Blue Jays manager Schneider on stretch run: 'We got to do it right f****** now'

There's no mincing words when it comes to the importance of the Toronto Blue Jays' upcoming stretch of five straight series against opponents under .500.

After a 5-3 loss to the Baltimore Orioles Thursday night, the sputtering Blue Jays will have to take full advantage of their impending 15-game stretch against opponents with a combined 0.382 winning percentage this season to have any playoff aspirations.

Blue Jays manager John Schneider certainly recognizes that.

"We've got to limit outs on the bases, we've got to make the plays, and we've got to have consistent at-bats," Schneider said postgame after his club dropped to 3-10 to conclude their season series with Baltimore. "There's no time to wait at all, we've got to do it right f****** now."

Clearly, there's a growing sense of urgency from within the walls of the Blue Jays clubhouse. The skipper's comments come just one day after the Blue Jays were shut out 7-0 by the Orioles, prompting Kevin Gausman to utter a similar refrain about his frustration with the club's stagnant season.

"We're just waiting for that big stretch. We've kind of been waiting for it all year. Is it going to happen? I don't know. I hope it does," the Blue Jays' ace said after his teammates wasted yet another one of his sparkling starts on Wednesday. "I hope it starts tomorrow, but we can't keep (waiting). We've got to go now & we need a little bit more sense of of urgency."

Needless to say, it did not start "tomorrow."

The Jays' soft stretch gets rolling with a weekend series against the Cleveland Guardians on Friday, before welcoming the Washington Nationals to town. Things should then theoretically ease up even more dramatically, as the Blue Jays get three straight sets against MLB's basement dwellers in in the Colorado Rockies, Oakland Athletics and Kansas City Royals.

Combined, those clubs are 126-258, a winning percentage that would equate to a laughable 53-109 record per 162 games — a level of ineptitude the Blue Jays have only ever matched during their expansion years of the late 1970s.

A failure to grab the vast majority of those extremely winnable games should spell disaster for Scheider and his squad. The club's playoff odds sit at just 59.2% according to Fangraphs, but despite those relatively favourable odds, the Blue Jays currently sit outside the postseason picture, 1.5 games back of the American League's final wild-card position currently occupied by the Houston Astros.

"We've got to go home ready to win," Schneider added. "Starting tomorrow, we've got to be aggressive, we've got to be on the attack, we've got to have good at-bats. Our pitching has been really good, but it's just (about) putting everything together."