Five things to watch as Blue Jays enter middle third of season

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As his team was grinding through the first five dates of a six-game road trip that wasn’t exactly a treat to be participating in, Blue Jays manager John Schneider suggested a five-game sample size wasn’t worthy of analysis.

And with 30 and change of those segments in a season, he’s not wrong.

“If we’re looking at 55 games, yeah for sure,” Schneider said in Texas, suggesting a more realistic time frame to begin your grading.

So let’s make it 56, the point in the sprawling MLB schedule that the Jays arrived at with what felt like an outlier of a 12-0 shellacking of the Athletics at the Rogers Centre on Thursday night.

As a loose opener  for what in many ways is the critical middle third of the season, it was an impressive launching point. That said, after what could best be described as an uneven first 55, Schneider is a realist regarding what needs to happen for his team.

“You definitely want to put your best foot forward right here for the next month, really and see (where you are),” Schneider said on Thursday, prior to his team moving to 28-28 and hitting the .500 mark for what felt like the umpteenth time this season. “I know everyone kind of looks at the (trade) deadline as a go or no. You’ve got to play pretty well right now.”

In other words, the manager is well aware of the stakes in what sure feels like a critical point of the campaign, even if there are a whopping 106 games remaining.

But the second 55 concludes the day after the July 30 MLB trade deadline so Schneider, and presumably his players, are well aware of what’s at stake over the next two months. If the team remains in touch with the post season, it’s a “go” for general manager Ross Atkins to shop. If they drift towards the basement, it’s likely a hard “no” and that means a selloff and major retooling of the core.

In evaluating the first third, Schneider steadfastly maintains that the offence has potential while acknowledging the flaws.

“The fact that we’re getting guys on is good, and I feel like we’re trending in the right direction from a hitting standpoint,” Schneider said. “But … then there are runners in scoring position, there’s damage (hitting for power), there’s extra-base hits that we can continue to get better at.”

That’s a mouthful, of course, but even with a blip or two in the bullpen and the ongoing concern regarding depth in the rotation, for this team to attain some semblance of consistency, it needs to hit and do so in critical situations. To his credit, Schneider wasn’t pulling any punches in that regard either, as he spoke before Thursday’s breakout, a smashing start to the middle 55 of a season that could still go in multiple directions.

“The first 55, it’s been up and down,” Schneider said acknowledging both the painful and the obvious. “I think that we can definitely play a little bit better for a consistent period of time. It seems to me that it comes down to (the fact) that performance of the starters, performances with runners in scoring position, base running … has been a little up and down.

“But you need to swing in the other direction pretty quickly with guys on base, getting guys in, getting guys over,” the manager added somewhat presciently given what unfolded a couple of hours later. “We were really good the first two weeks of the season at doing that. We’ve got to get back to that.

“We’ve got to get back to knowing what each situation is calling for and that leads to a little more consistency.”

Small sample size or not, the recent road trip certainly showed much of what can go awry with these Jays. Six runs in six borderline unwatchable games for all but the diehards and the doom and gloomers was stunning in its ineptitude. Prior to Thursday’s prodigious output, the 209 runs the Jays had scored ranked 25th in the majors.

Where does the season played thus far put them? Perhaps shockingly, in third place in the AL East, albeit 7.5 games behind the leading Yankees. The upside is they’re just two games out of a wild-card spot, a “race” that includes as many as eight teams.

As for projections, analytics heavy website Fangraphs lists the Jays with a a 32.3 per cent chance of making the post season while predicting a win total of 81.6.

So with work to do, here’s a look at five areas to watch as the Jays attempt to sprint into what could evolve as a pivotal stretch of their season.

TONY TATERS

The history lesson tells us that when the calendar switches to June, Anthony Santander transforms into a fearsome, home-run hitting machine.

Or at least he did last season.

Santander, whom the Jays signed to a five-year $92.5-million US contract to bring some bash to the proceedings, hit a homer on June 1 and never stopped, finishing the month with 13.

By season’s end, of course, he had launched a career-high 44 with the Orioles, perfect timing for his foray into free agency.

Through his first 50 games as a Blue Jay, Santander has six homers, only three fewer than at the same point in 2024. The problem, to anyone who has watched him closely, is that so many of his at-bats have been ugly to the point where the 30-year-old switch-hitter has looked lost at the plate.

He hasn’t registered a hit in his last 17 at-bats with a minuscule .179 batting average. Still, it’s not difficult to fathom that a couple of big hits here and there and the Jays record would jump notably, especially given the team’s preponderance to grind through one-run games.

Perhaps the recent struggles have been injury related. Perhaps there has been an adjustment to a new environment. But without a significant resurgence from their biggest off-season acquisition, an eventual Jays push for the post-season will be seriously compromised.

MAX FACTOR (and Manoah)

While it has reached saga status, the ongoing rehabilitation of Max Scherzer’s thumb remains both a source of optimism and intrigue for the Jays. And the possibility of his return is definitely something for the Jays to dream on, even if it’s likely a month away at best. More than one Jays starter has told me that based on what they saw early in spring training — when Scherzer looked in near peak form — an injection of the multiple all-star and Cy Young Award winner into the rotation would be a massive boost.

Perhaps more importantly, it would bring some stability to a group that has seen No. 4 starter Bowden Francis struggle for much of the season. As good as the “bullpen days” that have occupied the No. 5 spot have been over the past couple of starts, the Jays don’t see that as sustainable over the long arc of the season.

Further off in the distance — we’re talking early August if all goes well — the possibility of Alek Manoah re-commencing his once promising career could be another huge addition. Manoah continues his steady recovery from Tommy John surgery and has the potential to be a force once again.

RISP-Y BUSINESS

There is probably no more maddening stat for a team struggling to gain traction and get runs across than such a maddeningly poor performance with runners in scoring position.

In most RISP measurables, the Jays rank towards the bottom of the majors, data backed up by the unsightly eye test.

“We’ve got the guys to do it, I know that,” Schneider said of delivering in critical situations. “They’ve got to just keep working at what they’re working on and hopefully you get rolling.”

As this inconsistent team has repeatedly proven over and over, you never want to get excited by one game, especially against an Athletics team that has lost 13 of their previous 14 games. But in that eight-run second inning alone on Thursday, the Jays had four hits with runners in scoring position, two of them home runs. In the entire six-game road trip that was so poor offensively, the Jays had just four hits in 45 RISP at-bats.

ALL AMERICAN

The Jays continue to be beneficiaries of residing in the American League, where the mushy middle of the standings seem to have just about everyone not named Orioles, White Sox and Athletics a contender.

There is also considerably less beast in the AL East in 2025, a division that has been seen as the powerhouse of all of baseball through recent seasons. The Yankees (35-20) may be the runaway leaders at this point, but they’re also one of only two teams above .500. (The Rays, helped by going 5-1 against the Jays this month are the other at 29-27.)

Meanwhile the Red Sox, a team many expected to challenge for the division, are free-falling with five consecutive losses and Boston sports fans going apoplectic. The Baltimore Orioles, just two years removed from being the team of the future, have regressed to their embarrassing selves.

The Jays need to be better, of course. But out of ineptitude around them, opportunity awaits. And if the team shows enough over the next 55, a massive opportunity awaits for Atkins to add at the deadline and try to take advantage of the mediocre AL.

MYSTERY BAT

Acknowledging that the front office was at least a meaningful bat shy of getting what the team needed most in the off-season, it’s reasonable to suggest that offensive success needs the emergence of a mystery bat to get things chugging along.

Yes, the team needs Vlad Guerrero Jr. and Santander to carry the big freight alongside the 2023 version of leadoff hitter Bo Bichette (whose last two games have shown precisely what he can do.) But the Jays also need someone else to step up to drive all those wayward runners that Schneider speaks of across the plate.

In the first month of the season, George Springer fulfilled that role but he has struggled somewhat lately.

In his delayed return from shoulder surgery, Daulton Varsho made a loud impression by banging eight homers in rapid-fire fashion, but the talented centre fielder continues to be dragged by too many strikeouts.

Catcher Alejandro Kirk has had flashes as has Addison Barger, mostly with the explosive power that he clearly possesses.

You get the picture. The team needs at least one of those players – or someone else not mentioned – to step up while having the big dogs at the top of the order deliver.