SIMMONS: Is this how Robbie Ray and the Blue Jays end?

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Robbie Ray handed the baseball to Charlie Montoyo and walked slowly from the mound at Rogers Center, not looking up, perhaps for the last time like a Toronto Blue Jay.

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It was not the story I wanted to write on this special night, with so much at stake. It wasn’t the way he wanted to complete his miraculous season with the Blue Jays.

The next time he pitches, maybe it’s in Toronto, with free agency lurking, maybe it’s somewhere else, maybe it’s an unlikely wild-card game. But this season, now with the Cy Young Award, a relatively open career, it looks a lot like this wonderful Blue Jays season. It was almost there, almost unbelievable. It was, with or without a joker, special and memorable.

And now there are only three regular-season games left to play for the Blue Jays and so much uncertainty for the final weekend of this American League season.

And the question for Ray, which he won’t necessarily answer yet, is what’s in his future and, frankly, where are the Blue Jays going with him and without him?

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There is something bittersweet about this last weekend in Toronto. Ray was the Blue Jays’ best starter from start to finish. Marcus Semien, playing out of position at second base, has had a brilliant season. and he too will probably make his final changes as Jay on Sunday afternoon. He’s a free agent, too, and yet the Blue Jays still can’t seem to fight their way to wild-card spot with Ray’s Cy Young season and Semien’s MVP year of sorts.

They might lose one or both before the next season starts, and how to replace them?

Ray has been a giant on the mound for most of the season. This morning, the box will be a little. It’ll have Ray pitching just over five innings, allowing five earned runs, and that’s accurate but not necessarily thoughtful. After Aaron Judge hit a home run in the first inning, the kind of shot the wonderful Judge can handle, the Yankees led 1-0 before Ray calmed down brilliantly.

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He had 16 consecutive batters after Judge’s home run and did not allow a hit. And it wasn’t just that he didn’t give up. He gave up lazy flying balls. He gave up the easy rolls. He was spectacular until he passed through the Yankees for that dangerous third time. That number that drives the pitchers of yesteryear a little crazy, but the stats people will tell you has significant merit.

In the sixth, Ray made a pretty sweet field play to get first. And then everything fell apart.

Anthony Rizzo homered with one out to tie the game 2-2. Judge followed that up with another bomb and it was 3-2 Yankees. Then Ray walked Giancarlo Stanton on pitches the Jays thought were strikes before Gleyber Torres hit another home run, a three-homer inning off the AL’s best pitcher this season, and it was 5-2 for New York.

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Four hits against Ray. That was great. Four home runs. Not very well.

And this happened on a night when Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. gave the Blue Jays an early opportunity. Bichette had won Game 2 of the series on Wednesday with a late home run after an early home run. Guerrero had been quiet lately until he hit a double-scorer in the fifth inning that looked like it was going to be a home run after the Blue Jays won a referee challenge in an apparent double play.

When you win those, inconsistent as they are, you think things are going like the Blue Jays. The Blue Jays began to run. Ray looked almost impossible to hit … until he was – and let’s give the Yankees credit for that, his explosions came at the most opportune moment.

The Blue Jays are now three games behind the Yankees with three to play, which basically knocks them out of that first wild-card spot. Seattle and Boston are one game ahead of Toronto. In a numbers game, the walls are closing in on the Blue Jays.

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Ray came so close to being near perfect Thursday night. He may not have had his unbeatable slider, but the Yankees couldn’t figure it out in the first five innings. He couldn’t even get a hit after Judge’s home run. And then what looked great, wasn’t, the history of this Blue Jays team somehow and this season.

With two MVP candidates, a Cy Young candidate, an infield hitting record-breaking power numbers, a deep starting pitching corps, perhaps the deepest in the division, and a muted closer, they are still in fourth place. in the East.

Like Robbie Ray’s first and perhaps only full season as Blue Jay, there was magic everywhere. And now the Blue Jays have to find out how he got away this season.

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