SPORTS TALK: Jays caught in the quicksand that is the American League East
By Greg Buchanan
The modest goal for any baseball fan base starts with the overused yet admirable aim for their team to get in a position to play meaningful September baseball. Of course, that status can come in many forms and levels of ambition, often ending up an altered version of what was initially projected and planned. Take the 2015 Blue Jays, who electrified the city (and, in fact, much of Canada) with a run that still has aftershocks felt today in the form of the massive crowds that have filled the Rogers Centre all season. The rise in popularity of that thrill-a-minute team ended decades of waiting.
In another form, there was 2021, where a rebuilt team that appeared to be the young guns of MLB fought gamely, only to be eliminated on the season's final day. The end result may have been excruciating, but it was also fun.
Then came 2022, and a Jays team took the next step, locking down the top wild-card spot in what was undeniably a season of progress until it ended with a thud in a two-game sweep at the hands of the Mariners when the playoffs began.
Let's flip the calendar page to September 2023, can we? When the Jays return to action following the all-star break, a dramatically different form of late-season drama awaits. GM John Schneider is becoming rather adept at saying something that sounds a lot like nothing. Which is kind of what this Blue Jays season has become. A club looks like something and plays like nothing. And sometimes, it looks like they're getting worse.
They remain caught in the quicksand that is the American League East, still a good month behind the Orioles and the New York Yankees. They are not completely drowning, but they're not swimming, either. And blaming Schneider for a team that can't hit and can't pitch is rather easy for fans and online screamers, but Casey Stengel and Joe Torre couldn't get this group out of last place, and the only real power you see from Vladimir Guerrero Jr. these days, or any days for that matter, is when Schneider is pitching batting practice to him.
That would be funny, but there is nothing seemingly funny about this Blue Jays team. For the third straight night in the nicely renovated Rogers Centre, the crowd was rather small for one of the American League's largest attractions.
The Blue Jays began the season with the "last winter belief" that their defence in the outfield would make up for that lack of offence throughout their lineup. That was noble thinking on somebody's part. What the Jays quickly discovered, as if they still need to learn this, is you can only win when you score runs.
They then changed their approach. They moved players around the lineup and batting order to get more bats in the lineup, thus relinquishing something defensively. That didn't work. If you wrote a book on the Blue Jays' season for 2024, the book title should be "Season Going Nowhere", subtitled "So long Ross." It was nice working with you.
And therein lies a problem on its own. If the Jays are going to be sellers by baseball's trade deadline, who do you want making the trades? Important trades. Trades that could plot out a new future for an old franchise.
Do you want a GM who made this mess in the first place to fix what he said he would fix a year ago and didn't? Or is this where the absent chairman, Edward Rogers, comes in? Where is he, and what does he think about this baseball team?