This was a discouraging (some might even say supremely discouraging) week for Blue Jays fans, who had badly hoped to see their team regain some ground in the AL East against the division’s last-place Tampa Bay Rays. Instead, Toronto barely managed a single win in the three-game set, eking out a mere six runs to the Rays’ 17.
Now, even the second wild-card spot seems tenuous at the minute, with Detroit nipping at Toronto’s heels, just a game back. Why are things going so wrong for the Blue Jays? Here are our series takeaways.
They just get us
If only the Jays could have met the Rays on a dating website…
Despite poor performances against the rest of the AL gang (7-9 against both Boston and New York; 4-11 against Baltimore), the Rays managed to solve the Jays over and over again this season. Observe the latest three tilts: In the first, as stellar as Francisco Liriano’s stuff was, it wasn’t enough to snuff Tampa’s lineup, with back-to-back solo home runs by Brad Miller and Evan Longoria leading off the seventh inning to even the score. And while Ezequiel Carrera’s go-ahead dinger in the eighth felt like fate, the 3–2 win very nearly disappeared in the ninth when Steven Souza almost, almost, hit a two-run homer.
As for the second game, a 6–2 loss for the Jays, Drew Smyly’s post-game musings on Toronto’s lineup pretty much cover it.
“If you make your pitches and spot up and mix speeds you can get them out,” he said. “That’s the whole key to facing a team like this, with all those big righties who hit home runs, just locate it down in the zone and try to stay off the heart of the plate.”
And in the Jays’ 8–1 loss on Wednesday, the Rays also managed to exploit what started as a terrific outing by Marco Estrada, and then had a field day against the five men called to the mound from the bullpen.
Wherefore the bunt?
The Blue Jays’ only run on Wednesday came on a sacrifice fly in the first inning, after a sacrifice bunt by Michael Saunders, in the No. 2 spot, pushed leadoff hitter Devon Travis to third. And thanks to Estrada’s strong start, the Jays were winning through the first third of the game, and things looked promising. Maybe that bunt was brilliant! A true manufacturing of runs!
But then the Rays come crashing back in the fourth and the Blue Jays abandoned the run factory. And suddenly that small ball they played in the first starts to seem sketchy: Why would such a bunt-shy manager make that call at that moment? What if Gibbons had let Saunders swing? Saunders, who’s hitting .262 this season with 23 home runs to date? What kind of spark might that have provided in the first? (Or what if Saunders had struck out, which he did in two subsequent at-bats? Would that have woken up the offence?)
The missing link?
Reigning AL MVP Josh Donaldson sat the series out with hip soreness (which necessitated an MRI on Wednesday). Donaldson had gone 0-for-23 in his past seven outings (previously his longest hitless steak in the season came in May, when he went 0-for-14 over three games), though Blue Jays GM, Ross Atkins, maintains that there is absolutely no connection between Donaldson’s latest skid and his current health issues.
The question about whether Donaldson’s presence in the lineup against Tampa this week would have made a difference is moot—the man could not play. But there’s no disputing that a healthy Donaldson is sorely needed by the Blue Jays if they hope to secure a spot—and then contend—in the post-season.
Russell Martin is the man
The brawl that very nearly broke out at the end of Monday’s game came down to a misunderstanding between the Rays’ right-fielder, Souza, and the Blue Jays’ stalwart catcher. When Souza’s promising launch to centre field landed in Kevin Pillar’s glove instead of spoiling the Blue Jays’ party, Martin said something to which Souza took offence and then Toronto shortstop Troy Tulowitzki was ready to give him some more. But tempers settled when it became clear that what Martin had said was something along the lines of “I thought you crushed it.”
Now that’s class: giving credit where (almost) due to a hard-working opponent whose team would spent the next two days trying to turn your team’s playoff plans into the equivalent of that real infield dirt so longed-for at the Rogers Centre.
(By the way, Martin is just as critical to the Blue Jays’ playoff hopes as Donaldson, as Sportsnet writer Arden Zwelling reveals in his magazine feature, Mr. Indispensable.)
The good news
Two things: The Blue Jays don’t face the Rays again until 2017. And skipper John Gibbons says this must be as low as his team can go.
That second one’s obviously not true—anything can happen in baseball—but if the team can rally behind the rock-bottom idea, perhaps they can find another gear for this last stretch of the season.
