Jays playing with house money now
YOUTHFUL SQUAD BACK IN PLAYOFFS WITH NO PRESSURE ON THEM
Charlie Montoyo said something on Thursday night, amid the celebrations of his team’s return to the playoffs, that is not the kind of thing baseball managers tend to say out loud.
The Toronto Blue Jays manager said he told his team, gathered around the mound at Sahlen Field, that he was proud of them for getting to this point in a season that had some extraordinary challenges. “The pressure’s off,” Montoyo said. “Let’s have fun now and enjoy it.”
It’s an attitude that runs contrary to the received wisdom on the eve of a playoff run. Usually, everyone talks about how the pressure is increased, and the stakes are raised, and various other sporting clichés. And that’s generally true. Getting to the Major League Baseball playoffs is a daunting task for most franchises, and no one wants to squander what could be a rare opportunity for post-season success.
But Montoyo is also absolutely right. I can’t say I’ve ever heard a coach or manager declare that his playoff-bound team has zero pressure to win, but I cannot think of a team that has more of a playingwith- house- money feel to it than these Toronto Blue Jays.
Start with the big picture. Before the pandemic arrived to disrupt spring training and put the baseball season on hold for months, the Blue Jays were a team with moderate expectations. To a roster that had won just 67 of 162 games a season earlier and had infamously left Montoyo casting about for literally anyone who could take the mound to start games, president Mark Shapiro and general manager Ross Atkins added a top- end starting pitcher in Hyun-jin Ryu and … also some other guys. While the 2019 season had ended with management acknowledging that the outfield defence couldn’t catch a cold and would- be superstar Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. was perhaps a bit too husky for an everyday position player, the 2020 season dawned with the outfield unchanged and young Vladdy not looking all that different, either. The team conceded the latter point by making him a first baseman/dh.
While the team’s young core was confident about their ability to play — young cores are like that — it was a roster that still looked some distance from playoff contention. Even after the pandemic pause and Major League Baseball came back with this zany sprint of a 60-game season, one that was in theory good for the Jays because it’s easier to paper over holes for a two-month stretch, that optimism was immediately offset by the team being booted out of Ontario, turned down by two more governments, and eventually settling on Buffalo as a home park. The wandering nomads of Toronto went 5- 8 on an extended road trip to open the season. Maybe next year, fellas.
You know the rest. In this goofiest of seasons, the Blue Jays have been just good enough to eke into the expanded playoffs, this despite a six-game losing streak that ended last week in which they were outscored 61-23. Quite how they managed this is harder to figure. Entering Friday’s play they had given up 17 more runs than they scored, the only one of the seven playoff teams in the American League so far to post a negative run differential. They had in Ryu a pitcher who was sixth in the AL among starters in Wins Above Replacement, and then no other starter among the top 50 in the league, except for Taijun Walker, the late- season add who slots in at number 48. The rest of the AL’S playoff teams are positively littered with starting pitchers in that list of top 50 by WAR: The New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays each have four, the Cleveland Indians, Minnesota Twins and Oakland Athletics each have five and the Chicago White Sox have three. The Houston Astros, the likely eighth playoff team in the league, also have three starters among the top 50. How vital was Ryu to Toronto’s success? When last season ended, Atkins was asked who among the younger Jays pitchers on that roster was likely to become a top- three starter. He suggested Trent Thorton as the most likely candidate. Thorton had an ERA of 11.12 when he was lost to injury after three appearances. Tanner Roark and Chase Anderson are each carrying ERAS above 7.00, while Matt Shoemaker has been better but has only made six starts due to injury.
But now none of that matters. MLB’S extra- frenetic playoff format for 2020, which begins next week with 16 teams playing in best- of- three series, means that upsets could easily happen. It could also mean the playoff journey lasts all of two games. Playoff baseball notoriously comes down to tiny margins, and this format will only exacerbate that, whether you are the juggernaut Los Angeles Dodgers or the plucky homeless upstarts from Toronto. Still, the young players who tired of losing so much last season now have, pending one victory this weekend, a winning season on their ledger, even if it is a wee stump of a season. Shapiro and Atkins, the non- beloved management duo, have some proof that they can build a roster that does something other than disappoint. And Canada’s only team, despite never actually playing in Canada this season, is back in the playoffs. House money, indeed.