Lower expectations flip Jays’ spring script
In the first three years after Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins took charge of the Blue Jays, spring training followed a familiar script.
It began with questions marks about a familiar face — such as Jose Bautista’s contract situation in 2016, former manager John Gibbons’ expected deal in 2017, and Josh Donaldson’s pending free agency in 2018.
There were side stories — such as injuries to Aaron Sanchez, Marcus Stroman, Devon Travis and Troy Tulowitzki.
And in the end, there was always a promise that the club would compete for a playoff spot despite it all.
The script panned out best in 2016, when they reached the American League Championship Series for the second straight season. A year later, there still seemed to be a chance. By 2018, it felt like a long shot and they finished 35 games back in the AL East. Now, the script has been flipped. There are no playoff expectations this year. The Jays are in rebuild mode and hope to contend by 2020 at the earliest, with top prospects Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette leading the way. In the interim, the club admits there will be growing pains. FanGraphs predicts the Jays are on course for a 77-win season; PECOTA, a sabermetric system that forecasts performance, has it at 76.
And yet, there is a genuine sense of optimism that may have been missing the past couple of seasons.
The former aging core of Donaldson, Bautista, Tulowitzki, Russell Martin and Marco Estrada were battling the clock. The next wave — also including Ryan Borucki, Danny Jansen and Hector Perez — has time on its side and talent to burn. Behind them, the likes of Nate Pearson, Eric Pardinho and Santiago Espinal offer hope that the next competitive window could be a long one.
The front office believes it.
The players believe it. “I think we’ve just got a really good core group of guys here, and a lot of good core guys in the minor leagues,” Borucki, the 24-year-old left-hander who made 17 starts with the big club last season, said recently. “A lot of guys have played together throughout the minor leagues, so when you play with these guys for a long, long time you just get that trust. You have that bond together.
“I think everyone’s just starting to get really into it, because they know that we’re not that far away. People think that we are, I really don’t think we’re that far away, so I think that’s why everyone’s getting excited.”
That list also includes righthander Trent Thornton, projected to crack the big leagues this year after arriving from the Houston Astros last fall in exchange for infielder Aledmys Diaz.
The 25-year-old Thornton moves from a World Series contender to a club that’s years away — but he says he doesn’t look at it that way.
“I look at it as, there’s not a lot of expectation for us to win a World Series this year or contend, per se, in the (American League) East, but I’m excited to see some of this young talent come up and see what they can do,” Thornton said. “There’s a lot of hype on them and there’s going to be no pressure, so we’re going to be able to go out there and have fun, play the game the right way and just kind of see what happens.”
What’s likely to happen in the short term is another fourthplace finish in a loaded division behind the defending champion Red Sox, Yankees and Rays. Still, there’s reason for hope in the not-so-distant future. Even 32-year-old first baseman Justin Smoak — who had perhaps his best seasons in 2015 and 2016 seasons with those departed veterans — seems up for the challenge.
“It’s definitely different,” Smoak said recently. “I feel like it changed over a few months last year. I felt like I was one of the guys and now I feel like I’m the old guy …
“It’ll be a fun year, I feel like. We do have a lot of young guys. A lot of young guys are going to have to play, but at the same time we’ve got some young guys that are really good players, so there are going be ups and down, probably. But you never know until you strap one on and play.”
The countdown is on. The regular season starts March 28.