Blue Jays facing harsh criticism on something they can't control

A new piece hit a familiar nerve in Toronto. At 7-9 and 2.0 games back in the AL East, the Blue Jays were already being tagged again for failing to land enough impact offense in the offseason.

That criticism is harsh, because some of what Toronto is dealing with has nothing to do with roster design. The club has been hit by injuries early, and that has made the lineup look thinner and less flexible than planned.

Still, the old complaint keeps coming back for a reason. The Blue Jays added Dylan Cease, but they still did not solve the larger need for another true difference-making bat.

That is where Okamoto gets pulled into the story. He was one of the names brought in to help carry more of the lineup burden, but Sporting News noted he has not hit much so far.

And that leaves Toronto in a spot fans know well. When the offense drags, every missed pursuit from the winter gets dragged back onto the table.

The sharper point from the Sporting News piece was not that Toronto failed to sign every star it chased. It was that this has become a repeating image around the club: good enough to compete, not complete enough to scare anyone at the plate.

That is a rough label to carry in this market. Toronto came off a World Series appearance with real momentum, and the expectation was that the club would finally turn that into a bigger offensive swing.

Instead, the Blue Jays are back hearing that they whiffed on premium bats. Sporting News specifically pointed to failed pursuits and the idea that the lineup is still hard to fully buy into.

That does not mean the lineup is doomed. A team sitting 2.0 games out in mid-April is hardly buried, and Sporting News even acknowledged there are positives in how Toronto has held together through the injury wave.

But the pressure shifts fast when the offense does not look dangerous. Then the conversation stops being about patience and turns back to what the Blue Jays did not get done over the winter.

Okamoto is not responsible for every offseason miss. But when he is not producing, he becomes the easiest symbol of a larger problem: Toronto asked a good lineup to feel bigger than it really is.

That is why this criticism keeps finding the Blue Jays. Injuries may explain part of the slow start, but until the bats give Schneider's club more thump, Toronto will keep hearing that it never fully fixed the same issue.