Blue Jays Somehow Beat Astros 5-4 on Five Hits

The Blue Jays had 5 hits.

The Astros had 10 hits.

The Blue Jays won 5-4.

Please do not ask baseball to explain itself. It will only produce a laminated pamphlet and then hit you with a rake.

Wednesday in Houston was one of those games where the box score looks like it was built by someone assembling a barbecue from memory.

Toronto scored 5 runs on 5 hits, made 0 errors, and left 4 on base.

Houston scored 4 runs on 10 hits, made 1 error, and left 7 on base.

If you are looking for logic, it is probably under the couch with the remote and several years of Blue Jays emotional stability.

But the win counts.

It counts at full size.

No tiny font.

No coupon restrictions.

The box score lost its keys

This was not a slugfest.

This was not a clean masterpiece.

This was the Blue Jays finding five useful pieces in a junk drawer and somehow building a functioning bicycle.

Nathan Lukes went 1-for-5.

Myles Straw went 1-for-4.

Kazuma Okamoto went 1-for-5 with 1 RBI.

Jesús Sánchez went 1-for-3 with a homer and 2 RBI.

Ernie Clement went 1-for-4 with a homer and 2 RBI.

That was the offence.

Five hits.

Five runs.

A team sitting at 3.9 runs per game for the season looked at scarcity and said, actually, we brought coupons.

The funniest part is that it did not feel efficient while it was happening.

It felt like watching someone carry soup across a trampoline.

The Jays were scoreless through five innings.

Houston had scored three in the bottom of the third.

Then Toronto tied it in the sixth and won it in the 10th, which is a very Blue Jays way to take the scenic route through a parking lot.

Jameson Taillon got the noisy inning

The bottom of the third did all the Houston damage that counted against Jameson Taillon.

Jose Altuve homered, number 13, on a fly ball to left field.

Christian Walker doubled, number 24, on a sharp line drive to left fielder Jesús Sánchez, and Daulton Varsho scored.

LaMonte Wade Jr. singled on a line drive to center fielder Myles Straw, and Walker scored.

Three runs.

All in one inning.

Taillon’s full line was 4.0 innings, 3 earned runs, and 4 strikeouts.

The transaction log says the Chicago Cubs traded Taillon and cash to Toronto for a Player To Be Named Later, and the Blue Jays activated Taillon after that.

Now he is pitching in a Blue Jays game where Daulton Varsho scores for Houston and the next opponent is the Cubs.

This is not a roster.

It is a detective wall with string.

Still, after the third, the game did not slide into the bayou.

That matters.

There have been nights where one bad inning becomes a landlord.

This one became a problem the Jays could annoy their way around.

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The offence brought exact change

The sixth inning was Toronto’s first act of useful vandalism.

Against Hunter Brown, Okamoto singled to center and Straw scored.

Then Sánchez homered, number 8, to right field, and Okamoto scored.

Three runs in the top of the sixth.

Tie game.

No long committee meeting.

No interpretive dance about approach.

Just one single and one ball over the fence doing the work of a whole department.

Then nothing in the seventh.

Nothing in the eighth.

Nothing in the ninth.

The Jays were apparently saving their last joke for the 10th.

Against Bennett Sousa, Clement homered, number 9, to left field.

Luis Urías scored.

Toronto had its two-run top of the 10th.

This is the elegant part, if you are willing to define elegance as a shopping cart with one perfect wheel.

The 10th inning filed a complaint

The bottom of the 10th was not peaceful.

Of course it was not peaceful.

This is the Toronto Blue Jays. Peace is something other teams leave in hotel rooms.

Yordan Alvarez singled on a sharp line drive to right fielder Nathan Lukes off Chase Lee.

Jeremy Peña scored.

Alvarez was out at second on the throw from Lukes to shortstop Andrés Giménez.

The Astros challenged the tag play.

The call on the field was upheld.

A normal sport might simply end.

Baseball prefers to briefly convene a courtroom at second base.

Lee’s line finished at 1.0 inning with 0 earned runs.

The Jays’ pitching totals showed 9 strikeouts and 3 earned runs.

Spencer Miles, Louis Varland, Mason Fluharty, and Tyler Rogers all had 0 earned runs in their lines too.

That is how you win a 5-4 game where the other team has 10 hits: you make the hits feel like unpaid invoices.

The series summary says Toronto won 2 of 3 against Houston.

The standings say 54-61, .470, fifth in the division, last ten 6-4, streak W1.

Not glorious.

But funnier than despair, and frankly better hydrated.

Thursday brings the Chicago Cubs, with Dylan Cease listed for Toronto and David Peterson listed for Chicago.

Please bring the five-hit efficiency plan.

Please leave the first-five-innings silence in the overhead bin.