CINCINNATI — Maybe Elly De La Cruz was listening when Bo Bichette talked about playing fearless baseball.
Few players can match the combination of speed and audacity that De La Cruz displayed when he turned a triple off the right field wall into a little league home run Saturday night. The play was the MLB equivalent of returning a kickoff for a touchdown — 15.3 seconds of the most exciting baseball you’ll see all year — and it electrified the 38,461 watching at Great American Ballpark.
But let the Cincinnati Reds have the style points, the Toronto Blue Jays got the win. With Bichette back in the lineup for the first time in nearly three weeks, the Blue Jays outscored the Reds 4-3 to win for the first time since Tuesday and improve to 68-56 on the season.
Starter Chris Bassitt offered six effective innings and Toronto’s bullpen did the rest, but excellent pitching has become the norm for a Blue Jays team that entered play with an MLB-best 3.68 ERA. More noteworthy was the offensive bounce-back after being shut out on three hits in Friday’s series opener.
Davis Schneider provided the Blue Jays’ biggest swing of the night with a solo home run to left in the fifth inning, but it didn’t take long for Bichette to contribute, either. He capped off a three-run rally in the fourth with a run-scoring single to centre field on a 1-2 change-up from Reds starter Brandon Williamson.
“We need to be fearless,” said Bichette before he went one for five in his return. “I don’t think any team accomplishes anything special by not being fearless, so I think we just need to be fearless. Go out there, play our game, be aggressive and get after it. That’s how I want to lead and that’s how I’ll try to lead by example now that I’m back.”
With that single to centre, Bichette matched the RBI total for all Blue Jays shortstops during his absence. While Bichette recovered from patellar tendonitis in his right knee, Toronto’s shortstops combined to hit just .089/.089/.111 with 18 strikeouts and -0.8 WAR.
Put simply, the very scenario the Blue Jays hoped Paul DeJong would help prevent ended up unfolding right before their eyes: they got zero offence from their shortstops. By designating DeJong for assignment Saturday, they ate about $1 million in salary, moving on from a deal that simply didn’t work out.
Still, their issues at the plate go beyond shortstop. As a team, the Blue Jays entered play hitting just .238/.318/.367 in August, good for the 21st-best wRC+ in baseball right behind the A’s and Pirates. So while the likes of Brandon Belt and Cavan Biggio have been productive lately, the Blue Jays need more from players including Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Matt Chapman and Alejandro Kirk.
That’s especially true at a time that George Springer (ankle) and Danny Jansen (hand) are day to day. But with Bichette back in the lineup and Schneider providing the occasional spark, the Blue Jays could at least get by Saturday.
Not to be overlooked, Toronto’s pitching is keeping them competitive. Relievers Trevor Richards, Tim Mayza, Jordan Hicks and Jordan Romano all got high-leverage outs for the Blue Jays, culminating in a late rally Romano shut down at the last minute, but it was Bassitt who got things started with his 16th quality start of the season.
The way the Seattle Mariners are playing, the Blue Jays can’t afford to slow down when the series wraps up Sunday. But as Bichette says, it might be time for a shift in mindset. Somewhat counter-intuitively, a looser style of play could pay dividends when the standings are this tight.
“At this point in the year every team is a tough team to beat,” Bichette said. “Even the teams that aren’t in it anymore want to spoil it for the teams that are in it. They’re big-league players over there. If we want to accomplish anything, we’ve got to go out and give it everything we got. I’m not worrying about what could go wrong, but focusing on what could go right. That’s where we need to be, and I think I think we definitely have to have the ability to do that.”
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