Now, the circus leaves town.
The dust has settled, the learned analyses have been offered, the suspensions delivered, and the great watershed moment that was the Brawl in Arlington consigned to history. By any measure, the Toronto Blue Jays got off relatively easy in the discipline department, with manager John Gibbons on enforced furlough for three games, pitcher Jesse Chavez for three, first base coach Tim Leiper for one, and Jose Bautista for one.
No easy excuses there. The same lineup that has scuffled through the first quarter of the season and rolled over meekly on Monday night will remain pretty much intact, and no opinions will be changed in what have become two solitudes – those who love the home team unconditionally versus those who have cast the Jays as villains, as violators of the Great Code of Baseball, as a whiny, entitled bunch despite having won but a single division series.
That last group clearly includes many opposing players, most if not all of the umpiring fraternity, and a large chunk of the non-Toronto baseball fan population.
Your Toronto Blue Jays, folks, wear the black hats now – and not the ones attached to those awful fashion choices of the early 21st Century.
But that will matter not if they win. Being on top while the rest of the world resents you is just fine, thanks.
Problem is that at this moment, this organization faces a predicament more daunting than did the 50-51 Jays under Alex Anthopoulos, before the magic hit.
The Jays began the fairytale 2015 season with iffy starting pitching, serious issues at the back of the bullpen, and an all-world offence that covered a whole host of flaws. Once Roberto Osuna was installed as the closer, Brett Cecil found himself as the setup man, Mark Lowe and LaTroy Hawkins were added for ballast, David Price arrived and Marcus Stroman returned, they were for a long stretch unstoppable.
This year, while also hanging around the .500 mark, they have enjoyed exceptional starting pitching and Osuna has been close to lights out as the closer. But no one has settled into the setup roll, and most importantly the hitting has regressed to something approaching league average, with the previously fearsome middle of the order nowhere near as intimidating, and some of last year’s less-likely offensive heroes (Ryan Goins, Russell Martin …) falling off the map.
That combination, as we have seen, just isn’t good enough in an American League East where it appears the Red Sox, and maybe the Orioles, might be better than advertised.
So it’s time for Ross Atkins and Mark Shapiro to fix this, right? Make a deal. Shake things up. Sit those underachievers down. Do something.
Which brings us to the tricky, depressing part, where the piper must be paid.
There are few baseball deals to be made in May. In a game with two wild card playoff berths in addition to the division winners, precious few franchises are going to wave the white flag this early in the season. Those that might – the Padres, maybe the Braves, maybe the Twins – will be interested in only one form of currency in return for their major league assets: prospects.
Thanks to Anthopoulos’s wheeling and dealing last summer, that cupboard is at the moment pretty much bare. There is no cavalry about to ride to the rescue from Buffalo or New Hampshire – what you’ve seen so far of the call-ups is what you’ll get. And there is precious little left to deal.
Want to trade for bullpen help? Thanks to the Kansas City Royals roster model, it’s never been more highly valued in the baseball economy than it is right now. Toronto’s top pitching prospect Conner Greene, currently struggling a bit in high A ball, would probably get you someone with a decent pedigree, but is that really a trade you’d want your team’s general manager to make?
The alternative – the only alternative other than a knee-jerk firing of the manager – is to sit and wait and light a few candles in the hope that the bats return to, say 80 per cent of what they were last year, that Drew Storen or somebody else can hold the fort in the seventh and eighth inning until Aaron Sanchez is sent back to the pen, that the starting pitching holds up.
If it gets better, everyone can relax and enjoy the chase.
If it gets a lot worse, Atkins’ and Shapiro’s task will be obvious: deal away players in the final year of their contracts, replenish the prospect base, retool for 2017 around the pitching and around Josh Donaldson, Martin and Troy Tulowitzki, praying that the latter two can rediscover their stroke, since those contracts aren’t going anywhere soon.
And if the Jays remain where they are now, in this murky middle ground of near contention, someone in a position of authority is going to have to make a very difficult call come July.
It’s a lot easier to talk about bean balls and brawls and bat flips and Old Testament justice and the sanctity of the game.
Because in the final accounting, that stuff doesn’t add up to anything.