LOS ANGELES — Ernie Clement has become baseball’s newest curiosity, a cult hero in Canada who the rest of the league is finally waking up to.
Is there an American player who’s better suited to play for Canada’s team? Toronto is the city that celebrated players like John McDonald, Kevin Pillar and Ryan Goins, those “gritty” role players who played great defense and left each game with a dirty uniform. That was enough. Now, Blue Jays fans have found another, but this one can hit … and he has a hockey stick poking out of his locker where the spare bats are supposed to go.
Throughout the Blue Jays’ run to the World Series, chants of “Ernie! Ernie! Ernie!” have filled Rogers Centre and confused visiting media, who look from side to side wondering. No, they’re not chanting “Vladdy.”
“It’s crazy. When you look up at the lineup, Vlad has the headlines and the hardware, but Ernie’s got the same batting average,” manager John Schneider said. “It’s been remarkable. He’s playing his game. He’s done a phenomenal job of taking the emotion out of it, but you still saw it after Game 7 [of the ALCS]. He cares. He cares a lot.”
Clement is batting .429 through 13 games this postseason, a contact machine who has struck out just twice. He’s transformed this lineup, creating a second wave of chaos and offense behind the big boys up top.
What a journey for Clement. When the Blue Jays signed Clement to a Minor League deal in 2023, the move came late in Spring Training after he’d been let go by the A’s … who weren’t exactly building a super team. This came after six years with Cleveland, which selected Clement in the fourth round of the 2017 Draft, but he was never a priority player in that system, never the hot young prospect pushing his way up the ladder.
Clement means so much to the Blue Jays and their fans because all of this means so much to him. It’s personal.
“For an organization to give me the opportunity that they have over the last three years, it means the world to me,” Clement said. “The least I could do is play really well in the postseason and help them get a championship. I just really appreciate these guys. They’re amazing human beings. I’m just trying to repay them a little bit.”
There’s an easy swagger to Clement, too, so loose and easy. He can be the biggest goofball in the clubhouse or stone-cold serious.
“My favorite thing about Ernie Clement, besides his baseball skills, is that he just doesn’t give a [damn],” Schneider said. “Any situation, he’s ready to play. He’s got a mentality that I think guys feed off, like with what he said after Game 5 in Seattle.”
After that Game 5 loss — the heartbreaker where Eugenio Suárez launched a grand slam to break it open — Clement leaned back in his locker while he was asked how he felt about this team. He explained, in the same tone you might use to order breakfast, that he loved where it was at. The Blue Jays had a chance, Clement said, shrugging his shoulders. He said that was all they needed.
“He’s just fearless, and I love it,” Schneider said. “That’s just his mentality. He’s blue collar. He sticks his nose in there and gets the job done.”
There’s that hockey talk again. Even the name feels like hockey, the first “Ernie” in the big leagues since Ernie Young in ‘04 with Cleveland.
When you start hitting like Clement has, though, you’re no longer just passing curiosity, no longer just a fan favorite who bats .195 but makes a few plays. Clement is nominated for Gold Glove Awards at both third base and the utility position this season and was worth 3.2 wins above replacement (per FanGraphs). He’s not a role player, he’s one of the biggest reasons the Blue Jays are in the World Series.
He doesn’t care about the attention, though. He’ll shrug his shoulders again with that wry smile. Whatever.
“I think it’s great,” Clement said prior to Game 3. “I’ve been overlooked a lot over the course of my career, so that’s nothing new there. So I don’t mind that one bit. When you fly under the radar and you play really, really well, people start to pick up on it. But yeah, I would rather be under the radar. I think it’s great and I’m used to it.”
There’s no hiding any more, though. His name is being chanted in the World Series, the old Minor League depth guy being showered with “Ernie! Ernie! Ernie!”
