The Blue Jays beleaguered bullpen has been very quietly outstanding for a week now.
Overall, the numbers still aren’t great, but the relief corps has climbed up to the middle of the pack with a 3.98 ERA that ranks 13th in the majors. They were 17th overall entering September, at 4.09.
A lot of that has to do with the relievers’ work this month.
The bullpen gave up four runs in a 13-9 win in Cincinnati on September 3, and in the 12 games since, they’ve only allowed eight more, over 39 2/3 innings, for a 1.82 ERA that’s second in the majors to, believe it or not, the vagabond Athletics at 1.70.
The only reliever who has given up more than one run over that span is Louis Varland, who has allowed two in five innings of work. Yariel Rodriguez, who gave up a run in the seventh inning on Wednesday and took the loss, had gone eight straight outings without being scored upon.
Back to even
The Jays won the first game ever played in franchise history, beating the Chicago White Sox 9-5 on April 7, 1977. They were 7-6 after 13 games, then lost 8-6 to the eventual World Series champion New York Yankees and didn’t get back up over the .500 mark overall for over 16 years, even though they had 11 winning seasons in a row from 1983-1993.
All those years of good work finally got the overall franchise record above .500 in September, 1993, but a 55-60 season in ‘94 meant that it wasn’t going to take much to knock them back under .500, and they sunk below the break-even waves less than two months into what would wind up being a 56-88 1995.
After more than 20 years of wandering through the wilderness, sometimes being good, but mostly mediocre, and not making the playoffs again until 2015, the Jays got good, but not good enough.
Even playoff teams in 2015 and 2016 and three more since 2020 couldn’t get the franchise record back to .500 until the 2025 edition picked up its 89th win of the season on Tuesday, beating the Rays 6-5 in Tampa.
That skin-of-the-teeth victory was the Jays’ 3,850th regular-season win all-time, against 3,850 losses. They couldn’t get up above the break-even mark Wednesday, though, the loss in Tampa dropping them to 3850-3851 all-time.
Santander update
Rehabbing slugger Anthony Santander got his first action, kind of, in the outfield Wednesday, playing seven innings in left field in the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons’ 6-1 home loss to the New York Yankees’ top affiliate, the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders.
He spent those seven innings standing on grass and wearing a glove, but not a single ball was hit his way.
At the plate, Santander went 0-for-4, with zero hard-hit balls, hitting left-handed each time. He’s now 4-for-22 on this rehab assignment, batting .182.
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