Being a creature of social media, it’s hard to miss which member of the Toronto Blue Jays is in the fans’ doghouse.
And even if I was momentarily oblivious, someone would certainly be helpful enough to point it out. When some fans need to relieve the pressure building from their frustrations at a player’s performance, or lack thereof, a timely and vexatious tweet sent at their favourite blue-faced avatar can serve as a release valve.
I wouldn’t say I love these interactions. I know that I occasionally vent on Twitter as well, hopefully with some semblance of obvious humour, though I know that what I tweet with a wistful sigh often gets answered and amplified with spitting rage. There’s a surprising amount of heat and speed to the fury that can be unleashed over a relatively small offense, or a small sample of poor play.
Look, I get it. Sport riles up our passions, for better and for worse, and we’re probably all a little too invested in the outcomes of each play, never mind the game or the season. I probably spent more time than anyone should have kvetching and moaning about Josh Towers when I first started blogging back in 2007.
I don’t want to perpetuate the view of myself as a scold who tells you how to be a better fan, because that is pretty obnoxious. Still, I wonder how much patience we owe the players before we completely write them off.
From the looks of my mentions on some evenings, one would think that players should be seen as completely disposable commodities. At the very least, there’s a little too much ease with which people can make the assertion "we know who this player is at this point."
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But do we, really?
There’s an essential fact to baseball that failure is often the most likely outcome, which you might be able to grasp that intellectually. But sitting night after night and watching a player fail in the same way, or in new and increasingly maddening ways erodes the patience, if not the faith in the player’s ability.
Obviously, in this moment, we’re talking about Kendrys Morales. And as he approaches 750 plate appearances in a Blue Jays uniform, we’re likely approaching the outer limits of patience for even those with solemnity of a zen monk.
But to be completely fair, there are players who might have easily been jettisoned from the Blue Jays over recent years if the front office had obeyed the wishes of fans.
Edwin Encarnacion is a prime example, and in fact a player who was demoted and released several times before becoming one of the beloved centerpieces of the 2015 and 2016 post-season runs. He was a player whose flaws in the field overshadowed his strength at the plate, and whose above-average contributions didn’t meet the expectations for a big, power-hitting corner infielder.
That is, until they did.
There is research that will tell you what a meaningful sample is for a number of baseball’s rate stats, and the more significant the metric, the more likely it is that you’ll need a full season or more of evidence before you can ascribe meaning to it.
But the "eye test" that is applied as we tune in or show up to the ballpark is hard to resist. This is where people start to throw around terms like "he looks lost up there", or "he’s clearly overmatched". Those statements might be true for an at-bat, or a game or series or a week or a month. But these players have spent the better part of their lives to get where they are, and have risen above a multitude of challenges to get to a point where they are facing down pitchers and batters of such rare skill. Even when they struggle, they are performing at a level that most of us could never conceive of reaching.
So, don’t we owe them a little more patience?
Last season and into the off-season, there were Blue Jays fans who would have been perfectly happy to jettison Luke Maile, who has turned into a very pleasant surprise so far this season. Not that we want to get ahead of ourselves, but if Maile can replicate anything close to his current performance, he could be a very good supporting catcher, if not a decent option as a fill-in starter. And if that sounds like faint praise, perhaps you’d like to consider what the market for backup catchers looks like these days.
Anybody can have a bad run. Very good players have had completely lost seasons, whether if their struggles were mental or physical. Injuries can change swings or releases, and in a game with such a tiny margin for error, those challenges can get magnified in the outcomes.
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It’s not to say that your feelings of frustration are invalid when you see another poor performance from your personal fall guy. But before we call for the team to eat millions of dollars or salary or year of control just to validate our grievances, maybe we owe a player more than a season to get themselves and their game on the right track.
At the same time, two full seasons of poor performance might be more than enough evidence for legitimate outrage. Splitting the difference, maybe a season and a half is a very fair measure of exemplary patience.
In which case, this year’s favourite target of fans’ frustration has about five weeks left on the clock.
Time to get hot, Kendrys.