Save Us, Brad Pitt

Is it too early to get off the Blue Jays’ bandwagon? This year, their hopes were pretty much counting on the following:

• Jose Reyes stays injury free, adding a new run-manufacturing dimension to their offence.
• The starting pitchers play to the best of their ability
• The other teams in the American League East aren’t as good as they seem to be.

Amazingly, all those hopes were dashed in the first couple of innings of the season, when R.A. Dickey gave up three runs to Tampa Bay, and Reyes pulled a hamstring in his first at bat. That’s a new record, since we can usually get to June before losing all hope.

And that’s the depressing thing in the toughest division in baseball. For most baseball fans, there’s some enjoyment in kidding yourself that your mediocre team can put together a slightly better season than the other mediocre teams in the division. But for the American League East, there are championship seasons where everything comes together perfectly, and then there are seasons where you’re twelve games behind at the All-Star break.

It’s not like a year is even going to make a difference. Usually, you can always say, “wait until next year” for another chance that your mediocre team will start overachieving then. But it’s not like we’re going to develop a bunch of superstars by then. So it’s more like “wait until five years from now, once we’ve had a chance to trade our veterans for draft-picks, replenish the farm system, and develop a team of low-cost stars who will reach their peak in a two-year window before they sign with someone else.”