Odds are long, but Blue Jays won’t quit
The Toronto Blue Jays limped into Fenway Park on Monday feeling bruised and beaten after dropping two extra-inning games in Baltimore, leaving them with 13 walk-off losses this season. They had eight all of last year.
Heading into Monday, the Jays won just four out of their last 16 games. And as if they couldn’t feel any lower, the Boston Herald described the team as “the goingout-of-business Toronto Blue Jays,’’ though Jay Stenhouse, the club’s vice-president of baseball media, assured Postmedia that Rogers has not declared bankruptcy or anything like that.
In the same article, writer Steve Buckley let his readers know that “the Sox likely will make short work of the Jays (this series), thereby allowing manager John Farrell to do some more struttin’ about a three-game sweep.”
To his credit, Farrell had his Red Sox sitting three games ahead of the New York Yankees in the AL East after the Yankees beat Baltimore 7-4 on Monday afternoon. The Jays were 14 games out heading into the Monday night game, and well back of the wild card spot. The baseball website FanGraphs lists the Jays’ chances of making the playoffs at 0.1 per cent.
In other words, it’s over.
But nobody inside the visiting clubhouse at Fenway was ready to throw in the towel. DeMarlo Hale, filling in for manager John Gibbons, said those two walk-off losses in Baltimore proved there is no quit on his team.
“It’s about competing every day and winning as many games as you can,” Hale said. “This team is going to compete to the end and we’ll see where it falls.”
Hale said the plan is to start some September call-ups in the final month, but always with the goal of winning the game that night and not just to play young guys for the sake of giving them a look at the MLB level.
“It’s a balance,’’ he said. Jays slugger Justin Smoak doesn’t appreciate the idea of his club becoming doormats in games against division rivals.
“Yeah, we’re not just going to quit,” he said. “That’s what we’re paid to do. If we play good, we’ve got a chance to beat anybody, and that’s the end of it.”