TORONTO – A year ago the Boston Red Sox were where the Toronto Blue Jays are right now, a high-expectations outfit mucking through spectacular disappointment, only with a heaping pile of clubhouse dysfunction to contend with, on top of it all.
Contrast that with the 2013 group, riding high atop the American League East standings and almost unrecognizable from that band of misfits thanks to its determination, tenacity and relentlessness. Love them or hate them, you have to respect how hard the Red Sox play – they simply don’t let up.
Now, an off-season haul that included Shane Victorino, Mike Napoli, Stephen Drew, Ryan Dempster and Koji Uehara is due some of the credit for that, but it’s worth noting how the change in environment helped incumbent core pieces like Dustin Pedroia, Jacoby Ellsbury, Jon Lester, Clay Buchholz (until his neck strain in June) and John Lackey enjoy resurgences this year.
The Aug. 25 blockbuster last summer that sent Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez to the Los Angeles Dodgers for some prospects and the GDP of a small country in payroll savings began the cleanse. The firing of unpredictable manager Bobby Valentine, poaching of John Farrell from the Blue Jays and subsequent signings ended the process.
“The guys in our clubhouse, players, coaches, obviously the manager, everyone, day-in, day-out, they’re focused mostly on the game that night, preparing and executing,” Red Sox GM Ben Cherington said in an interview Wednesday. “That’s a result of a combination of things, hopefully having guys that want to be in Boston, guys that thrive in that situation, and John’s done a great job setting the tone ever since spring training. That’s the biggest difference between last year and this year.”
All that is worth keeping in mind when looking at the 2013 Blue Jays, and judging their first bit of noteworthy turnover Wednesday, with the dealing of Emilio Bonifacio to the Kansas City Royals for essentially a roster spot, and the arrivals of outfield prospect Kevin Pillar and infielder Munenori Kawasaki.
While the Blue Jays, as best we can tell, don’t have anything near the depth of problems the Red Sox did last year, and manager John Gibbons is far more stable and effective than Valentine, the series of moves carried a deeper significance than just the simple shuffling of lawn chairs to accommodate injury.
With Anthony Gose due to join the club shortly as well, the Blue Jays are making a definitive shift of focus to 2014, trying at once to identify new pieces who may factor into the mix while making a few incumbents uncomfortable, and changing the mix in a clubhouse that’s endured 4½ months of misery.
“It can become stale sometimes, and that’s nobody’s fault, it’s just the nature of the beast playing 162 games. New blood sometimes can be a real pick-me-up. We’ll just see. It’s that time of year,” said R.A. Dickey. “When you’re out of it you want to start evaluating people to see what kind of pieces you have, what kind of bullets you have in the holster. I would anticipate that those wouldn’t be the only moves upcoming, and that’s good. We’ve had to swallow our humble pie and need to start figuring out how we can become better, who can help us and that’s part of the process.”
Added closer Casey Janssen: “When you’re losing changes happen. … What we’ve done this year hasn’t worked like we had planned. Just personal opinion, if this season went like this, I wouldn’t be extremely, extremely comfortable going with the same roster next year. Going forward, I’m sure there’s got to be some changes here and there to get this thing right.”
Those changes needn’t be as dramatic and as deep as the ones made by the Red Sox, but in plugging holes at second base, the starting rotation, potentially first base/DH and perhaps left field, maybe GM Alex Anthopoulos needs to consider clubhouse impact as much as talent, as difficult as that is to quantify.
While there’s certainly an element of randomness and luck in why teams of similar talent levels experience widely divergent levels of performance, the manner in which players handle both success and adversity can certainly nudge the ledger on both fronts.
Injuries also factor into the mix, but players known to take responsibility for both themselves and their teams can only help.
That’s in part what makes Pillar such an interesting choice.
An unheralded 32nd-round pick in the 2011 draft, the 24-year-old has exceeded expectations at every level he’s been at, playing with a fierce determination and chip and his shoulder. That style can rub off on others, and the more of it the Blue Jays have, the better.
“Early on I wasn’t really given anything,” Pillar said of his brief pro career thus far. “I had to earn playing time. I had to earn the respect of my teammates, my coaching staff. I just kind of played the style I was taught at Dominguez Hills. Play hard, do the little things right, be a good team player.
“That allowed me to get a little more opportunity.”
The Red Sox added plenty of that over the winter, and combined with internal recoveries by members of their starting rotation, they’ve played to a much better sum of their parts than a more talented 2012 team ever did.
“One of the things John and I talked about last winter was not focusing on how many wins we were going to have, but getting back to doing the things every day that give you a chance to win – preparing the right way,” said Cherington. “It sounds boring, but we talked about that a lot.
“What can we take out so far from this year is that we’ve taken a step forward and gotten back to doing some things better in our preparation and execution and focus and attention to detail. That’s turned into some wins, but the goal was to get back to doing things better in those areas and let the other stuff take care of itself.”
With internal rotation gains and a few pivotal adjustments, the Blue Jays could be saying the same thing next year. The process began Wednesday, and this time Anthopoulos has to get it right.