The Toronto Blue Jays were eliminated from the post season this Friday night. I put off writing this post for 48 hours because I didn’t know exactly how I wanted to approach the final Blue Jays’ entry of the season. After consideration, there were several factors I didn’t want to focus on.
The first being the questionable
umpiring. There were several close plays that didn’t go Toronto’s way and the
strike zones seemed to be all over the place. However, umpires are human too
and the potential for human error is always there and if we watched all six
games again, I’m sure we’d find some calls that went against Kansas City, too.
So I didn’t want to blame the umps.
Secondly, I wanted to avoid any
anger directed towards Kansas City. It’s very easy to get mad at the team that
just eliminated your team, especially when their unprofessional attitude gets
under your skin. So I wanted to ignore Yordano Ventura’s cowardly act of
mouthing off at Jays’ first base coach, Tim Leiper, when he was pulled from the
game, then shouting at the Toronto players from the safety of the Kansas City
dugout while hiding behind his teammates.
And then there was the FOX broadcast
team. While I’m a big fan of the play-by-play announcing of Joe Buck, Harold
Reynolds is an absolute goof. It was clear from the Texas series that he held a
sore spot for the Blue Jays. I’m not sure why that is, but any time a play went
against Toronto, he agreed with it. Every time something went well for Toronto, he
said they got lucky. How FOX decided to hire this guy as an analyst will puzzle
me for a long time.
And let’s not forget Tom
Verducci, who foolishly jumped on the side of the Royals’ players when they
suggested the Blue Jays were stealing signs. Verducci managed to say something
to effect that the Jays have been known for some time, throughout the league,
for stealing signs. Well, Tom, guess what? Yes, the Blue Jays steal signs. And
so do all the other 29 teams in baseball. Stealing signs has been a part of
baseball since baseball was invented. Heck, even my team did it when I played
midget ball when I was sixteen. Get over it. Don’t single out Toronto.
And the last thing I didn’t want
to focus on for my last Jays’ story of the season was the ineptitude of the
Toronto hitters to get a hit with men in scoring position. During Game 6, they
were 0 for 13 with men on second and/or third including 0 for 3 in the ninth
inning. While I applaud the team for the power display they put on during the
season, sometimes all it takes is a base hit to get the job done. And while
pounding the ball may have worked in the regular season while beating up on
teams like the Yankees and Orioles, when you have to face a rotation and bull
pen as good as the one the Royals have, you need to get your runs any way you
can.
But the reason I didn’t want to
focus on these four items in my final Jays’ post (well, it probably won’t be as
I’d like to look ahead to 2016 at some point) is because I didn’t want the
season to end on a negative tone, but rather look at all the team accomplished
in 2015.
On July 28, the team was in
third place, eight games behind the Yankees. With an eleven game winning streak
leading the charge, Toronto was in first place two weeks later and, after
dropping back into second for a week, got into first place for good on August
23rd and finished six games ahead of the second place Yankees, a fourteen game swing.
They made the playoffs for the
first time since 1993, won the AL East for the first time since 1993 and won
over 90 games (93) for the first time since 1993. In the ALDS against Texas,
they dropped the first two games, but managed to come back and win three
straight to advance to the ALCS.
Despite their shortcomings
against Kansas City, the 2015 Toronto Blue Jays took their fans on quite a
ride. They made baseball relevant in the city again. And they raised our
expectations of what they could accomplish.
Going forward, provided they
keep the team together and improve the bullpen, they could be a force in the
American League for a few years to come. As for the Kansas City Royals, I hold
no grudges. Congratulations on going to the World Series for the second year in
a row.
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