You can hardly blame fans for losing their damn minds at this time of year.
You feel like your team is close, but not quite there. You feel like they’re flawed, but not without hope. It’s equal parts tantalizing, frustrating and exasperating.
At this point of the season, we’ve all had the opportunity to watch our teams, assess their defects and dream on immediate solutions acquired before the non-waiver trade deadline this Friday. But beyond the somewhat rational impulse to improve your team, there are all the geeky baseball nerd aspects of the silly season to fill your mind and build anticipation.
Who doesn’t love those first images of a player donning a new uniform? Or the stories of players negotiating for uniform numbers, or choosing a new one. Or the pictures of the heartbreaking bro hugs as a player leaves one team, only to be followed by smiling but tentative bro hugs when he bounds out of his new dugout.
That moment when you see your team’s colours on a new acquisition – or the anticipation of that moment – is an event that draws gleeful enthusiasm out of even the most cerebral, brain-in-a-jar baseball fan.
But as with any quick dose of euphoria, one hit is rarely enough. Even as Blue Jays fans breathlessly await seeing Troy Tulowitzki donning blue, there’s already chatter about the other moves the team has to make. As though acquiring the best shortstop of his generation is a mere trifle now that the impossible has been accomplished. This is not-so-subtle cajolery that the mere presence of a deadline creates in the minds of baseball folks.
Even in retrospect, there are players who made brief contributions to the Blue Jays after arriving mid-season whose production somehow outstrips those who graduated through the system or came in at the trade deadline. Beyond World Series heroes David Cone or Rickey Henderson, players such as Dave Martinez, David Segui or Juan Beniquez still stand out in the memory for their brief presence and contributions to the team. Even players who were mostly non-contributors, such as Steve Trachsel, Bobby Kielty or Brian McRae, still elicit some added recognition if only because of their notable arrivals.
This isn’t to say that fans shouldn’t get excited by deadline deals, but in most seasons, the added bonus of new bats and arms are seldom enough to push a team over the top. Even a premier player might be worth a win or two in the last eight weeks of the season, and while the competitive landscape in the American League is more aggressive than it has ever been, it’s possible that we sometimes lose our perspective on the actual importance of making a deal in the final days of July.
Importantly, the easy disregard for future value and the willingness to burn through prospects for short-term success will continue to get amped up to unsound levels between now and Friday. Yes, "flags fly forever," and we’re probably all a bit guilty of inflating the value of prospects, but there’s a dangerous "now-or-never" impulse that can unhinge fans as the deadline approaches.
And yet…
If there was a year in which the deadline had an especially high degree of urgency for the Blue Jays, it’s this season. Hovering in the middle of the wild card race after 22 years of missing the playoffs is certainly a factor, as is the sense that the team might be better than its record portends. With one of the most potent offences in the history of the franchise, it seems as though anything resembling middling pitching should be enough to get them over the top, and finally ease the torment of two decades without so much as a game of post-season baseball.
Beyond that, the fact that the Blue Jays have only one more year of control of Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion creates the additional feeling of an impending zero hour rapidly approaching.
Tack on a diving Canadian dollar and the looming changes to the front office, including new presidents for their team and the business division at Rogers, and a sense that both Alex Anthopoulos and John Gibbons are approaching the end of their respective ropes, and there are a lot of reasons to feel as though the time to make bold moves for the short term is now.
Maybe, as fanatical supporters of a sports team, we’re inherently irrational, and are inclined to seek out the sense of desperation, and maybe this year shouldn’t feel different than any other. Yet, even given the arrival of Troy and LaTroy, it’s hard to recall a deadline in recent memory where there was so much opportunity, and so much at stake.