Sue Bird understands Caitlin Clark’s frustrations with losing, expects brighter days in WNBA

May 28, 2024

Sue Bird can relate to Caitlin Clark’s early frustrations about losing in the WNBA. But Bird knows from experience how things could change for the much-talked about rookie.

CHICAGO — In the aftermath of Sunday’s choose-your-own-adjective-for-awful loss to the Detroit Tigers, Toronto Blue Jays manager John Schneider made a point of addressing his players. It’s not unusual for him to offer up a few post-game thoughts, but after watching the group fight back from 5-0 and 8-3 deficits to take a late lead in an eventual 14-11 loss, he thought it was important to recognize the effort.

Now, everyone understands that this is a time for actual victories, not moral ones. But the Blue Jays need to take anything they can build upon from the latter to help produce more of the former and rescue a season careening toward some degree of pivot.

“Ninety-nine times out of 100, that game (Sunday) is probably a turning point,” Schneider said Monday before a 5-1 victory over the Chicago White Sox. “It’s bad timing to have that kind of game. The positives you take out of it are the way that we battled back, that’s a really good step in the right direction from our offence, and we didn’t get it done the last six outs. They understand that’s a tough loss, a really tough one, and a tough series overall and it’s been a season where we’re not where we expected to be. For the fan base and for everyone that’s not here, as cliche as it sounds, there’s a reason we play this many games, there’s a reason you play 162. …

“There are different ways you can go about it. You can say, this is May. Or you can say, OK, our season’s over, you know what I mean? The guys aren’t doing that. I’m not doing that. And it takes a good week or so to get rolling. That’s where the mental part of it comes in. We do this every single day. Some days are harder to turn the page — today obviously being one of them. You definitely mentioned that before the game to the guys. That’s the balancing act, for sure. But you’ve got to really put all your energy into today.”

The Blue Jays did that in a just-produced-enough Memorial Day matinee against the American League’s worst team, before 14,993 at Guaranteed Rate Field.

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George Springer opened the scoring in the second when he followed a two-out Daulton Varsho walk by ambushing a first-pitch fastball from Nick Nastrini and sending it over the wall in left, his first homer in 90 plate appearances dating back to April 24. Chris Bassitt threw five-shutout innings after being uncertain to start due to neck spasms that forced him to use a different delivery because he couldn’t turn his head to see the plate. Bo Bichette’s solo shot extended the lead in the fourth and after the bullpen survived a nervous one-run eighth, Davis Schneider added a two-run homer in the ninth that provided some breathing room.

A day that started with “kind of a weird vibe here early,” according to Schneider had a much happier finish than the one before it.

“When things don’t go your way, both individually and as a team, it can seem to spiral and things can seem like a big just jumbled mess,” said Springer, who hit seventh in the lineup for the first time in his career. “But I think guys have done a really good job of getting to the next day, trying to win the day, not really looking forward to what’s ahead or dwelling on the past.”

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The Blue Jays did that in a just-produced-enough Memorial Day matinee against the American League’s worst team before 14,993 at Guaranteed Rate Field.

George Springer opened the scoring in the second when he followed a two-out Daulton Varsho walk by ambushing a first-pitch fastball from Nick Nastrini and sending it over the wall in left, his first homer in 90 plate appearances dating back to April 24. While Chris Bassitt threw five-shutout innings, Bo Bichette’s solo shot extended the lead in the fourth and after the bullpen survived a nervous one-run eighth, Davis Schneider added a two-run homer in the ninth that provided some breathing room.

A day that started with “kind of a weird vibe here early,” according to Schneider had a much happier finish than the one before it.

The win ended a three-game losing streak and improved them to 4-4 through a 13-game stretch that’s gone from soft-spot opportunity to just avoid drowning. For context, their playoff odds, which peaked at 57.9 per cent April 22, stood at a season-low 14.6 per cent going into Monday’s play, per FanGraphs.

Where that math goes in the coming weeks will play a key role in determining the front office’s next steps with the 24-29 club — selling off expiring assets or small adds to bolster a post-deadline run — while the players simply try to plough through, no matter what the probabilities suggest

“You ignore and override. You go,” Schneider said. “Math is not always certain, whether it’s a matchup or whether it’s how many games you have left in a season. So you have to ignore everything and focus on what you’re doing each and every day. And at this point, yeah, there needs to be some other things rather than us just going out and doing our job for us to get to where we want to get to and to go our way. But to really start putting the numbers together at this point, for one, I don’t think players dive that deep into it. They worry about what they’re doing each and every day. You’ve got to take today for what it is and move on to tomorrow.”

Easier said than done, especially after the weekend’s misery in Detroit was compounded by Sunday’s loss and added to the club’s recent stop-and-start frustration. The Blue Jays looked set to take off in late April when they left San Diego having won four consecutive series and then didn’t win another one until they took two of three from the White Sox last week.

They’d won four of five outings after taking the opener against the Tigers on Thursday, letting another chance to take off slip away.

“It’s really easy to let those thoughts creep into your mind,” said Kevin Gausman, who starts Tuesday against Mike Clevinger. “But being the competitor that I am and that a lot of these guys in this clubhouse are, we’re not going to give in, we’re not going to give up. We have too many guys that have gone through so many things in their careers that have bounced back. None of us are going to give in. We want to win with this team. We want to win with these guys. We know we have the makeup to do it. We’ve just got to put it all together. And yeah, it’s frustrating that we haven’t done that, but there’s nothing else we can do but keep coming to the ballpark every day with the mindset that we can turn it around and we’re going to, that we have what we need to do it. That’s where we’re at.”

Feeding Gausman’s outlook is what he described as more consistent play at a higher level. That covers everything from better attention to detail by pitchers to things like holding runners to the better offensive results the Blue Jays have enjoyed at the plate. They’ve hit 19 homers over the last 17 games, for instance, after hitting 30 in their first 36 contests

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“I feel like we’re making strides. We’re playing better baseball,” said Gausman. “It’s frustrating because we want the results, we want the wins to come with that. But we know that we’re on the right track. And we’ve got to keep our heads down and keep plugging along and that’s really all we can do. We can’t give in right now. We have a lot of the season left. So we’ve got to have the faith in us and faith in our talent and faith in our camaraderie that we’re going to come out of this.”

Schneider was full of praise for Bassitt’s effort in that regard.

The veteran righty woke up unable to turn his neck to the left, an issue that began a few days ago, improved since but then got worse again Monday. Genesis Cabrera, who ended up pitching the ninth, was on call to start until Bassitt convinced the Blue Jays to let him give them what he could.

“I said, ‘I’ll be smart. If anything gets worse, I’ll stop,’” said Bassitt. “And lucky for me nothing got worse.”

He felt his way through the first inning, when he made “some mechanical adjustments just to throw strikes,” escaped a bases-loaded, two-out jam by getting Paul DeJong to strike out and wasn’t in any serious trouble in his next four innings.

“I’ll be honest, I got lucky. A lot of pitches, I got lucky,” he said. “And I think the awkwardness of it all kind of threw them off a little bit. How I was throwing was way different than what I did five days ago against them. So, just made it work.”

For a Blue Jays team in need of a lift, it provided one, fleeting as it may be.

Much of the season is still ahead, but little margin for error remains. The front office must plan for all possibilities — and not aggressively scouting the farm systems of contending clubs right now would be malpractice — and let what the players do on the field guide what’s next.

“As a team over the course of a year, start to finish, you want to have a lot of growth, you want to find identity, you want to do a lot of things that end up winning you a lot of games,” said Cavan Biggio, who singled, walked and stole a bag as the club tries to get him going. “(Sunday) could have been a very similar story to what we’ve already showed where we get down early and compete but are not really into the game. (Sunday) really showed a fight and will to win, trying to win the game at any cost. I thought it was very positive to see that.”

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Sue Bird understands Caitlin Clark’s frustrations with losing, expects brighter days in WNBA

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