How long can the Blue Jays offence survive without Vlad and Bo?

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The focus is where it should be this weekend for the Blue Jays, the thrilling push to the wire to win the American League East and all of the significant potential edges that go with it.

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But bubbling below the surface for at least a couple of weeks now has been a troubling question: Can these Jays make a deep playoff run without the potent output of Vlad Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette contributing?

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While it’s a first-things-first final series for the Jays and their desperate bid to capture the division title, the injury to Bichette and the struggles of Guerrero have had a profound effect in turning what seemed like a cruise to first into a too-tight-for-comfort battle.

As long as Bichette is out of the lineup though, the sharpest focus is on Guerrero and the search for his game-changing swing.

“I think when he’s going through stuff, he’s just a little like any hitter. He’s thinking a little bit more,” Jays hitting coach David Hopkins said prior to Friday’s first of three against the Tampa Bay Rays at the Rogers Centre. “The at-bats are a little more defensive. He’s not attacking as much and really looking to drive the ball … he’s just trying to get a hit when he’s up there.”

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The examples of that tentative play are starting to pile up for Guerrero, who has now gone 19 without a homer while knocking just one extra-base hit in his past 17, that being a double last Sunday in Kansas City.

With 23 homers, he’s headed for the lowest long ball output in his career (26 in 2023 ) and less than half than his best year (48 in 2021.) On Friday, Guerrero’s night at the plate consisted of a meek groundout into a double play, a strikeout, a single and a harmless popup. Those types of mostly benign efforts have been coming too often at the most important time of the season.

And thus the search continues.

“Right before he got that hamstring injury (on August 19), he was doing incredible,” Popkins said. “It’s always tough when you get an injury and that resets you. Some of the problems that were happening before he got hot have come back.

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“And this game is a battle, right? Overall I’ve been extremely proud of how he’s handled the ups and downs this year.”

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Popkins is being kind, of course, while doing what ever he can to support and cajole Guerrero into delivering the type of output he’s paid to provide.

So is the 26-year old five-time all-star weighed down by the pressure? He’s always believed he’s the type of player who can carry an offence when he’s raking. And he’s surely well aware that with that $500,000 US contract extension he signed comes expensive and sky-high expectations.

“It’s a natural thing for someone of his caliber, the type of player he is,” Popkins said. “I think he puts that on himself every year. For him, if he’s able to relax when these little ruts come and just know that we’ve got his back then he’s going to go and carry us at some point ”

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The sooner the better, obviously, which is where we transition to the absence of Bichette.

Despite missing his 18th consecutive game with a left knee sprain, Bichette incredibly still led the majors in hits heading into Friday’s play with 181. When he gets his next at-bat — never mind hit — is a big question mark right now, however.

Manager John Schneider said on Friday that Bichette continues to hit and has started to throw, though it would appear he’s doing both activities somewhat gingerly.

Timelines, then, are sketchy. Earlier in the week, Bichette had a substantial brace on his leg, which is to be expected given the nature of the injury.

“I think this weekend will tell us a lot,” Schneider said. “You want to see how he’s feeling and work with him on that, and how comfortable he is. But yeah, it’d be really nice to just write his name in the four hole. Just having his presence in the lineup would be a huge plus.”

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Timelines are just a stab in the dark guess at this point, but a return for the ALDS a week from Saturday likely qualifies as a best-case scenario. And even that feels optimistic.

Meanwhile, for so much of the season the offensive narrative of this Jays team was how the little guys have been getting it done. Now that many of those bats have lapsed into slumber mode, the need for Guerrero to become a beast at the plate is at its highest.

More than ever, the Jays need that game changer, much like the Yankees’ Aaron Judge, who has triggered his team’s hot stretch by hitting nine homers in the time since Guerrero previously swatted one out.

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“I think that’s any offence, right” Popkins said when he asked him how dynamic the Jays could be with Guerrero doing his thing with authority “When your superstar is doing what the superstar does, it kind of allows everyone else to relax, and those guys tend to perform better when they’re relaxed.

“There are things that he does even when he’s not locked in, defensively, base running, working a walk, stuff like that, that can help us still win games. So I admire that from him a lot.”

Even if there’s much more waiting to be unlocked.

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