SIMMONS: Time is already running out on the tight Blue Jays

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Now is a season of a game. That short, really. So tight.

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There are five games to play and almost no wiggle room left for the Blue Jays in this wild-card race for years after being beaten up by the greats of the New York Yankees Tuesday night at the Rogers Center.

The game looked like the crowd and it felt like the crowd and this wasn’t the kind of baseball night to celebrate something.

The only reason the night wasn’t a total disaster for the young Jays is that the older Red Sox somehow lost to the terrible Baltimore Orioles.

Then there are the Yankees, now with 90 wins – two more than Boston, three more than the Blue Jays – the Yankees silenced a surprisingly calm crowd, the team, the result, the mood at the Rogers Center seemed lacking.

This should have been some kind of historic night in Toronto. The crowd doubled in size. Billionaire Hyun-jin Ryu was on the Blue Jays mound after the break and an apparent injury. Canadian Jameson Taillon had to leave early for the Yankees, his bad ankle couldn’t hold.

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Ryu was sharp from the start. And then it wasn’t sharp enough, lasting just 4 1/3 innings, allowing three earned runs, two of them courtesy of uncooperative relief pitcher Adam Cimber.

This wasn’t the kind of outlet the Jays needed from Ryu, who they brought to Toronto for precisely this kind of game. It wasn’t terrible, it looked great for a short time, but the numbers don’t look good on the morning scoring chart, just like the final score doesn’t seem to be heading into Game 2 of the three-game series Wednesday morning. evening.

It’s been a long time coming, these once-in-a-lifetime drama and meaning baseball games in late September and maybe, just maybe, Toronto forgot what it was supposed to be.

Marcus Semien talked about this the other day, how much he heard about the glory days of Toronto baseball, how this stadium, this relic, shook with more than anticipation in 2015 and 2016, as it did in 1992 and 1993. But on Tuesday for the night there was not much shaking at the Rogers Center.

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There was mostly heartbreak and reluctance with a bit of apprehension – the crowd traditionally became rowdy only after two strikes hit a batter or once when a Bo Bichette slide to third base was incorrectly called by the third base umpire and then by the replay referee.

Then noise. Then emotion. Then back to a kind of theater sound. The fans waiting for the Blue Jays to do something great. For this mighty team to flaunt some power. To take home something that you will remember forever.

Now comes tomorrow. The Yankees appear to be in a position to be almost certain to be one of the wild-card teams. Now it all comes down to the Blue Jays and Red Sox and maybe even the Mariners, who play their games so late that most of the East Coast is asleep when there is a result to calculate with the rest of the standings.

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Now the Blue Jays practically have to win the next two Yankees games. They face Gerrit Cole on Wednesday night, which is an escalation in itself. They released Robbie Ray to the Yankees on Thursday, but as much as it sounds, it could be too late.

At first, there was a kind of postseason feel to the Yankees-Jays game. Toronto led 1-0. The Yankees tied 1-1 on a home run by Aaron Judge. The Blue Jays led 2-1. The Yankees led 3-2 in the fifth inning. Then came the big blow from the giant named Giancarlo Stanton. His three-run homer off Trevor Richards was basically a good night in Toronto and we’ll see you tomorrow.

“It feels good,” general manager Ross Atkins said before the game and not after. “I couldn’t be more excited.”

But Atkins won’t look back to last night and he won’t look back to tomorrow. His whole life has been baseball and that means that every day is a new day, every hitter a new hitter, every pitch a new pitch.

Only the Blue Jays are running out of hitters, pitchers and time. Five games to go. They probably need a minimum of four wins.

Ryu didn’t, having now made three straight starts less than five innings long.

Blue Jays greats Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Semien couldn’t match the twin towers Stanton and Judge.

And the crowd at the Rogers Center, larger in pandemic than before, apparently couldn’t quite match what it used to be, either.