ACHY BREAKY START
Injuries and some unhealthy hitting have left the Jays looking for small miracles in the AL East,
This Blue Jays squad, according to manager John Gibbons, needs to tread water until it can be buoyed by the return of five of its most important players currently on the DL. But things went from bad to worse on Tuesday, as designated hitter Kendrys Morales, who leads the team in home runs and RBIs, left the game with a tight left hamstring.
The current AL standings tell a dismal story. Yes, the Jays have been playing .500 ball over the past 20 games, but the numbers don’t lie. It’s a huge hill to climb.
“I’m well aware of what (the standings) say,” Gibbons said of his daily glance that shows the Jays as a last-place team in the AL East. “You go out and try to win today. You can’t do anything more than that. You can’t afford any more tough streaks, I know that. Try and hold your own until you get a couple of key guys back.
“Guys have been busting it all year. They make a run every night. I don’t care how much we’re down, they’ll make a run at it. So we’re happy with that. We’re not happy with the results. You can’t complain about the effort, that’s for damn sure.”
Here is an opinion that will shock some Toronto fans. If the Jays manage to climb back to .500 and are still mathematically alive in the middle of September, this may well be Gibbons best managing job in his 10 seasons with the Jays.
Consider the adversity this team has faced. Tuesday night’s start by Mike Bolsinger was the seventh emergency start in 33 games by pitchers not in the spring training rotation that management believed would be the team’s strength.
The Jays have needed three starts by Mat Latos, two by Casey Lawrence, one by Joe Biagini and now Bolsinger. In addition, Aaron Sanchez, twice, J.A. Happ and Marcus Stroman all exited games early with injuries.
Last season, when Gibbons and the Jays earned a wild-card berth with 89 wins, the opening day rotation logged 152 starts, with Francisco Liriano (eight) and Drew Hutchison (two) the only fill-ins.
Offensively, consider that Tuesday’s Blue Jays’ lineup was the 31st different batting order used by Gibbons in 33 games. Because of injuries to Josh Donaldson, Troy Tulowitzki and now Russ Martin — because of awful starts at the plate by Jose Bautista, Devon Travis, Steve Pearce and the since-released Jarrod Saltalamacchia — the Jays have had to cobble together workable lineups and change offensive strategies to manufacture runs. Third-base coach Luis Rivera has been at the centre of it.
“It crossed my mind a lot of times, a lot of situations in games where I say I’ve got to be real aggressive on this play here,” Rivera said. “It happens that sometimes that’s the situation and I have to make a decision and other times that didn’t happen. But it’s crossed my mind that we’re not scoring too many runs, getting too many hits, that anytime we get a chance to score we have to do that.”
The Jays were 6-4 in the first 32 games when scoring five or more runs. Back in 2015, the first year Josh Donaldson joined the Jays’ heart-of-the-lineup duo of Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion, over the first 33 games, the team was 14-3 in games in which they scored five or more. The three big bombers were the key.
“It’s important at least to have two of those,” Rivera said. “Every team that is good usually has three guys they can rely on to drive in those runs and hit homers and we were very fortunate to have Edwin with us that many years. With Donaldson there was two more years where we had three guys that really accelerated the lineup. They could produce runs and it was huge because they were so consistent . . . and they were a big part of us winning the last two seasons.”
When the Jays advanced to the ALCS the last two seasons, Encarnacion, Donaldson and Bautista averaged a combined 110 home runs and 321RBIs. Those are stunning numbers. If you take the Jays’ top three producers in homers and RBIs this season and project over 162 games, you arrive at Morales, Justin Smoak and Ryan Goins combining for 69 home runs and 235 RBIs. The Jays are on pace to score 292 fewer runs than in 2015.
“Those three players (Encarnacion, Donaldson and Bautista) are the guys that, when the team was down . . . ” Rivera siad. “Edwin probably in May (of 2015) hit maybe 12 homers in a month and he carried us for a long period of time. Bautista can do the same thing and Donaldson also. So those are the guys that are so important because sometimes we don’t have anybody else hitting and those are the clutch hitters.”
Morales, in his first year as the DH and occasional first baseman, may be able to produce numbers that approach those that will be posted eventually by Encarnacion in Cleveland, but when Encarnacion and Bautista anchored the middle of the Jays order from 2012-16, there was an extra dimension. They were both athletes that understood the game and were multi-dimensional.
“I can say that they’re not the fastest guys around, but they are good base-runners,” Rivera said. “They will give you a good secondary lead, which will give you a chance to score a run. They will advance on a ball in the dirt. They are heads-up players on the bases and they took chances.
“If you can hit at the same time, you can move around the bases and don’t clog all the bases and score on singles to left because you just gave me a good opportunity to send you with a good secondary lead, that’s huge.”
The Jays are not as good as when they won a division in 2015 and a wild-card spot last year. If they do eventually get back into contention by the second half, it will be Gibbons best managing job. If they don’t, it could be his last managing job.