TORONTO – As much as this was a night of what-might-have-been for both the Toronto Blue Jays and Shohei Ohtani, a first-hand look at the partner on the path not taken, their first encounter since an unfulfilled winter dalliance was also about what is in the here and now.
For Ohtani, that’s shaking off some of the loudest boos for anyone at Rogers Centre in recent memory to homer in the first inning, and later walking and scoring during a six-run third in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ fifth straight win, a 12-2 romp.
For the Blue Jays, that’s deepening concern over the slumping duo of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette atop their dormant lineup, the grim realities of what that means when their pitching staff doesn’t pin a game down, and a downturn now at five losses in six outings.
Combined with the off-season baggage and the current divergence in fortunes, it made for a weird vibe before a crowd of 39,688 on Friday. Ohtani looked like exactly what the Blue Jays are missing in their lineup. The Dodgers banged out 19 hits – including additional homers by Max Muncy and Will Smith – while knocking out Chris Bassitt in 2.2 innings, forcing manager John Schneider to run through five relievers before asking Isiah Kiner-Falefa to pitch ninth.
This was definitively the Blue Jays’ worst game of the season.
“That’s a tough one,” said Schneider.
Now, a poor outing can happen to anyone at any time, but that it happened on the night of Ohtani’s arrival rekindled all those off-season conversations once again.
Difficult as it is to fathom, the Blue Jays were right there in pursuit of the two-way superstar, who visited their Player Development Complex where he grilled them on “resources that are available, farm system, roster plans for the winning part of it,” said Schneider. “But a big part of it was how he can make himself better and what can we provide to help that. …
“It was just more curious questions as to how we operate and what the plan looked like going down the road, things like that,” he added later. “The day-to-day stuff that’s going to help him, he was interested in.”
How deep and genuine that interest was, only Ohtani truly knows. For years the industry believed Ohtani and the Dodgers were destined for one another once he hit the open market and given that his personal life and business interests are all on the West Coast, the Blue Jays’ pursuit had a low probability of success from the outset.
Still, that he made the Dunedin visit – which included meeting with Edward Rogers, chairman of both the team and owner Rogers Communications Inc. (which also owns this website) – and how long Ohtani’s process took made an upset seem possible. That fed into the crushing events of Dec. 8, when a wild day of online flight tracking and two erroneous reports suggested he was coming to Toronto.
Ultimately, though, it seems everyone was vying to be Ohtani’s top fallback in case the Dodgers got cold feet, or made some mistake along the way. The Dodgers didn’t and Ohtani revealed his $700-million, 10-year deal via an Instagram post Dec. 9.
Given how everything played out, Ohtani wasn’t surprised to get booed Friday.
“You know, aside from how the fans may or may not think, I’m just very, very grateful for the teams that approached me and wanted to sign me,” he said through interpreter Will Ireton. “And as I said in my press conference before, ultimately I could only choose one team.”
Ohtani choosing the Dodgers meant a dramatically different off-season for the Blue Jays, who shifted from offering a historic contract for a historic player to a more conservative, maintain-the-floor approach for plugging roster holes in a not ideal free-agent market.
They kept tabs on everyone from more obvious fits like incumbent third baseman Matt Chapman and centre-fielder Cody Bellinger to old friend Teoscar Hernandez, although there was never traction on any of those fronts.
“Honestly, not really,” said Hernandez, who signed a $23.5 million, one-year deal with the Dodgers. “At the beginning, they said to not forget about them. Obviously when we exchanged numbers and years and all that stuff, they said they could not go that far. That was about it.”
The Blue Jays ended up re-signing Kevin Kiermaier and adding Justin Turner, Kiner-Falefa and Yariel Rodriguez, and the season is a referendum on that approach, especially in light of the Game 2 debacle in Minnesota last year, and with 65 per cent of the roster eligible for free agency in the next two off-seasons.
That, in part, is why prospect Addison Barger was recalled earlier this week when Kiermaier hit the injured list.
The Blue Jays want to assess what their internal options look like before deciding if they need to push for external help and given his hot start at triple-A Buffalo and that he bats left-handed, Barger made the most sense for a look.
“My ability to control the zone has improved a lot,” Barger said of his gains at the plate this season. “Getting good pitches to hit and drive, and overall contact, putting balls in the air, extra-base hits, some ability to do damage on pitches that I want to hit. And then the ability to also work a walk.”
The Blue Jays can use all of that, pronto.
The Dodgers are in a league of their own in many ways, but the gulf between the way the teams’ offences are currently performing is staggering. This is obviously small-sample-size randomness but Ohtani’s slugging percentage of .681 is more than that of Guerrero (.324) and Bichette (.320) combined.
“They’re going to figure it out because they’re great players,” Hernandez said of his former teammates. “They showed it in the past and I think they’ll find it.”
Hernandez had a couple singles Friday and is batting .267/.336/.486 with six homers and 20 RBIs, benefiting both from being in a deep Dodgers lineup and the club’s well-regarded game-planning. While Bassitt summed up his rough outing by saying “adjustments have got to be made,” the Dodgers hitters were definitely ready for him.
“The way they prepare their games and all the plans and all that stuff, it’s a little different than the ones that I’ve been with,” Hernandez said of the Dodgers’ process. “That makes a difference when you’re going to play games.”
The Blue Jays, meanwhile, are averaging 3.63 runs a game through their first 27 contests and for the moment are totally dependent on their pitching and defence to win games. Seeing Ohtani on the Rogers Centre field, doing Ohtani things, it was easy to wonder how different things might be had he chosen Toronto.
But he didn’t, the Blue Jays’ reality is the group they have in place, and they have work to do at the plate to get themselves right.
