Bichette's absence amplified by frustrating loss to Nationals

TORONTO -- Bo Bichette is the player the Blue Jays can least afford to lose, but for the second time in a month, they’re facing life without him.

Bichette was placed on the 10-day injured list Tuesday with a right quad strain only eight games after returning from a three-week IL stint with right patellar tendinitis. It’s another major blow to the Blue Jays, who sit 3 1/2 games out of the final Wild Card spot in the American League after a frustrating 5-4 loss to the Nationals on Tuesday night at Rogers Centre.

The Blue Jays are chasing the state of Texas for that final spot. The tiebreakers favor Toronto over the Astros, which could be important, but the club will need to take at least three of four games from the Rangers when they visit in two weeks.

The Blue Jays had every opportunity to come back on Tuesday, including a bases-loaded bottom of the ninth inning. They had Alejandro Kirk on third in the previous inning, too, but they decided against pinch-running for the catcher, who was thrown out trying to tag and score on a fly ball. Manager John Schneider said following the loss that Kirk only would have been pinch-run for if he was the tying run, and with the benefit of hindsight we see that could have changed the game.

“We all know that every loss and every win is at a premium right now. Every loss sucks,” Schneider said. “It’s a quick turnaround. We need to be ready to roll tomorrow.”

That quick turnaround is made even more urgent by the absences in Toronto’s lineup.

The Blue Jays hope that Bichette can return by the time the Rangers roll into town on Sept. 11, but all the organization has right now is that hope. Bichette will be shut down for a few days “to calm it down,” as Schneider put it, before crafting a plan to ramp back up.

“He’s frustrated,” Schneider said. “At the same time, he understands that he doesn’t want to do anything that’s going to put him out for the season. He took it as well as he could, is the best way to say it. He wants to be out there every day, especially at this time of year.”

Bichette is batting .314 this season with an .832 OPS, often the only consistent source of offense in a lineup that has battled frustrating inconsistencies. Even at 25, he’s become one of the Blue Jays’ most important leaders on and off the field, calling for his teammates to be “fearless” when he returned from the IL earlier this month in Cincinnati.

There are layers to this loss, too, since third baseman Matt Chapman was placed on the injured list on Monday with a right middle finger sprain. Chapman hadn’t been nearly as hot as Bichette offensively, but it hasn’t been difficult to spot the absence of Chapman’s trademark defense on days when he’s out of the lineup.

A silver lining is that there’s no holding Davis Schneider out of the lineup now. The rookie sensation launched his sixth home run in just 13 games on Tuesday. He later doubled in another run.

Schneider isn’t far removed from a bench role, but this performance means he’s here to stay and remains Toronto’s brightest source of hope. Another good indication of that is the fact that he hit in the No. 2 spot on Tuesday, which is typically reserved for Bichette.

Who plays shortstop?
Ernie Clement started and looked the part defensively, but in the ninth frame, Cavan Biggio trotted out for his first career MLB inning at shortstop.

Schneider wasn’t kidding when he laid out how the Blue Jays would handle the position without Bichette.

“Creatively,” Schneider said. “Like we told the guys yesterday, it’s not every day you lose the left side of your infield in the span of two innings. It’s going to get weird. It’s going to get dirty, ugly, crazy at times.”

What had the potential to be a weird and crazy win turned into an ugly loss for the Blue Jays. They’ve had performances far more underwhelming on the field, but being so close in both the eighth or ninth innings led to a massive letdown in a ballpark that was absolutely alive, feeling like a true postseason race for the first time in this run.

Toronto has a position player to add on Sept. 1 when rosters expand, which will turn the focus back to top prospects like Orelvis Martinez (No. 2), Addison Barger (No. 5) and Spencer Horwitz (No. 17), all of whom have a case to come up and inject some life into this stretch run.

“It will be an interesting couple of days,” Schneider said.

That’s an understatement, and if the Blue Jays are going anywhere, “interesting” needs to mean something different than it did on Tuesday.