Man of this hour, at least
Donaldson wants to be ‘the guy,’ as long as Jays will have him
“My mom always told me, you don’t always get things right away when you want it.” JOSH DONALDSON ON THE CHANCE OF A LONG-TERM DEAL
A Jay for now. And that’s worth a sigh of relief.
A marquee free agent at the end of the season. And that’s worth a heap of speculation directed Josh Donaldson’s way as the season turns.
Money — in the marquee three-time all-star’s case, amounting to a Major League Baseball record oneyear arbitration-eligible contract — does not equal the nirvana of permanence.
He knows it. The Jays knew it, which is why they decided to simultaneously suck, at $23 million (U.S.), and blow, on a short-term deal that would still make the 2015 MVP magnificently attractive as a trade asset, should the team go all pear-shaped by, say, July.
It was atypically generous for the current executive regime, dangling a pile of do-re-mi in front of their charismatic third baseman to avoid the arbitration wrangle.
“There’s no generosity in arbitration,” said Donaldson, who has been down that road before. “You don’t get the money if it’s not earned. But I did appreciate the way that we went about it, from both parties. Ultimately I’m happy to where we got.”
Still, no Toronto player had made more clear his eagerness to remain a Jay into the multiple-year future. Donaldson said so forthrightly last September and hasn’t dog-whistled a different tune since. He certainly sounded entirely sincere, although one might wonder how thrilled he would be about spending his early and mid-30s with a club in rebuild mode, as the Jays may become if their purported intent of genuinely contending in 2018 goes sideways.
“As we talked about at the end of the season last year, I’ve definitely voiced my opinion that I would like to stay here,” Donaldson reiterated Saturday, in town with a slew of Jays past and present for the Winter Fest carnival at Rogers Centre. “That hasn’t changed. This was the first step that needed to be taken care of. I’m kind of looking forward to how things are going to play out in the future.”
Surprisingly, the discussions that sidestepped arbitration never included a long-range extension, Donaldson confirmed. “Not to my knowledge.”
He would certainly have been receptive. “I’ve said I wanted to do that. That’s pretty much all I can say. I’m not the one who makes decisions. Nor would I want to put them in that position. Like I said, the situation will become more fluid when the time is right. The time hasn’t been right to this moment, to my knowledge. But we were able to accomplish what was needed to be accomplished at the moment. I’m happy about it. I’m sure that they’re happy about it.”
If the upshot means that Donaldson’s name will be bruited about in trade rumours from here until the July 31 deadline, so what?
“I don’t think about it. Distractions are things that you allow to be distractions. It’s not something that is a distraction to me. I’m very comfortable with where I’m at in this game, the things that I’ve done for this game and in it. My mom always told me, you don’t always get things right away when you want it. Patience is a virtue. Patience has worked out for me up to this point.”
Fluidity, the term Donaldson prefers, translates into options. The Jays spent more money than was arguably necessary to lock in Donaldson for one year but retain the pass key that would spring both sides before the player ascends to free agency heaven. Nobody gets stuck.
Limbo is where upwards of 125 free agents are stuck right now, with few teams biting at the cohort available, everybody waiting for somebody to step forward and set the bar, a template that might be established should the Red Sox ever get off the stump and offer J.D. Martinez what he’s demanding — five years and open the vault.
“It doesn’t seem like there’s much going on, so I haven’t had to monitor much,” said Donaldson, asked his opinion on the curious sluggishness of the free agent market. Theories?
“That’s a tough question. I definitely think that there are going to more questions like this after we see where things end up going. I’m not going to speak on it at the moment because you’ve got to see how it ends up playing out. I don’t know the type of deals that have been going on out there. Every now and then you hear something in the media but as a player I know that’s not always true.”
For sure the players’ union doesn’t like what’s afoot. It smells a bit like the C-word. Collusion among owners. “I can’t say that word,” Donaldson demurs. Eventually, if the market doesn’t start moving, somebody — an agent likely — will. Baseball has been there before, to its litigious detriment.
Anyway, Donaldson, sewed up as a Jay for the time being, isn’t part of that unsigned and suspicious rump of players. He can set his mind exclusively on baseball. He began his conditioning routine down in Florida about a month ago, and has his sights set on a new day, perchance better day, dawning for the Jays.
He looks fit and strong. He has no physical ailments bothering him as there were in spring training last year, a season in which he was plagued by injuries that cost him 49 games, though he rebounded to hit .270 with 33 home runs and 78 RBIs, with an OPS of .944. This time around, Donaldson is setting his own workout program. For all the ballyhoo last year, the club’s highperformance department did not receive flying colours as player after player went on the disabled list.
“I’d never worked out with the Jays in the off-season until last year,” Donaldson points out. “To me it’s about getting back to the basic fundamentals of what got me to where I was . . . where I believe led me to be healthy and successful through the season.
“(The training staff ) do a great job But I definitely also feel that what I was doing works for me and has worked for me in the past. I just want to get back to where that was going, and implement some things that I have learned from them as well.”
Donaldson had never had to contend with injuries before. At age 32, he can’t abide the idea of going through one-step-forward-onestep-back rehab again. He trusts his own instincts. “Really, just focusing in. It’s not always about spending tons and tons of hours on what you do. It’s about getting ready and preparing smart at the same time.”
Being the straw that stirs the Jays drink, oh yeah, bring it on. That kind of pressure is like oxygen.
“I set a pretty high ceiling for myself. So it’s not something that’s uncommon, for me to be in this situation, where a team’s success kind of depends on how I’m playing. You’ve just got to understand that and continue to embrace it. It’s not something that I shy away from.
“I want to be the guy. I have been that guy.’’
He’s Toronto’s guy. For now.