ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — In previous winters Daz Cameron received offers to play in Japan but this past off-season, he was finally ready to take the plunge in Asia and signed with the Korean Baseball Organization’s Doosan Bears in November.
A first-round pick by the Houston Astros back in 2015 with an electric combination of bat speed and athleticism, he expected to be there for a season or two and see where that took him. Instead, he hit the ground running, batting .287/.360/.473 with nine homers and nine stolen bases in 75 games, started drawing some interest from back in North America, got his release in June and signed a minor-league deal with the Toronto Blue Jays on July 8.
“To be here now wasn't the plan, but things worked out with Toronto, they wanted me to join the club and phase me through the system and see how things would go,” said Cameron. “You create relationships along the way but here is the end goal, is where I wanted to be, back at home. I'm glad that I'm getting the opportunity to do so.”
The Blue Jays, who had past interest in the right-handed hitting outfielder, feel the same way, selecting his contract last weekend when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. suffered his concussion, and the 29-year-old hit his first home run for them Thursday in a 5-1 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays.
His drive, at 442 feet the longest of his 12 in the big-leagues, came in the fifth, after Nathan Lukes had gone deep earlier in the inning (his first in the majors off a lefty). Cameron added a single in the seventh, scoring on George Springer’s two-run single that padded the Blue Jays lead.
That helped along Shane Bieber, who having stymied the New York Yankees on a run over six innings in his last time out, was even better in holding the AL East leaders to a run on four hits with seven strikeouts in seven innings, while throwing a season-high 101 pitches.
As he increasingly looks to be regaining his top form, he said “everything, really” is getting sharper, although work remains. “It's really about momentum and repetition. I feel like for me, it's exactly what I told you guys after my last start, just put myself in better counts. I still think I could do a much better job of that, so that's what I'm going to try and focus on going forward.”
Kazuma Okamoto also went deep as the Blue Jays won a seventh consecutive series around a makeup-game loss at the Chicago Cubs, improving to 63-66. They also took a series at Tropicana Field for the first time since Sept. 22-24, 2023, outscoring the Rays 21-13, and now head to New York for three versus the Yankees, the last club currently with a winning record remaining on their schedule.
“That was impressive to come in against that pitching staff and not only to pitch the way we did against them, for the most part, but to have the offensive approach be pretty consistent (but) different every night was pretty encouraging,” said manager John Schneider, who praised his hitters for adapting as needed to three different starting pitchers. “First game here, you try to grind (Nick) Martinez and get into the bullpen and just try to be stubborn against (Drew) Rasmussen and then try to do some damage against (Ian) Seymour, who strikes out a lot of right-handed hitters, we know that. Just taking one game for what it is and understanding what you need to do to try to beat the opponent that night.”
Cameron is the latest piece to join the Blue Jays mix and expand Schneider’s options to try and do precisely that.
Finding right-handed power to complement the infield and outfield has been a season-long challenge for the club, but Charles McAdoo, since rejoining the club Aug. 10, and now Cameron have helped on that front.
Despite his loud tools, Cameron has struggled to stick in the majors during stints with the Tigers, Athletics and Brewers over the past six years, but feels like he figured some things out with the Bears this season.
Facing more spin thrown for strikes and on the edges of the zone in the KBO forced him to “learn how to really fine-tune my approach and stay within myself to hit breaking pitches,” he explained. “We had an analytics department there, they would show us how to attack the pitchers, how to be ready and prepare for the game and I just took my approach with how to go into the game, and through my routine I would approach how the pitchers would attack me, stay within the process and was able to put up some good numbers.”
Cameron kept mashing once he got to Buffalo, batting .367/.462/.582 with three homers and 10 stolen bases in 23 games and since he’s out of options, the Blue Jays will have an interesting roster decision to make Saturday if Guerrero returns as planned. Lefties Ryan Weathers and Carlos Rodon are lined up for the Yankees behind Cam Schlittler, who gets the opener.
The home run he hit off Seymour landed on the D-Ring catwalk beyond the outfield wall, a shot Schneider said was among “the farther ones I've seen here at the Trop.”
Lukes said “everyone's jaws were just on the ground,” and added that “we knew he had it like that, but we didn't quite know to that extent. That was awesome.”
Cameron said crushing that Seymour changeup was the result of “understanding what he was trying to do to me. Just trusting my approach, I was able to hit it out front, drive it to the big part of the ballpark.”
It was a pretty good way to leave an impression at a time the Blue Jays are finding ways to get the best from more of their roster, a key driver of their recent surge up the wild-card standings.
Cameron, with four hits in three games so far, is making the most of the at-bats he’s getting.
“Just continue to help the team any way I can in all phases, offence, defence, running or hitting, any opportunity that I'm given,” he said of his mindset. “Understand the situation, the approach to take in the situation, try to come through it and perform through those opportunities I do get.”
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