Ben Nicholson-Smith

Not that they were going to, they still had 100 games left either way.

It just puts more pressure on the here and the now to just dig in and come up with some wins.

And particularly tonight is going to be a big one on Wednesday night because, as you mentioned earlier, Chris Sale looms on Thursday.

So, you know, if you want to go into Thursday with a chance to take the series, not fighting off a sweep, then guess what?

This is a really big one with Patrick Corbin on the mound.

So...

It's the pressures back on and the pressures almost always on in a major league season.

I guess you could say for Atlanta, that's not the case because they built themselves such a cushion.

So there are rare exceptions to that.

But the Blue Jays definitely in a spot right now where the pressure is on.

They have to come up with a way to get back to a 500 and above.

And the sooner the better.

Right, and I think John Schneider made a good point after the game when he said that this is a veteran team, this is a really, really good offensive team, even without Drake Baldwin, that they are prepared for the splitter.

They know what's going to come in.

So then in a sense, Gosman can work off of that, go to the fastball, and then even to the slider at times.

So he can use the give and take there to keep...

the opposition off balance which he did pretty well on the way to 19 swinging strikes so that definitely stood out to me that he was able to miss 19 bats for anyone listening wondering like what the average would be in 100 pitches you'd normally expect maybe 10 11 that would be normal from a starting pitcher um so 19 is a ton he was really missing bats and on the way to eight strikeouts so you like that and then i thought the comments after the game were interesting too because i

he's showing accountability and you and i know and everyone listening knows yeah kevin gossman's been really good for five years including this year he continues to be really good so he's not the problem with this team right but he is demonstrating accountability that presumably others on the team should and could show as well where it's like hey i'm doing my best i'm getting some results but there's room for more and kevin gossman expects that from himself

And I think it would be fair for him to expect that from his teammates as well, because they are going to need to get the absolute most out of their ability and execute better than what they have to this point in the season.

Yeah, it's massive pressure.