Last month, I wrote an article about the “crisis” in Boston as the high-priced Red Sox struggled to gain traction in the AL East. I’m sure that many of you thoroughly enjoyed this article (sound of crickets chirping). Unfortunately for fans of the Blue Jays, the crisis in the AL East has now spread to Toronto.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but as a lifelong fan of the Jays, I can see that this year’s edition simply does not have what it takes to make the playoffs. In fact, I have to say that the 2012 Blue Jays are one of the worst editions of the team I have seen since the 2004 squad which lost 94 games. This team will be lucky to finish higher than 4th in the division. I dearly hope that the Blue Jays prove me wrong, but I’m preparing for another season without playoff baseball in Toronto.
It is a rite of spring with the mainstream Toronto media to each year pronounce that the Jays are finally ready to contend in baseball’s toughest division. Such was the case again in 2012. It’s hard to imagine why some television stations which are owned by Rogers Communications continuously played melodramatic propaganda about how good the Jays were going to be in 2012, when the team happened to be owned by…Rogers Communications. However, some very seasoned fans, including yours truly, saw a lot of potential for disaster with this club. The starting rotation had more holes than J.P. Arencibia’s swing, the bullpen was filled with too many gas cans and not enough flamethrowers, and the Jays had four players penciled into their starting lineup (Arencibia, Thames, Lind and Johnson) whose defensive abilities were best described as “hands of stone”. To top it all off, the Jays had built their hopes of competing in 2012 on receiving the same or better production from nearly every position on the diamond.
In all fairness to the Jays, the team has suffered some really bad fortune, with injuries to Brandon Morrow, Kyle Drabek and Drew Hutchison in consecutive starts earlier this month. Drabek actually had no business pitching in the major leagues this year with his 1.60 WHIP and his averaging as many walks as strikeouts per nine innings. His recent injury aside, one has to wonder if Drabek is ever going to be more than back-of-the rotation filler in his career. The only things that hurts more than Kyle Drabek’s elbow is my heart knowing that this player was the centrepiece of the return netted in the trade of the best pitcher in franchise history, Roy Halladay.
The recent rash of injuries has exposed just how little depth the Jays had in their pitching staff. Seven of the pitchers used as relievers in 2012 have spent the majority of the season in the minor leagues. The Jays have used eight different starters this year, only three of whom had pitched 200 innings or more in their careers prior to this season.
And it’s not as though the Jays are flush with depth among their position players. Adam Lind, Eric Thames and Travis Snider, who were expected to be the starting first baseman and left fielders, respectively, are currently playing in AAA. Hand’s up if you feel good about or predicted that Rajai Davis would be the starting left fielder in June. Worst of all, Omar Vizquel has been used as a pinch-hitter on several occasions this year.
It’s time for this club to give Travis D’Arnaud a shot at the starting catcher’s position. J.P. Arencibia is a terrible defensive catcher (2nd in MLB with 8 passed balls and tied for 10th with 4 errors), and he does not look like he will be able to carry a batting average above .230. When watching Arencibia chase balls to the backstop and swing and miss with such frequency, the phrase “glass ceiling” comes to mind. Conversely, D’Arnaud has put up a 1.000 OPS this year in Triple-A, was named the best defensive catcher in the Double-A Eastern League in 2011, and is three years younger than Arencibia. Because Arencibia is a 26-year-old catcher who hit 23 home runs last year, he still has tremendous perceived value, and the Blue Jays should do everything possible to trade him for a good, major league ready starting pitcher.
Kelly Johnson has an above-average bat for second base (career .778 OPS) and is only two seasons removed from belting 26 home runs. He is a free agent at season’s end, and the Jays need to parlay his offense-first reputation into another solid major league pitcher.
Travis Snider is 24 and has every tool in the baseball shed, but his wandering path to the Majors evokes memories of Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe in 1522. With top prospect Anthony Gose on the horizon and Thames still in the mix in left field, there is no room left in the Toronto outfield of the future. Toronto doesn’t have time to wait for Snider to round out his game in AAA; if he can’t be a big contributor in the Show this year, he needs to be moved for a useful piece. The Jays should showcase Snider in the Majors for a couple of weeks and hope he catches fire, and then package him in a trade for a first baseman, or, you guessed it, a good starting pitcher.
I’m not saying that there are no bright spots for this team because there are many. Jose Bautista is one of the most valuable players in baseball, and already has smashed 23 home runs and is second in the league with 8 outfield assists. Colby Rasmus has been scorching the ball all year, has a .796 OPS and is playing great defense in center (5th in MLB with 6 Total Fielding Runs above average). Brandon Morrow led the club with a 3.01 ERA and a 1.00 WHIP before he was injured this month. Brett Lawrie has the heart of a lion and tons of potential. Despite all of these positives, I suspect that many Blue Jays fans are, like me, tired of seeing this team fighting it out for 3rd place in the AL East on a shoestring budget in the fourth largest market in North America. One really has to feel for manager John Farrell being asked to compete in the same division as baseball’s two biggest spenders with such a paper-thin roster.
The biggest indictment of the Blue Jays is the decision by Rogers and the team management to do absolutely nothing in the offseason to improve this team and sell the fan base yet another promise of contention come October. Over the past couple of years, the Blue Jays have milked every possible ounce of goodwill out of the fan base from the 1992 and 1993 World Series Championships, even returning to their classic logo and uniforms this season. The new generation of Blue Jays fans don’t remember the World Series years, and won’t continue to buy tickets to Jays’ games if this club doesn’t put a truly competitive team on the field in the next two or three seasons.
…and that’s the Last Word.
