In what feels like a different bit of scheduling, the Toronto Blue Jays both start and finish this season with a heavy dose of the American League East.
Wednesday night’s loss in Baltimore was the last game the Jays will play within the division for an entire month. The game ended a run of 28 of the season’s first 35 games within the East. The Blue Jays will also play 22 of the season’s last 25 games against divisional opponents, including the final dozen.
The Blue Jays emerged from the first test right smack dab in the middle of the East, ahead of the Orioles and Red Sox, behind the Yankees and Rays, and with a neither impressive nor unimpressive 14-14 mark against their rivals.
That .500 record (overall, the Blue Jays are 17-18 thanks to a home series loss to the Braves and a road split with the Indians), is also the third-best intra-divisional record among AL East teams, but the Blue Jays have compiled a winning record against every other team in their division save for the Tampa Bay Rays.
While the Jays have handled the Orioles to the tune of a 6-3 mark, have gone 4-2 against the Yankees with a couple of series wins and have split six with the Red Sox, they’ve gotten thoroughly thumped at the hands of the Rays, dropping six of seven so far. They don’t see the Rays next until a three-game set in Central Florida in late June, then not again until after the all-star break.
As much as the Rays have taken care of the Blue Jays, Tampa has had a hard time with the Yankees, with a record of 3-6 in the early going. The first-place Yanks have a winning record against every team in the division save the Blue Jays while the Red Sox have a losing record against every team in the division save the Blue Jays, and a winning mark against nobody. The Orioles are treading water in the division they won by a landslide last season, going 11-9 against everybody but the Blue Jays for an overall 14-15 mark within the East.
Now the test becomes everybody else. For a long time, the AL East had been the class of not just MLB, but of all of North American major pro sports. That’s no longer the case, as the AL Central has risen to power with the Tigers and Royals at the front of the pack along with the surprise Twins, and just in case you’d forgotten about the Indians, there was defending Cy Young Award winner Corey Kluber notching 18 strikeouts over eight one-hit innings Wednesday night.
The Houston Astros were supposed to spend another year in the AL West cellar while the A’s, Angels and Mariners fought it out for the division crown, but there are the Mighty ‘Stros sitting tied for the best record in the entire league thanks in large part to a 10-game win streak that ended a week and a half ago.
The Astros, who are 3-6 since that double-digit run, are the first team to greet the Blue Jays as they emerge from the AL East onslaught. The Jays will spend four days in Houston, where their ill-fated August began last season. The Blue Jays went into last season’s penultimate month firmly in the first AL wild-card spot, and just a game and a half out of first place, but went 9-17 before the calendar turned to slip out of the playoff picture for good.
This year, they have emerged battered and bruised, still without their starting shortstop and left fielder, without their back-up catcher, with their starting right fielder having been unable to throw a ball for three weeks and with but one starting pitcher having posted an ERA under 5.00 in that role.
With all that, the Blue Jays are still only a single game under the break-even mark and have not at all lost sight of the top of the division, held firm (so far) by the creaky Yankees.
They won’t have many head-to-head opportunities to gain ground over the next long while, though — the Blue Jays play 80 of their next 99 games outside the AL East, which means they’ll have to fatten up against everybody else.
The beginning of the end started in Houston last year. This year the Blue Jays head deep into the heart of Texas with a chance to rewrite that story.