May showers leave forecast cloudy
When the Blue Jays optioned Richard Urena to Buffalo on Sunday night — a pair of errors committed at shortstop in one game can earn a guy a ticket back to the minors lickety-split — it marked the club’s 44th roster move in a season that’s not yet two months old.
Which vividly illuminates the bejeezus of a time Toronto has had cobbling together a majorleague lineup and sorting out a disfigured pitching assembly.
Eight players have gone on the disabled list — six of them currently out: Marcus Stroman (shoulder fatigue), Aledmys Diaz (sprained ankle), Randal Grichuk (knee sprain), Jaime Garcia (shoulder inflammation), Steve Pearce (oblique strain) and Troy Tulowitzki (heel bone spurs).
Six players have had a turn at short, four at third base, four at second base.
And we won’t even go into the head-spinning chronicles of the starting rotation carousel.
But ailments hardly explain away the woes of a club that got off to a promising season start, even as the bullpen provided yeoman service in support of a wobbly starter crew that has lasted into the sixth inning on only 26 occasions, and most of those times by just a smidge.
For all the bad memories of a year ago, Toronto irrecoverably harmed by an 8-17 April splat, there’s every possibility they will have a worse win-loss record when the page is turned on May: 22-25 with nine games left this month, where they were 26-27 at the end of May 2017.
The downward trend hit rock bottom with a four-game sweep by Oakland at the Rogers Centre over the weekend, which hadn’t happened at home since 2001. Dropped to 11-15 in their own ballpark, having lost 12 of their last 15 here, losing six consecutive at home for the first time in five years. Losing seven of their last eight games by a cumulative score of 27-12, averaging 2.7 runs in those defeats while the pitchers have given up an average of 7.4 runs per game.
Toronto’s starting complement has racked up the secondmost earned runs in the majors. While, more recently, the overtaxed ’pen has started to come apart at the seams. In Saturday’s 5-4 loss, an excellent Blue Jays starting debut by call-up Sam Gaviglio — 51⁄ 3 scoreless innings — was squandered when the team’s most reliable relievers, John Axford and Tyler Clippard, combined to allow five runs, a four-run eighth-inning lead transmogrified into another L.
MLB has just extended Roberto Osuna’s administrative look for a third seven-day period, while continuing to investigate an incident of alleged domestic assault. There’s the very real chance that Toronto’s stud closer might not be restored to the active list for the remainder of the year, assuming the franchise is even willing to bring him back with a fan base that might not tolerate it, regardless of how the matter is resolved in criminal court.
The offence has dipped into a funk since a 12-1 demolishing of the Mets in NYC on May 16. In the series with the Athletics, the bottom third of Oakland’s order accounted for 10 runs.
Josh Donaldson, who had misadventures at the hot corner on Sunday, is hitless in his past 15 at-bats and five for his past 34 (.147). He’s being pitched carefully but popping up and grounding out more often over the last fortnight, with his highest career soft-contact rate.
“Honestly, the pitches I do get to hit I’m not putting a good enough swing on to hit the ball,” Donaldson admitted on Sunday. “I’m not getting a ton of pitches to hit. With that being said, I have to make an adjustment. And I will. I’m not that concerned about it. It’s difficult and it gets frustrating at time, but I’ve been through it before and I know that there’s another side.”
Indeed, Donaldson endured a .168/.209/.230 month-long stretch a year ago yet corrected himself, finishing the season with a slash line of .270/.385/ .550 and 33 home runs.
With the Los Angeles Angels, 11⁄ 2 games out of a wild card, in next for three starting Tuesday — a crucial series, even so early in the campaign — there’s not much comfort for the Jays to draw upon, although no sport is as up-and-down shifty as baseball. A small bright spot is that Devon Travis is on an eightgame hit streak in Triple-A and could be summoned up by the Jays in a corresponding move for Urena’s demotion. While a restive public pleads for the quick-step promotion of mega-prospect Vladimir Guerrero Jr. from Double-A (4-for-4 at the plate on Sunday with a two-run walk-off homer in Game 1 of a doubleheader).
“Just baseball being baseball,” observed Curtis Granderson of the gruesome weekend. “You’re going to run through highs and lows with 162 games, and guys possibly piling up anywhere from 500 to 600 at-bats. Unfortunately, it just happens to be a situation where we’ve run into some teams that are playing well, that have pitched well against us, and we haven’t been able to get things clicking on all cylinders the way we want to. But with an off-day (Monday), hopefully we can reset.”
What’s happening, to make the team goes sideways? Well, down-ways.
“There’s nothing specific that guys are thinking, saying or doing one way or the other,” Granderson continued. “Guys are putting together good atbats, just not necessarily getting the results. So it’s a combination of things (behind) why we aren’t able to go ahead and stockpile a bunch of hits and a bunch of runs and big innings. But that’s what makes the game so exciting and frustrating at the same time.”
Eternally buoyant, Granderson resists the “urgency” label for this series. “Not at all. It’s only May. Regardless of who you’re playing, a team that’s in first place and has the best record in baseball or a team that has the worst record in baseball, we’ve still got to put ourselves in the best position to win a series. But we do understand that (the Halos) are a team that’s coming in playing very well. At the same time, we trust the confidence and the ability of what we have in this clubhouse, no matter who the opponent happens to be.” Donaldson agreed. “We can’t get too far ahead of ourselves. We can’t focus too much on what’s happened in the past. You’ve got to stay in the moment. As cliché as it sounds, you’ve got to take it one day at a time.”