After the Blue Jays scored just two runs across back-to-back losses to the Kansas City Royals at home earlier this week, manager John Schneider reminded everyone that it’s early.
“It’s going to come,” Schneider said. “It’s May 1st. It will come. We will be better. That’s that’s what I can say to (fans) & I would hope our fans trust that we have really good players (who) understand they’re not performing up to their expectations…We’re not anywhere near where we can be… We know we need to be better… When it does click, I think you’re gonna see a complete brand of baseball. Right now it hasn’t worked consistently. But again, it will be better.”
The message was quite different ahead of Toronto’s series opener against the Washington Nationals on Friday.
“The time is now,” Schneider told the media on Friday afternoon. “The time is not, ‘It’s going to happen.’ The time is now. What are we going to do to do it?”
The Blue Jays scored three runs in the second inning and had struggling starter Patrick Corbin on the ropes. He wound up settling down and made it through six innings with just three earned runs for his first quality start of the season. The Nationals then scored eight runs in the seventh and eighth innings off of Toronto’s bullpen and cruised to a 9-3 victory.
The loss was Toronto’s third in a row and eighth in their last ten games. The Blue Jays now own a 15-18 record on the season and are ahead of only three teams in the American League standings.
“If there’s a time to make adjustments, that’s on me,” Schneider said. “Not waiting around for it to happen is very, very important. I think we fell into that last year a little bit with the guys that are still on this team and some guys who aren’t here this year, saying, ‘It’s going to happen, it’s going to happen.’ Well, it needs to happen. As a staff, there’s things we’re doing differently. We wouldn’t be doing our job if we’re just saying it’s going to happen.”
Though the team’s defence and pitching let them down on Friday, the story around the Blue Jays is still undoubtedly the team’s lack of offence. After scoring three runs off of Patrick Corbin, who came into the start with a 6.82 ERA on the season, the Blue Jays rank 28th in baseball with 3.45 runs per game.
All of their runs on Friday came in the second inning. Danny Jansen led off the frame with a walk, Davis Schneider moved him to third with a double, and Daulton Varsho drove in two with a double of his own. After Ernier Clement bunted Varsho to third, George Springer brought him home with a sacrifice fly.
That sac fly from Springer was the only damage Toronto’s top-three batters managed against the Nationals. Springer, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Bo Bichette combined to go 1-for-12 in the game, with the one hit coming in the form of a Guerrero Jr. double in the sixth inning. Bichette came up next and lined out.
What’s next from the Blue Jays and their struggling offence? Ultimately, the players on the team need to hit better, but, given Schneider’s comments, we might see a different lineup when the team takes the field in Washington on Saturday afternoon.
Springer has a .285 on-base percentage and should be moved out of the leadoff spot for somebody like Justin Turner (.372 OBP), Davis Schneider (.346 OBP), or Cavan Biggio (.341 OBP). Guerrero Jr. and Bichette, who own on-base plus slugging numbers of .685 and .538 respectively, should also likely be moved down the lineup in favour of more productive hitters until they work out of their slumps.
