
Suddenly, their lungs were full again.
"Everybody wants to feel this pressure at the end of the season because that means you're in it,” said Varsho. “And it's one of those things where you either can crumble and fall and not play well, or you can be us, knowing that throughout the season we've played really good baseball and just keep trusting it.”
The Blue Jays chose the latter, something Varsho vowed to do earlier in the day when he said to hitting coach David Popkins “that a lot of people didn't pick us to win the division and we exceeded everybody's standards. And now it's like everybody's holding us to that standard and we've got to win the division. Well, screw it. We already have house money, let's just keep going and keep playing the way that we've always played. And if we don't win the division, who cares? We're a really tough team to beat and we've got the pieces to do it.”
Utilizing that mindset, the Blue Jays retained their share of the division lead behind that Varsho swing and a very strong bullpen day, which was perfect through the first six innings thanks to the dominant work of Louis Varland for two innings, Eric Lauer for 3.1 frames and Yariel Rodriguez for two outs. Braydon Fisher, Seranthony Dominguez, Brendon Little and Jeff Hoffman handled the final three frames to secure the second victory in eight outings for their club.
“Regardless of when it is, I treat every inning that I'm out there as if I'm closing the game,” said Lauer, who bounced seamlessly from an inning of leverage Sunday to 3.1 frames of bulk. “I might have one inning, I might have three innings, whatever. But I'm treating every hitter like it's the last hitter I've got and treat every inning like this is the last inning I've got. That's my mindset coming out of the bullpen in general, just close this inning out.”
The victory cut their magic number to win the division down three, while the New York Yankees beat the Chicago White Sox 5-3 to keep pace atop the AL East.
As a result, the Blue Jays will be back in the water Friday, when the Tampa Bay Rays arrive for the final three games of the regular season, but in control of their own fate thanks to the tiebreaker they hold, albeit with no margin for error unless New York provides them some by faltering against the Baltimore Orioles.
Shane Bieber, pushed back a day after pitching into the seventh for the first time after surgery last Saturday, starts the opener in Toronto against Adrian Houser, as the Blue Jays aim to keep their offence right where it was Thursday.
“I thought they really got back to being themselves,” Schneider said of his team. “Nate with the triple (in the first) and you want to try to score there, you don't and you don't get frustrated and you keep moving along. That's been what we've been good at. It takes a big swing sometimes to get you out of the funk that you're in, you know? And I thought our at-bats up and down were good. Worked some walks, put the ball in play, I thought our approach was good. But it's nice to get a little bit of breathing room there.”
How much air Thursday’s win provides into the weekend for the Blue Jays is unclear, as their playoff-berth-clinching 8-5 win Sunday at Kansas City also seemed like it could be a springboard onto stabler ground. Two consecutive losses to the Red Sox, who were seeking to book their own October ticket with a win Thursday, derailed that and pushed their hosts deeper into the water.
The vibes had shifted so that Schneider very much went into calm-the-waters mode after Wednesday’s 7-1 loss, while also taking pains to cut off any complaining about umpiring calls or other potential excuse-making.
In doing so, he was essentially telling his players to stop thrashing as the runway in a sport of variance approached the very end. Given the circumstances, with the offence slumping and the Yankees coming, Schneider said, “you have to attack it, you can't shy away from it.”
“So balancing (the pressures of the moment) is, yeah, we are where we are, but at the same time, you can't look past things that we have to get better at. It's hard,” he continued. “This game can just lead you down some weird paths. It can hurt you. It can taunt you a little bit. Whether it's Max (Scherzer) in the first inning or whether it's our hitters right now, you've got to figure out ways to do it. And I think the easiest way to do it is kind of lean into it and say, yeah, this is hard, but if you don't get the job done, the next guy has to do it.”
[SRC] https://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/article/varshos-grand-slam-steadies-blue-jays-in-pivotal-win-over-red-sox/
