Long Ball Stories

After a nearly three-month hiatus from my daily reports on the ups and downs of the Toronto Blue Jays, this day looked like a good one to resume my post. The game itself Monday night was likely to be auspicious, marking the first time that the brothers, crown princes of Cuban baseball, Lourdes Gurriel Junior and Yuli Gurriel, would meet on the field in a major league game.

It also marked the last hurrah atof the noble and self-effacing Marco Estrada, who started what was surely the final homegame of hisbrief but impactful Blue Jays’ career, a career during which he provided Toronto’s fans with far more thrills than anyone ever hoped for when he arrived from Milwaukee at the beginning of2015 with a mediocre record of 23 and 26 in the National League.

Alas, the game itself failed to live up to its billing in respect of both the Gurriel and the Estrada story lines. After Yuli Gurriel knocked in a run for the Astros in the top of the first, Lourdes Junior, typically hustling out a double-play ball, damaged a hamstring in the bottom of the first and was pulled from the game. It appears that his season is at an end.

As an aside, my observation is that if Troy Tulowitzki goes into spring training thinking he’s the incumbent starting shortstop, he’d better be prepared for a surprise; barring further injury, Gurriel seems to have nailed it in his first season in the majors.

Meanwhile Estrada, still hampered by physical problems, though he managed to provide a few moments that recalled the glory days, was only too hittable, right from the first pitch of the game, which George Springer smashed into the gap in right centre for a double.

Estrada lastedfour and two thirds. Hemanaged to limit the damage to four runs on seven hits, leaving with the Jays only down 4-2, thanks to a rousing two-run homer by Kevin Pillar off Dallas Keuchel in the bottom of the fourth, a drive that made up to a limited extent for the back-to-back dingers Estrada hadserved up to Brian McCann and Josh Reddick in the second.

Jays manager John Gibbons pulled Estrada with two on and two out in the fifth, lest he have to face the left-handed McCann again, after McCann’s drive off him in the second.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Gibbie pulled Estrada mid-inning to give the crowd a chance to acknowledge him for the last time as he trudged off the field. A little smile, a little waveof his glove athis thigh—Estrada was never one for big displays—and he was gone into the dugout for the last time as a Blue Jay at the TV Dome.

Marco Estrada should be the centre of his own encomium, but it’s not for me to write it, as Arden Zwelling has already done so much more finely on Sportsnet.ca. You can read it at: https://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/estrada-somber-final-game-blue-jay/Of course Arden had to thrown in a couple of his charts, but they detract not a bit from a lovely piece of work.

So, to my title, and the real subject for today: it must be stated unequivocally here and now that henceforward the world of sport cannot consider itself to exist in a bubble, impervious tothe world around it.

When I awoke Monday morning, sportsdom was consumed, not with the anticipation of an inconsequential baseball game in Toronto, but with the electrifying news that Tiger Woods was back!

Revered seniorWashington Post sports columnist Thomas Boswell, who penned the immortal line, “Life begins on Opening Day”, devoted his column yesterday to Woods’ return to the victory podium Sunday afternoon in the Tour Championship in Atlanta, Georgia.

For those who can stomach it, you can read his piece at

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/tiger-woodss-failures-made-him-human-so-we-could-all-embrace-his-redemption/2018/09/23/79c18018-bf6e-11e8-90c9-23f963eea204_story.html?utm_term=.363e1694fcc6

But I’ll summarize it for you, get quickly to the point, and save you the trouble. Boswell, who always writes majestically, waxes beautifully about the depths and difficulties into which Tiger Woods fell, and how against all odds he resurrected himself and his career, and finally won the love of the fans who had never warmed to the Tiger of old, as much as they admired his ability.

However, Boswell works very hard to elicit our sympathy for all that Tiger Woods has endured in recent years, while treading very lightly indeed on those aspects of Tiger’s fall which were not only totally of his own making, but shine a very negative light on the essential character flaws of Mr. Woods.

Thomas Boswell, as he often does, reaches Shakespearian heights in his tribute to Tiger Woods. However, in so doing, he has forgotten some elementary Shakespeare. The tragic hero in Shakespeare, we must remember, always carries a fatal flaw within. No more so than the character of Macbeth, who brought down on himself a fate most richly deserved.

But Mr. Boswell would have had us up and cheering for Macbeth if he had gotten off the floor and conquered Macduff to survive. At least, that’s so it seems, considering his treatment of Woods in yesterday’s column.

Not mentioned by Boswell is that Woods’ fall began with an egregious display of domestic infidelity and never explained violence, and was exacerbated by the detailing of his career of entitled priapism (you can look that one up) that unfolded in the following days. Who knew that conquering the world of golf for Tigers Woods was only a convenient tool to be used to lay waste every willing golf groupie he could get his hands on? While living out a superficially perfect family life with his beautiful wife and two young children?

So, no, Mr. Boswell, I prefer not to consider whether this is the “greatest comeback of all time”, let alone compare it to the comeback of Muhamad Ali, whose return, it will be recalled, was from a prison sentence served for refusing on principleto be drafted into the U.S. military to participate in the war in Viet Nam. The gorge rises in the throat at the thought of the comparison of Woods and Ali, not to mentionthe even more invidious comparison between the return of Tiger Woods and the miraculous comeback to the winners’ circle of golf greatBen Hogan after being nearly killed in a car crash.

To be clear, there is no fatal flaw to be found either in Ali or in Ben Hogan, but that’s okay, because Tiger Woods has plenty of fatal flaws to go around.

Mr. Boswell needs to look at his calendar, see that it’s 2018, and look for a redemptive hero more in keeping with the temper of the times.

And then there’s Roberto Osuna. Monday’s game marked Osuna’s return to Toronto, in uniform for the first time since the club placed him on administrative leave last May eighth.

If there was one moment that marked the beginning of the end for the Blue Jays’ 2018 season, it was when we learned that Roberto Osuna had been charged with assault in a domestic violence case, and been placed on leave by the Jays pending an investigation by Major League Baseball. A week into May, their fine April start was pretty well forgotten, and it was all downhill from there.

If anyone on Toronto’s team could have been considered the team’s fair-haired boy, despite his darkly handsome looks, it would havebeenOsuna. Making his major league debut at the age of 20 on April 8, 2015 in Yankee Stadium by striking out Alex Rodriguez in a high leverage situation,he quickly and easily assumed the club’s closer role, despite his callow years.

He performed so admirably as the closer and a huge contributor through the playoff years, and into the darker days of 2017 and early 2018, that at the beginning of this year he became the youngest reliever in major league history to attain 100 saves.

The future was bright for Roberto Osuna, whether he remained with the Blue Jays through their inevitable rebuild to buttress another playoff contender, or whether he would be traded off for a playoff opportunity with another team, in exchange for an appropriately rich treasure trove of prospects.

From the beginning of his relationship with the Blue Jays it was a great story. Plucked from poverty at the age of 16 but already having pitched in the professional Mexican League, he was so prized by the Jays that they nursed him through Tommy John surgery and the recovery therefrom. His time in the majors never left any doubt that Toronto had made a fine if lucky choice in bestowing international cash on his signing.

Then came May 8, 2018, and the end of the career of Roberto Osuna as a Blue Jay.

As an organization, Toronto was presented with a quandary; no decision would be required until MLB finished its investigation, but once Osuna’s 75-game suspension was announced, it became evident that the team did not feel it would be appropriate to bring him back to Toronto after the suspension regardless of what might happen in terms of the criminal charge against Osuna.

In 2018, the team understood that their young star would ever be tainted by the charge against him, and it would be hard to present him as an appropriate representative of a team that is, after all, backed by a corporation, a corporation, one might add, that has never had a great public image in Toronto in any case.

So as Osuna’s suspension came to an end, and the rules allowed him to begin rehab assignments, the Jays were faced with the fact that they had an asset that was worthless to them. But then the question became: would another team, perhaps a playoff-bound team, be less fastidious, more able to hold its nose while making the deal, see enoughvalue in him to offer fair value in return?

In 2015 the Chicago Cubs showed they were willing to overlook the stench emanating from Aroldis Chapman’s vicinity, andtraded prospects to the Yankees to acquire him after he’d served out his domestic violence suspension. The Cubsrode his big left arm to the World Series championship, and then the Yankees, in 2016, showed their eagerness to pretend that Chapman had somehow become a changed man while exiled to the North Side of Chicago, and re-signed him to return in triumph with all forgiven, as long as he continued to pile up the triple-digit strikeouts.And of course the Yanks also harvested the proceeds of the trade, among them current rookie-of-the-year candidate Gleyber Torres, bullpen stalwart Adam Warren, and our very own Billy McKinney.

But this is 2018, and the issue stands even more starkly: what team would dare take on Roberto Osuna, in a bald-faced assertion that winning trumps all? The answer, surprisingly, was the Houston Astros, a team with a well-known club-house adhesion, and with a couple of outspoken #MeToo supporters on the roster.

Regardless, Astros’ management was not only so crass as to disregard the potential public relations and dissension problems created by acquiring Osuna, but in my opinion profoundly careless in assembling the roster of players to be sent to Toronto in exchange for the young closer.

Granted that Ken Giles was on the outs with Astros’ manager A.J. Hinch, and had lost the Houston closer’s job, yet since his arrival he hadgone twelve for twelve in save opportunities for the Blue Jays. (His thirteenth out of thirteenth came Wednesday afternoon against his old team.) David Paulino has already made his debut with the major league team, and has displayed not only an impressively large body, but a beautiful assortment of different curve balls in a few innings of very effective work.

Giles, if he continues his good work next year, will, barring the lightning strike of a surprise Jays’ playoff run, no doubt be harvested next July for another flock of prospects, but the prize of the haul might well be Hector Perez, who achieved the rank of eleventh-best prospect for Toronto by the end of the year, and just might be a serious piece of the pitching mix next time we shoot for the top.

So it was inevitable that the last home series of the year for the Blue Jays, joined by half the roster of the Buffalo Bisons, facing the Astros, would be fraught in many ways, both for the home team and the visitors, not to mention the Toronto fans and the management of both teams.

Despite the fact that Joe Biagini, who is surely running out of chances to secure his future with Toronto, yielded yet another ninth-inninginsurance run in yet another tight game, A.J. Hinch felt the Houston lead of 5-3 precarious enough against the homer-happy Jays to call on his young closer, Roberto Osuna, to make his first appearance at the TV Dome since that fateful night in May.

The question on everyone’s mind was how would he be received, with sympathy or scorn.

The bullpen door opened; Osuna skipped out in his usual style. And the boos rained down.

In fact, they rained down twice. Manager Hinch had belatedly requested a review of the pickoff by Biagini of Jose Altuve at first that had ostensibly ended the top of the ninth. Osuna returned to the bullpen for a few more throws while waiting, and the typical exchange of players on the field slowed to a halt, the Astros half on and the Jays half off.

Then Altuve was confirmed to have been picked off, and Osuna had to enter again, inspiring a new chorus of boos.

The boos continued, with greater or lesser intensity, throughout the bottom of the ninth as Osuna picked up the save while giving up a base hit to Richard Urena, and continued as the game came to an end.

It wasn’t everyone booing, mind you, but it was fairly general, and, to me quite surprising, that there was little forgiveness in the hearts of Toronto’s fans for their favoured son who had given away the family jewels in a moment of sublimely misdirected anger.

(I know all that business about innocent/guilty. In fact, with hindsight I am writing this after the charges were dismissed, only because his presumed partner refused to testify against him. But anybody who thinks that nothing bad happened that night between the couple, with him twice her size, is dreaming in technicolour. Or thinks it’s all right even if something did happen. For anyone who thinks the latter, there is nothing to be said. Nothing.)

So, there you have it. The long-anticipated matchup of the elder and the younger Gurriels is truncated by an unfortunate injury. Marco Estrada leaves as he came, and as he worked, with dignity intact and the respect of the faithful, but quietly, without a splash, as he would have wanted.

These should have been the good and leading stories of Monday. But, they weren’t.

Thanks to the lionizing of the permanently tainted Tiger Woods, and the crass decision by the Houston Astros to offer Roberto Osuna a job (but thanks for the exchange, guys!) and bring him back to the scene of his downfall, the Gurriels’ story and the noble Estrada’s departure went by the boards.

Yet again we find ourselves split down the middle, between those who recognize that it’s 2018, and those who don’t, and never will. Or don’t even care.

Note: I’m posting this piece on Friday night, September twenty-eighth, after the drama, and the farce, of the Brett Kavanagh/Dr. Christine Blasey Ford hearing in the U.S. Senate. Also after the well-considered effort of Senator Jeff Flake to care more about seeking the truth than stacking the Supreme Court, which of course came after the heroic intervention of thetwo young elevator ladies who made Jeff Lake think.

I don’t think I need to point out the irony of the timing.

The thing about baseball is that there are times when you don’t know whether to laugh or cry, but you know you’ll never forget the moment.

So, I was just gearing up to write a nice paean to the mystique of Opening Day, when I decided to practice my game logging on Toronto’s last pre-season game, the second game of the now-traditional emotional spring closeout in Montreal at the Big O.

And then Vlady Guerroro Jr. happened.

This was a pitching duel the likes of which you seldom see in mid-season, let alone at the end of spring training. It was a beauty, despite my having to choke back consternation about the Jays’ mounting strikeout toll.

For eight innings plus it went, no runs, 8 total hits, 24 total strikeouts, 2 walks, and no errors. The managers, the newly-bespectacled John Gibbons for Toronto and the Cards’ Mike Matheny, who both played for Toronto in his catching career and played as an opponent against the Expos in Montreal, took diametrically opposed approaches to their pitching assignments for tonight’s game.

Matheny divided the assignment between three of his rotation pitchers, a final tuneup of three innings each for his presumed three, four, and five starters, Luke Weaver, Miles Mikolas, and Jack Flaherty.

And what a tuneup it was for them. Weaver gave up one hit, walked one, and fanned four. Mikolas gave up one hit and fanned six. Flaherty gave up one hit and fanned four. Oh, he also gave up the only run of the game to take the loss, but—Vlady—we’ll get to him.

Gibbons, on the other hand, didn’t use a single pitcher expected to make the Opening Day 25-man roster. Joe Biagini, finally destined to be the number one starter in Buffalo in order to begin his journey to MLB starting-pitcher glory, got the start. He threw five full innings of Jack-Morris style bend-but-don’t-break brilliance, giving up no runs on one hit with one walk and six big strikeouts.

Biagini worked quickly, and was rewarded with solid work behind him, his defence turning three double plays for him.

Mind you, the Cards hit some shots off him, and he was lucky to survive the first two innings, relying apparently on a big rabbit’s foot to survive three drives hit by the Cards. In the first, after he fanned leadoff hitter Dexter Fowler, Tommie Pham bounced one in the hole to the backhand of shortstop Gift Ngoepe, and reached first with an infield hit when Ngoepe couldn’t come up with it. Matt Carpenter followed with an absolute rope, but right at first baseman Kendrys Morales, who happened to be standing between the bag and the helpless Pham, and jogged to the bag for the DP.

Then in the second inning Biagini had to work around two drives into the left-field corner that should have produced a run. Except that adventurous (to be generous) left fielder Steve Pearce played the first one, from the hot bat of newly-acquired Cards’ slugger Marcel Ozuna, so quickly off the wall that Ozuna had to hold at first with a single that should have been a double.

This left Ozuna at first base, from which he was promptly erased when Jose Martinez bounced one out near the bag at second, perfectly placed for Ngoepe to turn a do-it-yourself double play. Then the catcher Yadier Molina hit another rope into the corner that Pearce again picked up quickly, and looked to be able to hold the ponderous veteran to another off-the-wall single, except that he spiked the throw into the ground and Molina chugged into second. Where he died when Paul Dejong flied out weakly to right to end the inning.

Biagini cruised the third, fanning two, gave up another hit to Pham to start the fourth, then was gifted with another easy double-play grounder by Matt Carpenter, who got to wear the bad luck hat on this night by hitting into two twin-killings.

Flagging a bit in the fifth, Biagini caught Martinez looking to lead off, but gave up an opposite-field single to Molina, and walked Dejong while pinch-runner Patrick Wisdom stole second. Everyone, including Biagini, was waiting for manager Gibbons to emerge from the dugout with the hook. But Gibbons, playing the game for exactly what it was, a test labratory for Biagini, left him out there. The big righty rewarded him by stranding Wisdom and Dejong, fanning slugger Jedd Gyorko and getting minor leaguer Yairo Munoz to ground out to Espinosa at second.

Biagini was followed on the mound by four Who-Dats, but Who-Dats who sure as hell pitched the lights out of the Cardinals, admittedly now parading more minor leaguers than big leaguers to the plate.

Big Canadian Andrew Case, impressive lefty Danny Young, and nearly-ready-for-the-show Jose Fernandez and Justin Shafer, both destined for Buffalo, blew down twelve Cardinal batters in a row. Case struck out one, Young struck out two, and Fernandez one. Shafer didn’t fan anybody, but threw so few pitches that he was back on the bench again before anyone even took note of his stylish blonde beard, sitting down to watch this epic duel of zeros end up awarding him the first win of his 2018 spring training, but that’s a story in itself.

A story that needs a little background, so here goes:

If there is any team in baseball more shrouded in the myths and nostalgia of what-if than the 1994 Montreal Expos, I can’t imagine which. We all know the story of a team that was far and away the best in baseball, having compiled a record of 74 wins and 40 losses before the season came to a crashing halt in August as a result of the only season-ending player strike/owners’ lockout in baseball history.

Woven into the 35-year history of the Expos is the sad understanding of many of their greatest fans that the strike in 1994 that kept the team from achieving the greatest victory of its existence also marked the beginning of the ten-year-long denouement of the franchise. And there is some credence to be given to the notion that had the Expos finished off the year with their clearly deserved World Series rings, it would have been the boost needed to cause the financially-troubled franchise to turn itself around and stave off its demise.

After 1994, if there was one player who, entirely on his own, might have warded off the end of the Expos in their last years, it was Vladimir Guerrero. The brilliance of his performance shone even brighter against the sad backdrop of a team whose end was clearly near.

Even though his career played itself out only about two baseball generations removed from our own day, when you look at Guerrero’s achievements, it was as if a god had descended from the skies to bless baseball with his presence. The fact that even Vladimir Guerrero could not accomplish the feat of saving the Expos is not a measure of his failure, but of the futility of the task he was given.

In the 16 years of his major-league career, Guerrero’s numbers made it inevitable that he would eventually be elected to the Hall of Fame, which finally happened just last year. Taking only the traditional measures of hitting prowess, for the sake of brevity, he hit .318 for his career, with 449 home runs and 181 stolen bases. He also had a rifle for a right-field arm, and racked up 126 career assists as a result.

But if you break out the first eight years of his career, when he toiled for the Expos, the numbers are even better, .323 with 234 homers and 123 stolen bases. From 1998 on, until his departure via free agency at the end of the 2003 season, he was truly the heart and soul of a team that was becoming feebler by the year, starved of the oxygen of money that could have kept it afloat.

Prior to the 1999 season in which Vladimir Guerrero appeared in 160 games for the Expos and made 674 plate appearances, his spring training was interrupted by the birth of his first son on March 16^th in Montreal. The proud father and happy mother named him after his dad, and the world was introduced to Vladimir Guerrero Junior.

In recent interviews the younger Guerrero has said that his main memory of being in the Expo clubhouse with his father as a toddler was that the team had a soft ice cream machine for the players and he always got a treat.

Fast forward to July of 2015, when the sixteen-year-old Vlady Junior, ranked either the top or fourth-best international prospect, depending on which ranking system you used, signed with the Blue Jays for a reported 3.9 million dollars. Almost from the moment of his signing the anticipation of his arrival in Toronto has been keen. It has only grown over the last two years as fans have heard of his rapid progress through the lower levels of the farm system, showing himself more than equal to the challenges of each level.

Interest has peaked this spring, the first time that Vlady Junior was invited to participate to a limited extent in the major league camp in Florida. In a strange confluence of circumstances, Vlady has risen alongside Bo Bichette, son of former big leaguer Dante Bichette, who has shone himself equal to Vlady in every respect on the field. Together, they represent the future of the Toronto franchise.

In an even stranger circumstance, Vladi and Bo have been joined in camp by Cavan Biggio, second baseman and son of Hall of Fame second baseman Craig Biggio, and first-baseman Kacy Clemens, son of would-be Hall-of-Famer Roger Clemens.

After having been given the opportunity to appear in a couple of spring games with the big team, starting with the traditional Jays’ game against the Canadian National Junior team, it came as no surprise that John Gibbons added Vlady Guerrero, Bo Bichette, and Cavan Biggio to the expanded roster being taken to Montreal for the final two-game stand at Olympic Stadium against the Cardinals.

It also came as no surprise when Vlady Junior received three standing ovations from the sentimental Montreal crowd on Monday night, first when he entered the game as a substitute in the field for Yangervis Solarte at third base in the top of the seventh. The second came in the bottom of the inning when he came to bat and lined out to right field to end the inning, and the third in the bottom of the ninth when he grounded out to second to make the second out in the eventual Blue Jays’ loss.

Tonight the crowd of 25,000 greeted him just as enthusiastically as last night. He entered the game in the sixth inning of that scoreless tie, replacing Russell Martin at third, and was the last hitter to be retired by Miles Mikolas, barely nipped by a throw from short on a grounder. Mikolas, mind, retired all but one batter he faced in his three innings of work.

St. Louis’ third pitcher, Jack Flaherty, was even more effective, mowing down eight in a row. This brought him to a moment that fired our imaginations with its possibilities, a moment that, like the scene in The Natural, when Roy Hobbs in his civvies descends from the train and proceeds to strike out The Whammer, brought together all the elements of a perfect storm of drama.

Buck had already reported that the teams had announced there would be no extra innings if the game remained tied after nine innings. After Justin Shafer polished off the Cards in the top of the ninth, there could be only two outcomes: a Blue Jay win, or a scoreless tie.

Catcher Patrick Cantwell, a veteran minor leaguer who occupies a spot fairly low on the Toronto depth chart, was sent up to hit for Aledmys Diaz. He grounded out to short for the first out. Biggio, who had replaced Gift Ngoepe at second in the eighth inning, was overmatched and caught looking at a major-league curve ball.

And then it came down to this: Vlady Guerrero striding to the plate, short, bleached dreadlocks sticking out comically from under his cap. He is a less imposing figure than his dad’s 6-3 and 235 pounds. He clocks in at six feet and 200 pounds, and, honestly, looks like a bit of a pudge.

But—those numbers!

Last year, at mid-A Lansing, he hit .316 with 45 RBIs in 71 games. Then he moved to advanced A Dunedin, where he hit .333 with 31 RBIs in 48 games.

But that was A ball, against A-ball pitchers and A-ball fielders. This was the Olympic Stadium in Montreal, the former home of the Montreal Expos for whom his father had played so brilliantly. And this was Jack Flaherty, a young right-hander who had already secured a place in the St. Louis rotation, and had shown why, over the last two and two thirds innings.

Sure, there was the possibility of a miracle, but who really thought it might happen? Yes, Buck Martinez mused as he walked up to the plate about how great it would be if Vlady ended it. But, seriously? He just turned 19. Right out of A-ball.

But also seriously: Vladimir Guerrero Junior is clearly a young man with a sense of occasion. Flaherty missed with his first pitch. Then he threw slider. A nice slider, with a nice break to it. But right over the heart of the plate, and way higher than the Cards’ hurler wanted it.

Vlady Junior jumped on that hanger and crushed it. You knew it was out off the bat. So did he. So did his team-mates, who started out onto the field when he was only half-way to first. Randy Arozarena, patrolling centre for St. Louis, knew it too. He turned back to his right, took a couple of steps, and then just stopped and watched it soar over the fence in left centre, finally coming down halfway up the outfield bleachers, initiating a mad scramble for the ball.

It was certainly a nice gesture for Manager John Gibbons to have brought young Vladimir Guerrero Junior along with the major leaguers to play in Montreal. It was an even nicer gesture to give him some playing time and a few at bats at the Big O, so that he could be acknowledged by the Montreal fans. What a nice story that made.

Only thing is, nobody told Vlady Junior that his presence was a gesture. He came to Montreal to play some baseball, and damn, he sure did.

Tonight might not bear the impact of Edwin’s walk-off game-winner in the 2016 Wild Card game, but it will be as equally hard, I think, to forget.

So yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and sometimes, fairy tales do come true.

Thursday is Opening Day. Let’s go Blue Jays, and don’t forget: there’s a kid heading for New Hampshire who’s got your back, and might just see you in the Show!

So, having spent the last half hour unsuccessfully trying to get MLB.Com’s “free” spring training audio to work, I’ve given up on listening to the game, and resigned myself to following it ever so slo-o-o-wly on the Gameday feature, as Ryan Borucki quickly goes down 3-zip on three unearned runs to the Red Sox in Fort Myers.

Being stuck with Gameday is just so 2015!

This, however, gives me time to think about this past very strange offseason, spring training so far, and the season to come. It’s a perfect time for a prelude to “Baseball’s Back!”

Though it’s not yet officially spring, it sort of feels like it in Toronto, and it certainly looks like it, as we’ve had far more sun so far this month than you’d ever expect in March. And whatever snow we’ve had has quickly disappeared. One advantage of being retired is that if you’re not going to drive your car until ten in the morning at this time of year, the sun has already cleared your windshield for you.

There’s always such optimism in the air in the last few weeks before the season starts.

Like the cheerful woman with the Slavic accent, A___, who works at the pharmacy counter at our local Costco.

September before last, just when the Jays were driving toward their fateful one-game encounter with the Orioles in the AL Wild Card game (oh Edwin, where art thou?) I was picking up a prescription and noticed that A___ was wearing a faded Blue Jay t-shirt under her Costco jacket.

When I commented favourably on her attire, I quickly learned that, though she was a little hazy on the details of the game, the Jays were very much her team, and she was no less eager than me to hear that the Boys in Blue had pulled out another tight one.

So it goes with baseball fandom. Cheerful attentiveness to the daily ups and downs of your favourite team is all it takes to qualify as a member of the legion of Blue Jays’ fans around Toronto, Canada, and even the world.

A___ served me again at the pharmacy counter this morning, armed with her usual friendly smile. At the end of our transaction, as I was leaving the counter, I turned back to her and said, “only two weeks more to wait!” She knew exactly what I meant. That’s why I love being a baseball fan.

It really was a strange off-season, wasn’t it? Usually through the winter I’d check in to the main web sites each morning with some expectation that there might be a bit of tantalizing news to ponder, sometimes even involving the Blue Jays. But not this winter. Day after day, site after site, I checked, and checked, and there was nothing, or nearly nothing.

Okay, even last season you could see that the days of big contracts for station-to-station sluggers had come to an end. So waiting so long to see J. D. Martinez come off the table made sense. And no one can be surprised that Jose Bautista remains unsigned, apparently unwilling to accept any one-year at a million deals. But premium relief pitchers like Wade Davis not signing until the end of the year, and fine two-way players like Eric Hosmer and Lorenzo Cain having to wait until spring training started to find new situations?

Conspiracy theorists have been quick to accuse the goombahs of MLB ownership of collusion to end the free-agent “madness”. In this case, I’m with the conspiracy theorists. Who’da thunk it, that there would be enough unsigned free agents to start a players’ union spring training camp for them?

The lack of free agent signings wasn’t the only thing that was rotten in the state of baseball. As Tony Clarke, the head of the players’ association, has been vociferously pointing out, there are an awful lot of teams out there who, under the guise of “rebuilding”, have been dumping salary—and stars—in trades for future prospects to the point where they have stripped down possibly competitive teams to put the cheapest possible product on the field this year.

And how would you feel if you were a fan in Miami, Pittsburgh, Oakland, or Tampa Bay, realizing that your team has dumped itself out of the running before Opening Day, without so much as a by-your-leave?

I’m still waiting for someone to point out that the team that handed out the biggest prize in the sell-a-star-a-thon, the Miami Marlins, who traded the awesome Giancarlo Stanton for the ordinary Starlin Castro and a couple of unproven kids to the New York Yankees, where he will join the awesome Aaron Judge in an unbelievable one-two punch, is run by none other than former Yankee icon Derek Jeter, who just happened thereby to shovel a bit of baseball gold over to his former team. Remember the days of the Kansas City A’s being the Yankees’ farm team? Here we go again.

It was an equally strange off-season for our beloved Blue Jays. Though I suppose it was inevitable, given the fragility of Troy Tulowitzki, that the Jays would have to strengthen their backup infielding crew, I was yet profoundly saddened to witness the departure of Ryan Goins, the best Toronto shortstop that never, or almost, was.

It’s always more fun to watch players you know, and both Darwin Barney and Goins, in particular, despite his lack of starter status, were very much parts of the inner, younger core of the team. Goins’ contributions to the two playoff runs were legend, from sparkling plays in the field to clutch hits, even to contributing a brilliant inning of pitching in the (in)famous 19-inning Toronto-Cleveland marathon on Canada Day, 2016.

Most fans will remember the curve balls that Goins snapped off to work his way out of a bases-loaded jam in the top of the eighteenth inning. What many of us have forgotten is that he threw his arm out with those 19 pitches and spent a month on the DL recovering from it, making real the idea of taking one for the team.

But baseball is a harsh business, as we’ve already seen, and we have to face the fact that being a familiar face and contributing to the team’s success carry no guarantee that a player will remain a fixture on a particular team. Witness the fact that according to MLB.Com the second best play of 2017 was awarded to then-Jay Chris Coghlan, for diving over a shocked Yadier Molina to change a DOA at the plate into the lead run for Toronto over the Cards back on July 25^th last year.

But Coghlan was released by the Jays on August 12^th, and currently resides in the unsigned limbo that so many players find themselves this spring. Yet every time they show the plays of the year, there he is, launching himself over Molina for his team. Even when you call up his player page on MLB.Com, there he is, in a banner photo, a Blue Jay soaring over Molina, fearless but untouched. It wasn’t enough, however, and so Coghlan waits, unsigned. It is a harsh business indeed.

As for Goins and Barney, Ryan has been signed by the Royals and is in their major league camp, and Barney is in the same situation with the Rangers. (Incidentally, Mr. “He’ll never hit” Goins is currently 12 for 31 with 6 ribbies for the Royals in spring training.) Each, then, carries into 2018 the chance to shine once again, and wouldn’t it be karma for them to do it against their former team?

What started as a quiet winter for our Blue Jays seems to have worked out well, and it is unquestionable that the team at this point looks considerably stronger than the 2017 version.

In the outfield, Kevin Pillar will be able to tend to his knitting in centre field, without having to compensate for the defensive deficiencies of Bautista and Steve Pearce. The arrival of the young, athletic Randal Grichuk from the Cards to patrol right is a definite plus, though it will take some time for the fans to forget the beloved Bautista. And the new left-handed platoon option for left field, Curtis Granderson, brings a veteran head and a wealth of experience. Not only that, but he has played far younger than his 37 years this spring, and when he is in left the Toronto outfield will get to more balls than it has in years.

Pearce still represents a deficit in the field, but if he’s healthy his offense will make up for a lot of minor deficiencies on defence. And should he go down again (he’s already missed time in the spring), the next up alternatives, Teoscar Hernandez and Anthony Alford, both of whom have hammered the ball so far in Florida, ain’t too shabby as replacements., though Alford has just come a-cropper with a hamstring injury. In fact, if Pearce does suffer anything that gives him significant time on the DL, I wouldn’t bet on him holding on to his starting status on his return.

The infield was clearly the top priority for Toronto’s management this past winter. The obvious fragility of both Tulo and Devon Travis, and even the growing fragility of Josh Donaldson, meant that Toronto could not go into 2018 without having some serious reinforcements. Rather than dipping into the free agent pool, Toronto dealt off prospects, and not significant ones, to the Cardinals (again) for Aledmys Diaz, and to the Padres for Yangervis Solarte. Danny Espinosa, a recent free agent signing after being released by the Yankees, cost nothing.

My favourite acquisition, though not really a candidate for anything other than competing with Espinosa for the final spot on the roster, is the young South African Gift Ngoepe, who came from the Pirates for the proverbial player to be named later and some cash.

With Tulowitzki possibly headed for the 60-day disabled list, and manager John Gibbons committed to controlling Travis’ playing time, the four acquisitions should serve the team well. Diaz is already the presumed starter at short, and if he should return to his All-Star proficiency of 2016, who will notice Tulo’s absence? Solarte is most likely to be used to spell off Travis and Donaldson, as he’s not a great fit at shortstop, according to Gregor Chisolm’s recent commentary.

I’m hoping that the team decides to carry seven relievers, because that could open a spot for Ngoepe as the insurance infielder. He’s clearly got a slick glove and a good arm, though he doesn’t have the at-bats yet at higher levels to be able to assess how well he will hit.

Regardless of whether he breaks camp with the team, Ngoepe is one of the great good news stories of the globalization of MLB. He and his younger brother Victor, who was also signed by the Pirates and remains in their minor league system, are the first players from South Africa to be signed by a professional baseball team.

Their origin is the stuff of legend. Their mother was the clubhouse attendant for the Randburg Mets, a professional men’s baseball team in South Africa, and part of her compensation for her work was that she and her two sons were allowed to live in the team clubhouse, so the boys literally grew up in a ballpark. Gift eventually played for Randberg, and then was signed out of an international camp in Italy by the Pirates.

Ngoepe has received a lot of playing time with the Jays this spring, and from his comments John Gibbons appears to be a fan. As Ryan Goins’ career has shown, there is often significant playing time available for a great glove who can occasionally contribute at the plate. Nothing against Espinosa, who went 4 for 4 in his first game with Toronto, but I can only hope that Ngoepe’s good-news story continues.

The catching appears set, with Russell Martin backed up by an oft-criticized Luke Maile, whom many of the chatterers knock for a weak bat. These woud be the same people who dismissed Goins as a weak bat. But a second catcher’s first job is to be a good catcher with experience. If he hits much at all, which I think Maile will do if given enough plate appearances, it’s a bonus. Deep insurance for the catching is provided by the rapid development of prospects Danny Jansen, Reese McGuire, and, going a little deeper, Max Pentecost.

The relief corps was considered solid enough, with slots allocated to Roberto Osuna, Ryan Tepera, Danny Barnes, and Aaron Loup, and a number of impressive Young Turks like Tim Mayza, Matt Dermody, Luis Santos, and Carlos Ramirez in the mix, that the team felt confident in dealing Dominic Leone, after his breakout 2017, to St. Louis for Grichuk. Since that deal, the acquisition of solid veterans Seung Hwan Oh, Tyler Clippard, and the surprisingly resurgent Canuck John Axford, has made it likely that the four youngsters will be allowed to mature in Triple A without being pressed to deliver at the major league level.

Remembering that the weak-hitting Torontos made hash of Jaime Garcia late last season when he came over to the Yankees, I wasn’t immediately impressed with his signing by the Jays. But taking the longer view, picking up a veteran lefty with a career ERA of 3.69, a guy who was mentioned in trade-deadline talks for the last several seasons, to be the number five in the rotation isn’t much of a gamble as long as he stays healthy and gives them a reasonable number of quality starts. With Marcus Stroman, a so-far healthy Aaron Sanchez, J. Happ and Marco Estrada ahead of Garcia, the Toronto rotation would rank, one to five, among the best in the league, if not in both leagues.

That leaves the open book of Joe Biagini to consider. The team has definitely worked him as a starter this spring, and he clearly stands in as the first into the rotation if one of the first five falters. He could see some early work if Stroman’s minor injury is slow to heal. If not, he’s headed to Buffalo to settle into the starter’s routine the team thinks he’s more suited to.

So, what have we got, with two weeks to go until Opening Day? Solid pitching, both starters and bullpen. Good defensive catching, and as much pop as an aging Martin and an under-achieving Maile can provide. Competent, if not slick infield defense, a little rougher with Travis at second, but a little weaker at the plate with Travis on the bench. Slick fielding, occasional pop and perhaps decent contact in the outfield. Major-league quality reserves behind the starting eight.

Is it enough in the wild west of the AL East? Depends on the Yankees’ rotation, and how Boston performs under new manager Joey Cora. If the east fills both wild card slots, one of them should be Toronto, in my book. If you make the wild card, it’s a crap shoot from there, and who knows?

Let the games begin. Let’s go, Blue Jays!

Today is Opening Day.

The world is green and warm and bustling with new life. Even in those places where it’s not.

That is the essence of Opening Day, which forever for baseball fans has marked the true beginning of the year. New Year’s Day? Piffle. First day of spring? Piffle. Easter Sunday? With no religious disrespect intended, piffle.

No, friends and neighbours, with my annual nod to the great Tom Boswell, yet again life begins on Opening Day. It was ever thus, and will ever be thus, even if the pitcher no longer has to throw four pitches for an intentional walk. Whether the technical details of the game might change from year to year, one thing is immutable: There is no day in the year like Opening Day.

Every team starts at zero, each with the same chances, the opportunity to dream, and to win, or, sadly, to dream, and to lose. Last year is erased from the record. Every pitcher has an era of 0.00. Every hitter who gets a hit on his first at-bat is batting 1.000. Every fielder has a perfect record. And there are no blown saves in the bullpen.

Let us put last October completely out of our thoughts, when the season of our belovedly unpredictable Torontos fizzled to an end under the roof. Instead, let us look at the strange path the 2016 Blue Jays have taken to morph into this new, superficially different, 2017 version.

Different indeed, but strikingly the same under the skin.

No longer with us are significant contributors such as Brett Cecil, Joaquin Benoit, R.A. Dickey, whose service to the Jays over four seasons I saluted in a piece posted last fall, Melvin Upton Jr., who had his moments, though few, Dioner Navarro, whose second stint with Toronto was not marked with the same success as his first, and Josh Thole, he of the unenviable task of trying to catch R.A. Dickey’s butterflies, to which he gave his all.

Then there is Edwin. Far too many words have been devoted to the mess of his loss. In the immortal words of I-don’t-know-who, what we had there was a failure to communicate. Edwin’s agent has to take his share of the blame for not realizing that the market this past off-season for big sluggers was changing drastically. It’s understandable that he wouldn’t have Encarnacion take the first offer that came his way, but will we ever accept the fact that he signed with Cleveland (Cleveland!) for less than the Jays’ initial offer? And then there’s the role played by the shrewd Shap-kins duo, who unemotionally turned away from Edwin in unseemly haste. Sure, they were justified in not wanting to let Kendrys Morales slip away, and in their defence, who knew that the bottom was going to fall out of the market for aging, one-dimensional bashers?

Regardless, it’s farewell, sweet teddy-bear prince, and may flights of parrots squawk thee to thy base. One last word: there’s nothing sadder than seeing how awkward and out-of-place EE looks in a Cleveland jersey! Even the Ed-Wing doesn’t look right.

New to the scene are the afore-mentioned Morales, who is a welcome addition in light of Edwin’s departure, and the lunch-bucket, versatile Steve Pearce. The positive side of Morales is that early evidence suggests that he’s a pretty disciplined hitter, and not just another homer-or-take-your-seat guy. He might as well put his glove away, though. Anybody who thinks he’s going to play a single inning at first outside of some of the inter-league games is dreaming My Little Pony dreams. With the arrival of Pearce, the continued presence of Justin Smoak, and the availability of the versatile Ryan Goins, we will be spared the agony of watching Morales try to play in the field.

Pearce is a guy who undeservedly flew under the radar in Tampa Bay and Baltimore, and whose signing wasn’t much noted here. But he’s a good add, a guy who hits line drives, with a flare for the dramatic, and a big glove bag, ready to do a decent job at first, second, or in left.

Navarro and Thole have been replaced for the moment by Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who had to suffer the embarrassment of waiting until the last minute before being added to the roster, despite his impressive resume. Maybe the team’s hesitation to commit to him had something to do with the fact that it went down to the wire this spring as to whether he would hit more extra-base hits or make more bad throws to second during the grapefruit season.

Finally, we have the surprising, gratifying, but somehow bittersweet return of Joey Bats, who had the misfortune of playing hurt in his walk year of 2016, and decided in the end that a do-over was in everyone’s best interest. On the evidence of his Florida performance and his contribution to the Dominican’s World Baseball Classic run, he looks to be heading for a better year, and is certainly in fine fettle, which should lead to a more successful run at free agency next winter. A perfect outcome would be the complete meshing of Bautista’s personal goals and the team’s post-season aspirations.

As a final note on the changes to the lineup, who could have predicted that not only Jose Bautista, but Mark Trumbo and Chris Carter, the two 2016 home run champs, would remain unsigned until so late in the game? There is clearly a sea change going on out there in terms of the valuation of various types of players, to the disadvantage of the one-base-at-a-time slugger.

Nothing much was needed to address the starting pitching rotation, obviously. A healthy Francisco Liriano represents a significant upgrade over R.A. Dickey, as much as I like Dickey, and what MLB team wouldn’t want two premier lefties in a five-man rotation? Marcus Stroman’s lights-out domination of the WBC this month suggests that this may finally be the year that he takes the place among the league’s elite that has been predicted for him since his debut in 2014. With such an array of starters, it’s not hard to see why Manager John Gibbons’ choice of an Opening Day starter ended up resting on tactical and strategic factors, and was not dictated by the obvious preeminence of one starter over the others.

As noted, the bullpen has been diminished by the loss of Cecil and Benoit, and it remains to be seen whether righty Joe Smith and lefty J.P. Howell will be suitable replacements. Even without the last-minute announcement that Roberto Osuna would start the season on the disabled list, it’s clear that, as usual for the Jays, the bullpen is the biggest question mark going into the season.

The stated objectives of Jays’ management for the offseason were to address the obvious imbalance toward right-handed power and to add speed and improved on-base capability. They added a switch-hitting DH, a switch-hitting backup catcher (no change from Navarro here), neither of whom will ever go first-to-third, and a good right-handed bat. All three should show some improvement in the matter of getting on base, and with the apparent improvement of Kevin Pillar in that area, the team’s overall OBP should improve somewhat. But was this a significant makeover of the Jays’ traditional look? A Kansas-City style redesign? Not so much.

I would like to close with a word or two about the prevailing tendency of baseball pundits to opine that somehow the first month of the season doesn’t really count. It is often suggested that it takes a while for teams to sort themselves out, and that no one should panic if things start out badly. But sometimes the impression is created that the early games hardly even count.

For example, my esteemed counterparts at Baseball Prospectus Toronto published a group piece the other day (“Three Things for Blue Jays Fans to Think About on Opening Day”) which contained an awkward internal contradiction. Having posited as thing one that the first two games in Baltimore “still matter”, they go on in thing three to dismiss the significance of the first games out of hand. “In the grand scheme of things,” they write, “the opening series against the Orioles means very little. There are 160 games that will occur after this opening series—games which will (obviously) have much more bearing on the Blue Jays season than the first two.”

Wait—what? How is any game that is one out of 162 less important than any other? Does a loss on Opening Day count less than a loss on the last day of the season? Folks, MLB used to refer to its season as the “Championship Season”. Everything counts towards success, from first game to last. Every win is golden, ever loss is a lost win.

In this day of minute analysis of numerical baseball detail, such an obvious logical fallacy can’t go unchallenged.

Similarly, the equally esteemed and perspicacious Shi Davidi, on today’s pre-game radio coverage, was discussing his concerns over the state of the team’s bullpen. He rather vulgarly referred to Toronto’s 2016 standing as the team with the most games “pissed away” by the bullpen in the first couple of months of the season. Luckily, he concluded, those lost opportunities ended up not hurting the team in terms of the season’s outcomes. Hmm. So, for example, in game three last April in Tampa, Manager Gibbons yanked Aaron Sanchez an inning too early and Brett Cecil coughed up a lead in the game that ended with the Rays benefitting from a call on the Headley rule, leading to a double-play ruling from New York. Is it not true that if the Jays had held the lead in that game, and in four other early-season losses that could be attributable in large part to the bullpen, they would have won the division, and avoided the perilous status of wild card team?

Again, and finally, it’s a season of 162 games. The goal is to win as many as possible. Period.

And with that, it’s on to Baltimore for Opening Day 2017.

The TV people are cueing up the Jays’ game-day opening anthem.

Let’s play ball!

I never thought his was the face of a baseball player. It was too wise, too resigned, altogether too philosophical. Every time the camera found him in the dugout, he seemed to be processing something, trying to put things together that may or may not have made sense. His default mode was reflective, not what you’d expect from a major league baseball player, let alone a Cy Young award-winning pitcher. Perhaps it was the unusual, circuitous path he took to fame and riches in baseball. Or perhaps it was the tool he chose to take him along that path, the knuckleball, the mastery of which is no easier than trying to catch lightning in a bottle.

Or perhaps it was just that this is the person he is.

Even when he was treated as an expendable spare part by Manager John Gibbons in both of his team’s recent playoff runs, his expression remained inscrutable, yet understanding, as if he were pondering the line from Desiderata made famous by the late Pierre Elliott Trudeau, “the universe is unfolding as it should”. In fact, Desiderata provides the foundation for a thorough characterization of R. A. Dickey, for its opening lines seem to capture his ways to a T: “Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.”

The news broke yesterday that Dickey, whose four-year tenure with the Blue Jays came to an end on October second, has signed a one-year deal with Atlanta, and will return as many had predicted to finish his short yet amazing career in the National League, where he first came to prominence as this generation’s premier knuckleball pitcher.

Though I’m very sorry to see him leave Toronto, and he leaves a big hole in Toronto’s baseball culture, I’m very pleased to know that his career has not come to an end, and that another major league team has seen fit to reward his years of hard work with one more opportunity to be part of a major league starting rotation.

Interestingly, today Atlanta announced the signing of Bartolo Colon to a one-year contract as well. Colon, who is actually a year older than R. A. Dickey, had a great year with the Mets, deserved to land a nice deal somewhere, and, like Dickey, would still seem to have something left to offer to the rebuilding Atlanta team. Still, it’s an odd story. The two oldest pitchers in major league baseball, both in the starting rotation on the same team. I’m imagining a little annex tacked on to the dugout, with a couple of nice recliners and outlets handy for heated lap robes, and the electric kettle, to keep the spring and fall chill off those old bones . . .

There is more to the oldness of R.A. Dickey than his calendar age. His whole presentation, as a person and as a ballplayer, is retro. From his bloused stirrups (blue socks showing, pants worn as knickers in the traditional style) to his old-timey pitching motion and the off-handed flip of his delivery, he would not look out of place at all in an old, jerky, home-movie reel, perhaps from the thirties. And unlike the contemporary manner, he’s neither an outsized figure, like a Josh Donaldson, nor a drama king, like any number of his team-mates. When there is reason to celebrate as a team, he holds back, benignly smiling as if to say “have fun, kids, I’ll watch out for the cops, and drive you home if you party too much.” Success doesn’t take him too high, nor does failure take him too low. And if you ever needed a pinch-runner, or somebody to go to the bullpen to mop up in a blow-out, you knew you’d get “sure, chief, whatever you need”. Now that he’s back in the National League, I have no doubt he’ll get the bunt down or hit behind the runner when it’s called for. He might even break up a double play at second, Utley rule be damned!

In short, R. A. Dickey is a pro, has always been, and will always remain one. However things work out in Atlanta, Dickey will always be Dickey, and I hope the Atlanta fans will appreciate him for that.

And so he packs his books, takes his list of Tolkien-derived names for his bats, puts his arm over the shoulder of his buddy and catcher Josh Thole, and marches out of the clubhouse with him, the old pitcher and the young catcher, together still but for how much longer who knows.

As he departs, we hope he will remember the good things about Toronto, and disregard the bad. The ovations after a great outing, rather than being pulled with a 7-1 lead in game four of the 2015 ALDS, at four and two thirds innings and 78 pitches, because his manager lost his nerve and thought it necessary to burn David Price with game five still to be played. The satisfaction of having contributed to two postseason appearances by his team, rather than the disappointment of watching the 2016 postseason from a non-roster seat on the end of the bench.

Yer humble scribe may be in the minority, but here’s to R. A. Dickey for being a consummate professional, an interesting character, and an all-round good guy. Farewell, old pro. Pitch well and prosper in Atlanta, where the weather is warm and the knuckler will dance once again.

CODA: A FEW FINAL THOUGHTS FOR TORONTO’S LEGIONS OF DICKEY HATERS:

Having made my own feelings clear about R. A. Dickey, it would be remiss of me not to direct some last remarks to those who would prefer that he had never donned the bird and blue.

I won’t dignify Dickey’s detractors by giving much attention to the chorus of abuse he has suffered from many in the fan base here since his arrival in Toronto in 2013. Suffice to say that Dickey turning out not to be the reincarnation of Sandy Koufax, added to the emergence of Noah Syndergaard on the New York stage, fuelled a lot of foolish chatter, which needs to be stilled once and for all, allowing the man to leave with the dignity he deserves.

Of course, coming off his Cy Young award in 2012, great things were expected of him, especially within the context of the other major acquisitions Alex Anthopoulos made prior to the 2013 season. When the trade was announced, let’s remember that no one was really crying about the loss of pitching prospect Noah Syndergaard and catching prospect Travis d’Arnaud, who were relinquished to the Mets in exchange for Dickey. At that time, the chatter was all about the incoming star pitcher.

Anthopoulos’ first attempt to deal his way to playoff contention was an abject failure, as the team continued to wallow in mediocrity through both the 2013 and 2014 seasons. There were no saviours to be had from that off-season haul of Dickey, Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle, and Josh Johnson, at least in the sense of being able to lead the team out of the desert and into the postseason. Johnson failed utterly to meet expectations, going 2-8 with a 6.20 ERA in his single season with the Blue Jays. Reyes stayed with the team until traded for Troy Tulowitzki in July of 2015, but he was never the impact shortstop and leadoff hitter that Toronto had hoped he would be, and eventually became a clear liability, both on the field and financially. In retrospect, Reyes’ greatest value was that he brought Tulo north of the border for us.

Mark Buerhle pitched well and honourably for three years, going 40-28, throwing 604.1 innings, with a high ERA of 4.15 in 2013, followed by seasons of 3.39 and 3.81. That he would pitch to the very limit of his ability was shown in his last start, when John Gibbons gave him the ball in the final game of 2015 in an attempt to extend his streak of 200-plus innings per year to fifteen on only two days’ rest. (He never got out of the first inning, getting only two outs and giving up eight runs, none of them earned, on five hits.) Sadly, the two outs gave him 198 and two thirds innings for the season; he fell only one and a third innings short of the 200 for fifteen straight years. Though he hasn’t officially retired yet, that was his last appearance in a major league game to date.

That Buerhle, et al. plus Dickey were not able to make Toronto contenders is not on them and what they did or didn’t do for the team. The disappointment fans felt over the team’s continued mediocrity is more attributable to the desperate and unrealistic hopes of the Blue Jays’ supporters themselves, and the excitement created by a general manager who had signaled that he might actually try to create a winning ball team in Toronto.

R. A. Dickey gave the Blue Jays exactly what they should have expected from an established major league starting pitcher: he took the ball every fifth day and more often than not, way more often than not, gave his team a chance to win. In the meantime he accumulated innings and rang up starts over the course of his four years in Toronto that no one could have expected from a pitcher who arrived here at the age of 38: 823.1 innings, 131 starts, 75 of them of the quality variety (six innings or more, three runs or less).

By comparison, and as a final word on the question of Syndergaard/d’Arnaud for Dickey, it needs to be said that the discontent over the deal, so loud over the last year or so, has to be put into context. To begin with, d’Arnaud, who still figures heavily in the plans of the New York Mets, has suffered a significant injury every year since the trade from Toronto, and has only caught for the Mets in limited spurts of good health. He came to the majors right away in 2013, but in the past four seasons has only appeared in 281 games out of a possible 648. Syndergaard did not make it to the Mets until 2015, by which time Dickey had already made 68 starts for the Blue Jays, and thrown 440 and a third innings. Since his promotion to the majors, “Thor” Syndergaard, with his impressive stature and great stuff, has had a 23-16 won-loss record with an ERA of 2.89, in a National League that generally tends to see better pitching stats because of the absence of the designated hitter. He has made 35 quality starts out of 55 total starts; his most impressive number is 384 strikeouts in 333 and two thirds innings.

There is no doubt that it would have been nice to have Thor down the stretch in the last two years, but who would have provided the innings in place of Dickey in the two previous years? For that matter, even in the last two years, Dickey logged 384 innings for Toronto, as opposed, I repeat, to Syndergaard’s 333 and two thirds. Again, who picks up the starters’ innings Syndergaard doesn’t give the Jays? Drew Hutchison? Jesse Chavez? Really?

To borrow a line that Joseph Stalin used to use to justify bumping off all of his political opponents, you can’t make an omelette without cracking eggs. In the case of R. A. Dickey, Noah Syndergaard’s loss was the cracked egg, and we’ve really enjoyed the tasty omelette of two straight seasons of going deep into the postseason. Would we have been there without Dickey? Hard to say. But this much is irrefutable: we made it to October with him in the rotation. Twice.

It occurred to me as I was describing the safety squeeze pulled off by the Blue Jays in the ninth inning of Sunday’s game against the Yankees, in the last series with the Yankees in 2016, a play that brought in the tying run in a scintillating come-from-behind 4-3 Toronto win, that a little primer on the squeeze play, both safety and suicide, might be in order, especially for the newer fans who might not be familiar with the terminology.

Briefly, the Yanks were ahead 3-2, Melvin Upton was on third, Kevin Pillar on first, and Zeke Carrera at the plate, with nobody out. On the first pitch from Yankee reliever Tyler Clippar, Carrera pushed a nice bunt into the gap between the pitcher and the first base line. As soon as the ball hit the ground in fair territory, Upton broke from third. Clippard, who was closest to the ball, did not get to it in time to have a reasonable chance to throw out Upton at the plate, which would be a tag play, and little chance of getting Carrera, who was flying down the line well past him to first.

Upton easily scored the tying run on the play, and Clippard, probably flustered at having to deal with a bunt at that point, made a bad decision and tried to bat the ball toward the catcher with his glove in a desperate attempt to make the play. His aim wasn’t great, though, and the ball shot by the catcher for an error on the “throw” and Pillar ended up on third and Carrera on second as a result. The advancement of the runners was an unexpected bonus of the play, since it created the conditions for the winning run to score.

With first base open, the Yankees elected to walk Josh Donaldson to load the bases and bring the infield in, hoping for a home-to-first double play on a ground ball to ease the pressure. However, Edwin Encarnacion drove a hard grounder up the middle, the Yankee second baseman dove for it to keep it in the infield, but couldn’t make a play anywhere and Pillar scored the winning run while everyone was safe at their base.

So, the squeeze play is an elegant play used to score a badly-needed single run. It can only happen with a runner on third and less than two outs, and it is never used with the bases loaded, because a ball that is bunted too hard back to the pitcher can easily be converted into a force play at home, and even a double play to first.

There are two kinds of squeeze play, the safety squeeze and the suicide squeeze. The safety squeeze is far more commonly used than the increasingly rare suicide squeeze but even the safety squeeze isn’t seen all that often. The safety squeeze would be seen with more frequency in the National League, where bunting is a more advanced skill for many players because the pitchers, who are generally weak hitters, have to hit. Many pitchers in the National League have turned themselves into skilled bunters, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see an R.A. Dickey or a Mark Buehrle, with their long years of National League experience, be sent up to pinch hit in a situation where a bunt is absolutely demanded.

The essential difference between the two types of squeeze play is that on the safety squeeze, the runner at third does not break for the plate until the ball is bunted and hits the ground. Bunts are often popped up, and if the runner breaks on contact with the ball, he risks being doubled off third. The bunt needs to be well-placed, so that it can’t be fielded quickly by the pitcher and played to the plate in time for a tag play. Thus the awkward position of Clippard created by the skilled placement of Carrera’s bunt. Because he is right-handed, and the bunt was to his left, had he fielded it cleanly and in time, he still would have had to turn his body around enough to make a throw to the plate. On the third base side, he would have been able to bare-hand the ball and throw across his body.

The suicide squeeze is a thing of absolute beauty, like the Rosetta Stone or Michelangelo’s David. This may sound like hyperbole, but if you ever saw one executed correctly, you would know exactly what I mean. On the suicide squeeze, the runner breaks from third as soon as the pitcher is committed to throwing the pitch to the plate. It is essentially an attempted straight steal of home (now that’s a rarity!) except that the batter is expected to get his bat on the ball and get a bunt down. Properly executed, the runner should be twenty feet or less from the plate when the ball is bunted, and should be able to score standing up.

Obviously, the suicide squeeze requires a superior bunter, because a popup would result in an easy double play, and a missed bunt would result in the runner being tagged out by the catcher. A foul tip would not be of much concern, as the ball would be dead and the runner would return to third. While you need a superior bunter at the plate to execute the suicide squeeze, you do not need a perfect bunt, because if the ball is down and the runner fast, it’s impossible to defend against. Well, there is one defence, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

The essential thing about both squeeze plays, if properly executed, is that they are intended to be sacrifice bunts, and it’s irrelevant if the batter is thrown out at first. The one run is deemed sufficiently important to sacrifice the out. If the runner should get on, as Carrera did (it was a good bunt and he was credited with an infield single, advancing to second on the error), that’s a bonus.

The one way to defend against the suicide squeeze? It sounds pretty hard-nosed in this day and age, but the pitcher has to throw at the batter. By the way, the suicide squeeze should only be done with a right-handed batter at the plate. Otherwise, the catcher has a clear shot at the runner and the pitcher just has to throw an outside pitch that the hitter can’t reach: the runner runs right into the tag. So, when the pitcher throws at the right-handed batter, if he hits him, the ball is dead, the hitter goes to first, and the runner returns to third. The pitcher then has a fresh chance with the next batter. If the hit batsman loads the bases, no more squeeze play. If he doesn’t hit him, and the batter bails out, the catcher has the ball waiting to tag the runner, always assuming the catcher catches the ball. It’s risky to try and throw an outside pitch that can’t be reached to the right-handed batter, because the batter is going to lunge at the ball and get in the catcher’s way, creating the possibility of a wild pitch or passed ball, and guaranteeing that the run scores. Also, catching the ball pulls the catcher away from the plate and away from the runner.

By the way, though the Carrera bunt on Sunday was a perfectly executed safety squeeze, it wasn’t, properly speaking, a squeeze play. According to Manager John Gibbons in his post-game interview, he did not call for the squeeze, and it was entirely Carrera’s initiative to bunt. By definition a squeeze play is planned and signalled to the batter and runner to take place on a specific pitch. In this case, the play succeeded because Carrera made an excellent bunt, and Upton has enough experience to have recognized and reacted properly to the play as it developed.

To end with an explanation of the “Coach Dave” moniker: I was “Coach Dave” to dozens of rep ball players in Etobicoke for about ten years. It is a name I have always cherished, bestowed on me with the respect of my players. Now, I’m just “yer humble scribe”, but that’s good, too.

What is so special about Aaron Sanchez’ arm? Conversely, what is wrong with it that we’re not being told? I’m not at all troubled by Blue Jays’ management showing concern for the well-being of a young pitcher, even if they’re solely motivated by the need to protect their investment. But when that concern becomes almost a contradiction in terms, it raises questions.

I’m puzzled, and don’t think I’m alone in this, as to why the Jays’ management is so concerned over the workload of Aaron Sanchez, and yet have said nothing about the workload of Marcus Stroman. It’s been repeatedly repeated (yes, I did mean to write this phrase) that Sanchez’ highest inning total in the minors was 133 innings, and since he’s now already past that, it’s getting to be time to slow him down. But how does that compare to Stroman, who threw 130 innings for the Jays in 2014, but whose highest inning total in the minors, in 2013, the only year that he threw more than 19 innings, in Double A with the New Hampshire Fisher-Cats, was 111 innings in 20 starts. What am I missing here? Is it because he has better mechanics? Is it because his body is more mature? It is because of his longer college pitching resume? Or does he just have a less aggressive agent, as in last year’s Matt Harvey melodrama with the Mets?

When you have a front office saying that a pitcher who’s having a Cy Young year has to go to the bullpen because of his innings total, and an apparently comparable arm carrying on in the rotation, I think that somebody in charge has to get up front with us and tell us what they know that we don’t. With yesterday afternoon’s news flash of the trade of Drew Hutchison (I was surprised!) for Francisco Liriano, the piece is now in place that allows Sanchez to go to the pen. But if Liriano doesn’t work out, and we no longer have five effective starters, Mr. Shapiro and Mr. Atkins are going to have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do, because so far they’ve done exactly none.

This discussion may be reaching the point that it affects the whole team. Before tonight’s game, Russell Martin, who didn’t have to put his game face on because R.A. Dickey was getting the start and he wouldn’t be in the lineup, gave a very frank and expansive interview to the Sportsnet people. During the interview, he made it clear that the clubhouse is pretty well unanimously opposed to moving Sanchez to the bullpen. (Although he has been very careful when asked to comment on the situation, it’s well known that Sanchez himself wants to remain a starter.) Having caught every one of Sanchez’ starts, Martin is in a pretty strong position to be able to talk about whether or not there are any signs of fatigue coming from Sanchez. He says no, and he is incredulous that the front office is insisting on going through with the move.

When you add Marcus Stroman to the discussion, you gotta wonder, don’t you?

A column that appeared in the Toronto Star this morning by baseball beat writer Richard Griffin, a wise old hand most of the time, really gave me pause. It was entitled “Bautista’s return can’t come soon enough”, and it took the approach that there were a number of “distractions” that had cropped up for the team just before and during the All-Star break which had caused the team to lose focus and experience a loss of momentum. Most of the points he makes are either minor issues, or absolutely non-issues. Evidence of the team’s malaise is that they split their last two games with the Tigers before the break, and they lost two out of three in Oakland after the break. In spite of the fact that he picked an interval that started with the only game out of four that the Tigers won in Toronto, and that the two losses in Oakland were close one-run games, he seems to see a rationale for thinking that there was a negative trend in evidence.

His thesis is that the Jays didn’t play “well” through that period because there were things “bothering” the team, such as Marco Estrada’s temporary stay on the DL, which actually came at a most opportune moment, things such as Michael Saunders’ having to organize getting “his family” to San Diego for the big game, which somehow may have caused him to go one for seventeen in Oakland, things such as the uncertainty over Aaron Sanchez’s selection to the team and its effect on planning his starts around the break, things such as the recent decline in Ezequiel Carrera’s offensive production, making it imperative that Bautista’s big bat be returned to the lineup ASAP, and Carrera being relegated to “the reserve role that best suits him”, things such as, finally, the allegedly deleterious effects of some of the players having gone off to enjoy themselves in Mexico during the break.

He also mentions that this period, when “recent doubts have been creeping in like fog off of San Francisco Bay”, has been marked by some of Manager John Gibbons’ more egregious and questionable decisions. I can’t address his criticisms of Gibbons, because he doesn’t actually state any, but it seems to me that the rest of these points are all small potatoes, perfectly normal things that crop up in the course of a season.

I’m not sure what side of the lens he was looking through when he wrote the column, and I understand that it was filed before Aaron Sanchez’ fine Tuesday night outing in Phoenix, but I don’t agree with his pessimism in the least, though it makes me stop and think about how I’m seeing the Blue Jays right now, both in terms of recent developments, and in terms of where they are in the season, and in comparison with where they were last year at about this time. At the same time, I’m thinking about how Blue Jays’ fans in general tend to feel about their favourite team pretty well all the time.

Which is to worry. Worry when they’re playing well that dark days are around the corner. Worry when they’re not playing well that this is really their natural state and we’re all doomed, I say doomed, to the mediocrity that the Maple Leafs have made a natural condition of life in Toronto.

Let’s look at Mr. Griffin’s short term “doubts” and “troubles” cropping up. Add two games to the beginning of the period and they’ve won four games out of seven. Add the two games in Arizona (and, to be fair, he didn’t know about these when he wrote), and they’ve won six of their last nine. Michael Saunders slumped in Oakland, and Zeke Carrera’s been slumping for a while longer, all of this while Jose Bautista’s still out. But Kevin Pillar’s hit over .350 for that same stretch, Junior Lake gets the odd big hit for us, and his errors of over-enthusiasm haven’t really hurt yet, and now, what more can we say about Darwin Barney, rock-solid veteran left-fielder and RBI machine after only one start out there in his career? Aaron Sanchez wasn’t bothered by the All-Star stuff, not at all, and if Marcus Stroman threw himself out of whack by going deep-sea fishing in Cabo San Lucas, what threw him back into whack to find the brilliance he showed yesterday?

Let’s leave the gloomy Richard Griffin aside now, and look at where we are and how we’ve come to be here. Much of the first half of the season was accompanied by hand-wringing and cries of woe. We’re not hitting. We’re not hitting with runners in scoring position. One-run games! The bullpen sucks. Sure, the starters are good, but Dickey sucks again, and Thole can’t hit. And the rest of the starters can’t keep it up anyway. Besides, Stroman’s lost it. Martin’s slumping. Tulo’s slumping. Donaldson and Encarnacion are bound to slump. Baltimore’s getting away from us. Boston’s buying up all the players. We shoulda signed Price. We shouldna traded Syndergaard. What’s with this guy Storen. I know, a lot of these are the chorus of the title song of the newly-released disc of Rob McKown and the Whiners, but most of us have thought most of these things at some point this season.

And yet. We are 12 games over .500. We are one game behind the Red Sox and a half game behind the Orioles. We have the second wild card spot by a couple of games. Without David Price and with Marcus Stroman at less than optimal, we are in a virtual tie with the Cleveland Indians for best starting rotation in the American League, second in ERA, second in opponents’ batting average, and first in innings pitched. Edwin Encarnation is leading the major leagues in RBIs. Josh Donaldson joined four fabled hall-of-famers and Alex Rodriguez in scoring 80 runs and hitting 20 home runs before the All-Star break. What slumps? Tulo’s hitting better. Martin’s hitting better. In the short term the break enabled them to paper over Marco Estrada’s back problems, and we’ll see tomorrow night how he’s doing. And what other team has the luxury of a proven mid-rotation starter just waiting in the wings in triple A? Jason Grilli has brought to the team what Drew Storen hasn’t, as of yet. Michael Saunders has exceeded all hopes at the plate. They’ve maintained full steam ahead with Bautista on the DL. In conclusion: we’re in the playoff mix now, and we know that all of the cylinders aren’t quite pumping together yet like they could be.

And how does this compare with 2015? One year ago today, we were 47-47, in third place, four and a half games behind the Yankees and a half game behind the Orioles. On the last day of July, trade deadline day, we were 53-51, but had fallen to six behind the Yankees, and were knotted with the O’s. Then of course the drive started. On August fifteenth, we were 64-54, one and a half behind the Yanks and three and a half ahead of the Orioles. By then, David Price, Troy Tulowitzki, Ben Revere, LaTroy Hawkins, and Mark Lowe were all in place and contributing, though Tulo would soon go on the DL, and incidentally Mark Buehrle was still a solid member of the rotation. The drive that had begun by mid-August carried them right to game six of the ALCS, after all those years of frustration.

It’s hardly necessary to point out that of all of the key players mentioned above, only Tulo remains a Blue Jay. All of the other major additions to the team that put them decisively over the top are gone, including the unfortunate and sadly missed Chris Colabello. Others have arrived and are contributing in ways and measures that could never have been anticipated. That is the nature of the game. Every team experiences turnover from year to year. Sometimes it is a negative, as witnessed by the 2016 Yankees and Royals. But no one can argue that the Toronto Blue Jays are not in a better position now than one year ago at the trade deadline. So let’s all take a deep breath, and get ready for a great pennant race.

In the Manifesto for this new venture, LongBallStories.com, I have suggested that at present there is a dearth of good reportage about baseball, in particular about the game on the field. This is a sad state of affairs for what has been a long and rewarding relationship between baseball and literary expression. While that relationship might be self-evident to thoughtful long-time baseball fans, I realize that newer fans might not be aware of it. Because part of my goal for LongBallStories.com is to provide the background and insight needed to enable new fans to appreciate the richness of the game, I thought it might be useful to review briefly the history of baseball as a source for literary and filmic expression. (more…)