50 games into the season, the Blue Jays sit with a 20-30 mark, which unlike the disappointing campaigns by the Nats, Mets, and Cleveland, there was no illusion of success for the Blue Jays this year. However, it is difficult to not feel disappointed by the results so far in 2019.
2018 was the difficult transition season that Jays fans had been bracing for ever since the all-in approach in 2015. General disorderly play, onset symptoms of Solatritis, seemed to dog the team all season long. The top two innings leaders, Estrada and Gaviglio, had ERAs well above the five mark and the team finished with 73 wins.
Yet, there was a sliver of optimism heading into 2019. The results in the later half of the season were much of the same but there were some rays of shine, including a seven run, ninth inning walk off victory led by some of the youth movement against Tampa Bay. That highlighted what seemed to be hope for 2019, that a youthful core that played harder could bring some more exciting baseball our way.
That has not been the case.
Danny Jansen and Teoscar Hernandez were supposed to follow up their 2018s with breakout 2019s but both have struggled mightly so far, with the latter already earning a trip down to Buffalo and the former perhaps not much further behind. Lourdes Gurriel is down there already, not even able to stay with the team through his bobblehead day in late April thanks to some mighty defensive struggles. Billy McKinney plays hard but is showing why that top prospect glean wore off by the time he reached the major leagues. Outside of Vladdy and Rowdy, the youth movement has propelled the Jays down and not up as hoped.
On the pitching side, Clayton Richard made his Jays debut Thursday afternoon for the Jays, going four innings while becoming the 11th(!) starting pitcher so far on the year. Injuries have forced an erratic rotation outside those not named Stroman, Sanchez, and Thornton. Starters have included the old (Edwin Jackson), the young (Sean Reid-Foley), and the why (Ryan Feierabend). It feels like we are only weeks away from Luke Maile performing "opener" duties for this beat up rotation.
It isn't all gloomy. Justin Smoak has had a terrific year as has surprising (so far) offensive years from Eric Sogard and Freddy Galvis, who is starting to cool off. But there no way these players are part of the Jays future past this season.
Things may get better this season but its hard to imagine they will soon.
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