August 8, 2006

JAYS ARE LIKE OLD RED SOX TEAMS—ALL HITTING AND NO PITCHING

      This past Sunday the Detroit Tigers beat the Cleveland Indians 1-0.  It was the third 1-0 victory of the season for the pitching rich and major league leading Tigers.  On the flip side—how many 1-0 games have the pitching poor Toronto Blue Jays won?  How about ZERO!  They don’t have any 2-0 or 2-1 wins either.  As a matter of comparison the Tigers have won 23 games when their offense produced four runs or less—for the Jays that number is nine.  Think about that number for a moment—the Jays (as of Aug. 8) have won 59 games, and only nine of those were won strictly on pitching.  It’s pretty obvious that if this club doesn’t hit—well, it just doesn’t win.

       The Jays just came off a seven game losing streak during which the club scored a grand total of 18 runs.  That works out to about 2.5 runs per game.  As I have already stated this club barely wins when it scores four runs, so anything less than that and the Jays have very little chance for victory.  All the talk about this club being a playoff contender through the first four months of the season turned out to be strictly hype.  There was no way that this team was going to make the playoffs, in a highly competitive league, with such a poor pitching rotation.   

      Now, taking the Tigers out of the equation (they are having an incomparably good year) let’s compare the Jays with their two division rivals from Boston and New York.  None of these clubs have dominant starting pitching, so what is the major difference?  Well, both of the division leading clubs can boast two quality starting pitchers at the heads of their respective rotations.  The Yankees have Mike Mussina and Chin Ming Wang, while the Sox have Curt Schilling and Josh Beckett.  All three clubs have decent to solid bullpens headed by dominant closers.  All three clubs boast impressive line-ups and have above average defensive units.  So, outside of the experience both the Sox and Yanks have from being playoff teams these past few years the only difference appears to be one quality starting pitcher.  Is it possible that the margin between being a playoff contender and a playoff pretender is as tight as one solid starting pitcher?  The answer is an unequivocal and profound--yes.  That’s how a pitcher with a seemingly mediocre pitching record, like A.J. Burnett, can command $55 million on the open market.

      The Jays had hoped Burnett was going to provide the kind of consistent pitching performances that his former Florida Marlin teammate Beckett has done for Boston (injuries and inconsistency have extinguished that hope for Toronto).  They counted on him for 15 victories.  If, the club projected, ace Roy Halladay could win 20, and if the 3-4-5 starters could pick up a grand total of 37 wins then the starting rotation would rack up a total 72 wins.  Then, if the bullpen could accumulate victories a total of one-third of those of the starters, not an unusually high number, then Toronto would win 96 games—certainly a playoff contender total.   At this point in the season Halladay looks good for the twenty and the bottom three in the rotation seems likely to fall a few wins short of that 37 win total, but not far short, chiefly because of the two month injury to Gustavo Chacin.   With three wins Burnett will far as far short of the 15 win mark this year as, it appears, the Jays will end up being short of a playoff spot.

       Injuries have certainly played a part in the less than stellar season experienced by the Jays.  Would Detroit be where they are if they lost Justin Verlander and Jeremy Bonderman for two months each?  How about the White Sox if they were without Jon Garland and Jose Contreras each for one-third of the season?   It’s not like the Jays have the financial wherewithal to go out and replace injured veterans with experienced and expensive players—like the Red Sox and, more specifically, the Yankees.  When you have a payroll budget that exceeds $200 million it gives a team a lot more latitude to cover up for ineffectiveness and injuries.  For the Jays, like so many other clubs, if they lose a couple of stars for a lengthy period of time they just don’t have the depth to compete.

       It may give the Jays some security knowing that they be just one healthy Burnett season away from the post-season.  The problem becomes—is that a possibility, or merely wishful thinking.