Series Recap: Blue Jays swept by Rangers as playoff odds continue to shrink
Photo credit: © John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images
Jun 29, 2026, 11:00 EDTUpdated: Jun 29, 2026, 10:56 EDT
This season is quickly starting to feel like 2024 all over again.
A week ago, the Toronto Blue Jays crawled back to .500 thanks to a come-from-behind victory over the Houston Astros. Since then, they’ve been free falling. They lost the final two games against the Astros, two winnable games, and were just swept in a four-game series against the Texas Rangers.
The story of this series was the Jays fell behind early by a handful of runs, with their late rally falling short. For the fourth consecutive game (at that point), Kevin Gausman allowed a home run off the bat of Joc Pederson to kick-start Thursday’s game.
Moving to the third, the wheels fell off as Gausman allowed a three-run home run to Wyatt Langford, followed by a two-run shot from Jake Burger. The Jays got on the board in the bottom of the fifth, as Davis Schneider hit a sacrifice fly, then Myles Straw hit a one-out double that scored two.
Down three with three outs left, the bottom of the ninth started positive, as Ernie Clement hit a lead-off single. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. struck out, but Kazuma Okamoto hit his 18th home run of the season to bring the Jays to within one. Unfortunately, Alejandro Kirk grounded out and Brandon Valenzuela struck out.
On Friday, the Rangers scored three runs in the top of the first. Brandon Nimmo drove in the first one with a double, followed by RBI singles courtesy of Justin Foscue and Ezequiel Druan. They tacked on two more runs in the top of the third, as Foscue went deep for a two-run home run.
Neither team scored for the next four innings, despite the Blue Jays having two on with one out in the seventh. They finally got on the board in the bottom of the eighth, as Guerrero Jr. hit a two-run single, followed by a two-run home run by Okamoto. In the ninth, Brandon Valenzuela drew a lead-off walk, but was stranded thanks to two pop outs and a fly out.
You know the drill by now, the Rangers scored a run in the top of the first on Saturday. They didn’t score again until the fifth, when they exploded for five runs thanks to RBI singles from Burger and Alejandro Osuna, as well as a two-run double coming off the bat of Elias Díaz.
A two run blast by the recently called up Yohendrick Piñango got the Jays on the board, but the Rangers countered with a run of their own in the top of the sixth. Again, the Jays scored twice in the bottom of the sixth, with Alejandro Kirk hitting his second home run of the season, and Andrés Giménez hitting an RBI single.
Giménez and Nathan Lukes were left stranded, as Guerrero Jr. grounded out to end the sixth. They didn’t have another base runner, as the Rangers struck out the side in the seventh, followed by a clean eighth and ninth inning for a 7-4 loss.
Looking to salvage anything from this series, the Jays went down in the first inning for the seventh consecutive game on Sunday. Pederson homering off Shane Bieber on the first pitch of the game. Bieber was solid from there, pitching four consecutive scoreless innings before the Rangers tacked on a second run in the top of the sixth.
The Jays had a chance to immediately respond in the bottom of the first, though. George Springer and Lukes hit back-to-back singles, but Guerrero Jr. flew out, Okamoto grounded out, and Daulton Varsho struck out, with the Jays going 0-3 with runners in scoring position in the inning.
Still, they managed to tie the game, something they failed to do in the first three games. In the bottom of the eighth, Lukes hit a two-run homer, his fourth of the season, to knot it up at two. The Jays found a new way to lose though, as Louis Varland struck out the first two in the top of the ninth, before surrendering a double. He threw a wild pitch, it went to Narnia, and the runner scored from second.
Entering the three-game series against the New York Mets on Monday, the Jays have lost six consecutive games, but are just two and a half games behind the final wild card spot. Still, something needs to change, and fast.
Ryley Delaney is a Nation Network writer for Blue Jays Nation, Oilersnation, and FlamesNation. She can be followed on Twitter @Ryley__Delaney.
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