Teams won’t accept long road is the best road
When you’re winning in pro sports, or have been winning, the notion of losing more games than you win becomes an utterly repulsive thought. So you resist.
As evidence, let’s examine the common plight of the Toronto Blue Jays, fourth out of five teams in the American League East this season, and the New York Rangers, visitors to Toronto for the first Saturday night of this young NHL season.
Both clubs wandered in the wilderness for years before finding their way back to elite levels. The Blue Jays missed the playoffs from 1994 to 2014, while the Rangers played a Stanley Cup playoff game in the spring of 1997 and then not another one until 2006.
The Jays made it to consecutive American League Championship Series in 2015 and 2016, losing to Kansas City and then Cleveland. The brain trust of Paul Beeston and Alex Anthopoulos, perhaps sensing their days were numbered, emptied the farm system to bring in a group of expensive veterans, notably R.A. Dickey, Jose Reyes, David Price and Troy Tulowitzki.
In 2014, meanwhile, the Rangers made it all the way to the Cup final, losing in five disappointing games to the Los Angeles Kings. Glen Sather, who would step down as general manager a year later, aggressively went after winning it all. Quality veteran players, notably Martin St. Louis and Keith Yandle, were acquired for packages of young players and draft picks.
In other words, both the Jays and Rangers went all in and nearly got to where they wanted. Both teams are now understandably reluctant to let that winning feeling go. They want to believe ultimate victory is still possible with the group that couldn’t quite get there before and have convinced themselves that it’s possible to simultaneously try to win while also rebuilding with a base of young talent, often picked up from other teams.
So far, after acquiring prospect Teoscar Hernandez at the deadline, the Jays have re-signed 34-year-old pitcher Marco Estrada and his bad back to a one-year deal with a pay cut, and abandoned all hope that 36-year-old outfielder Jose Bautista has anything left. Those moves would seem to be born of competing philosophies and don’t really tell you where Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins want to take this thing, but their public comments suggest they have no intention of taking a couple of steps backward next year.
There’s certainly no indication at all the Jays are looking to mimic the powerhouse Houston Astros, a team that went to the bottom with seasons of 56, 55 and 51 wins and drafted the likes of Carlos Correa and George Springer. The Astros have now emerged as a team likely to contend for years.
The Jays’ immediate future revolves around 31-year-old third baseman Josh Donaldson. They can’t allow Donaldson to simply walk as a free agent after next season, but they also could really set themselves back with a gigantic contract that ties them to Donaldson for six or seven years. They need a solution between those extremes.
He could represent a bold move toward a true rebuild if the Jays move him for futures. But that wouldn’t help them be competitive next season, which is their stated goal. Unstated is the fear that the fans won’t come to the ballpark if the team doesn’t win.
The Rangers, meanwhile, seemed to indicate last summer an understanding that having no firstround picks for four consecutive drafts from 2013-16 and no top-five pick since Pavel Brendl in 1999 had left them in a precarious position. So they traded the sizeable contract of centre Derek Stepan to Arizona for the seventh pick in the draft and mobile 21-year-old defenceman Anthony DeAngelo. The Rangers also had their own first round pick, the 21st, and used it on forward Filip Chytil, who managed to stick with the club this fall.
At the same time, however, GM Jeff Gorton inked a four-year, $26.6 million contract with 28-year-old defenceman Kevin Shattenkirk. That indicated the Rangers believe they can get back to the Cup final and this time win it.
Their key players are beyond their best years. Winger Rick Nash, their Donaldson, is 33 and in the last year of his contract. Forward Mats Zuccarello is 30. Defenceman Marc Staal is 30 in January, and goalie Henrik Lundqvist is 35. Captain Ryan McDonagh, the team’s best player after Lundqvist, is 28, but right in his prime.
Signing college free agents like Kevin Hayes and Jimmy Vesey has helped ease the youth crunch, and the excitement over Chytil this fall has some in the organization believing they may have somehow come up with a steal late in the first round of a so-so draft.
There’s absolutely no indication the Rangers want to do what the Leafs did, which was to use seasons of 84, 68 and 69 points to acquire blue-chippers William Nylander, Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews through the draft. Instead, Gorton has the Blueshirts on this rebuild-on-the-fly track.
That’s fine, except winning with an aging goalie as your best player is very difficult in the NHL, and the kids you’re likely to get while contending for the playoffs aren’t usually the franchise-type athletes you need to build a team around.
The Rangers still have the taste of that visit to the 2014 final on their lips. The notion of becoming a loser again makes them nauseous.
Like the Jays, the logic of losing now to one day win again isn’t appealing. Eventually, it will have to be.