Friday, November 16, 2012

Why the Blue Jays Will Not Win it All in 2013: An Essay


I often downplay the sheer unpredictability that baseball brings, but that's because it's so prevalent that it really doesn't need up-playing. The game's unpredictability has done wonders for its popularity in so many ways. For instance, a year ago today, would you have thought that the A's, Nationals and Orioles would be playoff heavy-hitters? Didn't think so.

In baseball, and in real life, impossibility can outweigh the seemingly-definite.

Read that statement over again. It didn't make sense to me the first time I wrote it.

I'll put it in layman's terms- Something that will never happen is more likely to actually occur than something that seems obvious. I don't mean "an asteroid will hit before I have to go to my mother-in-law's". I mean "the Panthers will win a Super Bowl before the Eagles do".

That right there is why the Blue Jays won't come out on top next year. They may get pretty far, but they probably won't make it to November?

Why again? Because it's such a forgone conclusion that they'll make it. And for that they won't.

Let me explain this a little bit, before you close the IE window in frustration.

The Blue Jays right now are the most offensively stacked team in baseball. This past season was stacked enough; Edwin Encarnacion, Jose Bautista, Rajai Davis, Colby Rasmus and Brett Lawrie packed some serious offensive punch. Now, with Emilio Bonifacio, Jose Reyes, and now Melky Cabrera poised to join that lineup, imagine what damage will be done. Imagine the amount of potential that team has.

At least the potential the offense has. Once you look past the string of hitters, the light will shine through the strategically placed wool; the Blue Jays cannot pitch for crap.

Ricky Romero, a once celebrated youngster, gave an incredibly pathetic performance this year, as did the rest of the pitching staff. JA Happ did his best to help, but he clearly could not save the rest of the rotation.

That's one of the reasons why the Blue Jays will fail. Their hitters are great, but they lack the amount of pitching needed to be contenders. You can hit it all the way to the moon, but if you can't keep the other team from catching you, then what's the point?

But even if the Blue Jays make a huge pitching signing, whose name may or may not rhyme with Rack Reinke, and get tons of prospects to make the pitching even stronger than the batting, they still won't win the World Series.

It seems like a foregone conclusion, but need I remind you that this is baseball? If things went according to plan every year, the Yankees would have more rings than the phone at the Blue Jays' front office. Things are supposed to get muddied up and not happen like they're planned. Sports Illustrated predicted the Angels to win the World Series this year. The Giants ended up winning, and nobody predicted that.

If you pick the overall frontrunner to win it all, it isn't going to happen, just like the Packers won't win the Super Bowl this year, unless they get really lucky.  Somebody else needs to swoop in and surprise everybody. It can't be predicted. It just happens.

The Blue Jays can't win, because everybody is saying they will. Somebody else is gonna get real hot in June and not stop winning, so much so that they're tire out the Jays. Things will not go as planned. The Jays will fall and rise occasionally, and that's because it's baseball!

So, in summation, the Blue Jays will not win the World Series in 2013, because right now it's painstakingly obvious. They're saying "the Blue Jays will be huge next year, no doubt about it". And that's concerning.

Because they also said the Titanic would make it to New York. And look where that ended up.

2 comments:

  1. Big acquisitions are often disappointing.... my take on it:
    http://rsnalberta.blogspot.ca/2012/11/blue-jays-blockbuster-2013-world-series.html

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  2. For the same reason the Marlins didn't "win it all" in 2012.

    Next question.

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