It's a funny game... now go win some

It took some time, and some hits with RISP, before I could adequately put my thoughts on the state of the Blue Jays into words. Finally, here they are.

What if I had told you on opening day that by the first official day of summer the Blue Jays would be on pace for 87 wins and sitting a half-game out of a playoff spot with 86 games left to play?

OK, but what if I then added that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. would have a 115 wRC+ and Alek Manoah had been sent all the way down to Single-A?

Nobody has to enjoy what they've seen out of the Toronto Blue Jays so far this season, and I've been doing this for more than long enough to know that expecting fans to maintain a little perspective is a strangely big ask, but man alive, it’s been especially ugly out there these last couple of weeks. And it never gets any easier, when things with this team start feeling like they’re going worse than they really are, to not find all the frothing anger and misery and vitriol and demands for pounds of flesh extraordinarily off-putting. Particularly knowing that one of the countless frustrations endemic to this “game of failure” we all love is that most of that misery goes away, every single time, with a little inevitable sprinkle of success.

The Blue Jays are a good team that's had awful luck with runners in scoring position. And... that's really been the major difference between contentment and misery around here. For all the hand-wringing and all the anguish, the Jays headed into Wednesday's game with an 89 wRC+ with RISP (25th in MLB) while generating a 108 wRC+ overall (7th). That's your problem right there, sailor. Or the bulk of it anyway.

I mean, like any other team they've had more problems than just the one, and I'm not going to hand wave those away or tell anyone not to notice them. Despise the manager's decisions if you must. Question whether Ross Atkins knows what he's doing — I know I did after reading on Wednesday morning that new Red Sox star Masataka Yoshida told his manger, Alex Cora, that at one point this winter he thought he was going to the Blue Jays as a free agent before the Red Sox' bid won out. Make the same joke over and over about Vlad just to shield yourself from engaging with your feelings of disappointment! Fine!

But given how razor thin the margins between victory and defeat around here have been of late, I think just 10 or 15 more hits with RISP since May 1st could have changed the tone of the conversation about this team quite starkly. And that's basically the number of additional knocks they'd have if, heading into Wednesday, their BABIP with RISP (.272) had simply been the same as it has been in all situations (.309) over that span.

Then — shock of shocks! — on Wednesday they went 5-for-10 with RISP, all five coming during their second inning rally against the reigning NL Cy Young winner, and much of the pall seemed to lift. At least for the time being, and if only for the seemingly dwindling subset of fans who haven't decided that their purpose when things aren't going well is to make everyone around them as miserable as they are themselves, or who think that constantly saying the most negative thing possible is an adequate substitute for having a personality.

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The thing is, most fans understand that the RISP thing has a ton of flukiness in it, even if it's impossible not to be frustrated by watching it for six weeks. The "fire the manager!" "fire the hitting coach!" "fire the GM!" stuff happens every single year at some point. What I think has made this stretch especially poisonous — other than maybe the fact that a lot of the more sensible types have abandoned the tire fire that is Twitter — is the overlap of the RISP stuff with Manoah, Vlad, and the fact that the Jays have lost their last five series against AL East rivals, all tied up in a neat little bow with the club's utter mishandling of the Anthony Bass situation.

I could be wrong, or it could be more subconscious than conscious, but I think the idea that the people at the top might not have a clue what they're doing can take hold a whole lot more easily when they spent nearly two weeks this month showing us their whole asses.

The guys who hired the hitting coaches, who put together the roster, who kept running Manoah out there, who are responsible for the lack of depth, thought that was a reasonable PR strategy? Thought that was leadership?

It doesn’t help that fans can also very easily remember that the team wasted what may end up being this era's best chance for success in 2021, embarrassed themselves in the 2022 playoffs, seemingly can't keep up with a Rays team spending $100 million less on payroll, and rightly or wrongly appear to have already fallen behind the Orioles.

That all said, I always maintain that nothing in this game is ever as good or as bad as it seems, and that's worth keeping in mind on at least some of this stuff, I think. The RISP thing will get better. We're only a couple weeks removed from the team winning four series in a row. The struggles against the AL East are hugely meaningful in terms of the standings, but certainly not predictive of what will happen every time. Vlad doesn't seem any more lost right now than Bo Bichette did a year ago. And the Rays may genuinely be as good as they look right now, but last year's Yankees — who were on a 120-win pace on June 22 but finished with 99 and are currently in the same fight as the Jays — very much turned out not to be.

Still, a ton of goodwill toward the front office that was rebuilt in the years following the their ugly arrival has been squandered, and as exhausting as the incoherent rage gets, once you actually articulate some of what’s behind it you start to understand why it’s so potent.

Consumer confidence is low. It’s understandable. In the big picture sense it might even be right. But even just a cursory look at what lies ahead gives plenty of reasons to maintain optimism for 2023.

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There are 86 games left in the season. As much as fans bizarrely hate to be reminded of this, it's still early.

It might only be “still early” in the same sense as I claimed to be still in my early 30s when I was 34, but I'll take that. Especially because my view on this ever-tedious argument has always been that the folks who throw the phrase back at people like an epithet are simply desperate for validation of their miserable feelings, or unwilling to accept the constant deluge of evidence that very little of day-to-day, week-to-week, or even year-to-year performance in this game is static. Outside of the very best and the very worst, consistency is rare.

The Jays are no more "truly" the team that had a 108 wRC+ with a 106 wRC+ w/RISP in March and April than they are the one that has had a 101 wRC+ with a 62 wRC+ w/RISP so far in June. And it would be nice if a lot of fans weren’t so easily drawn to a team or a player’s most recent performances, like a jangling set of keys, when making up their minds about what those players or teams truly are.

Not everything about what these Jays are, or how this season is going to play out, is yet written in stone. One only needs to look back at where Manoah, Bo, Yusei Kikuchi, José Berríos, Trevor Richards, the team itself, or countless other non-Jays examples were a year ago to understand that. I mean, Aaron Hicks and Billy McKinney are two of the hottest hitters on the planet right now!

Plenty about this season can still change, and when something looks particularly askew — like that 39 wRC+ gulf between the Jays’ overall mark and their mark with RISP this month — you can feel all the more confident about it doing so.

That’s the good news. What’s less good is that it may not be early for much longer.

On Friday the Jays begin a three-game home set with the lowly Oakland A's (19-57). The red hot San Francisco Giants (42-32), winners of 10 straight, come next. The Boston Red Sox (39-36) then visit for three to finish off the homestand. After an off day, they go to visit the White Sox (32-44) in Chicago and then the Tigers (32-41) in Detroit before the All-Star break.

The team could continue to muddle along here, as they have been through this most recent stretch, and maybe not be all that much worse for it. But a huge opportunity to put themselves on a much clearer playoff trajectory lies directly ahead of them in the form of a softer schedule than they’ve seen at any point in the season so far — and boy would it be nice if they actually managed to do that earlier than late August or September for once.

It goes the other way? Well, obviously things only get tougher.

The Jays might get Vlad going and a better version of Manoah back relatively soon, but the Yankees will get Aaron Judge and Carlos Rodón healthy. The Astros will snap out of it. The Orioles and Rays may not win as often going forward, but they will be stronger teams in August and September, after the trade deadline. The Angels and the Red Sox are good, flawed teams not far behind the Blue Jays — and with run differentials 12 and 20 runs better than the Jays’ respectively. And the Mariners shouldn’t give up fancying themselves contenders just yet either.

Right now FanGraphs' rest of season projections, knowing all that the computer can know about what’s already happened so far, have the Orioles finishing with 89 wins, the Yankees at 88, the Jays and Astros at 87, the Angels at 85, the Red Sox at 84, and the Mariners at 82.

You’d have been disappointed, but you’d have taken that on opening day. And you’d have absolutely taken it knowing we haven’t seen anything close to the best of Vlad or Manoah yet. But it’s going to be a dog fight. It’s not going to be for the faint of heart.

It also, I dare say, is going to be fun. And probably a lot more fun than most understandably dispirited Jays fans currently appreciate.

There is, as they say in soccer, all to play for. There is also a very good team still in there somewhere. And, I suppose more to my point, there’s no need to cry so much about fighting for a wild card spot just because it turned out not to be the division title romp you felt like you were promised before the season began.

Now win some damn games, Jays.

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