'Enough is enough': Toronto swept by O's after lack of key hits

TORONTO -- Swept by the Orioles in their own house, the Blue Jays are leaving themselves a hill to climb in the American League East.

There’s no gondola lift to save the Blue Jays either after Sunday afternoon’s 8-3, 11-inning loss at Rogers Centre that frayed for hours but finally fell apart. Suddenly in last place in baseball’s toughest division with a record of 25-22 -- a cruel enough reality on its own -- the Blue Jays are now coming off a week in which they dropped six of seven to New York and Baltimore.

“We just need to get hits when we need to,” said Blue Jays manager John Schneider. “We have tons of chances and we’re just not really coming through with the double plays from George [Springer] and [Kevin] Kiermaier today. It’s kind of at the point where enough is enough. You’re waiting for it to turn, and it will -- not 'I think it will,' but 'I know it will' -- and in order to get there, the guys are going to have to continue to work their asses off.”

Zoom out just a fraction of an inch, and you’ll see a homestand where the Blue Jays went 4-6 -- which included a sweep of the mighty Braves, who sit comfortably atop the NL East, but also featured struggles against the division-rival Yankees and Orioles. Toronto’s season has already taken on the identity of incredible highs and lows, but absolutely everything this organization does needs to be framed within the realities of its own division.

Kevin Gausman did everything in his power to give the Blue Jays a chance, as he always does. Gausman threw 115 pitches, the most he’s thrown with the Blue Jays. He held the Orioles to two runs over eight innings of work, but it wasn’t enough.

Here’s what we can take away from a troubling week, with an even greater challenge lying ahead.

Castaways

The Blue Jays left more people stranded than the airplane from "Lost" this week.

Hitting with runners in scoring position can be one of baseball’s most frustrating conversations. There will be natural peaks and valleys, but when the Blue Jays struggle as they did against the Yankees and Orioles, this becomes such a glaring, obvious issue. Making it even more frustrating is that this star-studded lineup is capable of so much more.

Toronto currently ranks 24th in MLB, batting .235 with runners in scoring position. Sunday’s 3-for-16 mark didn’t help those numbers.

“Right now, when it snowballs like this, you might want to do a little bit too much,” Schneider said, “but you can’t. You reel it in, stay with your approach and stay with what pitchers are doing. There was probably a total of 100 cutters thrown at us today. You’ve got to see that and adjust.”

Where’s the power?

The Blue Jays rank 18th in MLB this season with 50 home runs. That’s not how this whole thing was supposed to work.

We knew the Blue Jays were swapping some level of power for a more well-rounded brand of baseball, but this club should still be capable of producing close to last year’s number when it ranked seventh in the Majors. It was even surprising to see that Matt Chapman's homer in the second inning was his first since April 18.

The real importance of this power? If the Blue Jays are hitting home runs in between, the odd game (or week) where they fail to hit with runners in scoring position are much easier to ignore.

Yes, even the Orioles

These are not the Orioles of 2018-21, who couldn’t even win 60 games.

Baltimore now stands where the Blue Jays did a couple of years ago, graduating a young core all at once and ushering in what should be a new era of baseball in Baltimore.

Whether the Orioles will spend like the Blue Jays have since their own relaunch to support their homegrown stars still remains a major question, of course, but there’s no way around Baltimore’s new reality.

They’re a problem today, and they’re going to be a problem tomorrow.

"They've got some pretty good batters over there and they do a good job of mixing up the lineup," said Alek Manoah. "It's kind of Rays-esque, having a bunch of lefties against a righty. They play matchups. Anybody in this division, it's fun to go out there and compete every night. Everybody is really competitive and everybody is really good. It's just a pleasure to go out there and be in some dog fights."

Right now, those fights just aren’t going their way.