Donaldson aims for encore after MVP year
Exuberant third baseman had staggering statistics in his first season with Toronto
DUNEDIN, FLA.— This off-season was a trip for Josh Donaldson. How could it not be after the year he had in 2015?
The dramatic playoff run, the MVP, the highlight-reel superman slides and headlong catches into the seats? When it was all over, he found his celebrity had grown. It was harder for him to go unnoticed in public. He had more media requests and endorsements than ever before. He was on the cover of PlayStation’s MLB The Show and made a well-cast cameo on the History Channel’s Vikings.
While Donaldson has been an elite player since 2013 — he finished in the top 10 in MVP voting in the previous two seasons — last year made him a star.
“Nobody really remembers who finishes in second or third, right? So obviously if you win an award like that there’s more notoriety that comes with it,” he recently told the Star.
While he enjoyed the accolades and attention, he’s looking forward to putting it behind him so he can do it all over again.
“It’s all fun and games (in the offseason), but now it’s time to get to work,” he said. “It’s time to move on and go out there and put up another good season.”
Because ex-GM Alex Anthopoulos pulled off one of the greatest tradedeadline weeks in sports history in 2015, it’s easy to forget his most important deal was actually made almost nine months earlier when he acquired Donaldson from the Oakland A’s for Brett Lawrie and a package of prospects.
No single player had as much impact on the Jays’ success last season than Donaldson, who was rewarded for his efforts with the franchise’s first MVP award since George Bell won the honour in 1987.
Looking back, the numbers are still startling: 41 homers, 123 RBI, 122 runs scored. Only two other players in the last decade have matched those totals: Albert Pujols and Alex Rodriguez.
In terms of advanced stats, his 8.7 Wins Above Replacement are the most ever by a Blue Jays’ position player, eclipsing the previous high- water marks of Jose Bautista’s 2011 season and John Olerud’s 1993.
He also led the American League in Win Probability Added, a measure of a player’s individual contributions to a team’s chances of winning a game. His league-leading four walk-off hits — three of them homers — were a big part of that.
Donaldson’s well documented influence on the team’s clubhouse culture merely added to his value and he has continued to be a magnet for his teammates so far this spring. A student of hitting, who bloomed late in his career thanks to a dramatic rebuilding of his swing, Donaldson continues to draw teammates together in informal chats on the finer points of hitting and swing mechanics.
Given the uncertain futures of pending free agents Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion, Donaldson stands to be the future face of the Jays’ franchise and — along with Troy Tulo- witzki and Russell Martin — will represent the Jays’ position-player core in the foreseeable future.
He’s not scheduled to become a free agent until 2019, but the Jays signed him to a two-year, $28.7-million (U.S.) deal earlier this year to avoid arbitration.
He welcomes the elevated status, and while the Jays boast remarkable offensive depth, he figures to once again be the focal point of a fearsome lineup that last year scored more than 200 more runs than the average team. Donaldson says he expects more of the same in 2016.
“Obviously, our goal is to win the division and we feel like we have a good team,” he said. “I feel like we have a team that can go really far in the playoffs and hopefully win the whole thing.”
Last year’s taste of the post-season only made them hungrier for more, he said.
“Without a doubt. We feel confident in our abilities and we feel that we have a team that’s going to go far in the playoffs,” he said. “But you can only do one thing at a time. So you have to focus on the regular season right now and when that other time comes, we’ll be ready.”