Sad-sack September fitting end to miserable Blue Jays season

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At some point, yet to be scheduled but likely this week, Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins will have a news conference to explain what has arguably been the worst season in his thus far ill-fated tenure here.

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And the man will have some explaining to do.

Sprinkled through the spin will be contrition, surely, then some excuses followed by great promise of a franchise renaissance in 2025.

But if and when the spin turns to a positive take on the second half of this debacle of a 74-win season, it should be your official cue to scream.

Not only has September been an uninspired mess for the Jays, it has been one of the worst final months in franchise history. That’s hardly the tone anyone associated with the club — players, coaches or management — wanted to see heading into an off-season where so much improvement is required.

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The series against the Marlins — which included a 3-1 loss on Sunday at the Rogers Centre — was particularly miserable, a terrible National League East opponent that came in and swept the Jays in three non-competitive contests that had to demoralize even the cheeriest of diehards.

As punctuation goes, a 1-5 season-ending homestand and losses in eight of their final nine games overall certainly pops out in bold for the Jays. It’s a point manager John Schneider acknowledged on Sunday, careful not to fall into the trap of throwing anyone under the bus, but not turning his back on the obvious.

“Not the way we wanted to obviously in terms of wins and losses, offensively and on the mound,” Schneider said following the finale, a perhaps fitting end as his team was swept for the fifth time on the season. “You bring to light the way we finished and that’s not what we wanted to do. Learning experience for the young guys and (now it’s) get to work.”

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How bad has it been? You may not want to count the ways, but here we go.

The Jays finished in last place in the American League East for the first time since 2013 and just the third time this century

Yes, they won just 67 times in 2019 and 73 in 2018, also under the rein of Atkins and his boss Mark Shapiro. But those were complete-teardown years where a poor record was almost scripted and certainly not a surprise.

With a record of 74-88, the Jays finished as the 24th best team in Major League Baseball, amassing a record better than only three other teams in each of the American and National leagues.

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The 7-17 mark in September is historically awful and visually embarrassing. It implies a lack of care and drive, especially given how it unfolded. Consider that even in those awful seasons noted above, the Jays went 13-14 and 12-13 in September of 2018 and 2019 respectively. What does that tell you?

The indifferent finish wasn’t exactly an inspiring “Fan Appreciation Weekend” tribute to the blindly loyal fans, now, was it? Including Sunday’s announced crowd of 31,688, the aggregate total for the three-game series against one of the worst teams in baseball was 99,020. The aggregate score? Marlins 26, Blue Jays 7.

If anything, the sloppy September has reaffirmed that the bodies Schneider has been forced to write on his lineup card daily are only a bit part of the solution — at best.

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“With the guys who are here that have been here in the second half, I don’t think we’re going to ask them to hit 30 home runs next year,” Schneider said with a clever take on the obvious. “Those guys (are) pieces, but you need some bigger pieces to go along with it.”

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This is not deep analytics talking, this is reality, harsh as it is. What has arrived is an off-season where everyone from coaches, to management, to players will have to look inward for solutions.

“It’s the only thing to do, if I’m being completely honest,” said reliever Erik Swanson. “There are a lot of guys in this clubhouse who are pissed off with how our season went as a team and individually. It sucks to be having this conversation, but at the end of the day it’s our reality.

“So how do we fix it? How do we get better? Going into this off-season, obviously front office-wise, they’re going to have to make additions to the team to try to better us for next year to be back in a position to win again. I think that’s what every single guy in this clubhouse wants and why everyone’s going into this off-season hungry and wanting a hell of a lot more from next year.”

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The process (and collaboration, to use another Jays buzzword) is already well underway, a blessing out of the curse of this season. But how the the next four or five months unfold will be intriguing given how disastrous the additions worked out last winter.

The Jays have not indicated when Atkins will speak, which could mean any number of things. Could there be front-office or coaching changes? (Likely nothing of significance.) Could the collaborators be working on just how to articulate this mess to a fan base that has been extraordinarily loyal? (Quite possibly.)

What is clear, however, is that the answers don’t rest in what was on display over the past month, a withering exit to a season that couldn’t end soon enough.

Leave it to the man most likely to lead them out of the darkness, Vlad Guerrero Jr., who went 0-for-4 on Sunday to stall his bid for the nice, round 200-hit mark at 199.

“We’ve got to get better in everything,” Guerrero said as the roof closed on the season and the Rogers Centre following his two-walk, two-out afternoon. “I’ve got to be realistic here and honest. Everything.”

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