'Ignore and override': Every win crucial as big decisions loom

CHICAGO -- The Blue Jays live in a new reality of their own making.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Everything is big now, a magnifying glass hanging over this organization as major decisions lurch closer and closer. The only way to keep those demons at bay is by winning. Winning fixes everything. Winning is undefeated.

Monday’s 5-1 win over the White Sox at Guaranteed Rate Field was a start, but at 24-29, the Blue Jays need a streak. There have been enough false flashes of hope already this season, but if the Blue Jays can crank out five, six, seven wins in a row? That’s when the conversation changes. It’s already changing inside those clubhouse doors.

“It’s been a season where we aren’t where we expected to be,” manager John Schneider said early Monday, fresh off a gutting loss in Detroit. “For the fanbase and for everyone who is not here, as cliche as it sounds, there’s a reason we play this many games. There’s a reason we play 162. There are different ways you can go about it. You can say that it’s May or you can say that our season’s over. The guys aren’t doing that. I’m not doing that.”

Of those 162 games, 109 remain. A more important number might be 55, the number of games that remain between now and the MLB Trade Deadline on July 30. The Blue Jays will need to pick a path by that point -- buy, sell or pivot -- so while it’s nice to have 162 games to work with, they still disappear quickly.

Each loss shaves a few percentage points off the Blue Jays’ postseason chances, but even in this analytics-loving game, the Blue Jays only have one choice: screw the math.

“Ignore and override. You go,” Schneider said. “Math is not always certain, whether it’s a matchup or how many games you have left in a season. You have to ignore everything and focus on what you’re doing each and every day. At this point, there have to be some other things [happen] other than us just going out and doing our job for us to get to where we want to get to.”

The White Sox aren’t exactly the Phillies or Dodgers, but at this point, the Blue Jays will take any win they can get if it’s Step 1 in the right direction. Home runs from George Springer, Bo Bichette and Davis Schneider powered the offense, an encouraging sign for a lineup in need of power, but Chris Bassitt was the man who made it all work. The veteran right-hander pitched stubbornly -- his specialty -- and shut out the White Sox for five innings, coming up with big pitches in big moments anytime danger came knocking.

Bassitt showed up. The power bats showed up. The Blue Jays “won the day”, as they say, and they need to keep winning days.

“When things don’t go your way, individually or as a team, it can seem to spiral and things can seem like a big, jumbled mess,” Springer said. “I think guys have done a really good job of not really looking forward to what’s ahead or dwelling on the past. Guys have been doing a much better job, especially the last month, I would say, of just playing the day out.”

Schneider, like any manager, is the voice of the team by default. Managers meet with the media before and after every game, Spring Training included. That’s nearly 500 times a season you hear from Schneider, but lately, there isn’t much talk of a pitcher’s new cutter or a hitter’s recent power surge. It’s all big-picture talk. It has to be at this point.

This also means that Schneider’s job inside the clubhouse changes. He has to manage emotions and personalities as much as pitching matchups and lefty-righty splits.

“It’s about people and the room,” Schneider said. “It is hard for everyone outside of the clubhouse to understand that every game is different. When you play every day, you really have to move on to the next day. Some times are tougher than others. It’s about managing individual players and managing the group, not only individual players, but staff, too, making sure that everyone is doing their part.”

Step 1 is the easy part. The Blue Jays dream of a day where every single win doesn’t need to be framed as “step 1”, but as long as they’re standing in this place and staring up the mountain in front of them, that’s their reality. Only winning fixes it.