Hopeful Jays could be sellers when all-star breaking point hits

This has been a most bizarre first half of the season for the American League East.

How odd is it that the Orioles — a team allowing five runs or more in 21 of the past 22 games — and the Blue Jays — a team that has lost all nine of its games with a chance to reach the .500 mark — are both paused at a crossroads, deciding whether they should become sellers at the trade deadline or roll the dice and continue to compete.

The problem for the Jays and O’s is that there are six other AL teams seemingly poking around in the same lifeboat of indecision. Bunched within four games of the second wild-card spot as the sea- son nears the halfway mark are the Indians, Rays, Rangers, Angels, Royals, Mariners, O’s and Jays. Within that eight-team grouping since May 31, the Jays have been merely treading water. Day-by-day, the schedule gets shorter, creating more mathematical difficulties.

Over the past four weeks, the Jays had their best chance to insert themselves into the playoff conversation, but continued to back off as the starting rotation proved hurt and inconsistent.

They have also failed constantly to cash in runners from scoring position.

With the softer part of the schedule out of the way, the Jays will now take on the O’s (for three, starting Tuesday night), Red Sox (three), Yankees (three) and the red-hot Astros (four).

“These next 13 games (are key) there’s no doubt, going into the allstar break,” manager John Gibbons said. “We haven’t seen much of Boston. We haven’t seen Houston at all. We know those other teams a little bit. It will be a good test. We’ll have a pretty good read, I would think.”

But the way the Jays have been playing in June, with a frustrating inability to launch up and over the .500 barrier, the odds are greater that they will stumble rather than pull themselves up by the bootstraps and take off on a much-needed win streak that must be something like nine of 13.

For optimists in the group, however, there remain subtle indicators that a turnaround may be around the corner. The starting rotation could be back to the original five within two weeks. Aaron Sanchez, on the 10-day disabled list for the third time with a finger issue on his right hand, is slated to make two rehab starts and then pitch one of the games against the Astros on the July 7-9 weekend.

As for the rest of the original five Gibbons believed was top five in baseball at spring training: J.A. Happ has been pitching like last year’s 20-win self; Francisco Liriano is healthy again; Marcus Stroman, if he regains consistency, can be dominant; and Marco Estrada just went seven innings following a headscratching stretch, seemingly the horsehide equivalent of rock-paper-scissors instead of fastball-changeup-curveball.

At times, it seemed hitters were more than simply guessing.

If those five starter dudes can stay healthy like they did a year ago, then Joe Biagini could return to a setup role out of the bullpen, joining Joe Smith — who is currently on the DL, likely because he was needed so often in the first two months. Remaining important to the ’pen would be Ryan Tepera and Danny Barnes, with lefties Aaron Loup and Jeff Beliveau, or even J.P. Howell should he resurface.

For those same optimists there is also the success of a recent change in the batting order to create more offence. Kevin Pillar, who has become a solid major-league player, was never going to be a final solution in the leadoff spot after he started swinging too often at pitches outside the strike zone again.

So now it’s Jose Bautista at leadoff, with his five-game OPS of 1.051 in that role. He is followed in the twohole by Russ Martin, who has five hits and 10 walks in his last seven games. Another positive: he sees a lot of pitches. After Martin, it’s Josh Donaldson, Justin Smoak and Kendrys Morales. They must begin to produce consistently against all pitching.

Bautista was asked about the importance of the next three series for the Jays headed into the break.

“It’s not going to be do-or-die type baseball, but it’ll definitely be a good stretch of games where we could make up some good ground,” Bautista told the Star as the Jays prepared to depart Kansas City on Sunday.

“We’ve been playing good. We just need to minimize the mistakes. Just figure out a way each day to claw ourselves into the lead of the game and hopefully finish it off. We just need to keep doing what we’re doing.”

But the major issue for their playoff hopes, despite Bautista’s belief that the team has been performing well, is that each and every week there are fewer and fewer games left on the schedule. Time is slipping away even faster than hope.

“There’s been ups and downs, but after a tough first month I think our record has been pretty good,” he continued on the Jays’ 30-22 record since April 29. “We’ve had to battle a lot of things — guys going down, stuff like that. We’ve just got to get in a groove where we’re all playing together and everybody’s doing what they’re capable of doing and the machine is running on all cylinders. Hopefully we get to do that here, especially down this stretch.”

If they have a bad fortnight over the next 13 games and the front office suddenly believes they are not contenders in 2017, it will all be over at that point — with some veterans dealt to teams that do believe.