Go on, admit it: it’s the waste that’s eating at you, isn’t it? What seems like a waste of another year of Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Of starting and relief pitching that until all that leverage should have been enough to get a team snugly into the post-season. Of a $233-million payroll that was sixth or seventh highest in the majors, something neither J.P. Ricciardi nor Alex Anthopoulos ever saw in their day.
The Toronto Blue Jays made the city and the country fall in love with them in 2015 and 2016, when it was all about Jose’s bat flips and J.D.’s head-first slide and Eddie walking the parrot and torturing the Baltimore Orioles and Texas Rangers. It was all here for a good time and not a long time, to be followed by a few seasons of treading water before Bichette and Guerrero Jr., would breathe life into it again, supported by a robust financial boost from ownership. Not known then? That ownership would foot the bill for a Rogers Centre retrofit that would unlock unforeseen streams of revenue.
Instead, we have boos on an ugly Wednesday night, a smallish crowd — albeit one that would have been a decent-sized mid-week crowd not so long ago — turning on the two franchise cornerstones. More boos on a Thursday as the home team was turned into roadkill by the visiting Texas Rangers. A home team out-scored 35-9 in the biggest series of the year, falling out of a wild-card spot.
It was likely more the moment than anything deeply personal — and that’s OK, you know? Paying customers, etc … But it resonated on TV, in print and, based on comments from the Blue Jays players themselves, in the clubhouse. By extension, you’d have to think it resonated in the executive level at the Rogers Centre, too.
Sports isn’t always or even usually that easy. But this … this 2023 Toronto Blue Jays season? It’s enough to make you wonder when the payoff is coming. I’ve chosen the phrase ‘empty calories’ to describe much of this season, because you can find some good stuff and let the sweet, sweet taste of ‘exit velocity’ and such linger on your tongue. But the meal has seldom been filling. Often, it’s led to indigestion. Or worse.
Look, I get it. In 2020, the vagabond Blue Jays played home games in Dunedin and Buffalo and Bo made two errors in the second game of a 2-0 wild-card series loss to the Tampa Bay Rays. But hey, we were just looking forward to taking our KN-95s off. Besides, it’s the Rays. They do that to us. Onward and upward, then to 2021, when the team (and fans) finally returned to the Rogers Centre and we all sat after a 12-4 win over the Orioles on the final day of the season and watched the videoboard as a Rafael Devers home run gave the Boston Red Sox a playoff berth at the expense of the Blue Jays.
Sucked but, hey, we got Vladdy! And Bo! And home playoff games in 2022, with a raucous crowd sounding a little more like 2015 watching an 8-1, fifth-inning lead disappear en route to a two-game wild-card sweep by the Seattle Mariners — that second game a shocking loss, low-lighted by George Springer being carted off the field after a collision with Bichette on a game-tying, three-run bloop double.
That loss convinced the organization to put a premium on defence, which expedited the departure of Teoscar Hernandez and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. But the feeling was that the core — the guts of the team — was OK, that all it needed was another starting pitcher and a little more balance and variation to a lineup that, after all, had Vladdy! And Bo!
Can I let you in on a secret? This is not the first time the Blue Jays went into a season being a trendy World Series pick and flopped. They have fielded major league teams in this city before 2015, you know, and Anthopoulos’ 2013 Blue Jays went 74-88 after off-season acquisitions R.A. Dickey and Mark Buehrle and Jose Reyes and the like made them Vegas favourites. If this year is a lot of empty calories, that was a bread and water diet. This is not good; that stunk. And if you want September swoons, you might want to check out the 1987 Blue Jays.
And so here come the Red Sox — out of it all but mathematically, their general manager fired but holding a 7-3 record against the Jays this season. The Blue Jays chances of making the post-season are still over 50 per cent according to those B.S. post-season odds charts and maybe that homer Vladdy hit Thursday in a losing cause is a harbinger. Maybe there’s a run for the ages coming up. After all, “just wait until we get into the playoffs … then we’ll be good … we’re the team nobody wants to face,” has kind of been the rallying call for this group for the better part of six weeks.
Even if that happens, even if the American League West teams beat the hell out of each other and get the Blue Jays back in, it won’t be enough to hide what is apparent: that this organization needs an off-season offensive reset that needs to begin by adding a bona fide, run-producing middle-of-the-order hitter. No more “we’re the smartest guys in the room” moves like fobbing off the Brandon Belts or Daulton Varshos of the world on everybody and telling us all to sit back and shut up. Maybe Vladdy’s big 2021 was in part a creation of Dunedin and Buffalo; or maybe it was a product of a lineup that had Semien and Bo and Hernandez and sometimes George Springer around him.
Vladdy knew he’d be managed by a Schneider this season. Bet he never thought he’d have another Schneider behind him in the lineup in September.
Back in the day, of course, an offensive reset would mean firing the hitting coach, but with so many cooks in the kitchen these days, well, it’s hard to know who or how many ought to walk the plank. All I know is that a lot of people in the baseball industry are puzzled that some very good hitters in this organization have had a difficult time getting out of months-long slumps or have at least suddenly stopped hitting for power that gets measured in something more than exit velo. You hear things, you know? That somehow there’s a disconnect between the nameless, faceless numbers guys and the guys that take the information and communicate it to the hitters. I’d like to think professional athletes like Matt Chapman and Vladdy and Bo have been around enough now that they’d have learned the fine art of telling coaches or strategists to piss off or go pound sand. I’d like to think Don Mattingly could have done something about this because he’s Donnie Baseball and all I kept hearing and reading in spring training was how there was a lineup to tap into his wealth of knowledge. Or maybe everybody is just tired of hearing each other talk and, well, pass the iPad when you’re done with it, yeah?
We live in the shadow of the Maple Leafs in this city and that means the shadow of Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner and wasted windows of opportunity and financial resources. But these days I also find myself wondering whether the Blue Jays go the route of Masai Ujiri and the Toronto Raptors and trade a player who is part of the furniture for one shot at the brass ring. Thing is, baseball isn’t basketball and I’m not sure one player can make the difference, let alone which Blue Jay plays the role of DeMar DeRozan or whether there’s a major leaguer out there who can play the role of Kawhi Leonard.
Anyhow, that’s all I have for you. Something’s not working. Something’s got to change. For now, though, we all need to assume that Vladdy and Bo will be crucial to the reset. And that means that all of us — especially the people who know what must be done and where the blame lies — need to conduct ourselves accordingly. Because this can’t be allowed to stand. There’s no mulligans left, gents.
Jeff Blair is co-host of Blair & Barker on Sportsnet 590 The Fan and Sportsnet.
