TORONTO – In the moments after Miguel Andujar turned on a dinner-platter-served 83 m.p.h. cutter from Seunghwan Oh and sent it 426 feet to left field for a go-ahead grand slam, the TV broadcast captured a shot of John Gibbons, hands on his hips, eyes staring forward.
No single word fully captures the look on his face. Shell-shocked, confounded, bedevilled, flustered – take your pick, they all apply as the blow from the New York Yankees set the stage for a 16th loss in 21 games for the Toronto Blue Jays.
During that span, the veteran manager and his beleaguered squad have endured nearly every calamity that can strike a baseball team, from injuries and underperformance to freak plays and ridiculously poor fortune. Off-days have offered the only real respite from the incessant grind and each outing seems to offer up a creative new way to get kicked in the delicates.
Over the past seven games alone, consider that the Blue Jays have scored in 13 different innings – so infrequent that it’s concerning on its own – and managed to shut down the opposition in the next inning only three times. Andujar’s slam in the seventh inning Tuesday night came immediately after a Teoscar Hernandez solo shot in the sixth opened the scoring.
Right now, on the rare times something good happens for the Blue Jays, it feels inevitable that something bad will follow.
“To be honest, I don’t think guys look at it that way,” says Gibbons. “You feel it. Everybody knows what’s going on. But I don’t think they get caught up in that. We got a great outing out of our starter (Marco Estrada). That’s big. It was one of those games where they held us in check, too. Then the hit batter and the walk and then the home run, it happened like that. Oh’s been pitching pretty good, he really has. He had that tough one in Detroit the other day, and of course (Tuesday), but he’s been one of our most reliable guys. That’s the way it goes.”
Really, that’s the way it’s gone for the Blue Jays since an 8-5 win at Yankee Stadium pushed them to a season-best seven games over .500 at 13-6. Since then, they are 13-28, haven’t won consecutive games since taking three straight April 29-May 1, and once the draft wraps up Wednesday night, it’s hard not to wonder how quickly the vultures will start circling around Gibbons, firing a manager the easiest desperation lever left in pursuit of a miracle turnaround.
If made, such a move will almost certainly do nothing to rescue a season facing daunting odds of a successful outcome. Fangraphs’ objective measure gives them a 2.5 per cent chance of reaching the post-season and a zero per cent chance of winning the World Series.
Reality can come at you quick.
The Blue Jays are obviously better than the .317 clip they’ve played at for the past month and a half, but regardless of whether Gibbons is managing the club or bench coach DeMarlo Hale is promoted on an interim basis to steer the ship, the flaws on the roster that have led to this predicament remain.
Gibbons bears no responsibility for the injuries that have sidelined Marcus Stroman and bothered Jaime Garcia and Aaron Sanchez, who is still trying to regain his form from a lost 2017, preventing the starting rotation from being the strength it was supposed to be.
It’s not his fault shoulder troubles and now calf tightness has forced Josh Donaldson to spend time on the disabled list and kept him from being his MVP-calibre self on the field.
Nor is it on his shoulders that along with Donaldson’s absences, all-star closer Roberto Osuna was charged with assaulting a woman and has been on administrative leave since; the lineup features four players batting below .200; there have been open auditions at shortstop that included a nearly two-week period without a natural shortstop on the roster and an experiment with catcher Russell Martin at the spot; and that few are performing to expectations, let alone exceeding them.
Essentially, Gibbons has been given the materials for a shed and asked to build a mansion.
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Now, that might have been possible had many of the calculations the Blue Jays made about their foundation – the starting rotation will be a strength; the additions of Yangervis Solarte, Curtis Granderson, Randal Grichuk and Aledmys Diaz will help support Donaldson and Justin Smoak offensively; their defence will be better – played out on the peak end of the spectrum.
They have not, and rather than getting a pleasant surprise or two from the minor-leagues, only Teoscar Hernandez has come up and provided impact.
To some degree, the roster will correct, as the Blue Jays are far more talented than they’re showing, but regardless, Gibbons and his excellent coaching staff have held steady, trying to make the most of what’s on the roster, searching for any little advantage they can find.
Asked Tuesday night if facing the Yankees was like going to a gunfight with a knife, Gibbons replied: “No, no, I don’t think that at all. (CC) Sabathia has always been tough on us, he was again. We had three hits, a couple of them were home runs, but you never feel good in a tight ballgame, I don’t care who you’re facing, especially in this ballpark. It got away from us, no doubt about that. We still like our team. We’re not playing particularly well, no doubt about it, obviously, but I don’t view it that way.”
True to himself, Gibbons stuck up for his players the way he always has, believing the best way to manage is to essentially have two rules: show up on time; play as hard as you can. That goes a long way in a big-league clubhouse and what the Blue Jays have had since the 2015 season has been an ideal players search for.
It’s never about Gibbons, it’s always about them.
But the cruel realities and established conventions of the business are closing in on the Blue Jays right now, and if he ends up paying the price for this season off the rails that no manager could have avoided, his firing will mark the beginning of the changes, not the end.
