Blue Jays fall further behind in wild-card race with painful loss

ARLINGTON, TX. — The out-of-town scoreboard at Globe Life Field is difficult to miss: a tall, red column high above the batter’s eye in centre field cycles continuously through results and games in progress across MLB.

It was only Saturday’s second inning — not even 7:00pm local — when it displayed a seven-run Cleveland Guardians lead over the displaced Athletics, which, coupled with a Chicago White Sox victory earlier in the day, forced the Toronto Blue Jays to face an unfortunate proposition. Win to merely keep pace. Lose and fall even further behind.

Well, they lost, 6-2, falling three games back of the American League’s third wild card spot and three games under .500 for the first time since Sept. 1. And in the process, the limited scenarios that produce a Blue Jays post-season berth a week from now grew ever more improbable and far-fetched.

Yes, the math is getting awfully difficult. Sitting at 76-79 with seven games to play, the Blue Jays’ highest achievable win total is 83. Yet that’s only if they don’t lose again. Say they go 5-2. Then Toronto finishes with 81 wins, a total both Cleveland (80-75) and Chicago (79-76) are within striking distance of. The Blue Jays hold a tiebreaker over the Guardians; they don’t with the White Sox.

Technically speaking, the Blue Jays haven’t exhausted what slim margin for error remains in their season. But they’re uncomfortably close. They could be statistically eliminated as soon as Tuesday if they continue losing while Cleveland and Chicago carry on winning. And that’s to say nothing of the AL West teams, Texas (78-77) and Houston (77-77), which remain in the mix with more wins than Toronto has.

Going into consecutive bullpen days, a Max Scherzer outing, and a big ol’ question mark in Dylan Cease’s next turn on Wednesday — the Blue Jays are non-committal as to whether Cease makes that start after averaging the lowest fastball velocity of his career in a laborious Friday performance — things have looked better.

Days ago, any Blue Jays post-season path included winning the four games Cease and Soriano started. Now, they’ve lost the first pair in resounding fashion. Of course, prevailing in a wild-card series also includes winning Cease and Soriano days. And if the Blue Jays can’t win them now, what makes you think they could win them then?

For his part, Soriano wasn’t Toronto’s primary issue Saturday, pitching efficiently over five innings before hitting rocky waters in the sixth. He threw a surprising number of curveballs — typically a secondary offering, it was Soriano’s most-thrown pitch on the night — using it early and late in counts against both sides of the platoon.

The biggest adjustment Soriano’s made since joining the Blue Jays is vastly upping his sinker usage while deprioritizing his four-seam fastball, which hitters slugged .505 against through the end of July. It isn’t a coincidence that Soriano’s groundball rate has shot up in turn, sitting above 60 per cent through his first three September starts.

He’s traded in some strikeouts to do it, but Soriano’s found a way to get deeper into outings and give his team more innings.