ARLINGTON, Texas — The Toronto Blue Jays have spent the last 20 years wandering in the MLB wilderness. They’ve been generally good — sometimes very good — but never good enough, and rarely awful. Still, the bottom line is that they’ve never been good enough even to be in a playoff race, never mind the actual post-season.
In many of those seasons, the Jays appeared to be on the way to good things when they’d get thumped in a series or two by a couple of teams they should beat, teams that just happened to be playing really well at the time, well over their heads. I can’t remember how many times over the last decade I heard — and even said — that the Blue Jays simply ran into a team at the wrong time.
Finally, the tables have turned, and the Blue Jays ran into a Texas Rangers squad at the best possible time and did something about it. The Rangers are likely playing as poorly right now as they will play at any point in time this season and the Jays came to town and took full advantage, sweeping them four straight right in their own backyard.
Actually, maybe it was their front yard. It seems to be Jerry Jones’ backyard, with the spaceship-looking Cowboys Stadium right behind this place.
It’s been a long time since the Blue Jays had a team way down and actually finished them off, stepping on their throats and not letting them off the hook. The Rangers’ offence has been sputtering badly through a 4-11 month of June that has seen them score more than three runs in a game only three times, and the Jays went right for the jugular. Toronto’s starting pitching allowed Texas to score just twice in the four games combined, Chien-Ming Wang adding the exclamation point with seven shutout innings in the finale.
We have now seen a full trip through the Blue Jays rotation in which the starter has pitched at least seven innings in every game but one.
The Rangers were ripe for the picking, and the Blue Jays got some awfully good picking done. Now they head home having won five in a row and eight of 10 as they continue their long, slow climb back to the break-even mark. At 32-36, the Jays are closer to .500 than they have been since April 24, when they had a dramatic extra-inning win in Baltimore to improve to 9-13. That was a game that many people believed would get the Blue Jays going — they went on to lose eight of their next nine, the last of those losses being the one that got them to rock bottom at 10-21.
Since that rock-bottom fourth of May the Blue Jays are 22-15, which happens to be the best record in the American League East over that period.
They’re playing a much better brand of baseball and they’ve kicked it into especially high gear over these last 10 games — their only losses have been that crazy Fog Bowl game in Chicago and a game in which they blew a four-run lead.
The Blue Jays come home now for three against the Rockies — and incredibly, the Jays have a winning record in interleague so far this season. Sure, it’s only 6-5, but baby steps. After that, it’s a 10-game stretch against three AL East opponents: home to Baltimore and on the road in Tampa Bay and Boston.
It would be great if the Blue Jays can keep this little roll going. They’ll face a Rockies team without Troy Tulowitzki for starters, but they’ve done a nice job over the last week and a half to take a chunk out of what was once a huge gap between them and the .500 mark. They’re not out of the woods yet — far from it — but a 5-1 road trip on which they beat a couple of teams who were scuffling was a pretty terrific step.