The Toronto Blue Jays’ woes at the plate continued Wednesday night, as another mediocre showing resulted in a 3-2 loss to the Kansas City Royals.
Toronto was 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position in Kansas City, and 1-for-10 between the seventh and ninth innings. As a result, their already poor scoring average fell even worse this season, at 3.8 runs per game.
According to StatsCentre, the Blue Jays have scored 95 runs in 25 games, tied for the sixth-lowest total in team history.
Notably, the 2022 Blue Jays had exactly 95 runs in 25 games. That season, Toronto fired manager Charlie Montoyo shortly before the All-Star break.
While the Blue Jays finished 92-70 and earned an AL Wild Card position that year, it required a significant midseason shift to get there. John Scheinder was the temporary manager who helped that squad turn things around, and it remains to be seen whether he can do the same as the full-time manager.
The five Blue Jays teams who scored fewer runs than the 2024 squad through 25 games all failed to make the playoffs.
Toronto’s offensive woes can be attributed to the underperformance of its greatest stars, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette. The former is batting.219 with a.674 OPS, and the latter is batting.231 with a.631 OPS.
The two young batters have combined for five All-Star appearances, but neither appears to be on course to earn votes in 2024.
Toronto is still 13-12 for the season, but they are only 0.5 games ahead of last place in the AL East. The Blue Jays will conclude their series against the 15-10 Royals on Thursday at 2:10 p.m. ET, before facing the 15-11 Los Angeles Dodgers over the weekend.
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