‘Baseball gods’ smiling on Jays
Toronto charting an unlikely flight path to the playoffs
TORONTO — 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 Blue Jays go through pre-game stretches, infielder 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, he 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 fran- chise-shaking trades in the space of three days last week, the Blue Jays took three of four games in a fiery series against Kansas City, and then steamrolled 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. A pretty good week, that.
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.
If there is an upside to having not made the playoffs for two-plus 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.