TORONTO - The Blue Jays can still hear the noise, and on Friday it was not kind.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. drew the loudest boos after a third-inning swing and miss on a looping Chris Bassitt curveball, then again after an ugly sequence that included a pickoff at first base and a slow walk back to the dugout with his bat in hand. Toronto was already buried by then, down 6-0 in a 7-4 loss to the Baltimore Orioles, and the afternoon had already gone sideways for nearly everyone in the home dugout.
That kind of outing is the problem for a team sitting at 73-75 and trying to claw its way into a postseason spot. Toronto can’t keep handing away games and expect October to show up anyway.
“We can’t lose our way into the playoffs,” Max Scherzer said. “We have to win our way into the playoffs, so we got to go out there and win ballgames.”
Scherzer got tagged hard in the second inning, when Baltimore strung together six straight hits. For a Toronto lineup that averages just four runs a game, the damage was enough to put the night on ice early. What should have been a chance to jump-start a crucial homestand instead put the Blue Jays’ biggest issues under a bright light.
The rotation is stretched thin, with basically Dylan Cease, José Soriano, Scherzer and two bullpen days. The offense, for much of the season, has been among the worst in baseball. That’s the math Toronto is living with right now.
And yet, somehow, the Jays are still hanging around.
They’re 21-15 since the trade deadline, one of the better records in the majors over that stretch, and that run has turned a season that looked dead in the water into something at least worth watching in September. But if they don’t close the deal over these final 14 games and get into October, that late surge will fade into the background fast.
The path is simple to say and hard to walk: survive with half a rotation, and hope someone steps up. Spencer Arrighetti is the most obvious candidate, though it may take more bullpen games than the club is comfortable using.
Toronto also needs offense from somewhere, even if it never comes from Guerrero finding his old form. The details matter less than the result.
Even after dropping two of three in Sacramento and getting hammered on Friday, the Jays are still only two games out of a playoff spot. The Cleveland Guardians, sitting third in the wild-card standings, beat the Minnesota Twins on Friday and pushed their lead up by a game.
For all the frustration in the stands, there were still moments when the crowd let itself believe. An inning after Guerrero’s strikeout, fans roared when he raced left and made a catch near the Orioles dugout. They were back at it in the ninth when he slapped an infield single that brought Alejandro Kirk to the plate with a tying run that never came home.
That’s the tension around this team now: a fanbase that wants badly to cheer, but has started to sour when the baseball turns ugly. The hope is still there, though. Every little flash from Guerrero or anyone else can flip the mood in a heartbeat.
“It’s tough to get, you know, to hear that and then to hear, you know, 40,000 (people) chanting your name,” manager John Schneider said. “So I think what you do in the moment is the most important thing.”
The only real lift came late, when the Jays scratched out a pair in the final inning to make the final score look a little less lopsided. Brett Bateman launched the first home run of his big-league career, a nice personal moment after he had hit only six minor-league homers before that. Rudy Martin Jr. also got the call he’d been waiting for, making his major-league debut 12 years after he was drafted.
Promoted Friday after the Jays designated Jesús Sánchez for assignment, Martin entered as a pinch runner for George Springer with two outs in the ninth. For the 2014 25th-round pick, it was the finish line to a long road that included 614 minor-league games, two seasons in independent ball, a brief stop in Australia and a handful of games in Mexico.
When Buffalo Bisons manager Casey Candaele called him into the office Thursday night, Martin figured his time had run out.
“I thought I was going home,” Martin said. “I did not think I was gonna be coming here.”
Those are nice stories, but Toronto is past the point where nice stories move the needle. First homers and long-awaited debuts are the kind of thing teams without anything on the line can enjoy. The Blue Jays still have something tangible in front of them.
They have 14 games left to squeeze a few more cheers out of the building. They have 14 games left to make a real push back to October. And after a day like Friday, every bad result makes that crowd a little quieter.
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