It Hurts to Live: A 2021 Toronto Blue Jays Post-Mortem
After a season of imperfection, the Jays were perfect this weekend.
After a game on Friday in which the lowly Baltimore Orioles came worryingly close to making it a competitive game after an early Blue Jays lead and a solid outing from Steven Matz, the Jays quit messing around. Long story short, they reminded the baseball world (and the poor, poor Orioles pitching staff who they were) by doing the batting equivalent of grabbing the O’s by the hair and smashing their faces through a glass window. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit his 47th and 48th home runs, tying with Royals catcher Salvador Pérez for the MLB lead.
George Springer hit three home runs, including a grand slam on Sunday. Alek Manoah shone brightly as ever with seven innings of one-run, 10 strikeout ball. Bo Bichette came out in support of minor leaguers protesting for better working conditions. It was perfect.
They looked every bit like the team that went 22-9 in September and, thus far, October. They were the best team in the American League. A team that had overcome non-ideal circumstances in one of the worst years of everyone’s life. Who had to play home games in three different parts of North America, two of which routinely featured more away fans than Jays fans, who cheered against them with gleefully demoralizing abandon. Not only that, but the 2021 Toronto Blue Jays were fun. Likeable. Filled with players who, by all accounts, share a profound love for the game of baseball, a deep-seated desire to improve their game and, most noticeably, who seem to adore their teammates and enjoy each other’s company, even when things could’ve been going better. And what a cast of characters they were.
There was Vladimir Guerrero Jr. A generational legacy talent dogged by underperformance and the first real adversity of his baseball career in his first two MLB seasons, Vladdy emerged in the biggest way possible, crushing opposing pitching with an approach that was somehow simultaneously calculated and disciplined while also being explosive and exuberant.
He’s also a massive goofball, and we love him for it.
There was also Bo Bichette. Another legacy player with a vicious bat who is not only one of the best young shortstops in baseball, but was so enthusiastic about returning to Toronto that he wrote a Players’ Tribune article about it whose title features not one, not three, but five exclamation points!
George Springer was the biggest signing of the offseason but found himself sidelined for just over half the season by various leg injuries. When he did play healthy though, he was a force of nature, electrifying with both his play and his clubhouse presence.
Robbie Ray had been an unplayable starting pitcher with control issues with the Arizona Diamondbacks who showed signs of modest improvement after being traded to the Jays in 2020. Re-upping for a one year deal with Toronto, Ray suddenly became one of the best pitchers in the American League, as well as MLB’s foremost tight pants appreciator.
Marcus Semien had a down year in 2020 and, after receiving a slap in the face of an offer from the Oakland Athletics, not only his former employers, but his hometown team, took a one-year prove-it deal with the Blue Jays in which he played second base as opposed to his usual shortstop. All he did was play like one of the best players in baseball, becoming the second hitter on the team after Vladdy to reach 40 home runs, breaking the record for home runs in a single season by a second baseman while becoming a leader in the clubhouse, even taking on something of a mentorship role to Bichette.
Teoscar Hernández has been a personal favourite of mine since the Jays traded for him in 2017, a prospect with all the raw talent in the world who just couldn’t put it together in the big leagues until he got sent down in 2019. Once he returned, he low-key became one of the better outfielders in the American League. Teo had endeared himself to fans with his cheerful personality and wonderful smile and was finally rewarded for his various frustrations and the grind to improve himself as an all-around hitter with his first All-Star appearance.
Susana Lluch is a single parent who worked hard to provide a normal childhood for her sons, Erik and Alek Manoah, working as a legal assistant while doing various side jobs, sometimes going hungry so that she could pay for her boys’ meals. Two years after seeing Alek drafted 11th overall by the Blue Jays, Lluch got to watch her younger son take the mound in Yankee Stadium to begin what would be a rookie season better than anyone could have reasonably imagined out of a kid who had barely played in the minor leagues. A bulldog with wicked stuff, Manoah also made a name for himself as a big, exuberant personality in the clubhouse.
Those aren’t even half of the fun stories and characters that formed the 2021 Toronto Blue Jays. I would be writing all day if I wanted to write about all my favourite personalities on this team. Alejandro Kirk, Jordan Romano, Tim Mayza, Adam Cimber, Steven Matz, Hyun Jin Ryu, Ross Stripling, José Berríos, Pineapple-headed absolute legend Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Cavan Biggio, Danny Jansen, Santiago Espinal, Nate Pearson, the list goes on. Charlie Montoyo, the team’s manager who, despite the occasional move that drew the ire of fans (rightly or wrongly), steered the team through some discouraging waters and always stayed laid-back, upbeat, and positive, even when there was little reason to be either.
A hallmark of the season was the team’s signature home run celebration attire, Blue Jacket, emblazoned with not only the players’ countries of origin but nations from all over the baseball world, a love letter to the evolution of the game beloved by so many around the world. The 2021 Toronto Blue Jays were protagonists in the truest sense of the word. And it was a joy to watch them.
And then it just didn’t matter.
It was a gut punch with a sledgehammer. The Jays had just completed the sweep of the Orioles. All they needed to keep the season going was a loss by either the dull-as-dishwater New York Yankees to the formidable Tampa Bay Rays, or a loss by the Boston Red Sox to the rebuilding Washington Nationals.
Thanks to Aaron Judge and Rafael Devers, neither happened. Now the protagonists, who had won 91 fucking games, go home empty-handed after a climax that seemed engineered in a lab to create the most boring Wild Card result possible: A one-game showdown between the Yankees and Red Sox. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. There was still so much left to do. It should be us.
I am in mental anguish.
I’m writing this without the clearest idea of what this post is meant to be. I’m not sure how I should be feeling. On one hand, this isn’t meant to be a post where I get pissed off (though I am that too) and start busily breaking down whose fault it is that the Jays have become the best ever team to miss out on playoffs in the Wild Card era, and who must be blamed, fired, etc. Frankly, I’ve already seen enough of that on Twitter, and it’s exhausting. There’s nothing wrong with looking at this team and seeing the upside. The Toronto Blue Jays will hopefully be contending for championships shortly. We saw that this season when the Jays were certainly facing more adversity than the fucking Yankees and the stupid goddamn Red Sox. And while it was cut short all too soon, you’d be right to be over the moon about the direction this team is going. Which I am.
But I also don’t want to act like it’s wrong to be upset, or even angry. Hell, I’m both those things. After all, the 2021 Toronto Blue Jays had a knack for making their own bad luck sometimes, giving away winnable games and going through stretches where they just couldn’t put together any meaningful competition, try as they might’ve. If even one bullpen implosion could be wiped from history, if one costly defensive blunder could be corrected, if the offence can rally against the soft-tossing lefty who’s having a field day against them for some reason, then this becomes a very different post. Or perhaps most prudently, whether a team that got an entire season in Toronto makes the playoffs.
And to have it be the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. The Boston Fucking Red Sox and the New York Fucking Yankees! The two teams and fanbases that deserve all the misery in the world! This shitty feeling probably wouldn’t be as bad if the Mariners had passed us. Why did it have to be those two teams in the Wild Card game, a matchup that no one other than a cabal of TV executives and billionaire lizard men that control MLB wanted to see?
Not only that, but two of their best players: Robbie Ray and Marcus Semien, aren’t guaranteed to return, off to free agency, where they will deservedly, undoubtedly, make a shit-ton of money. And it could be the Jays who pay them, but it could also not. And that sucks big time.
There will be a time soon to talk about how the Jays move from here. And you can bet we’ll be doing that here on this humble blog masquerading as a newsletter. But now just can’t be that time. It just hurts too, too much to be objective about anything right now. But there’s value in that, I think. It’s part of loving a sport and a team so much that you feel personally injured when things go wrong. It’s a socially acceptable, (usually) not unhealthy way of trying to be a part of something relatively bigger than ourselves, whether that be a grand narrative, some fancy, improbable numbers, or just a bunch of great kids out to prove that they can excel at the game they love.
And when the team’s as likeable as this one, with the expectations on the rise, that’s when parasocial relationships start hitting real good. Or, again, really bad, as is the case right now. I want Springer, Ray, Ryu, Matz and Semien to make a deep run this year. I really wanted the young guys to finally taste postseason success. In my heart of hearts, I know that Vladdy, Bo, Biggio, Teo, Ray, Gurriel, Espinal, Manoah, Romano, Pearson, Kirk, and Jansen all deserve this, even if I can’t explain why and fuck you for asking me to. And seeing their coronation postponed, as it were, is painful for anyone emotionally invested.
Suffering is a part of sports. We’ve done our fair share of it as Jays fans, and now that we’re at a point where we expect things from the Blue Jays and we connect with them as people, it’s going to be that much sadder when it gets, well, sad. And that’s okay. In the words of Night in the Woods protagonist Mae Borowski:
I want it to hurt. Bad. I want to lose. I want to get beaten up. I want to hold on until I'm thrown off and everything ends. And you know what? Until that happens, I want to hope again. And I want it to hurt. Because that means it meant something.
Granted, Mae was talking about the death of Midwestern rural America at the hands of capitalism, so it’s a bit more high stakes, but I think the principle applies.
For all you could say about this year’s Jays team, I don’t think anyone can say that this team will be easily forgotten, though the extent to which may depend on how well the team does in the future. Obviously for the reason that it was a really good team who should’ve done better. But if they make the playoffs in the future (and god I hope to do) maybe we look back at this season as a sign of the things to come, the things that were possible and would be possible.
I loved the 2021 Blue Jays. I can honestly say they’re probably my second-favourite Jays team of all time (though seeing how I only started watching baseball in 2005, there isn’t a ton to choose from). I’ll always remember this team for what they were, good, bad, and otherwise. I don’t really have a choice in the matter, after all. Baseball is cruel and deterministic in that way.
And whether you’re seething with deserved anger, searching for a silver lining, or just trying to come to grips with it all, I encourage you to remember it all too and hold it close to your heart. Let yourself feel the emotional rollercoaster. There will never be another team exactly like the 2021 Toronto Blue Jays. Nothing lasts forever, and there’s something both sad and beautiful about that.
Goodnight.
Goodnight.
Goodbye.
BEST BIRDS
Hitter: George Springer (8)
Honourable Mentions: Danny Jansen, Santiago Espinal
Pitcher: Alek Manoah (8)
Honourable Mentions: Steven Matz, Hyun Jin Ryu
BEST BIRD STANDINGS
Hitters:
Vladimir Guerrero Jr.- 13 (clinched)
Bo Bichette- 9
George Springer- 8
Marcus Semien- 7
Lourdes Gurriel Jr.- 5
Teoscar Hernández- 4
Joe Panik- 2
Randal Grichuk- 2
Santiago Espinal- 1
Cavan Biggio- 1
Pitchers:
Robbie Ray- 15 (clinched)
Hyun Jin Ryu- 9
Alek Manoah- 8
José Berríos- 4
Ross Stripling- 4
Steven Matz- 4
Julian Merryweather- 2
Adam Cimber- 1
Trevor Richards- 1
Anthony Kay- 1
Anthony Castro- 1
Ryan Borucki- 1
Thank you very much for reading and supporting JAYSLAM for its very first regular season! There were growing pains and things I could’ve done better for sure, but overall, I’m happy to have kept this weird little project going for the entire season.
After getting some broader MLB stuff out within the next day or so, I’m going to be taking a little break for about a week (unless some major news drops), just to recharge my batteries so JAYSLAM is ready to go for the offseason.
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