Nothing was ever going to be easy for the Toronto Blue Jays.

Sixty-eight games into the season, they Jays have proven that they are slipping further away from the idea of consistency. Turning things around was always on the table, but making it aA reality has been a struggle for a team that’s been consistently inconsistent.

The Blue Jays salvaged a three-game series against the pesky Oakland Athletics by taking the last two games convincingly. While a clean sweep would have crafted a narrative for the team’s compelling rebound, they had a bigger problem coming up as they flew over to face the ever-successful Milwaukee Brewers in Wisconsin.

Coming out of a rather lacklustre offseason, the Brewers were never the favourite to become a strong contender in the 2024 season. Yet, they are at the top of the National League Central division early on by demonstrating savvy lineups and developing even more competitive pitchers in their system. Winning a series against a team this competent wasn’t going to come easily for Toronto.

As expected, the Blue Jays didn’t start strong and fell to the Brewers by a score of 3-1 in the first game of the series. Thankfully, Toronto then took the second game by effectively shutting out Milwaukee while scoring three runs. The series was up for grabs in a rubber match game set for Wednesday.

Wednesday’s matinee game saw the Blue Jays began wobbly at best, despite taking an early lead. Starting pitcher Chris Bassitt allowed traffic on bases early on but managed to get out of them each time, but the Jays failed to give him run support. Davis Schneider’s first inning solo home run was the only run the team would score while Bassitt was in the game. When he left, the Blue Jays were clinging to a 1-0 lead until the bottom of the sixth disaster ensued.

To put it lightly, whatever occurred in the bottom of the sixth inning was egregious. The split-second defensive mistakes came back to haunt them as the Brewers took advantage of not-so-strong pitching and wreaked havoc on base paths. Perhaps the worst error of all was letting centrefielder Blake Perkins steal home as Kirk decided to throw to second on a double steal. There simply wasn’t a way to stop the bleeding once it started and Toronto handed out five runs to Milwaukee in that inning.

Despite all the atrocious gaffes the Blue Jays created, the team started a rally in the top of the ninth. With no outs and productive at-bats, Toronto threatened Milwaukee and showed cracks in their relief pitching in the process. Unfortunately, the comeback fell short as the Blue Jays only scored three runs in total, leaving runners on first and third, as Milwaukee took both the game and series.

Such a cycle of inconsistency has been a reoccurring pattern that the 2024 Blue Jays couldn’t seem to quite overcome. There were multiple chances to spark the momentum, as well as reach the .500 mark, but Toronto has squandered those opportunities each time they’ve came along. Simply put, winnable games were always on the schedule for the Blue Jays, but they couldn’t put together good enough pitching, at-bats or defence to come out on top.

Good teams are the ones who can perform under any circumstances. They fight back against all odds or cream their opponents mercilessly if they have to. The Blue Jays haven’t been anything close to that this season, and with a negative run differential of 35, this team is far from contending unless they can turn their luck miraculously.

If there’s any saving grace, the American League’s playoff picture is more or less messy and provides the perfect opportunity for Toronto to do just enough to squeeze into the playoffs in the fall. Even after unimpressive performances, the Blue Jays are three games back from the third Wild Card spot as of Thursday. Fully embracing the chaos may be the only answer for the Blue Jays to survive the rest of the season no matter what.

But, for now, the Blue Jays are the epitome of mediocrity as it stands. Not much is going to change, barring explosive trades, breakouts or rediscoveries within Toronto’s roster or farm system. The Blue Jays’ weaknesses have been exploited thus far and it’s undeniable that the team sorely lacks depth in pitching and offence.

The puzzling part about this iteration of the Toronto Blue Jays is that they won’t regress enough to be one of the worst teams in the league, but they won’t advance enough to give a large amount of hope either if they make the postseason. The harsh truth is that the Blue Jays are stuck in a never-ending loop of mundanity that won’t grant any exhilaration or depression. By fabricating the abysmal purgatory, they are slowly producing a state of hell, in a sense, as unfortunate as that sounds.

This hell, this is hell. I am sorry to tell you and it never gets better or worse.