Blue Jay's Bats Falling Silent in ALCS
It's no secret the Toronto Blue Jays are an offensive baseball team. Their pitching is good, but the team lives and dies with their bats. In the wild card game, the Blue Jays won on a walk-off home run by Edwin Encarnacion. In the ALDS, the Jay's bats led the way to a 3 games to 0 sweep of the Texas Rangers. Toronto's lowest run total in the series was 5 runs in game two. Toronto was rolling up to that point, and the bats were a big reason why.
Now two games into the ALCS, the Blue Jay's bats are falling silent. Toronto is in a two games to none hole, and have only scored 1 run all series. Toronto has run into fantastic Indian pitching, which pretty much shut down the Red Sox offense in the ALDS. In game one, Corey Kluber threw 6 1/3 scoreless innings, then Andrew Miller tossed 1 2/3 scoreless innings, and Cody Allen finished it off with an 11 pitch save. In game two, Josh Tomlin pitched 5 2/3 innings giving up just 1 run. That would be the only run Toronto would score, as the Indians bullpen came in and shut down the Blue Jays. Toronto had just 3 hits in the game. Toronto's pitching has not been bad, they've allowed just 2 runs in each of the first two games, but the bats are not there. The Blue Jays are built to score a ton of runs, but they are not doing that right now.
The star players in the middle of the order really need to step up for Toronto. Josh Donaldson, Edwin Encarnacion, and Jose Bautista are getting paid for one thing and that's putting runs on the board. If the Blue Jays go down three games to zero the series is over. It's up to these guys to lead the way. Being back in Toronto should be a boost, that building is always electric in the playoffs. If the Blue Jays want to save their season, the bats need to wake up and wake up fast. Game three is Monday at 8pm; it's a pretty important game. We'll have to see if the Jays can finally solve Indian's pitching. Trevor Bauer is scheduled to pitch for the Tribe, while Marcus Stroman is tossing for the Blue Jays. It should be a great game.
