NEW YORK – In a season of extremes, the Toronto Blue Jays have reeled off a nine-game win streak, twice won six straight and twice won five in a row, while three times they’ve lost four consecutive games, lost five straight once and enter Saturday’s clash with the New York Yankees in a six-game nosedive.
Brilliant in May at 21-9, they were bad in June at 12-15. Good in July at 15-11, they were awful in August at 9-17. What is to be made of this team, one limping badly to the finish line right now?
“We’re streaky, we go through a week and say, ‘Man, we’re going to get in here, we’re playing good right now, we’ve got a chance,’ and the next week it’s like, ‘Should we even belong here? We’re playing pretty bad,’” starter Mark Buehrle saaid after Friday’s 5-3 loss. “It’s why we play 162 games, we have to finish the season. Four months ago, three months ago, we would have been in the playoffs, now we’re sitting to go home and watch it.”
Without doubt there is plenty to lament for a team that on June 6 led the American League East by six games, and at the end of July 31 was only 1.5 games behind the division champion Baltimore Orioles and had a three-game edge over the Seattle Mariners for the second wild card.
On Sept. 11 they still had a realistic shot at the post-season sitting just three games back. Then they dropped two of three at home to the Tampa Bay Rays and entered Saturday’s play 0-5 on their road trip to Baltimore and New York thus far, with an elimination number sitting at four.
The dream died over the last week, and now it’s a nightmare to the end.
“This becomes a time when guys show their true colours, or when stuff comes out,” says Buehrle. “Guys getting benched, guys getting more playing time than most, guys getting called up that are getting playing time for next year. I don’t know where to pinpoint what went wrong this year, we had streaks where a week or two we’d play outstanding and feel like we’re the best team in baseball, then the next two weeks we’re the worst team in baseball.
“We dealt with injuries, and again every team has them, it’s not an excuse, but it’s those guys who step in and fill in for your big guys who go down [determines] who’s going to get there and obviously that wasn’t us.”
The return of their misery at Yankee Stadium is especially disconcerting given how the Blue Jays seemed to turn a corner by winning two of three there at the end of July. A 6-4 victory ended a 17-game losing streak in the Bronx and appeared set to propel them forward, but the ability to play well consistently has eluded them.
What changed things after that breakthrough?
“Losing. When you’re not winning it’s tough to have a good clubhouse,” says Buehrle. “It’s one of those things, everybody says team chemistry, I think it comes with winning. When you’re winning, you get away with murder, everything is fine in here, when you’re losing, the littlest thing, you step wrong and somebody brings it up. [Since] that time, I don’t know what went wrong, obviously something did, and we’re where we are at right now.”
August remains the biggest head-scratcher, as the returns of Edwin Encarnacion and Adam Lind didn’t provide the expected lift. Lind returned during a three-game Mariners sweep in Seattle Aug. 11-13, and after Encarnacion rejoined the team Aug. 15 in Chicago, the Blue Jays struggled through a 4-8 stretch.
“I’ve said it before, when we got the three guys back, [Brett] Lawrie was short-lived, but once we got Lind and Edwin back, we treaded above water while they were out and we thought now hey, this is when we’re going to take off. We didn’t, and I don’t know why.
“Some guys in here are trying to cross minds and figure out what happened, but for some reason we didn’t, and we played bad, other teams took off and we’re sitting where we are. Mathematically we’re not out of it, but I think everyone knows the situation, we’re going to be going home at the end of the season.”