The Toronto Blue Jays have done an incredible job this season of making sure the highs have been really high and the lows awfully low.
The Jays started the season 8-6, which is lovely, but nothing to write home about. They followed that with a 5-11 run that featured numerous spectacular bullpen blow-ups. Right out of that slump, the Jays ripped off 25 wins over just 32 games, moving into first place in the American League East in the process. They’ve since fallen back hard, dropping 8 of 11 after the first two of their three-game set at the house of horrors that is Yankee Stadium — a place the Blue Jays have now lost 15 games in a row.
The problem is they’ve been able to look really, really good and also really, really bad — often within the space of the same week. It’s what has made this season feel like a roller coaster with 89 games yet to go.
The current slide has been especially frustrating for two reasons — a serious lack of offence (just 24 runs over the 11 games) and the fact the Jays have lost four of six over this span to the Orioles and Yankees, their closest pursuers.
But through all of this, where the internet trolls have returned and even many otherwise sane Blue Jays fans have begun looking for a ledge to be talked off of, it’s important to remember one big thing: The Jays are still in first place in the A.L. East, and by 2 1/2 games at that.
There are two other facts that stand out: The Blue Jays still have the second-best record in the American League, behind only the Oakland Athletics, a team they swept what seems like a lifetime ago. Also, despite the recent offensive struggles, the Blue Jays remain third in the major leagues in runs scored.
I don’t expect the Blue Jays to remain in first place for every day of the rest of the season, and that’s not a bad thing. I expect there will be a lot of back and forth over the course of the next 3 ½ months, more ups and downs, teams getting passed and passing back, which makes for a fun pennant race.
The fact that through a 3-8 run, the Blue Jays have lost only three games off their division lead is something to be happy about as opposed to a reason to begin rending garments and crying to the heavens.
There’s no systemic failure going on here, it’s just been a run of almost two weeks where a bunch of good hitters haven’t been hitting well. The starting pitching has been good, the bullpen has been fine (with the exception of Wednesday night), and there have been no glaring issues on defence.
The injuries are beginning to pile up, but so far the Blue Jays haven’t suffered the disastrous, multiple-month catastrophic injuries that plagued them last season.
At this point in the 2013 season we’d all love to forget, Jose Reyes had played in only 10 games and Brett Lawrie just 37. Melky Cabrera only had 18 games left in his season, Colby Rasmus 52 and Jose Bautista 55.
This season, Reyes and Adam Lind have missed time on the disabled list, but the only Blue Jay regular other than Brandon Morrow to be on the shelf for more than three weeks has been Rasmus, and now he’s back. It appears as though the current injuries to Lind and Lawrie are going to be minor nuisances.
They’re as healthy as any team should expect to be at this point in the season, they’re just not hitting right now and the bats should be the least of their concerns.
It’s been a long time since Blue Jays fans — or any Toronto sports fans, for that matter — have watched their team be the pursued and not the pursuer, and have experienced a playoff race in a sport in which fewer than half the teams in the league make it to the post-season. It’s going to take some getting used to, to be sure, but it’s also going to be a lot of fun.