Tao of Stieb nails it

[KingKat]

http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/tao-of-stieb-do-the-blue-jays-actually-suck/

(I'm posting the text here but you should proably click on the link and send a page hit Tao's way if you can.)

 

Maybe it’s a touch harsh to say that the 2013 Toronto Blue Jays “suck”.

The team itself is not so awful as to be unwatchable, and has actually been rather entertaining at various points of the season.

(I’ll pause here while you instinctively summon up an argument about the team’s “consistency”. And I’ll silently judge you for doing so, though I am sympathetic and realize that it is not your fault seeing as though you’ve spent your whole life being fed the load of hooey about “consistency” by people in the business of creating noise about sports. But really, you should stop complaining about foolish consistency. It’s the hobgoblin of small minds.)

The 2013 Blue Jays are not nearly the omnishambolic catastrophe that we saw unfold painfully before us in 2012, befallen by injury miseries, compounding underwhelming performance miseries, compounding bullpen implosions, compounding behavioural miseries, compounding the general misery of Farrellball.

This year’s edition of the team has hit better, fielded well enough and features one of the most reliable bullpens in recent memory. So it’s not all drudgery and burden to watch them play.

It’s just…they were supposed to be so much better than this, weren’t they?

After a winter in which they emptied out the system to go “all in”, acquiring veterans with track records and trophies on their mantles, even my relatively tempered expectations for the team weren’t this tepid. And to torture the poker analogy: How exactly do you go all in, bust out and then attempt to all in again the next year?

Next year? Are we already talking about next year? Yes…yes, we are.

It’s not an absolute impossibility that the Jays get some decent starting pitching and go on some sort of run that propels them into the crowded mix for an outside chance at a spot at a one-game playoff run. But the smart money is against it, so the question that you’re left asking is: What the hell? What’s the plan now?

The Blue Jays had a perfectly defensible plan up until this past season. Build through the draft and international signings, and develop the eventual contender through the Eternal Rebuilding Process. But the urgency of winning in the short term led them to empty out the system to bring in the likes of R.A. Dickey, Josh Johnson and Mark Buehrle to support Brandon Morrow and Ricky Romero in the rotation.

Needless to say, it hasn’t exactly worked out as planned.

The flummoxing question as a fan is not so much one of whether the Jays should be buying or selling – they should always be both, really – but rather, what’s the new timetable for contention? Are the Jays ready to start dealing from the shallow depths of their system in order to bring in more major league talent? Does it make sense to take a shot at even more short-term veteran players like Jake Peavy with a view towards contending in 2014?

On one level, it certainly makes sense to attempt to ride out this season with as much of the Major League roster intact as possible. The lineup has been fine, and could be much better if good health and reasonable expectations of progression come to pass. The bullpen is deep, promising and somewhat cost-controllable through the next several seasons, though one can rarely predict reliever performance from one year to the next, and the team will eventually have to make decisions between a few of the bullpen arms.

All of that ponderous re-tweaking amounts to deck chair feng shui on the Titanic if the team can’t figure out their rotation, which for 2014 looks to be cluttered with pitchers who might have profiled at some point as aces or number twos or threes, but have recent performance that makes them look more like fours or fives or minor league roster depth.

Do Drew Hutchison or Kyle Drabek factor in as positives for the rotation next season? What – if anything – can we expect out of Brandon Morrow at this point? Is R.A. Dickey’s surreal, magical moment over? Does Josh Johnson return on a qualifying offer, and if so, do the Jays get enough out of him in another “contract season” to make him worth their while?

Even if a shard of positive light ekes in through the bottom of the door, what’s to say that the bullpen doesn’t implode or the lineup doesn’t take a step backward?

The step forward into contention this season has been a bit of a bust. Those underwhelming results also augur poorly for next season. Which leaves me as a Jays fan asking this fundamental question: If not this year, and not next year…then when? And for all the hoopla and fireworks of the offseason, are the Jays really any better off than they would have been by staying the course?

Are we getting closer yet?

[fapaholic]

I stopped reading at "fielded well enough"......

[John_Havok]

Expectations being high + underachieving ball club = much bigger feeling of failure

[KingKat]

Expectations being high + underachieving ball club = much bigger feeling of failure

 

Tao was never that optimistic though. I don't think he was ever sold on this new direction.

[KingKat]

I stopped reading at "fielded well enough"......

 

Yeah really depends on what you mean by "well enough". It's a bad fielding team but not necessarily worse than expected.

[GeorgiaPeach]

I still don't understand where the urgency to go "all in" came from?

[z3r0s]

I still don't understand where the urgency to go "all in" came from?

 

Could have been an order from up to... could have been his job was in jeopardy or he thought it was.

[ElNik2013]

Could have been an order from up to... could have been his job was in jeopardy or he thought it was.

 

 

There's no doubt there was some of this. AA was forced to get rid of Escobar, make no mistake about it, that's just one example. I don't think it necessarily excuses AA for overpaying, but acting under pressure can lead to desperate moves in an attempt to not end up empty-handed.

Anyway, I won't get into this whole thing again, it is what it is, let's move forward.

[Boxcar]

The comments section is truly amazing. Apparently, all of this is Gibbons' fault.

 

I really wish I had been born with an allegiance to a different team and was able to escape Toronto's retarded sports fans who can't even grasp hockey.

[ElNik2013]

I really hope Gibbons doesn't get canned after the season, but I think AA lacks the cojones to keep him.

 

 

I will have to disagree...he must fire him! Ok, kidding aside. I think Gibbons is AA's guy, he'll sink or swim with him....and Bonifacio.

[Tuco]

I really hope Gibbons doesn't get canned after the season, but I think AA lacks the cojones to keep him.

 

I see it the opposite.

I think theres no chance AA fires Gibby after one season and then has to hire another manager that would be the 3rd in 3 years.

[IBTrini]

I still don't understand where the urgency to go "all in" came from?

Anthopoulos is most probably the only one with an answer to that question however my guess would be he took a gamble based on his assessment of the situation.

 

If the achievement highlight is to win a WS and the window of opportunity for any team to win it all is small then it is understandable why he made such a decision. If there was also added impetus from the FO that would point to another reason why he took the gamble when he did rather than continuing along the path of the previously conceived plan. In other words, small window of opportunity in the ALE (won't go into this as it has been said before) this year and next year, players involved in the moves looked great on paper, winning the WS is the crowning achievement, and any other additional unknown factors such as FO's pressure to produce.

[IBTrini]

Could have been an order from up to... could have been his job was in jeopardy or he thought it was.

This could also be another factor however I do not believe this to be true. Most of Anthopoulos' moves have been good and the previously perceived plan looked like a good strategy so putting him in a no-win position does not sound feasible - I could be wrong.

[IBTrini]

The comments section is truly amazing. Apparently, all of this is Gibbons' fault. I really wish I had been born with an allegiance to a different team and was able to escape Toronto's retarded sports fans who can't even grasp hockey.

 

Fans are a vital part of any sport and as such their passion sometimes overstep the boundaries of commonsense and impartiality. They are usually not interested in finding the root cause of problems which would entail the analysis of negative patterns, identifying hidden weaknesses within the system, and discovering specific actions that contributed to the problem. This is definitely not something the fanbase is in a position to do successfully partially because most of the pertinent information will not be available to the general public and/or some of the fans are just not that interested in doing all that work for something that's just there for entertainment value.

 

Some fans live and die by the performance of their team and as such you will find that no matter where you go or which team you choose to follow there will definitely be a faction there too.

[G-Snarls]

Speaking of which, Tao is having a live chat on sportsnet.ca today at noon EST. They're always entertaining.

[G-Snarls]

 

[Dick_Pole]

The comments section is truly amazing. Apparently, all of this is Gibbons' fault.

 

I really wish I had been born with an allegiance to a different team and was able to escape Toronto's retarded sports fans who can't even grasp hockey.

 

Sports fans and MENSA members don't exactly go hand-in-hand so I'm not sure what exactly you're looking to get out of being born in another city. The only difference between Toronto and other cities is that you're exposed to Toronto on a daily basis. I've been to several different parks in the US and the one common bond between them and Toronto appears to be a lot of guys who just want to go drinking with their buddies at the game and a lot of families who want to take their kids somewhere fun and exciting but aren't sports experts.