Through 20 games, the Blue Jays struggles are real

It’s amazing how quickly a narrative can change in baseball. Before Tuesday night, the Toronto Blue Jays were a struggling, underperforming team that was running out of time to right the ship. And then Chris Coghlan took a flying leap over Yadier Molina, and everything changed. Because no one was talking about the Blue Jays’ pathetic start anymore, they were talking about the greatest home plate tag anyone has ever seen.

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Coghlan’s slide was one of the things that helped the Jays win against the St. Louis Cardinals on Tuesday, and they needed it badly. The Jays have been having trouble getting anything going through nearly a month of play. They have a 6-14 record, which is bad enough. But it gets worse once you look back a few weeks and realize that they were 1-9 through the first 10 games of the season. And they still haven’t won back-to-back games.

But that was all before Chris Coghlan’s miraculous leap. Now, it feels like anything can happen. (In this case, “anything” means “winning two games in a row.”) The Jays can start their much-needed turnaround and finally win back-to-back games on Thursday, when they take on the Cardinals in the MLB Free Game of the Day on Yahoo Sports. You can stream the game on the Yahoo Sports MLB page, on our Free Game of the Day tab or within this very post once the game starts at 1:45 p.m. ET. Local blackouts apply per MLB rules.

So what’s been going on with the Blue Jays? Why have they been struggling so much? The tough thing for the Jays is that it doesn’t seem to be one thing, it seems to be many things. Their season so far has been the baseball version of death by a thousand cuts.

The Jays, with their prodigious hitters, haven’t been blowing anyone away with their offense. As a team, they’re hitting .223/.292/.347. Out of all 30 teams, they’re 27th in batting average, 27th in on-base percentage, and 29th in slugging. Not great. Jose Bautista seems like a shadow of himself, hitting .145/.275/.211 with two home runs. His compatriots Troy Tulowitzki and Josh Donaldson aren’t doing any hitting at all right now, as they’re both on the disabled list and aren’t expected to return until May.

Ezequiel Carrera, Kevin Pillar, and Darwin Barney are all hitting well, though it’s hasn’t been enough to pick up the slack. But the bigger issue is how they’ve been doing with runners in scoring position. When Jays hitters comes to the plate with a runner on second and/or third, their average is .181. That’s good for 29th in the majors, and it shows what trouble the Jays have had scoring runs. (They’ve scored 71 total, which is also 29th in all of baseball.)

By contrast, their pitching has been decent. Their team ERA is at 4.03, which is right in the middle of the pack. But that stat doesn’t tell the whole story. The team has already endured injuries to starters J.A. Happ and Aaron Sanchez, and the guys they’ve called up have only highlighted their tragic lack of starting pitching depth. Mat Latos and Casey Lawrence haven’t been terrible, but neither appear to be long-term replacements. If Happ and Sanchez are out longer than 10 days, things could get ugly.

All this sounds dire, but it’s important to remember we’re just 20 games into the season. 20 games into the 2016 season, the Jays were 10-10, and they went on to make the playoffs. It will be a tall order, but with 142 games left, the Jays have more than enough time to turn it around. And if the turnaround starts on Thursday, Chris Coghlan’s leaping tag from Tuesday will gain even more significance.

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Liz Roscher is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at lizroscher@yahoo.com or follow her on twitter! Follow @lizroscher