TORONTO — At the outset of the 2024 Major League Baseball season, there are high expectations of what would constitute success for the Toronto Blue Jays. And yet, there is also low confidence amongst the fanbase that they can meet those expectations.
It’s a peculiar situation from the outside looking in, though for Blue Jays fans who have lived through the team’s most recent competitive window, such a circumstance is well-earned.
Blue Jays fans are well aware that they are approaching the later stages of this competitive window, and for all of the promise that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette brought with them, the team’s results have ultimately been disappointing, punctuated by soul-punishing conclusions to almost every season in their careers so far.
Add in that the most dramatic moment for fans in recent memory was an ill-fated plane ride that did not bring the game’s most coveted free agent to Toronto, and one can understand how even your most measured Blue Jays supporter is more than a little irritable and twitchy these days.
They say hope springs eternal at this point of the baseball season, but given the wariness that trends toward cynicism, there’s not much margin for error for this year’s Blue Jays. If the series of recent failures would make any fan leery, the punishingly frustrating 2023 season has left many fans feeling contemptuous of the team.
Moreover, an off-season that was a letdown for the futile pursuit of Shohei Ohtani and generally underwhelming otherwise has left some fans wondering whether the front office feels the same level of disappointment at the past results, or the same urgency to compete.
Even with the benefit of inherent enthusiasm for a new year, this prologue of past calamities will weigh heavily on the current season. It means that every negative outcome on the field will take on added meaning. Every setback and bad break will be an extension of the recent history of disappointment and futility.
It certainly won’t be a season to assuage someone with an offhanded assertion that “it’s still early,” unless you are seeking to be rebuked by an ornery fan.
Of course, baseball is a game of failure, and there will be plenty of it in the season ahead. More than a thousand runners will be left on base. Likely more than 100 double plays grounded into. Well over 1,000 strikeouts. Likely more than last year’s 71 errors committed. Somewhere close to 500 walks allowed and 200 home runs against Jays pitchers.
Even in the best-case scenarios for the Blue Jays, they’ll lose around 60 games. That’s at least two full months of days and evenings in which fans will end the day on a bad note.
When you consider it all this way … man, does supporting the Blue Jays ever sound like a lousy existence. When did we become as miserable as (gulp) Yankees fans?
(Some of this perspective clearly comes from the author of this piece being so utterly and terminally online, a place where people aren’t likely to show up to declare how sanguine they feel or how well-adjusted they are.)
So, why do it? Why commit to the next six months of misery and suffering and torment? Especially in the scant few days of warmth and sunshine and summer that are allotted to Canadians?
Maybe it’s because under all of the dust and ashes of past misfortune, there’s some glimmering lights of optimism to be found.
Emerging players such as Davis Schneider and Ernie Clement played their way into roles on the big-league roster by following a good finish to 2023 with a solid spring this year. And Bowden Francis has built upon a succession of improvements to arrive on the roster as a plausible contributor to the rotation this year and in the future.
There is also the matter of a certain Hall of Fame-worthy Canadian who was signed late in the off-season. While even Joey Votto would agree that there are no guarantees for how he could fit in this roster or contribute to the Blue Jays’ success, the possibilities for a finally healthy generational hitter to have real and meaningful moments in his hometown at long last is an exciting possibility.
And finally, there are Guerrero Jr. and Bichette themselves. Every player says all the right things in February and March, but the Jays’ franchise cornerstones arrived in camp carrying themselves much differently, both physically and mentally. They look and sound prepared to grasp the responsibility of leading the team on the field and in the clubhouse, no longer willing to allow others to serve as the veterans on the team.
It could be that the history of this club in the context of this competitive window will continue to cast a considerable shadow over the team’s fortunes and the fanbase’s mood. But ultimately, fans support a team because they want them to succeed. Hopes for the 2024 Toronto Blue Jays may be diminished, but they aren’t extinguished.
And hope is a powerful thing.
