Blue Jays Fans Made The Right Call Not Attending This Texas Series
TORONTO — If there’s a silver lining right now, it’s that the Blue Jays are playing their most demoralizing baseball in front of the smallest home crowds of the year. Fewer eyes to bear witness.
The September stretch was supposed to generate non-stop excitement, but instead, the Blue Jays set a season-low in attendance Monday with 23,451. The atmosphere didn’t get any better Wednesday, when the Rangers smashed the Blue Jays 10-0 in front of another meager crowd of 25,495, the third-weakest showing of the year.
Again, Toronto fell behind. Starter Yusei Kikuchi raced out to a good start, then found himself thrashed in the fourth. Jonah Heim knocked in a runner with a single before Nate Lowe unloaded the big bomb, a three-run blast off the batter’s eye, to kill the vibe. There was but a whimper from the hollow crowd, already desensitized from two previous batterings.
Rogers Centre has been a house of horrors this week. This series versus Texas was hyped up more than any other matchup all year, yet the team has floundered through three games. In the face of massive playoff implications, the offense went dormant while the pitching allowed a wealth of no-doubt dingers.
Perhaps all the would-be Blue Jays fans knew what was coming when they snubbed a trip to The Dome in favor of Buffalo Bills Monday Night Football, an evening at the Toronto Film Festival, or whatever other fall activity took precedence.
There were faint cheers here and there during Wednesday’s spanking, but not without some sort of devastation before or after. Kikuchi allowed an atomic two-run home run to Robbie Grossman in the fifth. Boo. Then George Springer made a swell running grab at the wall in right field, prompting a brief woo from the crowd. Then the flatlining continued, and there were no blips of life either, only jam-shots and pop-ups.
It’s fair to wonder whether the lack of energy from this Blue Jays series (or the season, maybe?) has permeated its fanbase. Could Jays fans have realized this club simply isn’t worth the price of admission? Or is that just a theory for the angry bunch on Twitter who spam comments about John Schneider’s ineptitude? Probably. But it’s sure hard to argue things are looking more promising after three decisive losses to Texas.
And now Toronto is left in the dust. The Blue Jays have lost the season series to the Rangers and Mariners, boxing them out of any playoff tiebreaker advantage. Toronto has the season edge over the Astros, though that’s unlikely to matter. Now the Jays must be one full game better than the fourth-best wild-card team, or they can pack it in.
There’s still some runway left, but the Blue Jays clearly botched an opportunity this week. They had an easier path to the postseason right in front of them, ripe for the taking. But, as they have all season, the Jays chose the hard way through.
