Time for Blue Jays to panic? ‘That’s when (bleep) snowballs’

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How bad are things going for the Blue Jays right now?

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Let’s just say if they lose the second of a three-game series against the Los Angeles Dodgers at the Rogers Centre on Tuesday night, they will be sorry owners of their longest losing streak since 2024.

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That’s right, the reeling American League champs — who so far more closely resemble the last-place team that preceded them — are doing their best to believe that a 10-game sample size is meaningless.

Of course this is true. Last year’s version, remember, was below .500 until late May before launching one of the most memorable summer and fall runs in franchise history. It’s just hard to see that ray of sunshine right now.

So much about the 4-6 record and a five-game losing streak, punctuated by Monday’s 14-2 stomping from the Dodgers stinks. And it’s the job of manager John Schneider, fresh off a two-year contract extension, to keep it from spiralling into something that lingers until it’s too late.

Given all that’s going on with his team, it won’t be easy.

“It’s no secret that it’s not working right now,” Schneider said following Monday’s debacle while doing his best to maintain a brave face. “Better now than in August or September.

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“We’re 10 games into the season and if we sit here and dwell on it, that’s when s— snowballs.”

Schneider staying positive

One of the enduring — and endearing — qualities of that 94-win, division championship team of 2025 was that it didn’t let the crap steam downhill. Were there moments of concern, especially early on? Sure. But the team always maintained a sense of balance and belief that things would be righted.

There’s little doubt that the current group is doing the same, but with all the bad stuff that’s happening right now, they are being put to a test that no one expected by the first week of April.

In no particular order, the troubles are stacked high. We may as well begin with starting pitching where with four of those arms on the injured list and a fifth, Monday’s two-inning starter Max Scherzer worried about forearm issues, it’s full-on crisis. The Jays navigated similar troubles last season, but it was months into the schedule, not days.

There is a bullpen that is overused, overtaxed and in vulnerable situations has been overmatched.

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There is an offence that is struggling mightily and will now be without one of its more important bats, catcher Alejandro Kirk, likely for somewhere close to months.

There is a flu bug sweeping the clubhouse, although to their credit the team isn’t raising that as an excuse.

And now comes the challenge of finding a way to first be competitive with the powerhouse Dodgers over the remaining two games of the series and perhaps even finding a way to win one.

“There’s been some things that are magnified,” Schneider said in Chicago on the weekend where his team was swept in a three-game series by a White Sox squad that is the reigning AL worst team.

“The more you dwell on it the worse it’s gonna get.”

First 10 games haven’t been good

In other words, 10 games into the season, the Jays find themselves in survival mode. The good news is they send their two best pitchers to face the Dodgers on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The counter-punch, of course, is that the champs counter with Yoshinobu Yamamoto (he of THREE World Series wins, two of them when he faced Gausman) and Shohei Ohtani (whose goal this season seems to be to win the National League Cy Young Award.)

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Getting swept by the Dodgers would qualify as a gut punch and it would certainly alter the hopeful narrative of the Jays channeling the near-miss of last November to propel themselves to greater things in 2026. It would still only be a dozen games into the season, but it will feel that much worse.

For so many reasons, the Jays season was effectively beginning this Monday. The nine games against the A’s, Rockies and White Sox was supposed to be about bloating a sizeable winning record and then facing the Dodgers with confidence and a shot at catharsis.

Through one game, it was more of a circus as the Dodgers scored 14 runs, hit five homers and by the seventh inning had removed most of their starters.

So what now?

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“If we get caught up in it, that’s where you look around and say ‘wow,’ ” Schneider said. “I don’t want the ‘woe is me.’ It’s what can we do now? We’re going to continue to think that way, continue to work that way.

“I think they’ve all been through enough, and they’re all old enough and mature enough to say, ‘Hey, this (terrible start) is not going to define our season right now.’

“If you get caught in that, quicksand, and then you look around and (worry about) who is missing and who’s hurt, then that’s when you can really kind of start to lose it.”

It’s back into that quicksand for games Tuesday and Wednesday with opportunities not just for the Jays to forget about the World Series, but to start playing like a team that made it there.

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