The Blue Jays' current six-game slump is well deserved.
When you can't hit and your pitching is dicey, losing streaks become a way of life.
So the Jays have no one to blame but themselves for their current situation which has them without a win in May, a 13-18 record, possession of last place in the American League East and being 71/2 games back of the division-leading Boston Red Sox, whom the Jays meet in a three-game series starting tonight.
Jays manager John Gibbons said that yesterday's day off was a blessing but not as much as not having to play any more games in either Cleveland or Arlington, Tex., two spot where the Jays are hexed beyond belief.
No one on the team is taking the losses harder than Gibbons.
"They hurt, they all hurt," he said after the Blue Jays' loss to Texas on Sunday. "As a whole we're just not winning."
The chief reason for the terrible road swing was their hitting, or lack of it. Other than third baseman Troy Glaus, who went 8-for-22 (.364) with three homers and five RBIs, no player distinguished themselves.
And it didn't help that centre fielder Vernon Wells was weakened by a virus, to the extent that he missed three of the games.
The Jays, though, were constructed to hit, hammer out home runs and pile up the runs, especially against mediocre pitching. The thinking was that they might take a page out of the New York Yankees' book and simply outslug other teams.
But lately, it's not happening.
"We hit home runs, that's when we're at our best," Gibbons said. "We score runs in bunches, that's the way we're built."
The problem is that the only time the Jays seem capable of scoring runs in bunches is early in the game, such as they did in two of their games in Cleveland when they opened with 3-0 and 4-0 leads only to lose both games as they failed to add on runs.
In the six losses, the Jays managed to score a total of eight runs from the sixth inning on, with three of them of the meaningless variety during an 11-4 blowout. That's not helping out the pitching staff.
And, as happens through every slump, hitters are pressing, trying to hit a three-run home run every time up.
"I think guys aren't taking advantage of what they've got," first baseman Lyle Overbay said after Sunday's game. "I had first and second and nobody out and I'm swinging at a bad pitch, off the plate. It's like we're trying to do too much and trying to make it happen instead of letting it happen.
"It's one of those things where we're all struggling and that's what kinda sucks right now. You can get by when you have one or two guys struggling but when everybody's struggling, well, we're just not clicking."
There isn't a sense of panic on the team, but there is concern.
"Hopefully we can turn it around quick because we've got to," Overbay said. "There's no excuse, we just have to go out and do the things we're capable of because this is a very good team and we're underachieving right now.
"We have to worry about what we're doing right now one game at a time and that's how you turn it around."
If only it was that easy.
