Saints’ Rattler shines, but Willis’s late heroics leads Titans to pre-season win

August 26, 2024

aints rookie Spencer Rattler threw a touchdown pass and led four scoring drives to make his case for New Orleans’ backup quarterback job behind veteran Derek Carr in a 30-27 preseason loss to the Tennessee Titans on Sunday.

TORONTO – So this spoiler stuff, Kevin Gausman?

Absent meaningful September baseball, it’s still a thing, yeah?

“For sure, especially teams in your division,” Gausman said Sunday, on the heels of an 8-2 win over the Los Angeles Angels.

“You want to spoil their seasons for sure and that’s kind of what we’re shooting for, now. Boston’s going to be an intense environment. It always is, especially when they’re good. Atlanta’s going to be that. We got Philly coming in. Going to Minnesota’s never easy for us … all good teams and teams that are still in the hunt, so you’ll see a little different baseball from them than maybe you saw over the last four days.

“It will be fun to see how those young guys react.”

The Blue Jays capped off a four-game sweep of the Los Angeles Angels by backing up Gausman’s efficient pitching with two-run home runs from Addison Barger and Alejandro Kirk as well as a go-ahead, run-scoring double by Guerrero in the fifth inning en route to their win in front of 37,086 at the Rogers Centre.

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The double was Guerrero’s 35^th of the season, tying a career-high.

The Blue Jays went 7-0 against the Los Angeles Angels, as part of a 10-6 run in their just-concluded 16-game stretch against soft or soft-ish competition. Along the way they’ve enjoyed a purple patch created by hitting homers, getting a whole lot of Ernie Clement happening, and receiving an infusion of energy and enthusiasm from the likes of Barger – who walked off the Angels on Friday – Joey Loperfido and Will Wagner. Shout out, too, to Bowden Francis, who followed up Barger’s walk-off blast on Friday and AL player of the week honours last week by carrying a no-hitter into the ninth inning on Saturday.

The Angels’ Taylor Ward – whose homer broke up the no-hitter but later described Francis’s offerings as “hittable” – might not have been impressed with Francis but it was nice to see Chris Bassitt respond to Ward by holding up a sign behind Francis’s head as he was doing an in-game interview on Sunday with Dan Shulman and Joe Siddall:

“15 innings, 2 hits, 20 Ks. Hittable + Nothing Special.”

“Chris and Kev, especially, have kind of taken Bowden under their wing,” said Schneider. “I just love it when guys just have each other’s backs.”

Hey, you can only beat who you’re facing, you know? But now it gets a little spicier.

The four-game series against the Boston Red Sox that starts Monday at Fenway Park will usher in a run of games against teams with various degrees of playoff aspirations: Minnesota, Philadelphia, Atlanta and the New York Mets. St. Louis and Texas could be all but done by the time the Blue Jays meet them; then it’s Tampa Bay, Boston again and – finally – the Miami Marlins.

Now, the whole ‘let’s play spoiler’ thing only carries so much water. But beggars can’t be choosers in 2024 and going into Sunday, Fangraphs playoff odds had the Phillies and Twins at over 93 per cent and the Braves at 83. The Twins and Kansas City Royals are two games back of the Cleveland Guardians in the AL Central race; the Braves are five back of the Phillies in the AL East.

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Those seven games against the Red Sox present an opportunity to lay down a bit of a marker.

Nothing wrong with frustrating the Red Sox. In fact, it could be all sorts of schadenfreude to stick a fork in them, no?

“It starts with pitching first and foremost and they need to continue to be consistent,” said Schneider. “For the young guys, it’s a cool environment to go up against good teams in their place. There’s always things to learn from. Always going to be firsts. Whether it’s someone’s first time at Fenway or Yankee Stadium or wherever you’re going you get to check that box. Again, I’ve said it before you need your veterans to kind of lead the way. I don’t want to say it’s a really, really good test … but it’s a good atmosphere for these guys to be in.”

Kirk’s homer, his fifth of the season, came after Angels manager Ron Washington intentionally walked Guerrero with one out in the seventh.

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It was the second time in the game that Guerrero was given an intentional pass only to see it back-fire — the Blue Jays’ first run came when Kirk drew a bases-loaded walk in the third. Guerrero expected that one: he stopped between the on-deck circle and home plate and started unbuckling his protective gear before Loperfido – who’d grounded out – made it to the dugout.

Singles by Guerrero and a fielder’s choice off the bat of Loperfido tacked on two more runs in the home half of the eighth, as the Blue Jays earned their fourth series sweep of the season and their first four-game sweep since May 2022, also against the Angels.

The Blue Jays are now 34-33 at the Rogers Centre.

The victory was the 100^th of Gausman’s career and came on a day when he struck out a season-high 10 batters. Over his last nine starts, Gausman has gone 6-2 (3.13) with a 1.04 WHIP and looks a little more like a guy who was near the top of pre-season Cy Young predictions. His slider and two-seamer were effective.

He said the results reminded him of 2023 – even though the path he took was a little different.

“Like I’ve said multiple times, I think the book is out on me and that’s kind of me throwing a new wrinkle at them,” said Gausman. “I know they’re good when I execute them and when I don’t, they’re not very good. I thought we did a really good job. If they weren’t swung at, they were balls off (the plate) so there wasn’t too much damage to be done if they did go after them.”

So, let’s see how these good times travel, shall we?

“I think it’s that they continue to do it, you know? “ Schneider said the other day when asked how he’d differentiate between fool’s gold and the real thing in these final weeks.

“There’s a lot of young guys. And I think one of the things we try to do is get them to be a little more vocal with their prep in meetings. I think it’s kind of freed them up a little bit in approach. But, you know, it can’t be for a week or two weeks. There’s a month plus left in the season, and you want to see them put the work in, have intent with their swings. Young guys especially … they have to keep doing it.”

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Saints’ Rattler shines, but Willis’s late heroics leads Titans to pre-season win

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