Blue Jays set to make the best of Buffalo shuffle 2.0

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Ross Stripling isn’t reaching for excuses and in fact is mostly accepting of the plight facing the nomad Blue Jays for a second consecutive summer.

That said, the starting pitcher isn’t about to deny the reality that his team feels at times as though it’s at a handicap compared to every other franchise in Major League Baseball.

So shuffle off to Buffalo (again) it will be — after spending the first two months of the season in Dunedin at a stadium even more minor-league than Sahlen Field, a charming park in the heart of Buffalo’s downtown.

Rare will be the public complaint from the Jays, a tone that feeds down from manager Charlie Montoyo. But don’t for a minute think that the players are thrilled about the challenges the pandemic has brought to their plight.

“It’s tough,” Stripling said recently. “It’s something no other team has to go through besides us and we’re well aware of that. I’m glad our team is young and hungry and happy to be in the big leagues because I think if we were a veteran team it would be pretty tough.

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‘Where it gets stressful is for guys like me who are moving a newborn. The team is doing a great job helping us as best they can. It’s just an added stress on yourself and your family. It’s something people might not think about as much that we’re going through that other teams aren’t.”

To be clear — Stripling isn’t looking for sympathy, nor has any other player done so publicly. But the grind of a 162-game season is tedious enough to add a couple of moves into the mix. The Jays have no clue how long they will be in Buffalo, where the action returns on Tuesday, but remain hopeful to get back to Toronto.

While it’s difficult to quantify how much of a competitive disadvantage could be associated with the transiency, the past 10 months haven’t been easy for the Jays. From a brief spring training 2.0 at the Rogers Centre last July, to starting 2020 on the road, to moving to Buffalo, to starting 2021 in Dunedin, it’s been an adventure.

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And how about ace starter Hyu-Jin Ryu, who signed a four-year, $80-million U.S. deal and may not set foot on the Rogers Centre mound until near the end of his second year, if then?

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It got to the point a few weeks back that some Jays acknowledged that they preferred going on the road just to escape the heat, the bright sun and the minor league feel to TD Ballpark.

It was expected that the puny spring training facility would be a boon to the boomers in the Jays lineup and that in fact did materialize. Unfortunately it had the opposite effect on the pitching staff — in particular the bullpen — and the Jays departed Florida with a mediocre 10-11 record.

Maybe the magic of Sahlen Field will return. The Jays were 17-9 at the downtown Buffalo venue in 2020, an advantage that played a big part in the team advancing to the post-season. It was likely easy to buy in to an us-against-them mentality when the term was two months, however. The best case in 2021, it would seem, is at least double that time on the other side of the Peace Bridge.

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“I will say this — as a team we loved playing at Sahlen Field last year,” utility infielder Joe Panik said. “I don’t know what it was, but we played really good ball there.

“Trust me — we would all love to be in Toronto. But with the circumstances the way they are, I’m really looking forward to getting to Buffalo and we’ll get some Blue Jays fans up there.”

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Panik’s last point will represent one of the biggest differences to the Sahlen Field experience this summer vs. last. The Jays have been clearance to sell tickets for 45 per cent capacity of the 16,000 seat stadium by June 15 with the possibility of that increasing during the summer.

With the Canada-U.S. border still slammed shut, it’s anyone’s guess how long the Jays second stint in Buffalo will last but a minimum two months sounds reasonable. They’ll begin with a pair against the Florida Marlins on Tuesday and Wednesday followed by a day off and three against the Houston Astros.

By the end of July, there will be 26 games played in Buffalo with 17 more scheduled for August. Internally, there is hope that the Jays will return at some point and Aug. 1 would be a worthy target, but border restrictions will dictate the process.

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The Jays have had to further upgrade the home stadium of the triple-A Buffalo Bisons to accommodate spectators, with the most notable being placed beyond the outfield walls rather than the hazard of being in fair territory.

Fans in the stands will be mostly pro Jays — with the likely exception of the June 15-17 series against the Yankees. Besides the skimpy crowds in the 1,400 at TD Ballpark, the majority of nights they were decidedly pro visitor.

“Hopefully it will become more of an advantage,” manager Charlie Montoyo said. “Because it wasn’t in Dunedin. Every team we played, they had more fans than we did. Hopefully it will become more of a home and be more comfortable for our players to play.”

rlongley@postmedia.com