Success comes with home cooking
Baseball’s all-star game this week didn’t produce fireworks, but rather a tight 2-1 extra-inning game. It was a low-scoring result somewhat in contrast with the sparkling array of bright young stars that were in the game, and the explosive display delivered by New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge the night before in the home-run derby.
Judge, who has already set a Yankees rookie record with 30 homers, was joined by exciting 27-and-under hitters like Miami’s Giancarlo Stanton, the Dodgers’ Cody Bellinger, Houston’s Jose Altuve, Boston’s Mookie Betts and Washington’s Bryce Harper in the allstar gathering, a seeming passing of the torch to a new cast of baseball superstars.
A Blue Jays fan watching at home meanwhile, could certainly have been forgiven if he or she had looked at such players and wondered, “Where are our homegrown stars?”
That, most team historians would agree, has not been a Toronto specialty for some time. A number of very good pitchers have come through the Blue Jays system over the past 20 years, but not many all-star quality position players. It was symbolic that the Jays representative in Miami this week was slugging first baseman Justin Smoak, a player claimed off waivers from Seattle in 2014.
With players like Smoak, Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion, the Jays have shown resourcefulness over the years by acquiring very useful players from other organizations for nothing or next to nothing, just like back in the day George Bell was picked up from Philadelphia in the 1980 Rule 5 draft.
But as far as drafting and signing young position players and developing them through its farm system, Toronto has shown a systematic weakness over the years. Look around the diamond now. Only centre fielder Kevin Pillar, chosen 979th overall in the 2011 draft, is that type of player for the Jays.
As the last two seasons have shown, it’s not like you can’t win by getting your best players from other teams through trades, waivers, free agency and other means. If Oakland was willing to trade Josh Donaldson to the Jays, so much the better for Toronto.
But there also is undeniable value in producing homegrown talent or at least having talent in the system, both in terms of salary costs and creating a sense in an organization that there is always upwards pressure from within a farm system to succeed. When injuries come at the big league level, a host of quality farmhands also provides depth beyond the 25-man roster.
As we’ve seen with the Maple Leafs and their crew of talented kids, exciting prospects create buzz. Look at the stir youngsters Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. are already generating in the Jays system, and they just graduated to Dunedin. Big first baseman Rowdy Tellez was much talked about in the spring, but he has limped along with a .204 average and just six homers at Triple-A Buffalo this season.
All three were either drafted or signed by the Jays, and could be evidence of a change within the organization of being able to develop more position players. Maybe this year’s first-rounder, shortstop Logan Warmoth, will be that kind of player. This, it’s fair to say, would be an admirable goal of the Mark Shapiro/Ross Atkins era if they could alter the organization’s perennial weakness in this area of talent development.
It’s also why the time is just so very, very right to go heavy on a youth movement now. Not next winter. Not next season. Now.
The Jose Quintana deal between the White Sox and Cubs, with Quintana moving to the north side for four prospects, suggests a willing- ness among the top teams to pay significant prices for talent before the July 31 non-waiver deadline. Quintana still has three years left on an affordable deal, something the Cubs certainly valued.
The Jays don’t have a player in quite Quintana’s situation. But they do have J.A. Happ, Marco Estrada, Jose Bautista, Smoak and perhaps even Donaldson to move.
There’s a suspicion, or a belief, that Rogers won’t want to start selling for fear of losing audience share and ticket sales. Well, with the oldest team in baseball and a farm system in need of re-stocking, a step backward is inevitable. It’s just a question of how much the Jays dictate that step, like the Yankees did last year, or whether they have it dictated to them.
The club is among the leaders in major-league attendance, which rather than making it more difficult to start a youth movement should make it easier. If the club was hovering around 20,000 fans a game, it would be more challenging to embark on a rebuilding project that could take some time.
If Shapiro and Atkins are here to win, then it’s clear they must be sellers. If they’re here to prop up the status quo, keep nervous ownership calm and simply strive to keep the team above .500 so as not to risk a few more empty seats, then they’ll add a left fielder or a second baseman and announce plans to gun for a wild-card berth.
Jays fans may not get excited about a rebuild now that they’ve tasted the post-season again, but they’re sureas-shooting not going to embrace years of mediocrity just so owner- ship doesn’t have to risk facing unhappy customers by making bold decisions now.
Two years of playoff baseball was fun, but facts are facts, and it’s almost time to face reality and start turning an eye more aggressively to the future.
This organization needs to start producing outfielders who can run, corner infielders with pop and a slugger or two. It’s got some prospects coming, but the time has come to add a few more from the outside who can grow in the Jays system.
Do it now, and it’ll be fun to watch. Wait, and it’ll be twice as painful. Damien Cox is the co-host of Prime Time Sports on Sportsnet 590 The FAN. He spent nearly 30 years covering a variety of sports for The Star. Follow him @DamoSpin. His column appears Tuesday and Saturday.