Blue Jays’ Five-Run Third Turns Giants Game Silly
The Jays scored three in the second, five in the third, and briefly made offence look less like a locked filing cabinet.
The Blue Jays won 9-3 on Wednesday, which already sounds like a clerical error if you have been following the offence with any sincerity.
Nine runs.
Thirteen hits.
Four left on base.
No errors.
This is the sort of line you read twice, then check whether the app has accidentally switched to spring training, a video game, or a charity softball event where everyone gets one emotional mulligan.
But no.
It was the Blue Jays, away against the San Francisco Giants, building the game around a Jonatan Clase three-run homer and a five-run third inning.
The offence did not just show up.
It arrived with snacks.
The second inning honked first
The first inning was quiet.
That was polite.
The top of the second was less polite.
Jonatan Clase homered off Trevor McDonald on a fly ball to right field, and Brandon Valenzuela and Sean Keys scored.
A three-run homer is one of baseball’s tidiest inventions.
No committee meeting.
No stranded-runner performance art.
Just hit ball, jog, make scoreboard do jumping jacks.
Clase finished 2-for-4 with one homer and three RBI.
He was recalled from Buffalo on July 1, which makes this feel like the front office ordered a small spark and accidentally received a desktop fog machine.
The Giants answered in the bottom of the second when Victor Bericoto singled off Spencer Miles and Rafael Devers scored.
That made the game less comfortable, but not unsafe.
It was still just a little baseball weather.
Then the third inning arrived wearing novelty glasses.
The third inning demanded everyone sign in
The top of the third was the kind of inning Blue Jays fans describe to their pets later because humans ask too many questions.
Brandon Valenzuela singled off Trevor McDonald to center, scoring Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Kazuma Okamoto moved to second.
Fine.
Useful.
Normal.
Then Sean Keys singled to right, a ground ball deflected by first baseman Bryce Eldridge.
Okamoto scored.
Valenzuela scored.
This is where the inning stopped being a scoring opportunity and became a food truck with no line.
Keys went 2-for-4 with two RBI.
Valenzuela went 2-for-4 with an RBI.
Andrés Giménez added a single to left off McDonald, scoring Keys and sending Clase to third.
Then Ernie Clement came up against Adrian Houser and hit a sacrifice fly to right.
Clase scored.
Five runs in the inning.
Clement finished 3-for-4 with an RBI, because apparently he spent the day treating the Giants defence like a customer-service kiosk with too many buttons.
Not everyone got confetti.
Daulton Varsho went 0-for-4.
That happens.
Even in a comedy, somebody has to stand near the door holding the clipboard.
But the larger point stands: Toronto strung the inning together instead of treating the bases like a haunted antique store.
The Giants filed paperwork, not a comeback
The bottom of the third gave San Francisco another run, but it came attached to a double play.
Rafael Devers grounded into it off Spencer Miles.
Heliot Ramos scored.
Luis Arraez moved to third.
Casey Schmitt was out at second, and Devers was out at first.
That is the sort of trade a team with a large lead accepts while nodding like it understands wine.
In the fifth, Luis Arraez doubled off Patrick Corbin and Ramos scored.
That was the Giants’ final run.
The Blue Jays pitching staff finished with six strikeouts and three earned runs.
Spencer Miles went 4.0 innings with two earned runs and one strikeout.
Louis Varland, Jeff Hoffman, Mason Fluharty, and Patrick Corbin handled the rest without letting the whole thing become a travelling circus fire.
Varland had 1.0 inning with no earned runs and one strikeout.
Hoffman had 0.2 innings with no earned runs and one strikeout.
Fluharty had 1.0 inning with no earned runs and one strikeout.
Corbin had 2.1 innings with one earned run and two strikeouts.
That is not a thunderclap.
It is a competent group text.
Given the way some Blue Jays games feel like they are being assembled while the car is moving, competence is welcome.
The ninth inning had one last rubber chicken
Toronto added a run in the top of the ninth in the least romantic way possible.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. grounded into a double play off Ryan Walker.
Ernie Clement scored.
Nathan Lukes was out at second.
Guerrero was out at first.
A run scored, two outs disappeared, and somewhere a spreadsheet smiled without showing teeth.
That made it 9-3, and that was the final.
The standings still say 43-49, .467, 4-6 in the last ten, W1, division rank 3.
Nobody is pretending the Blue Jays have solved hitting because they spent one afternoon behaving like they found the instruction manual.
The season line still says 366 runs, 3.98 runs per game, a .244 batting average, a .686 OPS, and 90 home runs.
Those numbers do not turn into confetti because of one happy Wednesday.
But this is the Comics Desk, and we know a pratfall when we see one.
A day after losing 10-1, the Jays scored three in the second, five in the third, and one in the ninth.
Clase hit the homer.
Clement kept finding grass.
Keys and Valenzuela joined the group project.
For once, the offence was not a locked filing cabinet at the bottom of Lake Ontario.
It was loud, strange, and briefly useful.
We take those.
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