Blue Jays are Playing Winning Baseball, But Losses Still Hurt
The Toronto Blue Jays are playoff contenders, if not favorites for a 2021 wildcard spot. They sit two games over .500 and just took back-to-back series from the New York Yankees and Cleveland Indians. They have been without their star free agent outfielder and have an injury battered pitching staff.
The Blue Jays have overcome adversity and taken advantage of opportunity throughout the early days of 2021. They have faced the hardest schedule in Major League Baseball, and are the only team in the top-5 hardest schedules with a record over .500.
No playoff percentage, caveat or concession makes Sunday's loss to Cleveland any less crushing. If anything, the expectations make it worse.
Hours after cruising past Cleveland in game one of the Sunday double header and minutes after Steven Matz was rocking a one hitter into the sixth inning, Bradley Zimmer slid across home plate to hand the Blue Jays their fourth straight series finale loss.
“It’s hard to finish a big league game,” Marcus Semien said.
The 2020 Toronto Blue Jays were 5-6 in extra innings and lost 10 games by one run. Good teams — playoff teams — blow games, botch series sweeps, and beat themselves. You only know if you won enough of the close games or staved off enough comebacks after 162.
Each individual game factors in just as much as the next. A 10-1 win counts just as much as a 2-1 walkoff, and the losses all count for the same in the end. But when you're in a division with the surging Rays, surprising Red Sox, and an 'underperforming' Yankees team still on pace for 89 wins, every game is an opportunity.
The 2021 Toronto Blue Jays have won two extra inning games and are 4-5 in one-run matchups. The bullpen was an unexpected strength of the team in March and April, ranking atop the league for a month. While the offense was cold and starting pitching inconsistent, a strong bullpen manufactured wins for the Blue Jays, providing them with opportunities. It was inevitable the unit would cost them some, too.
Like Charlie Montoyo said postgame, the Blue Jays just took back-to-back series from two 2020 playoff teams and we're talking about one bad game — one bad inning.
But it's one bad inning that cost them one bad game that they will never get back. It's a game the Jays can and will soon forget, but Sunday's loss is somehow a reminder of how long a baseball season is.
The Blue Jays were never going to coast to the playoffs on the back of a shockingly good bullpen throwing four innings a game. If Toronto is still playing in October it will because they get healthy, find a rotation mix that can pitch deep into games, and clobber opponents with one of baseball's best offenses.
They've won games 1-0 and 10-8, but on the aggregate this Toronto Blue Jays team seems to be exactly what we thought it was.
They finally found an established five-man rotation, have an elite offense that health may only improve, and roster an injury plagued bullpen with the ability to both win and lose them games.
Two straight wins and they're on pace for 87 wins, two straight losses and the Blue Jays are .500. As expected, they're right there, right on the cusp, and right in the middle of a long and grinding playoff fight.
They're playing winning baseball and exactly where we thought they would be, which is exactly why the losses hurt — especially the ones they should've won.
