The Blue Jays Are Off To A 1-7 Start For The First Time In Franchise History
After being dismissed from the ALCS in five games last October by the Cleveland Indians, and losing a middle of the order bat in Edwin Encarnacion to that very same team, the Toronto Blue Jays are off to a 1-7 start for the first time in franchise history here in 2017. For those wondering, only three teams in the history of Major League Baseball have made the postseason after starting out their season 1-7. Not great.
Now, does that mean that the Blue Jays are fucked and that there’s no way they’re going to rebound from this and make it to the postseason this year? Of course not. You have to take a look at the landscape of the American League East, and each team has their flaws. Not only that, but despite being 1-7, they’re only 4.5 games back of first place, which is not an insurmountable lead by any means. Oh, and then there’s that little detail about there being a hundred and fifty-four fucking games remaining on the schedule. That helps a lot.
However, despite how early it is, that doesn’t mean that everything’s all good up there in Toronto and we can just use the, “Don’t worry, it’s early” defense because we’re in the second week of April. Yeah, it’s early, but you’ve gotta get your shit together before you dig yourself too deep of a hole. Coming into today, the Blue Jays are dead last in the majors in batting average (.190), and dead last in OPS (.549).
You’ve got Josh Donaldson hitting .308 with a 1.014 OPS, but that’s really been it. Through the first eight games, Troy Tulowitzki, Jose Bautista and Russell Martin are hitting a combined .127 with a .480 OPS. That’s brutal. And as highly touted as the Blue Jays rotation has been, they’re off to a shaky start, too, 23rd in the MLB in ERA (4.57), and 20th in WHIP (1.32). On top of that, their bullpen has also blown a couple saves, but Roberto Osuna is back from the disabled list so that should improve pretty quickly.
I don’t think anybody expects this to continue for very long. Aaron Sanchez and Marcus Stroman have been great through this stretch (1.61 ERA), and we’re not going to see JA Happ, Marco Estrada and Francisco Liriano carry a combined 7.43 ERA the rest of the way. They’ll click at some point, but they might wanna get on that sooner rather than later.