George Springer (right) had a good return to the lineup for the Blue Jays on Wednesday. He was 1-2 with an RBI in an 8-1 win over the visiting Boston Red Sox.Cole Burston/Getty Images
In the fifth inning on Wednesday, Blue Jays manager John Schneider went to his bench and summoned George Springer to pinch hit.
Springer hadn’t appeared in a game since April 11 when he sustained a fractured left big toe by fouling a pitch off of it. He hadn’t played in 15 days, which drove him bonkers. He always wants to play. Drives others around him crazy when he doesn’t.
“Oh, the last few weeks have been brutal,” Springer said after the team’s 8-1 victory over the Boston Red Sox. “I like to play, but it’s a broken toe and there is nothing I can do but put ice on it.”
Springer batted for rookie Yohendrick Pinango and promptly delivered a single to centre field off reliever Jovani Moran to score Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and put Toronto up 6-1. Guerrero went 3 for 3 and walked as his average soared to .358 to take over the lead, at least temporarily, in the American League.
“It is exciting to just have a chance to have my number called,” Springer said. “It was fun.”
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The Blue Jays have won seven of their last 10 games and won three straight series. They travelled to Minneapolis on Wednesday night and begin a four-game series on Thursday against the Twins.
Toronto is now 14-16 where at one point it was 7-13. Slowly it is inching back to respectability.
“For a while I think a lot of guys, me included, were trying to do too much at certain times,” Springer, who is likely to start versus Minnesota, said. He flew out in one other at bat on Wednesday.
Toronto pounded out 10 hits and got a good start from left-hander Eric Lauer and great work from its bullpen.
Eric Lauer got the Blue Jays off to a good start against the Red Sox on Wednesday. The Jays' bullpen pitched 4 2/3 shutout innings in an 8-1 win.John E. Sokolowski/Reuters
Lauer, who is still fighting off the effects of a stomach bug, went 4 1/3rds innings and gave up five hits and one run, a 406-foot homer to left by Willson Contreras in the first. It was the latter’s seventh of the season.
“It has been tough,” Lauer said of the illness. “I still get tired really quickly but feel now that I am on the other side of it. I am at a spot where I can start to work on things.”
In the fifth, the Red Sox loaded the bases on three singles with one out but Braydon Fisher replaced Lauer and got Contreras to line to shortstop Andrés Giménez for a double play. Fisher (2-0) was credited with the win.
The Blue Jays scored three times in the third to go ahead 3-1, with the big hit being a hard single to left field by Kazuma Okamoto. The third baseman also had the winning hit in a 3-0 triumph over Boston on Tuesday.
After a slow start, Okamoto leads the club with five home runs, has 15 runs batted in and is hitting in the .290s over his last 10 or so games.
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“He has been swinging the bat well,” Springer said. “He hits the ball extremely hard and is starting to get a lot more familiar with the surroundings and where he fits in.
“He is starting to get his voice. I love him.”
Toronto’s other runs came on home runs by Ernie Clement and Brandon Valenzuela, a sacrifice fly by Myles Straw and a single by Pinango. It was the first RBI of the rookie call-ups career.
Fisher, Tommy Nance, Joe Mantiply and Spencer Miles combined to toss 4 2/3rd shutout innings.
“Baseball ebbs and it flows,” Schneider, the manager, said. “We want to win series, stack them on top of each other and move on. There will be more ups and more downs.”
For now, Toronto will pick spots to play Springer until it is certain he is thoroughly healed. Without his bat there is a large void in the lineup. He had 32 home runs, 84 RBIs and 18 stolen bases in 2025.
The club has suffered a litany of injuries that at least partially impacted its start to the season.
“I didn’t think about it when I fouled the pitch off my foot, but when they told me a day or two later that the toe was fractured, I thought, ‘Dang, this sucks,’” Springer said.
“But my job is to get back as fast as I can.”