Jays need to think bigger, bolder to get back on top
Fearless approach to signing top players gives Yanks and Red Sox a huge advantage
The Toronto Blue Jays began their season with a dispiriting loss to the New York Yankees, one that was full of ominous signs. Giancarlo Stanton mashed two home runs, the Jays managed just two hits and Josh Donaldson threw the ball from third base like it was a wet fish.
As portents go, it was pretty much bang on.
But with the Jays rolling into New York this weekend amid the tatters of their lost season, it’s worth checking in on how things have gone recently for the Yankees. They were swept in a four-game series by the Boston Red Sox.
Stanton and Aaron Judge, who combined for 111 home runs last season, have combined for 56 so far this year. That’s still a lot — and 20 more than any pair of Blue Jays — but it hasn’t been the overwhelming display that was feared.
Gary Sanchez, a 25-year-old power-hitting catcher, has turned into Russell Martin at the plate — the 35-year-old version of him. The acquisition of Sonny Gray hasn’t worked, neither has the trade for Zach Britton, and staff ace Luis Severino, who gave up fewer than three runs in 14 starts before July 1, hasn’t done that since.
Meanwhile, the Yankees are 30 games above .500 and 20 games ahead of the Blue Jays.
The Jays, as has been beaten to death, have problems at the major-league level. But for all that needs to happen for them to return to being competitive, whether it comes from bounceback seasons from veterans or an infusion of youth or some combination of the two, there remains the daunting reality of the Yankees and the Red Sox. Those two teams are miles better than the Jays, they have young talent to spare, and perhaps most significantly, they operate with a fearlessness the Blue Jays’ front office simply does not.
Whatever one thinks of the job done by Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins, who tried to keep an old team reasonably competitive and have seen that blow up in their faces two years running, it has been an undeniably cautious effort. They picked up veterans on short-term deals and avoided the big financial commitments that might have impaired an eventual rebuild. If they were going to make a mistake, it wasn’t going to be punishingly costly.
In Boston and New York, they don’t worry about such things. In May, the Red Sox released Hanley Ramirez, eating the remainder of his US$22-million salary this season. That was less than a year after they dumped Pablo Sandoval, who they are effectively paying $41 million to play for the San Francisco Giants.
The Yankees, meanwhile, paid Alex Rodriguez $21 million in each of 2016 and 2017, even though he retired early in the 2016 season. When he was finally off the books, they took that money and traded for Stanton and the $295 million owed on his contract. They’re also paying Jacoby Ellsbury $21 million to not play for them this season, but that didn’t stop them from trading for Britton and J.A. Happ at the deadline.
Swallowing bad deals has long been a thing the Yankees just do. They once bid $26 million for Japanese pitcher Kei Igawa, gave him a five-year, US$100-million contract, and then kept him in the minors after he struggled with the big club. While they were paying Igawa $20 million to pitch for Scranton-Wilkes Barre in 2009, the Yankees won the World Series.
This is the extent of the challenge the Blue Jays face: Not only are the Red Sox and Yankees much better than them, but they don’t mind taking mighty swings (and misses), even if the financial consequences are severe.
The Blue Jays of the recent past once acted like that, but that hasn’t been the attitude of the current management group, and it’s an open question as to whether it will be again.
So far, they have been defined by the big money not spent on players like Jose Bautista (wisely), Josh Donaldson (ditto) and Edwin Encarnacion (whoops), and by this season’s dedication to keeping Vlad Guerrero, Jr., in the minors so they won’t have to pay him too much, too soon.
No one would accuse Atkins of being a swashbuckler. And the Jays, now fully in rebuild mode, probably won’t be in a position to spend aggressively anytime soon. But at some point, they will need to do so again.
Will management have the blessing of ownership to make big, risky bets? Will they be able to throw good money after bad?
If they don’t, it only makes the job of chasing Boston and New York that much harder.