MILWAUKEE – Limping through an August of opportunity, the Toronto Blue Jays must replicate their torrid May and early June and sprint to the finish in order to realize their post-season aspirations.
Can they do it?
Much of that will depend on whether their hitters – putrid this month but now reinforced with Edwin Encarnacion and Adam Lind – can perform similarly to the way they did during a 25-7 stretch between May 4-June 6, when they posted an .834 OPS with 53 homers and 61 doubles.
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In the 63 games since heading into Tuesday’s series opener against the Milwaukee Brewers, the Blue Jays are just 26-37 thanks to an offence that produced a .707 OPS with 52 homers and 104 doubles.
The numbers through a 4-11 start to August are even grimmer – a mere 46 runs, .646 OPS, and seven home runs.
“Maybe we were doing some things over our head there a little bit,” manager John Gibbons said before the game. “Maybe we were playing over our heads in certain spots. But now we’ve got Eddie and Lindy back, a big part of our offence, we can’t use them both in this series at the same time, but that’s when we were scoring runs.”
The lack of a DH for the two-game interleague set against the Brewers hurts, to be sure, but more important is that the Blue Jays are a long ways from the team that climbed into first place on May 21 and stayed there until July 4.
They began Tuesday facing an eight-game gap in the American League East behind the Baltimore Orioles and a 3.5-game disadvantage for the second wild card behind the Seattle Mariners and Detroit Tigers.
A daunting task is before them.
“You just play the game,” said Gibbons. “What would help is you get a good start on the mound, which we haven’t had much of lately, and give the offence a chance to take over, really. …
“Just look at the road trip. Out in Seattle [where the Blue Jays lost three games], for the most part, we pitched pretty good we just didn’t hit, and we ran into a couple of pretty good pitchers. In Chicago [where the Blue Jays went 1-2)]we hit, we just didn’t pitch very well. You’ve just got to hope it all comes together, and it will, it has before.”
Human nature in such situations is to try and do things beyond the norm in order to help. Take Sunday’s game, when Melky Cabrera, one of the club’s hottest hitters, sacrificed himself to advance Jose Reyes in the first inning and while the shortstop eventually scored, the Blue Jays got just the one run that frame.
“I understand what he was trying to do but we’ve got the big guys coming up next, go for a big inning,” said Gibbons. “We might have scored those six [the White Sox scored in their half of the first].”
Manager and coaches must avoid a similar trap. Baseball is a skill game and asking players to exert more effort, or try harder, won’t help. All they can do is prepare their players and hope they perform.
“As far as interfering, I don’t know, bunt Jose Bautista if we get the first two guys on in the game? That kind of stuff?” said Gibbons. “Baseball is not a complicated game by any means, there’s only so much you can do. It starts on the mound, that’s just the way it is. You get a good outing there, then score one more run than the other guy. …
“You just keep running your game. We’re going to need to score runs, you figure we will.”
