Rays silence Jays’ bats as winning streak ends at 11 games

ST. PETERSBURG, FLA. — Next time the Toronto Blue Jays roll up a few wins in a row, John Gibbons would prefer that you keep your voices down, fans.

Before his team hit a brick wall at Tropicana Field, the manager was asked whether the Blue Jays’ 11-game surge had altered his workday routine.

“You don’t want to do anything that might curse it — like talk about it too much,” he said with a smile, pretty well ending that line of questioning.

A few hours later, the Tampa Bay Rays had ended the Blue Jays’ line of victories. The score was 4-1. The Jays are back in last place. Probably just too much chatter, if you ask Gibbons.

But for the past week or so, Blue Jays fans have been buzzing about little else, and who could blame them? From the doormats of April, the Jays morphed into the darlings of June. They had reeled off a 15-4 record for the month and were closing in on a club record of 12 straight wins.

That bid ended rather quietly in Tropicana Field, with the Jays managing one measly single by J.P. Arencibia off Jeremy Hellickson in seven innings. They finished with a total of four hits, two of which did not exit the infield.

There was a brief noisy spell back in the second inning when starter Esmil Rogers gave up consecutive home runs to James Loney, Wil Myers and Sam Fuld. That gave a jolt to the 11,407 hometown fans, whose heroes had lost eight of their previous 12 games.

With the loss, the Jays swapped places with the Rays in the American League East standings, falling back into the familiarity of last place but still only 5 1/2 games back of the front-running Boston Red Sox.

This was the first of seven critical road games this week against the Rays and Red Sox, a golden opportunity to jump from the fringe to the thick of the division race. Gibbons was hoping the streak might continue in an arena that has been a snakepit for Toronto in recent years. The Jays are now 10-32 at Tropicana from 2009 to present.

The Jays are 4-4 versus Tampa Bay so far. As Gibbons observed before the game, they have played three of their four division rivals “pretty well even” this year, the egregious exception being the Yankees, who have beaten them eight times in nine games. That leaves them with a 15-21 record within the division, reinforcing the notion that this week’s games represent both challenge and opportunity.

Before the week is over, they expect to welcome back shortstop and leadoff man Jose Reyes, who played his seventh rehab game Monday night in Buffalo with general manager Alex Anthopoulos among the spectators.