PHILADELPHIA, Pa. – The Blue Jays concluded a long spring training of fake games with a two-game sweep of the Phillies in their non-Grapefruit League exhibition series in the City of Brotherly Love, wrapping up their preseason with 16 wins, 17 losses and a tie.
What does that mean? Not a blessed thing.
There are two goals for every team in spring training: The first is to have all your players emerge in one piece, the second is to get your pitchers stretched out to the point that they’re ready to throw at least 100 pitches in their first starts of the regular season.
The Blue Jays achieved the second goal, though not with the five starting pitchers they expected, and came very close to taking care of the first one. They’ll start the season with only one player they expected to bring north sitting on the sidelines injured, Brett Lawrie.
The Jays emerge from spring training with perhaps the best and deepest starting rotation in the game, an offence that has replaced two of its three weakest spots with the last two National League batting champions (with, yes, an asterisk on Melky Cabrera’s numbers) and a bullpen full of big-armed strike-throwers in the key positions.
It’s a team that is very well-positioned to have a season unlike any this franchise has seen in 20 years.
Spring training numbers really don’t mean anything because of the lack of consistent playing time and the enormous variance in the level of competition, among other things, but there remain certain things that one can take from the preseason.
Blue Jays fans were concerned about Jose Bautista’s wrist (though Bautista wasn’t) following his missing almost the entire second half of last season with a torn tendon sheath. So Bautista went out and led the team with six spring home runs in sixty at-bats, including a laser beam off the left-field foul pole here in Philly.
Blue Jays fans wondered what they’d see out of Cabrera, whose huge 2012 for the Giants was marred by a drug suspension that cost him the last month and a half (and tens of millions of dollars). What we saw from Cabrera this spring was a strong line-drive stroke that works to all fields, and a ton of contact – things that generally aren’t affected by performance-enhancing drugs. The proof will be, though, in the regular-season pudding.
Blue Jays fans weren’t sure what to expect from Sergio Santos, who threw all of five innings last season before shutting it down with a sore shoulder that required surgery. Even after a setback due to soreness in his biceps, though, Santos allayed concerns by throwing 95 mile an hour bullets and showing that huge wipe-out slider that made him so successful in his big year of 2011.
All those things count, and should leave a good taste in the mouths of Jays fans everywhere, despite the sad saga of Ricky Romero’s springtime. Even with Romero’s demotion, though, the Blue Jays have a perfectly serviceable fifth starter in J.A. Happ, so the team shouldn’t really miss a beat.
I’m not in the prediction game. Mostly because I’m human and no one knows what’s going to happen in the future. Even the most educated guess will be wrong a large portion of the time.
I will say, though, that I don’t see any team in the American League East that matches up with what the Blue Jays can do on the mound and at the plate.
I’m afraid to write off the New York Yankees, as horrible as they look right now, simply because there have been reasons to write them off in the past and they have always gotten by them, making the playoffs every year but once since 1995. But man, do they look like they’re in trouble.
The Tampa Bay Rays are relying a little too much on some young starting pitching that’s either good but not great (Jeremy Hellickson), could be great but might be a year or two away (Matt Moore) or just pretty OK (Alex Cobb, Jeff Niemann, Roberto Hernandez) behind David Price, and they have almost no offense at all beyond Evan Longoria and what I expect to be a resurgent Yunel Escobar. Can the Maddon Magic work a fifth straight year? At some point, the Rays will have to play down to their talent level, won’t they?
I do believe the Red Sox will be better than many think. They picked up a lot of players to whom they gave much too much money this winter, but most are still solid and they can’t possibly run into the injury trouble they did last season. I actually think Boston might even finish second in the division, but that’ll take some huge rebound years from Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz, among others.
Don’t even get me started on the Baltimore Orioles. I believe I can safely say that there’s no way they win 76 per cent of their one-run games again, or 16 extra-inning games in a row. It’s also just about impossible for them to go 74-0 in games in which they lead after seven innings. And they made the mistake of buying too much of their own “team coming together” and “coming up clutch late” press to the extent that they made no significant improvements to their club in the off-season. It’s going to be a rough year in the land of the crabcake.
It should be a fun, exciting season for the Blue Jays and their fans, and no one can wait to get things started. The spring training games are done, so the next time a ball flies (or in this case, floats) through the air, it’ll be for real. Strap yourselves in, and get ready to enjoy the ride!