The 'Who Jays' are in first place. How is this happening?
'It's every day,' said Lukes. 'Every day you don't know who that person is going to be in this lineup. Every day it's always someone different who comes through. That's the fun of it.
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'When you have a team like that, you just know people are going to produce. You just don't know who it's going to be. To me, it's an honour to be part of this group. We're special. I think the fans know it, we know it. The coaching staff knows it.'
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And how is this possible? Vladdy Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette are not MVP candidates this season. Solid as the Jays veteran rotation is, nobody is screaming Cy Young. The most likely award-winner this season — if there is one — is the manager John Schneider, and he's likely behind Detroit's A.J. Hinch in the popular vote.
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'This shows you what baseball is,' said Lukes. 'Small money, big money, you still have to play nine innings, you still need 27 outs. That's the beauty of it. That never changes.'
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The Jays swept San Francisco on the weekend, just after the all-star break, and large offensive contributions came from Tyler Heineman, the veteran backup catcher; from Will Wagner, son of the Hall of Famer; from the young slugger Addison Barger and the unlikely Joey Loperfido. And a couple of key hits from Lukes in between.
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Before the break, the Jays won seven in a row at home, including a sweep of the then first-place Yankees. The key offensive hits, except those from the old man George Springer, came from Loperfido and Davis Scheider and Barger and Ernie Clement.
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'We know they're playing incredibly well,' said Yankees manager Aaron Boone, again on the hot seat with a team lacking in fundamentals. 'The emergence of their supporting cast has been really good. They've performed at a very high level.'
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All of a sudden, the Who Jays have a four-game lead on the Yankees, something that hasn't happened a lot over the past 32 years. The Jays won their most recent World Series in 1993.
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Since then, they have won the AL East once, made the playoffs five times, won 10 playoff games in all.
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In that time, the Yankees have been to the World Series eight times, winning five of them, and in those 32 years that the Jays won 10 playoff games, the Yankees happened to win 128 of them.
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This race is not a first among equals. This is an anomaly worth admiring. This is the impossible suddenly becoming more than possible.
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'Our goal is not to think about what we're doing,' said Lukes. 'Just keep doing it. When you start picking apart your numbers in this game, that's when you get into trouble. I've been through that before. A lot of us have. The best part is, just be ready, be enthusiastic, just keep playing the way we're playing. And just keep winning.'
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