Bichette and Jansen star as Blue Jays crush woeful White Sox

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Another lineup shuffle was another hit for the Blue Jays, who beat the Chicago White Sox 9-3 on a beautiful Victoria Day afternoon.

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Shifting Davis Schneider to leadoff has been beneficial and manager John Schneider gave Danny Jansen his first career start batting second.

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The catcher delivered, and then some. Jansen homered, doubled, singled, drove in four and raised his average to .333.

Shortstop Bo Bichette hit three doubles (he had six all season coming in) and went 4-for-4 to back a solid performance by starting pitcher Jose Berrios, while, Daulton Varsho homered to erase an early White Sox lead.

Jansen said afterward he was eating some pancakes when he was told he was moving up.

“Wherever I am in the lineup I’m just trying to do my part and put some good swings up. Any way I can help the team, so, it was a lot of fun today,” Jansen said, before adding later he hasn’t been told if he’ll stay put there.

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Jansen said his strong start is a result of learning more about himself and “just a little bit of freedom and to kind of sticking to my strengths and having an approach and sticking to it.”

Manager Schneider has been impressed. “He’s having good at-bats, hitting the ball hard. Worked out well today, came up in some pretty big spots and got the job done. He’s been pretty consistent all year,” Schneider said after Toronto’s second win in a row.

Chicago got on the board in the second inning with a couple of singles and a stolen base. It could have been a lot worse, since the White Sox collected four singles in the inning but only plated one run.

The frame ended in bizarre fashion, when the White Sox attempted a double steal with runners at first and third. Jansen threw to Davis Schneider, who ignored the runner approaching second base and immediately threw back to Jansen to retire Korey Lee, the runner tryint to steal home.

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The Jays responded with a leadoff double by Bichette, followed by Varsho’s eighth home run of the season, a big hit considering Chicago starter Erick Fedde had nearly worked himself out of trouble by getting two outs. The manager later called the Varsho homer the “key” to the win. “They score early and I think just taking the lead right back is big. It kind of just shifts momentum a bit early,” Schneider said.

Toronto was at it again an inning later, when Kevin Kiermaier flashed his still elite speed by somehow turning a ground ball into a double. The centre fielder then tagged up to get to third on a fly ball to left field and scored to make it 3-1 on Jansen’s two-base hit. Jansen then scored on a Vladimir Guerrero Jr. double.

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Berrios battled, but gave up a home run to one-time Jay Paul DeJong in the seventh and then a walk and was pulled. But Yimi Garcia, Toronto’s best reliever so far this season, picked up Berrios with a couple of strikeouts to end the inning. Berrios finished with a line of six innings, eight hits allowed, three earned runs, two walks and six strikeouts to improve to 5-3. Jansen’s homer, his fifth, in the bottom of the seventh, gave Toronto some breathing room.

As bad as Chicago has been, starter Fedde has been a bright spot. He was 4-0 with a 2.60 ERA (11th in the American League) coming in. But the Jays had a good plan against him and came through. Fedde gave up five earned runs in his six innings with only two strikeouts.

THUNDER FROM DOWN UNDER

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Not many teams in baseball start all three outfielders way down their order, but that’s where the Jays find themselves these days. George Springer has been dropped to sixth, Varsho hit seventh for the 10th time in 25 appearances, while Kiermaier is pretty much a fixture in the nine-hole. Good teams tend to get a lot more offence out of their outfielders, but it was noted at least pre-game by media to manager Schneider that at least the group was “as good as it gets” amongst MLB outfield trios at preventing runs at the other end. And while Springer booted a catch attempt early, Varsho and Kiermaier had typically excellent defensive outings and Springer ranged to his left to end the eighth with a nice catch.

Plus as a bonus, they also delivered with their bats. Varsho smoked his homer and leads the team in that category, Kiermaier was a thorn in Chicago’s side all afternoon and Springer hit a sharp single in the eighth.

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ONE DAY AT A TIME

Schneider was asked pre-game if his last-place team was aiming to run off series win after series win to get back into the race, but said things are more urgent than that for his club. “Literally trying to win today,” Schneider said, saying the Jays are on a game-by-game basis right now and aiming not to look past what’s right in front of them.

If the Jays were to zoom out though, they’d see a lot of minnows on the upcoming schedule. Sunday was the first of four against MLB-worst Chicago, with three more against the Sox to follow after a four-game set in Detroit (the Tigers entered Sunday .500). If the Jays don’t take advantage, they’ll need to steal some games from elite squads like Baltimore, Milwaukee, Cleveland and the New York Yankees in June when the schedule turns into a bear.

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AROUND THE BASES

Both Chad Green and Bowden Francis will thraow for triple-A Buffalo on Wednesday and the hope is both will be able to rejoin Toronto soon after, per Schneider … Garcia has stranded all 10 runners he has inherited this season, per Sportsnet’s Blake Murphy … Bichette was confident he would break out of his season-opening slump and has been hot over his last 10 games. Over that stretch he has hit .368.

@WolstatSun

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