TORONTO — As each loss nudges the Toronto Blue Jays closer to the type of subtraction deadline they’re seeking to avoid, their growing challenge is in finding their game amid the increasing urgency of the moment.
Manager John Schneider hit on that theme after Sunday’s 3-0 loss to the Chicago White Sox, saying that he didn’t want to put more pressure on his players but they needed to turn things around soon, and the start of a four-game series Monday against the Tampa Bay Rays only amplified that push and pull.
The American League East leaders rolled in on a five-game losing streak after dropping four straight to the surging Boston Red Sox out of the break, yet it was the Blue Jays who played tight in a 7-1 loss. Over the course of the latest disappointing nine innings, lowlighted by three errors and missed chances at the plate, small plays made or not compounded into a one-sided result in a way that mirrors their season.
At 46-54, they hit a new low, eight games under .500, and their run differential, now minus-51, suggests that their record is actually one win better than expected. Their playoff odds, another objective measure, are similarly bleak, beginning the day at a season-low 14.7 per cent, according to Fangraphs, and due to drop further.
Opportunity remains to play themselves back from the brink, but the degree of difficulty keeps rising by the day, a bigger picture that can make winning the day all the more difficult.
“The push and pull is like, OK, recognize that, but if you let it kind of swallow you up, then you don’t play to the capabilities that we can play to,” Schneider said before the game. “It’s hard because it’s like, yeah, every game, every play, every at-bat is important, but at the same time, you don’t want guys to play tense. So there is a little bit of back and forth and it’s a big four-game series, but it’s a big one-game series today.
“That’s kind of what I told them today in the hitters’ meeting,” he continued, “where, you know what, if we lose today, we’re going to play tomorrow. We have a roof, it’s not going to be rained out, we are going to play. You have to just focus on today and figure out what’s important to try to beat (Nick) Martinez and the Rays. It’s tough, but they all understand the urgency part of it. But 7:07, you’ve got to just go into compete mode.”
They tried, but the Rays pushed and pushed and pushed their way to a lopsided win. Victor Mesa Jr.’s solo shot in the second off Dylan Cease opened the scoring. A Taylor Walls double followed by Cease’s errant pickoff throw led to Jonathan Aranda’s RBI single in the third. Errors by Kazuma Okamoto and Andres Gimenez and a Yandy Diaz caught-the-defence-napping stolen base led to two more runs in the fifth, right after Alejandro Kirk’s RBI single in the fourth had pulled the Blue Jays back into the game.
Given how hard it is to score for them right now, each run allowed becomes all the more daunting. And symbolic of that struggle was Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s third-inning bid for his first home run in Toronto this season, a promising drive to the left-field wall that nestled into Chandler Simpson’s glove just short.