Toronto Star

DIAMOND LIFE

Baseball’s first African player was never far from the field growing up. He lived in the clubhouse,

- MARK ZWOLINSKI SPORTS REPORTER

The Blue Jays are closer to digging themselves out of a considerab­le deficit they created with a terrible April record.

The desired goal for the moment is to reach the .500 mark, and with a 3-1 win over Texas Saturday at the Rogers Centre, Toronto is now three games from the break-even mark.

The win was the club’s fifth straight — tying a season high — but the bigger picture remains the post-season. And that prospect is much more promising as the end of May approaches than it was at the end of April, when the team dropped to the bottom of the American League with an 8-17 record.

A third straight post-season appearance remains a tall task: The Jays, at 23-26, will at the very least need another 60 wins in their final 113 games to be in the playoff picture. Fangraphs, a respected baseball analytics website, projects the Jays to finish 83-79.

Their chances increase dramatical­ly with every win beyond that, according to sportsclub­stats.com, which handicaps playoff chances for profession­al sports teams.

“We’re playing better baseball in the month of May . . . April wasn’t a good month, you can’t sugarcoat that,” Jays manager John Gibbons said after his team struck for three runs in the fifth inning — courtesy of a Jose Bautista home run — to beat the Rangers on Saturday.

“We always felt confident with the guys we had in here, and the guys who stepped up when we had injuries. Lots of things have started to fall for us. We weren’t getting that big hit before, we weren’t getting that big break. Now, we’re getting home runs (eight in the past three games), and it looks like our old team.”

The Jays, according to sportsclub­stats.com, would have a 12.6 per cent chance of making the playoffs if it finished the season with 83 wins. The odds jump to 28.2 per cent with 84 wins, 49 per cent with 85, 69 per cent with 86, and 84 per cent with 87.

Toronto would have to play 15 games over .500, 64-49, to reach 87 wins. The players have always maintained it is possible.

“I don’t want to say we were ever down, but there was a time when we were in a spot we weren’t expecting to be in,” said Devon Travis, who singled and scored on Bautista’s home run, and increased his hit streak to 11 games. “Everyone in our room takes a lot of pride in the team. There were times when we were looking at each other and saying, when is this thing gonna happen.

“(Manager John Gibbons’) biggest message was to stay the course, keep fighting . . . so we started coming back in games and winning, and that wasn’t going our way in the beginning. We have a lot of work to do, but we feel good about what we can do.” Catcher Luke Maile concurred. “I wasn’t here in April, but from the second I arrived, it was evident this was a confident team,” Maile said. “Everyone knows we have a good team with a deep lineup. We had big parts missing (to injuries), but guys stepped up, and when you have three of four guys take the place of a Josh Donaldson and a Troy Tulowitzki, that’s the sign of a good team. We never felt we’d missed much of a step.

“Certain teams get down — and certain teams like this one, you get down but you know the numbers will be there in the end.”

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 ?? CHRIS YOUNG/THE CANADIAN PRESS ?? Jose Bautista, right, hit his seventh home run in May and Devon Travis extended his hitting streak to 11 games in a win over Texas Saturday.
CHRIS YOUNG/THE CANADIAN PRESS Jose Bautista, right, hit his seventh home run in May and Devon Travis extended his hitting streak to 11 games in a win over Texas Saturday.

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