Blue Jays by the numbers: Soft September start gives slight boost to faint playoff hopes

Baseball's marathon regular season has reached its final stretch and the Toronto Blue Jays' faint playoff hopes are hanging by a thread. Here they are now with 26 games left to play and their fan base desperately searching for any reason to believe that a resurgence is right around the corner.

After a disastrous 9-17 August the Jays enter September a pedestrian 69-67. They're 10 games back of Baltimore for the division and 5.5 back of Detroit for the second wild-card with three teams ahead of them. Fangraphs gives Toronto a 3% chance of making the playoffs and projects them to finish the season 82-80. Hard to believe that a month ago they were in a wild-card spot and still in the hunt for the AL East crown.

While it's not much the schedule does offer the slightest bit of optimism. The Jays' first 12 games in September are all against teams currently below .500.

Even without David Price, Tampa Bay's starting pitching is still good (3.45 FIP in August), but they've disappointed defensively (-30 Defensive Runs Saved this season) and taken a step back at the plate (3.9 runs per game). Boston and Chicago have struggled all season.

If the Blue Jays are going to make any run at all, we'll know sooner rather than later. After their soft start to September they close out the season with 14 straight games against teams above .500, including six against the Orioles.

The Orioles are running away with the AL East thanks to a deep lineup with great power, a strong bullpen, and starting pitching that's been unreasonably lucky with RISP and made to look better by top-notch defensive play. They're not perfect but they've certainly earned their spot in first place.

The Blue Jays don't have the balance that Baltimore does. They're a team that needs to score runs in bunches to win consistently. Losing Edwin Encarnacion, Brett Lawrie, and Adam Lind for signifcant time eventually caught up to the offence and Jose Bautista slumped for most of August. Mark Buehrle and Marcus Stroman had their worst months of the season and in general the bullpen had another rough go of it.

It's going to take another month like their monster May (5.5 runs per game) for Toronto to have any realistic shot at the playoffs. For that to have any chance of happening the Jays need Encarnacion, who has hit .170 with two home runs in 14 games since he returned from the DL, to perform at an elite level — and that's just to give them a chance.

All they can do now is take care of business early so that maybe there's some sizzle left for the second half of September. Otherwise there's a long list of people that will feel the heat in the offseason.

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