I have a terrible choice in sports teams I picked up as a child mainly based on my stubborn Canadian allegiance to the Toronto Raptors and the Blue Jays. The only Canadian franchises in the NBA and the MLB, I have stuck it through the high times and the low times with the Toronto sports franchises.
Mostly lows as Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment and Rogers seem to measure wins in terms of revenue and not in what you can actually put inside of a trophy case, but the Raptors have brought me Vince Carter, Chris Bosh, the 2001 Playoffs, the 2006 Atlantic Division Title and some winning basketball to make me feel like I haven't wasted the better part of my formative years in front of a television torturing myself.
The same can't be said about the Blue Jays.
After high expectations after the Rogers Communications war chest was opened and General Manager Alex Anthopoulos was given the go ahead to trade for Jose Reyes, Josh Johnson, Emilo Bonifacio and sign free agent Melky Cabrera and NL Cy Young winner R.A. Dickey the Jays have struggled mightily heading into the All-Star break and the halfway point on the MLB season.
Despite pulling things together and rattling off an 11 game winning streak, the Jays are still sitting below .500 at 43-45, six games out of the American League Wild Card, making a 20th straight season without postseason baseball in Canada a distinct possibility.
Even a decent season is a painful one in Toronto when it comes to the Blue Jays. Playing in the AL East, the hands down toughest division in all of sports, things have never seemed to have swung in the Jays direction when it comes to the balance of power in their division. The years where the Yankees or the Red Sox have slipped up, Tampa Bay or Baltimore have filled the void. Now with every team in the division all in after Boston's struggles last season left the door wide open for the Tampa/Baltimore/Toronto contingent to attempt to change the AL East power circle, the Jays find themselves in the AL East basement after throwing money at a laundry list of free agents and drumming up excitement all winter as part of the annual campaign to get as many eyeballs on Blue Jays Sportsnet telecasts as possible.
Those signings haven't completely panned out. Mark Buerhle looks like he is in there for one last contract after being one of baseball's most underrated starters in Chicago before moving for big dough to Miami.
The other pitcher in Toronto's megadeal with the Marlins, Josh Johnson, looks overhyped and middling in moving to the AL East from the National League. R.A. Dickey, a 20 game winner and the winner of the 2013 NL Cy Young, has an 8-9 record and a 4.77 ERA . If you told me that the Jays pitching rotation would somehow be as bad as last season when Ricky Romero decided to forget what a strike zone was I would have told you that you were crazy, but after adding well over $25 million in payroll to the pitching staff during the offseason, the rotation is not much better.
Part of that is due to injuries. J.A. Happ took a line drive to the face after starting the season off strong, Brandon Morrow was supposed to be a top of the rotation guy and has been out on the DL since May 28. In the lineup Jose Reyes, Jose Bautista, Melky Cabrera and Brett Lawrie have all missed chunks of this season and it has shown as the Blue Jays are simply not deep enough to play the consistent baseball needed to stay afloat in the toughest division in baseball and it is getting to be too much to take.
This was supposed to be the season where the culture changed, the excuses were supposed to be gone. No more pointing at our smaller pocketbook and yelling that if we spent as much money as Boston and New York that we would be sitting in the playoffs. What we have always wanted as fans was given to us and at the expense of the majority of our prospects. Now it is a season that has seen the bandwagon on Opening Day completely fall apart with only the diehards who sit through every 162 game season fueled on the hope that we will see some magic left to suffer.
How much more can the Blue Jays fanbase seriously handle at this point? Twenty years. From Roger Clemens and David Wells to Shawn Green and Carlos Delgado to Vernon Wells and Roy Halladay and now to Jose Bautista, the Jays have went through four era's and plenty of quality talent without piecing things together just long enough to have one summer end with playoffs in the fall.
I am still keeping the faith that one day I will see the SkyDome pumping in the flesh during the playoffs like in the year I was born, but inching towards 20 years it seems like that dream is going to be put on hold for another fall.
