Many years ago, a former Red Sox pitcher named Frank Sullivan was asked to assess his contribution to baseball.
“I am in the twilight of a long and mediocre career,” Sullivan replied. (Sullivan’s assessement proved quite accurate. He finished 11 years in the majors with a lifetime 97-100 won-loss record.)
Cue the 2017 Toronto Blue Jays.
Long and mediocre, though to be fair, mediocre is a stretch since this team never made it above .500 all season.
They’re playing out the string now.
They went into their final series of the season on Friday–three games against the Yankees in New York–in fifth and last place in the American League East with a 75-84 record, 17 games out of first place.
It will soon be over. Thankfully.
I probably should have thrown in the towel after the first 10 games, of which the Jays won exactly one.
But baseball fans, of which I am one, are inherently optimistic.
And so am I.
No more.
The 2017 Blue Jays were so bad they forced me to do something I’ve never done before: stop watching their miserable brand of baseball.
The bad news began in the off-season when new management let the heart of the team, Edwin Encarnacion, slip away to Cleveland.
The ripple effect quickly ensued.
Without his pal, the Jays’ long-time star, Jose Bautista, alias Joey Bats, got off to a bad start (along with everyone else) and never recovered.
Ditto Russell Martin, the Montreal guy who made it to the majors.
Heck, only one guy, the first baseman, Justin Smoak, had anything resembling a good year at the plate–until third baseman Josh Donaldson, after spending much of the season nursing injuries, began hitting in August.
By then, it was way too late.
It was brutal.
The pitching staff, with the exception of the gutsy, effervescent and reliable Marcus Stroman, was pretty much a disaster, a lot of it because of injuries.
That left the Jays with too many starts going to too many AAA pitchers–too many guys who just weren’t ready.
With the combination of injuries, bad luck, off-years, one wonders how anyone could bear it.
But, as mentioned earlier, baseball fans are an optimistic bunch and a pretty healthy number of them kept coming out to the park or watching on television–enough to force management to not go automatically into rebuild mode.
As it stands now, we fans are in limbo. Just what will the Jays do in the off-season? How will they do next year?
That will be up to management, who–at best–deserve a gentleman’s C.
Predictions are a mug’s game, but I must confess I’ll likely be ready to take another stab at rooting for the Jays in 2018.
But please, boys. Spare me a 1-9 start.
A man who loves watching good baseball every bit as much as I do is my friend Rich Griffin, the Toronto Star baseball columnist.
He didn’t get to watch much of it this season, but Griffin is a gamer.
Sure as shooting, he’ll be back in the press box next season. Thank God.
I spoke with him by phone about what happened this season, what might happen in the off-season and for some thoughts on next season.
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