Oh, I absolutely adore living in a world where the Blue Jays are in last. After everything I went through with them in the middle part of the decade, this is really refreshing.
The good news? Two cheap offseason pickups, namely Freddy Galvis and Matt Shoemaker, are doing a bang-up job in the first few months of gameplay. Galvis has gotten off to an offensive start that evokes memories of his Philly days, while Shoemaker is reaching strikeout numbers that have rivaled most of his injury-plagued years (and knock on wood that he stays healthy this year).
Everybody else is just reaching various degrees of meh. Again, most of the silver linings are on the pitching staff- Stroman and Sanchez are back to their old tricks, and rookie Trent Thornton has been impressive enough so far. But the entire rest of the lineup is way under the Mendoza line, even if rookie Rowdy Tellez has a few good moments. It's as if the sole things keeping the lineup together were Kendrys Morales and Kevin Pillar, and that they can't really survive once those two are gone. Currently, the only remnants from the playoff runs are Justin Smoak, Aaron Sanchez and Marcus Stroman. And keep in mind- these runs only happened three years ago. There are more members of the 2015 Mets still intact than there are 2016 Blue Jays. It just didn't take too long for this team to shit away a lot of their best players, which is slightly sad to watch.
Of course, you all know what's gonna happen next: the second Vlad Jr. gets brought up, the team's gonna be reformed around him, they're gonna make like 5 more playoff runs and maybe make a World Series. It's a dreadful reality, but it probably might happen. I don't know how many members of this team will be there when it does, but if the prospectors are right, we might be in for another Jays uprising soon enough.
Coming Tonight: Who the hell else is there to even talk about in Atlanta right now, anyway?
I think it is going to be a rough couple years with Vlad being the highlight of course, and someone they will build around. I don't expect anything playoff wise for a few years depending on how the rest of the division is, but would be happy with near .500 ball for a couple years, fingers crossed.
ReplyDelete