Listless Blue Jays hear more boos as Rangers complete convincing sweep

TORONTO – A stretch of 11 losses in 16 games to begin September 2016 looked set to doom the Toronto Blue Jays’ season. They dropped four straight series, one of them a sweep to the New York Yankees, and split a fifth, falling from first place in the American League East to barely hanging on to the second, and at the time final, wild-card spot. Their offence, cold all season, went dry, stranding 120 runners during the skid, while a pitching staff that had largely carried them began to fade. The walls appeared to be quickly closing in on them.

Those Blue Jays recovered enough for an 8-5 finish that sent them to the post-season, where they beat Baltimore in the wild-card game and swept the Texas Rangers in the division series before falling to Cleveland in the American League Championship Series. Their run is a reminder of how quickly fortunes can turn in September, both good and bad, and is something for the current group -- hitting a nadir after a 9-2 loss Thursday night capped a four-game sweep by the Rangers -- can cling to in this dire hour.

Not even a pre-game meeting called by manager John Schneider to discuss the situation, Matt Chapman’s sooner-than-expected return from the injured list and Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s first homer in 10 games, a two-run shot in the first inning that gave the Blue Jays their first lead since the third inning Monday night, could help salvage the finale.

“On to the next day,” said Bo Bichette. “I think the preparation and all that is good. I think we understand the moment. We just got our butt kicked. Just turn the page.”

“Obviously in this series we played terrible, really, in all facets,” added Kevin Gausman. “To get swept at home is tough. We're still right there. I don't know exact numbers, but I know that we're really close still, so we just have to keep plugging away.”

The exact numbers are such: At 80-67, the Blue Jays now trail the Rangers (82-64) by 2.5 games for the second wild card, while falling 1.5 game behind the idle Seattle Mariners (81-65) for the third and final spot. A saving grace for them is that Texas and Seattle have seven games remaining against one another, but it won’t matter if they can’t get themselves right first.

This is a time, Schneider said, “to see what you’re made of.”

“It's what you deal with every day in this game, whether it's something you're going through personally, if you're struggling at the plate or on the mound, you just you have to deal with it,” he added later. “This game will test you mentally, physically, everything. Guys deal with it every day. That's kind of how they're built. That's how they're wired. And they have to just continue to do that. There's really no other option other than come here tomorrow and play your ass off.”

They tried Thursday, punching back after Corey Seager’s solo shot in the first opened the scoring, with Guerrero’s 22^nd homer of the season.

But the lead he provided didn’t even survive the second inning, as Whit Merrifield, playing through tightness in his left groin, ran 61 feet, leapt at the wall and had Seager’s 98.7 m.p.h. rocket pop in and out of his glove, turning a nearly great defensive play into a go-ahead two-run double.

“Today is completely on me,” said Gausman. “To go out and give the lead away, and then for Vladdy to come up and take the momentum back, and then really giving up two right away, is just unacceptable. That whole game after that is on me.”

The Blue Jays tried to rally in the bottom half but Bichette, who singled and scored ahead of Guerrero in the first, fouled off a 1-1 fastball right down the middle before chasing a Nathan Eovaldi splitter for strike three to end the inning. It was one of many meatballs the right-hander got away with during his 3.1 innings, managing to limit the damage to just the two runs.

A Jonah Heim solo shot in the third extended the Texas lead to 4-2 and the Blue Jays squandered chances in the fifth, when Bichette doubled with one out, and seventh, when Jose Leclerc beat Guerrero with three fastballs in the zone, two of them at 96.6 m.p.h. right down the pipe, to escape a two-on jam, before the game unravelled in the eighth.

The Rogers Centre crowd of 37,594 booed throughout an appalling eighth, when manager John Schneider turned to Trevor Richards, who’d taken damage in four consecutive outings, and watched the Rangers score four times before making a single out. Texas tacked on another run before the inning ended.

Lowlights in the frame included Yimi Garcia taking over from Richards with two on and three runs already in and fielding a Leody Taveras bunt, looking to third and not recording an out before walking Robbie Grossman to bring home another run.

The entire sequence from the unfulfilled bottom of the seventh to the questionably managed and poorly executed eighth was symbolic of the entire series, in which the Rangers outscored them 35-9 in the four games.

“We’re as pissed as anybody, obviously,” said Gausman. “We’re mad. We’re all competitors. We don’t like what happened this series. We got a bad taste in our mouths. But we can't do anything right now but keep going. ... We've got to play good baseball from here on out to have a chance.”

They have 15 games remaining to do precisely that, beginning with three against the Boston Red Sox on Friday, and a message of seizing the opportunity at hand was the focal point of the team meeting Thursday afternoon.

While Chapman went 0-for-3 with a walk in his first game since Aug. 27, his will and intensity helped the Blue Jays play a more tenacious and resolute game. The club debated sending him out on a rehab assignment first, but “the second that I could, the second that my finger was able to hit velocity and respond, I knew I was ready to go,” said Chapman. “It's crunch time.”

Bichette ended an 0-for-16 slide with two hits and a walk while Guerrero looked more in control in the batter’s box than he’s been in a while. Unlike Wednesday’s 10-0 loss, when they let Jordan Montgomery roll them for seven innings, they ground out every Rangers arm, with much better swing decisions.

"For me, it just comes down to just being me at the plate,” Bichette said of his day. “Not trying to do too much. Take what's given to me, stay within myself and I think I took a good step today.”

Texas, of course, did the same to Gausman – who grinded through 4.2 innings without his best stuff, allowing four runs and a very unchareteristic six walks – and every other Blue Jays pitcher they faced. It was a blueprint for how to play going forward.

Still, there’s been a gap between planning and execution for the Blue Jays seemingly all year, which has led to the inconsistencies that has landed them in this spot. Examining that is a bigger-picture question for down the road.

For now, the Blue Jays focus must be on getting themselves right for the next 2 ½ weeks and seeing where it takes them. That’s what the 2016 team did, when it clinched a wild-card berth in Game 162 and then went on a run, and the only path forward for this group is to see if they can make history repeat itself.