Toronto Blue Jays ace Kevin Gausman said he hopes his team can turn its frustrations into results during the final stretch run of the season.
“We’re as pissed as anybody, obviously. We’re mad,” Gausman said after a 9-2 loss to the Rangers that allowed Texas to complete a four-game sweep and build significant separation in the wild-card race.
“We’re all competitors, we don’t like what happened in this series, we’ve got a bad taste in our mouth. But like I said we can’t do anything but keep going.”
Gausman didn’t excuse himself from the criticism, calling his performance “unacceptable.” The veteran right-hander allowed four earned runs for just the sixth time this season and also failed to pitch into the sixth inning for the third time in his last four starts.
The Rangers took an early lead in the top of the first on a Corey Seager home run, but the Blue Jays seemed to find new life when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. sent a ball 426 feet into the second deck for a two-run home run. Toronto only managed two more hits the rest of the game and Texas ultimately outscored the Blue Jays 35-9 in the series.
“We just played bad. I think we came in with good energy but today is completely on me,” Gausman said. “To go out and give the lead away, obviously, and then Vladdy come up and kind of take the momentum back and then to me to give up two right away is just unacceptable. And that whole game after that is on me.”
With 15 games to go, the Blue Jays now trail the Rangers by two-and-a-half games and the idle Mariners by one-and-a-half games, but Texas and Seattle hold tiebreakers over Toronto.
The Blue Jays close this homestand with a three-game set against the Boston Red Sox beginning Friday and then have six games remaining against both the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays to close out the season.
“We’ve got to play good baseball from here on out to have a chance, and obviously this last four days we didn’t,” Gausman said.