"Flush it and move on": Blue Jays looking to get over sh*tty playoff opener

Not much was going right for the Toronto Blue Jays in their playoff opener against the Seattle Mariners.

Sure, they weren’t blown out by a super embarrassing margin that made you completely lose faith in the roster.

But the Blue Jays fell behind 3-0 before they’d gotten a chance to hit, failed to score a single run, and are now just one game away from their season officially being over after a 4-0 loss in Game 1 of the American League Wild Card series.

Blue Jays starter Alek Manoah went 5.2 innings in his postseason debut, giving up just four hits but also allowing four earned runs.

On the mound for Toronto’s counterparts was Seattle ace Luis Castillo, who went 7.1 innings, recording five strikeouts, allowing six hits, and more importantly, didn’t allow any runs.

“Yeah, he did a great job,” Manoah said, but didn’t quite elaborate on any more credit for his counterpart. “I just think you got to go up and execute pitches. Obviously I didn’t do that today.”

Adding fuel to the Toronto fire was an eighth inning errant pitch from Castillo that hit Jays outfielder George Springer on his left wrist and sent him to the ground.

X-rays came back negative, but there’s still no guarantee he’s fully healthy for tomorrow’s do-or-die Game 2.

Whatever way you slice it, the Jays’ performance left a pretty crappy feeling in the stomachs of the sold-out crowd leaving the Rogers Centre on Friday evening.

And, uh, Toronto’s looking to expel themselves from the waste.

“You expect [us] to come out with the same energy, the same mentality, the same focus [in Game 2]. [My advice is to] just understand that you ran into a really good pitcher today for seven-plus innings and a really good one after that in Andrés Muñoz so flush it and move on,” Schneider said. “[We’re] ready to go [for tomorrow].”

Like Manoah, Schneider was complimentary of his counterpart.

“His stuff was good, you gotta give him credit,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said in his postgame press conference. “Flush it and move on to Robbie [Ray].”

Ray, of course, won the American League Cy Young with the Blue Jays in 2021, but did not re-sign with the team with reasons at least partially due to his refusal to get the COVID-19 vaccine which would’ve made him ineligible to enter Canada for the majority of the 2022 season. Ray missed a May road trip with the Mariners to Toronto earlier this season.

“I expect us to come out swinging,” Manoah said of his teammates facing Ray.

With travel-related vaccine mandates lifted last month in Canada, Ray will be pitching at the Rogers Centre for the first time since September 30, 2021.

“We’ve been saying it the whole year, the whole second half, that you’re trying to win every series and you got to win two in a row to win it,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider told his club.

Manoah seems to be of a similar mindset to his manager.

“We’ve got [Kevin Gausman] going tomorrow and [Ross Stripling] on Sunday. All hands on deck, Game 3,” Manoah added.

For a Blue Jays team now playing for their lives and looking to flush out their demons, they can only hope the toilet isn’t clogged when they hit the field tomorrow.

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