Time to clear my throat a bit, after an aggravating bout of laryngitis. Here are some notes on my scorecard after a week of Toronto Blue Jays games.
• Relax about the bullpen. Really. If you’re into numbers – and you really shouldn’t be this early – the ‘pen is middle of the pack. Brett Cecil hasn’t forgotten how to pitch and Roberto Osuna has gone 3-for-3 in closing situations.
Right now the issue is trying to figure out the bridge to Osuna and it stands to reason that was going to take time because manager John Gibbons, pitching coach Pete Walker and bullpen coach Dane Johnson need to see how all the pieces fit together in various matchup situations. That’s not something that happens in spring training, when at least a third of the games involve players who won’t be in the majors.
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• You know this new Rogers Centre dirt infield/basepaths? It looks dandy and all that, but I’m not at all certain it’s going to be as much of a boon to this team defensively as that slower artificial surface – the one with the cut-outs around the bases – was in 2015.
That surface provided the Blue Jays with a clear home-field advantage (all you have to do is think back to how much it perplexed managers such as Kevin Cash and Buck Showalter). This new one? Not so much, I’m afraid. Although, as always, it’s how the thing plays with the roof open that will tell the tale.
• Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion have been just fine at the plate. Bautista has nine walks in 30 plate appearances, and seems to be the same hitter he was last season – contract extension or no contract extension. There’s no greed in his game, so far. He’s hitting home runs and so is Josh Donaldson. There’s a whole lot of lengthy track records in this lineup, people.
• You’re right: R.A. Dickey’s going to be R.A. Dickey – frustrating as hell. … The team’s 71 strikeouts, second-most in the majors so far behind the Minnesota Twins, is too much. … Bautista’s defence in right field has been confusing, especially in light of the manner in which the Kansas City Royals appeared to view him as something less than a “game changer” on defence, as former Blue Jays third base coach Brian Butterfield used to describe him. … Russell Martin looks out of sorts at the plate – much as he did last season when he hit .197 in the first month.
Kudos, by the way, to my Baseball Central co-conspirator Kevin Barker, who was skeptical a month ago about how wedded Troy Tulowitzki would be to his new Donaldson-esque leg kick that everybody was talking about during spring training.
• I’ve been warning you about the offences in the American League East – all of them have the capacity to put together big innings, including the Tampa Bay Rays. It’s going to come down to the pitching, and in that regard the notion that Chris Archer is not entirely healthy – an idea posited by Blue Jays announcer Buck Martinez – might be the most significant event within the division. The rest is just first-week stuff.
TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF
Two things I’m going to take credit for: Being one of the first to call the 2014-2015 Toronto Maple Leafs the least-likable group of athletes I’ve ever seen and forecasting some time around the New Year that the happiest fans of any Canadian-based team were going to be those of the 2015-2016 Maple Leafs.
With good reason, too: The Leafs are the only Canadian team to have achieved, essentially, all of their goals this season.
They were able to dispatch the sour faces of recent seasons (Phil Kessel and the unfairly-maligned Dion Phaneuf), find some reps for the future (William Nylander, Nikita Shoshnikov, Zach Hyman and the like) and finish dead-last in the process, maximizing their chances of landing Auston Matthews, the consensus first pick overall in the upcoming draft.
I mean, that’s pretty much everything you wanted, right?
Indeed, it’s hard not to view this past season as one of the most successful in recent memory. The organization made peace with Dave Keon, finally, it has a handle on Nazem Kadri and Jonathan Bernier – we can put to rest any notion that they’re important pieces for the future – and Joffrey Lupul? A sunk cost, at best.
We found out a great deal in this city about a lot of players this season – and no jerseys or waffles were tossed in the process. We can lay to rest, finally, the misguided notion that Leafs fans didn’t have the stones for a true rebuild. Truth be told, there are a lot of media people in this city who owe Leafs fans an apology as there’s a lot more depth to the fan base than they’re credited with having.
I still believe that at some point ownership will want to see the pedal stepped on and I don’t believe for a second the rebuild will be allowed to take as long as they want, but I do believe this management group is canny enough that they won’t broadcast it, and that’s OK. The best thing about where Brendan Shanahan, Lou Lamoriello and Mike Babcock have the organization positioned is that it’s light on its feet. Babcock’s suggestion that next years team won’t likely have a captain is reflective of that. Why create distractions?
It’s damn nice to have adults running the show, isn’t it?
QUIBBLES AND BITS:
• I know there would be travel issues and all manner of logistical hurdles, but it’s time the NHL gave thought to putting all of its Canadian-based teams in one division. It would guard against a repeat of this season – with no Canadian teams making the playoffs – and in fact would open the door to ensuring more than just one of those teams makes the playoffs.
• It didn’t get a great deal of coverage in the fallout of the release of NHL e-mails detailing some of the internal discussions about concussions, but when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau weighed in to the debate on March 29, I was taken back to the manner in which no real concrete action against steroid use was taken by professional sports leagues until the U.S. Congress held their feet to the fire. The NHL got off lucky at that time because nobody in Congress gave or gives a tinker’s damn about hockey – they were too busy hammering on baseball and football.
Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper was too much of a fan to ever interfere, but I wonder what would happen if the Canadian government ever decided to seriously weigh in on the matter of concussions in sports?
• The always-excellent Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated penned a fascinating column about the impact Major League Baseball’s trend towards the nuclear bullpen is having on comebacks, and he wonders whether we’re in the process of being robbed of ‘the art of the comeback’ and by extension future memorable moments most of which, as he rightly points out, involve offensive plays. You can read that here. Then read this rebuttal from Russell A. Carleton of Baseball Prospectus via Sports On Earth.
Lots of math, but an interesting debate nonetheless.
• If you’re interested, in the East I have the Panthers beating the Islanders in six games; the Lightning beating the Red Wings in five; the Penguins beating the Rangers in six; and the Capitals beating the Flyers in four.
In the West, how about the Stars over the Wild in five; the Blackhawks over the Blues in seven; the Ducks over the Predators in five; and the Kings over the Sharks in six.
THE ENDGAME
Look, I like David Price. How can you not? But Price likes to be liked, so of course he’s going to say, ‘Well, maybe if Alex Anthopoulos were still here I might have signed here.’
As I’ve mentioned before, the only thing Anthopoulos has said was the possibility of re-signing Price was “a discussion I was willing to have” with ownership, which is a lot different than saying “I’m ready to give you $30 million a year” and Anthopoulos knows that the issue wasn’t payroll this season, it was payroll in 2017 and beyond.
Either way Price was always going to go where the money was, because that’s what the biggest name free agents do every year. Plus, he also had a pre-existing relationship – one that pre-dated his relationship with Alex Anthopoulos – with Boston Red Sox GM David Dombrowski.
Really folks, it’s time to move on.