March 6, 2006

JAYS SHOULD FORGET WILD CARD AND LOOK AT WINNING DIVISION 

      The New York Yankees are perennially regarded as the favourites to win the American League East.  The amount the Yankees annually spend on their roster dictates that they will certainly be in the race each year, and with their experience they possess they usually will be the leading contender.  While in years past the Yankees biggest rival has been the Boston red Sox that will change this year, as the Toronto Blue Jays will field a more complete team than Boston and, except for that experience factor, a more complete team than the Yankees.

       Now I can hear all so-called baseball experts, and certainly Yankee fans, howling at that determination, but if you look at each roster from an overall perspective it’s not so hard to fathom.  Forget the fact that the Yankees have multi-million dollar players at every position—save second base—and forget the fact that they have multi-million dollar pitchers at every key spot, the Yankees simply aren’t that good.  They likely aren’t as good as last year’s club—a team that struggled most of the season and were saved by a trio of cheap pitching cast-offs (Shawn Chacon, Aaron Small and Ching Ming Wang).  That scenario is unlikely to repeat itself.  

      You can’t compare the line-ups for each contending club.  It really isn’t close.  The Yankees have a modern day Murderers Row set up after the signing of Johnny Damon to lead off.  After that the line-up looks set—Jeter, Sheffield, A-Rod, Matsui, Giambi, Williams, Posada and Cano—and is a line up that will test the patience and the resiliency of every pitcher that faces it.  The Achilles heel for this club, both from a pitching and a hitting standpoint, is age.   Injuries follow the aged around like a bloodhound and a lack of depth, something that hurt the Yanks last season, will be its death knell this year.  If Randy Johnson starts showing his age, he began showing signs last year, and if, more importantly, Mariano Rivera starts showing some rust, then the Yanks could be in for a lot of high scoring losses.

       The Jays, on the other hand, have more of an all-around feel to them.  Last year’s club pitched very well, despite the loss of Cy Young starter Roy Halladay at the midway mark of the season, but they couldn’t muster up enough offense to support the staff and the Jays finished fifteen games in arrears of the two division rivals.  This year, not only has the hitting markedly improved, but so has the pitching.  If you merely added Halladay (for a full season), A.J. Burnett and B.J. Ryan to last year’s club it would not be a stretch to think that that club would have won another eight games.  That suddenly puts the Jays within seven games of the Yanks and Red Sox.  Now, add on Troy Glaus power, Lyle Overbay and his .300 average, Bengie Molina and his offense and defense, the expected improvement of the Jays young players and it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that all of this would contribute to seven more wins.   The Yanks better be as successful as they were during last year’s regular season or (if they don’t win the wild card) they’ll be on the outside looking in come playoff time.

       So, Boston fans are wondering, what happened to the Red Sox?  What about their chances?  A quick response—be glad you broke the curse two years ago.  This year’s Red Sox club is a hybrid—somewhere between the championship club of two years ago and, with some good young players on the way, the good club they’ll field in two more.  There are far too many question marks on this club for them to be taken as serious contenders.  To compete with the Yanks and the Jays the Sox will need surprising seasons from about seven players, they’ll need to keep Curt Schilling, Josh Beckett, and Keith Foulke healthy and pitching at a high level, and they’ll need Manny-gate to finally go away.  The chances of any, never mind all, of those circumstances being realized is like saying Coco Crisp will win the batting crown and David Wells will win 20 games.  Boston will hope that Baltimore continues to handle its organization like a hot well so they can stay ahead of the Orioles this year.

       So, let’s get back to the actual contenders.  The Yankees are hoping that their pitching staff will be solid enough to keep them in games to allow their vaunted offense to lead them to victory.  But the starting staff has those that are nearing the end (Johnson, Mussina) those that are constantly injured (Pavano, Wright) or those that are unproven over the long haul (Wang, Chacon, Small).  There isn’t enough depth in the rotation to think that more trades aren’t on the way.  The bullpen looks better this year depth-wise, but the loss of Tom Gordon as Rivera’s main set up man will be a huge loss.  Kyle Farnsworth’s history dictates that he folds up like clean laundry when the pressure is on, and there isn’t any more pressure in sports than pitching near the end of a close game in New York.  This pitching staff looks to have too many holes for the expected band-aid moves to be able to cover it.  And with the success of the White Sox last season it has become apparent once again (in the less blatantly obvious steroid world that is baseball) that good pitching will beat good hitting.

       The Jays have that good pitching.  They have a solid starting five of established young veterans that should win 70 games between them (Halladay should win 20 by himself).  The Jays also have a very deep bullpen combining young fireballers (Chulk, Fraser, Ryan) and dependable veterans (Schoenweiss, Walker).  The Jays also have some very promising arms that are just about ready for the big time, namely Dustin McGowan.  Add the aforementioned hitters to established sluggers like Vernon Wells and Shea Hillenbrand and suddenly Toronto looks rather imposing from an offensive viewpoint—certainly as imposing as the White Sox looked last year. 

       There are only two ingredients that could delay Toronto’s rise to the top of the division—injuries and experience.  Toronto’s depth offensively is still a little murky, though it is much better than last year, and they may have trouble supporting the outstanding pitching if the team loses someone like Glaus or Wells for an extended period of time.  Of course star players going down is the major caveat for any club in any sport.  The Yankees certainly wouldn’t be able to survive if they lost two or three of their big hitters for much, if not all, of the season.  Experience then becomes the intangible.  This will be the first time many of these Toronto players will play important games in September, and it is certainly the first time the Jays will be competing for a pennant as club.  How will they respond going head to head with the Yankees and Boston in late September?   We won’t find out until then but we’ll get a preview in April as the Jays play their two division rivals eleven times in the opening month.  

       Either way the days when the Yankees and Red Sox dominated this division are over.  Finally, there is another team ready to enter the mix.