Chacin and Jays look to the future
Blue Jays 7 Royals 2 Rookie starter finishes with 13 wins ‘Frustrating’ season for Vernon Wells
A smiling Blue Jays rookie Gustavo Chacin packed his bags for a flight home to Venezuela tonight looking more relieved than he has in a while. With only one victory since July heading into yesterday’s season finale, Chacin gladly welcomed another, even if it did come against a disinterestedlooking Kansas City Royals team. Chacin cruised through 72⁄ innings to secure his 13th victory, tying him with Josh Towers for the team lead and keeping his fading rookie-oftheyear hopes alive.
It also provided a happy finish to one of the bigger individual success stories on a Jays team that will need plenty more next season to build on an 80- win campaign.
“ It was a great year for me and I pitched a lot of innings, too,” said Chacin, who became the first Jays rookie in 29 seasons to throw more than 200 innings, a milestone surpassed midway through yesterday’s 7- 2 win in front of a Rogers Centre crowd announced at 37,046. “ I don’t think about things like ( rookie of the year). For me, it’s about helping the team get wins.”
Toronto boosted its win total by 13 from a 67- 94 record last year, but still fell six shy of its total from 2003. Ahandful of Jays spent yesterday padding their stats against Royals starter Runelvys Hernandez, who served up a threerun homer to Eric Hinske and three hits to a surging Frank Catalanotto. John- Ford Griffin clubbed his first career homer in the sixth off reliever Jimmy Gobble, while Emil Brown had a solo shot in the eighth for the Royals to end Chacin’s day to a loud ovation from the appreciative crowd.
It was a run- scoring triple by Catalanotto in the fifth, on another ball that left fielder Brown allowed to drift over his head just as he had in Saturday’s game, that pushed the Jay outfielder’s batting average to .301. The Jays quickly pulled Catalanotto from the game, having insured the presence of at least one .300 hitter in their year- end stats count. Catalanotto used a torrid final week, in which he drove in 15 runs, to push his season RBI total to 59 — matching his career high in an otherwise disappointing year.
Hinske ended up with 68 RBIs, most of them coming the final two months when the Jays used him almost exclusively against right-handers. He ended up with a batting average of .262. Vernon Wells drove in his 97th run of the season on a fifth- inning single that scored Catalanotto. That followed a first- inning double by Wells, who admitted he was disappointed in his season.
“Frustrating, that’s the best way to describe it,” he said.
Wells has been the subject of trade rumours, although it’s doubtful the Jays would move him. But Wells and his teammates know there will be plenty of comings and goings this winter as the Jays boost their payroll into the $80 million ( U. S.) range and general manager J. P. Ricciardi tries to rebuild an offence among the most powerdeprived in baseball.
“ I think he’s got to continue to be as aggressive as he has in the past,” Wells said of Ricciardi. “ He’s learning on the job. Like a lot of our young guys.”
Chacin was the biggest of those young performers, despite signs of running out of gas down the stretch. He became the first Jays rookie since Jerry Garvin in 1977 to throw more than 200 innings and make 34 starts.
Jays manager John Gibbons said the seasons of both Chacin and Towers rank among his best memories of his first full campaign as a field boss. Among the lowest points was the team’s 1- 6 stretch against Detroit and New York after climbing to within four games of the wild- card lead on Aug. 18. But Gibbons said the thing he’ll take into the winter is how the Jays hung together, especially after Roy Halladay was injured, and fought to stay close to .500. “We had a lot of times when we could have collapsed, but we didn’t,” he said.