Ladies and gentlemen, your 2014 Toronto Blue Jays. The home opener in this town is usually a savage sort of ceremony, filled with too many people who are out of control, whether the mayor is in the building or not. But last season it felt different. The Jays were going for it this time. The Jays were in. Dome or no dome, the sky was the limit. The season was a smoking crater, of course, but as the poets wrote, there’s always next year.
And so we come to this team, and what it can be. Dustin McGowan started the home opener Friday against the New York Yankees, and that alone was incredible. McGowan has been touring doctor’s offices since 2008 or so, and last season his solid turn as a reliever was accompanied by the terror that his shoulder could blow at any moment. His stuff has always been electric, but every pitch will be accompanied by a prayer, because he is one hell of a roulette wheel to count on. All the starting pitchers are, to varying degrees.
If this team wins, it will be a wonderful surprise. But McGowan is a starter because there wasn’t anybody else.
There was nobody else because the Jays didn’t acquire any arms over the winter, and that fact hung over the opener. Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports reported it first Thursday night, and the details were discerned by the National Post’s John Lott: five Jays players agreed to defer $3 million US of salary, with interest, in order to free up money to sign free-agent pitcher Ervin Santana this season. Santana agreed to a one-year, $14-million US contract with Toronto on Mar. 7 before deciding he would prefer not to pitch in the American League East. Santana had told Jays players he was coming to Toronto, after Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, Jose Reyes, R.A. Dickey and Mark Buehrle agreed to help make it happen.
Retired pitcher and former Toronto Blue Jays ace Roy Halladay, left, shakes hands with Blue jays pitcher Mark Buehrle, right, after throwing out the opening pitch. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Peter Power
But Kris Medlen got hurt in Atlanta, and Santana reneged. In the end, you couldn’t completely blame the Blue Jays for Santana getting away. They had a deal for a pitcher they sorely needed to fill out an uncertain rotation. He changed his mind. So it goes. General manager Alex Anthopoulos addressed it before the game, and essentially confirmed the facts: he noted they had a deal, and in the end, that is what was important.
That’s part of what’s important, anyway. The Blue Jays have always said that if they asked for money from ownership, they believed Rogers Communications would accede because Rogers had never said no. So why the need for this arrangement? How many teams with a US$132-million payroll needs to resort to Billy Beane-style accounting to fill a hole? This isn’t Oakland, and not just because Oakland plays in a park where the toilets overflow when it rains.
No, what this did was lay bare the mechanics of the Blue Jays and how they operate. This is a team in a top-five market in North America owned by a corporation that generated $12.71 billion in revenue in the last quarter of 2013, and reported a profit of $4.993 billion. But while the Jays aren’t in A’s territory, they are run with strict financial responsibility, because that is how Rogers runs all its divisions.
New York Yankees starting pitcher Masahiro Tanaka, left, throws against Toronto Blue Jays left fielder Melky Cabrera. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
It shouldn’t be a surprise; remember, last season the Jays were able to load up on Dickey and Reyes and Buehrle and Josh Johnson and the whole doomed crew because Jays president Paul Beeston, the canny old hand, ran the numbers and told Rogers they could make money on it. Accordingly, attendance increased, TV ratings increased and revenues rolled in. The team crashed like an unlucky zeppelin, but it had insurance.
So, for clarity’s sake: when the Jays say they can go to ownership and ask for money, it clearly requires a business case.
Beeston needs to be able to sell, and surely Beeston is smart enough to know what to ask for, and what not to ask for. Without the same revenue boost this season, the Jays went into winter in a box: A big signing would require a trade of equivalent salary, or an arrangement like the proposed Santana deal. The Jays could eat what they kill. In retrospect, the Santana deal would have been pretty creative.
Full disclosure: I do work for TSN, which is owned by Bell Media, which is the other side of the telecommunications colossus coin. But Bell doesn’t own a baseball team unless they decide to somehow bring back the Expos, which would frankly make them national heroes right up until the point that the team desperately needed starting pitching while attempting to contend and Bell said no, make do with what you have.
Retired pitcher and former Toronto Blue Jays ace Roy Halladay throws out the opening pitch before the Blue Jays take on the New York Yankees. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Peter Power
“Well, we’re a business,” Beeston told the CBC Friday, when asked about payroll caps. “We’re a business. So the answer to that is we have a budget. So the answer is it’s not ‘capped,’ because we can increase our revenue, we can increase our expenses, but we run it as a business.”
In Toronto, this is our moneyball. Anthopoulos gambled on his haul last season, and that haul remains the bet. That is why prayers will accompany Dustin McGowan, and why kids like Aaron Sanchez and Marcus Stroman may get rushed up when there is a need, and why any outside reinforcements will likely be offset by a trade. An individual owner with vision might consider investing beyond the balance sheet to aspire for something bigger, especially in this cage match of a division. It happens in other markets. It doesn’t always work, but it happens. It just doesn’t happen here.
So if this team craters again, you’ll probably see a sell-off at the deadline, starting with Colby Rasmus and Casey Janssen and maybe moving onto Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion. Maybe someone gets fired, too, and the circle of life will begin again. In the meantime, the 2014 Blue Jays will give this a try. Maybe there’s something here. It’s just hard not to think that after all these years, after everything this fan base has sat though and paid for, there should be something more.