Jays GM again tries to reason on a season of misery
GM will need to decide on a rotation revamp
This year, Alex Anthopoulos has seen more Blue Jays hats and shirts and jerseys when he’s driving to work, when he’s walking around. Maybe he’s just noticing them more now, he wonders; no, there are more of them, he thinks. People cared. That’s what gets him, when you get down to it.
“It should kill me,” the 36-yearold general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays says, at the end of a second consecutive disastrous season. “It should beat me up. You don’t play well, you deserve it. I could go into how awful it is, and it is, but it’s just taxing. Because you care so much. And it’s not just expectations, but it’s guilt, to be honest with you.
“It’s more the fans, and it sounds corny, and they’ll be rolling their eyes and saying, ‘Save it.’ But you know there’s those people who are supporting and following and there’s an element of pride for them too, and we’re not delivering. So you have this vibrant, passionate fan base, and we didn’t deliver for them. And that’s awful. That’s my responsibility.” So what now, is the question. This big blue machine was a mess from the start; guys got hurt, guys started slow, guys threw the ball around like it was a live salamander. The problems were everywhere, and the division was the usual gladiator academy, and the result is a team that’s been in last place since R.A. Dickey’s first knuckleball floated off his fingertips, not quite right.
It’s been a disaster, and it feels like there are so many things to fix. But Anthopoulos keeps coming back to two things: the pitchers and the doctors.
Fix those, he figures, and maybe the machine works.
“All those other deficiencies — you can win with those,” Anthopoulos says. “Not to say that they don’t need to be improved, but we had two pretty good winning stretches, and when we won 10 of 13, we pitched. When we won 11 in a row, we pitched. The problem is we need to do it in more than a 25-game span. That rotation has to be consistent. That’s the rock, and that’s the foundation, of any good team.”
And that’s the problem. Josh Johnson imploded, and Brandon Morrow got hurt, and R.A. Dickey got just hurt enough that his knuckleball slowed and floated too often, and J.A. Happ got beaned, and there was no margin for error.
The rotation was worse than Houston’s, which takes some doing. It was worse than just about everyone’s. That’s the first thing to fix, and the hardest thing to fix.
“If R.A. Dickey is way better next year, if Buehrle is Buehrle — I know I’m saying ‘if’ a lot, but I think that’s the position we’re in,” Anthopoulos says.
The candidates are Morrow (who may still need surgery to alleviate a compressed radial nerve), then maybe someone acquired in a trade (Anthopoulos still dislikes free agency), then maybe a body or two or three from the grab bag of Drew Hutchison, Kyle Drabek, Todd Redmond, Esmil Rogers and minorleague guys Marcus Stroman and Sean Nolin. It beats relying on Chien Ming-Wang and Ramon Ortiz, but it’s not a sure thing.
“So if the rotation is strong — easier said than done — I think everything else follows suit, because you’ve got the bullpen, and some dynamic, special bats that some of those other teams don’t have,” Anthopoulos said. “I know people are going to say (the defence needs work, but) defensively if you’re running out (Brett) Lawrie, (Jose) Reyes, (Ryan) Goins or a plus-defender at second, Colby (Rasmus), (Jose) Bautista … and so on …
“We’re back to an extent that the rotation’s the issue, so absolutely we’re back. But we have bodies now. The question is do we have impact starters, and starters who can impact us in the American League East.”
If, if, if. Anthopoulos is back where this team used to live, in a way. He is starting from a better position, with heavier expectations, but it’s a lot like when the Jays needed a lot of coin flips to come up heads.
And Anthopoulos still believes he can deliver. He has to; it’s part of the job. He has gone over his moves from last season, examined them, good and bad; he knows a good decision can be luck as much as anything, so it’s good to know what’s what. Josh Johnson passed all his medical tests before the trade.
Dickey (and Lawrie) got hurt at the World Baseball Classic, and Dickey’s velocity and control have returned to normal as the season has gone on. Reyes’s legs held up for 45 games on the home turf, except for that one bizarre slide, which happened in Kansas City anyway.
Nobody figured Melky Cabrera would have a benign tumour wrapped up in his spine.
“I still think the process, actually, was right. The thought process was right,” Anthopoulos says.
“In this job, you know there are decisions that don’t work out. We wanted to take a step forward and win and be a contending team and be a playoff team, and that hasn’t happened at all this year. And I can’t tell you at all that we can’t be that team next year.
“I think in the long run, if the process is right, you’re going to make 20, 30, 40 decisions over time, and you know you’re not going to go 40 for 40. But if the process is right, in the long run, I think you will come out ahead.
“Now, especially with what happened last year, I’m not going to blow smoke or anything like that. When you have a year like we had this year, people want to be skeptical or doubt, and that comes with the territory. I just don’t feel like it does anybody any good to say, let us convince you. Because we’ll find out when the season comes.”
Yes, we will. Anthopoulos has come a long way in a short time — wunderkind GM, patient foundation builder, big-table poker player, and all it got him this season was six months of watching this flaming car roll into a ditch and never get out.
He’s not thinking about his job status, because it does him no good. He’s thinking about pitching and doctors, and trying again.