Jays fans bite their nails for a wild-card spot

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The biggest crowd in more than two years was at the Rogers Center Wednesday night, and it was getting a lesson in the existential dread of playoff baseball.

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It wasn’t technically, literally, playoff baseball, because that doesn’t start until next week, but the Toronto Blue Jays have essentially been playing it for a month. A September that has seen them emerge in postseason contention before falling into a small slump has brought each of their final games closer to a must-win deal.

Things had gone well on that front Wednesday against the New York Yankees, behind a brilliant start by José Berríos and first home runs by Marcus Semien and Bo Bichette. But shaky bullpen work in the seventh inning allowed the Yankees to erase what was left of a four-run deficit, tying the game at 5-5. With the out-of-town scoreboard showing the Boston Red Sox defeating the Baltimore Orioles (Boston and New York are two of three teams the Blue Jays are now looking for a playoff spot), they were turning desperate times for the home team. A loss would be a serious blow to his postseason chances. A loss after holding a comfortable lead would seem much worse than that.

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But in the bottom of the eighth inning, Bichette returned to the plate and taught a lesson in the exquisite excitement of playoff baseball. Bichette, one of Toronto’s talented young offshoots, broke a Clay Holmes pitch with an inside-out swing that sent the ball over the left-center fence and sent the fully vaccinated crowd into great joy. . The list of center infield players who can hit a pitch like that with power across the field is very short, but Bichette and his Vladimir Guerrero, Jr., have proven to be rare talents for a while now. That’s why even as the Blue Jays have led their fans on this prolonged streak of terror and euphoria as they try to break into a playoff spot, there is something of a consolation prize left in a young roster that should be competitive for several years.

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But the Rogers Center was in no mood for consolation prizes Thursday night. Starter Robbie Ray took a 2-1 lead in the sixth inning against the Yankees before the visitors from New York hit three home runs on frame to turn that deficit into a 5-2 lead. The eventual 6-2 loss left the Blue Jays trapped behind the Yankees, Red Sox and Seattle Mariners in the race for two wild-card spots in the playoffs. Toronto will now need help if it goes beyond the 162 regular games.

The Blue Jays will now happily welcome the historically terrible Baltimore Orioles for the last three games in the dome. More playoff baseball to see if there will be playoff baseball.

If things go well for the Blue Jays this past weekend, it will be the culmination of a plan that has been five years in the making. If things go wrong, Jays fans will be forgiven for wondering what the heck just happened.

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In any normal season, the Blue Jays, with this collection of players who are these types of years, would give the guys days off and establish their ideal playoff rotation. Guerrero, 22, is having an incredible breakout season, the kind expected of him when he made it to the majors as the plump teenage son of a Hall of Famer. Semien set a major league record for home runs by a second baseman on Wednesday with his 44th. Bichette boosted his 101st career, giving the Blue Jays four-man 100 RBIs in one season: Guerrero, Semien, Bichette and Teoscar Hernandez, who has the most of them at 112, for the first time in club history. Ray is having a Cy Young season, though Thursday’s implosion won’t help on the awards front. George Springer, though injured for much of the year, has proven himself worth every part of his monster contract when he’s played.

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All of those good performances have given the Blue Jays one of the best running spreads in the American League, which is generally the best measure of whether a team is good. And a group of guys with years of careers will tend to give your team a big racing differential. And yet the team has needed this spectacular September 19-9 just to give themselves a chance this past weekend. Defy the logic of baseball: The Blue Jays have a +165 run differential while Seattle, with a nearly identical record, is at -48, but it’s not exactly a mystery. Toronto had a disastrous bullpen in the first half of the season, and all season they’ve only been 15-15 in one-run games and 3-9 in extra innings. They didn’t earn enough from the close ones, so now here they are.

After a season where they started home games in Florida, and then moved to Buffalo before finally arriving in Toronto, that they are in this position is insane. They didn’t play in their actual home stadium until July 30, and they didn’t have any actual home crowds until, well, right now. But the fans are here and the stakes are high. Seat belt.