Blue Jays Beat Reds, but a 79-83 Season Wins Out

The Blue Jays won their final series.

That sentence is true, and for once it does not need a complicated explanation. Toronto beat the Reds 6-5 on Friday, lost 5-1 on Saturday, then won 5-1 on Sunday.

Two wins in three games. A home finale with two Blue Jays home runs. A last afternoon that gave everyone something better to carry out of the ballpark than another loss.

The series also happened at the end of a 79-83, fifth-place season.

Both versions of the ending belong to Toronto. Only one describes the year.

Three games, three different feelings

Friday’s 6-5 win was close on the scoreboard. Saturday’s 5-1 loss offered one Toronto run. On Sunday, the Blue Jays were the team holding the other side to one.

The final result was welcome. So was the sight of Brandon Valenzuela and Charles McAdoo supplying home runs rather than leaving every bit of scoring to the patient work of moving runners along.

But Saturday belongs in this account as much as Sunday does. The middle game is not a detail to be edited out because the series was won. Toronto scored once, lost by four, and returned the next day to produce a much happier box score.

That movement between one run and five is familiar to anyone who spent the year waiting for the offense to give a game some room.

A series victory tells us the Blue Jays were better than the Reds over these three games. It does not tell us they were better than their final standing over the season.

Sunday made its case clearly

Valenzuela homered off Brandon Williamson in the second inning, bringing Davis Schneider home. It was Valenzuela’s ninth homer of the season.

Cincinnati scored in the third when Carlos Jorge singled off Max Scherzer and Oswaldo Cabrera came home. Toronto answered in the bottom half: McAdoo’s sacrifice fly scored Sean Keys, and Schneider’s groundout scored Brett Bateman.

McAdoo added his third homer of the season in the eighth, off Carson Spiers.

There was no need to strain for a positive detail. Scherzer worked 7.0 innings with one earned run and seven strikeouts. Paul Sewald and Mason Fluharty each worked 1.0 inning without an earned run charged. Toronto committed no errors.

The Blue Jays scored five runs on five hits. Cincinnati scored one on seven hits. It was a decisive enough finish to let a fan appreciate what Valenzuela and McAdoo had done without pretending it was merely symbolic.

They helped win the game. That matters.

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The longer account does not disappear

Toronto’s offense finished the season with 648 runs, 4 runs per game, a .247 batting average, a .691 OPS, and 152 home runs.

Those numbers cover far more than Sunday. They cover the year in which the final homers would have been useful company on many other days.

It is tempting to make Valenzuela and McAdoo the answer to a question that belongs to the whole club. They should not have to bear that weight. The hopeful thing about their swings is that they happened and can be remembered. The dishonest thing would be treating them as proof that the offense’s season-long difficulties no longer count.

The standings did not misplace Sunday’s win. It is there in the 79. The losses are there, too, along with fifth place.

That is why a series victory feels smaller than it ordinarily might. Toronto did something well at the end, after a full season had already established how much had gone wrong.

What stays after the last game

Monday is an off-day, with no upcoming game listed. There is no next Reds matchup to prepare for and no fresh result to hurry this one out of sight.

So let Sunday be good. Let Valenzuela’s homer and McAdoo’s homer be remembered as good swings. Let the final 5-1 score stand without a complaint attached to every inning.

Then let the season stand, too.

The Blue Jays took two of three from Cincinnati. They finished 79-83 and fifth in the division. Neither fact cancels the other, but they do not carry equal weight.

A fan can leave the last game with a little hope.

It is the whole year that makes the walk home quiet.