Although they are in the positive after fifty games, the Toronto Blue Jays do not do better than the fifth and last place in the Eastern Division of the American League of Baseball. In this overpowered group, each small error of course is expensive.
Taking advantage of a day off on Monday after a 3-0 victory over the Minnesota Twins the day before, the Toronto club is 28-25. Ahead of him, the Tampa Bay Rays (39-16), Baltimore Orioles (34-19), New York Yankees (32-23) and Boston Red Sox (28-25) were all doing better than them before the duels of the day.
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In fact, the Jays would be in the top three in every other major league division. Despite this disappointing point of view, it is not very difficult to put your finger on the problem. The calendar (17 games in as many days) and the troubles on the mound had a definite impact on the most recent sequence.
“Obviously we haven’t won series honors in a while, but it shows we can do it and we have to stay confident,” Daulton Varsho told Sportsnet on Sunday night after the Jays had won two of their three games against the Twins.
“It’s baseball,” continued the outfielder. You are always going to experience this kind of bad streak once a year. For us, it was now. Here’s hoping we can build some momentum and end the year strong. There’s still a lot of baseball left.”
What about launchers?
At the start of the year, Toronto certainly had high regard for pitcher Alek Manoah (1-5), who was a Cy-Young Trophy finalist last year. After 11 starts, however, the American is the big disappointment of the campaign so far. His stats, like his 5.53 ERA, can improve, but has the damage already been done?
Jose Berrios is the one who gave hope to the Blue Jays by starting Sunday’s shutout. The Puerto Rican gunner hasn’t given his former team a run in five and two-thirds innings. There is no doubt that it comes to put a balm on a catastrophic start to the season.
“He just had to get back to the level he’s maintained for his entire career,” manager John Schneider said. It kind of got away from him last year, but he’s been that kind of pitcher for six or seven years now.”
Not illegal
In an episode of the Jomboy Media podcast airing Monday, Jays pitcher Chris Bassitt addressed the scandal surrounding Aaron Judge’s possible signal theft. The frustration surrounding this story about two weeks ago represents the season so far.
“They knew we were making signals and they were relaying them,” Bassitt said of the Yankees. Is it illegal? No, it’s a bit of a gray area…”
The 34-year-old is also not sorry for the reaction of Judge, whose gaze shifted to his bench during an at-bat had given many observers a flea in the ear. According to him, number 99 lied on the pretext of suspicious activity by his teammates and that’s fine as it is.
“What do you want him to say? Say, “Hey, all of their throwers do signals, so I’m going to explain to them how they do them.” I think he made up a story to say, “I won’t let them know that I know they’re signaling. Why would I do that?”
The Blue Jays will try to put that controversy and their recent setbacks aside when they host the Milwaukee Brewers for a three-game series on Tuesday.