Arden Zwelling

It's going to be tough to win when you're not getting more production from really core pieces of your lineup, such as Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who was obviously hitting tremendously well for the first five, six weeks of the season.

But now he goes into a mini slump and it's extremely noticeable because there's no one else picking up that slack.

Dalton Varshow not hitting very well, but taking a ton of plate appearances.

Jesus Sanchez on the trip goes four for 26 with four singles, four strikeouts, zero walks, and grounded into two double plays.

He's got an ex-WOLBA under 200 on the trip and a weighted runs created plus in the negatives with a nearly 50% chase rate.

And that's a guy who had like the third most plate appearances on the team on the trip.

So...

When you're just having this many plate appearances go awry from really core everyday pieces in your lineup, the margins are going to be thin and you're going to have to be perfect elsewhere in order to win some very low scoring, very tight games.

And the Blue Jays haven't been perfect elsewhere because no team really is perfect elsewhere.

Therefore, you get a two and four road trip.

I said it was a two and four road trip, actually a two and five road trip, so I forgot the miniseries was four games.

So two and five, over seven games.

But yeah, you're bang on.

The margins are so thin when you aren't scoring.

You get that bad, bad luck against Tyler Rogers that you're talking about, that kills you.

You get an Ernie Clement misthrow here or there, that kills you.

These are things that would be like washed away and forgotten when you're working with a five run lead, but they loom large and they're incredibly impactful

when there is no margin for error.

Today, Wednesday, in the seventh inning, when you saw John Schneider go to Louis Varland down 2-0 with two out, how do you interpret him using his best reliever in that situation?

I interpret it as if this deficit gets to three or four, it's over.