MILWAUKEE – The ability to maintain belief, to play like opportunity is ripe instead of rotten, to act the way a contender does, will only become more difficult for the Toronto Blue Jays as things grow more dire with each passing loss.
That’s because aspirations die slowly amid baseball’s long grind, the number of defeats a team can sustain slowly decreasing until its hopes for the post-season are officially extinguished. The number of losses the Blue Jays can still absorb and maintain any realistic shot at the playoffs is getting dangerously near the point of no return, where the math says they’re in it but the hearts and minds feel otherwise.
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To that end, Tuesday night’s 6-1 thumping from the surging Milwaukee Brewers hurt on both fronts. Trying to find something positive to latch onto, starter J.A. Happ dropped them in an early 2-0 hole, was thumped for four runs in 3.1 innings and was fortunate to not have given up more, while the offence squeezed out one run after putting men on second and third with none out in the second and then didn’t manage another base-runner. They had two hits all night.
The night’s most competitive contest at Miller Park was the sausage race – Bratwurst edged out Chorizo at the finish.
“When you have a two-hit game and you score one run, it’s going to be tough,” said Blue Jays shortstop Jose Reyes. “This late into the season, we’re not allowed to lose too many games, it’s almost September, we’re falling behind in the standings, and that’s not going to be good for us if we want to play in October.”
At 4-12 in August, the Blue Jays (64-62) have fallen nine games behind the AL-East leading Baltimore Orioles and 4.5 games behind the Seattle Mariners for the second wild card, with the Cleveland Indians tying them in that race.
And while they were thoroughly outclassed by the NL Central-leading Brewers (71-55), winners of five straight and eight of 11, at some point they must stop tipping their caps to the opposition. Good teams beat other good teams all the time, and they haven’t been doing that.
“Just find a way. It starts with pitching,” said Happ. “It started with me tonight. We got outplayed and it started with me, I guess. In a hole behind early and that’s tough against anybody, let alone a first-place team. Everybody’s got to do their part, and I came up short.”
Happ, who’s been given four runs of support in his last four starts, didn’t fool anyone, surrendering three laser beam doubles in the first, the ones by Jonathan Lucroy and Aramis Ramirez scoring runs for a 2-0 lead, then two more in the third, with Ryan Braun driving in a run and scoring on Khris Davis’ sacrifice fly.
An opportunity to do some damage against Mike Fiers came in the third, when Dioner Navarro singled to open the inning and Colby Rasmus doubled. Juan Francisco promptly struck out, Munenori Kawasaki grounded out to score Navarro and Happ struck out to end the threat.
Manager John Gibbons yanked Happ in the fourth with two on and one out to try and keep things tight and while Dustin McGowan limited the damage there, Todd Redmond was burned for a Davis RBI double and Rickie Weeks run-scoring single in the fifth that made it 6-1.
Ballgame.
“I can’t remember the last game I was involved in when I’ve seen that many hard-hit balls all night long,” said manager John Gibbons, speaking solely about the opposition, of course. “It was loud.”
The Blue Jays have been buried behind early deficits in three of their past four games, which isn’t exactly a recipe for success.
That’s why Gibbons’ said: “I think the psyche’s fine. Just another game where we gave up a lot of runs early and we couldn’t do anything with Fiers. He did a nice job.”
Later he added: “We’re in a little bit of a rut. But there’s six weeks left. It’s a long season. We’ve got to regroup.”
The Blue Jays have a short night to regroup before Wednesday’s matinee, when R.A. Dickey will take on Jimmy Nelson, and a team in need of reasons to believe will again try to find one.