It’s one of those things that simply doesn’t seem possible these days: the Blue Jays, despite having now won eight straight games, don’t have a single save since May 4.
After beating the Marlins 7-2 on Wednesday, the Jays are 18-16 since closer Brett Cecil (or anyone else on the team) last picked up a save. 14 of those 16 losses have included saves by the opposition. But none of the 18 wins. Let’s look at the scores of those wins.
May 6: 5-1
May 8: 7-0
May 9: 7-1
May 12: 10-2
May 18: 10-6
May 21: 8-4
May 24: 8-2
May 25: 6-0
May 26: 10-9 (walkoff victory)
May 29: 6-4
June 2: 7-3
June 3: 8-0
June 4: 6-2
June 6: 7-2
June 7: 7-6 (walkoff victory)
June 8: 11-3
June 9: 4-3 (walkoff victory)
June 10: 7-2
14 of the 18 wins came by four or more runs, with three of the remaining four being decided in the Jays’ final at-bat. The only real chance for a save was on the May 29 game against the Twins, when the Jays scored twice in the top of the ninth to take a 6-4 lead. Under normal circumstances, that would have been Cecil time. Manager John Gibbons, though, decided to let Mark Buehrle finish it, which he did with a flawless final frame.
It rates as quite the oddity. I know of no way to find out the last team to go 18 wins without a save, but I’m guessing it’s been a long while. Last year, AL teams earned saves in 619 of 1,228 victories, so just over half of the time. The Jays had 45 saves in 83 victories then. If we just go with 50 percent of wins as being frequency of saves, then it’s a 1/524,288 chance that a team would go 18 straight wins without one.
With the winning streak, the Jays are 31-30 for the season. Because of the abundance of lopsided wins and close losses, they have the AL’s best run differential, having scored 325 runs and allowed 266.