Are there any beacons of Blue Jays hope after early season hitting woes?

Article content

In the aftermath of the latest miserable Blue Jays loss, manager John Schneider found himself reaching for an answer, just as most of his players are struggling to come up with a meaningful hit.

“It takes one game to get out of it, really,” was Schneider’s beacon of hope when speaking to reporters in Houston following Wednesday’s 3-1 loss to the Astros.

And, really, what else would you expect the surely flabbergasted manager to say following his team’s season-high fifth consecutive loss and a three-game sweep at the hands of the Astros in which they managed two runs and just nine hits?

I suppose the Jays can take that meek rallying point into Thursday’s off day in New York as they muster up some motivation for a three-game weekend series against the Yankees, set to begin Friday in the Bronx.

But something has to start booming with the bats — and soon.

In this edition of 3 Up, 3 Down we look deeper at the Jays predicament, one in which their record has slipped to 12-13, the first time they’ve been below .500 since Game 3.

DOWN

How about down and out with the excuse-making that the reason the Jays are struggling offensively is because they’ve faced a murderer’s row of starting pitching over the past week?

Jays starter Chris Bassitt was the first with the Jays to articulate it publicly in Houston, suggesting all will be right when the Jays start facing some “lower-level pitching.”

Ouch.

While it’s true that that Jays have faced some elite arms of late — the Astros’ Hunter Brown on Tuesday was particularly filthy — this just in: There are good pitchers all around baseball. Oh and Jays hitters hadn’t exactly been lighting it up on offence before the current stretch of tough pitching.

No, the solution for some success doesn’t lie with who they are facing, but what Jays hitters are doing at the plate, a crisis now exacerbated by pressing to snap out of it.

If you buy that Bassitt and Kevin Gausman are among the better starters in the league — and you should — remember that the Astros found a way to get to both in wins this week.

UP

If we’ve heard Schneider say it once, we’ve heard him say it a dozen times: The offence eventually will heat up and with it the home runs will come.

We’re willing to take the manager at his word — in part because it’s impossible to imagine a team continuing to perform this poorly.

But here’s the worry if you are the Jays or a fan of the team: What if, when that mythical big-hitting moment arrives, the Jays still just aren’t good enough offensively? Realistically, even when this team is performing at its best, it will not be a home-run-hitting juggernaut.

The bottom half of the Jays order is mostly built on contact hitters with some speed, the type of hitters that can be both useful and productive, but not likely to regularly change a game with one swing of the bat.

Acknowledging it’s only April, so there’s some wait and see here, what if the ceiling of the offence is similar to what it was in 2024?

DOWN

We’ll let some of the numbers speak for themselves here.

Anthony Santander has one home run, a .189 batting average and is hitless in his past 17 at-bats. Time is running out on the “he’s a slow-starter” narrative.

Andres Gimenez leads the team with three home runs but hasn’t hit one this month. After an encouraging start at the plate, his average has dipped to .194.

Vlad Guerrero Jr.’s .277 average shows he’s doing some good things at the plate, though his one home run through 25 games simply isn’t enough. He’s the one bat that can carry an offence and it needs to happen soon.

The Jays have the second-fewest home runs in the majors and have been out-homered 33-13 by opponents.

And as a final postscript to the Houston series in which the Jays were outscored 15-2 and had a .100 batting average: The nine hits they managed matches a franchise low over a three-game series.

UP

Somehow the Jays have reached the final weekend of April at least in the shadow of .500, even though the meek efforts through the current losing streak make it feel much worse.

Would a .500 April (and those five games in March) be considered a success for this team?

Depends on your point of view, I guess, but probably. It is a fact that the array of opponents were always going to provide a stout challenge in the early going and we’ve seen that over the past week.

Eventually the matchups, on paper anyway, will stack up less formidably. And if there are signs of life from the offence at any point, at least the Jays will have the opportunity to compete in an American League that isn’t exactly on fire yet.

DOWN

A four-man rotation in April? Not good.

Yes, the Jays have off-days on Thursday and again next Monday to help navigate the growing concern of Max Scherzer’s lengthening absence. But reducing the rotation to four men this early in the season smacks of perilous desperation.

And yes, Schneider has indicated that the measure is a temporary, one-time-through-the-order situation. While that’s well and good, it doesn’t disguise the team’s alarming lack of depth and that there isn’t an arm they felt comfortable getting anywhere near the mound at Yankee Stadium for a start this weekend.

UP

The hockey playoffs bring the possibility to take some of the heat off of the Jays with the deeper the Maple Leafs go into May and potentially beyond, providing a welcome distraction for fans.

Certainly, the Jays will be the second story on most sports media outlets should Craig Berube’s squad provide a nice diversion for John Schneider’s.

For games in Houston, anyway, the post-game analysis on Sportsnet has been decidedly brief.