And we're not little children
And we know what we want
And the future is certain
Give us time to work it out
John Farrell and the last-place Red Sox are coming to town.
Many of us thought the 2014 Blue Jays looked like a .500 team, more or less. Here they sit, a week from September, two games over .500 - and that on merit, having scored and allowed exactly the same number of runs.
How do we feel about the universe unfolding more or less as expected? Not that great, I suspect. This team led its division by six games at one point. Which is a lot. They had given that back by the time the trading deadline hit, but they were still just 1.5 games off the division lead, still holding a post-season spot.
That's all over now. Anthopoulos couldn't make a move at the deadline because he thought the price was too high - that the short-term benefit would be outweighed by the long-term damage. Ok, but. There are two things that need to be said about that kind of thinking: 1) this team is built for the short-term. Anthopoulos at one time may have been stockpiling assets and building for the future, but he changed course. Trading for Reyes, Buehrle, and Dickey is a strategy with the idea of winning something right now, and 2) long-term damage was done anyway. Anthopoulos, and Gibbons (whose authority comes entirely from his position as the GM's extension on the field), and ownership have all lost credibility with the players. That's hard to fix.
Anyway....
Buchholz (5-8, 5.94) vs Happ (8-8, 4.39)
De La Rosa (4-5, 3.69) vs Dickey (10-12, 4.08)
Kelly (2-3, 4.26) vs Stroman (7-5, 4.11)
Bill James was working a new counting stat the other day - Pitched Well But Did Not Win. Basically, it's Game Score of 50+ without getting a win. I haven't checked but R.A. Dickey certainly leads his own team in frustration. Dickey's made 18 starts with a Game Score better than 50, and has just 7 wins to show for it.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20140825182314522