Blue Jays running short on time

rocky start to year ‘It’s going to be late here before too long’

TORONTO • Most baseball fans in Toronto were feeling pretty cocky a month ago. All the smart folks who take money to write about this game loved the Blue Jays and could see, plain as day, that the sky was falling on those fat cats in New york and Boston.

The Blue Jays themselves were confident — no, not cocky — throughout spring training, buoyant about their playoff prospects after soaring into the high-rent district in the offseason. How could this robust bunch not win?

So here we are at the end of April, with Blue Jays veteran Mark deRosa calling a team meeting in New york because he could feel “a bad vibe creeping in here,” as he told Bill Madden of the New

York Daily News. That Sunday morning session took place right before the Jays lost their fourth straight to the yankees, dropped to 9-17 for April and continued their trend of scoring one or two fewer runs than their opponents.

In the Bronx and Beantown, meanwhile, the skyhooks are working. The Red Sox are doing a dream job under John Farrell, leading the American League east with an 18-7 record. The yankees, whose casualty list is longer than the lineup for US$140 tickets, are winning with good pitching and bunch of guys nobody else wanted. On their way to a 15-10 record, they have also found a patsy in the Blue Jays, whom they have beaten six times in seven tries.

“The names may have changed but they still know how to win over there” in the yankees’ clubhouse, deRosa told Madden, adding that the Jays’ declining morale is “just weird after spring training when we had a swagger about us.”

WHAT THE NUMBER SAY:

The Toronto offence is averaging 3.65 runs per game. Opponents are averaging five runs per game against Jays pitching.

The Jays are second in the American League in home runs with 33, but 22 of them have come with the bases empty.

They are 11th in the league in hits and walks, and 14th in batting average (.229) and onbase percentage (.291).

With injured leadoff man Jose Reyes out until July, no one has stepped up in sustained fashion to lead the offence. In the past six games, however, edwin encarnacion has shown signs of doing that, going 7 for 22 with five homers. But he is getting little help.

Although their pitching has improved in recent games, the Jays are second in the majors in runs and earned runs allowed. Only Houston has allowed more.

VOX POPULI

There are no simple answers, although there is no shortage of simplistic answers making the rounds of social media and call- in shows. The solutions start with firing manager John Gibbons for failing to find the magic wand or bullwhip required to stir this team. (Some fans seem to believe that the “lollygaggers” scene in Bull Durham was taken from real life.)

Some question whether so many new players, most of them brought in from losing environments, can meld into a productive unit and “learn how to win” in such a short time.

And increasingly, the armchair prognosis is that the team is simply what April has revealed it to be: the 2013 version of the 2012 Miami Marlins.

That may turn out to be so, although it is highly doubtful, and a specious conclusion to draw after 26 games. Citing past records, Anthopoulos and Gibbons keep saying their players are too good to continue playing this poorly. It is safe to say this team will get better. It can hardly get worse.

THE BABIP FACTOR

Amid the gloomy numbers, there is some evidence that the Blue Jays’ hitters have simply been unlucky. Some of the hits they could reasonably expect have not found green.

Their batting average on balls in play (BABIP) is .262, worst in the majors. Among the 30 teams, the average BABIP is .293. Historically, that number is close to .300, and teams like the Jays, which start with a substantially lower number, typically gravitate to the league average over the course of a season.

The Red Sox, who start a three-game series Tuesday night at the Rogers Centre, represent the other extreme. They lead the majors in BABIP at .340. That number is likely to fall.

AS BERRA SAID, IT GETS LATE EARLY

Perhaps Anthopoulos is right: This team is too good to be this bad for long. Or maybe he is wrong: This team is less than the sum of its parts.

even if the GM is right, the Jays face a stiff challenge. yes, from the 1914 Boston Braves to the 2012 Oakland A’s, there are plenty of precedents for earlyseason doormats turning into October darlings. But those are exceptions.

To win 90 games, the Blue Jays must go 81-55 the rest of the way, a .596 winning percentage. They need to heat up fast. They face a May schedule crammed with AL east opponents and a June in which they play only nine games at home.

Gibbons, a favourite whipping-boy for the Twitterati, was asked after Sunday’s loss whether there is anything he personally can do or say to stop the free-fall. His reply, spoken softly through a tired half-smile, blended his familiar self-deprecation with a month’s worth of frustration.

“What, you want me to go out there and hit or something?” he asked. “Couldn’t hit when I played. How am I going to do it now?”

There is still enough time for this team to do what the pundits predicted back in december, when Jays fans thought Anthopoulos was still a genius and his star-studded roster still looked like a juggernaut.

“I know everybody keeps saying it’s early,” pitcher Mark Buehrle said last week. “It is early, but it’s going to be late here before too long.”