Jays have nowhere to look but up
Return of Donaldson, Happ, Tulowitzki and Sanchez can’t happen soon enough
NEW YORK— The Jays jetted out of here Wednesday night and headed for Tampa, for what will be anything but a routine, early-season series with the Rays.
Given the state of their pitching staff, and their American Leagueworst 9-19 record, the Jays are desperate not only for wins, but for more signs this season isn’t slipping entirely from their grasp.
About that record: a quick glance at the AL East standings shows the Jays are nine games out of first place, four games in the loss column behind Tampa, and 10 behind the first-place Yankees.
The 10 games in the loss column sets a very challenging gap to make up for a team that hopes its injured regulars — Josh Donaldson, Troy Tulowitzki and starting pitchers Aaron Sanchez and J.A. Happ — will rejoin the club at some point either this weekend or next week in Toronto.
Any baseball person will tell you a double-digit deficit in the loss column is difficult to erase, regardless of how much baseball there is to play.
With Toronto off to one of its worst starts in team history, and having made the post-season the past two years, the talk always comes back around to “what will it take” to make the post-season in 2017.
Toronto earned a wild-card berth with 89 wins last year. The rule of thumb is it takes 90 to 93 wins to earn a playoff berth. Even to reach 89 wins, the Jays would have to win 80 of their remaining 134 games.
That’s a stunning .597 clip. Only one team in baseball played at that pace last year, the World Series-winning Chicago Cubs (who posted a .640 percentage, going 103-58).
Right now, the post-season is a distant thought, but always a relevant concern. Toronto’s main objective is to get Donaldson and Tulowitzki healthy, reach .500, knock off as many games in the loss column as possible, and see where the team is at by the end of May.
To do that, it will need, at the very least, Donaldson and Tulowitzki back in the lineup by the middle of the month. Getting their two key offensive threats, and leaders, back on the roster, and getting them back to full form, is the key to rescuing some of the desperate post-season scenarios facing the team at the moment.
Toronto’s timing for this road series in Tampa couldn’t be better: they’re right next door to Donaldson, Tulowitzki and Happ, all of whom are rehabbing in Dunedin.
Over the past three days in New York, the team “hoped” to have Donaldson and Tulowitzki possibly rejoin the team in Tampa and return home for the start of a nine-day, nine-game homestand that opens Monday.
There is no guarantee on that timeline (Happ will remain in Florida and isn’t as close to returning). The plan for Sanchez was to have him possibly pitch in a Gulf Coast League game this weekend — depending on how his split fingernail feels — and rejoin the team by May11, when he is due off the 10-day disabled list.
If any or all of those three rejoin the team over the next few days, the Jays’ outlook becomes less gloomy.
For the moment, they are heading into the Tampa series with Francisco Liriano and Marco Estrada starting the first two games. Mat Latos is slated for the series finale on Sunday.
Latos has given everything he can in three fill-in starts since Happ and Sanchez went on the DL. The plan is to have him fill in one more start, since the Jays are also in need of a spot starter in one of the three games they’ll play at home to Cleveland beginning May 8.
Marcus Stroman, after leaving Wednesday’s loss to the Yankees with “general tightness” in his arm, says he is certain he will be ready for his turn on May 9 against Cleveland.
There are a lot of questions to be answered with injured players over the next few days, and the answers will certainly have bearing on the Jays chances to climb out of the 9-19 hole they’ve dug for themselves.
Jays manager John Gibbons knows a win in the next game is the most important thing right now, because it may breed more winning.
Gibbons also has concerns with late-inning setup men Jason Grilli and J.P. Howell. Each has struggled during the past week. Grilli has allowed two home runs and five earned runs over his last two outings.
Grilli recently posted a tweet that serves as a reminder for all those who are worried about the hole the Jays find themselves in: “There are no hopeless situations, only people who think hopelessly.”