AL EAST A DIVISION RIFE WITH OPPORTUNITY FOR JAYS
No one is about to suggest before the midpoint of March that the American League East is falling apart, but might it be a little more vulnerable these days?
The Boston Red Sox are in a “no more Mookie Betts and David Price” makeover mode (plus dealing with injuries) while the vaunted reigning division champion New York Yankees seemingly can’t go more than a day or two without someone getting wounded.
With that in mind, Toronto Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins was asked on Wednesday if there’s a hint of urgency at taking advantage of that situation with his own hungry, retooled team.
While not exactly declaring the tough division a land of opportunity, Atkins acknowledged that a hot start could certainly gather momentum and ultimately alter the front office’s way of thinking.
“We’re making our team as good as it possibly can be given the strategy and the resources that we have,” Atkins said. “I think it could, into the season as we get closer to the (trade) deadline and we see where things are, it could certainly impact our ability to be slightly more aggressive. But there’s so much more information to come until that point.”
The Jays have certainly been a buzz team at spring training for a number of reasons.
The baseball world took notice of the emergence of the Vlad Guerrero Jr., Cavan Biggio, Bo Bichette threesome last year and were almost universally impressed.
And when the front office splurged with its four-year, Us$80-million deal for Korean starting pitcher Hyun-jin Ryu, the narrative continued.
National media have made regular stops here over the past month to see what’s up and a team that lost 95 times in 2019 is no longer under the radar.
“We certainly could be a team that has some things go our way and when we look up in the second half, people are excited,” Atkins said. “Sports is a beautiful thing and oftentimes, us as executives, can fall into the category of being too objective. We do anything we can to push that envelope as close to winning as possible.
“So yes, injuries are definitely a very real factor. We feel good about where the organization is.”
Of significant importance from Atkins’ perspective is the optimism is rooted in more than just the maturation of the heralded trio, which could be listed as a fivesome if you add catcher Danny Jansen and outfielder Lourdes Gurriel Jr. And it also extends further than the off-season acquisitions of Ryu, Tanner Roark and Chase Anderson to bolster the flagging pitching staff.
It is Atkins’ view that for the first time in a number of seasons, the team has the necessary depth to move closer to being a competitive playoff contender.
“We have an incredible amount of depth in our system and a lot of depth on our 40-man roster,” Atkins said. “We’ve transitioned a great core. We’ve complemented it with free agent pitching that will allow us to be patient with our prospects that is, at the upper levels, mostly in the pitching category. We have some good stories this year.”
In terms of intangibles at play, there seems to be a strong bond building in the Jays clubhouse. While it’s easy to be optimistic at this time of year, it certainly seems like a light, tight group.
“As far as the team psyche, they’re thinking about one thing,” Atkins said. “They’re thinking about one thing only and that one thing is winning.”
Again, it’s easy enough to be all buddy-buddy during spring training, but another encouraging aspect is the way veteran acquisitions have fit in with the young group.
“I think the most exciting thing is just the feel and the environment and how well players are getting along,” Atkins said. “How excited they are about the year, how excited they are about the group, the collective team.
“It’s a very good feeling that the players are exceptionally excited. You cannot only hear it, but you feel it on a day-to-day basis. The players that we thought we were acquiring, the people, the teammates, seems to very much be accurate. All of the scouting work that was done, what we learned about players over the course of free agency, over the course of the off-season, has turned out to be true.”
Just as a 10-6-2 record prior to Wednesday’s game against the Baltimore Orioles at TD Ballpark tends not to mean much, the “we are family” singsong doesn’t necessarily translate into being a contender, either. But in a competitive division where the Yankees especially are rife with injuries, if the Jays get off to a quick start, an ambitious winter could quickly translate into an intriguing late spring and summer.