TORONTO — The Toronto Blue Jays have wrapped up their second straight 4-2 week in the month of September, sweeping the Cubs then dropping two of three to the Rays.
While a .667 winning percentage in the final month would be swell indeed, it likely won’t be good enough for the Jays to sneak into a wild card spot and end their 21-year playoff drought.
Wins have been coming in bunches lately, but the bunches need to get bigger. By no means are the Blue Jays out of a playoff race – heck, if things break right they could be two games out by the time they get to New York on Thursday. Of course, if things break wrong they could be seven games back by then, and out of any realistic chance to get in without an absolute miracle.
Mark Buehrle wasn’t bad Sunday, but he wasn’t great in six innings against the Rays – Jose Bautista losing a Wil Myers’ fly ball in the sun was a big factor in the Rays’ two-run fourth – and only the massive comeback that forced extra innings prevented Buehrle from notching his first loss against the Rays this season. In fact, Sunday’s game was the first time in six Buehrle starts against Tampa Bay this year that the Blue Jays lost. It came at a pretty bad time, though.
The six innings for Buehrle means he’s 12 innings shy of an MLB-record 14th straight season with 200 innings pitched, and it gave the Blue Jays a club-record 20 straight games in which their starting pitcher has thrown at least six innings, breaking the mark set by the 88-win 1998 club. Marcus Stroman will try to make it 21 in a row Monday night in Baltimore as the Blue Jays begin their final road trip of the season.
The trip to Maryland will, as always, be a homecoming for Brett Cecil, who finds himself on some kind of a roll right now, reminiscent of his all-star first half last season. With Casey Janssen a free agent and no lock to return next season, Cecil – a closer in college as a Maryland Terrapin – is tossing his glove into the ring for a shot at the big job next year.
The lefty hasn’t been scored on in 23 of his last 24 outings since July 20, allowing just 19 base runners in 20 innings, with an astounding 33 strikeouts. The only blemish came Aug. 2 in Houston, when he gave up home runs to Jason Castro and Jonathan Singleton in a three-batter outing in which he didn’t get anybody out (Singleton’s homer was an inside-the-park job).
Outside of that game, Cecil has an ERA of 0.44, a 0.89 WHIP and 15 K/9 since the all-star break, using a fastball that is back touching 95 mph and a devastating curveball that opposing hitters just can’t seem to lay off. He’s even stranded 16 of 19 inherited runners over that span, though the one he allowed to score in the 10th inning on Sunday afternoon hurt a lot.
Even including the Houston blow-up, and Cecil’s first appearance out of the break in which he gave up a run on a walk and a hit, recording only one out, his second-half numbers this season are right there with the first-half numbers that earned the lefty a trip to the all-star game last season. His ERA is 0.17 of a run better this year, the WHIP is an insignificant 0.013 worse and there’s a big difference in the K/9, which was “only” 10.7 last year.
The problem? In between Cecil’s all-star first half last year and tremendous second half this season, he threw 43 2/3 innings and pitched to an ERA of 4.33 and 1.604 WHIP.
Consistency is a fleeting thing for most relief pitchers in the big leagues as few of them are able to put together back-to-back terrific seasons, let alone three or four in a row. In the space of the last two years, Cecil has had one phenomenal season and one pretty rough one.
There will ever be debate surrounding the “capital C” closer, and whether getting those last three outs in the ninth inning is any different than doing it at any other point in time. But Cecil certainly has the stuff to do it, and when given the opportunity to close out a game this season, he has five saves in five tries.
Cecil will definitely be a candidate to be the final line of defence next season should Janssen not return, and as the Blue Jays try to overcome the four-game deficit they face over the final fortnight of the season, they’ll be leaning on him pretty heavily in the back of that bullpen.