Score one for the cause of going all-in.
The Toronto Blue Jays ended Major League Baseball’s longest postseason drought with Friday’s win – though it didn’t become clear until Saturday morning – and from the trade deadline on they haven’t made it look particularly difficult. Of course, they had the cooperation of their divisional rivals: the Baltimore Orioles and the New York Yankees.
The O’s experienced one of the worst Augusts in recent memory by a supposed contender (11-18) and only just this Wednesday climbed back up to .500 after completing a sweep of the similarly woe-begotten Washington Nationals, essentially playing themselves out of the race for anything but the second wild-card spot.
The Yankees, though, went into the back half of the season up 4.5 games in the American League East and fully in control of their own destiny. They played Toronto 12 times down the stretch, more than enough to put the division comfortably out of the Blue Jays’ reach regardless of what the Orioles or anyone else did, and went 3-9 in those games. The Blue Jays embarrassed them. But to be fair, the Blue Jays have been embarrassing pretty much everyone else in baseball since the All-Star break.
They’ve benefitted from over 2,200 plate appearances of combined .900+ OPS hitting from Josh Donaldson, Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion and Chris Collabello. All of those guys share something in common: they’re right-handed power hitters who feast on hitting in Rogers Center, and with the exception of Donaldson (an excellent all-around hitter) they’re all most comfortable pulling the ball. The Blue Jays have been great at identifying guys like this for years – Collabello’s just the most recent standout, even if he has to be platoon-protected at times – and they’re a huge part (along with great supporting cast performances by the likes of catcher Russell Martin and injured second baseman Devon Travis) of why Toronto has far and away the best offense in baseball.
But even that offensive firepower had them lagging behind the Yankees going into the second half of the season. So Toronto went out and did something that comes close to apostasy in some analytical circles these days: they traded significant pieces from their future to get better for this year, and only this year.
They also got somewhat lucky.
The first time was with the Colorado Rockies, who actually wanted to acquire Jose Reyes in exchange for Troy Tulowitzki, and were willing to accept Reyes along with a prospect coming back from Tommy John surgery (Jeff Hoffman), a promising MLB-ready relief arm (Miguel Castro) and a likely org pitcher (Jesus Tinoco) as the return for the best all-around shortstop currently playing baseball. The real reason was financial, of course; Reyes is the inferior player at this point in his career, but he’s making about half of Tulowitzki’s salary for the remainder of the season. The big knock about Tulo is his health, something Reyes was already struggling with in Toronto, and in addition to his bat declining Reyes’s defense had taken a tumble as the first half wore on, leading to an ongoing debate that persisted. The Tulo trade made it go away: Tulowitzki is arguably the best or second-best defensive shortstop in the game, and has the best established bat at shortstop (pending the sophomore campaigns of Carlos Correa in Houston and Francisco Lindor in Cleveland).
One might have a hard time seeing how this is all that lucky for the Jays, given that Tulowitzki’s bat has been tepid since coming over from Colorado and he’s already been sidelined by his first injury. But the Tulowitzki acquisition has done two things for Toronto: first, it has kept them from having to run Reyes out there every night at short – the same Reyes who has completely imploded in Colorado at the plate to the tune of a .656 OPS. Second, it has improved the team for the next few years to come, as Tulo is two years younger and in a different, higher tier of player than Reyes at this point in his career. And all it cost was a risky pitching prospect – something Colorado desperately needs – and some money. They were lucky to find such a perfect upgrade for both now and the future on the market, and to find such a perfect trading partner in the Rockies. That they got excellent veteran reliever LaTroy Hawkins included in the deal was only a bonus.
The second place they got lucky is the early return of starting pitcher Marcus Stroman. Stroman was presumed lost to an ACL tear early in the season, but returned this week to blank the Yankees over seven innings on Wednesday. There’s an insane amount of hard work behind this “luck,” of course – Stroman had to accelerate his rehab and training significantly to be physically ready to return to play this year, and had to make that decision early in the process – but not only being capable but effective in his return, rather than suffering a setback of any kind, involves a certain amount of luck of its own. Having Stroman available deepens a staff that was a bit top-heavy and lacking in young power arms since Castro and Daniel Norris left the organization, and gives Toronto a persuasive tandem partner for Marco Estrada in the playoffs if that particular performance doesn’t survive translation into the postseason.
Speaking of Norris, however, there’s one place the Blue Jays didn’t get lucky: David Price. In Price the Blue Jays got precisely, exactly what they meant to get when they shipped their top pitching prospect to Detroit for a half-season rental: the presumptive American League Cy Young Award winner. Price has been slightly better in results since coming to Toronto – posting a 1.95 ERA against his 2.53 in Detroit – and you might attribute some of that to luck or at least random variance. But Price is also playing with a much better defense up the middle behind him in Goins, Tulowitzki and centerfielder Kevin Pillar, and with a much better, more complete offensive team buoying him at the plate.
The Jays could probably find the money to bring back Price next year (and for the next five years after that) if they so desired, though it’s fairly unlikely that the Yankees will permit that to happen once Price hits the market. But there’s a persuasive argument to be made that the trade will be worth it regardless if the Jays are able to secure homefield advantage through the playoffs, and an overwhelming argument that it will have been worth it if the Jays are able to make it to, and win, the World Series.
As of this writing, regardless of what the Kansas City Royals or Texas Rangers (two other teams that bought big at the deadline) are doing, the Blue Jays look like the team to beat in the American League. And none of that happens if they don’t make the hard buy at the deadline and play for October.
