With 30 games left, Blue Jays have no time to coast

TORONTO -- Thirty games left, all against teams with .500 records or lower. Sounds like a freshly paved road to the postseason, doesn’t it?

If you’d offered this deal to the Blue Jays a month ago, they’d have taken it in a heartbeat. These past few weeks have been the fun part, a disappointing team finding new ways to exist -- and win -- following the Trade Deadline. Now comes the hard part.

Thirty games against teams at .500 or under sounds like a launching pad, but what about this Blue Jays season has come easily and what about it has made sense? This team has been batting Brett Bateman and Charles McAdoo in the leadoff spot. It’s Aug. 25 and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hasn’t hit a home run at Rogers Centre. Do you really expect things to make sense now?

The first challenge: Last-place teams with nothing to lose

It’s important to work a bit beyond the tagline of “30 games against teams at .500 or under," because that doesn’t fully capture the story of what's been going on recently.

Take the Royals, who sit 58-74 and last place in the AL Central. That doesn’t sound all that threatening, but the Royals have won their last eight games and are fresh off an 11-7 win over the Tigers. It’s still the Bobby Witt Jr. and Jac Caglianone show, but the Royals are humming. Their rotation is pitching well and Craig Kimbrel, now on his 12th MLB team, just picked up his 441st career save. Heck, even Salvador Perez is stealing bases.

The Blue Jays open this homestand with three against the Royals, then travel to Kansas City next weekend on a three-city road trip which also includes visits to the Guardians and A’s.

We’ve talked about the Blue Jays playing like they have nothing to lose, but the Royals really have nothing to lose. There’s something dangerous about teams like the Royals, A’s or Reds down the stretch, even though they’re well out of postseason contention. With the right core and the right manager, teams like these can play loose and free, and if they’re rolling out young prospects for a taste of the big leagues down the stretch, that just adds another layer of unknown.

It’s up to the Blue Jays to not play down to their level, but we’ve seen how magnetic that pull can be.

The bigger challenge: Teams in the AL Wild Card race

Let’s not pretend that the other teams in this race are all playing the Dodgers 30 times down the stretch.

Toronto’s schedule is on the favorable side, sure, but most of these contenders are facing something similar. The Blue Jays have series coming up against the Mariners, Guardians, Orioles (twice), Tigers and Rangers, all of whom are central figures in this race. There will be massive swings from night to night and series to series.

The key factor here is motivation. Against teams like the A’s, perhaps the Blue Jays will catch an out-of-contention team on a night where they are not maxing out their bullpen. Why push your best back-end relievers to throw three out of four days if you’re completely out of contention? It’s a small edge and a small factor, but all of this matters so much in such a tight race.

In these other 18 games against legitimate Wild Card contenders, the Blue Jays will be getting the other team’s best punch every night. Just because they’re all a few games “below .500” doesn’t make it any less scary.

The big question: Which team can pull off a hot streak?

This is not the time to get excited about playing sustainable, just-above-.500 baseball with a 16-14 finish. There are currently seven teams with a legitimate shot at the final Wild Card spot, all of them within 4 1/2 games entering play Tuesday. This is not a normal Wild Card race, so it demands that one team goes on a true tear down the stretch.

Are the Blue Jays built for a hot streak? Their pitching is strong, but can this offense go seven or eight games in a row without taking a nap? Their longest winning streak is just four games this season, which isn’t encouraging. That’s also the Twins’ longest winning streak this season, but the other contenders have all put up longer ones.

The Blue Jays’ rotation is stable, their bullpen has been excellent and their defense is once again the best in baseball over the past month, but one of these teams will ride an offensive explosion to 18 or 20 wins over their final 30.

It’s a sprint now. Are the Blue Jays sprinters?