The Blue Jays walked out of Tropicana Field on Thursday with something they had not managed there in nearly three years: a series win.
That alone would have counted as a small victory. Doing it in the middle of all the usual Tropicana Field weirdness made it feel even stranger.
Toronto opened the game by nearly turning a routine pop-up into a disaster. Four Jays converged on a towering ball in front of home plate, only for nobody to catch it as two Rays runners stood on base.
The ball dropped, rolled foul, and looked like the kind of play that can unravel a game in that building.
“Usually that turns into like a four-run inning here,” manager John Schneider said.
This time, it didn’t. Shane Bieber got through the inning without damage, and Toronto finished the job late, pulling away for a 5-1 win and its first series victory in Tampa Bay in more than 1,000 days.
“Weird things happen here. It can get into your head a little bit,” Schneider said.
“It’s been a grind here. So to win another series, against a division opponent, I think is really big for us.”
The three-game set had plenty of Tropicana Field oddities beyond that one play. Fly balls hit three of the four roof rings over the course of the series, with one falling fair, another going foul and another bouncing over the wall for a ground-rule double.
Toronto also had to juggle some health issues along the way: Ernie Clement missed a game because of an illness, Brett Bateman left with a mild hamstring strain, Josh Smith played through cramping and Andrés Giménez exited Thursday’s finale with hamstring tightness. Schneider said Giménez was doing better after the game.
Assistant hitting coach Lou Iannotti was also ejected for arguing a swing call.
Even with all that, Toronto managed to outlast the building and the Rays. The Jays scored 10 runs in the opener, more than they had produced against Tampa Bay in the previous four meetings combined.
On Wednesday, they hit Drew Rasmussen for five earned runs, more than he had allowed in his previous six outings combined. On Thursday, they scratched out two runs on a 50.5-mph George Springer single in the seventh, and that was their only hit with runners in scoring position.
There were also a couple of individual swings that stood out. Daz Cameron, who was in Buffalo two weeks ago and South Korea two months ago, launched the longest homer of his big-league career, a 442-foot shot to left. Nathan Lukes added his first career homer against a left-hander.
“Finally,” Lukes said. “Me and lefties, I just try to grind my ass off against them, have good at-bats. So that one is special.”
Toronto’s trouble at Tropicana Field has been real enough that one series win still carries weight. The Jays have now taken just two of their last 13 series in Tampa Bay.
But this one mattered beyond the venue. If you set aside a day trip to Wrigley Field in early August, the win gave Toronto a seventh straight series victory.
For a team sitting three games under .500 at 63-66 and just outside the playoff picture, that’s not nothing. The postseason race is still tight, and Toronto is far from a lock for October. But a place that has often swallowed momentum did not do it this time.
“We know we don’t particularly do well when we come to The Trop,” Lukes said. “The Tampa Bay Rays, they always give us problems. Felt good to finally punch back.”
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