The degree to which Vernon Wells was a benign clubhouse presence has been driven home this spring. It really is almost as though he was never with the Toronto Blue Jays.
Wells's image is used on an advertisement on the left-field wall at Florida Auto Exchange Stadium for a supplement company called BodyCustom, but no sooner had he left than they handed out his No. 10 jersey to Edwin Encarnacion. Had the once jelly-doughnut gooeyness that was Encarnacion not dropped a dozen pounds, it would have been permissible to add the tag-line: INSERT JOKE HERE.
Seriously though: the Blue Jays trade away their cleanup hitter and his untradeable contract, turn the job over to Adam Lind, who has all of 25 career plate appearances cleaning up and is coming off a season of declined power and must provide protection for Jose Bautista - and what's the reaction?
Pfft! Nothing. Roy Halladay leaves and the pitching world collapses; suggestions that his exit has lightened the mood in the clubhouse are greeted with rolls of the eyes and snide comments about how painful it must have been to be around all those 200-inning seasons and yadda yadda - And dammit if those suggestions don't turn out to have some validity.
It's true that Wells is gone. It's also true that the Blue Jays had the fifth-worst on-base percentage in the majors in 2010 (.312) and scored a staggering 53 per cent of their runs by homers - well ahead of the 41 per cent of the next closest team, the Arizona Diamondbacks. Since 1954, the next highest percentage of runs scored on homers belongs to the 2005 Texas Rangers. Yes, they have the jackrabbit stylings of Rajai Davis at the top of the order and Travis Snider's oft-whispered hidden talents on the basepaths will be given a chance to show themselves. What remains to be seen is whether the team's offensive DNA has changed dramatically.
"When Doc [Halladay]left, some guys had to step up, and with Vernon gone there will be opportunities for other guys," said Snider, the everyday left fielder.
"The mindset of this team from Day 1 has been to take the extra base, to go from first to third to steal bases and move guys over, to do the little things to go along with our strength: driving the ball out of the park."
Adds Bautista: "Right now, we're learning how specialized some of the guys' games are - like Rajai stealing bases, Corey [Patterson]bunting and some of the guys we can hit and run with. I'm not saying it's better or worse, but the team composition has allowed us to work on these things we didn't have to work on before."
It is not just a rebound from Lind that is needed. Aaron Hill, who played and most importantly moved well in his third consecutive Grapefruit League game Thursday, is now a middle-of-the-order hitter. Jays manager John Farrell realizes that Hill made the All-Star Game as a No. 2 hitter in 2009, but he prefers Yunel Escobar in the No. 2 spot. Escobar's swing, Farrell believes, can make him a hit-and-run specialist while having Hill fifth or sixth lengthens the batting order. "We think of Aaron as a middle-of-the-order hitter, somebody capable of 20- to 30-homer capacity," said Farrell, who adds that unless Hill becomes less apt to chase pitches, it won't matter where he is in the batting order.
Remember this about Farrell: as the former Boston Red Sox pitching coach, he's likely seen unbiased, brutally honest scouting reports on his new team. The guess here is he has an idea of the Blue Jays' weaknesses better than the Blue Jays themselves, and I wonder if general manager Alex Anthopoulos didn't think at least a little bit about that when he made him manager.