Stroman tirade a ‘cry for help?’

All tangled and twisted in 68 inches of rage, frustration and disappointment, the unfortunate words of Marcus Stroman, some of them true yet contradictory, spoke volumes about the troubling and confounding state of the Toronto Blue Jays at the Allstar break.

“We’re f-----g terrible,” Stroman shouted on Sunday at Fenway Park, almost to no one in particular, howling it seems at the baseball moon, after the wrong question was asked at the wrong time (by Arash Madani, who I think the world of ) and it set off the Blue Jays most volatile and self-absorbed player on a telling tirade of obscenities.

He wasn’t wrong in what he said, probably immature and predictable in how he said it, personally almost crazed by a season he can’t seem to get a hold of. The Blue Jays are effing terrible and for the most of the time, when Stroman has been healthy enough to pitch, he has been effing terrible right alongside them.

He can accept that others are terrible. Dealing with his own state — two quality starts in a season going nowhere, having made 12 and missed seven starts, two wins, and a 5.86 earned run average — that’s an enormous challenge for a meagainst-the-world athlete, forever fighting with a chip on his shoulder and an ability to trust no one who might get in his way.

This isn’t just Stroman, though. This is a Blue Jays team in disarray, without many parts of consequence, teetering on the edge between rebuilding and contending, injured beyond logical belief, attendance plummeting, with $63 million dollars invested this season alone in Troy Tulowitzi, who wasn’t played an inning, Russell Martin, who has performed as though he’s given up and Josh Donaldson, who has cost himself money and his team a future piece with his inability to stay healthy.

And another $58 million owing on Tulowitzki and Martin after this season.

That other players haven’t publicly lost it — if Stroman wasn’t all wrapped up in Stroman he might have remained reserved — tells much about the ease with which this team performs badly and the lack of accountability found from the front office to field to a media crew of which the majority are employees of the team owner.

A year ago I asked a Blue Jays employee a rather basic question: When did Stroman become a jerk? (Note at the time, he was pitching rather well for a last place Jays team.)

The answer came back simply: “You don’t become one.”

If he pitches as he did a year ago, with his numbers among the best of American League starting pitchers, then you can become whatever guy you want to be, so long as you perform. But when you stop being an ace, and it becomes all about your inability to find your way, then the clubhouse personality in a clubhouse lacking any kind of leadership, stands out for all the wrong reasons.

Before saying the team was terrible, Stroman did say he had his teammates’ back, and they have his. When he lost it a few minutes later, the teammates he said he supported were suddenly effing terrible. The truth serum in this case came through in obscenities. The notion there hasn’t been more blowups is probably a tribute to the manager, John Gibbons, who keeps his own anger and disappointment inside.

But there is so much to wonder about on this team just two seasons removed from contention. From a year ago, the Jays are down 9,910 a game in attendance. Over an 82-game season, that’s 812,620 fewer tickets sold. On a conservative estimate, if the average fan spends $100 at the ballpark a game — which is likely a low number — that’s $81 million in revenue the Jays aren’t taking in, compared to what they did a season back. They played to 80.2 per cent attendance at the Rogers Centre last year. This year, it’s 60.2 per cent capacity for the Jays. That’s a drop of 25 per cent in one season.

By not buying tickets, the fans are in fact agreeing with what Stroman said Sunday.

Whom to believe here? It’s difficult to believe in management, which inherited a near sold-out playoff team and has diminished the asset accordingly in the past two summers. This is a team that signed Kendrys Morales and Jaime Garcia as free agents, allowed Tony Lacava to sign J.A. Happ and Marco Estrada as free agents before putting him out to pasture, it’s a team that lacks stars and leadership, it doesn’t have a hitter in the Top 37 in the American League, it doesn’t appear to have a sense of direction, and it has a manager in Gibbons, quite likely in his final months on the job, who can’t be happy with his lineup, his players’ performance, their inability to play defence, and a roster forever changing that doesn’t appear to have enough big league parts.

Gibbons is ready to go — take his next season’s pay — and head home. That’s understandable. You can’t believe in what you don’t believe in.

Apparently, the Blue Jays are chasing the Red Sox and the Yankees in the AL East, but the reality is this: There’s not a current healthy Jays player who could start in the field for either Boston or New York. Maybe if Donaldson’s healthy, he would be the one, but who knows when he plays his next games for the Jays or if he’ll ever play again.

Donaldson is in Florida, with Aaron Sanchez and where Stroman went to rehab an injury that didn’t require an MRI to solve. Some think the Jays sent Stroman to Florida to work on the mental side of the game, stop being so much about himself and learn to let his talents work for him.

Stroman is 27 years old. He’s in the prime of his career. He’s not a kid anymore. At this stage of life, Dave Stieb was an all-star and Jimmy Key was a top of the rotation pitcher and Roy Halladay was between starring seasons. At this stage of baseball life, Ferguson Jenkins was in his fourth consecutive 20-win season in Chicago. Stroman is looking for his third quality start on a terrible team.

He needs to be better. He needs to be smarter. The team needs to be better. Management needs to be way better. The only real sound work done by management in free agency — they did get the flawed Teoscar Hernandez in the Francisco Liriano deal — has come from the bullpen, pieced together with 30-plus pitchers Ty Clippard, Seung Hwan Oh and John Axford, who have performed beyond expectations.

Three years ago, the Jays were 15 games better than the Red Sox. Since then, a 37 game shift in the standings, with Boston in first, Toronto near the basement.

It’s enough to make Marcus Stroman scream, his personal cry for help on a team in need of so much of it.

Marcus Stroman