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New York Times
28-04-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Padres takeaways: Swept away, Xander Bogaerts' power outage, bullpen flowers
SAN DIEGO — The Padres, once 11-0 at home, were swept at Petco Park on Sunday. A 4-2 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays gave San Diego its third consecutive defeat and its seventh in nine games. Here are three takeaways amid the Padres' slide from the top of the standings. Padres manager Mike Shildt put it well late Sunday afternoon when asked to assess his team's performance over the past two weeks. Since winning 14 of their first 17 games, the Padres have gone 3-8 while averaging 2.1 runs per game. Although the offense's struggles are largely explained by the ongoing absences of Jackson Merrill, Luis Arraez and Jake Cronenworth, the 30-inning scoreless streak that ended Saturday was the franchise's longest since 1981. Advertisement 'It's not as easy as we made it look, and it's not as hard as it is now. Right? I mean, somewhere in between,' Shildt said. Indeed, the Padres were not built to challenge the 1906 Chicago Cubs and 2001 Seattle Mariners. Before this season, Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA projections pegged them as an 82-win team. The Padres, as their first 17 games demonstrated, likely are better than that. But their floor is lower than most teams, thanks to a top-heavy roster that already has suffered multiple significant losses. San Diego's rash of injuries has bordered on the extreme, but it also has thoroughly exposed the organization's depth problems. The Rays, carrying a typically meager payroll, have four outfielders on the injured list, but they still managed to pull off the sweep at Petco Park. Sunday, the visitors got a pair of hits and a run from Travis Jankowski. The Rays, out of sheer necessity, traded for the former Padres outfielder only a couple of weeks after he was outrighted off the 40-man roster of the last-place Chicago White Sox. At this still-early juncture in the season, Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller might be compelled to consider similar castoffs (or veterans on minor-league deals with upcoming opt-outs). The only healthy player on the 40-man roster who hasn't come up this season is catcher Luis Campusano. Campusano, who has a .999 OPS in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League, has yet to prove he can sustain above-average offense in the majors. Shildt indicated after Sunday's game that Arraez (seven-day concussion injured list) and Jason Heyward (left knee inflammation) could be activated before Tuesday's series opener against the San Francisco Giants. But the manager also made clear that no decision had yet been made on either player. Meanwhile, Merrill (right hamstring strain), Cronenworth (non-displaced right rib fracture) and Brandon Lockridge (left hamstring strain) are headed to the Padres' spring training complex in Arizona to ramp up their recoveries. Advertisement Xander Bogaerts had an acceptable offensive performance Sunday, going 1-for-3 with a walk and a run. But he also continued to chase his first home run of 2025, and he has not driven in a run in his past 16 games. The Padres simply need far more from their $280 million shortstop; even when Merrill comes back, they could use more power from other parts of the lineup to balance out a contact-oriented offense. In his third season in San Diego, Bogaerts has reduced his chase rate (19.9 percent entering Sunday) and increased his walk rate (11.3 percent) and line-drive percentage (30 percent). Yet his strikeout rate is slightly up — perhaps Bogaerts, who did not swing at a hanging sweeper over the heart of the plate Sunday, could stand to be more aggressive — and the 32-year-old continues to show signs of defensive decline, especially now that he is back at a premium position. No one inside the Padres' clubhouse or around the industry questions Bogaerts' work ethic. It remains too early to write off the five-time Silver Slugger as a contractual albatross who will significantly limit the club's ceiling for the next eight-plus seasons. But so far, Bogaerts' nine-figure deal is a prime example of why teams increasingly are paying for future projection rather than past production. The Padres bullpen remains the MVP of the season. San Diego relievers have combined for a best-in-baseball 1.63 ERA and a 2.91 FIP that ranks third. Despite the recent lack of offense, the Padres have lost only three games this season by more than three runs. With the team temporarily needing just four starters, Ryan Bergert was called up from Triple-A El Paso on Friday and made his big-league debut Saturday with a scoreless inning. David Morgan, an athletic former position player who can throw 100 mph, came up Sunday to replace Logan Gillaspie, who is expected to miss an extended amount of time with an oblique injury. Advertisement Other relief prospects seemingly on the cusp of the majors include Francis Pena, who has held PCL batters to two hits in eight innings, and Bradgley Rodriguez, who wowed scouts in spring training. (Top photo of Jeremiah Estrada celebrating after José Caballero was tagged out at the plate Sunday: Orlando Ramirez / Getty Images)
New York Times
27-03-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Most White Sox players happy to have an opportunity, but what will they do with it?
PHOENIX — Martín Pérez, Bryse Wilson, Bobby Dalbec, Mike Tauchman, Mike Clevinger (again), Josh Rojas, Austin Slater, Michael A. Taylor. For a certain type of journeyman ballplayer, the kind of guy with a bat-and-glove bindle and a stubborn dream, the South Side of Chicago was a hot winter destination. Advertisement 'We were a very popular place to be in the offseason for free agents out there,' White Sox director of pitching Brian Bannister said the other day. 'Ones who are prioritizing service time, they wanted to be here.' When you hear 'Chicago White Sox,' you might think of words like 'civic disaster,' 'league-wide punchline' or 'that team with the viral milkshake.' But for baseball players young and old, the ones in need of a new beginning or a last chance, the word you should associate with the Sox is 'opportunity.' Don't count on a playoff share, but the Sox have at-bats and innings to spare this season. 'That's what we talked about since day one, just the legitimate opportunity everyone has to contribute to the club,' new Sox manager Will Venable said. 'Whether that means opening day or the summer, there is going to be opportunity here and a chance to make an impact.' I'm not breaking any news here, but it's not going to be a very good season for the White Sox. Unless a miracle happens — they sign a dog who can play baseball or find a kid in the stands who can throw triple-digits — the Sox seem like a lock for their third consecutive 100-loss season. Best-case scenario: They won't be historically bad. Worst-case scenario? Well, we saw that last season. After going 41-121 in 2024 — breaking the 1962 Mets' modern-day record for losses — how many more games will the Sox win in 2025? How many more can they win with this Quadruple-A roster? 'I can confidently say we're going to win more games than we did last year,' White Sox general manager Chris Getz told me in a recent interview. Not exactly a leap of faith. Last I checked, BetMGM had the Sox at 54.5 wins and Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA projections had them at 62. If the Sox don't lose 100 games, Getz should get executive of the year votes and Venable should ask for a contract extension. Could 'Better than the Rockies' be the team's rallying cry? Advertisement Getz has improved the front-office infrastructure and made a respectable managerial hire in Venable, but the roster screams 100-loss season. Maybe 110. The lineup is generally ranked last in baseball — and that's with Luis Robert Jr., who could get moved this season — and so it the pitching staff. The Opening Day payroll looks to be south of $60 million (according to Spotrac) or about $15 million less than 20 years ago, when the 2005 White Sox came out of nowhere to win it all. I could rant and rave about how bad the organization is and how Jerry Reinsdorf should sell the team, but you've heard that before and, well, maybe he's thinking about it. There's no reason for fans to be optimistic about the big-league club, but when I visited Camelback Ranch at the end of spring training, I thought about the opportunities here for the players. A rebuilding team provides more jobs than the old Works Progress Administration. The problem is keeping those jobs. Last year, 63 ballplayers suited up for the Sox, a franchise record, breaking the previous mark of 56 set the year before. Some players will start their major-league careers in a Sox uniform. Others will end theirs in one. They might as well add a revolving door to the clubhouse. The Sox have already been hit with an array of spring-training injuries — major and minor — the kinds that will provide chances for other players to impress. Promising young pitcher Drew Thorpe — acquired from San Diego in last spring's Dylan Cease deal — left last Thursday's minor-league start with elbow soreness and was quickly scheduled for Tommy John surgery. Thorpe was coming off surgery to shave down a bone spur in that right elbow last fall. He joins three other Sox pitchers who have already had arm surgeries this spring. 'Admitting that there's injuries in today's game with how hard everyone throws, there's going to be plenty of opportunities not only from the break of camp but throughout the season,' Bannister said shortly before the Thorpe news broke. 'And I think just letting everyone be aware that you are going to get to pitch, and you're going to get to compete and be productive for this team and have a really good year, it keeps everybody positive. Nobody feels like they're shut out of getting service time this year.' Advertisement Sean Burke, drafted by the Sox in 2021, is probably the least-known Opening Day starter in the majors after appearing in four games last season. Shane Smith is the rare Rule 5 player who will get an immediate chance in the starting rotation. The White Sox announced that Smith made the opening day roster the way teams desperate for positive attention do nowadays, via a video on social media. From Rule 5 pick to making the Opening Day roster. Congrats, Shane! — Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) March 20, 2025 Smith, 24, was undrafted out of Wake Forest in 2022 after Tommy John surgery and signed with the Brewers. He got up to Triple A last season but was left unprotected in the Rule 5 draft. The White Sox are the kind of team that can take a chance on him. 'It means a lot to me,' he said of making the club. 'It means everything to me and my family and the journey that I've been on over the last couple of years. It's everything.' Everyone on the Sox is playing for something: a first chance, a second look, a last gasp. I talked with shortstop Chase Meidroth, who was acquired from Boston in the Garrett Crochet trade. Meidroth, 23, looked like he was going to start the season with the White Sox, but instead he'll begin in Charlotte. But as long as he's healthy and hitting, he'll be up before it gets warm in Chicago. He said the atmosphere in camp was light despite the competition for jobs. 'I feel like we've got like a brotherhood building in here,' he said. 'A lot of the older guys in here have set a good example for the younger guys. So it's been fun learning from a lot of the guys that have done it for a while and competing and growing and kind of like molding myself.' GO DEEPER MLB's best, weirdest and most unique promotional giveaways in ballparks this year Across the way from Meidroth in the clubhouse was 30-year-old Andrew Benintendi, the recipient of the largest free-agent contract in White Sox history. He's guaranteed a job and he's making around $17 million, but he's playing for pride. He was a negative WAR player last season with a .229/.289/.396 slash line, though he did hit 20 homers. The opportunity is there for him to turn it around and show he's still a valuable player. Advertisement 'Another year going out and trying to be better than I was last year,' he said last week. 'Last year was a very down year for me. I'm just trying to overall be better, win more games and have more of an impact.' The better he plays, the better the chance the Sox have of dealing him for prospects. The same with Robert and any of the veterans they've signed to club-friendly deals. The rebuild wheel keeps spinning. The promise of the future is down on the farm, which is again highly touted. That means we're back to the days of breathless reporting about minor-league exploits. Left-handed pitchers Hagen Smith and Noah Schultz are the White Sox's future but probably not the present. 'I have tasked our group to get them mirroring the major-league routine,' Getz told me recently. 'But really, it's more like '26 and '27, knowing that it's going to take time for them to adapt to that. But also it lines up in a way where we can support it on the position player front as well.' White Sox fans don't live in Birmingham, though. So why watch this team? I'm guessing that won't be a question for a large chunk of their fandom. The Sox drew 1.38 million to their park last season, the lowest total since 1999. And if fans aren't going in person, they might have a tough time watching on TV given their new cable channel's impasse with Comcast. How many fans will pay a la carte to watch this team? This year, the organization is celebrating the 125th anniversary of the franchise instead of just focusing on the 20th for the 2005 team that is the lone standard bearer for modern success on the South Side. The '05 team will be around plenty, though, with Mark Buehrle getting a statue. The Sox are just dandy at honoring the past. Their problem is always winning in the present. The team sold the future during the last rebuild. It's hard to peddle hope again so soon, especially with Reinsdorf still prominently involved. Advertisement 'You know, we certainly sympathize with our fan base that was really frustrated with the product last year and where things currently stand,' Getz said last week. 'But we are making strides. We are determined to get this right, and we will get this right.' The last time we saw the Sox in Chicago, fans were booing them for winning. They had an opportunity to set the modern MLB loss record in their final home series against the putrid Angels, so of course that's when the Sox pulled off only their third series sweep of the season. You couldn't blame the long-suffering fans for wanting to see history. You go to games to see something you've never seen before, and no living person had ever seen a major-league team lose its 121st game in a season until the Sox did it in Detroit. 'All I know is that we ended the season strong,' Benintendi said with a smile. 'That's all I remember. I think we won like five out of the last six or something like that. So, yeah, we needed another 100 games after that.' Of course, not even Benintendi wanted 100 more games from the White Sox last September. But as it turns out, the team again has 162 to play. A new season often brings the promise of better days. For a franchise that needed a late surge to win 41 games, the Sox know the opportunity is there to win at least 42. (Photo of Shane Smith: Rick Scuteri / Imagn Images)
USA Today
26-03-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
MLB 2025 Predictions: Win total over/unders for every team
MLB 2025 Predictions: Win total over/unders for every team Any baseball fan can go ahead and guess which teams will make the playoffs after all the offseason dust has settled. It takes a true sicko to look at each ballclub and try to predict how many wins each will finish with. Fortunately, we have three such sickos at For The Win willing to take on the challenge. As Opening Day for the 2025 Major League Baseball nears on Thursday, we've gone through every win total line at FanDuel and predicted which teams will finish over or under. For reference, we also added the notorious PECOTA projections from Baseball Prospectus. Let's dig in! American League East Team FanDuel W/L Line PECOTA Projection Blake Schuster Charles Curtis Prince Grimes Baltimore Orioles 88.5 88.7 Over Over Over Boston Red Sox 86.5 79.5 Over Over Over New York Yankees 92.5 89.1 Under Over Over Tampa Bay Rays 81.5 82 Over Over Under Toronto Blue Jays 78.5 85.1 Under Under Under Blake Schuster: This feels like it has to be the year for the Orioles to win the division. The Yankees took a step back, the Blue Jays are teetering on a fire sale and the Red Sox are maybe a year away from contender. You can never count out the Rays, but the collection of talent in Baltimore is pretty hard to top. Charles Curtis: Whew, this is tough. I do love what the Sox did this offseason, which makes them sneaky good. I think I'm going O's to win the East, the Yankees to grab a Wild Card and the rest to be CHAOS. Gotta love it. Prince Grimes: I really want the Orioles to compete for the division title, but the loss of Corbin Burnes is going to hurt that rotation a lot. And the Yankees are still great without Juan Soto. I'm going Yankees, and the Red Sox are a sleeper here. American League Central Team FanDuel W/L Line PECOTA Projection Blake Schuster Charles Curtis Prince Grimes Chicago White Sox 54.5 61.3 Over Over Under Cleveland Guardians 82.5 79.9 Under Under Over Detroit Tigers 83.5 78.8 Under Over Under Kansas City Royals 82.5 81.3 Over Over Under Minnesota Twins 83.5 86.8 Under Over Over Blake Schuster: I know we just saw the Tigers make a triumphant postseason push, but Kansas City really seems like the class of the division and could be for awhile. Minnesota didn't get any better and has the same injury concerns with Byron Buxton and Royce Lewis. Cleveland is a bit older and the White Sox the White Sox. Charles Curtis: Ahh, the AL Central. Good luck forecasting this one, but I'll try: I'll say the Royals take the title and the Tigers take them down to the final week of the season ... but then I wonder if the Twins do Twins things and the Guardians are underrated. Did I forget a team here? Oh, right. Sorry, Sox fans. Prince Grimes: There's a lot to like about four of the teams in this division, but I have a lot of questions about how real the Royals and Tigers are -- which brings me to Minnesota. With better health, I could see the Twins coming out as the surprise winners. American League West Team FanDuel W/L Line PECOTA Projection Blake Schuster Charles Curtis Prince Grimes Athletics 71.5 71.5 Over Over Over Houston Astros 86.5 88 Under Over Over Los Angeles Angels 72.5 74.2 Under Under Under Seattle Mariners 85.5 85.8 Under Over Under Texas Rangers 85.5 90.4 Over Under Under Blake Schuster: It's Texas and then everyone else in this division. That said, I expect we'll see a much stronger Athletics' team than many casuals expect. Not that they'll contend, but the A's won't be as bad as last year. The Astros' reign of terror is over. Charles Curtis: Bold take: I think the A's will be really fun for three quarters of the season. But I could see Texas winning and the Astros at least hanging in the Wild Card. Prince Grimes: The West is ripe for the taking with Houston expected to take a step back. I just don't think Seattle has enough offense to take it, and the Rangers have too many question marks with oft-injured vets. Don't be surprised if you look up at the end of the year, and it's the Astros again. National League East Team FanDuel W/L Line PECOTA Projection Blake Schuster Charles Curtis Prince Grimes Atlanta Braves 86.5 87.6 Under Under Over Miami Marlins 63.5 60.7 Over Under Under New York Mets 90.5 91.7 Over Over Over Philadelphia Phillies 90.5 85.7 Under Over Over Washington Nationals 70.5 67.9 Over Under Under Blake Schuster: The most exciting division in baseball yet again will come down to the Braves and Mets (and likely whichever team can stay healthier). Charles Curtis: I'm a Mets fan, so I'm set up to worry that they won't win the division, especially with their rotation. I'll say it's Mets by a hair over the Braves and the Phils keep in the mix. Prince Grimes: We're probably headed for another photo finish between the Phillies, Braves and Mets. Juan Soto's shuffle might just be the thing that finally pushes New York over the top. National League Central Team FanDuel W/L Line PECOTA Projection Blake Schuster Charles Curtis Prince Grimes Chicago Cubs 86.5 91.7 Under Under Under Cincinnati Reds 79.5 74.5 Over Over Under Milwaukee Brewers 82.5 79.5 Over Over Over Pittsburgh Pirates 75.5 75.1 Under Under Over St. Louis Cardinals 75.5 77.5 Under Under Over Blake Schuster: The Cubs will be better than expected, but they aren't ready to contend yet. The same goes for Cincinnati, but ultimately a healthy Brewers team should win the Central. Charles Curtis: It's probably the Brewers or bust, but don't bet against the Reds. Prince Grimes: The Cubs closed the gap on Milwaukee, which should make for an interesting race, but I get the feeling the Brewers aren't quite done owning this division. National League West Team FanDuel W/L Line PECOTA Projection Blake Schuster Charles Curtis Prince Grimes Arizona Diamondbacks 86.5 87.6 Under Under Over Colorado Rockies 59.5 54.7 Over Over Over Los Angeles Dodgers 104.5 103.2 Over Over Over San Diego Padres 85.5 87 Under Over Under San Francisco Giants 79.5 77.6 Under Under Under Blake Schuster: Thanks for playing everyone else, just give the Dodgers their division title now. Charles Curtis: Yeah, yeah Dodgers yadda yadda yadda. Padres are nice though. Prince Grimes: It's the Dodgers, then everyone else. Not just in the West. That goes for the entire league.
New York Times
25-03-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
How each MLB team can make the 2025 playoffs. (Yes, even the Rockies and White Sox)
In the first week of the baseball season, there's a war going on in the hearts and minds of baseball fans — a battle between what you so desperately want to believe can happen and what you think will really happen. It's the gap between the naivete of youth and the realism of experience, played out over 162 games. Advertisement I'm here to tell you it's OK to dream a little. This is the time to think big about breakthroughs and bouncebacks, about capturing magic in a bottle and somehow prolonging it for six weeks or six months. This time last year, the Kansas City Royals were coming off 106 losses, projected to be the fifth-worst team in baseball and barely better than the Chicago White Sox. The Royals played in the Division Series, losing to a Yankees team that itself had come off a mediocre 82-80 season to win the pennant. In 15 of the last 19 years, half of baseball's postseason teams had not qualified the prior year. That includes a 50-percent turnover rate in each of the last three seasons. Four of the last six pennant winners had not made the playoffs the prior season. So to divine the future this October, let's look to the past. For all 30 teams, I've looked at their projected win total (via Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA system) and found a historical analogue since 2008 — another team projected to win a similar amount that nevertheless made the postseason. The fits aren't perfect and the methodology had to improvise — some teams are projected to be really bad — and they're not all best-case scenarios, because only so many teams have won the World Series. Yes, I'll occasionally get tongue-in-cheek, but the exercise here is mostly earnest. Because somebody on this list is about to stun the world. Here is last year's piece, which correctly predicted the 12 teams that would make the postseason. Unfortunately, I was wrong on each of the 18 teams that did not make it to October. This comparison worked out so well for the Dodgers last year that I'm running it back (said sincerely). Teams are rarely projected to win in triple-digits; it's happened only six times in the last two decades, all of them since 2020. And of course, five of them belong to the Dodgers, which means they're basically in a class by themselves. Advertisement The 2020 team played 60 games at a record-tying 116-win pace. The 2025 team should, knock on wood, have a chance to play 162 games this season to see if it can match that squad. Atlanta is the other team that's been projected for more than 100 wins in the last two decades, and that was last year's squad that ended up with only 89. It was a disappointing season but a justifiable one, given the absurd run of injuries that sapped the roster of much of its star power. A healthier season, on its own, should push Atlanta back into the mid-90s in wins, and the 2017 Astros represent a version of the best-case scenario, where the offense clicks on all cylinders and the pitching staff proves deeper than anticipated. I don't claim to be the most creative person in the world. So when a team in New York acquires Juan Soto and opens a season full of supercharged expectations in Houston, it reminds me of a recent team in New York that acquired Juan Soto and opened a season full of supercharged expectations in Houston — en route to the pennant. Merely matching expectations last season was good enough for the Yankees to win their division and claim home-field advantage throughout the AL playoffs. Methinks 92 or even 94 wins won't be good enough to do either for the Mets this season. But incorporating Soto into a lineup that improved significantly during last season and welcoming back Kodai Senga into a rotation that outperformed anyone's expectations leaves this New York squad with room for growth. It's a frustrating byproduct of postseason expansion that a team's legacy can be defined more by what happens during three days in October than over the previous six months. And so it is for the '08 Cubs, who ran away with the NL Central only to get stomped in a Division Series sweep by the 84-win Dodgers. Advertisement While these Cubs are not coming off a division title like those Cubs, there's real reason to believe Chicago could be a contender in the National League as a whole. Kyle Tucker is the kind of star who makes the complementary players around him look that much better. Maybe Justin Turner provides the kind of turn-back-the-clock season that Jim Edmonds did in 2008. Maybe Justin Steele and Shōta Imanaga give the rotation a pair of All-Stars anchors like Ryan Dempster and Carlos Zambrano. And maybe October goes a little better this time. This is the first time in the sample that no American League team was projected for even 90 wins. (It happened in the National League in both 2010 and 2012; Rangers fans would prefer not to be reminded of that stretch.) The last time neither the Yankees nor Astros was projected to lead the AL in wins was 2016, when Cleveland was projected to win 92. The 2016 club was also one of the last teams to be projected a pennant frontrunner despite not making the postseason the prior season, much like Texas this year. That Cleveland team made a leap because of the strength of its infield, specifically Francisco Lindor and José Ramírez, and the breakthrough of Corey Kluber in the rotation. The Rangers' infield has a considerably longer track record, the roster has the same kind of upside from its youth as that 2016 Cleveland team, and the rotation has multiple breakout candidates, ranging from the young in Kumar Rocker to the old in Jacob deGrom. Sometimes a roster comes together so cohesively, so dominantly early in the season that you feel dumb for not seeing it beforehand. The 2018 Red Sox were an obvious wrecking ball by the middle of April, when they were 17-2. They had a transcendent outfielder in Mookie Betts, an excellent shortstop in Xander Bogaerts and the best versions of J.D. Martinez and Andrew Benintendi to lengthen the lineup. These Mariners lack the recent pedigree of those Red Sox, who had won consecutive division titles. But it would surprise nobody if Julio Rodríguez put together a Betts-like MVP season. J.P. Crawford, Cal Raleigh and Randy Arozarena aren't perfect matches for the rest of that Boston lineup, but they don't need to be given Seattle's outstanding rotation. The Mariners have a one-through-five other that teams dream of — the kind that could look very early like a wrecking ball. Life comes at the core of a baseball team fast. The best team in the American League from the start of 2023 through the end of June last season, the Orioles stumbled to the finish, got swept in the playoffs (again), and now face questions about just how good this current group can be. There's still loads of talent here, mostly on the position-player side Advertisement The 2018 Nationals had fallen back, winning 15 fewer games than they had the season before, and infamously losing 31 of their first 50 in 2019. (Baltimore dropped 10 wins last season). But the top-line talent of the Nationals roster eventually shined through, surging back to win a wild card and storm through to a championship. The Orioles, despite some present skepticism, still have loads of talent, mostly on the position-player side, and possess the highest ceiling of any team in the junior circuit. So this was the Giants team led more by its offense during the regular season than its pitching staff. San Francisco basically ran out an eight-man lineup of above-average hitters, headlined by Buster Posey, to overcome an inconsistent starting rotation behind Madison Bumgarner. In the postseason, Bumgarner and the bullpen — when they weren't one and the same — carried almost the entire load for the pitching staff. No, the Twins don't have the same recent success in the postseason that those Giants did, and they don't have Bumgarner ready to sling up zero after zero in the highest-pressure situations. But the lineup is projected to have nine above-average regulars, and the pitching staff could do quite well in October if shortened considerably. Hey, we can all be forgiven for forgetting the 2014 Angels were the American League's best team — an absolute buzzsaw that in one stretch in the summer went 55-22, only to be swept by the upstart Royals in the Division Series. The Astros have largely run the AL West in the decade since — apologies to Jeff Banister's overperforming Rangers teams — though the trendline is going in the wrong direction. Houston joins the White Sox, Angels and Cardinals as the only team to fall short of its projections in each of the last two seasons, and the 87-win projection here is the lowest for the franchise since 2016. That Angels lineup was built around MVP Mike Trout, with Albert Pujols, Howie Kendrick and Kole Calhoun as the complementary pieces. Yordan Alvarez isn't quite Trout, but José Altuve, Isaac Paredes and Christian Walker make the top four as formidable if not more so. And Hunter Brown — whom your savviest friends are pegging as a Cy Young candidate — gives this pitching staff more upside than that of those Halos. Add Corbin Burnes to the team that just scored the most runs in baseball, and you like its chances of making some noise. For Arizona, the question is how much of last season's offensive firepower can be replicated. Sometimes that's with the same players — which version of Eugenio Suárez shows up this year? — and sometimes that's trying to replace departures, with Josh Naylor stepping in for Christian Walker and Pavin Smith for Joc Pederson. The '08 Phillies were able to replicate a lot of the good things they'd done a year earlier in, like Arizona, an 89-win campaign. Ryan Howard and Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins were all still good, and Cole Hamels was even better. A sturdier bullpen with Brad Lidge paid it off in a championship. Advertisement It's a bit outlandish to start, but look closer and you start to see some similarities here. Zack Wheeler can be the kind of shutdown pitcher Zack Wheeler was for those 2022 Phillies, and Bryce Harper can lead the lineup just like Bryce Harper did. Jokes aside, this Phillies team sure looks to have a higher ceiling than the one that fell two wins shy of the championship. That team started the year with Didi Gregorius at short, not Trea Turner. It had Kyle Gibson and Bailey Falter in the rotation, not Cristopher Sánchez and Jesús Luzardo. Corey Knebel led a makeshift bullpen, not José Alvarado and Orion Kerkering. Of course, real success may all come down to the first paragraph here: Wheeler being Wheeler, and Harper being Harper in the biggest moments. While the Rangers hadn't been to the postseason in more than a decade (it was tougher then), they were coming off an 87-win season, and winning 90 and the AL West wasn't a shock. Coming through in October, though, by upsetting the Rays and Yankees was more of a surprise. For San Diego, it's that last part that eludes it. The Dodgers appeared invincible by the time the World Series was over last year, but it had been only three weeks since the Padres had them on the brink. If Fernando Tatis Jr. doesn't hit into that double play — well, let's not be cruel with hypotheticals. Although the bottom part of the Padres roster leaves much to be desired, the top half still sparkles. Those Rangers got by with uncharacteristic lineup holes to win a pennant. This century, the Cardinals have finished above .500 in all but two seasons, they've made the playoffs 16 times and won the World Series twice. But the two years they won the World Series were not the years you'd have expected: the 83-win squad in 2006 and the 2011 team that needed miracles in September and across multiple innings of Game 6 of the World Series. Although the Yankees are the only team with more playoff berths this century than St. Louis, expectations are lower than normal the week of Opening Day. The Yankees lost Juan Soto in free agency and Giancarlo Stanton and Gerrit Cole in spring training, and the PECOTA forecast has dropped accordingly. So you can imagine, years from now looking back at New York's long run of success, and saying, 'Really? 2025? That's the team that won it all?' Advertisement I haven't asked the people at Baseball Prospectus specifically about this, but it's my understanding there's no multiplier they throw into the PECOTA algorithm for 'vibes.' If so, Toronto probably would get knocked down a peg or two, given another offseason of relative disappointment and the inability to extend Vladimir Guerrero Jr. before the start of spring training. But the talent is still there. Guerrero is an MVP candidate. Bo Bichette can't be as bad as he was last year. The only member of their starting rotation that casual baseball fans don't know, Bowden Francis, took like six different no-hit bids into the eighth inning after last year's All-Star break. And Andrés Giménez is here, which ties it all back to last year's Guardians — who despite a disappointing season and offseason, relied on their best players playing like great players. José Ramírez posted another top-five MVP finish, Emmanuel Clase was lights out, and the bullpen did the rest. While there is not much precedent for a team playing its home games in a minor-league park, it's all pretty good precedent. The 2020 Blue Jays, playing in a Triple-A stadium in Buffalo, made the postseason. The 2021 Blue Jays, who played in their spring training facility in Dunedin and Buffalo before returning to Toronto, won 91 games. As for the comp here, Atlanta in 2021 was not the best team in the National League at any point of the season, until it hit its stride thanks to some unexpected contributions by the end of the year. Tampa Bay does not stick out as a frontrunner just yet, but those unexpected contributions can come in the form of a pitching staff returning to health and an offense that should smash in the tinier confines of Steinbrenner Field. The 2009 Giants had made the big leap, from 72 wins to 88. Naturally, projection systems were skeptical it was all replicable. After all, could a rotation fronted by Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain do that again? The Royals face the same challenge. They've completed Step 1, leaping from 56 wins all the way to 86 and the playoffs last season. Now the challenge is backing it up a year later. Lincecum and Cain weren't as good individually in 2010 as they had been in '09, but they were joined by Jonathan Sánchez and Madison Bumgarner. Seth Lugo may not be the Cy Young runner-up in 2025, but Cole Ragans can still be better, and the bullpen provides more depth to the staff as a whole. And there, no one else has ever previewed the 2025 Royals season or reviewed the 2010 Giants season without mentioning Bobby Witt Jr. or Buster Posey, respectively. Advertisement By the end of the Fall Classic, after the Rangers had dispatched the Diamondbacks and won their first World Series, it made a fair amount of sense. Why wouldn't a lineup that featured Corey Seager and Marcus Semien batter opponents all season long? The rotation was good enough, and if the only thing holding you back is a bullpen getting hot at the right time, well let me tell you about the joy and mysticism of Tyler Matzek and Ryan Brasier and some guy off every other World Series champion. The Red Sox have become a trendier pick since adding Alex Bregman last month, and it's become easier to see them not just contending in the American League but taking it all the way into the World Series. Bregman and Rafael Devers and Jarren Duran are good players, Garrett Crochet and Walker Buehler have high ceilings as starters, and there's youth here to push the Sox across the finish line, same as Texas had. Oh, and Aroldis Chapman can play the role of Aroldis Chapman. The 2015 Mets are good evidence that you never quite know how talented a roster is until you see it in action. New York's rotation had promise, for sure, even with Zack Wheeler requiring Tommy John surgery that spring. But nobody could have foreseen the quartet of Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz clicking the way it did at exactly the right time, to chase down the Nationals in the NL East and get by the Dodgers and Cubs into the World Series. Cleveland's rotation should be better than it was last season — it has to be better than it was last season — and it has the kind of youth that can bring unexpected, ceiling-raising breakouts. And the Guardians wouldn't need to trade for an offensive anchor like those Mets did; they already have José Ramírez. The Brewers are attempting to do what the Pirates couldn't in the middle of last decade: Build a sustainable, year-after-year winner in the NL Central and break through in the postseason. Milwaukee has most of the former down; it hasn't quite achieved the latter. The best team in Pittsburgh in a generation, the 2015 Pirates, picked a profoundly bad year to win 98 games. It wasn't enough to win the NL Central — St. Louis crossed into triple digits — which meant it drew only a single-elimination wild-card game against the starting pitcher on the hottest end-of-season run in recent memory (Jake Arrieta). Overperforming to win 98 this year should give the Brewers a better chance of making October noise than that Pirates team had, given the division around them and the playoff format. To get there, Milwaukee will rely like Pittsburgh on a pair of outstanding outfielders in Jackson Chourio and Christian Yelich. Advertisement Sure, the 2014 Royals had made their late-season push, they'd won a ridiculous Wild Card Game and made it all the way to Game 7 of the World Series. But, come on, presented with the challenge of 162 games again, could that roster really be as good? Be even better, somehow? The Tigers face a similar challenge. They had a magical month last September, chasing down several teams ahead of them to end a 10-year postseason drought, and then they beat the mighty Astros in the Wild Card Series. Can they really capture that magic again for 162? Tarik Skubal's one very good reason why that's possible, as is the return of Jack Flaherty, the development of Jackson Jobe and the continued growth of Riley Greene, Kerry Carpenter and maybe even Spencer Torkelson. 'Development isn't linear' doesn't fit on a T-shirt quite like 'Trust the process,' but hey, the Royals won a ring living it. Cleveland didn't enter the 2022 season at a high point. It had drifted down to 82 wins the previous season (St. Louis had 83 last year) and its 77-85 projection was its worst since 2011. And then the Guardians rode the sustained excellence of José Ramírez and Shane Bieber, along with breakout seasons from Andrés Giménez and Tristan McKenzie to a division title. For the Cards to be like the Guards, it will probably take Nolan Arenado and Sonny Gray being All-Stars again. It will require an unexpectedly large step forward from Masyn Winn (to become an MVP candidate the way Giménez did) or by Jordan Walker or Andre Pallante to become above-average contributors. Here's the thing about the 2014 Royals (ring the bell): You kind of forget how good that rotation was. Yes yes, the bullpen was incomparable at the ends of games, the team speed could be overwhelming, and the offense Texas-leagued you to death sometimes. But James Shields and Yordano Ventura led a rotation with the fourth-best ERA in the American League. And that's where San Francisco has to be unexpectedly good this season. Logan Webb remains terrific. Justin Verlander is a year removed from being quite good. And for the Giants to beat expectations like it's 2021, they'll need Robbie Ray to pitch like it's 2021. The 2024 Tigers didn't look like an archetype for a potential postseason run — not this time last year in spring training, not at the trade deadline when they sold, not after the first week of September when they were a .500 outfit sitting in ninth in the American League. But one wild, dare-we-say chaotic month can change things, and the Pirates wouldn't mind following Detroit's blueprint. Advertisement Pittsburgh already has Paul Skenes to play the role of Tarik Skubal, plus more depth in the rotation than the Tigers had by late September. Oneil Cruz and Bryan Reynolds could be Riley Greene — the standout of an otherwise underwhelming offense that does just enough to win games. And maybe David Bednar recaptures his old form and the Pittsburgh 'pen proves as bewildering to opponents as the Tigers' did down the stretch. The Diamondbacks' modest outperformance of the projections showcase a reality of the expanded postseason: Almost any team is 10 regular-season wins and a hot October away from history. Even these Angels. Arizona's run was propelled by youth — by Corbin Carroll being even better than anticipated, by Gabriel Moreno breaking out — and a bullpen that locked down when it mattered. Zach Neto and Logan O'Hoppe haven't had the same prospect hype as Carroll and Moreno, but there's a solid floor there with upside. Kenley Jansen and Ben Joyce can shut the door late. And since this is all about best-case scenarios, man, the best-case scenario for Mike Trout is still pretty damn good. In writing up the Reds last spring, I said they possessed the same kind of cohort of young talent that could make a dramatic leap forward — not just to the postseason but to real October contention — as the 2014 Royals. And then Cincinnati went out and lost 87 games. But I'm undeterred. Let's raise the (regular-season) bar to the 101-win Orioles from two years ago, when Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson carried them to a division title. For Cincinnati, Elly De La Cruz and Hunter Greene did make leaps last year. Matt McLain and Christian Encarnacion-Strand are back, Jeimer Candelario and Noelvi Marte can't have a worse year (right?), and the rotation is full of interesting pieces. And then there's Terry Francona, whose first team in Boston won the World Series and whose first team in Cleveland improved by 24 games to make the playoffs. Few franchises made PECOTA look sillier in the 2010s than the Athletics, who routinely outperformed the preseason projections to win division titles if not Division Series. The 2012 team might have been the most fun: A heavy underdog to the established Texas in the AL West, five games under at the end of June — and then a surge out of nowhere to catch and pass the Rangers in the final weekend of the season at the Coliseum. Even now, you're probably thinking of Stephen Vogt and Josh Donaldson and Sonny Gray and nope, wrong A's. This was rookie Yoenis Céspedes and newcomer Josh Reddick, this was Jarrod Parker and A.J. Griffin. And in that vein, this year's A's have a little more of a track record entering the season than that squad. Brent Rooker and Lawrence Butler were both really good last year, and Luis Severino and Jeffrey Springs raise the floor of the rotation. Crazier things have happened for the Athletics before. Advertisement The Orioles got a Nationals team, the Nationals get an Orioles team. Kismet! The O's and A's start to show up a lot toward the bottom here because those franchises have consistently beaten expectations over the last 15 years or so. The 2016 Orioles were carried by Manny Machado (in one of his best overall seasons), a lights-out Zack Britton and terrific seasons from Kevin Gausman and Chris Tillman at the top of an otherwise pedestrian rotation. Washington doesn't have someone as talented right now as Machado was in 2016 — but CJ Abrams, James Wood and Dylan Crews are all capable of significant leaps. MacKenzie Gore and Michael Soroka can be Gausman and Tillman. Good luck finding someone as good as Britton, though, but that's a thing I say a lot. We've reached the point where teams projected this low in our sample have not made the postseason. And so the method switches, from finding a team with similarly low expectations that made the playoffs, to finding a team that outperformed expectations enough to make the playoffs plausible for this group. First, it's startling that a White Sox team that set a modern record for losses in a season and then traded its best player away does not rank 30th on this list. Projecting Chicago for merely 100 losses feels pretty optimistic — which is crazy when you step back and think this team won its division four years ago. The 2012 Orioles were in the midst of a much longer rut, if not one as deep. They'd posted a losing record for 14 straight years, with at least 90 losses in the last six. They overachieved in 2012, thanks to a baseline of competence around the roster and an otherworldly, mostly no-name, bullpen that led it to a 29-9 record in one-run games. If the White Sox are going to do something ridiculous this season, it's going to take something aberrational like that. Heading into the season, Xavier Edwards and Jonah Bride are the only Marlins Opening Day hitters projected to be above the league average, and no offense to them, they're not exactly Ruth and Gehrig holding up an offense. The long-vaunted Miami pitching staff will begin the year with four starters on the IL, again. And Miami plays in a brutal division. Advertisement So let's really squint here. Sandy Alcántara is back, Edward Cabrera and Ryan Weathers will be soon, and Max Meyer was pretty good, briefly, to begin last season. The rotation could end up in the top half of the league. And it wouldn't shock anybody if Connor Norby or Kyle Stowers or Matt Mervis or Otto López or Griffin Conine became an above-average hitter; so what if three or four of them did at the same time? Outpacing the projection by 21, like an Athletics team lifted up by Matt Chapman, Khris Davis and Edwin Jackson, still might not be enough for a playoff berth. But it gets Miami in the conversation. For the Marlins, a lot of things need to break right to contend for the playoffs. For the Rockies — whose 55-win projection ties for the lowest in PECOTA's history — everything needs to go right. And there's only one team in recent memory for whom everything seemed to go right in the regular season: the 2021 Giants. Those Giants outperformed their projection by 32 — six more than any other team in the sample. San Francisco excelled by basically only playing good players. Simple, right? Most every at-bat was taken, most every pitch was thrown, by a player who performed above the league-average that season. Last year's Rockies were nearly the inverse of that. And so to exceed its expectations by 30-plus games, Colorado will need the occasional big jump — say, Ezequiel Tovar and Brenton Doyle becoming top-10 MVP finishers — and scores of smaller ones: Michael Toglia hitting for the same power but getting on base more, Kris Bryant playing more than half the time, and the trio of Kyle Freeland, Germán Márquez and Antonio Senzatela turning back the clock in the rotation. Like so many of these, it's probably too much to really ponder. But imagine leaping forward in time, opening up the Baseball-Reference standings on that Monday after the season ends and seeing the Rockies listed there with 87 wins. Insane! you'll say. When's the last time a team outpaced what everyone thought of it like this? And the answer will be, 'Yeah, only four years.' (Top photo of the Los Angeles Dodgers celebrate winning the 2024 World Series: Elsa / Getty Images)
New York Times
25-02-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
The Blue Jays ponder what might have been — the All-Almost-a-Blue-Jay Team — and what's ahead
DUNEDIN, Fla. — The All-Almost-a-Blue-Jay Team would be one of the monsters of baseball, wouldn't it? Would Shohei Ohtani be their Game 1 starter in October — or Corbin Burnes? Then there's Roki Sasaki, the Game 3 starting pitcher nobody would want to face. Would Juan Soto hit second, in front of Vladimir Guerrero Jr.? Would Pete Alonso hit cleanup — or would that be Shohei's gig? Advertisement Wherever they'd all slot, this would have been one hellacious baseball team. Don't you think? There's only one small problem. The actual 2025 Blue Jays are now two games into spring training — and none of those star-power kings is wearing their uniform. You probably know what happened, but let's recap. Ohtani and Sasaki went Hollywood on them and signed with the Dodgers. Burnes stayed home in Arizona, so he's now a Diamondback. Alonso went back to exotic Flushing, N.Y., where he can hang out with Soto all summer in the Mets' clubhouse. And the Blue Jays — despite offering mega-millions to all of them (aside from Sasaki) — would turn into that team that finished second in free agency on seemingly everybody. It's not a fun niche, but it's now their niche. So here's a question that hangs over them this spring: Is there ever a time where the current Blue Jays let their minds travel to that alternative What If universe where their world includes some or all of those Almost Blue Jays? 'Not at all,' said the manager of those current Blue Jays, John Schneider … before even he then let his mind wander beyond the team he was watching take batting practice. 'Yeah, I think you wonder sometimes: 'OK, what would that have looked like?'' he continued. 'Like, 'What if we had player X? What would that mean for everyone else that is here? Would we be able to acquire who we have?' 'I think you think about that when you're away from the ballpark,' the manager acknowledged. 'But when you're here? No. It's the guys here — 26 of you — and let's figure out a way to win.' Well, here's a bulletin for you: Contrary to the running narrative, the Blue Jays' path to winning isn't a dead-end street. In fact, it's safe to say the team Schneider is actually managing feels like one whose lack of buzz doesn't match the talent on the roster. Advertisement Has anyone noticed that Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA projection system gives the 2025 Blue Jays a 48 percent chance to make the playoffs — and projects them to score more runs than the Yankees, allow fewer runs than the Phillies and win more games (84.6) than the Red Sox? The men in this camp can't help but ask that question. Has anyone noticed all the upgrades this team has made? They ask that one, too. They'd like us all to put aside the running commentary on that array of stars they haven't signed — and just focus on the guys they did bring in, over an offseason that inspired the 32 insiders who took part in our annual spring training preview survey to rank the Blue Jays as the fifth-most improved team in the American League. '(People) can say, 'What if,' but I think we've landed in a good place,' Schneider said. 'If you'd told me last September that (over the offseason) we would have acquired Yimi García, Nick Sandlin, Andrés Giménez, Jeff Hoffman, Anthony Santander and Max Scherzer, I'd be pretty OK with that. I'd be more than OK with that.' Then there's that Vladdy guy. On one hand, he also turned down their money this spring — saying no to what Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins described as a 'record-setting' contract. We don't know exactly what that offer looked like. But the Jays have dropped enough breadcrumbs to make it clear it would have gone down as one of the three or four biggest deals in the history of the sport. Now Guerrero is barreling full-bore toward free agency after this season. And that's also a heavy, often uncomfortable topic in this camp, for good reason. But if you're picking your 2025 All-Motivated Team, where would Guerrero rank? Is he the captain, the poster boy or practically a category unto himself? 'Oh, he might be No. 1,' Schneider said. 'But … we have a lot of guys on that team.' 'They had their numbers, I had my numbers.' Vladimir Guerrero Jr. confirms he and the Blue Jays did not reach an agreement on a contract extension before his Monday-night deadline. — Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) February 18, 2025 You'll never hear a packed stadium chant: 'We're No. 2.' You never want to be that team people describe as 'the Buffalo Bills of (pick your favorite category).' Nobody sets out to be that team that almost wins … or almost signs the biggest stars in the galaxy. As you may have noticed, there's not much difference between a consolation prize and no prize at all. Advertisement As Blue Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro said last week after his team came up short on extending Guerrero: 'There's no such thing as close or not close. There's done or not done.' On the other hand … It could be worse than to be Meryl Streep. How many Oscars didn't she win in her four decades or so as arguably America's greatest actress? That answer is 18, to be exact — versus the three Oscars she did take home. So while we won't be casting Shapiro and Atkins in 'The Bridges of Ontario Province' … and they won't be collecting any accolades for not quite signing Ohtani … they continue to make the argument that all of our beer mugs are half-empty if we don't at least recognize that they've continually gone down to the wire in their pursuit of the best free agents in baseball. 'I think that there were 26, 27, 28 teams … that weren't factoring in for those players you're talking about, and we still were,' Shapiro told reporters last week after the Guerrero negotiations shut down. 'We've been in a good spot on a lot of high-profile players, and we'll keep pounding. And one of these days, we're going to get one of those guys.' So how close did they actually get on those players? We've asked that question to agents and rival executives who were involved in some of those negotiations — and based on those conversations, here is how we would characterize the Jays' place in those talks. OHTANI — Ohtani never did board that fabled plane to Toronto on one of the craziest Hot Stove days ever, back in December 2023. But execs whose teams were involved in those negotiations believe that if, for some reason, Ohtani hadn't wanted to be a Dodger, he would have been a Blue Jay. Only Ohtani knows for sure. But it is well documented that three teams agreed to offer exactly the same heavily deferred 10-year, $700 million deal that Ohtani eventually signed — and the Jays were one of them. The other two were the Dodgers and Giants. So when the Jays claim that they weren't outbid, they have the facts on their side. Advertisement BURNES — This is another instance where the Blue Jays pushed for a player, firing a bigger offer at Burnes than the six-year, $210 million package he agreed to with the Diamondbacks. The Giants and Orioles were also involved. But while the Jays could match or beat the money, they couldn't figure out a way to match or beat Burnes' commute to the ballpark from his home in Scottsdale, Ariz. If you have any ideas on how to invent geographical teleportation, they'd probably take your call. SOTO — Was Soto ever going to leave New York? He had the Mets and Yankees involved — plus the Blue Jays, Red Sox and Dodgers cruising along on a highway that did not cross the RFK Triborough Bridge. It was a fun little derby while it lasted. Then Mets owner Steve Cohen upped the bidding to a place no one else was prepared to go — with the 15-year, $765 million deal that out-dollared not only the Jays, but also every other offer for every other player in history. So were the Blue Jays 'used' in those Soto negotiations? That's an easy argument to make. And we've heard rival front offices make it. But when a player has the Mets and Yankees on his trail from the day he files for free agency, does he really need any other team to stoke his market? ALONSO — There's nothing shocking about Alonso deciding to go back to the only team he'd ever played for. But it's clear there was more money out there for him in Toronto than the $54 million the Mets guaranteed him over two years. Was Alonso ever 'close' to becoming a Blue Jay? By Shapiro's definition of 'there's no such thing as close,' then let's go with no. But was there a clear path for him to become a Blue Jay, if the Jays had made an offer that significantly separated them from the Mets? Let's go with yes on that. SASAKI — If you followed the Sasaki negotiations at all, you know it was never going to be about money. He was a different kind of free agent, one whose signing bonus was capped by international bonus pools. So this is yet one more instance where the Jays were not outbid. Then what should we make of the fact that they were one of the three finalists — along with the Dodgers and Padres? Let's ask again: How half-full or half-empty is your beer mug? Advertisement Maybe Sasaki was always going to be a Dodger. Maybe he was never going to sign to play in a city so far from Japan. But two league sources briefed on the negotiations say he was serious enough about Toronto that he spent more days there, checking out their city and ballpark, than he spent visiting the Dodgers and Padres combined. So was this a 'rejection'? Or was it an example of a player who found himself intrigued by a place that almost no one expected to entice him? If the Blue Jays want to argue that people are misreading their place in the Sasaki sweepstakes, they have an interesting case. But add all of that up and what have you got? A whole lot of fish that wriggled away. And despite all of those bids and offered dollars, what goodwill has it built them? What bonus points for effort have they cashed in? Good luck finding any, in a sea of fan base frustration. 'What I see,' said one rival AL executive, 'is that their fans are kind of fed up with constantly reading about how 'the Blue Jays were also involved with this player, who didn't sign with them.' They want something to happen. And they're in a division where it's tough to make things happen.' So is it time to ask: When the biggest stars in the sport keep saying no, it's easy to jump to conclusions. And fans we hear from seem to find that nobody wants to play there narrative an easy conclusion to jump to. But is that really true? The people who run this team vociferously dispute that narrative 'Look at the past five years,' Schneider said. 'I know the last two years, that narrative has kind of crept in. But look at the past five years. We've still signed Kevin Gausman and Chris Bassitt and Jeff Hoffman and Anthony Santander. We've signed a lot of guys. And hopefully, when the time is right, we'll continue to do that.' Advertisement So here's an idea. Let's ask some of those guys why they signed — and what they see now. KEVIN GAUSMAN (signed for five years, $110 million before the 2022 season): He is three seasons into his five-year deal – and collected Cy Young Award votes in two of them. So Gausman has been one of the Blue Jays' best free-agent additions ever — and a guy with no reservations about the decision he made. That makes him the perfect Blue Jay to answer this pivotal question: 'If you're always finishing second on every big free agent, does that become a thing?' 'You know, the way I like to think about it,' Gausman replied, 'is that I'd rather be in an organization that's trying to get those guys than an organization that's not even trying. And that kind of goes back to, you hear a lot of fans complain about, 'These owners aren't spending money. This front office isn't doing this or that.' 'But in reality, there are a lot of teams that aren't even trying. So you've got to just be happy that you're on a team that's in on those guys and the willingness is there on our side. But you can't force a guy to sign somewhere.' Gausman understands the forces that pulled Ohtani, Sasaki, Alonso and others elsewhere. But what about Guerrero, we asked. If this team couldn't get a homegrown player like Vlad signed, was that a red flag to players — or anyone else? 'I don't know,' Gausman answered. 'That's a tough question. I think that might go back to, if a guy just doesn't want to be somewhere, then he's not going to choose to be there. But if he wants to be somewhere, then usually, a deal gets done, as we've seen. I think that's kind of what happened with Alonso.' So does it feel like Toronto is where Guerrero wants to be? Or with a player in his shoes, is it just business? 'The only person who really knows that is Vlad,' Gausman said. 'But I think he likes playing in Toronto. … And I think the fans obviously would love to have him here. But who knows what's going to happen? I think that if we're able to win this year, everything will line itself up.' ANTHONY SANTANDER (signed for five years, $92.5 million in January): It's all a little new for Santander, who last season hit more home runs (44) than any player on this free-agent market. Only three free-agent hitters — Juan Soto, Willy Adames and Alex Bregman — signed for more total dollars this winter than Santander. Somehow, there has been more attention paid to all the players the Jays didn't sign than the biggest free agent they did sign. Funny how that works. Advertisement But when Santander looks at those players who said no to Toronto, he thinks they're the ones missing out, not him. 'I look at this as a winning team,' he said. 'They've won a lot of games. And the other thing is, they have a really good staff and they have great facilities. Here in spring training, you're living in paradise. You walk around the facility? This is the definition of the big leagues. It's great.' Santander is excited to play alongside Guerrero, loves the allure of the AL East, and sees nothing but reasons to be stoked about the contract he signed and the team he joined. So he couldn't imagine, he said, why other players didn't see this team that way. 'Do you think that there are guys who don't want to play in Canada?' we asked. 'I have no idea,' Santander said. 'I love Toronto. I always loved when I would go to play against the Blue Jays when I was on the Orioles. So I can't speak for all the (other) players. I have no idea what they think.' JEFF HOFFMAN (signed for three years, $33 million in January): He is only two weeks into his second go-round with the Blue Jays, after signing the second-largest contract of any free-agent reliever this winter. But Hoffman is already volunteering to be the Jays' No. 1 recruiter of future free agents. 'I'll tell you what,' he said. 'They aren't going to be finishing second on free agents much longer, because word is going to get out. I've already been texting guys and saying: 'You guys have no idea what it's like here. This place is great.'' Hoffman knows there are many reasons free agents don't sign with teams that pursue them. The fit has to be right in every way, he said. And playing in Canada doesn't work for everyone. But whatever it was that stopped those other guys from picking the Blue Jays, it isn't what he sees. Advertisement 'I was intrigued by the team that's been put together,' Hoffman said. 'I was intrigued by the fact that they underperformed last year, because I know there's a hunger coming in. I know they missed the playoffs last year, but it's not like they've missed the playoffs the last five years in a row. What I see is a team that's hungry and ready to win. 'So I don't think this is going to be the story that's written about the Blue Jays,' he said. 'By the time it's all said and done, I don't think that's going to be what they're known for, is finishing second. I think the story is going to be, they had some trouble getting guys through the door at first, but once they land that first top-of-the-market guy, players will start to see that. And obviously, word travels fast through our game.' But you know what else is obvious? If Guerrero walks out that door this fall and doesn't return, that word will also travel fast. So welcome to possibly the most pressure-packed season in Blue Jays history. It might be the grand finale for the face of their franchise — and for his longtime tag-team partner, Bo Bichette, who is also an impending free agent. It might be played, from start to finish, beneath the cloud of how formidable that All-Almost-a-Blue-Jay Team could have been. It will be a litmus-test season for those in charge — for Shapiro, for Atkins and certainly for the manager. And they all will feel the boulder on their shoulders that comes with a fed-up fanbase. So if this were a Netflix series, we'd watch. But since it's 'only' real life, there's just one option. They'd better win. 'Absolutely,' Hoffman said. 'We have to win. It's all that matters. If you don't win, nobody gets excited about any of it.' GO DEEPER Rosenthal: Blue Jays never should have reached this point with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. GO DEEPER This Week in Mets: Why Vladimir Guerrero Jr. doesn't look like a fit for the Mets GO DEEPER Which MLB front offices, managers and teams are under the most pressure? Insiders weigh in GO DEEPER Ten MLB teams that should prepare to target Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in free agency (Top image: John Schneider: John McDonnell / Associated Press; Juan Soto: Sam Navarro / Imagn Images)
