Dylan Cease Helps Blue Jays Blank Cleveland 11-0
Toronto's offence brought a carnival cannon, but the cleanest joke was Dylan Cease and friends leaving Cleveland with nothing to say.
There are many kinds of silence in baseball.
There is the silence after a popup with runners on.
There is the silence when a broadcast shows the standings and everyone in the room suddenly becomes very interested in coasters.
And then there was Cleveland’s side of the Wednesday linescore.
Zero in the first.
Zero in the second.
Eventually, zero everywhere.
The Blue Jays beat the Guardians 11-0, which is the baseball equivalent of ordering a sandwich and receiving a small piano.
Unexpected.
Difficult to explain.
Technically delightful.
Toronto had 11 runs on 15 hits.
Cleveland had 0 runs on 6 hits.
Both teams made 1 error.
Both teams left 6 on base.
That is symmetry, but wearing clown shoes.
The Jays pitching plan was suspiciously calm
Usually, a Blue Jays pitching plan feels like a fire drill conducted inside a submarine.
This one felt almost rude in its competence.
Brendon Little threw 1.0 inning with 0 earned runs and 2 strikeouts.
Dylan Cease threw 6.0 innings with 0 earned runs and 4 strikeouts.
Paul Sewald threw 1.0 inning with 0 earned runs and 1 strikeout.
Braydon Fisher threw 1.0 inning with 0 earned runs and 2 strikeouts.
The pitching totals were 9 strikeouts and 0 earned runs.
Please read that again slowly, preferably while seated.
This is the Blue Jays, a team at 69-71, with a W1 streak and a .493 winning percentage, not a lab experiment designed to make fans feel emotionally regulated.
And yet there it was.
No Cleveland run in the first inning.
No Cleveland run after the Blue Jays scored in the top of the second.
No Cleveland run after the Blue Jays added in the third, sixth, eighth, and ninth.
Just a long hallway of zeroes, with the Guardians occasionally looking for a light switch.
Cease gave the offence room to become ridiculous
The offence did not need much once the pitching staff decided to put a weighted blanket over the game.
It brought a forklift anyway.
In the top of the first, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. doubled off Joey Cantillo on a sharp line drive to center.
Brett Bateman scored.
That was enough, technically.
Baseball did not require more.
The Jays, however, had misunderstood the assignment in the most pleasant way.
In the second, George Springer reached on a fielder’s choice against Cantillo.
Andrés Giménez scored.
Myles Straw scored.
Bateman moved to third.
Shortstop Angel Genao made a throwing error.
Then Guerrero homered, his eighth, to left off Cantillo.
Bateman scored.
Springer scored.
Toronto had moved from early lead to circus wagon without stopping for gas.
Guerrero finished 3-for-4 with 5 RBI.
Against a season that has often asked this lineup to produce four runs per game and then please tidy up after itself, this was not a rally.
It was a food fight with accounting.
Cleveland kept waiting for the other shoe, then found twelve
The third inning added Myles Straw’s double, his 18th, off Cantillo.
Ernie Clement scored.
Giménez went to third.
Straw went 2-for-3 with an RBI.
Giménez went 2-for-3.
Nathan Lukes went 2-for-5 with an RBI.
Springer went 1-for-4 with an RBI.
Charles McAdoo and Sean Keys each had one hit in one at-bat.
This is how an 11-0 game starts to feel less like a box score and more like attendance was taken with a bat.
Even the hitless nights had to stand in line politely.
Alejandro Kirk went 0-for-5.
Kazuma Okamoto went 0-for-4.
Somehow the team still scored 11, because baseball is not a balanced meal.
It is a vending machine that occasionally dispenses lasagna.
The sixth inning brought Springer doubling off Carlos Hernández to score Straw, followed by Guerrero singling off Hernández to score Bateman.
The eighth brought Josh Smith homering, his fourth, off Hernández.
The ninth brought Nathan Lukes singling off Austin Hedges to score Sean Keys.
Austin Hedges appearing as the pitcher in an 11-0 game’s final scoring play is how you know the baseball gods had moved from plot to improv.
Take the zero and do not ask it too many questions
There is no need to turn this into a manifesto.
The Blue Jays are still under .500.
They are still 4 in the division.
They are still sitting on a season with a .246 batting average and a .688 OPS.
But Wednesday was a useful reminder that sometimes the sport stops being a grim little spreadsheet and becomes a pie launched from a moving cart.
The Jays split 1 of 2 against Cleveland so far, losing 6-1 on Tuesday and winning 11-0 on Wednesday.
Today, José Soriano faces Tanner Bibee in Cleveland.
That game will have its own problems.
This one had none that mattered.
Cease gave them six clean innings, the bullpen added its clean pieces, Guerrero hit the big note, and Cleveland spent the night trying to find the receipt for a game it did not remember buying.
React