The Blue Jays again tried and failed to reach .500

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It’s been a rough season for the Blue Jays, and much of that is due to their horrific start. They’ve mostly recovered, but that “mostly” bit is key: On Thursday, for the ninth time this season, the Blue Jays attempted to reach the .500 mark. For the ninth time, they failed miserably trying to get their head above water.

This time, it was an 11-4 loss to the Rangers, who have spent more time than they’d like hovering around the .500 mark, too. Toronto has gone 0-9 in these attempts at .500, but it’s not just the fact they’re yet to successfully get there: It’s also how badly they’ve been defeated every time they try. They’ve been outscored 73-24 in these nine contests — that’s an average score of 8-3, and that’s if you round up on what the Jays managed to plate.

While .500 is just a number in many ways, it’s also emblematic of the Sisyphean nature of their season. The Blue Jays went 8-17 in April following a 2-11 start to the year. May was much stronger, with Toronto going 18-10, but the Jays have been outscored by 34 runs in June and are lucky to have even gone 9-10 on the month.

They are just five games back in the AL East and 2.5 back of a wild card spot, so it’s not ridiculous to think they might end up rolling that boulder up and over the hill before the season is out even with their problems. They’ve already used up the allotted awful stretch for the year, though, so they can’t afford to falter again or else they risk falling much further behind. This is even more true when you realize that the Yankees and Red Sox are both likely to plug holes at the trade deadline — the Jays aren’t quite in a position to do the same yet.

Toronto has 90 games left. If they go .500 the rest of the way, they’d finish with 80 wins. If they play .600 ball from here on out, 89 wins. And remember: They haven’t even been a .500 team yet this season. The distance between them and those they’re chasing isn’t that great, but when you lay it out like that, it sure feels huge. The Jays need to look a lot more like their May selves for the rest of the year to make the postseason happen again. And given the up-and-down nature of 2017 so far, it’s fair to say that team might not exist.