Blue Jays' latest offensive burst not enough

BOSTON -- Three days, three late losses and a whole lot of ERAs on the rise. Life in the AL East can be so cruel.

The Blue Jays turned a win into a loss on Tuesday at Fenway Park, falling 7-6 to the Red Sox in a game they controlled for a moment after a six-run outburst in the top of the fifth inning. That frantic frame showed the incredible heights this offense can reach, but those innings can’t stand alone.

Just like the Blue Jays leaned on Bo Bichette’s 5-for-5 performance on Monday but got little from the rest of their lineup, Tuesday’s performance was another look at how this lineup used to operate in 2022 and before. This won’t last, but it shows just how important it is for Toronto to get back to the offensive identity it started to build throughout April.

Good teams can beat you one way. Great teams can beat you two, three and four ways.

“We can score in a hurry, for sure,” said manager John Schneider. “[Tanner] Houck is tough and he wasn’t really landing his slider early, so we jumped on him there when we had the chance. Other than that, it was a weird night. I thought we were swinging at the right pitches, trying to get him up in the zone with that slider and just missed a couple.”

The Blue Jays have still scored 19 runs across these three losses and are 18-12, so there’s hardly any reason to panic here. These bits of turbulence through April and May are all part of the journey. In the simplest terms, it’s about learning from these stumbles and avoiding them next time.

Much like Bichette was Monday’s bright spot, Tuesday’s was Daulton Varsho, who launched his third home run of the season to catapult the Blue Jays into that sudden lead in the fifth.

Varsho has been struggling at the plate, but you’re starting to see signs of life again following Saturday's walk-off single at Rogers Centre and Tuesday’s blast.

“He kind of eliminated a bit of his toe tap for a bit more of a traditional gather,” Schneider said. “It’s freed him up in terms of being able to use his athleticism in his swing. He swung at the right pitch.”

When Varsho is at his best, he represents everything that this offense wants to be. The Blue Jays are no longer a boom-or-bust power team, leaning on star performances and big innings to carry them. This group should be just as capable of winning a 2-1 game of small ball as it is winning a 12-10 slugfest. Each and every move this front office made over the offseason pointed in that direction.

Some of this will come from the top, with George Springer long overdue for his first hot streak of the season.

Springer has hit some rockets over the past two weeks, but luck has eluded him stretching back to that series in Houston where he couldn’t buy a base hit. The star right fielder is hitting just .216 with a .574 OPS, far from the .270 hitter with an OPS near .850 that we’re used to seeing. When he finds that form again -- and it’s coming -- so many of these hits from the red-hot Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. will turn into RBIs.

These are conversations the Blue Jays have as a lineup, whether it’s around the cage or in the clubhouse. They know they’re good, it’s just about consistency.

“It’s about consistency, staying in the moment and trusting yourself,” Bichette said. “This game is really hard and it can be harder some days than others. When those days happen, you just have to compete, trust in yourself and try to stay in the moment. For me, I try to represent that, but I also have a lot of guys around me who I can look to when I’m not feeling my best.”

Of course, Toronto’s pitchers have allowed 23 runs over these three losses, which never works. Yusei Kikuchi lived in the strike zone Tuesday, but too comfortably, giving up plenty of loud contact over 4 1/3 innings of five-run ball. They, too, will bounce back, but Toronto’s offense looks so much more natural when it’s not chasing.

The Blue Jays are never far from another winning streak, though, with fewer games to create space between them and their AL East rivals in 2023, the time is always now.