Pieces in place
Jays’ lineup will largely be intact for potential run in 2016
KANSAS CITY— The Blue Jays are by no means looking at this as a one-and-done in terms of qualifying for the post-season. There seems to be a legitimate window open for at least one more year based on the number of key offensive players under contract that will return.
That being said, there are huge question marks on the pitching side that will have to be addressed by the new frontoffice team of GM Alex Anthopoulos and president Mark Shapiro. Nothing has yet been formalized regarding the return of Anthopoulos but, at this stage, if he doesn’t return it will likely be his choice. Shapiro’s first official day as prez is Nov. 1 and GM is a priority.
In terms of a 2016 batting order, it’s amazing the Jays only lose a grand total of 526 plate appearances from players that finished the season with them. The list of players likely to be shown the door includes catcher Dioner Navarro, outfielder Ezequiel Carrera plus infielders Cliff Pennington, Munenori Kawasaki and Darwin Barney. Everyone else is under club control.
That means, without lifting a finger to dial a fellow GM’s number, the opening day lineup could list Ben Revere, Josh Donaldson, Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, Troy Tulowitzki, Chris Colabel- lo/Justin Smoak, Russell Martin, Kevin Pillar and Ryan Goins. The bench could be chosen from among a recovered Michael Saunders and Devon Travis, Dalton Pompey and Josh Thole.
But it’s on the pitching side the Jays will need to do a lot of heavy lifting to ensure they have what it takes to repeat as a playoff team.
Eligible for free agency from among the pitchers will be David Price, Mark Buehrle, Marco Estrada, LaTroy Hawkins, Mark Lowe and Jeff Francis. That group of six pitchers cost the Jays a combined $33 million (U.S.) this year — if you narrow Price’s salary down to the amount the Jays had to pay after acquiring him at the end of July. There are big decisions on the pitching staff to be made.
The biggest question mark of all is Price and whether to be competitive on trying to re-sign him or to spend those resources elsewhere and rationalize the belief that having Marcus Stroman for a full season is the equivalent at the top of the rotation as bringing back Price — which it isn’t.
What will Price be looking for? He is 30, so he will want seven years, because who wants to negotiate another contract at 35 or 36? He will want between $22 million and $30 million per season, because that is the range of the top nine pitcher salaries in major league history. The list includes Clayton Kershaw (seven years/$215M), Max Scherzer (seven/ $210M), Justin Verlander (seven/ $180M), Felix Hernandez (seven/ $175M), C.C. Sabathia (seven/$161M), Masahiro Tanaka (seven/$155M), Jon Lester (six/$155M), Zack Greinke (six/ $147M) and Cole Hamels (six/$144M). Price fits nicely within that group.
It says here the Jays will not bring Price back. As for Buehrle, he will either retire or take a short-term contract with a team in the U.S. Midwest. That’s 24 wins between the two veterans that need to be replaced. As for Estrada, the Jays have an excellent chance of bringing him back for a three- or four-year deal at a reasonable number. He’s already 32 and Toronto is where he had his first real success.
Remember, the Jays are not just trying to compete in 2016, they will be trying to repeat their trip to the October dancefloor. But they can be looking at a rotation of Stroman, R.A. Dickey, Estrada, Aaron Sanchez and Drew Hutchison. Sanchez was a starter until he was hurt in June and was rehabbing as a starter before they realized they needed immediate help in the eighth inning. He will likely be a starter again next spring. However, that quintet of potential starters only combined for 665 innings and 48 wins. Clearly, minus Price there will need to be at least one major signing or a trade.
The bullpen will also need help, but that’s an area easy to re-stock via freeagency, with good scouting and a little bit of luck.
These playoffs showed how thin the Jays’ bullpen actually is in terms of arms that manager John Gibbons trusts. The injury to Brett Cecil and the family issue for Aaron Loup that caused him to miss three games highlighted the organization’s weakness from the left side.
From the bullpen’s right side, 42-yearold Hawkins will retire and Lowe will be difficult to re-sign. Liam Hendriks was impressive for most of the season as a hard-throwing middle man, and Osuna is the likely first choice to repeat in the closer’s role.
That’s pretty thin, given all the promising young arms from the farm system that were dealt away in the last week of July.
There is a plenty of off-season work to be done, but the returning position players that led the majors in runs scored gives the Jays a nice head start.
KANSAS CITY— Rany Jazayerli can’t remember ever not being a Royals fan, but he knows he became a diehard in 1989 when he was14 years old and Bo Jackson, George Brett and Brett Saberhagen led Kansas City to a 92-win season, their highest total since 1980.
“That was the team I really fell in love with,” he told the Star.
“And as it turned out, I wouldn’t see a team that good again for 26 years.”
That ’89 Royals team didn’t even make the playoffs — finishing second to the Oakland A’s, who went on to beat the Blue Jays in five games and then sweep the San Francisco Giants to win the World Series — but it was the franchise’s high watermark for the next quarter-century.
Jazayerli, a dermatologist by day and sabermetrically inclined baseball writer by night, remained steadfast in his fandom, even as the Royals plumbed Major League Baseball’s depths year after agonizing year.
“I honestly don’t know how I stuck with them,” he says. “I was either too dumb or too stubborn to stop paying attention, because they really didn’t deserve the attention I was giving them.”
That feeling is one to which Jays fans can relate. Before last season, they could at least always look to the Royals as a franchise that had suffered deeper and longer. Then the Royals snuck into the post-season with a wild-card spot and won an epic rollercoaster against the Athletics before improbably steamrolling their way to the World Series until they hit a wall named Madison Bumgarner.
“Like Superman meeting his kryptonite,” Jazayerli jokes.
Though there may not be any love lost between the two fan-bases at the moment — given their clubs represent the only obstacle to the other’s World Series berth — Jays and Royals fans should, in theory, be able to bond over their long-suffering fandom and drought-busting jubilation.
But despite the Royals being reigning American League champions in their second straight playoffs, there is a case to be made — unpopular in Toronto, to be sure — that Royals’ fans deserve to win this series more than Jay fans.
For one, Kansas City has a longer championship drought — 30 years to the Jays’ 22 — and while Jays fans may have endured two decades of mediocrity, they never suffered the soul-crushing, wandering-in-thedarkness despair of the Royals, who lost 100 games four times in a fiveyear stretch and went nearly 20 years with just one 80-win season.
That kind of consistent failure doesn’t just test one’s fandom, it taunts it.
“We sucked for so long,” says Danny Dryer, 33, wearing a “Party like it’s 1985” Royals’ T-shirt while tail-gating outside Kauffman Stadium before Game 6.
“At least the Jays have been in the mix every now and then.”
It’s true the Jays were never nearly as bad as the Royals, but it should also be pointed out they finished higher than third just once during their 22-year drought.
But Dryer also pointed to the dismal record of the Kansas City Chiefs, the only other major pro sports team in town. The Chiefs’ only Super Bowl victory came back in 1969 and they haven’t been back since. Dryer said the Royals’ return to the World Series is important for civic morale.
“The only thing we’ve got going for us is barbecue and the Royals.”
There is also the matter of the Royals coming within a game — within 90 feet, really, with Alex Gordon getting to third with two outs in the bottom of the ninth in Game 7 — of winning the World Series last season. They have “unfinished business,” Jazayerli said.
“The way last year ended, coming so close to a championship, and instead that championship going to a team that had already won two championships in the last five years,” he said, referring to the San Francisco Giants.
“If they don’t finish it off this year there will always be this sense of letting the big one get away.”