We’ll be watching lots of sweeps,
From our luxury box seat,
And the days of shutouts will be gone…
Other teams looked light upon,
And sang the same old song,
But we know the Jays will prove them wrong!
We’ll finally have solid execution,
An offense built on fair distribution.
Smack the ball, and bat all around,
Drive the ball the other way,
Win at home and away,
And we’ll all come and pay…
Won’t get shutout again!
Sorry, with Roger Daltry in the news, this is just where my mind wanders. Needless to say, the theme coming into this new season is a revamped offense, and thank the baseball gods for that. While the Jays did manage to place fifth in runs scored in the American League last year, anyone who watched a majority of these games realized very quickly how it was done:
- A very “playing over their heads” kind of April.
- Useless addons against weak bullpens after games had already been decided.
- Rallying against weak teams.
In practical terms only of these traits can be expected to carry over from one year to the next, and only one of them is demonstrative of a positive trait for a team. If you guessed that I am talking about number three you are correct. While there is nothing wrong with hoping a team will play above predictable performance levels, depending on that is precisely the sort of wishy-washy optimism that crippled the Blue Jays during the Gord Ash era. At the same time, rallies after the game is essentially over looks nice in the next day’s boxscores, but they inflate statistics that would otherwise present an accurate picture of performance. The Jays, in spite of a few outbursts, failed to score enough runs to beat the Yankees and Red Sox consistently, and consequently ended up with a record against the two of .500.
The additions this year strike me as a calculated evaluation by J.P. Ricciardi to move away from an offense that depends on bad teams and rallies against weak, back of the rotation/bullpen pitchers. The subtraction of Koskie and Hudson, and the addition of Overbay and Glaus doesn’t add a tremendous amount of power or run production: what it does is provide a lineup that is able to sustain a rally. Assuming the further development of Russ Adams, the Blue Jays can now field a lineup where batters one through six will be able to put up respectable on-base-percentages, and consistent offense against all opponents. A bit more offensive consistency will make up for the general lack of power far more than Troy Glaus’s imposing frame ever could.