For several years, I’ve had a bit of a fixation on the 2006 Toronto Blue Jays.
For one, it’s the only squad that has finished as high as second in the AL East since the World Series years. It was also a team that was impressively productive, but with profound flaws that ultimately undermined it.
When looking at missed opportunities over the past two decades and change, it’s a team that stands out because of what might have been.
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(It’s also a team that featured current pitching coach Pete Walker, former hitting coach Chad Mottola and Sportsnet personalities Gregg Zaun and Kevin Barker, so as the song goes, there’s always something there to remind me.)
It’s also the year that we were introduced to two fresh-faced kids from the system: Casey Janssen and Adam Lind. It seems like just yesterday, and yet it’s nine years of team-controlled service time ago.
Janssen was somewhat inauspicious in his debut MLB campaign, making an April debut as a starter. Janssen’s promotion to the big leagues had as much to do with the improvised state of the rotation and the “sharks” floating in A.J. Burnett’s elbow as it did with his commendable 2005 minor league performance. He gave just enough peeks of what he might be to keep him on the roster, though not so much that the team didn’t resort to replacing him in the rotation with Tomo Ohka, Victor Zambrano and Jesse Litsch the next year.
Lind had a more typical ascent into the big leagues, getting his late-season cup of coffee with the 2006 team and making the most of it, posting a 1.015 OPS with two homers in 65 plate appearances. On a team that had 10 hitters with more than 200 plate appearances post an OPS+ over 100, Lind still managed to distinguish himself and serve notice that he could contribute in the coming years.
The road for both players was circuitous to say the least. By 2009, when Lind was in the midst of what remains the best season of his career, Janssen was scarcely holding on to his roster spot. Janssen returned from a shoulder surgery that seemed as though it might be career-ending, taking a permanent spot in the bullpen starting in 2010, just as Lind’s career was sideswiped by an inability to hit lefties and a series of back problems that undermined his production.
And somehow, for all of the highs and lows, by the conclusion of the 2014 season, you could make the argument that Lind and Janssen rank among the best players developed by the Blue Jays’ system. That through a gruelling road to make it to the majors and stick there, both players managed to succeed to enough of a degree that they carry forward value into their post-Blue Jays careers.
That’s not a small thing, either. It takes a lot of MLB-calibre players to make a successful team, and the supply of those players is not as plentiful as one would think. To develop players who in the end give your three-to-five good or above average seasons of performance constitutes some sort of success.
It would have been easy for the Blue Jays to allow Janssen to languish or DFA him after his surgery. It also would have been heartily applauded in many quarters if the Jays had washed their hands of Lind after 2010. Or 2011. Or 2012.
But as we look ahead to a 2015 season where Lind is already gone and Janssen is sure to follow, the heartbreak that some fans feel at the departure of these fan favourites is well-earned.
We should miss those guys. Lind ranks 12th among Blue Jays all time in games played and Janssen ranks fifth all time in games pitched. Maybe showing up for work is the least that we can expect from our team’s regulars, but it still matters. There’s something to be said for performing at a level that keeps you around for long enough that our attachment becomes something beyond rational.
At the same time, there’s little room for sentimentality for the 2015 Blue Jays. This is a team for whom expectations remain anxiously high, and committing significant salaries to players over the age of 30 who have had health and performance concerns in the previous 12 months is not a luxury they can currently claim.
For the right price, you’d certainly welcome Casey Janssen back, but it would be hard to give him “closer money” when his rate stats for strikeouts, walks and hits all indicate that he might not be a lock for the role.
For Lind, it goes beyond money and output. Though his 2015 salary was reasonable, having a first baseman/designated hitter who needs to be excused from facing left-handers and whose power numbers vastly diminished means blocking the team’s lineup and positional flexibility. At a time when the team should be open to any situation which lands them an above average bat, having playing time blocked off is likely to diminish Alex Anthopoulos’ ability to rework the roster.
What Janssen and Lind achieved as Blue Jays is commendable. We should think kindly on them for years to come, and maybe even mourn the fact that they’ve moved on. But for the Blue Jays to transcend into the next level of contending teams, these are the painful choices they’ll have to make.