It appears the parade Toronto Blue Jays fans may have been anticipating honouring their World Series heroes for 2013 has been put on hold.

The team, which on paper back in March was favoured to take the title, has for the most part failed to show up wearing a Jays uniform on the actual playing field .

At the all-star break the talented but underachieving Blue Jays are currently 11.5 games back of the American League East leading Boston Red Sox and 8.5 games back of securing a wildcard play-off berth.

While that might not seem like an insurmountable task ahead of the Blue Jays, it’s not exactly where the fans, the players and the front office executives figured they’d be at this point of the season.

General Manager Alex Anthopolous had been a busy man in the off season gathering all sorts of pieces to fit into the puzzle and once those moves were made the Jays looked to be the odds on favourite to win the A.L. East.

Some odds makers had Toronto winning it all given the additions to the lineup with Jose Reyes, R.A. Dickey, Josh Johnson and Mark Buehrle.

Well, it hasn’t really played out that way and Jays fans are getting a bit anxious.

Now in the case of Reyes, he’s only suited up for 28 games due to an ankle injury so it’s hard to be a spark plug for the team when you are not in the lineup.

However, the starting pitching was thought to be the gem in the crown and needless to say the shine has come off of that jewel.

The three aforementioned pitchers are a combined 14-21 with era’s well above four (Johnson is currently at 5.1).

That’s not exactly what the fans thought they were getting in all those moves.

I don’t have a statistic to back this up but if you have watched enough games this year, Jays starters somehow don’t seem to be able to hold the other team down right out of the gate.

Teams are able to knock the daylights out of the ball in the first few innings, then it’s comeback time and the Jays offence, while still solid, can’t seem to dig the team out of the early inning hole.

Here’s hoping the break provides the time for the Jays we all thought we were going to cheer on to show up for the remainder of the season. Go Jays go!

sports@reddeerexpress.com