That the hit meant so much is a result of both the pressure of September’s meaningful baseball game and a collective scrimmage with runners in scoring position. Bichette’s 108.7 mph home run in a 4-1 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates on the 10th pitch of a hard at-bat against Duane Underwood Jr. was the Blue Jays’ first in 10 attempts Saturday . In the seven games leading up to that, against the Los Angeles Angels and Chicago Cubs and Friday’s opener at scenic PNC Park, they had gone just 9-for-47, hitting .191 with a chance to bring in runs and scored just 22 times. As the wildcard ratings shrank in tandem, the weight on each at-bat felt greater and greater. On Saturday, they came up empty after putting two men on in four separate innings before Bichette broke through, to the delight of a large pro-Blue Jays crowd among the crowd of 23,568. However, the difficulty in pushing all the way meant a steady diet of higher-than-expected leverage against teams the Blue Jays (72-59) expected to handle more comfortably. Alek Manoah did the heavy lifting for them in Friday’s 4-0 win, while Saturday’s tightrope walk was much heavier on a deftly handled day, with Yimi Garcia inducing a groundout double play to end the fifth in relief of Yusei Kikuchi and Tim Mayza. hitting Jack Suwinski with men on the corners in the eighth. Jordan Romano followed with a clean ninth for his 29th save. Well, credit to the pitching staff for keeping the Blue Jays in games, but it’s clear that the offense needs to start delivering on more than the innings they’ve produced. Small sample sizes are naturally noisy and the previous week could just be random. Zoomed out for better reading, the Blue Jays entered the majors 14th in hitting with runners in scoring position with a .260 average, along with a .342 OBP and .423 slugging percentage, and while they’re not elite, they’re not the raging hell it feels like and the last few days. It’s worth noting that the Blue Jays entered Saturday eighth in the majors with 605 runs scored, better than Houston, Tampa Bay, Baltimore, Seattle and Cleveland. Their hot and cold spells remain enigmatic, and there’s a sense of confusion around the team as to why they haven’t put together the kind of extended run they seem capable of, but sometimes baseball is weird, winning is hard, and the players and other teams drive nice cars. As quickly as the Blue Jays cooled off, they can warm up similarly, and Bichette’s recent resurgence bodes well in that regard. He’s off to a .349/.429/.535 start over his previous 11 games, and while he swung at first pitch in his first three outings Saturday — resulting in a single and two flyouts — he wore Underwood down by eventually hitting around a cutter 91.7 mph.
