CHICAGO – Having peered into what one cautionary-tale future might look like over the weekend while playing the Los Angeles Angels, this week’s series against the Chicago White Sox offered the Toronto Blue Jays a glimpse into a potential alternative reality.
Rather than trying to retool on the fly with a flawed core and a barren farm system like the former AL West power, the South Siders are in full-on rebuild mode, carrying only 11 players who started the year with more than a full season of MLB service time. Four of them are retreads acting as rotation stop-gaps with another fulfilling a similar role in the bullpen. It’s not pretty.
Still, their kids have youth and energy and athleticism and upside, learning hard lessons before barren stands at Guaranteed Rate Field, with more suffering ahead. If things go to plan, the White Sox will, perhaps, eventually end up like the powerhouse Houston Astros, who host the Blue Jays in a three-game series that starts Friday, but there are no guarantees, and there will be lots more losing along the way.
The Blue Jays hope to avoid both that pain and the dangerous middle-ground where the Angels are mired, telling one season-ticket holder upset over next year’s ticket-price hike in a recent email that "there are no plans for a rebuild," and that "we remain in full GO mode for 2018."
For that to happen successfully, they’ll need J.A. Happ to consistently pitch the way he did Wednesday, when he struck out a season-high 10 batters over seven innings of one-run ball in a 5-1 win over the White Sox.
A 20-game winner last year when he threw a career-best 195 innings, the veteran left-hander has been among the many Blue Jays left chasing his season because of injury, in his case elbow inflammation caused by some bone-on-bone contact.
"You’re fighting to get back, it just takes time to get that feel again," said Happ. "Today was definitely as good as I’ve felt as far as life on the ball, too."
Happ’s been good in stretches, but has yet to replicate the same steadiness he delivered last year.
The month-and-a-half long absence is an obvious factor, and with so much flux elsewhere in the rotation with Aaron Sanchez’s blister troubles, Francisco Liriano’s shoulder and neck troubles and Marco Estrada’s inconsistencies, the Blue Jays haven’t been able to weather the performance dip.
"There are so many variables that go into the outing, how you’re feeling and how things unfold, but the main thing is trying to get to the point where I’m pitching deep in games and consistently giving us a chance to win a ballgame," said Happ. "I felt more like myself from last year today as far as being able to use a lot of pitches for strikes, that was a big part of it. Especially when I was down in some counts, I was able to induce some weak groundballs."
The ability to dominate remains, as evidenced by his handling of the White Sox.
Helped out by a conservative hold on Tim Anderson by Chicago’s third base coach, Happ worked out of a bases-loaded, one-out jam to escape the first unscathed. He then stranded a leadoff triple by Anderson in the third and didn’t have any trouble until Leury Garcia’s two-out single scored Tyler Saladino and cut the Blue Jays lead to 2-1 in the sixth.
"He was really good," said manager John Gibbons.
The offence did the rest against the good hitting offered by the White Sox pitching staff, a Russell Martin RBI single and a wild pitch that scored Pillar pushing the advantage to 4-1 in the eighth. Josh Donaldson, in the ninth, homered for a third straight day to further pad the advantage.
"Everything is working pretty well," said Donaldson. "I’ve been putting in a lot of work the last week or so and it’s starting to pay off."
Shaking off consecutive blown saves, Roberto Osuna came on in the bottom of the ninth after the first two batters reached against Joe Biagini and was money. He retired the next three batters to close things out for his 27th save as the Blue Jays took two of three from a team on a path they don’t want to follow.
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