![]() ![]() The club needed help earlier and tried to bridge the gap with shorter-term free agents and low-risk trades during that time, but all that did was delay the inevitable. While the likes of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, Cavan Biggio, Alejandro Kirk, Danny Jansen, Jordan Romano and Tim Mayza were all in the system back then, they didn’t start percolating up until 2018. Part of what truncated the last Blue Jays playoff core was that the gap between the aging players on the roster – at 29.5 in 2015 and 30.0 in 2016 the team’s position player group was the third-oldest in baseball – and the next wave of talent was too wide. The challenge, of course, is also in augmenting the group effectively, ensuring there’s a steady supply of young players to naturally turn over the roster and build sufficient organizational depth to withstand the inevitable attrition of the 162-game regular season. This, I don't see why we wouldn't be together for a while.” We really feel like it's the beginning of something as opposed to something you're trying to grasp on to where you've got a great bunch of players, but older players that might be going in different directions. “This one, it's a different feeling because this group should be together for a while. “Back in 2015-16, it was an older group so you had a feeling that was potentially the last hurrah,” says pitching coach Pete Walker, one of the few holdovers remaining from those runs. The platform is there for a deep run this fall and, managed smartly, for more in the years to come, which wasn’t necessarily the case last time. A reset after a change in management followed and the club is now in a window of what it hopes is sustainable contention.Īlready on the ledger is the playoff trip in the pandemic-shortened season of 2020 (a campaign that over a full 162 might have looked more like this year’s Baltimore Orioles performance) and last year’s one-game-short heartbreak. Between the 1993 World Series and their return to the playoffs in 2015, they went through three teardowns, the last of which led to a brief window of opportunity from 2014-17 and consecutive trips to the American League Championship Series. Which category the Toronto Blue Jays, who host their first post-season game since 2016 against the Mariners in a wild-card series that begins Friday afternoon, end up in is to be determined. Then there are teams who take forever to recover like the Seattle Mariners (first post-season since 2001 this year) and Philadelphia Phillies (first since 2011), or clubs that get stuck in the build cycle or never see a window through, like the Detroit Tigers, Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies. Less optimal is an outcome like that of the Chicago Cubs, who busted a century-long championship drought in 2016 only to quickly fall back into the abyss. Ideally, a team that bottoms out turns into the Houston Astros, a perennial contender with one World Series ring, tainted as it may be, and counting. TORONTO - The thing about rebuilds is that you can never really be sure how they’re going to play out.
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