About this series: This article is one installment in a month-by-month account of the Vancouver Canadians' 2026 season. Each article stands on its own, covering how the team fared, which players defined the month and which games are worth remembering, but each is also a chapter in a larger story that runs from Opening Night in Pasco to the final series in September.

If April was the month the Canadians could not win close games, May was the month they finally did, and it hardly mattered. Vancouver went 12-15, which left the season record at 21-30 and, on the final day of the month, officially eliminated the club from the race for the first-half title. The one-run record, a miserable 0-6 in April, flipped to 5-2 in May. The run differential flipped the other way, from plus-19 to minus-11 (132 runs scored, 143 allowed). Along the way, the Canadians lost their best prospect to a promotion, found an unexpected ace and handed first-place Eugene three losses in a single series, yet they still finished the month 16 games behind the Emeralds.

The pattern that hurt them most was lopsided. By May 30, Vancouver was 17-1 when leading after seven innings and 18-0 when leading after eight. When trailing going into the ninth, they were 2-21.

Walk-Offs and a Goodbye

The month opened with a long-awaited breather. On Friday, May 1, the Canadians snapped their six-game losing streak with a 4-3 win in ten innings over Hillsboro in a 'Nooner at The Nat. Catcher Hayden Gilliland, who had not homered all season, hit two in the game, the second tying it at 3-3 in the seventh. In the tenth, with Arjun Nimmala at second as the extra-inning placed runner, Matt Scannell doubled to left-centre field on an 0-2 pitch for the walk-off.

The next day brought the best comeback of the young season. Trailing Hillsboro 6-0 in the fifth, the Canadians got a first homer from Dub Gleed and a two-run shot from Jacob Sharp, then, in the bottom of the ninth, a rally built on patience. Nimmala, Alexis Hernandez and Brennan Orf walked to load the bases, Scannell drew a bases-loaded walk to force in a run and Manny Beltre lined a two-run single to left to finish an 8-7 win. The weekend crowds of 3,470 and 3,849 saw the Canadians lose the series finale 5-3 and took just two of six from the Hops, but at 11-15 they were breathing.

The celebration was short. That weekend, the Blue Jays promoted Nimmala, the club's top prospect, to Double-A New Hampshire. The 20-year-old left Vancouver with four homers and nine doubles, after a slow start that had him hitting .132 through his first 47 plate appearances. Starter Austin Cates went with him. In their place came Nolan Perry, a 22-year-old right-hander from Carlsbad, New Mexico, who had been named Florida State League Pitcher of the Week in April at Single-A Dunedin.

Perry Takes the Ball

No one could have predicted how quickly Perry would take over the rotation. In his Canadians debut on May 8 at Eugene he allowed one run, a solo homer, over five innings with eight strikeouts, as the Canadians beat the first-place Emeralds 4-2 to hand them their first back-to-back losses of the season. Six days later at The Nat, he struck out ten in five scoreless innings. On May 20 in Spokane he did it again, ten strikeouts over five scoreless innings with one hit. On May 26 he threw the first quality start by a Canadians pitcher all year, six shutout innings against Eugene in a 3-0 win. Minor League Baseball named him Northwest League Pitcher of the Month after he went 3-1 with a 1.08 ERA, 40 strikeouts and nine walks in 25 innings. His only loss came on the final day, when he was charged with two earned runs in four innings. Through May 26, his strikeout rate of 16.8 per nine innings led all Canadians starters, and his ERA across two levels was 1.25 over 36 innings.

Perry's emergence was one piece of a rotation that, by May 30, led the league with a 3.80 ERA and 247 strikeouts. Johnny King, the 19-year-old lefty and Blue Jays' No. 4 prospect, carried an ERA below 1.00 for most of the month without getting a victory to show for it. On May 13 he struck out a season-high eight in five scoreless innings and took no decision in a 3-0 loss in which Vancouver managed two hits. It was not until May 30 that he earned his first High-A win, five scoreless innings with eight strikeouts in a 5-4 victory over Eugene in his tenth start. His worst outing came in between, on May 24 in Spokane, when he recorded one out and allowed five runs in the first inning.

Elsewhere, Holden Wilkerson turned in a career night on May 7 at Eugene with five innings of one-hit relief on 49 pitches in a 3-2 victory. Daniel Guerra struck out ten in 3.2 innings on May 17. Danny Thompson Jr. set a season high with five innings on May 29. And Jonathan Todd emerged as the closest thing to a closer, collecting four saves by May 26, including three scoreless innings against the minimum number of batters in the shutout of Eugene. Guerra's 3.40 ERA ranked second in the league as of May 30, Carson Pierce was 3-0, and Jay Schueler carried a 0.81 WHIP out of the bullpen. The relief corps as a whole was less steady, with Gilberto Batista at 7.43 and Trace Baker at 9.00.

Eugene Finds Out It Can Lose

Eugene was 22-6 when the Canadians arrived at PK Park in the first week of May, and the trip looked like a mismatch. A 4-3 loss on May 4, a rare Monday game, was one of the near-misses of the month. Thompson retired 11 of the last 12 batters he faced, and the Canadians scored twice in the seventh and once more in the eighth before falling a run short. Then came the wins on May 7 and 8, which gave the Emeralds their first back-to-back losses of the season. The first was a 3-2 decision in which Gleed doubled to start the game, Beltre homered and Wilkerson retired the first 13 batters he faced. The second was Perry's debut, sealed when Sharp lined a two-run single on a 1-2 pitch in a three-run eighth and Sauer closed out a six-out save. Reality returned quickly. On May 9 the Emeralds swept a doubleheader 7-5 and 5-1, both seven-inning games, and won the finale 13-8 on 17 hits. The Canadians lost the series 4-2 and fell to 0-4 in doubleheaders when they dropped two more to Everett a week later.

The return engagement was better. When Eugene came to The Nat in the final week of the month, Perry's shutout made the Emeralds lose the opener of a series for the first time all season. After 10-7 and 5-2 losses, Vancouver won 7-3 on May 29 behind three hits each from Sharp and Orf, who hit his first home run of the year, and scored in six consecutive innings. They followed with a 5-4 win on May 30 behind home runs from Sharp and Gleed, the latter a 410-foot blast onto the Hey Y'all Porch. Vancouver became the first team to hand Eugene three losses in a series. A 4-1 loss on May 31, in which Eugene homered twice and the Canadians scored once, made it an even 3-3 and, mathematically, ended the club's first-half hopes.

The Lineup Without Its Star

Carter Cunningham, April's Player of the Month, cooled off. He hit four more homers in May, including a 403-foot shot on May 14 that was his league-leading eighth, and had ten by May 30. He still led the team with 33 RBI, but his slash line dropped to .244/.380/.506 and he was no longer the league's most dangerous hitter.

Others stepped forward. Sharp hit his first career walk-off on May 12, a single in the tenth that beat Everett 6-5 after the Canadians erased a 4-0 deficit in front of 4,054 fans. A few moments earlier he had thrown out the extra-inning placed runner at third base. He was throwing out 48 percent of would-be base stealers, which would be a franchise record, while hitting .279 with five homers and 26 RBI. Hernandez was named Player of the Week for May 18-24 after going 12-for-25 with five doubles, three homers and ten RBI, including a second-inning grand slam in a 15-0 rout of Spokane on May 22. He finished the month hitting .289 with seven homers.

Gleed provided power, with five homers and 19 RBI, and Maddox Latta kept getting on base at the top of the order with a .396 on-base percentage. Peyton Williams hit .289 with a .437 on-base percentage, while Beltre stole six bases and added three homers. Orf, Freethy and Scannell all hit their first homers of the year in May, and Gilliland hit three. Not everyone thrived, though. Kendry Chirinos, back from the injured list on May 1, was hitting .195, and Scannell and Orf both finished the month below .175, even as they drew walks. But the lineup struggled with consistency, and the team was held to two runs or fewer in six games.

The Middle of the Month

Between the two Eugene series came a pair of six-game sets that went about as the standings suggest. Against Everett at The Nat, the Canadians split three and three. The opener, on May 12, was the best of them. Everett led 4-0 before Sharp homered in the fifth, Latta and Kendry Chirinos hit consecutive doubles to score a run and Peyton Williams doubled home two in the seventh to tie it. Everett pulled even again with a solo homer in the ninth, and in the tenth Sharp threw out the placed runner and then won it himself. The next night's 3-0 loss, in which the Canadians had only two hits, was the opposite. A May 15 rainout pushed the series into a Saturday doubleheader, which Vancouver dropped 9-5 and 6-2 to a team that included Jonny Farmelo, the No. 78 prospect in the minors. They bounced back with a 7-4 win in front of a sellout crowd of 5,536 on May 17, powered by home runs from Hernandez, Cunningham and Beltre.

The Spokane trip went worse. The Canadians lost four of six, in games that showed both sides of the team. On May 20, Perry's ten strikeouts, two homers from Hernandez and a four-hit game from Gleed delivered a 7-5 win, with Todd collecting a five-out save. Two nights later came the 15-0 rout, with ten walks and a Hernandez slam. But on May 23, in a game with 25 combined hits, Vancouver took a 6-5 lead on Freethy's two-run homer and a Hernandez double before Spokane scored five unanswered runs to win 10-7. The next afternoon, King's one-out start put the Canadians in a 5-1 hole, they fought back to lead 6-5, and they lost 7-6 anyway.

What May Meant

There was progress in May, even if the record did not show it. As late as May 26, the club's plus-9 run differential suggested a 23-22 record, good for second place, rather than the 18-27 mark it actually carried. The rotation, which had been good in April, became the best in the league. The Canadians learned that they could beat Eugene, the best team in the league. They learned how to win close games, going 5-2 in one-run games after an 0-6 April, and they produced two walk-offs in three days at The Nat.

But the structure around the team was changing, too. Nimmala and Cates were gone. Kelena Sauer, who had been solid in relief, was sent to Double-A on May 20, and Eminen Flores went on the injured list on May 17. Catcher Edward Duran returned from rehab on May 27. New pitchers like Carson Myers and Jack Eshleman arrived from Dunedin.

The first half would end June 18. The Canadians could no longer win it. What remained was the second half, and a series in Pasco beginning on June 2 against the Tri-City Dust Devils, the team that had started it all.