Forget about TGIF.
The Toronto Blue Jays — and their fans — are saying “TGIM,” as in “Thank Goodness It’s May!”
Toronto has closed out the opening month of the Major League Baseball season with a hideous record of 8-17.
That is the second-worst start in franchise history following 7-15 Aprils in 2004 and 1979.
Think about that for a second.
The expansion team in 1977 had a better start to their season than the current crop of Bluebirds and that team went 54-107 (second-worst record only to their 53-109 mark in 1979).
The Jays closed the book on the month of April with an unfathomable 3-1 victory over Tampa Bay on Sunday.
Unfathomable, because Toronto lost starting pitcher Aaron Sanchez to a split fingernail after just one inning, forcing manager John Gibbons to lean on his leaky bullpen.
But six relievers got the job done against the pesky Rays and Toronto’s offence finally got some key hits from struggling stars Jose Bautista and Russell Martin en route to beating their fellow A.L. East foe.
Toronto is now on its first two-game winning streak of the season. Yes, it has taken a whole month to string together at least two wins in a row.
Sunday’s victory also secured Toronto’s first series win of what has quickly become a sobering 2017 campaign.
However, despite their poor start, the Jays are only eight games behind division co-leaders Boston and Baltimore with five months of baseball still to come.
That’s 137 games to go, in case you were wondering.
I’m still not convinced the Blue Jays can recover to become a playoff calibre ball club, not from what I’ve seen thus far.
If they have any hope, and I mean any hope, of getting a whiff of the postseason, the Jays must first get healthy (Aaron Sanchez, Josh Donaldson, Troy Tulowitzki, J.A. Happ, et al) and start putting some winning streaks together.
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