BRONX, NY — For a Toronto Blue Jays team that has not seen past the Wild Card Series since 2016 and the inexperience that comes with it, this American League Divisional Series stage is not messing with them one bit.
Despite being the American League’s No. 1 overall seed, the consensus was that they would be handled easily by the New York Yankees in the best-of-five ALDS. Not only has Toronto proved those sentiments incorrect, but they crushed the Yankees by a combined score of 23-8 over the first two games of the series.
What has been the secret for an unproven Blue Jays team against the mystique of the defending American League champions?
“I feel like we have a bunch of young dudes at heart,” outfielder Davis Schneider said. “We have a lot of old heads. Even George [Springer], he’s 36 but he acts like he’s 12, which is great. You want a leader who leads by example but also knows how to have fun. He does that really well. Same with [Vladimir Guerrero Jr.], too. He’s only 26, but he acts like he’s been here for 20 years. That’s what you want as a leader, too. Everyone is on the same page of having fun and whatever happens on the field happens.”
The blend appears to be perfect. So much so that the Blue Jays’ clicking clubhouse has reminded manager John Scheider of the movie ‘The Sandlot’, which highlights a group of neighborhood kids playing baseball for the love of the game in its most innocent form.
“That was kind of there [all season], but you really saw it unfold over the course of the season,” Schneider said. “You can grasp on to any narrative, right? But I think that’s been apparent for a while now. Some days, it feels like the movie ‘The Sandlot’. We’re just coming in and playing. If you can embrace that, it’s pretty cool.”
Springer has the extensive postseason experience accrued with the Houston Astros juggernaut of last decade. Guerrero is one of the game’s premier sluggers who has maintained that billing into October, which can’t be said about the Yankees’ talisman, Aaron Judge.
Veteran pitchers Max Scherzer and Chris Bassitt “love to talk,” helping take the leadership reins with Schneider not feeling the need to step in. Simply put, this is a team that feels as though it can go anywhere and beat anyone, regardless of previous track records.
“Ultimately, if you want to get to where you want to get to, it’s just going to get more and more magnified and more and more tense,” Schneider said. “So it’s been like that for a while with this group, which is pretty cool.”
