These Jays really have the blues
As Casey Stengel would say, ‘Can’t anybody here play this game?’
When the Baltimore Orioles closed out the latest Toronto Blue Jays’ loss on Sunday, the consensus was that the All-Star Game break couldn’t have arrived soon enough.
Because — and this is being said universally by those around the club — the Blue Jays desperately need respite. “A little breather,” as manager John Gibbons put it.
That cuts both ways. Fans of the Blue Jays need a break as well, a break from the chronic disappointment that has been Toronto’s contribution to the first half of the 2013 major-league baseball season.
It isn’t merely that the Blue Jays are four games below .500 with a 45-49- record at the All-Star Game. It’s how they got to this point with a disgraceful display of fundamental baseball. If the late Casey Stengel were managing this bunch, he’d shout, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”
Commonly, Blue Jays starting pitchers are getting beaten up on the call-in shows. They are convenient targets, and worthy of criticism, notably for the disappointing performances of reigning Cy Young winner R.A. Dickey (10 losses at the break) and Josh Johnson (one victory at the break). They’d be the first to admit the first half has been a disaster.
Likewise for Ricky Romero, who is being paid a lot of money to win games for the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons, and he has been doing a pretty good job of that lately, which means he should get another shot with the Blue Jays soon.
Far greater crimes against baseball have been committed by Toronto’s everyday players.
Certain scenes play out as symbolic and representative of what has been going on with the Blue Jays: outfielder Jose Bautista tripping over his own feet, a routine fly ball plopping on the ground behind him; Emilio Bonifacio booting so many balls at second base that it becomes the new position for Brett Lawrie, returning from an injury rehab assignment.
Painfully, Bonifacio repeatedly cannot successfully drop a bunt down to advance a runner.
Hardcore fans of the Blue Jays feel as though they were sold a bill of goods given all the hype coming out of spring training.
When the boy wonder general manager Alex Anthopoulos went out and signed or traded for the likes of Jose Reyes, Melky Cabrera, Dickey, Johnson and Mark Buehrle, there was far too much talk about the Blue Jays returning to the World Series for the first time since 1993.
Far too much talk, within the organization itself, of this being a club that “has everything.”
Of course, it was the kiss of death.
Lessons abound regarding teams that have it all, on paper, before the first pitch flies in a meaningful game. Who can forget the headlines hyping the 2011 Boston Red Sox as one of the “greatest teams of all time.”
By the fall — and we do mean fall — the Red Sox were associated with one of the great collapses of all time, but comparisons with the 1927 New York Yankees had long since faded.
In the age of instant tweets, no one can wait any more for the leisurely baseball season to play out, so the best and worst get anointed in advance. Since 2011, the Red Sox have done an admirable job of crawling out from the ruins of their “chicken wings and beer” days of 2011 to become one of the pleasant stories of 2013. Granted, the Red Sox have too much history and payroll to rank among the feel-good stories that are the 2013 Pittsburgh Pirates and Oakland A’s, but it’s worth noting that fans and media in Toronto were chortling over manager John Farrell jumping ship to the Red Sox, as though he’d made the worst timing blunder in the game and was about to get his comeuppance.
Today, Farrell is the calm and cool skipper of a firstplace Red Sox club that can’t say enough about the Terry Francona-style respect Farrell has for his players, in sharp contrast to the fiasco overseen by Bobby Valentine last season.
How good would Farrell look in Toronto today?
Hard to say, but, under Gibbons, we have witnessed temper tantrums by Bautista and Lawrie, watched a team that can’t do the little things right, including fielding.
The Blue Jays rank 18th in the MLB in team defence, which is bordering on defensive indifference. Too often, looking on helplessly from the dugout, Gibbons wears the look of a man in over his head. When this group turns around, and it will turn around, few will be surprised if it happens under the watch of the next Blue Jays manager.
When he was in Ottawa for a baseball clinic last week, Duane Ward, an ace reliever for the Jays 1992 and ’93 championship teams, did his best to defend the beleaguered 2013 edition. The first mistake, Ward said, was for anyone to link this group to the Jays of 20 years ago.
“It’s wrong to compare,” Ward said. “Different breed of player, different breed of game. They have a lot of new guys to the organization where we had a lot of guys that had been with the organization.”
Ward insisted he liked the makeup of the current lineup, especially the bullpen.
“Would you like a few other players? Sure,” Ward said. “But right now this is what we’ve got, and it’s pretty damned good.”
For what they’ve delivered, they’re pretty damned disappointing.