The Toronto Blue Jays hit the halfway mark of their season this week.
Not the halfway mark of the season, mind you. That’s not for another month and only involves teams that matter.
The Jays had two months to prove they were part of the contending group. They failed. Now it’s time to figure out what they do before their season functionally ends on the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline.
The only good news here is that there is no good news, and therefore no reason to feel conflicted about accepting the truth.
This team isn’t close, or cursed, or unlucky. It’s bad. It’s the worst sort of bad you can be – the kind where you’ve only just slipped under the waves and still have a long drop to the ocean floor.
Their best player is becoming the car your cousin gave you for free when you were 16 − breaking down so routinely and in so many different ways that you’re beginning to wonder if repairs are possible.
Their best pitcher is off on an unplanned vacation, and hasn’t bothered to book a return flight. Their closer may be beyond salvaging, and is in the process of becoming an unperson.
Their starting catcher is an emergency outfielder. They don’t have a shortstop, which is a pretty important thing to forget. At some point, they will have to start listing their designated hitter as the designated misser.
They aren’t much worse at this point this year than they were at the same point last season (so, bad), but everyone around them has gotten better.
Last year on this date, the Jays were 2 games out of the second wild card. This year, they’re 8.5 games away from the postseason.
You might still be able to just barely persuade yourself it was possible if the trend line were not headed downward and bending close to vertical.
At this point, the only viable option is to cash in what few chips you still have and run − do not walk − run from the Major League Baseball casino.
If they’d done this a year ago, they’d have left with a pretty good stack. But they’ve taken too long to waive the white flag. In their effort to continue the charade that the team was actually good, they’ve frittered away the value left in it.
One-and-a-half years of a healthy Josh Donaldson was worth something. Four months of the current Josh Donaldson – the one whose levers no longer bend all the way to 90 degrees without seizing up – isn’t worth much.
No one else on the current roster is untouchable. Unfortunately, just about every one of them is more fit for a garage sale than an auction.
Somebody may be willing to give fair value for starter J.A. Happ (fair value being a couple of middling prospects).
Everyone else is either flawed or underperforming (often both) in ways that make this group the best buyers’ market since the Soviet Union privatized.
If the Jays want to start over, they’re not going to be able to do it by selling and moving a few months later into a nicer place. That’s the ‘controlled rebuild’ or ‘modified rebuild’ or whatever baseball’s gearheads are calling it these days.
That opportunity may have briefly existed in 2017. Had they done it then, 2019/20 would be looking pretty exciting right now.
Now we’re looking at the full tank. Everything must go. You can reasonably posit a 2019 Blue Jays roster in which two-thirds of the batting order has turned over, and three of five starting pitchers.
In the short term, the Toronto Blue Jays are becoming a Triple-A team. That’s a given.
(Of course, they could open the books and buy a decent club right away, but, well, you know. Rogers Inc. has done a remarkable job in persuading Canadian fans that the most important thing in baseball isn’t winning; it’s maintaining shareholder value. Just like Babe Ruth used to say.)
The challenge isn’t going in for the full dive. Like weather, that’s going to happen whether or not you’re dressed for it.
The problem is explaining what’s happening to people you’ve spent the past two years shining on.
Here’s the wrong way to do it – continue banging on about “improving the fan experience;” remain coy about making Vlad Guerrero, Jr. an everyday major-league player; talk about the draft like stockpiling high-schoolers is the point of all this.
That’s winner talk. The Blue Jays don’t get to talk like winners any more.
Now is the time for loser talk.
Tell people you’re starting over. Allow them to enjoy the last few weeks of some of their favourite players.
It would be a small tragedy if everyone were to wake up one day and hear that Donaldson – close to the best player in Toronto history – is on a plane to St. Louis or wherever. Since it is inevitable, let people say goodbye.
Then tell them that Guerrero isn’t coming soon and certainly not as a regular. However great a hitter the 19-year-old already is, he needs to do a lot of work on his fielding and physical conditioning. The major leagues are not the place to do that.
Finally, stop pretending that the next phase will be just as much fun as the playoff runs of a couple of years ago.
If it’s terrible, it can’t be any worse than what’s happening right now – watching a bunch of guys who’ve already given up staggering out onto the field each day, not exactly sure where they should be standing, waiting to be crushed by a falling piano.
Winning baseball is off the table. Now there are two ways to lose – chaotic and pointless; or logical and ordered.
That’s the first choice to make. Then comes the harder thing.
Over the next two months, we’ll find out if all that executive brainpower has spent the last two years coming up with a better plan than “Here’s hoping!”
Because “Here’s hoping!” is all we’ve seen so far.
Cathal Kelly