Jesús Sánchez #12 of the Toronto Blue Jays reacts with Daulton Varsho as he crosses home plate after hitting a grand slam home run in the sixth against the Miami Marlins.Cole Burston/Getty Images
Well, that was wild, especially Miami’s Sandy Alcantara.
The former Cy Young Award winner hit four Blue Jays batters on Tuesday night, including Kazuma Okamoto on the first pitch after Jesus Sanchez hit a grand slam in the sixth inning that propelled Toronto to an 8-1 victory.
Alcantara was roughed up for eight runs and eight hits in 5 2/3rds innings and was booed off the field by a partisan crowd that believed he had ill intentions when he struck Okamoto.
Toronto manager John Schneider said he didn’t believe Alcantara hit anyone intentionally.
“They were all breaking pitches,” Schneider said. “I have all the respect in the world for Sandy. I’m glad they weren’t fastballs. It felt like we were dodging bullets with a roster that is pretty beaten up already.”
Alcantara also hit George Springer, Sanchez and Lenyn Sosa. Although all will be sore, it doesn’t look like a serious injury was incurred.
Toronto pounded out 12 hits and got home runs from Ernie Clement (his fifth) and Yohendrick Pinango (his second.) Sanchez launched his first career grand slam 394 feet to right field during a six-run sixth inning.
It was his sixth long ball of the season and increased his runs batted in to 27, one fewer than Okamoto, the club leader. Earlier, Sanchez had a double.
Spencer Miles, who followed starter Braydon Fisher into the game in the second inning, picked up the win to improve to 2-0. He threw 4 1/3rd innings and allowed one earned run. Tanner Andrews pitched two scoreless innings to close things out.
Miles is 25 and was given a lease on life by the Blue Jays in 2025. Andrews is 30 and made his major league debut for the Blue Jays on Monday night.
Miles underwent a back operation in 2023 and had elbow reconstruction surgery the following year. He had only pitched 14 2/3rds innings in the minors when Toronto purchased his contract in December from the San Francisco Giants in the Rule 5 draft.
Andrews is in his ninth year in professional baseball and if he wasn’t near the end of calling it a career he surely could see it from Staten Island, where he started 2025 with the FerryHawks of the independent Atlantic League.
In November of last year, however, the Blue Jays took a flier on him and sent him to Buffalo, where he excelled over 16 games.
He was called up from Toronto’s Triple-A farm club on Monday when the team placed starting pitcher Dylan Cease on the 15-day disabled list.
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“I was sitting at home in Buffalo when I got the call,” Andrews said. “My wife and seven-month old daughter were next to me. The baby was asleep but we had to wake her and rush to Toronto.”
Drafted in the 10th round by the Miami Marlins in 2018, Andrews has pitched in 151 games over eight minor league seasons. In his 11-year career he has been a member of the Wichita Wind Surge, the Jupiter Hammerheads, the Batavia Muck Dogs and the aforementioned FerryHawks, among others.
In the ninth inning with the contest all but lost to the Marlins on Monday, Schneider called him in to mop things up. Andrews’s wife and infant daughter were at Rogers Centre.
“It’s just another part of the journey,” Andrews declared Tuesday a few hours before the Blue Jays and Marlins locked horns again. “Everyone’s is different but the game is still the same.”
Spencer Miles made his 15th appearance of the season on Tuesday, as the Blue Jays hosted the Miami Marlins at Rogers Centre.Cole Burston/Getty Images
Schneider had been cringing in the dugout for nearly three hours as Toronto played an interminably terrible game. Then he tapped Andrews, who strolled to the mound and retired all three hitters he faced.
“That’s a really nice moment for a guy that it seems like has grinded on forever,” Schneider said. “It’s always cool for somebody like that to be recognized for all the hard work he has put in.
“In a game like [Monday] night’s you always look for something nice and God knows I needed something like that at the time.”
As a Rule 5 player, it was a significant risk to bring Miles in. Unless injured, Rule 5 players must remain on a team’s active roster all year. If he fails, it’s an expensive move.
“When you make the World Series and a few months later draft a Rule 5 guy he better be pretty freaking good, and he is,” Schneider said. “He has the stuff to do it and the demeanour to do it.”
As luck would have it, Miles was in Dunedin, Fla., when the Blue Jays selected him in the draft. His girlfriend’s family lives there and he was simply visiting.
“It was crazy, I was at the training and development centre the next day,” he said.
Miles made his big league debut in the Jays’ second game of the campaign against the Athletics. So far he has been quite an awakening.
He entered Tuesday evening’s game having made 14 appearances and had tossed 29 innings with a 2.17 earned run average. Not bad for a guy who had never pitched above Single-A.
“I was pretty confident in my ability but I wasn’t sure about the path,” Miles said. “And I had a kind of crazy path.”
After the elbow reconstruction surgery he wondered if he would ever be able to pitch without pain again.
When he got on a major league mound for the first time, he said, “There was a rush of emotions. But then I did what was second nature for me. I tried not to make it more than it is.
“It’s still 60-feet 6-inches to home plate.”