Daulton Varsho's walk-off Grand Slam a payoff for the Blue Jays "trusting the process"

And just like that they can all take a deep breath and exhale. It took them five tries, but the Toronto Blue Jays finally beat the Tampa Bay Rays in 2026, and in the process, ended a three game slide in the most emphatic ways. Daulton Varsho hit a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the tenth to lift the Blue Jays to a 5-3 win. Perhaps no team needed that moment more than the Blue Jays who will hope to use this as a jumping off point to get their season back on track.

The prevailing storyline all year has been the Blue Jays' slow start and at 19-24 they still have a long way to go just to get back to .500. Fortunately for them after Wednesday's win (May 13) there are still only five teams in the American League playing at .500 or better. That means while they have lots of ground to make up, the teams they need to catch aren't too far out of reach just yet.

And when a game ends the way it did for the Blue Jays against Tampa Bay on Wednesday, that usually can be looked at as a turning point - if the team can capitalize on that moment. It's reminiscent of Bo Bichette's pinch-hit home run on May 28 in Texas against the Rangers last season. That two-run home run in the top of the ninth propelled the Blue Jays to a 2-0 win, got them to a 27-28 record on the year and sparked a streak in which they won 12 of their next 14 games.

Whether the Blue Jays get that kind of win streak off the Varsho home run remains to be seen, but what they can point to and learn from is a trust in the process. The Varsho home run was just the massive smothering of icing on the cake on a night where the Blue Jays were hitting the ball well, but not getting rewarded for it.

It was a combination of the Blue Jays frustrating lack of luck, and the Rays being a super savvy defensive team that lead to the teams combining for just two runs through the first eight innings of the game. However, this game should have belonged to the Blue Jays long before it got to the Varsho moment. While Toronto had just six hits in total in the game, they also had 10 walks.

Blue Jays turned frustrating night into a win

This was a team that wasn't trying to "do too much," they were exhibiting patience, they were getting men on, they were trying to start rally's in almost every inning. The problem was that they were 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position and left nine men on base. But those stats don't tell the entire story. The Blue Jays just got unlucky for basically nine straight innings.

Take Varsho's first at-bat of the game. After Kazuma Okamoto walked to lead off the inning, Varsho smashed a pitch 101.7 mph to left field, but it was caught by Chandler Simpson. Jesús Sánchez followed with a line drive single to center field and then Ernie Clement smoked a ball that went 386 feet, but Cedric Mullins ran a mile to get there and made a catch on the run right in front of the wall to get the out. Had Clement pulled that ball a couple of feet to the left, that was going to be an easy double, with the ball hitting the top of the wall.

That was just the second inning. The Blue Jays ran into instances like that all night. In the bottom of the third, Yohendrick Piñango inside-outed a pitch that should've gone down the right field line for a double, but was nabbed by first baseman Jonathan Aranda who then stepped on first base for the double play as George Springer couldn't get back to first in time.

In the bottom of the sixth, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. worked an eight pitch at-bat to open the inning and on pitch number eight he drilled a 103.4 mph splitter to center field, only for Mullins to catch it on a line. In the bottom of the seventh, Lenyn Sosa lined out into a double play with the Blue Jays threatening with men on first and second and one out. In the bottom of the eighth the Blue Jays had the bases loaded and nobody out and on the first pitch, Okamoto got a changeup right down the heart of the plate that he absolutely belted at 104.1 mph, but it only ended up being a sacrifice fly to left field - though it tied the game, it should have done more damage.

That all lead to the culmination in Varsho's home run. A team that was snake bitten all night finally got a bit of luck with Varhsho's shot carrying over the top of the wall and into the Blue Jays bullpen. This is the epitome of the season being a marathon, not a sprint, and the Blue Jays can look at the results of this game and have to believe that if they keep this process going, the results will be far better than what they have been to this point.

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