Sean Keys’ First Homer Gives Blue Jays Comic Relief
The Jays beat the Mets 9-3 behind Sean Keys, Myles Straw, and the kind of box score that looks like it was assembled during a staff prank.
Sean Keys was selected from Buffalo on June 27.
On Wednesday, he hit his first homer for the Blue Jays in a 9-3 win over the New York Mets.
This is how baseball gets you.
You spend weeks asking the offence to be normal, like a mature adult with a calendar and a vegetable drawer, and then it sends Sean Keys and Myles Straw to do the loudest possible group presentation.
The Blue Jays won the series 2 of 3.
They also made Tuesday’s 0-3 loss look less like a warning sign and more like the quiet part of a magic trick where someone is definitely about to pull a toaster out of a hat.
Wednesday was the toaster.
Possibly two toasters.
Sean Keys found the big red button
The first inning was harmless enough.
Kazuma Okamoto singled off Freddy Peralta, and Nathan Lukes scored.
That made it 1-0, which is a baseball score you can place gently on a shelf.
Then came the bottom of the third.
Ernie Clement doubled off Peralta, scoring Okamoto and sending Alejandro Kirk to third.
That alone would have been useful.
Useful is nice.
Useful wears sensible shoes.
Then Keys homered off Peralta on a fly ball to left field.
Kirk scored.
Clement scored.
A 3B selected from Buffalo five days earlier had just turned a tidy inning into a marching band falling out of an elevator.
Keys finished with one hit in four at-bats, one homer, and three RBI.
That is not a full scouting report.
That is a comedy sketch with exit velocity removed for legal reasons, because we are not inventing numbers and also because the emotional number was honk.
The Blue Jays have spent enough of this season treating runners on base like delicate museum glass.
Here, Keys simply hit the baseball over the wall and saved everyone a lot of paperwork.
Myles Straw heard there was a theme
A reasonable team might stop at the surprise first homer.
A reasonable team might say, yes, thank you, we have done the whimsical portion of the evening.
The Blue Jays are not currently in the reasonable team business.
In the bottom of the seventh, Daulton Varsho singled off Cionel Pérez, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. scored.
Then Myles Straw homered off Pérez on a fly ball to left center field.
His third.
Varsho scored.
Kirk scored.
Straw’s line was one at-bat, one hit, one homer, three RBI.
That looks like someone tried to compress a whole baseball game into a snack-size bag.
It also made the whole night feel like the lineup had been run through a randomizer set to benevolent nonsense.
Sean Keys with the first homer.
Myles Straw with the three-run shot.
Clement doubling.
Okamoto driving in Lukes.
Varsho driving in Guerrero.
Kirk going two-for-two and repeatedly appearing in the middle of important things like a very calm traffic cone.
Toronto had 12 hits.
The Jays left five on base.
They committed no errors.
This was not the usual haunted mansion with a runner on second and a flickering lamp.
This was a functioning offence wearing a fake nose.
The mound crew kept the room from spinning
A 9-3 score can trick you into ignoring the pitching, which is unfair.
Also dangerous.
Pitching notices things.
Spencer Miles went 3.0 innings with no earned runs and five strikeouts.
Braydon Fisher went 1.0 inning with no earned runs and one strikeout.
Patrick Corbin went 5.0 innings with three earned runs and five strikeouts.
The Blue Jays finished with 11 strikeouts and three earned runs allowed.
For seven innings, the Mets did not score.
Then in the top of the eighth, Carson Benge homered off Corbin with Brett Baty scoring.
In the top of the ninth, Francisco Lindor homered off Corbin.
That moved the Mets to three runs, which was annoying but not structurally threatening.
It was less a comeback than someone knocking politely on the window after the party had moved to the basement.
The Mets finished with five hits and three left on base.
The Jays finished with nine runs, 12 hits, and the strange feeling that maybe the baseball gods had accidentally delivered another team’s package.
The off-day is the punchline
And now Thursday is an off-day.
Of course it is.
The Blue Jays finally produce a clean, silly, cathartic 9-3 win, powered by Sean Keys’ first homer and a Myles Straw three-run shot, and the reward is staring at your phone like it might grow a lineup card.
They are 41-46.
The winning percentage is .471.
The last ten says 3-7.
The streak says W1.
Division rank 3.
So nobody is throwing a parade.
A parade would probably leave six floats on base anyway.
But winning 2 of 3 against the Mets is allowed to feel good for a day, even if the day contains no game and therefore no immediate opportunity to misuse the good feeling.
Saturday brings the Seattle Mariners on the road, with Dylan Cease listed for Toronto.
That is the next real thing.
For now, the Blue Jays have given us something rare and useful: a blowout that was not just successful, but deeply stupid in the best way.
Sean Keys hit his first homer.
Myles Straw hit a three-run homer.
The Mets series was won.
The off-day gets to hold the receipt.
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