'ENOUGH IS ENOUGH': Jays' run of futility continues after being swept by O's

Baltimore Orioles second baseman Adam Fraizier throws to first base for a double play after forcing out Toronto Blue Jays centre fielder Kevin Kiermaier in the fourth inning at Rogers Centre in Toronto, May 21, 2023. Photo by Dan Hamilton /USA TODAY Sports

When this rather ominous stretch of 17 games in 17 days began at the start of a 10-game homestand, the Blue Jays were in bring-it-on mode.

The opposition may be tough to beat, they said, but so are we.

Well, the struggling team had some of that bravado punched out of them over a gruelling and often gruesome stretch of games that mercifully came to an end Sunday afternoon at the Rogers Centre.

Mercifully because the ugliness also had a heaping of agony in an extra-innings loss as the Jays fell 8-3 to the Baltimore Orioles.

To make it worse, the Orioles sealed it with a bat-around 11th in which they scored five runs. That unsightly collapse at the end of a maddening week of bad baseball around these parts brought out the boo-birds from those remaining from a sellout crowd of 41,643.

How low can they go? We’re about to find out.

“It’s at the point where enough is enough,” Jays manager John Schneider said before the team departed for St. Petersburg, Fla. where they will face the Tampa Bay Rays in a four-game series beginning on Monday.

“You’re waiting for it to turn and I know it will. But in order to get there, guys are going to have to continue to work their asses off and not just expect it.”

Not only has Schneider’s team lost four in a row and six of their last seven, the Jays have entrenched themselves in the basement of the AL East. At the conclusion of Sunday’s game, they were also 2 1/2 games out of an AL wild card spot and a shoddy 5-12 against division opponents.

The latest loss plummeted them to a record of 25-22 — two games worse than they were at the same point last season. The Orioles, meanwhile, are now 31-16 and six games ahead of the Jays, who trail the first-place Rays by 8 1/2.The frustration for a team that exited spring training convinced it had the goods to challenge for the division title has to be at a high.

“Obviously we’re grinding right now and the last two series haven’t been very sharp for us,” said Jays starter Kevin Gausman, who tossed eight innings and allowed two runs, but could file a successful lawsuit for lack of run support. “Lack of timely hits. We’re getting guys in scoring position, not shutting the door when we need to.

“It’s a mixture of a lot of things.”

Those things — big and small — have perhaps taken a body blow to the Jays’ confidence as they continue to press while trying to force things to happen.

“We’re going through a bit of a bad stretch, but there’s still a lot of games to play,” outfielder Daulton Varsho said. “So you can’t take a long stretch and make it feel even longer. Just keep your head up and keep grinding.

“It was an emotional week. In the division, you always want to win. At the same time, it’s a learning experience.”

For all of that bold talk, opponents are applying the same attitude when they face the Jays, the Orioles being the latest.

The visitors talked about Sunday being a possible statement game and the up-and-coming team that’s off to a blistering start continued that momentum by sweeping the Jays in their own stadium for the first time since 2005.

The Orioles, who have won nine of their last 12 including the three here, took advantage of a Jays offence unable to move batters along. On Sunday, Toronto scattered 13 hits, but managed just one run in an excruciating display of ineptitude on the bases.

Countering the hits were a dozen strikeouts, which further amplified the struggles from Toronto hitters, who were a mere 3-for-16 with runners in scoring position on Sunday.

It’s just a week in a long season, of course, but the warning bells continue to ring for a team that essentially finds itself in the middle of the pack in the AL.

A homestand that started with a three-game sweep of the Braves ended with a substandard 4-6 mark.

Furthermore, the much-touted attention to detail that the Jays promised during spring training continued to find lapses. From Cavan Biggio easily stealing a base only to slide through it and get tagged out, to Kevin Kiermaier dropping a fly ball for an error and, perhaps most crucially, swift and speedy Whit Merrifield getting picked off at first in the 10th inning when he represented the winning run.

So how do they snap out of it? Surely there is an urgency to reverse the current form and to do so quickly.

“It’s a tough grind, but (Jays players) are handling it extremely well,” Schneider said. “It’s a tough grind, but they’re handling it as well as they can.

“Right now, when it snowballs like this, you want to do a little too much, but you can’t. You’ve got to reel it in. And when it does (turn around), as (crappy) as it is right now, it will be the exact opposite.”

WIZARD OF GAUS

The Jays received yet another stellar outing from Gausman and another game with minimal run support.

The right-hander was able to exit with a 2-2 tie after scattering six hits and holding the pesky Orioles mostly at bay. With a weary bullpen, he needed 115 pitches to do it, though, the most thrown by a Toronto pitcher since Marcus Stroman in 2017. It was also the most pitches Gausman has thrown in a game since 2017.

With an overworked bullpen, that opened the door for Nate Pearson to come out and pitch the ninth, an assignment he’s earned with some strong work over the last couple of weeks.

OFFENCE OR OFFENSIVE?

The Jays struggles at the plate continued and in rather unsightly fashion.

Schneider has urged his hitters to press less while at the plate, but to no avail. And the frustration continued to mount.

The Jays had runners in scoring position in five of the first six innings and couldn’t punch one of them across. Most damning was the sixth inning with the bases loaded, down a run and one out, only to see Kiermaier ground out into a double play.

The Jays had counted nine hits by that point, so it wasn’t as if the bats were silent. The clutch hit chip? Gone missing, it seems.

The stretch mercifully ended in the seventh inning on a Matt Chapman sacrifice fly to score George Springer and tie it 2-2. When Merrifield struck out to end the inning, that was that, however.

GAME ON

The Jays, who suffered their third series sweep of the season, slipped to a 4-4 record in extra-innings games and 13-9 at the Rogers Centre … Tip of the old ballcap to Nathan Lukes, whose long journey to the major leagues hit a high point in the fourth inning when the Blue Jays outfielder singled for the first base hit in the bigs … Chapman shook off some of the May struggles over the weekend with a Sunday homer — a 420-foot bomb in the second inning, at that. Chapman also drove in the tying run with a sacrifice fly in the seventh to temporarily end the runners-in-scoring-position debacle.