The past 17 years have not treated the Toronto Blue Jays all that well.
Since the second of their back-to-back World Series Championships the Blue Jays have been through more than their fair share of rebuilding projects, Band-aid solutions and frustrations of being stuck in the same division with the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox.
All told, they have not been back to the post-season since Joe Carter touched ‘em all, and they won’t be again this year.
But there is now legitimate reason to have hope for fans of the Blue Jays.
This was supposed to be a season to forget. A season mired in development and digging themselves out of the mess pieced together by fired general manager J.P. Ricciardi. Instead it has been a season of far more highlights than low lights.
After divesting themselves of ace starter, and fan favourite, Roy Halladay they were supposed to find themselves at the levels of the Baltimore Orioles (44-62) and the Cleveland Indians (50-75). They were not supposed to be sitting at five games over .500 heading into Wednesday’s home date with the Yankees — the 125 game-mark. In fact if the Blue Jays weren’t in the American League East there is a good chance they would be competing for a division crown, at the very least the wild card. This point is hammered home even harder when it is considered that they would not have to be playing the three best teams in the AL — Yankees, Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays —18 times a season each.
It is actually the Ray’s rise to power in the division that gives the Blue Jays hope, especially with an owner committed to spending dollars when the time is right.
The Rays built through the draft around power arms — a strategy new Blue Jays G.M. Alex Anthopoulos has taken to heart.
While he had a few good arms already up with the big team like Shaun Marcum and Ricky Romero, Anthopoulos has not only managed to lock up Romero to a long term deal for very reasonable dollars, he has added to that depth with quality young arms like Brandon Morrow and Kyle Drabek — who he picked up in the Halladay deal.
Morrow started slow, but has rounded into form and recently came up one out short of a no-hitter, while striking out 18, in one of the all-time great pitching performances. All Drabek has done this year is go 14-9 with a 2.98 ERA and throw a no-hitter with Double-A New Hampshire. He should be with the big club in a season or two.
The pitching staff is young enough and deep enough that they will be one of the top rotations in the AL for the next five years. All they have to do is stabilize their fourth and fifth spots in the rotation.
Then there is the offence — for the last decade their Achilles’ heel.
While they boast plenty of power this year with a Major League leading 190 home runs — including the game’s top slugger Jose Bautista with 40 home runs — they are very much an all or nothing team. They have the third worst average in the AL at .250 and the second worst on base percentage at .314. All of this means they are hitting a lot of home runs with no one on base and when they are competing with teams like the Yankees and Rays on a nightly basis, this is a killer. It’s not the solo shot that hurts a team, it’s the two and three-run home runs that will sink your opposition or turn the tide.
This, however, is a fixable problem, especially when one considers that the likes of Aaron Hill (.206), Adam Lind (.234) and Lyle Overbay (.252) are having miserable years at the plate — in fact not one regular is hitting above .288.
But the foundation is coming together for this young team — a process helped by the signing their first 13 picks in this year’s amateur draft — and shrewd moves like shipping Alex Gonzalez to Atlanta for Yunel Escobar and picking Fred Lewis up off the scrap heap in San Francisco.
For a season that was supposed to be forlorn, if you’re a Jays fan you should be about as excited about the franchise as you have been since the SkyDome was the envy of every team in the game.
At the very least they can start dreaming of the post-season again in the next couple of years.
jaldrich@www.reddeeradvocate.com