TORONTO -- The series opener at Rogers Centre on Thursday night felt like a pro golfer missing a tap-in putt, at least from the outside looking in.

The Blue Jays entered as one of the biggest favorites this season in MLB, facing a last-place Royals team that was forced to leave 10 players -- including some key contributors -- on the other side of the border. The result of David vs. Goliath? A 3-1 Royals win.

Of course, the Blue Jays weren’t taking this game as lightly as the outside world. This is a club that has just gone through an in-season managerial change after a free-fall in both the American League East and the AL Wild Card races, including a 1-9 skid and a 1-6 road trip through Oakland and Seattle that all but sealed the fate of the departed Charlie Montoyo.

“Whenever you’re playing a Major League game, it doesn’t matter who is on the other side,” said interim manager John Schneider prior to the loss. “It’s a Major League game and it’s going to be hard to win. Records are kind of thrown out the window. Just like the last series against the Phillies and the next series against the Red Sox, it’s a chance for us to win. That’s how we’re going to approach it.”

Following the game, Schneider kept the same tune. This loss featured some bad luck in the eyes of Schneider, who didn’t want to call this a “letdown." It’s a difficult one to make sense of, though, especially after this star-studded lineup was muffled by Angel Zerpa.

If you haven’t heard that name before, it’s because the 22-year-old Venezuelan product has spent most of the 2022 season in Double-A for the Royals.

Looking for a silver lining to this rain cloud that rolled over unexpectedly to ruin the sunny forecast? Kevin Gausman.

The veteran right-hander returned from his brief absence with a right ankle contusion, suffered during the last homestand on a hard comebacker. The injury was a “hold your breath” moment for the Blue Jays after Gausman had spent the first three months of the season putting himself on the fringes of the AL Cy Young Award conversation, and while Thursday’s six innings of two-run ball didn’t amount to much, this matters in the long term.

Gausman wasn’t all the way back to 100%, though. That will take some time, so the All-Star break will be a welcome breather for him.

“I would say 85 [percent], probably,” Gausman said. “At about the third inning, things got a little hard for me. I definitely started beating up that ankle a little bit trying to push off. I was able to make some pitches, but wasn’t as sharp as I would have liked to be and I was able to get through six.”

Yusei Kikuchi, who’s out with a neck strain, will throw another bullpen session on Friday and could need a rehab outing before making his return. It’s likely that he’ll get another crack at the rotation, but that says more about the Blue Jays’ depth than Kikuchi’s performance.

After Thomas Hatch fell flat in an audition on the same day that Gausman went down earlier this month, the Blue Jays have turned to veteran Casey Lawrence and 23-year-old Max Castillo in search of reliable innings. Clearly, this will be a focus for the Toronto leading up to the Trade Deadline, but with Gausman back and rolling, we can call this a simple “priority” instead of a flashing red alarm.

A rotation with five Jacob deGrom’s wouldn’t cut it if the Blue Jays aren’t hitting, though. So much focus this season has been put on the club’s rotation depth and bullpen -- rightfully so -- but this lineup is not living up to expectations, especially after lighting the league on fire last year with nearly the same group of hitters.

Schneider put his own stamp on that group Thursday, shuffling the top four to have George Springer followed by Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Alejandro Kirk and Bo Bichette, a group he’s long liked due to its “on-base and damage potential.” It’s a change that makes sense and one you can expect to see moving forward, but the results weren’t immediate.

The coming weeks will feature a series of “firsts” in the John Schneider era. One day after the first win, you see the first loss. Schneider calls this a matter of bad timing, though, avoiding the narrative of disappointment, and he left his club with a clear message.

“That’s going to happen over the course of the year and it sucks that it happened tonight,” Schneider said. “Our goal is to come out tomorrow, win. The next day, win. The next day, win.”