Blue Jays week in review: the good, the bad, the noteworthy for June 16

A week of .500 baseball is never the worst record to have, unless you get there the way the Toronto Blue Jays got there over the last seven days. Toronto was riding their hottest streak of the season in the opening stages of this nine-game road trip. They were 2-1, coming off a series win over the Twins, before beginning the week with a sweep of the Cardinals. That pushed them to a season best, eight games above .500 before running into a wall in Philadelphia - where they lost three straight.

Overall, the Blue Jays are 38-33, 4.5 games back of the Yankees for the AL East lead and 1.5 games ahead in the Wild Card chase.

Blue Jays week in review: the good, the bad, the noteworthy

The Good: A sweep to start the week

That three game series against the Cardinals had a little bit of everything and was their best of the season since sweeping the Padres in May. It’s one thing to hammer an opponent at home where the Blue Jays have a .629 win percentage, it’s another to do it on the road against a Cardinals team that is playing .611 baseball on their home field.

The series opened with a well-earned comeback victory when the Blue Jays defeated the Cardinals 5-4 in ten innings. Jonatan Clase hit his first home run of the season to tie the game in the ninth, before Alejandro Kirk delivered yet another clutch at-bat to drive in the winning run. It was the Blue Jays 20th come from behind win this season – something they only achieved 24 times in 2024.

The Blue Jays then outlasted the Cardinals with a 10-9 win in the second game, and a bullpen day in the series finale gave them enough to secure a 5-2 win.

The Bad: Swept away to end the week

The Phillies flipped the script on the Blue Jays in the ‘City of Brotherly Love.’ Toronto had outscored their opponents 56-43 in June heading into that series but were promptly outscored 22-6 during the sweep. The Blue Jays pitching had no answer for the Phillies. Gausman lasted just five innings and while he racked up seven strikeouts, the two-out two-run homer to Kyle Schwarber in the second inning of the first game really set the tone for the series.

Bowden Francis held the Phillies off the scoreboard through the first three innings, but then fell apart in the fourth, putting five straight batters on board with either a walk, or hitting a batter. Max Kepler’s home run in the bottom of the eighth off Chad Green was the nail in the coffin in a 3-2 Phillies win.

Then Jose Berrios had his worst start since Opening Day allowing six runs on nine hits over 4.2 innings, walking one and striking out five. It was his shortest outing and the most runs and hits he’d allowed since March 27 when the Orioles tagged him for six runs on nine hits in five innings.
This just wasn’t a good series for the guys on the mound.

The noteworthy: Swanson’s sub-par star

Erik Swanson was activated off the injured list at the end of May and made his season debut on June 1, throwing one inning against the Athletics in an 8-4 Blue Jays win. Swanson has thrown 5.1 innings total this season and has given up a run in four of his six outings, with his ERA ballooning to 15.19 in six appearances. A couple of earned runs in his first few appearances to begin the season is certainly a pill you can swallow, but his last two outings in this series against the Phillies were counter productive to helping the Blue Jays get back into the win column.

On Friday, he allowed three runs to the Phillies in just one inning and on Sunday he allowed four runs while getting just two outs. It feels as if Swanson is in the mop up duty role right now while he finds his way back to what made him so successful in 2023.

On Deck: Home sweet home

As mentioned, the Blue Jays have been very good at home this season, and they are back at the Rogers Centre to start a six-game home stand on Tuesday against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Tuesday. The Blue Jays have outscored their opponents 180-154 in Toronto this season and they’ll look to continue that against the Diamondbacks (36-35, 4th in NL West, 6.5 GB) who are starting to trend toward deadline sellers, after staff ace Corbin Burnes hit the injured list earlier this month. The Diamondbacks took the lone head-to-head matchup last season with a 2-1 series win.

Following that three game series, Toronto welcome in the Chicago White Sox for a three-game set.