NEW YORK – Two or three years from now, once we better know what Noah Syndergaard and Travis d’Arnaud become, and whether or not R.A. Dickey ends up helping the Toronto Blue Jays end their playoff drought, a more accurate reading of Alex Anthopoulos’s most controversial trade can be made.
Even then, grading the deal in isolation isn’t totally fair, because it wouldn’t have happened if the previous blockbuster Miami Marlins trade hadn’t already went down. The steep price in future potential was only paid because the need for present-day value was paramount after the first win-now move.
Still, in watching how the Blue Jays’ club-record matching 11-game win streak ended in a 4-3, 11-inning loss to the New York Mets, with the lightning-armed Syndergaard dominating for six innings and Wilmer Flores capping a two-run rally in the 11th with a single up the middle, it’s obvious long term it will hurt.
"He’s pretty good, the Blue Jays let one go trading him," said Mark Buehrle, who allowed two runs, one earned, over seven strong innings of four-hit ball. "He’s going to be good, he throws hard, his ball is moving. I don’t hit very much but after the first couple of pitches I didn’t think I was going to get a base hit."
Base hits in general were hard to come by for the Blue Jays, but Jose Bautista’s second solo shot of the game, off closer Jeurys Familia on the first pitch of the ninth, tied things up 2-2. Edwin Encarnacion followed with a double, but the Blue Jays couldn’t knock him in for the win.
They went ahead 3-2 in the 11th, when with one out Ezequiel Carrera fought back from 0-2 against Hansel Robles to work a walk, Chris Colabello followed with a single and Dioner Navarro’s fly ball to right field easily plated the speedy outfielder.
But Brett Cecil couldn’t lock things down, as Lucas Duda’s two-out bloop against the shift and a no-doubles defence tied things up before Flores shot a single up the middle on the first pitch from Liam Hendriks.
Just like that, good fortune stopped falling the Blue Jays’ way.
"That’s the way the game works, we’ve benefitted from that and there will again be times we will, too, that’s just the way it goes," said manager John Gibbons. "I’m proud of these guys, it was a hell of a roll, it’s tough to do, 11 games. It’s a tough one because it was right there and you’ve got the lead. But it didn’t happen so move on to tomorrow."
A tomorrow rapidly becoming today is what Syndergaard is to the Mets.
The 22-year-old nicknamed Thor flashed a fastball that touches 98 plus a changeup at 88 mph – 3-5 mph faster than a typical Buehrle heater – and demonstrated why he has a chance to be pretty special.
"He definitely has a lot of movement on an extremely hard fastball with a good curveball and a pretty good changeup," said Bautista. "His off-speed definitely keeps you in check and then he can go to work with his heater.
"He did a great job today and that’s why they ended up winning, because he kept them in the ballgame."
Legit runs at the post-season in 2013 and 2014 were supposed to ease the potential sting of the prospect price the Blue Jays paid to both the Mets and Marlins, but so far it hasn’t happened.
That’s not entirely the fault of Dickey, who has given the Blue Jays 440.1 innings over last two years, nor the Marlins haul of Buehrle, who’s logged 405.2 frames over that span, nor Reyes, a dynamic but oft-injured catalyst. Regardless, their contributions will always be viewed through the prism of those trades.
"That’s really been the toughest thing for me," says Dickey. "You want to be worth it, you want to be worth the trade, you want to be worth the expectation, you want to live up to the expectation. And more times than not you don’t – that’s just the nature of the beast. More times than not you struggle some during your time and your contract. You have to be mentally tough and have people around who will really encourage you through the times that you don’t feel so good about yourself."
Dickey hoped his turn might line up against Syndergaard, it looked like it might and wouldn’t that have been perfect, but then the Blue Jays had to shuffle their rotation when Aaron Sanchez suffered a mild lat strain. Sanchez, the last of the Lansing Big Three of prospects still in the organization, was slated to pitch Tuesday but is instead on the disabled list, and it’s not clear when he returns.
Syndergaard allowed only two hits, one of them a Bautista rocket into the second deck in left field to open the scoring in the bottom of the first, the other a two-out Colabello bloop in the opening frame that put men on first and third.
But Navarro struck out on a 3-2 fastball and the Blue Jays managed just one more base-runner, on a Bautista walk in the third, until Syndergaard left.
Minus the big stuff Buehrle was dominant as well, but in the sixth, Reyes fielded Kevin Plawecki’s grounder and threw high to first base for an error, a miscue that proved as costly as the shortstop’s throwing error against the Kansas City Royals that led to the end of last year’s nine-game win streak.
After a Syndergaard sacrifice bunt, Juan Lagares ripped a game-tying double to left and Ruben Tejeda ripped another ball to right that after a bounce eluded Bautista for another RBI double.
"It was fun," Buehrle said of the duel. "He’s a pretty good pitcher and he had his stuff today, you’ve got to go out there and throw up zeroes. Made a couple of bad pitches there in that one inning when they scored those runs, but with this offence, we’re not going to score 10 runs every day, but nine out of 10 days we’re going to, so you’ve just got to keep it as close as you can."
A sign the Blue Jays’ good fortune might have run out came in the eighth when pinch-hitter Justin Smoak just missed a homer foul off reliever Jack Leathersich. Smoak settled for a walk but was eventually stranded.
"It got about halfway out there and then it took a left turn," Smoak said of the drive. "I don’t know if that’s the way the wind was blowing or what the deal was. I thought it had a chance but it just took off."
Bautista knotted things up with his liner just inside the foul pole in left leading off the ninth – "I placed my bet on fastball, he threw it and I hit it," the slugger explained – but eventually, an old bugaboo for the Blue Jays, the bullpen, returned, ending a streak for a team living in the present, vying for enough success now to justify the price in the future.