The Blue Jays’ return to Buffalo is a step up, and maybe a step closer to home

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This article was published 01/06/2021 (1628 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BUFFALO—Fully vaccinated to the left, socially distancing to the right, and baseball straight down Broadway.

Main Street, actually.

See how easy it is?

This homely city on Lake Erie can figure it out. Not so much for the smug metropolis on Lake Ontario.

So Buffalo has the Blue Jays and Toronto has … a hockey team eliminated in the first round.

Are the vagabond Jays over the moon about being back in the Empress City, gathered to this burg’s breast as ballers on loan? Rent-a-big-league team. Congregate venue for the homeless.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. certainly likey. On two pitches he saw Tuesday, in a pair of at-bats: his 11th double and a three-run homer, his MLB-leading 17th. But of course Guerrero had affection for the dinger-prone TD Ballpark in Dunedin, Fla., where he hit 11 of his previous 16 bombs.

The eternally sunshiny-Vladdy had the first four-hit game of his career — double, homer, a brace of singles — in a 5-1 win over the Miami Marlins. Whatever pitchers are doing to minimize his clout and contact, the audacious 22-year-old is adjusting right back.

“I’m just trusting the plan,” he said. “Working hard. The plan might change every day.”

Because he’s studying them as much as they’re marking him.

In the past, Guerrero has revealed he can often feel it in batting practice when he is primed for a big day, the swing feeling particularly humming. On Tuesday, against the Marlins, there was just an all-over sense of well-being, with the team’s friends and families in the stands at Sahlen Field.

“To be honest with you, I feel good every day. When I’m doing BP, doing my routine, before the game. I always make sure that I do everything the right way. But not every day that I’m gonna get a day like this.”

The Jays got a sturdy starting effort from Robbie Ray too, as he racked up nine strikeouts on 96 pitches in six innings of one-run ball.

“Fastball felt great, fastball-slider combination was really working for me tonight,” Ray said,

He felt the groove before the game, then got a giant boost from a crowd exulting when he punched out the first two batters.

“Being able to get two strikes on the guy and the crowd gets fired up behind you. It gives you that extra little rush of adrenalin. So it was a lot of fun to pitch.”

The Jays were jiggy all over with Sahlen Field; they went 17-9 here in 2020. A team that hasn’t played a real game at Rogers Centre since 2019, endlessly on the pandemic-paved road, was welcomed home by a crowd of 5,321 divided into tiers of the jabbed and un-jabbed, face masks mandatory for all. Unlike the rest of Buffalo, where masks have disappeared from public spaces.

This is a familiar sandlot for the Jays, following their emergency tenancy last year, all very rush-rush back then because the Triple-A ballpark was at the bottom of the list in preferred venues when the team was given the boot from its Toronto environs. This time ’round, after playing out the first couple of months in Dunedin and its A-ball yard, the Jays were pleased to come on back.

But they’re an accommodating bunch and rarely has a discouraging word been heard from within the clubhouse. Almost humble-like, at the very exactingly polite about their hobo existence, as in thank-you-for-having-us. Like shelter puppies.

TD Ballpark was OK, barely, in a pinch, until it got too hot in Florida. But it was always an awkward, even embarrassing fit.

“There have been no excuses,” Jays president Mark Shapiro said, approvingly, of how his team has responded to unenvious circumstance. “It’s never been feeling sorry for ourselves. It’s never been complaining about the situation.”

But still.

“Despite making the best of it, we were playing in a minor-league facility, an A-ball facility … It could have been a crutch (but) our guys have battled, with the toughest schedule in baseball, a ton of injuries, and stayed right in the race, certainly the wild-card race. So I feel like we’ve got a heck of a run in us as we move through this season.”

First, moving to Buffalo. Pack up the spouses, pack up the babies, haul the whole kith ’n’ kin ’n’ and kaboodle to within nudging distance of the border.

“Most of the guys have been here already,” noted manager Charlie Montoyo, referring to players who’ve matriculated to the mother club via the Bisons. “That helps. The guys who haven’t been here have to get used to it. But so far, so good. No negatives about this place.”

This place — the Jays could be here for a month, might be here for two months, club executives are elusive with details and they probably don’t have a clue themselves — has a bit more spit and polish than a year ago, and big boy bullpens.

But what do you care? If you’re following the rules, as obedient and un-pushy Canadians and non-essential, you won’t be crossing the Peace Bridge or Rainbow Bridge anyway.

Danny Jansen, when he assumed the Zoom position with media pre-game, hadn’t yet actually stepped on the field but he’d sussed out the clubhouse, the batting cages, the weight room. Two thumbs up. “They did an outstanding job. They had more time this year and it’s tremendous … I think it’s going to be one of the better if not the best Triple-A facility. It’s gonna be great when it’s all said and done and we’re back in Toronto.”

See, that’s the thing. The Jays are just passing through, though there’s no guarantee they will get back to Toronto this season. Maybe the post-season.

“Conversations at every level, municipal, provincial and federal have been consistent,” Shapiro said. “It’s been more substantive of late and more frequent of late, particularly at the federal level. And certainly more positive.”

But nothing will budge that border needle until Ottawa takes off the shackles. Which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is obviously in no hurry to do, certainly not for the travel privilege of pro sports teams. They can’t come there and you, technically, can’t come here.

So, the Jays will look at expanding capacity at Sahlen Field, maybe upwards of 7,000. Certainly the demand is there. Locals mostly, delighted to claim the Jays as their own, in passing.

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And, as of Tuesday, they’d seen one real game more than a Toronto audience, for 2021, the Jays now 28-25.

“You know what?” Jansen said. “It’s been a good two months. We’ve been in a lot of games that we’ve lost. Obviously, the four games with Tampa, all extra-inning games pretty much, tight games. There hasn’t really been a whole lot of blowouts. That just goes to our bullpen, our starting rotation, obviously our bats keep us in ball games, for sure.

“After the first two months, you could always say, could be in a better place. But just going off the first two months, we’re happy with where we are.”

Which is Buffalo.

Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno