AL East Woes Continue as the Red Sox Sweep the Jays
Dan Shulman and Buck Martinez were having a conversation during the broadcast of the first game of the Red Sox series. They were speculating why fans on social media didn't seem that enthused about the Blue Jays this year, and had generalized anxiety about the state of the team at the halfway point.
SportsNet put up a graphic with stats saying how good the Jays have been in June the record is excellent.
In the last week, they dominated the Bay area when they took two of three from the Oakland Athletics and then took two of three from the San Francisco Giants. They pitched well and they hit well and it all seemed fine.
And then the Red Sox come to the Rogers Centre for the Canada Day long weekend, and in what has been the pattern for the rest of the season, the Jays completely collapse when it comes to playing their own division. And I realized that this is why there is so much anxiety and concern.
The Red Sox are massively underperforming and had come into that series having a serious crisis. But then the Jays rolled over and acted as a confidence booster. So the fan base can't really get excited about this team because they're never going to advance unless they figure out how to beat teams in their own division. That is where the rivalries are, that is how you advance in the standings directly. The Blue Jays fans are not really going to care if the Jays beat San Francisco all the time but they will be excited if they roll into Yankee Stadium and have a really great series or if they roll into Fenway Park and have a really great series.
And this team doesn't seem able to do that. They play like a playoff team against the rest of the league and then they do this.
It’s hard to get excited.
Also worrying is Jordan Romano's tendency to randomly give up solo home runs in the 9th inning and blow saves for no particular reason. It’s not something to lose sleep over but when it's the third game when you're about to get swept and then your closer gives up a go-ahead dinger. This is compounded when your offence isn't able to muster anything against a relief pitcher who has an ERA over five. That's just not getting the job done and it's frustrating as hell to watch.
The Blue Jays are going to have to do some serious soul-searching to figure out what they can do to start getting some wins against their own division.
A couple of weeks ago the discourse on social media about the All-Star Game was all about how Canadians were flooding the voting and putting Vlad Junior and Bo Bichette in starting positions for the All-Star team and how egregious just that was.
This was all quite amusing — I didn't think that meant anything at all other than an indication of how many fans the Blue Jays have. There is a general assumption that the Blue Jays are a small market team, but that isn’t reality.
But enough concern was drummed up on Twitter that both Guerrero and Bichette lost their starting spots. They both made the All-Star team, as did Merrifield and Gausman.
I will say that Bo Bichette absolutely has absolutely performed well enough to be a starter, and his place was earned and not a reflection of a Canadian bias.