The Jays record under Cito Gaston and promising rookie Travis Snider are two glimmers of hope in yet another disappointing season.
I sure picked a good season to start this job.
That was the year 1993, when the Toronto Blue Jays were defending their first World Series title, and on September 27th of that season, when the Brewers' Kevin Reimer tapped into a 6-4-3 double play - Fernandez to Alomar to Olerud - a ticket to go to the dance to defend said title was secured.
Or, as Jim Hughson, then play-by-play man for TSN aptly put it, "It's a 93-peat."
The echo of those words has long dissipated.
So, here we sit, 15 years later. I'm 15 years older with two grandchildren, and the Blue Jays have not come close to sniffing those halcyon days of playoff baseball. (Note: It took the Blue Jays half as many seasons to make the playoffs for the first time in 1985 that it has taken to return to the post-season.) 2008 will be no different with the team just on the fringe of the Wild Card race, seven games behind the Red Sox as the calendar flips to the final month of the regular season. The games that slipped away under John Gibbons in the first two and a half months have come back to bite them in the derriere. And the off-loading last week of veterans Matt Stairs to the Phillies and David Eckstein to the Diamondbacks for a pair of nondescript minor league arms finally shows that the team has conceded this season, although no one in the front office that doesn't wear socks in their loafers will ever admit to that publicly.
It will be yet another September of playing the role of the spoiler, something they've become accustomed to. But that doesn't mean that there can't be some positives to come out of this.
The arrival of their top prospect, 20-year old outfielder Travis Snider, should tweak the interest of Jays' fans everywhere. His rocket double over the head of Johnny Damon at Yankee Stadium last Friday night gave us a glimpse of great things to come. Hopefully a month under the watchful eyes of Cito Gaston and Gene Tenace will be just the elixir to keep Snider out of the minors for good and into a prominent role with the team in 2009. Lord knows they could use his bat going forward. And they'll also be able to give another former round pick - left-handed starter David Purcey - a regular turn in the rotation to find out if he's closer to the guy that struck out 11 Rays last Wednesday in St. Petersburg than the guy that walked seven in his Major League debut back in April against the Tigers.
This September will also allow Cito to get a good read on which players he'd like to see show up at Spring Training next February in Dunedin. The team's record under their new/old manager has been 35-27 since he magically appeared in Pittsburgh back on June 20th. That's a .565 winning percentage - good for fourth-best in the American League over that time frame - and over the full 162-game schedule equates to 91 wins. Certainly reason for optimism there.
This final month will be used to evaluate everyone and everything in the organization. Rumours of an overhaul of the front office will start to heat up as the schedule winds down. J.P. Ricciardi and his hand-picked people have been given seven seasons now to bring playoff baseball back to Toronto. The closest they have come are second place in 2006, but that team still finish double-digit games back of the front-running Red Sox in the East and eight games back of the Tigers in the Wild Card. Quite frankly, under Ricciardi, this team hasn't even come close to playing baseball in October.
Some serious decisions lay ahead, but until then, the Blue Jays have 26 games left to play, with 20 of them coming against teams still considered contenders for playoff spots. That should lead to some entertaining baseball over the final four weeks.
Then we'll wait to see if the other shoe drops.
