Look, I get it.
This Toronto Blue Jays team looks terrible right now. At 9-17, they’ve not only hit rock bottom in the AL East, but are seemingly looking to challenge the Houston Astros to become the worst team in the AL altogether. The hitters aren’t gelling, the starters aren’t getting key outs, and Adam Lind leads all current healthy (sorry, Jose Reyes) bluebirds with a .404 OBP.
You think that’s bad enough? In second place is Munenori Kawasaki, the little replacement shortstop that could (but probably can’t, actually), getting on base as a .313 clip.
Again, that’s better than just about every other Blue Jays batter on the roster right now. No wonder why they’ve lost eight out of the last 10 and were just swept by the hated Evil Empire over four straight games for the first time since 1995.
Yes, it’s that kind of bad in Blue Jays land right now — the kind that makes you wonder what all the buzz was about, why this team was ever the preseason favourites to win the World Series when it doesn’t even look like they can win a game against a Triple-A team, and just what Jeff Loria did to these players that have cursed them to this fate.
But this whole “fire Gibby” stuff? Well, you’ve lost me there.
Sure, it’s Toronto, and this is a city that is so used to disappointments with its sports franchises that knee-jerk reactions are the norm. Even so, this one is off the mark by a ways away.
Really? This is the best that the Blue Jays are supposed to do? Make manager John Gibbons the sacrificial lamb to satisfy some sort of misguided justice for the team’s ineptitude?
‘But someone has to answer for it,’ they say. The simple answer is just … no. This is baseball, after all, and it won’t be the first or last time this team gets into this kind of a slump. Imagine a scenario where you’ve put the parts together for a coin flipping machine, and the specifications of said creation gives you a 60 percent chance of having the coin land on heads every time someone presses the switch.
Now imagine you work the machine 26 times, and the coin ends up on tails 17 times — what are you going to do, blame the person who you brought in to press the switch?
The last time I checked, it wasn’t Gibbons’ fault that the pitchers haven’t pitched the way they should. It isn’t his fault that R.A. Dickey and Josh Johnson are hurting. He didn’t bust up Jose Reyes‘ ankle, and he sure wasn’t the reason why Brett Lawrie got off to a late start to the season.
Plus, it’s not as though there’s a visible clubhouse mutiny going on Boston Red Sox-style circa 2012 … so what are we blaming Gibbons for again here?
Fortunately, Alex Anthopoulos‘ latest comments suggest that the team is not going to buy into any such nonsense that’s coming up from a particularly fickle segment of the fan base not even one month into the season. Teams go on runs and slumps and in some cases, sometimes all of the numbers look like they’re stacked against them under insurmountable odds.
We know that’s not true, though, and unless you believe that the Blue Jays have about as much talent as the Astros, you’d have to think this the odds are going to turn the Blue Jays’ way at some point. They’re going to start winning some of those one or two-run games because Lyle Overbay isn’t going to homer most of the time, and the early-season pitching woes will even out.
If there is one worry, it’s that whether 162 games will be long enough of a sample for things to balance out so that the Blue Jays will end up in a favourable spot; but the pieces are there, and Gibbons is the man to back his team for now. There are plenty of things to be frustrated by, and very few of them are the results of what the manager has done thus far.
Let’s just put it this way: if and when that’s no longer the case, the fans won’t be the first, or the only ones taking shots at him.
