Jays given radar love
‘Let the year shake out,’ quietly confident players say
DUNEDIN — The Blue Jays are like stealth aircraft.
They’re not being picked up on anybody’s radar — at least in terms of anyone expecting them to do anything significant 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 for good reason: The Red Sox — who ran away with the AL East title last year — signing slugger J.D. Martinez this week, and the Yankees — who also qualified for the post-season in 2017 — trading for MLB home run king Giancarlo Stanton this off-season, make those clubs favourites for a playoff spot.
The betting website Bodog has the Yankees and the defending World Series champion Houston Astros at 11/4 favourites to win the AL pennant. As for 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-in-cheek suggestions that the Jays, and the AL East’s other franchises, the Baltimore Orioles and the Tampa Bay Rays, needn’t bother playing this season. But you can certainly feel a different vibe at this year’s spring training.
Fresh off back-to-back playoff appearances, last year’s camp was rife with anticipation of another big showing. The players were all talking about winning the World Series. Then, injuries and subpar performances derailed the Jays’ chances.
Most pundits believe this year’s Jays have, at best, a passing chance of grabbing a wildcard berth. To a man, though, 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,” third baseman Josh Donaldson said. “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,” added shortstop 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 or deep into post-season.”
Toronto’s hopes are resting on its starting rotation — Aaron Sanchez, Marcus Stroman, J.A. Happ, Marco Estrada and newcomer Jaime Garcia. If that unit stays healthy, it can be one of the better rotations in the AL.
“This staff has shown what it can do,” Sanchez said. “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 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.”
Donaldson is optimistic that, given a full year of good health, he can have another huge season. He also believes Justin Smoak can repeat his breakthrough performance and that off-season acquisition Randal Grichuk will add to the offence. The 2017 Jays scored the fewest runs (693) in the AL.
“I think guys in here don’t put too much (thought) towards (us being overlooked),” Sanchez added.
“We know what we’re capable of doing. A lot of these guys on this roster are guys that were on the roster in ’15 and ’16 when we made the playoffs. We’ll just let the year shake out.
“We’ve got solid players. We’ve got a good pitching staff, a good bullpen, players who love to go out there and compete until the final out. So, we don’t really care what other teams are doing.”
“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,” GM Ross 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.
“Right now,” added Tulowitzki, “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.
“Baseball, man, all you’ve got to do is get hot and get on a roll and anything can happen.”