AT A SHAKY WHEEL, GIBBONS HAS BEEN AS STEADY AS EVER
Lesser lights are playing key roles as club springs to life in May,
Sure, the first month of the season was unsightly for the Toronto Blue Jays, with doom meeting gloom at almost every turn.
The pain of looking at the standings every day was matched only by the growing list on the baseball infirmary better known as the disabled list. But through it all, Jays general manager Ross Atkins said there wasn’t a whiff of panic — not from the front office, not from the veteranheavy lineup and certainly not from the manager’s lair of John Gibbons, where calm and confidence wafted through the clubhouse and into the dugout.
Baseball is a game where impatience can be destructive and by somehow avoiding it, this Jays team, which polished off the Seattle Mariners 3-2 on Sunday with Kevin Pillar’s majestic walkoff homer in the bottom of the ninth, is now one of the hottest in the sport.
“All you can do is try to focus on the positives and through work and effort find a way to be consistent,” Atkins told Postmedia News on Sunday. “If you do that, hopefully it ends up with being in the position where we are contending for the division.”
Did somebody say contending for the division?
Atkins is well aware of the fact that getting to the top of the AL East is still a distant prospect, but riding a five-game winning streak and with victories in seven of their past eight, the Jays — somewhat incredibly, given their 2-11 start — are just four games below .500 and three out of an AL wild card spot.
So how did this happen — especially with five key components on the DL? Atkins is adamant the team has learned much about itself through the painful start. And with depth players seizing the opportunity and producing, the optimism escalates at the possibilities of when the wounded return.
“There really wasn’t any (panic),” Atkins said.
“A lot of people would say, What does that mean? How does that play out? It’s attitude and communication and overall mood and secondarily in decision-making. There was very little volatility. (Gibbons) has a calming influence on his players.”
Rather than overreacting with dramatic changes, Gibbons has relied on his bench and his bullpen and the belief that players such as Jose Bautista and Kendrys Morales would eventually come around.
Based on performance, for example, Bautista could have easily been dropped in the batting order. Instead, Gibbons relied on instinct and his own belief in the players that got him to the ALCS in back-to-back years.
“The confidence he’s had in certain players, I can’t say enough about it,” Atkins said. “Putting players in a position to succeed, players that haven’t necessarily been in before — the confidence John and (pitching coach) Pete Walker have demonstrated for players like Ryan Goins and Darwin Barney and (Ryan) Tepera and (Danny) Barnes … they’ve really come in and stepped up. If you’re looking for one aspect that’s helped us have better results, it’s that leadership…
“And we’ll be that much better when we’re finally healthy.”
Another reason the Jays refused to lose hope — beyond the common refrain that it’s still early — was a belief in what the nightly box scores were showing beyond wins and losses. The games were competitive and some of the losses quirky.
“We’re definitely playing better — there’s no doubt about that — and we’re getting better results,” Atkins said.
“Early on, there were only a couple of games that we didn’t have legit chances to win in the ninth inning. We’ve been extremely competitive, and now we’re seeing better results.”
It certainly hasn’t hurt that Pillar is on fire, emerging as not just a superman in centre but a superstar at the plate. And as much as the aging roster may have contributed to the ungodly rash of injuries, the temperament from the older players appears to be of tangible benefit.
“We felt like things weren’t really going our way early on,” Pillar said after his monumental Mother’s Day blast at the Rogers Centre.
“We were competing, we were playing well — we just didn’t come up with timely hits, and it seemed like teams were blooping balls in and we just couldn’t find a way to win games.”
They’re doing it now, however. And after the Seattle sweep, the Jays have a golden chance to further advance with four against the lowly Atlanta Braves. With a 17-21 record, they can smell .500, a much more pleasant odour than a month ago.
We felt like things weren’t really going our way early on … We were competing, we were playing well — we just didn’t come up with timely hits.