Flying under radar just fine with Jays
The Toronto Blue Jays are like stealth aircraft. They’re not being picked up on anybody’s radar.
The media in New York and Boston are already ramping up talk about how the Yankees and Red Sox will fight it out to win the AL title, with nary a word on the Blue Jays’ chances.
The Red Sox won the AL East title last season and signed slugger J. D. Martinez this week. The Yankees, who also qualified for the post- season last season, traded for MLB home run king Giancarlo Stanton this off-season.
The betting site Bodog have the defending World Series champs Houston Astros and the Yankees at 1-4 to win the AL pennant. In terms of winning the AL East, Bodog has the Yanks even at 1-1, the Red Sox at 7-4 and Toronto at 17-4.
You can certainly feel a different vibe at spring training this year. After coming off back-to-back playoff appearances, last year’s camp was rife with anticipation of another big year and the players were all talking about winning the World Series.
Injuries and sub- par performances derailed the Jays in 2017. Most pundits believe the Jays have a passing chance of grabbing a wild card berth at best this year. But to a man, the Jays truly believe they have a shot to go all the way — or, at least, that’s what they’re programmed to say.
“I believe this team has confidence in itself and we believe that we’re very capable of doing damage throughout the season this year as far as winning a lot of games,” Josh Donaldson said.
“I hope so. I hope so,” shortstop Troy Tulowitzki said when asked if the Jays are being dismissed. “It’s always nice to fly under the radar.
“I’ve been on teams like that before and it seems to make things a little bit easier. But then again, I also want to be on a team that people shoot for, because it means you’re probably coming off a post- season berth.”
The Jays’ hopes rest on their rotation — Aaron Sanchez, Marcus Stroman. J.A. Happ, Marco Estrada and newcomer Jaime Garcia. If that unit stays healthy, it is one of the better rotations in the AL.
“This staff has shown what it can do,” Sanchez said. “Adding Jaime … I like our chances. The main thing, we’ve got to stay healthy. If we manage to do that I think we’re fine.”
Donaldson is optimistic that given a full year, he can have another huge season. He also believes Justin Smoak can repeat his breakthrough performance from last year and that newcomer Randal Grichuk will add to the offence. The Jays scored the fewest runs in all the AL last year, with just 693.
“We know what we’re capable of doing,” Sanchez said. “We got solid players. We got a good pitching staff. We got a good bullpen. We got players who love to go out there and compete until the final out.
“So, we don’t really care what other teams are doing. We got to maximize our talent in here and if we do that, we’ll put ourselves in a good position to win every night.”
Jays general manager Ross Atkins also sees reason for optimism.
“You don’t aspire to fly under the radar,” Atkins said. “(But) if we are, that’s OK.
“I think ultimately we have a good team. We have a very strong core of leaders that have won before. There’s a lot of reasons to believe that there could be some bounce back in some of our players that were injured last year and we have a much, much better triple- A team and farm system that, in the event that we do have setbacks, we’ll be able to overcome them.”
“We made some moves that are kind of under the radar and we like our chances,” Tulowitzki added. “Baseball, man, all you got to do is get hot and get on a roll and anything can happen.”