John Gibbons was eager to bring his Blue Jays home, but not this way.

As he bantered with reporters in the visitors' clubhouse in Cleveland early Saturday afternoon, the Blue Jays' manager was looking on the bright side, as is his habit. His team had lost Game 1 of the American League Championship Series, so naturally, someone asked whether winning Game 2 was a matter of frightful urgency.

"It'd be nice to even this thing today, I'll put it that way," Gibbons said. "It would be real nice."

Then he paused.

"It'd keep everybody off my ass," he said. "I've actually enjoyed walking around Toronto for the last couple weeks. Pretty nice little backslapping now and then, instead of having to do it yourself."

Gibbons is not ready to venture out in disguise quite yet, but experience tells him that critics will be poised to pounce if the Jays cannot stage a quick comeback from two exasperating defeats in Cleveland.

The scores were 2-0 and 2-1, so there certainly was nothing wrong with the work of Marco Estrada, J.A. Happ, Joe Biagini and Roberto Osuna, the only pitchers used in those games.

"That's kind of what we expect out of those guys," infielder Darwin Barney said after Sunday's loss. "It's almost unfair that we expect them to pitch so well, but that's what they've been doing."

And given the way the hitters are floundering, the pitchers will have to continue doing what they've been doing when the series resumes on Monday night, with close to 50,000 anxious fans rocking the Rogers Centre to its rafters.

Those heavy expectations will fall on Marcus Stroman in Game 3 and his buddy Aaron Sanchez in Game 4. If there is a Game 5, Estrada will be back.

Cleveland will counter with Trevor Bauer on Monday, and Mike Clevinger chairing a committee of relievers in Tuesday's game. Cleveland has lost two strong starters—Danny Salazar and Carlos Carrasco—to injury, but don't sell that bullpen committee short. During the regular season, Cleveland's bullpen posted a 3.45 ERA, second in the league to Baltimore's 3.40.

History makes Cleveland a heavy favourite. Of the 27 previous teams to take a 2-0 lead in a league championship series, only three failed to advance to the World Series.

The Blue Jays are a perplexing team. During the regular season, they were fifth in runs scored in the AL (Cleveland was second), but they also sputtered through significant droughts, perhaps most notably in September-October, when they averaged 3.7 runs per game and went 13-16.

Then, in their first four playoff games, all victories, they scored 27 runs and hit 10 homers. The sudden surge sent hopes soaring in the fan base; perhaps the offence was primed for a World Series bid after all.

In Cleveland, they hit a wall. But it was no surprise the games were low-scoring. The Jays' pitching staff led the league with a 3.78 ERA. Cleveland was second at 3.84.

Of their seven games during the regular season, six were close and four were decided by one run. Cleveland won four of those games, including a 19-inning marathon on Canada Day.

That was a month before Cleveland dramatically changed the way it deployed its bullpen by giving up four prospects to get Andrew Miller from the Yankees.

Last year, Miller posted 36 saves and a 2.04 ERA for New York. But Cleveland already had a capable closer in Cody Allen. Manager Terry Francona saw Miller as the perfect pitcher to fulfill a sabermetrician's dream, a reliever who would "save" games in the sixth, seventh or eighth innings if that's what the situation required.

Miller's ERA in 26 games for Cleveland was 1.55. In the playoffs, he has been virtually unhittable, as the Jays can attest. In the two ALCS games, he has faced 12 batters and struck out 10 of them, all with his signature slider.

The only batters to put the ball in play against him: Josh Donaldson, who singled on Friday, and Ezequiel Carrera, who grounded out on Saturday.

At 6-foot-7, Miller is all arms and legs. His fastball averages 95, his slider 84. Sixty-one percent of his pitches this season have been sliders.

After Sunday's shutdown, someone asked Darwin Barney what makes Miller so tough to hit.

"Angle, height, length, fastball plays up a little bit," Barney said. "The strike slider just starts out of the zone sometimes. You've just got to try not to give up on that early.

"It's good to have gotten some looks at him. A lot of guys got looks at him and I think that'll hopefully pay dividends."

Donaldson echoed Barney's sentiments, not only with respect to Miller, but the entire Cleveland staff.

"We feel like we can score against them," he said. "I know we haven't done much, but we feel like we can score against those guys. We still have some games left and we still feel confident that we can score against Miller and whoever. We've done it before in the past and we feel like we can do it again."

They have scored against Miller, but not lately. He faced the Jays just once during the regular season, back in April, logging a scoreless inning for the Yankees. His career ERA against Toronto is 4.11. Perhaps there is hope.

Of note, however, is that Miller has not allowed a single run in his 10 career playoff games with three teams. In three postseasons, he has struck out 27 in 16 innings.

So far in Cleveland's unbeaten playoff run, he has become the fulcrum on which victories are fashioned. To have a hope of victory in this series, the Blue Jays will have to figure out Andrew Miller.

So far, they haven't figured out anybody on the Cleveland staff. But two games is a ridiculously small sample size. And Cleveland"s offence, despite two wins, isn't doing much better, hitting .182 to Toronto's .159. On Saturday, Cleveland had four hits, Toronto three.

No matter how good these pitching staffs might be, it figures that two runs will not continue to be enough to win games in this series.

So on Monday, the Jays hope to break out against Bauer, who is coming off a 6.39 ERA in September and a 4.2-inning playoff start against Boston in which he allowed three runs.

Toronto, meanwhile, will count on Stroman, who turned in a solid six innings in the wild-card game, to continue the trend set by their starters.

"We play good at home," Gibbons said after Game 2. "Get in front of our crowd, maybe that will energize us and maybe get some things going. But our back's against the wall."

Which doesn't leave a lot of room for backslapping.

You can read all our Blue Jays postseason coverage here.