Team USA staves off massive upset, edges South Sudan in Olympic tune-up

July 22, 2024

There have been moments during this Olympic tune-up run when the United States hasn’t looked like the mighty all-star team they were projected to be. That was the case on Sunday against South Sudan.

TORONTO — The Arizona Diamondbacks, winners of the National League West in 2007 and runners-up in 2008, still believed in their club when, 29 games into the 2009 season, they fired Bob Melvin as manager and replaced him with A.J. Hinch. But the change in fortune they sought didn’t materialize, two last-place finishes followed and it wasn’t until 2011, another manager, GM and refreshed core later, that their fate turned.

Fifteen years and three jobs down the road, the now Detroit Tigers manager still wrestles with how to know when a team should keep running it back with its current group versus when it’s time to make wider-scale changes. It’s a question that is glaringly before the Toronto Blue Jays, who beat the Tigers 5-4 Sunday to avoid a three-game sweep, but also, to a lesser extent, in front of Hinch’s club, too.

“You want all the good players, you want to keep them as long as you can to give yourself the best chance because none of us, no matter how long you’ve been in the game, can predict what the next team will look like,” said Hinch, whose Tigers are likely sellers at 49-51 but are playing well enough to cloud directional decision-making. “Whatever you thought of teams at the beginning of the season, we are not 100 per cent accurate on where they are today. And so it takes incredible patience and discipline to build a team and then also sustain a team.

“Obviously you have to have a core. … Fortunately for us in the dugout that wear the uniform, we react to whatever we’re given and try to win as many games with the group that you have. But it’s not easy hitting a timeline that often is either set for you by your expectations or set for yourself by your belief.”

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Threading that needle becomes even harder as a core begins to time out, the way the Blue Jays, now 45-54, are doing.

As things stand, they intend to trade players on expiring contracts with the aim of regrouping for another run behind Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette, who is expected to miss multiple weeks with a moderate sprain of his right calf. Both are potential free agents after the 2025 season, spiking the risk should next year fly as far off the rails as this year has.

The question then becomes how to best manage the assets currently in the core. Guerrero and Bichette, likely untradeable this summer now that he’s due to miss significant time, are front and centre. But that also includes other players under contractual control beyond this year, such as pitcher Kevin Gausman, who allowed four runs in 6.2 innings on Sunday.

Without meaningful off-season additions, how much sense does it make to take one last-ditch shot at winning in 2025, versus restocking barren farm-system cabinets now to ease coming pain that seems inevitable?

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Without deft touches, this could easily turn into the lost years of 2017 and 2018 again for the Blue Jays.

Justin Turner, one of their expiring contracts, was part of a team facing a similar dilemma last year, when his Boston Red Sox needed help but were on the fringes of the wild-card race, held and ultimately fell off the pace, letting a handful of assets, himself included, wither out.

The club’s message at the time was “look, we didn’t go get anyone, but we also didn’t trade anyone away, we kept our guys, which was great,” recalled Turner. “At the same time, we were still doing bullpen games and then we had guys coming back who could only go three or four innings at a time, which was still essentially a bullpen game. So it made it tough, for sure.”

Unlike the Blue Jays, the Red Sox’s core was in place for more than one season — starting with Rafael Devers — and they had a farm system full of talented young players coming. A sell-off wasn’t as essential for them as it is for their AL East rivals.

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As a veteran on a one-year deal, Turner understands the situation he’s in, even as he points out that players “are in the same position as all the fans are, just waiting to see what direction we’re going to go in, because we don’t know either.”

During his nine years with the Los Angeles Dodgers, he knew nothing but deadline adds, so that stress didn’t exist the way it did last summer and this one, now with a newborn to worry about, too.

“There’s an aspect of it where you’ve got to compartmentalize the what-ifs and the maybes,” he said. “Other than my first three years with the Mets, (last year) was the first time I’ve ever gone through something where it’s like, ‘Oh, I might get traded, I might not get traded, I don’t know what’s going to happen.’ And it’s definitely a weird feeling.

“This trade deadline, I don’t know what’s going to happen again, but if something were to happen, it’d be kind of the same thing. Take it one day at a time and figure it out as you go.”

For players more firmly in place, there’s the focus of just going out and try to win a game, which the Blue Jays did thanks to a pair of home runs from George Springer and Spencer Horwitz’s tying RBI single in the fifth. This after Justyn-Henry Malloy’s grand slam in the top half, and Ernie Clement’s go-ahead RBI single in the sixth.

Genesis Cabrera recorded two outs and Chad Green followed with five to earn his seventh save before a Rogers Centre crowd of 38,766. Green closed with the Blue Jays wanting to avoid back-to-back outings for Yimi Garcia, who struck out the side Saturday in his first outing back from the injured list.

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Along with his 58^th career leadoff homer and a two-run shot in the third, Springer also doubled and scored on Horwitz’s single in the fifth, extending a torrid stretch since posting a .559 OPS in his first 71 games. In 21 games since, he’s batting .377 (29-for-77) with eight homers, six doubles, a triple and 25 RBIs.

“Over the span of a year, over the span of a career, everybody is going to have ups and downs,” Springer said. “It’s more about how you respond to it. Are you going to quit or are you going to stand back up and fight? And for me, I refuse to quit and here we are.”

That’s important at a time the Blue Jays are to set themselves for a better future, whether that’s with an eye on 2025 alone or beyond that.

For the players, it’s an opportunity to “lay the groundwork for what we expect for next year, for the future,” said Springer. “It’s all about fight. I don’t want anybody to lay down in that room.”

For the front office, it’s taking what Hinch described as “an incredible core where you feel like they can win any given season,” and finding ways to put it back on track to do just that.

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Team USA staves off massive upset, edges South Sudan in Olympic tune-up

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