Ugly start weighs on Blue Jays
TORONTO — The stress, the panic — it boggles the mind to imagine what would be happening in Boston had the Red Sox suffered through a start similar to the 2-11 Blue Jays.
While the playoff runs of the NBA’s Raptors and NHL’s Maple Leafs have helped keep the Blue Jays’ excruciatingly slow start on this sports-mad town’s back-burner, there’s no disguising the shock value.
This is a team that reached the American League Championship Series the last two years, a team with the sixth-biggest payroll ($177.8 million) in the game, and a team expected to pose the stiffest challenge to the Red Sox in the AL East.Expectations are already very high here. What’s rising is concern. “You’ve got to put an end to it,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said before his team’s 8-7 loss in the series opener against the Red Sox. “You can’t dig too deep of a hole, the division’s too good. Really the whole American League’s too good, so many good teams. We need to turn it around quickly, that’s for sure.”
Gibbons stressed that while there’s always concern when a team goes through “ruts” like his has, there is one saving grace.
“I know people don’t want to hear it, but it’s very, very early,” he said.
Of course it is, but the Blue Jays can’t wait much longer for their offense to come alive. Check yourself in case you suspect the loss of slugger Edwin Encarnacion from the heart of the lineup is all that’s missing. His replacement, Kendrys Morales, has at least shown some pop with two home runs, plus he knocked in the first Blue Jays run last night against Red Sox lefty Brian Johnson.
No, it’s virtually the entire lineup that has been stuck in a deep freeze.
In their first dozen games, the Blue Jays posted a .212/.280/.312 slash line, a feeble and unrecognizable resemblance to the bashing lineup of the last two seasons. They were averaging just 2.83 runs a game and their speed game was nonexistent.
The pitching has been solid enough, but with Josh Donaldson on the shelf with a calf injury, the Blue Jays’ lineup looks shabby even with names like Jose Bautista, Morales and Troy Tulowitzki still in it.
“You look back on the start, other than a couple of games, we’ve been in every game, basically been a onerun, two-run game so a big hit here and there or a big pitch and maybe get out of a jam, could have swung those the other way,” said Gibbons, whose team has been outscored, 62-41, after last night. “Yeah, I would say overall that it’s the offense that’s been missing.”
While it made some sense that the right-handed heavy lineup enjoyed some early success last night against Johnson, the TripleA callup, their task the rest of the series looks somewhat daunting, considering their circumstances.
“We’ll see how it plays out — next couple of days, we’ve got Cy Young (Rick Porcello tonight) and we’ve got Chris Sale (tomorrow), so you naturally think you’d get slim pickings, but we’ve got two pretty good ones going, too, so you figure it will be low-scoring games,” Gibbons said.
“We’ll do what we have to do. Naturally you’re going to go through your ups and downs over six months anyway. I think when something clicks on one particular night, I think they’ll run with that and they’ll be good.”
Much like the Tigers caught a break on the last road trip when the Red Sox showed up decimated by the flu, this first meet-up comes at a good time for the Sox.
Not that they would admit it.
“Oh, I don’t know that their record or what we’ve done to date changes our approach or what we feel or how we view them. That’s still a very dangerous lineup,” said Red Sox manager John Farrell. “And watching games and watching video prior to this series opening up, they’ve had pitchers that have gone against them and executed extremely well. We’re going to need to do the same.
“I don’t know what the reasons are that led to their first 12 games. We can all see the numbers and what the standings say. Still, there is no loss of respect here.”