Can rotation live up to hype?
The best starting five? Despite great expectations, Jays aces still face some serious competition
It’s one thing to be praised as a can’t-miss starting rotation, the best in the American League, a collection of five No. 1 starters.
It’s another to measure up to all the hype.
Standing in his always huge media scrum, with his distinctive white head band, Jays starter R.A. Dickey knows better than to buy too far into the hype.
Dickey understands too many things about expectations, about the grind of 162 games, about failure, to ever place success ahead of its delivery date.
For the Jays starting rotation, and for Dickey, success is based on several different rationales beyond the obvious high calibre of each of the five members of the rotation. Still, Dickey is a fan somewhere alongside everything else that he is in baseball; he can’t help but get excited over the 2013 fivesome that stacks up with him pitching opening day, followed by Brandon Morrow, Mark Buehrle, Josh Johnson and Ricky Romero.
“Yes, it’s the best rotation I’ve been part of . . . I should say that I’ve only been part of that since 2010 so I don’t have a big example to resource, but you look at us and any one of us can take the ball Opening Day, so that definitely reduces the pressure,” Dickey said. “We don’t have to be the stopper every time we go out there. One of us will do that and we can feed off each other that way.”
The best rotations, according to several online rankings, centres on a group of five teams, in no particular order, that includes Washington, Philadelphia, Detroit, San Francisco, and either Tampa or Los Angeles.
The Jays certainly rate high mention, but they generally fall outside that group, in sixth or slightly higher (lower).
It’s interesting to note that during spring training, several veteran American League scouts said Tampa’s rotation is not only the best in the league, but that the Rays are the best team in the American League East Division.
Here’s a look at each individual starter, and how each one feels about the starting five.
R.A. DICKEY
Dickey is baseball’s philosopher king, English professor pitcher. He is well read, well spoken, well grounded, and might one day write about baseball as well as he throws a knuckleball.
During spring training, he was often asked to put the starting five into some perspective. Dickey, given his experience and patience with media, doesn’t just give his opinions — he approaches them first.
Rather than simply making a statement about the Jays staff being the best he’s ever been a part of, he offers a whole range of support.
For instance, he has an interesting, somewhat unorthodox take on the importance of chemistry, both on the staff and with the team. Talk about the Jays team, one that came together within the span of some shrewd trades and signings in the off-season, has them needing to focus on becoming a team instead of a collection of superstars.
“Chemistry in itself is a word that gets tossed around so much . . . it won’t make you a championship team,” the knuckleballer says.
“It’s being prepared that counts, it keeps an eight-game losing streak to three or four. Chemistry is important, it is a good component of a team, but we have a lot of older guys so what will be important is guys taking ownership, so it’s not my team, it’s not Brett Lawrie’s team, it’s a collective effort, it’s a bunch of guys doing their jobs every day.” As for himself, he makes the mental part sound easy, and convincing. “Mentally (change), no . . . the more you talk to me the more you’ll see (the mental side) will not change,” he says. “It’s taken a lot of time to grow into this present mind . . . the worst thing I can do is try to win another Cy Young Award for the Toronto Blue Jays. The best thing is to commit to the process and make it work over time.”
BRANDON MORROW
Morrow, if you subscribe to a general rule of thumb about the Jays rotation, should have an awesome season following Dickey in the rotation. It’s power after flutter, and the thinking goes that Morrow, with his mid to high 90 m.p.h. stuff, should reap the benefits of facing a batting order a day after having its timing disjointed by Dickey’s knuckle ball. Morrow politely leaves those arguments to the critics. And while he knows he will be judged in part against this apparent privilege of his placement in the rotation, his actual dynamic on the team changes dramatically from what it was in 2012. Morrow, with essentially one full year as a major league starter entering last season, was thrust not only into a top of the order responsibility, but into a role as leader of the staff. The leadership was actually a team-up with Romero. Both were expected to bond as a leadership tandem. They were to lead by example and take control of a rotation that at one point featured three pitchers fresh out of no more than class AA experience. They were to be leaders of all that, and more, with less than five years experience as major league starters themselves. “Last year you wouldn’t have considered me and Ricky to be veterans, but we were in that rotation (2012),” Morrow said. “We were asked to do our jobs on the field and to mentor young guys. It makes our job easier now to know there’s self understanding in our rotation, and now it’s the reverse where Ricky and I can ask them. I’ve gone from the oldest in the rotation to being the second youngest. Guys have gone from one and two years experience to 13 years and more.”
MARK BUEHRLE
The lefty is undoubtedly a stabilizing influence on the staff, but it’s his own stability in Toronto that comes under question. While it’s difficult to expect anything but excellence from this veteran, one who has seven consecutive years of 200 plus innings, he is certainly in a splintered career situation. His ties to his family and his beloved pet pit bull have been well documented. Buehrle is not happy with Ontario’s pit bull ban and the separation it’s forced on his family and his pets. There is, however, a quality to Buehrle, one that exudes professionalism. While he is not happy with his living situation, one of the happiest places in his life has always been the ballpark. “When you see me out there on the mound, I like to have fun, I like to have a smile on my face because I just love being at the ballpark,” Buehrle said. “I’m out there laughing, good start, bad start, I throw it out and go out the next day and try and have fun at the park.” That storyline will not fade. But Buehrle brings a level of pitching excellence that is unique. He has a quick pace on the mound and an ability to throw strikes at any time with any pitch in any count.
JOSH JOHNSON
Josh Johnson has some awe-inspiring stats, and some unflattering figures, mixed into his 2012 season. He was bouncing back from shoulder surgery in 2011 and performed admirably well, save for the fact he’d lost seven of his final nine outings. His 2011 opened incredibly — he took a no hitter into the fifth inning in five of his first six starts. The surgery limited him to 60 innings, and he came back in 2012 with 191.
This is a tall right-handed power pitcher who says he “never” looks at his stats. But he does think one of his key goals with the Jays is logging 200 innings. It seems like a universal measuring stick of contribution for every starter.
“That’s hard for me,” Johnson said when asked to size up himself for 2013.
“Hopefully for me it’s going out and working a lot of innings this year. People talk about me and last year I pitched (191) innings . . . it wasn’t terrible, I thought it was until I took a better look at it. So to go out and pitch 200 innings this year would be important, but I’m not here for my stats, I’m here for the team.”
“I NEVER look at my stats, ever,” he added.
“My wife has a better idea that I do. I looked this off season, someone had me sign a card so I looked on the back and I said to myself, that’s not too bad.”
RICKY ROMERO
Romero knows as much as any of the starting five about the importance of staying healthy.
His perspective on health tempers the unavoidable hype surrounding the rotation.
“I think the biggest thing is for everyone to keep feet on the ground,” said Romero, who underwent procedures on his arm and knees in the off-season.
“Yes, the names are very good on paper. But that doesn’t change anything, we still have to go out and get outs. And what’s important is staying healthy. It’s definitely pretty special when you add all those names to the rotation. When you add a Cy Young winner, then you know Mark (Buehrle) was a World Series winner; and Josh is just a fantastic pitcher. It’s pretty exciting. But we know we have business to take care of. We have to have that attitude that it doesn’t matter what anyone says about us, it’s up to us to deliver what we’re capable of.”