Opinion | Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse for the Blue Jays, here comes a visit to Tropicana Field

It seems as if the Blue Jays have been going from the frying pan to the fire again and again this season.

Their first 30 games came in a span of 31 days. Their first day off was followed by 13 straight games against teams that made the playoffs last season. Their next — an unscheduled breather after losing in Cleveland on a bitterly cold, rainy, windy night — was followed by a doubleheader. The next series was a stop in New York to play the team with the best record in baseball for the ninth and 10th times this year.

Now the reward for another day off is a trip to a place described many times as the Jays’ house of horrors: Tropicana Field. The Tampa Bay Rays await and they’re less a bitter rival for the Jays than they are a team that they just can’t seem to beat.

The Jays are 83-125 in St. Petersburg, Fla. That’s a .399 winning percentage. The only American League city they’ve fared worse in is Houston (.333), and they’ve only played there 33 times.

The once went through a drought that lasted longer than half a decade in Central Florida, losing 17 consecutive series between 2007 and 2013.

“That’s a really good team that knows how to play well,” said George Springer, who wasn’t around for that awful stretch and who has seen the Jays go a quite-respectable 4-5 at the Trop over his tenure. “It’s not an easy place to play. I don’t know what it is about it.”

The Jays are in the biggest slump of their season, a four-game losing streak that is part of a 2-7 run that has left them two games over .500. Manager Charlie Montoyo is taking it in stride.

“That’s just part of the American League East and that’s fine,” Montoyo said Wednesday. “Like I always say, to be good is not enough when you dream of being great, so you’ve got to play the good teams and battle and try to win games.”

The Jays might be catching the Rays at a reasonable time. They’re just home from a long road trip to the West Coast that finished with three losses in four games, one of them a no-hitter by Angels rookie Reid Detmers on Tuesday night. The Rays have been outscored 27-8 over their last four games.

Tampa is without two of its top young starters, Shane Baz and Luis Patino, but will kick off the series with terrific young left-hander Drew Rasmussen facing Kevin Gausman.

The Jays aren’t going to shake their slumps — at Tropicana Field and in the last week — until they start scoring some runs. They’re last in the major leagues with runners in scoring position (.181) and last in on base-plus-slugging percentage (.561). Crazily, their .245 average with the bases empty is second in the AL.

“We’ve just got to slow things down, really not try to do too much,” Springer said. “Don’t hit the five-run homer if there’s nobody on base.”

Montoyo thinks all it will take to get things going is a big hit or two at the right time.

“What happens when everybody struggles with men in scoring position (is that) everybody presses more because everybody tries harder, and that’s what’s going on right now,” he said. “So it takes one guy to get hot with men in scoring position and others are going to follow.”

Springer agrees. “This is a hard game. When you know that you’re not doing what you’d like to do as a team, especially offensively, yeah, you tend to press a bit.”

As for how to fix it?

“Get back to the small things,” said Springer, whose .269 average with runners in scoring position is second to Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s .308 among qualified Jays. “Just breathe. (It’s about) understanding that it will come. It’s in there. The talent is in there to do it. There’s still time to right the ship, but there needs to be a little bit of urgency.”

A little bit, sure. You always want to see a team playing with urgency, but also recognize that they have 130 games remaining and haven’t played any of their 19 games against the Baltimore Orioles yet. The backs of the baseball cards will tell a far different tale than where their numbers sit as we approach the middle of May. A bounceback is coming.

It’s just looking a little bleak right now, and Tropicana Field isn’t usually a place the Jays go to shake off the bleak.

Mike Wilner is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star and host of the baseball podcast “Deep Left Field.” Follow him on Twitter: @wilnerness

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