In a make-or-break week for the Blue Jays as currently constructed, they opened the series against the White Sox deciding to make.
The Jays broke out of their offensive doldrums with nine runs and seven extra-base hits in a game started against the White Sox's best pitcher. Bo Bichette embodied the turnaround better than anybody, going 4-for-4 with three doubles after entering the game hitting .211/.273/.298. Danny Jansen, one of the Jays who has been doing his best, knocked them down late, driving in five runs, including a two-out, two-run homer off Jordan Leasure in the seventh, and a two-out, two-run single off Tim Hill in the eighth.
In the process, Erick Fedde suffered his first loss as a White Sox, and he'd more or less deserved it. The Blue Jays appeared to be sitting on his sinker, which Fedde made possible by missing a little bit too widely with his sweeper. He also suffered from the White Sox's current outfield alignment, which didn't have the range to potentially bail in him out.
The White Sox grabbed a 1-0 lead in the second inning (although they needed four hits to do it, and ran into an out to end their chances for more). The Blue Jays immediately answered with two, starting when Andrew Benintendi couldn't chase down Bichette's lazy fly down the left-field line for a leadoff double. Fedde nearly escaped trouble with a couple of groundouts, but his 1-1 changeup to Daulton Varsho, while a little low, was over the heart of he plate, and Varsho had just seen a changeup miss the pitch before. He hoisted the pitch out to right center for a 2-1 lead, and the Blue Jays never trailed.
They expanded their lead an inning later when Kevin Kiermaier took 90 feet on Tommy Pham by stretching a single into a double, took another 90 feet on Andrew Benintendi's arm on a flyout to left, and scored when Jansen notched his first RBI with a double to right center out of the range of Gavin Sheets. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. then tacked on another run with a solid single on a second straight full-count sinker to make it 4-1, which turned out to be enough.
At times, it looked like the White Sox might break through for a crooked number, but they had to settle for single runs.
In the second, after Andrew Benintendi grounded into a double play, Paul DeJong reached on a single, stole second and scored on Korey Lee's single. Lee then advanced to third on Nicky Lopez's single, but when the Sox tried to double-steal a run to avoid putting all the burden on Danny Mendick, the Jays jumped it, with Bichette charging the throw from Jensen in time to return the throw home to catch Lee.
In the fourth, Gavin Sheets led off with a double when George Springer lost a bet on his diving attempt, but Eloy Jiménez and Andrew Benintendi rolled over on two of the next three pitches to risk stranding Sheets. DeJong bailed out the middle of the order with a single to center.
Capping off the Sox's scoring, DeJong blasted a solo shot to right center off José Berríos in the seventh, which cut Toronto's lead to 5-3. DeJong had three hits in his first three plate appearances today, which matched his hit total over 44 plate appearances with the Blue Jays last year.
The Sox never drew closer, because when Leasure entered to face Jansen after Dominic Leone yielded a two-out double in the bottom of the seventh, Leasure hung a slider that Jansen converted into a two-run homer to ice the game.
Bullet points:
*Nicky Lopez joined DeJong with a three-hit game, but it didn't translate into runs because Danny Mendick, Tommy Pham and Andrew Vaughn combined to go 0-for-13 with five strikeouts behind him.
*The White Sox dropped to 0-4 on the road trip, and remain stuck with baseball's worst record for at least one more day.
