ANAHEIM, Calif. – More boneheaded plays. Another frustrating loss. As sharp a public rebuke of his players from a manager as you’ll ever hear. One more roster pillar headed to the disabled list, thanks to a fracture revealed by an MRI the player’s mother urged him to take.
Wait, what?
This is the disconcerting state of the Toronto Blue Jays right now. Messy doesn’t even begin to describe things.
“It takes good focus,” manager John Gibbons said in a rare rant to media after an 8-7 loss to the Los Angeles Angels on Wednesday afternoon, Melky Cabrera’s failure to wave down Jose Reyes on an unsuccessful scamper home triggering an unusually blunt spell of criticism.
“The stupid play in the first inning, we don’t tell the guy to slide, we lose by one run, you know? You’ve got to be in the game, you’ve got to pay attention. That’s the way it goes,” he continued. “The guy’s got to be over there going, ‘get down.’ The guy running doesn’t see what’s going on behind him. Little things like that.
“We’ve lost a lot of one-run games, stupid stuff, from not making a routine play or something stupid, you know? That’s cost us way too many times.”
Cabrera’s mistake was far from the only one during a sixth loss in seven games on the West Coast for the Blue Jays (48-45), nor was it the decisive one during a game in which they went a dismal 3-for-16 with runners in scoring position.
The Angels (53-37) did their best to give this game away and should have been buried on multiple occasions, but it’s likely the cumulative toll of a 10-21 nosedive since the Blue Jays hit their high-water mark of 14 games over .500 with a six game lead atop the AL East since June 6 that pushed Gibbons to pop off.
“I can’t say it’s this road trip, it’s been all year, it seems like every now and then we just do something stupid,” he said. “[The Cabrera play] goes back to when you’re a Little League kid, your job on the on-deck circle was tell the guy, let’s go. You lose by one run? That’s the difference right there. But you’ve got to blow open a game every now and then, too. You’ve got to do it. We were getting a lot of hits today, it wasn’t like it was one of those games where … you’ve got to blow a game open.”
To be fair, seven runs should have been enough, and they nearly were, but things are only going to get harder from here on out. Adam Lind, hobbled since June 14 when he fouled a ball off his right foot, will miss 6-to-8 weeks with a fracture only discovered Tuesday when his mother urged him to get an MRI because the problem diagnosed as a bone bruise stopped getting better.
Huh, you say? Apparently mom really does know best.
“I wasn’t showing any improvement, and I had enough, really,” Lind said in his typical unaffected manner. “I needed another exam than just an X-ray or a CAT Scan.”
Lind is scheduled to see another doctor Friday in Charlotte where he’ll be outfitted with a boot to immobilize his foot, and while he’s hopeful that a second opinion will suggest a shorter recovery time, the Blue Jays must be realistic, not optimistic.
First baseman Dan Johnson, leading the International League with 17 homers and 78 walks, is the best option at triple-A Buffalo, although the Blue Jays are sure to look at the trade market, as well. But with so many holes to pick from now, where does GM Alex Anthopoulos make his move?
The Blue Jays have already tried to squeeze water from a stone with their various platoons, and there may be incremental gains to be had by subbing out Darin Mastroianni with Kevin Pillar, or bringing back Anthony Gose.
But with the majority of the club’s DH at-bats suddenly freed up, an impact add is needed.
Thankfully for the Blue Jays, the waiver claim of right-fielder Nolan Reimold, who picked up two more hits and knocked in three runs Wednesday, is showing promise, but this team’s thump has been sapped by the loss of Encarnacion, Lawrie and now Lind.
That’s why Wednesday’s loss hurt so much – they were one hit away from really busting it open and instead watched Albert Pujols take Aaron Loup deep in the seventh – the first homer off the lefty all year – for the decisive drive Colby Rasmus got a glove on but couldn’t pull back.
Three games remain until an all-star break the battered Blue Jays so desperately need, and they need an effective a salvage job at the Maison of Misery that is Tropicana Field to alter their perspective before parting ways.
If this 10-game road trip ends 1-9 or 2-8, there will be lots of frustration and disappointment taken into the break.
“It’s tough, any time we score seven runs we should be able to win the game,” said Marcus Stroman, handed a 6-3 lead in the fourth he immediately gave back in the bottom half. “I wasn’t able to put our team in a position to do so, especially with the stretch we’ve been having lately where it’s been hard to get wins. Hopefully the tide turns.”
As dire as things feel – and make no mistake, they feel dire – sitting second in the AL East at 48-45, a good week and a half away from catching the front-running Baltimore Orioles, isn’t a terrible spot to be in.
The division seems incapable of running away from them, and the Orioles have a meat-grinder schedule to open the second half.
But unless the Blue Jays find a way to stop ceding ground by cleaning up their own game and overcoming the attrition that is eating away at their foundation, they’re going to have trouble simply keeping pace.