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It’s come to a point in this season that I can’t hold a single thought about the miserable state of the Toronto Blue Jays without having Boyz II Men’s 1992 chart-topper “End of the Road” echo endlessly in my head.
We belong together
And you know that I’m right
Why do you play with my heart?
Why do you play with my mind?
Going back to the time when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was signed and Bo Bichette was drafted, one could have looked ahead to 2024 as the season when everything should have come together. The two young and promising players could have been projected to reach their peak, and the team would have had the opportunity to build sufficiently around them.
This could have been – should have been – the Blue Jays’ best opportunity in this competitive window. It should have been the year that the Jays were pushing for the AL East title, and that key veteran additions would join with high-end prospects to make them more than just a contender. This could have been the apex. That was the dream.
The reality has been so painfully different. This season has been a calamity of underperformance and injuries that brings us to a point where even the most ardently optimistic fans have given up hope on this season. It started slowly and poorly for almost everyone on the roster, but as recently as June 16, the Jays were a game under .500 and just a modest winning streak away from being right back in the mix.
Instead of a winning streak, the Jays promptly lost seven games in a row and the season’s highest aspirations were essentially quashed within the week. They’ve gone 9-16 since that modest high point of the season, losing games in the standings and most of their high-leverage relief corps at the same time.
So we’ve come to the end of the road. And the fans have let go.
The level of resignation is such that the discussion is not whether the Blue Jays should be sellers at the forthcoming trade deadline, but just how deep the sell-off should go.
If the fact of a deadline sell-off has reached to the point of general acceptance, perhaps the more pertinent question is whether if those who oversaw the team’s direction in this competitive window should get the opportunity to be able to make such foundational decisions on when and how the next competitive window should open.
It’s hardly shocking that a significant portion of fans in a down year are ready to see everybody and just about anybody walk the plank for their part in all this mess. Even the sainted former GM Alex Anthopoulous and the revered former manager John Gibbons spent most of their tenures being run out of town.
A distinction between those fine gentlemen and the individuals involved in making the critical decisions now is the difference between expectations and outcomes. While Anthopoulos and Gibbons benefited to some degree from the modest expectations of a fanbase that had spent nearly two decades meandering in middling results, the current front office has brought the team to the precipice of success, only to fall short. It comes across as either comic or tragic.
This was the season to get over the top, not fall off the cliff.
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Seattle GM Jerry Dipoto was pilloried this past off-season for stating that the goal of a franchise should be to win 54 per cent of its games over the course of a decade. Though Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro and GM Ross Atkins have never made such a statement publicly, their cautious, risk-averse, process-driven approach seems to embody the notion.
What fans want, on the other hand, is not just the sustainable long-term competence, but the peak moments that will draw them back in fallow moments such as this. Flags fly forever, and in a time of abundant cynicism, the concept of selling hope just isn’t what it used to be. The measure of risk and the internal processes need to adjust for that fact.
So where do the Blue Jays go from here? Clearly, their impending free agents are likely to be dealt, assuming they can all return from the injured list in time.
What the team decides to do with homegrown starting catcher and impending free agent Danny Jansen may well be a bellwether for the forthcoming direction of the team. Should he be moved at this deadline, given his importance to the team, it would seem to suggest that the Jays are more inclined to rebuild than retool.
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Which brings us back to the beginning, and the aspirations fans had for a team led by Vlad and Bo. They belong to us, we belong to them.
All indications are that the Jays’ off-field leadership is inclined to hold on to them through this season, despite whatever interest there may be on the market. What ultimately becomes of these two players will be truly decisive as to the legacy of this closing window, and the outlook for the future. This reaches the deepest level of hearts-and-minds fandom, and the inevitable decisions that must be made on them will define this front office.
But how likely is it that the answers to those questions are answered by this deadline? And who will answer for them?
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