Blue Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk runs toward first base on his second-inning RBI single during Monday’s game against the Seattle Mariners in Toronto.Dan Hamilton/Reuters
Monday marked just more than six months since the Toronto Blue Jays last faced their fans.
Things have not gone well since then – a playoff meltdown, a media-led coup that didn’t come off and a sly tease of an off-season ending in a sad trombone concerto.
In another market, people might be angry. But not Toronto. Toronto forgives.
In another market, the organization might feel some pressure to put on a special sort of apology performance. Remind the people why they should care.
But Toronto doesn’t do shows. Toronto does promises. If you want a show, you have to provide it yourself.
There were acres of pregame festivities, none of which was very festive. The Jays made a big deal of presenting José Berríos and Kevin Kiermaier with the Gold Glove trophies they won back in November. Kiermaier waved his over his head like it was the Stanley Cup.
You know what making a big deal about a Gold Glove reminds people? That you didn’t win anything better.
Then they did an ode to the construction workers who installed the new lower-bowl seats. The Jays couldn’t give Toronto Shohei Ohtani, but they did keep that cupholder promise.
A hundred or so hard-hatted, reflective-vested, working-class heroes ringed the field before ritually laying down the bases.
The Jays’ baffling new slogan – “To the Core” – was plastered all around the park as they did so. People seemed to think these were the people doing the drilling.
Sporadic and confused cheering was the rule throughout. By the time the players finally came out, the crowd was spent. Rarely have I seen a spectacle so underwhelming, and I once watched the Junos.
They still had to play a baseball game.
The starter Berríos picked his way through the Seattle Mariners in the top of the first. There were happy, contented sounds from the crowd.
In their half, the top three guys in the Jays’ order each grounded out to third. It wasn’t a great first inning, but it’s just a first inning.
Not for this crowd. They weren’t quite booing at the end of it, but they were headed in that direction. There were restive, unsettled noises from every part of the ballpark. That’s new.
An hour later, after the Jays had put a few runs on the board, they were happy again.
Later, when manager John Schneider came out to pull Berrios, the night’s starter, the crowd showered him with jeers.
This same scenario cost the Jays in last year’s postseason. The club may act like everyone’s moved on, but the fans obviously haven’t.
In the end, Toronto won 5-2.
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This may turn out to be a good Jays season or a bad one. But right now, it feels as if there is a strong possibility this becomes a season of rage. Rage that’s been building for years over all the baseball promises made, unkept and then made again as if no one caught them the first time.
Every team gets a few chances to set the right tone. On their homecoming, the Jays’ tone was a car alarm that won’t turn off.
In spring, you can convince people they root for a club on the rise. The Jays failed that one, though maybe that failure was baked in after the failure to sign Ohtani.
The tone is set again during the first week or so of the regular season. Is this team springing from the gate, or staggering out sideways? Is somebody hot right off, or is everybody lukewarm? The Jays have failed that test even harder.
After getting hammered in New York over the weekend, the club laid out their offensive vision.
“For us, it’s about getting balls that you can hit hard,” manager-in-waiting Don Mattingly told MLB.com. “Hopefully, within that, there’s some home runs. I don’t really see us as a huge power club, but we do have a chance to have four or five guys hit 20 or above, and that would be good for us.”
Last year, “four or five” Jays hit “20 or above” home runs and the offence was crap. So the guy in charge of the offence is saying he expects more crap to come?
The ballast used to be starting pitching. Early days, but that looks like it’s headed for some performance chop as well.
Club No. 1 Kevin Gausman didn’t pitch until the last days of spring training and looks it. Chris Bassitt is up there throwing batting practice. Bowden Francis, the man holding down Alek Manoah’s theoretical spot in the lineup, looks like he’s throwing batting practice in a beer league.
Meanwhile, Manoah has gone overboard somewhere in the minor leagues and no one has bothered to send out a search party. In a Single-A start on Sunday, he walked the first four batters he faced.
They’re calling it rehab, but rehabbing from what exactly? Rehab assumes there’s something to rehab to. At this point, Manoah is too fragile to consider promoting to the majors. Yet he was on the field for Monday’s introductions in Toronto.
Shouldn’t he be off somewhere trying to throw a football through a tire? Baby steps and all.
In time, Manoah may be seen as the indicative player of the Mark Shapiro-Ross Atkins era – someone who should have been great, actually was great for a moment, and then wasn’t, without any attempt by any involved party to explain what happened.
Though everyone down to the parking attendants was brought out onto the field pregame, the Jays’ top executives were not named by the announcer. Maybe they were worried about riots.
Shapiro and Atkins worked the field before the fans came in.
Atkins said he was “exceptionally confident” in the offence. Shapiro said you can’t tell anything from 10 games (though something tells me he could tell plenty if the Jays were 8-2).
Some clubs set a winning tone. Based on the things they do and say, the Jays are trapped in a prison of rapidly reducing expectations.
Ball clubs get another chance to make an impression as May edges toward June. A quarter of the way into the season you’re able to make some judgments about who’s up and who’s down.
If the Jays aren’t up by then, the Rogers Centre crowd may have decided to start setting its own tone.
Cathal Kelly