‘ Baseball gods’ smiling on Jays at right time
It is a few hours before the Blue Jays wrap up a series sweep of the Minnesota Twins, and if Toronto manager John Gibbons was any more loose, someone would be checking the clubhouse Gatorade for evidence of a spiking.
A writer notes that Drew Hutchison has a historically high winning percentage for a starting pitcher with an ERA above 5.00, and Gibbons just leans back in his office chair and smiles.
“He brings out the best in us,” he says, grinning widely.
When someone mentions the Jays’ radio crew, Gibbons looks over at Jerry Howarth and says, “What is it you say?” Then he mimics Howarth’s nasal tone: “The Blue Jays are in FLIGHT!”
The manager laughs, as does Howarth, who doesn’t seem to be enjoying it as much as his impersonator.
Out on the field, as the Jays go through pre- game stretches, Munenori Kawasaki enthusiastically mixes in some dance moves. Twins outfielder Torii Hunter, a couple hundred feet away, notices and does some moves himself. Kawasaki rises to the challenge and, as Drake plays over the sound system, the infielder twirls and shakes some more. His teammates are in peals of laughter.
For Kawasaki, weak of bat but a strong court jester, these are heady days — the Blue Jays as a whole suit his outlook. They are, in a word, giddy.
This is a baffling state for the team and its fans. The Blue Jays entered this season with a streak of 21 years without a playoff appearance, the longest drought not just in Major League Baseball, but in any of the four major North American sports.
Not only did they still have a hangover from the dashed expectations of their 2013 swing-and- miss, but as recently as the middle of last week the Jays looked like a flawed team that offered only a modest hope of success.
Projection systems gave them a two- thirds chance of running the
no- playoffs streak to 22 years. But now? Hope abounds. After general manager Alex Anthopoulos managed two franchise- shaking trades in the space of three days, the Blue Jays took three of four games in a fiery series against Kansas City, and then rolled over Minnesota to complete an 8- 2 home stand that pulled them from the fringes to firmly in the playoff picture. Now the projection systems give Toronto a two- thirds chance of breaking the no- playoffs streak.
But it isn’t just that the Blue Jays have reeled off some wins. It is that they have the swagger of a team that, for the first time in a generation, is flat- out loaded.
Troy Tulowitzki made an already dangerous lineup a nightmare — he has scored 11 runs in nine games since the trade and posted an OPS in Toronto of .956 — and the addition of ace starter David Price has anchored the rotation in a way not seen since the Roy Halladay years.
Entering a series against the division- leading Yankees Friday, Toronto starters had gone 11
straight games allowing three earned runs or fewer, something they hadn’t done in five years.
Hutchison, despite the pedestrian statistics, is 10- 2. Four months ago, he was the opening day starter; if you were to reorder them, to decide who starts in a playoff series, he would be No. 5. No wonder Gibbons is grinning.
If there is an upside to having not made the playoffs for twoplus decades, it’s that fans have largely forgotten that pennant races are often an exercise in heartbreak.
Toronto’s first playoff appearance, in 1985, ended in a tragedy that was only exceeded by the disastrous collapse down the stretch in 1987. The Jays were thumped in two more playoff appearances before finally getting their two World Series titles. Put another way, there is a very good chance that even if this run of success lasts through September, it will be fleeting.
But no one gives a sweet damn about that now. After the sweep was completed Thursday, there was something approaching
delirium outside the Rogers Centre, and not just among the drunk people.
Perhaps someday there will be an explanation for why the Jays pinched pennies last season and waited until the waning days of July this year before completing the aggressive remake of their roster, but the end result is a team that is in as much of a win- now mode as any in baseball. Barring a hard- to- foresee collapse over the next couple of weeks, they will not just be cycling rookie call- ups through the lineup in September. They will be playing — gasp — games that matter.
Comparisons of this version of the team to those of the early 1990s cannot be easily avoided. The Blue Jays had scored 587 runs heading into Friday, most in the majors, 59 more than the second- place Yankees.
Minnesota’s Hunter likened Toronto’s repeated bludgeoning of the baseball to the sound of a series of car crashes. The punishing lineup battered Twins starter Kyle Gibson for eight runs on Thursday after stomping poor Tyler Duffey in his major- league debut the night before. Twins pitchers could not get through scoreless innings unless they faced the soft underbelly of the Toronto attack — Kevin Pillar and Ryan Goins — and even outfielder Ben Revere, added at the trade deadline, scored three times from the ninth spot in the order. If he is going to lead off innings with singles, as he did three times on Thursday to set the table for Tulowitzki, Josh Donaldson and Jose Bautista, the game is basically unfair.
The breaks are also working out. Bloops are falling in for singles, the defence is making dazzling plays and, on Wednesday, a ninth- inning rocket off the bat of Brian Dozier that would have scored at least one Minnesota run was instead snagged by Revere as he fought the glare of the lights. Game over.
Gibbons had a smile for that one, too. “Baseball gods,” he said.
They are definitely smiling on Toronto. It has been a while.