Toronto and Houston put on one of the most exciting series’ I’ve personally ever watched, with each game being must see television that left everyone who tuned in on the edge of their seat. And the best part about this? It was only the second series of the season, which only leaves room for even more exciting baseball action for the rest of the year. At the end of this thrill ride of a three game series, the Blue Jays came out losing the series dropping two of the three games in Houston with their record on the year falling to 3-4 and the Astros improved their record to 2-5. Each game had its highs and lows for both teams, and certainly proved to be an entertaining three games of baseball.

Game One:

As I’m pretty sure everyone still recalls, game one of this series saw the first no-hitter of the year when Ronel Blanco threw the full nine innings while racking up seven strikeouts en route to allowing zero hits against the Jays. I already made a full story fully breaking down this game, and analyzing what went wrong for Toronto that led to their embarrassing 10-0 defeat. To summarize, the offence went completely quiet and made no attempts to adjust at the plate while Bowden Francis couldn’t keep his composure and locate his pitches that resulted in Houston’s piping hot bats to take him deep over four times throughout the course of the game.

Game Two:

Alright now on to game two, this one saw Toronto trying to bounce back and keep themselves off the ropes after being no-hit the game prior and Houston was hoping for another dominating performance from both their hitting and pitching. This game was shaping up to be a pitchers duel as Jose Berrios stepped up for Toronto, while Houston went their own ace pitcher in Framber Valdez. The game was slow with both teams getting hits but was a low scoring 1-0 game in favor of Houston going into the top of the ninth inning. Toronto was fearing of being on the verge of getting shutout in back-to-back games, and those fears were reinforced when the Astros brought in their newly acquired star closer in Josh Hader. Hader made quick work of the Jays offence to start the inning only allowing one runner to reach base and bringing the Jays down to their final out of the game, leaving it up to Davis Schneider to be the hero and save his team. In an amazing turn of events, Schneider connected on a hanging slider and drove the pitch over the left-center field wall, stunning Hader and the Astros as Toronto took the lead 2-1 and closed the door when Chad Green came out of the bullpen to pick up the save and secure the victory for the Blue Jays.

UN-BABE-LIEVABLE 👨🏻 pic.twitter.com/T9ZsOX1Oj7

— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) April 3, 2024

I’ll speak for Jays fans when I say that watching Schneider hit that homerun was such a joyful thing to see, when in doubt count on babe Schneider to get you out of a jam. While the offence was once again slow and it took until the very last moment to put up a run, the Jays took the W nonetheless and were feeling good going into the rubber match for the third and final game of the series.

Game Three:

With the series tied at one game apiece, the third and final game was bound to be another exciting one for the fans. However while that statement is true, similarly to the first game it was a one-sided beat down by Houston as the Astros were in full control. Chris Bassitt took the mound for the Jays and despite having a stellar campaign last year, he didn’t quite look the same in his first start and the same continued in this game as well. For the Astro’s offence, Yordan Alvarez has been very effective against Bassitt having four career homers against him in just 17 plate appearances. Yordan continued his dominance by blasting his fifth career homer against Bassitt in his first at-bat to put the Astros up early 1-0 in the bottom of the first. The offence piggy backed off of Alvarez’ first inning homer, and racked up the hits and scored runs left and right to back Bassitt into a corner that pushed him out of the game after just 4 1/3 innings pitched. As for Toronto, their bats for the third straight game looked non existent as the team only mustered one hit through seven innings and there was no Davis Schneider in the lineup to spark the offence this time around. In the end, Houston would easily stroll to a victory and the series win  while leaving the Blue Jays clubhouse and fanbase deflated and with a feeling of disappointment due to the lack of quality in their most recent performances.

I think the best thing that Blue Jays fans can think about after this series is that the season is still young, there is still plenty of time to turn themselves around but it’s hard not to be concerned about the team’s hitting struggles from last season continuing to hinder them after having all of this time to work on consistency. Either way, all that can be done now is shake it off and focus on the tough road ahead.