Club is rough all over the diamond

Josh Donaldson says the Jays are struggling in pretty much every aspect of the game.

At the end of a disastrous 1-6 seven-game homestand — the final loss being 8-1 to the Angels on Thursday — Josh Donaldson was asked his thoughts on what the problem might be that is preventing them from putting any sort of win streak together.

“It has more to do with just putting a complete game together — hitting, pitching, fielding, running the bases,” suggested their best player. “All of it, we have to do it all better. It’s not that we can’t, it’s just that we need to be better and we’re not doing it as a collective group right now. I think if we didn’t have the capability that would be one thing, but we have the capability to do it.”

Let’s examine how horrible the Blue Jays’ pitching has been on the homestand.

The club allowed 43 runs in seven starts, averaging 6.1 runs per contest. Starters managed to log five innings or fewer in four of the seven games, averaging 95 pitches and just over 51⁄ 3 innings per start. Manager John Gibbons was compelled to call on the bullpen 30 times in those seven games, wearing out his reliev- ers and, out of necessity, placing them in difficult situations and roles for which by and large they may not be suited.

However, it all begins with the starters.

Overall, in seven shaky games, Toronto’s pitchers required 1,202 pitches — an average of 172 heaves per game, or 19.1 per inning. That’s ridiculous. “We were really swinging the bats in April,” Gibbons suggested of the club’s 16-12 record into May. “The bullpen was lights out in April. There are some things that got corrected a little bit that you figured were going to. We haven’t had the consistent starting pitching we expected that I think we will have. You lump them all together, that’s kind of what happens sometimes.”

Changes to the pitching staff continue to mount. Following the game, Deck McGuire, who mopped up with two innings in the loss, was brought into the manager’s office and we assume he was given bad news. In addition, Saturday’s assignment will be returned to regular fifth-starter Jaime Garcia, who will take the ball from Joe Biagini, with Sam Gaviglio throwing Friday. A new reliever will report to Philadelphia and join the Blue Jays for the start of a nine-game road trip.

Bottom line is the pitching staff will not improve its record of hits and runs allowed until the defenders start defending like a major-league team should.

The outfield has been ragged, and while Aledmys Diaz has been out, the middle infield has been shaky, bordering on disastrous. While Donaldson’s ailing arm continues to heal, Justin Smoak ranks as the only above-average defender on the inner diamond.

“We have to stay as positive as possible,” Donaldson said of the 25 players in the clubhouse. “At the same time we have to look in the mirror at the end of the night and say, ‘Hey, what can I do to get better?’ I know everybody in here is working their tail off. We’re going to try and adjust the issues as much as possible and go out there and do a better job.”

With the starting pitchers going short the bullpen, in Gibbons’ opinion, will need to stay with eight arms. However, that has a ripple effect on the position players. With 13 pitchers, there are only three players left on the bench. Consider that on Tuesday, with the Jays mounting a rally from two down in the ninth inning, Gibbons was forced to leave the lead-footed Kendrys Morales on second base as the tying run. If the game had gone to extra innings, Morales would have stayed in at third base, with Donaldson at short and catcher Russ Martin playing second. Luke Maile was the last player on the bench and in the 10th would have caught.

“I’m ready to get on the road,” Gibbons admitted. “There’s no doubt this was a brutal homestand for us. We got outplayed and a couple of tough losses definitely hurt us. We’re going to some pretty good places. We’ve got some teams playing pretty good, but sometimes you need a change of scenery.”

Over the years, Jays managers and players have suggested it can be tough to win at times, because when the team is hitting it’s not pitching, and when it’s pitching it’s not hitting.

The problem for the Jays at the moment is this — are not doing either of those fundamental aspects very well. Throw in shoddy base-running and shady defence, and you wonder how they will ever come out of this funk any time soon. It may have to be one hot player that carries them to safety.

“Obviously I can, I’ve done it several times in the past,” Donaldson said when asked if he needs to step up and assume an offensive load. “I need to go out there and do a better job of what is called of me. The heart of the matter is it’s one of those things where you go through spells where guys are making pitches. I need to do a better job of executing when I get a good pitch to hit.”

The Jays now have the exact record after 50 games they had a year ago, when by the end of the season fans were angry and frustrated with just 76 wins. But Thursday’s starter, Marco Estrada, believes this is a better team.

We definitely have a good team,” Estrada said. “We just got to get a few key pieces back. I need to turn things around myself to help this ballclub out, because today I just sucked. I was on a bit of a better roll. I was making better pitches. Just today I didn’t have it. We’re going to be just fine.”

For the Blue Jays heading out on this important road trip, all of this brave talk is fine, but fans are impatient to borderline fatalistic.

“Just do it.”