Blue Jays Swept in Boston, Drop Fifth-Straight Game

The month of May has not been kind to the Toronto Blue Jays. After starting the year with a stellar 18-9 record and operating at a .667 pace, the wheels have seemingly fallen off as the calendar has flipped from April to May.

Coming off an uncharacteristic 10-8 loss in the final game of a three-spot against Seattle, Toronto hit the road for a four-game test against division rival Boston. Having yet to see the Red Sox this season, the Jays struggled to find consistency on both the mound and in the batter’s box.

Toronto left Boston with an 18-14 record and a lot more questions than answers as the club was handed its first sweep of the season.

The Blue Jays did manage to hit a few long balls in the four-game series – two courtesy of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. – while racking up 19 total runs, but it wasn’t enough to best the rolling Red Sox.

Toronto’s five-straight losses have seen the team put up 8, 5, 6, 3 and 5 runs, respectively – which would have given the team wins in each of its previous five games. But that’s not the way baseball works.

Despite the offence having avoided hitting a complete stalemate, the starting pitching was the largest cause for concern over the weekday series.

Having started the season rather dreadful, the Jays’ five-man rotation seemingly rebounded for a two-week stretch in mid-late April. But this most recent time through the order has been eerily familiar to the team’s early-season struggles.

Alek Manoah, the team’s expected ‘ace’, now owns a 4.71 ERA and has entered the sixth inning of a game just two times in his seven appearances this season. On Wednesday, he threw just three strikeouts. It has been anything but the expected results following his stellar 2022 campaign.

“We have a really good veteran presence in that clubhouse,“ Manoah said of his team. “We’re not going to let this dictate the rest of our year. We know the way we’ve played the last couple days hasn’t been who we are.”

Things didn’t get any easier for Kevin Gausman on Thursday – who has been the team’s top pitcher thus far. He lasted just 3.1 innings and gave up eight earned runs on 10 hits along the way.

“It’s tough to line things up properly,” clubhouse manager John Schneider said. “A week ago, we were talking about how good our starters were and how deep they were going into games. It will ebb and flow like that and it will get back to normal.”

Gausman entered the game with a 2.33 ERA and an American League-leading 9.0 strikeout-to-walk ratio. That changed dramatically as the game wore on. As of Friday, Gausman’s ERA is listed as 3.86.

“The key to their success was to put the ball in play, extending at-bats… doing a good job of laying off good pitches, and forcing me to get into the strike zone,” Gausman said post-game. “On my part, just unacceptable.”

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But Schneider, who is in his first full year of managing, is maintaining his hopefulness as the team looks to bounce back following its worst stretch of the season.

“When you’re in a little bit of a funk, you grip the bat a little tighter or the ball a little tighter,” Schneider added. “You want to make sure it stops, and that’s the wrong way to go about it. I have all of the trust in the world in these guys, both on the mound and defensively. Right now, it’s just time to stop it right here and get out of it.”