Then, timely hitting was the main issue as the club often found itself down in tight leverage games. Now, injuries and inconsistencies in the rotation have sparked a vicious cycle of early deficits, leading to poor approaches at the plate. In both cases, the club’s leadership team felt it necessary to talk things out with each other. “They’re similar, but the moments in a season are all different,” Springer said Saturday. “We are further ahead in the season. It’s a lot easier for people to look at the standings and say, you have to do this and you have to do that, as opposed to at the beginning of the year, you can say, I’ve still got time. I just said, “We all understand what our job is or what the job is in front of us. We can’t be concerned about the other teams and the standings and all that. We just have to go play, control ourselves and see what happens at the end of the day.” The talk paid no immediate dividends, though the Blue Jays did play much better in dropping a second straight game to the Seattle Mariners, 5-2 in 11 innings, Friday night on what has become a road trip of misery. They are in arguably their most grueling physical test of the season, snapping a 31-game 30-day hitting streak into a longer stretch of 42 games in 41 days before the All-Star break. Hyun-Jin Ryu’s season-ending Tommy John surgery reduced Yusei Kikuchi’s pregame rotation, and Kevin Gausman’s sprained right ankle made matters worse. And hovering in the shadows is lingering grief for first-base coach Mark Budzinski, who has been away from the club since the death of his daughter. That’s a lot, frustration is building and a once-comfortable lead in the wild-card standings has now dropped to third place, two games ahead of Seattle heading into Saturday’s action. So, it’s not a bad time for the players to talk to each other and try to change the atmosphere. “It’s one of those times of the year when things don’t necessarily go your way and everybody’s trying to figure out why instead of going out there and playing,” Springer said. “We lost a tough game (Friday) night, it is what it is, that’s the game. We all understand that there will be ups and downs in a season and this is one of those times. But we also understand that we all have to go out and get better overall, try to get back to doing the little things better and we’ll see what happens.” Shifting the thought processes from why the losses are mounting to how to win under difficult circumstances is no small feat, especially when there is so much outside noise about how the Blue Jays are frustrated by their pitching floaters. That they’re off to a 45-40 start despite not really getting their hitting and pitching in sync outside of an eight-game hitting streak from May 24 to June 2 is both cause for pause and reason to believe better times are ahead . That the club’s leadership team took the initiative to meet is “what you want,” manager Charlie Montoyo said. “I think when a coach comes and talks, they think he’s panicking. It is good when the leadership has the meeting. I think it’s awesome.” However, the immediate challenge is unlocking the upside and making the roster perform to its potential, a constant issue all season long. “It’s never good when you try to push, whether it’s on the pitch or attacking. We just feel like we’re not clicking on both cylinders right now,” Ross Stripling said after five shutout innings in Friday’s loss. “When we’re playing well, we’re not necessarily scoring a bunch of runs and scoring a bunch of runs, we’re not doing as well, or whatever. We’re over the halfway point and we just haven’t quite started clicking on all the cylinders yet. So, we don’t push. Nobody panics in there. But we know the roster is too talented not to start, and we feel like it could happen at any time.” Trusting the process over the results is a part of that. The Blue Jays made enough solid contact during Monday and Tuesday’s losses in Oakland to deserve more than four runs, but that didn’t go well. They created a lot of chances on Friday, but didn’t take them. With a few breaks, they could be 4-1 on this road trip instead of 1-4, which is both part of the problem and part of the solution. “That’s baseball,” Springer said. “You’ve got to keep fighting, keep swinging and hopefully we’ll all be on the better side of a good day. … But there is not much you can do. You can’t try to be someone you’re not. You cannot try to do things that you do not know how to do or that you are simply not physically capable of doing. You have to go be yourself. The mentality of this team is to go out there and play hard, never give up and fight until the last out. No one ever tries to fail. We understand it as a team and we’ll see what happens.”
