TORONTO – Brandon Belt’s placement on the 10-day injured list with lumbar spine muscle spasms sent the Toronto Blue Jays back to the batting order blender, with Spencer Horwitz in the cleanup spot followed by Davis Schneider and Cavan Biggio pouring out in the mix.
“Not exactly how we drew it up (during spring training),” manager John Schneider conceded before a 6-3 loss to the Texas Rangers dropped his team a half-game back of the American League West rivals in the wild-card race. “But the guys that are here are playing well and having really good at-bats. You make do with what you’ve got during that time. Not exactly Plan A but here we go.”
Since Horwitz is one of 10 players to bat cleanup for the Blue Jays this season, technically it’s Plan J for these high-stakes games in whatever-it-takes days. The 25-year-old began the day with just 30 career big-league plate appearances under his belt, speaking to where the club is in its search for offence right now, and triggered a two-run rally with a leadoff double in the seventh when his team did most of its damage at the plate.
Biggio, who doubled and was stranded in the second, drove him in with a single and after a Santiago Espinal double, scored on pinch-hitter Ernie Clement’s RBI groundout. Schneider, who doubled in the fourth, sent a 366-foot drive out to right-centre during that seventh but it was chased down by Robbie Grossman. He added a solo shot off closer Aroldis Chapman in the ninth.
Productive as the makeshift middle of the order was in this game, especially relative to the rest of the order, instability out of the cleanup spot all season long is without a doubt a factor in the Blue Jays’ inconsistencies at the plate.
Consider that entering play Tuesday, their No. 4 spot batted a collective .249/.336/.424, ranking 15th in the majors with a .759 OPS, 20th in home runs with 19 and last with just 66 RBIs.
It’s hard to steadily put up runs with so little production out of a pivotal spot in the lineup.
This isn’t a byproduct of injuries or the mixing and matching inherent to today’s game. The Blue Jays have been searching for someone to lock in there all season, using 10 different players in that spot.
Daulton Varsho opened the season at cleaup with Matt Champan mixed in and by May, once he’d shaken off a slow start, Belt was moved into the role. By mid-June, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., was taking a turn there, in August, George Springer was moved down to the spot and others have taken some reps there, including Davis Schneider (five), Whit Merrifield (four), Danny Jansen (two) and Biggio (one).
The lack of a proven run-producer for the role has underlined how much the Blue Jays miss Teoscar Hernandez, who was traded for Erik Swanson and prospect Adam Macko during the off-season in a deal that was understandable and still justifiable.
At issue is that the Blue Jays didn’t adequately replace the loss of Hernandez’s thump, which GM Ross Atkins at the time predicted wouldn’t be an issue.
“I think we will be able to replace it with some of the players that were either not playing as much last year or from within and from the player-development system,” Atkins said of making up for Hernandez at the time of the trade. “But there will also be other opportunities via trade and free agency and we will exhaust those.”
The Blue Jays did later add Varsho and Kevin Kiermaier and while valuable, neither is providing Hernandez’s impact. And as a result, the lineup has felt one bat light all season.
In contrast, the Rangers, even with Adolis Garcia and Josh Jung out, are a deep nine and did their damage against the Blue Jays before a Rogers Centre crowd of 30,479.
After Hyun Jin Ryu cruised through the first three innings, Kyle Seager singled to open the fourth before Grossman homered to left, each pouncing on a first-pitch cutter. Jonah Heim added a sacrifice fly in the sixth off the lefty, while RBI doubles by Jonathan Ornelas and Seager off the bullpen in the seventh made it 5-0.
