Jays happy to fly under radar
Boston, New York the easy favourites but Blue Jays say they just need to ‘stay healthy’
DUNEDIN, Fla. — The Blue Jays are like a stealth aircraft. They’re not being picked up on anybody’s radar. At not least in terms of anyone expecting them to do anything in 2018.
The media in New York and Boston are already ramping up talk about how those two clubs will fight it out to win the American League title, with nary a word on the Blue Jays’ chances. And why not? The defending AL East champion Red Sox added slugger J.D. Martinez this week, and the Yankees — who also qualified the post-season last year — traded for National League MVP and MLB home run king Giancarlo Stanton, making those clubs favorites to make the playoffs. The betting site Bodog has the defending world series champs Houston Astros and the Yankees at 11/4 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.
There have been tongue-incheek suggestions that the Jays, Baltimore Orioles and Tampa Bay Rays needn’t bother playing this season. You can certainly feel a different vibe at this year’s camp. 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. But injuries and subpar 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 wouldn’t say we’re on anybody’s radar at this point,” said third baseman Josh Donaldson. “Which is fine. 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.
“I hope so. I hope so,” added short stop Troy Tulowitzki, when asked if the Jays are being overlooked or dismissed by the pundits. “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 are resting 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,” said Sanchez. “Adding Jaime and being on the other side of that for some years now and seeing what he does, I like our chances. The main thing, we’ve got to stay healthy. I think that’s what it comes down to and I think that’s what it comes down to with every single team. If you can stay healthy and minimize disabled list transactions, usually that season at the end of the year looks like a pretty good season. 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 ended up scoring the fewest runs in all the AL last year (693).
“I think guys in here don’t put too much (thought) towards (us being overlooked),” said Sanchez. “We know what we’re capable of doing. A lot of these guys on this roster are guys that were on the roster in 2015 and 2016 when we made the playoffs. So we’ll just let the year shake out. 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.
“Flying under the radar is not where you want to be when you aspire to build a team. You don’t aspire to fly under the radar,” added GM Ross Atkins. “(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 set backs, we’ll be able to overcome them.
“Right now, you look at the division (AL East), you see some teams where people think, ‘They’re going to run away with it.’ (But) we made some moves that are kind of under the radar and we like our chances,” said Tulowitzki.
“Baseball man, all you got to do is get hot and get on a roll and anything can happen.” SBuffery@postmedia.com
Twitter: @Beezersun