Softer schedule has Blue Jays playing tough — the way it should be

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This article was published 29/06/2021 (1603 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The view from Deep Left Field on Tuesday’s 9-3 Blue Jays win over Seattle in Buffalo:

The Blue Jays got through the first 67 games of the season at 33-34, having dealt with the toughest schedule in the major leagues to that point.

Then, all of a sudden, the schedule got soft and the Jays have been fattening up.

The feast continued with a win over their expansion cousins from Seattle on Tuesday, as Bo Bichette and Marcus Semien belted late-game three-run homers to bust things open after the Mariners finally got to Robbie Ray in the sixth inning.

After being swept by the Yankees in Buffalo, the Blue Jays had lost four in a row and eight of eleven, and they went to Baltimore and dropped the opener of a three-game series. But since that loss at Camden Yards the Jays have won eight out of their last nine games, beating up on the Orioles and Marlins and now the Mariners.

Going from the most difficult schedule to the easiest has looked pretty good on the Blue Jays and they now have the advantage of having one of the lightest schedules in the game for the rest of the year, with 30 games, or 35% of their season, remaining against teams that are currently at least 10 games under .500.

It’s been showing.

• In these last nine games the Blue Jays have outscored their opposition 62-28, scoring an average of seven runs per game.

• Against lesser competition, the bullpen has rebounded to post a sparkling 3.10 ERA over that span with one meltdown — but only one.

This is what this team was supposed to do, and it took them getting through that miserable trudge where it felt like they were facing nothing but playoff teams every night for a couple of months while dealing with major injuries to the relief corps and doing it without George Springer.

Springer is healthy now and following an 0-for-4 in his return to action he’s reached base safely in every game since, with four hits and five walks in five outings for a .409 on-base percentage.

Tuesday morning’s trade to add side-arming righty Adam Cimber to the improving bullpen provides immediate help and whenever Corey Dickerson is ready to come off the injured list, the Blue Jays will have the left-handed power bat they’d hoped Rowdy Tellez would give them.

Will this boost against the bottom-feeders translate to success when the Blue Jays get back to playing with the big boys again? We’ll find out soon – the Tampa Bay Rays are coming to Buffalo this weekend.

It works: Bichette was front-and-centre in Tuesday night’s win over the Mariners, breaking a brief 3-3 tie with a mammoth three-run blast in the bottom of the sixth.

The 23-year-old took a 1-0 slider and pounded it 406 feet into the Western New York night, a no-doubter to Deep Left Field.

We wrote in this space how, while Bichette is among the best at the game in battling through at-bats once he gets to two strikes, he has been so much a better hitter when he doesn’t allow the count to get that deep, and the proof was in the pudding Tuesday night.

Bichette came to the plate five times and only let the count get to two strikes once, in his second-inning fly out to right.

He had two hits in the other four at-bats, grounding a single to right to go with the three-run blast.

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Limiting the damage: Starter Robbie Ray has been prone to the home run ball this season, the game-tying sixth-inning home run by Ty France was the 19th big fly he’d allowed in his 86 2/3 innings.

It was, however, the first three-run homer the lefty had given up all season and the first that left the yard with more than one runner on base.

Because Ray has cut down on his walks so dramatically, 14 of the 19 home runs he has allowed have been solo shots, and despite having coughed up the long ball so often his ERA sits at a tidy 3.43 through 15 starts – his best since his all-star season of 2017.

Tune into Mike Wilner’s weekly Blue Jays podcast, Deep Left Field, wherever you get your podcasts.

Mike Wilner is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star and the host of the baseball podcast Deep Left Field. Follow him on Twitter: @wilnerness