SIMMONS: The 'Who Jays' are in first place. How is this happening?

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The names line up in rather large letters by the lockers in the opulence that is the Blue Jays clubhouse.

Fluharty. Lauer. Little. Sandlin.

Wagner. Straw. Nance. Lukes.

Bruihl. Heineman. Loperfido. Francis.

Clement. Jimenez. Schultz. Schneider. Fisher.

If you can’t match a first name to a last, that’s understandable. Most of baseball couldn’t. This is the most unique, invisible and unexpected team in Blue Jays history.

And we can’t take our eyes off them.

They won’t let us as they remain in first place in the American League East, now four games up on the Yankees, with a better record than the huge spenders in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

They won’t let us turn away. These are your first-place Blue Jays, winners of 11 in a row at home. Yep, that’s 11 in a row.

Those World Series champions of 1992 and 1993 never won 11 in a row at home in Toronto. The great 1985 Jays, who probably should have won a World Series in an awful stadium, never got to 11. Same with those electric teams of 2015 and 2016, at least one of which should have been fitted for rings and didn’t quite get there.

There were not a lot of Nathan Lukeses on those teams, or Addison Bargers, Will Wagners or Joey Loperfidos. And you can keep adding on to those names. The great Blue Jays teams in history had MVP candidates such as Jesse Barfield and George Bell in 1985 — the AL MVP that year was won by current Blue Jays coach Don Mattingly — like Joe Carter, Roberto Alomar and Dave Winfield in 1992 and John Olerud, Carter and Paul Molitor in 1993. Great players doing great things.

Josh Donaldson won the MVP in 2015 when baseball returned to life in the city, then he finished fourth the following year, with Jose Bautista hitting 40 home runs in 2015 and Edwin Encarnacion 42 the following year.

That’s the history of winning teams in the sport. The best players, the biggest boppers, the deepest bullpens win. There aren’t 15 or 16 of who-are-these-people on most winning teams.

Mrs. Nathan Lukes, who has followed her husband city to city, league to league, and knows the letters DFA well, noticed the other day that the Jays’ starting lineup against the San Francisco Giants had two players on major-league contracts and everybody else in the starting nine was hoping there is a next year for any of their deals.

“That’s the beauty of this team,” said Lukes, who hits wherever the Jays put him in the lineup and plays whatever position he is asked to play. This is his 10th season of professional baseball and the Blue Jays are his ninth team.

He had bounced through various levels of the minor leagues, getting used to carrying change-of-address cards and understanding furniture rentals, and at 31 years of age, he’s still trying to establish himself as a big league something. Maybe here. That is happening for so many in this breathtaking Blue Jays season.

“It’s every day,” said Lukes. “Every day, you don’t know who that person is going to be in this lineup. Every day, it’s always someone different who comes through. That’s the fun of it.

“When you have a team like that, you just know people are going to produce. You just don’t know who it’s going to be. To me, it’s an honour to be part of this group. We’re special. I think the fans know it. We know it. The coaching staff knows it.”

And how is this possible? Vladdy Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette are not MVP candidates this season. As solid as the Jays veteran rotation is, nobody is screaming Cy Young. The most likely award-winner this season — if there is one — is the manager John Schneider, and he’s likely behind Detroit’s A.J. Hinch in the popular vote.

“This shows you what baseball is,” said Lukes. “Small money, big money, you still have to play nine innings, you still need 27 outs. That’s the beauty of it. That never changes.”

The Jays swept San Francisco on the weekend, just after the all-star break, and large offensive contributions came from Tyler Heineman, the veteran backup catcher; from Will Wagner, son of the Hall of Famer; from the young slugger Addison Barger and the unlikely Joey Loperfido. And a couple of key hits from Lukes mixed in.

Before the break, the Jays won seven in a row at home, including a sweep of the then first-place Yankees. The key offensive hits, except those from the old man George Springer, came from Loperfido, Davis Schneider, Barger and Ernie Clement.

“We know they’re playing incredibly well,” said Yankees manager Aaron Boone, again on the hot seat with a team lacking in fundamentals. “The emergence of their supporting cast has been really good. They’ve performed at a very high level.”

All of a sudden, the Who Jays have a four-game lead on the Yankees, something that hasn’t happened a lot over the past 32 years. The Jays won their most recent World Series in 1993. Since then, they have won the AL East once, made the playoffs five times and won 10 playoff games in all.

In that time, the Yankees have been to the World Series eight times, winning five of them, and in those 32 years that the Jays won 10 playoff games, the Yankees happened to win 128 of them.

This race is not a first among equals. This is an anomaly worth admiring. This is the impossible suddenly becoming more than possible.

“Our goal is not to think about what we’re doing,” said Lukes. “Just keep doing it. When you start picking apart your numbers in this game, that’s when you get into trouble. I’ve been through that before. A lot of us have. The best part is, just be ready, be enthusiastic, just keep playing the way we’re playing. And just keep winning.”

ssimmons@postmedia.com

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