HE’S GOT THEIR BACKS

Gibbons stands behind Jays

A New York-based reporter asked John Gibbons about his team’s “very poor start” before Wednesday night’s game against the Yankees.

“That’s an understatement,” said the Toronto Blue Jays manager.

“I was trying to be kind,” the reporter quipped.

Her point was: Given the fact that the Jays have stumbled through the first month of the season and were 9-18 heading into Wednesday’s game, is he worried that the word “fire sale” is going to be used by reporters more frequently? There certainly has been talk that GM Ross Atkins will have to embark on a rebuild if the Jays fall further out of contention over the next few weeks. But Gibbons said it’s too early to start thinking fire sale.

“We’ll have a little better idea in the next couple of months (about that), but I don’t think anybody’s been swamped with those kinds of questions yet,” he said. “You get later in the season. But it goes back to this particular group — and not all teams are like that — they’ve got a different mentality. Because they know they’re good, they’ve been successful and one of things that make them good, they don’t get caught up in all the noise.”

More and more Gibbons has had to defend his team and he’s more than willing to do that.

“This group has been very successful the last two years. I know what makes them tick and I know what they’re made of, and one thing about this group, they never panic, they never tuck their tail or anything like that,” he said. “There’s no need to. I’ve always believed in baseball, if you’re good enough you’ll be there in the end. There might be a couple of teams every year that overachieve and a couple that underachieve. Because inevitably every team, good or bad, gets on some kind of good streak and everybody rides some bad streaks and we’re hoping we’ve had our bad one.”