ALL GOOD THINGS…

Blue Jays 11-game winning streak comes to an end at the hands of the rays.

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 5½ 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. Gib- bons was hoping the streak might continue in an arena that has been a snake pit for Toronto in recent years. The Jays are now 10-32 at Tropicana from 2009 to present.

“You hope you can stretch it out a long time, and then when it’s finally over, you can hope to start another one,” he said.

The Jays are 4-4 versus Tampa Bay this year. 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.

The Jays say they are monitoring Reyes daily, with no specific target date for his return, although it is clear he will rejoin the club sometime this week. He is tentatively scheduled to play Tuesday night at Double-A New Hampshire.

“He could be there, he could be here [in St. Petersburg] in the next couple days, you never know,” Gibbons said.

Over the 6-0 homestand that finished Sunday, the Toronto offence scored 39 runs and hit 11 homers. But against the Rays, their attack consisted of four singles, including an infield hit and a bloop single that contributed to their lone run in the eighth inning.

The Rays’ home-run barrage in the second inning halted an impressive run for Rogers, who had surrendered only four earned runs in four starts since he was pressed into service as an emergency starter May 29. This time he matched that number in one evening, although he did manage to work six innings.

Hellickson has had his way with the Jays this season. On May 22, he held them to two runs on four hits over eight innings in a game Toronto eventually won on a walkoff single by Jose Bautista.