THEY’RE GOING FOR IT
Trading for superstar pitcher David Price sends a clear message to Jays fans: Let’s take a run at the title
So this is what it feels like, abandon. Sports fans in this city are familiar with the big splash and with the sinking, slow or fast or eternal. The Blue Jays don’t do this. Alex Anthopoulos doesn’t do this. This a franchise of half-measures, maybe two-thirds. It never leads to much of anywhere.
Well, new world. On Thursday Anthopoulos traded three young pitchers for Detroit left-hander David Price. Price is a superstar, an ace. Anthopoulos compared him to Roy Halladay, correctly. They’re going for it, really going for it. Finally.
But David Price is a rental, probably, and Anthopoulos doesn’t go for rentals. Did the general manager break? Did he crack, after six years of valuing contractual control above all else, and having no contract of his own next year? Was he tired of being a rental himself? Did he just say what the hell, let’s go?
Yes, and no. This Blue Jays team has been weirdly maddening. They entered Thursday night having outscored opponents by five fewer runs than the majorleague-best St. Louis Cardinals, but without the record to show for it. They needed pitching. When Anthopoulos burned a couple of prospects and Jose Reyes for the best shortstop in baseball on Tuesday, people still said, what about the pitching?
Two days ago Daniel Norris wasn’t on the table, and until Wednesday night neither was Price, and now the Jays are a circus team, all of a sudden. The players seem elated. The fan base feels alive. Are they all in? People keep saying they’re all in. Anthopoulos hates that term.
“We’ve got a good club. We’re two games out of the wild card,” said Anthopoulos, the general manager whose future remains uncertain. “We’re a very good team, and we have enough time.”
And hey, maybe Price stays. He has already told people that he loves the city, loves the lineup, loves the defence on the left side of the infield. He’s said to be the kind of guy who will play somewhere he likes over chasing every last dollar. Toronto’s five-year self-imposed cap on contracts was always a Paul Beeston production, and it may very well leave with the august president. It was already bent, just a little. Troy Tulowitzki, acquired Tuesday, has five years and two months left on his deal.
On the other hand, Price turns 30 next month, and if he asks for Max Scherzer or Clayton Kershaw money, he will cost well over $200 million (U.S.) over seven years. The Jays would probably prefer less. The Dodgers will come for Price, dragging their vaults behind them. They came for Russell Martin, though.
So maybe this is a sugar high, and even if Price gives this team enough to get in, he’s gone. Maybe this is Anthopoulos’s Expos trading Randy Johnson as part of a Mark Langston deal.
But at the heart of it, Anthopoulos believes in this team. Best offence in baseball, the bullpen’s coming around, R.A. Dickey and Mark Buehrle are pitching well, and it should turn, eventually. It’s not that hard to talk yourself into it. Maybe that’s what Anthopoulos did.
Anthopoulos never believed in rentals, but he believed in talent. He used to say that if he called the Cardinals and asked for a price on Albert Pujols, he would be told there wasn’t a price. That’s how aces work, usually. But the Tigers talked extension with Price before the season, and apparently the talks didn’t go anywhere. Here he is.
Either way, the Toronto Blue Jays have traded for the best position player available, and the best pitcher available, and Donaldson, too, and they kept Aaron Sanchez and Marcus Stroman and Roberto Osuna and Dalton Pompey. At the very least, this is the first time since the sainted burnished glory days of 1993 that this franchise has looked at its fans and said, let’s go. Maybe Anthopoulos never believed in rentals because his team wasn’t worth it. He thinks this one is. As he put it in a text, “We’ve got a shot. This is what we do this for.”
They have a shot, and baseball’s playoffs are the roulette wheels of all roulette wheels, if you can get to the table. Suddenly this team looks like it makes sense.
And maybe that’s worth it, too. Jays fans have been waiting for this team to play games that matter for over two decades. When something’s riding on every pitch, every at-bat, every ball in play, baseball’s terrific. When the space between pitches becomes suspense, baseball’s terrifying. That’s been missing here.
Well, that’s where these Jays are now, for as long as it lasts. If you’re a fan, time to see how much you believe. This is what you do this for, too.