Even as winter does its best to hang on in Saskatchewan with the arrival of April we know one thing as sports fan — the new baseball season is upon us.
It is one reason I’ve always loved the game, it has a season that is defined closed by our own season.
The Majors start in earnest when the snows are melting here, and frankly we all wish they were gone. April in reality may be a month where snow exists for us, but in our minds it is spring.
And by the end of October fall fades and the season ends.
There is a symmetry with the seasons that is sublime with baseball.
Which of course is just the opposite with hockey.
Locally the Terriers are often hitting the ice to start the process with August still showing on the calendar.
And the Royal Bank Cup takes Junior hockey into May.
The National Hockey League drags the Stanley Cup finals into June.
Certainly many will argue with me on this one, but May and June are the coveted months for outdoors.
It is not summer where the heat can make an evening in front of a fan with a Blue Jays game on television a good thing.
No it’s that nice time when you want to be out fishing, at the disc golf course, or maybe in the backyard pitching some horseshoes, not watching hockey.
This year it won’t be a decision I will even have to think about. No Canadian team will make the NHL playoffs, meaning I have no team I care about to follow, so other than maybe remembering to check scores once in a while, hockey will not be something I care about once the regular season wraps up.
So it is with some added interest I am looking forward to the Toronto Blue Jays this year.
Coming off a loss in the American League Championship series to Kansas City there is of course high hopes.
And those hopes should be warranted after last season, but there have also been a lot of changes in TO.
Gone is Alex Anthopoulos who engineered last season’s run with some crafty trade deadline moves (remember David Price) that boasted the Jays into the playoffs.
In is the Cleveland Indians regime, yes those perennially feared Cleveland Indians (sarcasm intended), with new president and CEO Mark Shapiro in, with another Indians alum Ross Atkins hired as GM.
On the field the Jays have been tweaked, and heading into the season they should be favoured in the AL East.
Certainly on offence the team should slug their way to a lot of wins. Jose Bautista, Josh Donaldson and Edwin Encarnacion all flirted with 40 home runs last season, and the trio has that potential again.
Add in Chris Colabello, Troy Tulowitzki and Michael Saunders who could easily club 60+ as a unit, and it’s obvious this team will score runs.
Of course Encarnacion and Bautista are free agents at the end of this season, and both appear to want contracts that given their positions and age are not particularly palatable for the Jays, so they could be distractions. Still you can’t exactly trade a free agent to be for anything useful to this year’s team, so the team is likely to have to hope they slug a ton, win it all, and then wave good bye at season’s end.
The bullpen looks better from the get-go than as the team broke camp in 2015.
Drew Storen is in as a closer. He had 29 saves with the train wreck Washington Nationals last season, but had lost favour by season’s end. If he has his old form he’s a great addition.
If not there is still Roberto Osuna with 20 saves of his own, most second half efforts in 2015. He will be a shut-down eighth inning guy at least that seems the game plan.
Brett Cecil is a lefty missed in the playoffs last year who slots in as the seventh inning man.
It’s a bullpen backend that is at least above average, if it all works.
And that brings us to the area of the team where the big question marks reside, the starting staff.
Marcus Stroman is the ‘star’. He had four starts before the playoff last season, missing the rest of the campaign recovering from an injury.
This will essentially be his sophomore year, the one hitters tend to learn pitching patterns and get an upper hand. That and how ready his arm is for 200 innings are big questions for the guy that needs to flirt with 18 wins.
The Jays were savvy in re-signing Marco Estrada in the off season. He was 13-8 with a 3.13 ERA, his best as a pro. That would normally be worrisome, but this guy’s control reminds of Greg Maddux, and I think he’ll be fine, although I’m not sure we can expect many more wins than in 2015.
R.A. Dickey was 11-11 and ate 214 innings. That’s it from an aging knuckleballer, although those innings are big in helping a bullpen.
J.A. Happ was the big free agent signing for the Jays. All right, you got me. It was a signing. The word big for a journeyman pitcher does not fit. He had 11 wins in 2015. That might be 13-14 with the Jays offence, but the AL is tougher than the NL where Happ toiled last year, so do not bet on it.
Aaron Sanchez could be the upside starter. He was in the bullpen last year and looked good, but pundits want him to start. If that’s the case you might as well break camp with him and see what he can do.
That leaves Drew Hutchinson who was the opening day starter in 2015, and had 13 wins, more than either Happ or Dickie, in the minors. He did have a horrible ERA at 5.57, but a demotion that far could break this guy’s psyche. I rather wish they’d trade him for an asset, and give him a chance to start fresh.
This group is not a disaster as starters, but if a wheel wobbles here and there, it could be.
There is not a proven ace, and except for Sanchez, the upside is limited, and may be less significant if it happened than most think. Say Sanchez has 15 wins, huge for a first full year starter. That is only two more than the displaced Hutchinson, and one game in the actual standings.
If the Jays are headed back to the ALCS and beyond, it will need to be offence driven, and sadly in the playoffs pitching ultimately wins out most of the time.
