Monday, September 14

This edition of Blue Jays Beat was written by Mike Lupica.

We all know how close the Blue Jays were to winning the last World Series, as great a Series as there has ever been, from the Dodgers. They were two outs away in the top of the ninth of Game 7 at Rogers Centre before Miguel Rojas, as unlikely a Series hero as we’ve seen, tied the game with a home run.

The Blue Jays still managed to load the bases in the bottom of the frame, before Rojas made a tough play and better throw that got the Dodgers one out at the plate. Then, of course, Andy Pages made a crazy catch in the outfield and the game went to extra innings, where Will Smith hit the home run that finally won it for the Dodgers.

Even after all that, the Blue Jays thought they were set up just fine for this season. But then, just about all of their starting pitchers got hurt. So did Alejandro Kirk and Nathan Lukes and Addison Barger. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hasn’t hit for any power (three homers) and George Springer really hasn’t hit (.657 OPS). And that is how they came out of the weekend a little bit out of a Wild Card spot (1 1/2 games) in the American League and a whole lot behind the Yankees and the Rays in the AL East race.

But Kirk is back now, and Shane Bieber is expected back in a week or two. Barger is expected back not long after that. As tough as things have been for John Schneider’s team -- and as disappointing after the high hopes the Jays brought with them all the way from Game 7 -- there are still 90 games left, a couple of lifetimes in baseball. It is why it is nuts to count a team this good out, not with that much baseball left to be played on both sides of the border.

Not long ago, Schneider was asked what Don Mattingly -- his bench coach last season in Toronto, now the interim manager of the Phillies -- had brought to the Jays across last season’s run to Game 7.

“It was experience,” Schneider said.

The Blue Jays now have experience. Even with the heartbreak of last season’s ending, not only in Game 7, but also after coming home to Toronto ahead three games to two, Schneider’s team has been through something now -- and knows that just in the past decade or so, teams that lost tough World Series have come back to win the very next year. The Royals, who had the tying run on third base in the ninth inning of Game 7 against the Giants in 2014, came back and beat the Mets in 2015. And the Astros, who lost a bare-knuckle six-game series against the Braves in 2021, came right back in 2022 to win it all.

More than anything, though, the Blue Jays need Vlad -- who sat out Saturday and Sunday against the Yankees with back tightness -- to turn back into the fearsome slugger we’ve come to expect if they are going to make a second-half run, even with the injuries they’ve seen thus far to five different starting pitchers. It reminds you of something Bob Lemon said back in 1978, when he was explaining what he’d done as Yankees manager after taking over for Billy Martin and his team was coming all the way back from 14 1/2 games behind the Red Sox to finally force a one-game playoff for the AL East with the Sox, a game that will always be known as "The Bucky Dent Game.'

“I just tried to get the pitching worked out,” Lem said one day in late September, “and hoped Reggie [Jackson] would hit.”

This is how Schneider has put it, addressing the injuries he and the Blue Jays have seen:

“You just have to push on through. … It has to be the next man up, it has to continue to do what you’re supposed to do and move on to the next day. I don’t want the ‘woe is me.’”

And Schneider added this:

“I said it a couple of days ago, it’s ‘what can we do now?’”

Have the Blue Jays struggled? They sure have. But just about everybody in the American League except for the Yankees and the Rays have struggled, too. It is why when you look at the Wild Card standings coming out of this weekend, you see the Blue Jays right there with teams like the White Sox and Athletics and Rangers. It is easy to see how the Jays, when even close to being at full strength, could make a big move up this summer in what really has been a down season in their league.

Guerrero has just three home runs and 27 RBIs. Springer had a couple of hits on Sunday, but came away from an 8-3 loss with just six homers and 16 RBIs. Kirk came back on Friday night after missing 62 games with a fractured thumb, went 3-for-3 with two RBIs and the Jays won. But after that, it was the Yankees winning the last two games of the series with ninth-inning home runs -- first from Paul Goldschmidt, then from Ben Rice and José Caballero on Sunday.

The Jays remain where they are in the Wild Card scrum. Their record stands at 34-38. So that’s the count right now. Just not down for the count. Way too early for that.

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