Valenzuela and McAdoo: Two Homers, a 648-Run Test

Here is the question for every Blue Jays offseason plan: where do the extra runs come from?

Brandon Valenzuela and Charles McAdoo offered one appealing answer on Sunday. Valenzuela hit a two-run homer in the second. McAdoo drove in Sean Keys with a sacrifice fly in the third and homered in the eighth. Toronto beat Cincinnati 5-1.

They combined for four RBIs. They deserve to be evaluated for 2027.

What they do not deserve is to become the front office’s entire answer to a season in which the Blue Jays scored 648 runs.

Do not let the last game rewrite the first question

Toronto played 162 games and finished 79-83, fifth in the division. Its offense hit .247, posted a .691 OPS and hit 152 home runs. The club knows what the complete season produced.

The finale was a welcome departure from the frustration those figures represent. It was also a single game. If the first question in a 2027 lineup discussion is whether Valenzuela and McAdoo might help, the answer is yes. Sunday made that possibility more interesting.

If the first question is whether their Sunday production already fixes the lineup, the answer is no. That distinction matters because a club can sound ambitious while doing very little. It can point to the last good swings of the season, talk about opportunity and avoid explaining how the whole offense will score more consistently.

The hitters should not be asked to carry that argument. They provided the performance. Toronto has to provide the plan.

Hope belongs in the plan, not in place of it

There is a legitimate way to make room for upside. Give Valenzuela and McAdoo a real chance to show what they can do beyond the finale. Judge what follows, and adjust the 2027 expectations to the evidence.

There is also an evasive way. Treat their homers as though they have already supplied the improvement a 648-run team needs, then call any doubt a lack of faith.

That is not faith in players. It is reluctance to face what the rest of the season says.

Sunday itself offers a warning against reading too much into the score. The Blue Jays had five hits. Brett Bateman had two of them, while Valenzuela and McAdoo each had one. Their home runs mattered enormously, but a 5-1 win does not tell us that every offensive question has received an answer.

Nor should the conversation turn into an argument against either hitter. McAdoo’s sacrifice fly was useful. Valenzuela’s homer scored Davis Schneider. The point is not to discount production. It is to refuse to confuse production that happened with production the team can already count on next year.

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Judge every proposed solution by the same standard

Toronto should welcome competition from Valenzuela and McAdoo. It should also ask of every offensive idea what it asks of them: how will this help the club score more runs, and what evidence supports that expectation?

Those questions do not require a prediction about a transaction that has not happened. They require the Blue Jays to be honest about the size of the job. A fifth-place finish is not a reason to dismiss promising players. It is a reason to avoid presenting promise as a finished repair.

The Reds series could make that distinction easy to forget. Toronto won two of three, ending it with the two homers and a comfortable score. That is a good finish. It cannot change the 162-game total or make the team’s .691 OPS irrelevant.

An offseason argument should survive the removal of Sunday’s highlight plays. If the plan for improving the offense collapses without them, it was too fragile to begin with.

Make room without handing over the keys

Valenzuela and McAdoo should enter the 2027 conversation as candidates who have earned attention. That is a meaningful result from a finale.

But the Blue Jays need a lineup plan that can accommodate uncertainty. If both hitters keep producing, Toronto should be ready to reward them. If the evidence is less convincing, the club still needs a credible way to improve on 648 runs.

That is the stance: evaluate the players, and make the offense answer for the season. Sunday’s two homers gave Toronto something worth pursuing. They did not give it permission to stop looking.