Playoff thrill beats post-season award haul for slugger who changed clubhouse culture
Whether he was diving head-long into the stands to catch a foul ball, acrobatically contorting his body to evade a tag at home plate or cranking a walk-off homer in extra innings, Josh Donaldson was the Blue Jays’ big, beating heart throughout this unforgettable season.
It ended sooner than Jays’ fans would have liked, but Donaldson’s first year in Toronto will always be remembered as one of the best ever — and now he has the hardware to prove it.
The 29-year-old third baseman became just the second player in Blue Jays history to win the American League MVP award Thursday night, garnering 23 of a possible 30 first-place votes to decisively wrest the crown away from L.A. Angels outfielder Mike Trout, who won it in 2014 and finished runner-up in 2012 and 2013.
Donaldson led the Jays’ juggernaut offence all year — hitting 41 home runs, while leading the league in runs scored, runs batted in and extra-base hits — en route to the franchise’s first post-season berth in 22 years. He was also among the best defensive third basemen in the game.
But what Donaldson said he will remember most about this year were not any of the individual accolades, but how the Jays won their first division title since 1993 and stormed back from an 0-2 deficit against the Texas Rangers to win their first playoff round.
“Our team really broke a lot of thresholds that this organization has had over the last 20-some-odd years,” he said on a conference call. “We never laid down and we fought to the very end.”
Acquired last November from the Oakland A’s for Brett Lawrie and a trio of prospects, Donaldson becomes the first player since 1984 to win the MVP after being traded in the previous off-season. He also joins George Bell, who took the AL’s top honour in 1987, as the only Toronto player to win the award.
Five Blue Jays received MVP votes, with Jose Bautista finishing eighth in balloting, followed by David Price in ninth, Edwin Encarnacion in 12th and Russell Martin in 27th.
The MVP is the cherry on top of Donaldson’s already impressive awards haul. Earlier this month he won the Silver Slugger as his position’s top offensive player, the Hank Aaron Award as the American League’s top offensive player and was voted by his peers as the Player’s Choice player of the year.
Alate-blooming star who isn’t eligible for free agency until 2019, Donaldson is nevertheless due to receive a significant raise on the $4.3 million he earned this season. Entering his second year of arbitration, he is projected to make around $12 million in 2016.
Despite his gaudy offensive numbers, Donaldson’s intangible contributions separated him from the rest. The notion of clutch hitting has been largely debunked, but Donaldson’s performance — in which he clearly thrived in high-leverage situations — made you question that ample research.
He set a franchise record with three walk-off home runs, while nearly three-quarters of his 41 homers either tied the game or gave the Jays the lead. He always seemed to deliver in the clutch.
Manager John Gibbons often described him as a special breed of player, among the most competitive he had ever been around, while crediting him for changing the team’s culture. His teammates likewise raved about him.
Off the field he was a magnet for all corners of a clubhouse that, in previous seasons, had seemed far from unified.
“I felt like I had a positive impact on a lot of guys in that clubhouse and I was always trying to have an open ear to everybody,” Donaldson said Thursday night.
“I’m not always probably the easiest guy to talk to a lot of the time, because I’m not always going to tell you what you want to hear. . . . But everybody on that team knows where I stand and they know deep down that I care the most about everybody that’s in that locker room and I know that they care about me as well, and I think that’s what makes a good team.”
One such moment in particular stands out. The Jays had just been swept in Houston to lose their fifth straight game and Donaldson openly called out his teammates. “This isn’t the ‘try’ league,” he said in a postgame scrum with reporters. “This is the ‘get it done’ league.”
The Jays were never swept again. “People took heed to that notice.”
Donaldson couldn’t remember exactly when the MVP chants started — sometime in May or June — but he certainly noticed it: “It was kind of like, ‘OK, these guys are starting to get pretty serious about what’s going on here.’ ”