You've probably noticed that the Jays longest winning streak this season is... ahem... three games. Is this any way to win a championship? Or even a little respect?
Probably not. Theoretically, I suppose you could win a world championship without ever going on a hot streak. Before the playoffs anyway. I don't think I recommend it.
But still - a team could go L-W-L-W-L-W week after week after week - twenty-seven times in all - and they'd go home with a .500 record. But if, just once every month, one of those Ls became a W; if you ran off a three game winning streak just once every month - you'd end up 87-75. Exactly like the 2006 Jays, and several games better than the 2006 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals.
That's not how it's generally done, and it's not how the Cards actually did it, of course.
Anyway - all of us, from time to time, have been known to lament the strange and sad fact that the Blue Jays just never seem to get really, really hot. They never seem to roll off nine straight wins; they never even seem to win 15 of 17, which is just about as effective.
And if you're going to be a good team, or a contender, or a champion, you need those patches within the season when you gain ten - count 'em, ten - games on .500. The smaller the number of games it takes, the greater the chance that you can do it again at another point in the same season.
The smallest number of games you can play and gain ten games on .500 is... 10, of course. You go 10-0 just once, and you'll end up at 86-76 if all you do is break even over the other 152 games. But let's suppose there's a patch in those other 152 games where you go... oh, I dunno... 31-21. Now you can split the other 100 games, and you've got a 91-71 record, which will surely have you in the hunt for the post-season. And from there, if just once a month. you turn one loss into a win - once every four or five weeks.. you get to play in October. [This quick fix made necessary by sharp-eyed Bauxite groove noticing that my ability to carry out basic arithmetical functions seems to have abandoned me in my old age.]
See? Just tread water for most of the year, and put together a couple of good streaks! Presto!
Ah, if only that was all there was to it...
But anyway. By definition, any team that finishes 10 games over .500 must have had a stretch within that season (even if that stretch covers - oh - 146 games) where they were 10 games over .500. So let's wander back through some recent Jays history, and see if this team has ever... ever... been hot.
2006 - They did finish 12 games over, so they must have gotten the job done at some point. As it happens, they did it in the first half of the season. They put together a 29-19 run from May 10 through July 1, closing it off by winning 5 in a row and 9 of 11. The five straight wins was their longest winning streak all year. The overall 48 game period lifted them from two games over .500 (17-15) to 12 games over (46-34). That was as far above .500 as they would get all season, and of course it's also where they finished the season. Which means that they played exactly .500 ball for the final three months of the season. They actually dropped as low as four games over .500 (57-53) after a 7 game losing streak in early August, and again to three games over (69-66) after losing five in a row at the end of August.
2005 - The team that never got hot. Their longest winning streak was four games (they did it three times); the longest losing streak was five games (twice). They spent most of the season very close to .500, never falling more than two games under (9-11, 45-47) but never rising more than four games over (6-2, 16-12, 28-24, 55-51) until a 7-2 stretch in late August lifted them to a season best six games over (63-57). From that not very giddy height, they eventually gave away 10 games to .500,, slipping four games under (76-80) and finished up two games below at 80-82.
2004 - The Jays fell below .500 on the very first day of the Season From Hell, and never came close to making it back. They lost their first three games, and 11 of their first 14 to plant themselves firmly in a deep, dark hole. A six week stretch of reasonably competent ball, highlighted by a season-best six game winning streak in early May saw them pull to five games under .500 on several separate occasions (13-18, 22-27, 25-30) - but that's as good as it would get. They started to slip further behind in June and July, and in August, of course, they drove right off the cliff and plummeted down, down into that awful chasm... oh, let us not speak of it.
2003 - A six game winning streak was also the best that the 2003 squad could manage. Still, the fact that four of those games constituted a sweep of the Yankees, in Yankee Stadium, really ought to count for extra. Nevertheless, this was a team that could, and did, get hot. Very, very hot indeed. They stumbled out of the gate, and posted a dismal 7-15 mark on April 23. After playing .500 ball for a week, they suddenly caught fire. They ripped off 34 wins in their next 48 games - that's .708 ball for almost two months, gaining a full 20 games over .500 in somewhat less than one-third of a season. Accordingly, by June 23, they were 12 games over at 44-32. That, alas, was the high-water mark. Soon afterwards, they lost 11 of 13, slipping to just 3 games above .500. They dropped below .500 at the beginning of August, and were three games under by the time they wrapped up their final West Coast trip on August 25. And then they got hot again, closing out the year with another burst that gained more than 10 games on .500 - this time it was a 22-9 run to close out the season.
2002 - The new general manager - J.P. Ricciardi - and the manager he inherited from the previous regime - Buck Martinez - never did seem like a match made in heaven. Everyone assumed the new GM would make a change; the real question was when he would actually pull the trigger. The 2002 Jays came out of the gate streaky as all hell. They won their first two. They lost their next five. They won their next four. They lost their next four. And soon thereafter, they dropped eight in a row, to fall to 10-18. By late May, they were stumbling along at 17-27 when they set out on a nine game road trip. They lost the first six, getting swept in Cleveland and Boston. And then, they took three in a row in Detroit - and this was the moment when Ricciardi decided to send Martinez back to the broadcast booth. Has anyone else ever wondered why that particular day? Who the hell knows, but here are three points to consider - 1) it was the end of the road trip. 2) why not turn things over to the new guy when the team has actually won a couple of games, and might be starting to feel a little more competent; 3) the three wins in Detroit did give Martinez exactly 100 career wins as a manager, which seems likely to stand as his lifetime total. Oh, that Ricciardi - such a sentimentalist! The Jays had sunk as low as 16 games under .500 (17-33) with Martinez in charge; under Carlos Tosca, they would actually fall further. They lost 8 of 9 at the beginning of July to stand 19 games below break-even, at 34-53. They were up and down over the next two months - they won 8 of 9 in mid-July, but immediately thereafter lost 12 of 15, to fall a full 20 games below .500 (53-73). And then... they actually got hot. They closed out the season with a very nice 25-11 run, and won their final seven games in a row (best streak of the season), bringing their record almost all the way back to even.
I'm going to stop there, at the dawn of the Ricciardi era. That 7 game winning streak at the end of the 2002 campaign is still the Jays longest such streak of the current millennium. I did look over the Game Logs of each season going back to the World Series years. A few notes:
Jim Fregosi's first team put together a very impressive two month run in mid-season, going 38-15 from June 13 through August 11. This was one streaky bunch. They put together an 8 game winning streak in April, but barely managed a winning record for the month. They had a stretch in August where they lost 9 of 10, and one on September where they lost 9 of 11. All of which more or less canceled out the good work done during the hot weather.
I remember Tim Johnson's 1998 team as having scuffled through a disappointing first half. And then, at the deadline, Gord Ash traded away all the Proven Veterans that Johnson had been running out there every day - Stanley, Sprague, Guzman, Phillips Myers! - giving Johnson no choice but to Play the Kids. And the kids, as the song says, were all right. However, my memory gives only a portion of the truth. The old guys managed to gain 10 games on .500 themselves in just two months, going 35-25 to take the team from seven games under .500 (10-17) to three games over (45-42). But they were two games under at the deadline, when Ash cleaned house, and they were just one game over a few weeks later when all of a sudden... en fuego! They suddenly snapped of 11 wins in a row. At 78-66, they were 23.5 games behind the Yankees, but just five games out of the Wild Card. They picked up two more games on .500 on the final weekend, finishing 14 games over. Which is the highest the franchise has been above .500 at any point in any season since the days when Duane Ward could still pitch.
The two World Series teams never put together two digit winning streaks - the 1993 team managed eight wins in a row, the 1992 team's best streak was a nine-gamer. The 1993 team also managed to lose 10 of 11 games at one point along the way. What both of these clubs were very good at was putting together those two and three week stretches of really high quality baseball that opens up space above the .500 mark. The 1993 team won 16 of 18 at one point; they also put together a 15-4 run, and two separate 13-3 stretches. In those four fragments, they went 57-12 - a full 45 games over .500 (which helped them withstand the 1-10 run they tossed in as well.)
The 1992 team also had a 15-4 run, along with a 17-7 patch, and a 19-8 patch. Those three season fragments put them 32 games over .500 (51-19).
So both world champion teams had three different parts of the season when they gained 10 games on .500. None of their followers have had more than two.
So, yeah. I think it would be helpful if the Jays could manage a winning streak longer than three games.
Probably not. Theoretically, I suppose you could win a world championship without ever going on a hot streak. Before the playoffs anyway. I don't think I recommend it.
But still - a team could go L-W-L-W-L-W week after week after week - twenty-seven times in all - and they'd go home with a .500 record. But if, just once every month, one of those Ls became a W; if you ran off a three game winning streak just once every month - you'd end up 87-75. Exactly like the 2006 Jays, and several games better than the 2006 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals.
That's not how it's generally done, and it's not how the Cards actually did it, of course.
Anyway - all of us, from time to time, have been known to lament the strange and sad fact that the Blue Jays just never seem to get really, really hot. They never seem to roll off nine straight wins; they never even seem to win 15 of 17, which is just about as effective.
And if you're going to be a good team, or a contender, or a champion, you need those patches within the season when you gain ten - count 'em, ten - games on .500. The smaller the number of games it takes, the greater the chance that you can do it again at another point in the same season.
The smallest number of games you can play and gain ten games on .500 is... 10, of course. You go 10-0 just once, and you'll end up at 86-76 if all you do is break even over the other 152 games. But let's suppose there's a patch in those other 152 games where you go... oh, I dunno... 31-21. Now you can split the other 100 games, and you've got a 91-71 record, which will surely have you in the hunt for the post-season. And from there, if just once a month. you turn one loss into a win - once every four or five weeks.. you get to play in October. [This quick fix made necessary by sharp-eyed Bauxite groove noticing that my ability to carry out basic arithmetical functions seems to have abandoned me in my old age.]
See? Just tread water for most of the year, and put together a couple of good streaks! Presto!
Ah, if only that was all there was to it...
But anyway. By definition, any team that finishes 10 games over .500 must have had a stretch within that season (even if that stretch covers - oh - 146 games) where they were 10 games over .500. So let's wander back through some recent Jays history, and see if this team has ever... ever... been hot.
2006 - They did finish 12 games over, so they must have gotten the job done at some point. As it happens, they did it in the first half of the season. They put together a 29-19 run from May 10 through July 1, closing it off by winning 5 in a row and 9 of 11. The five straight wins was their longest winning streak all year. The overall 48 game period lifted them from two games over .500 (17-15) to 12 games over (46-34). That was as far above .500 as they would get all season, and of course it's also where they finished the season. Which means that they played exactly .500 ball for the final three months of the season. They actually dropped as low as four games over .500 (57-53) after a 7 game losing streak in early August, and again to three games over (69-66) after losing five in a row at the end of August.
2005 - The team that never got hot. Their longest winning streak was four games (they did it three times); the longest losing streak was five games (twice). They spent most of the season very close to .500, never falling more than two games under (9-11, 45-47) but never rising more than four games over (6-2, 16-12, 28-24, 55-51) until a 7-2 stretch in late August lifted them to a season best six games over (63-57). From that not very giddy height, they eventually gave away 10 games to .500,, slipping four games under (76-80) and finished up two games below at 80-82.
2004 - The Jays fell below .500 on the very first day of the Season From Hell, and never came close to making it back. They lost their first three games, and 11 of their first 14 to plant themselves firmly in a deep, dark hole. A six week stretch of reasonably competent ball, highlighted by a season-best six game winning streak in early May saw them pull to five games under .500 on several separate occasions (13-18, 22-27, 25-30) - but that's as good as it would get. They started to slip further behind in June and July, and in August, of course, they drove right off the cliff and plummeted down, down into that awful chasm... oh, let us not speak of it.
2003 - A six game winning streak was also the best that the 2003 squad could manage. Still, the fact that four of those games constituted a sweep of the Yankees, in Yankee Stadium, really ought to count for extra. Nevertheless, this was a team that could, and did, get hot. Very, very hot indeed. They stumbled out of the gate, and posted a dismal 7-15 mark on April 23. After playing .500 ball for a week, they suddenly caught fire. They ripped off 34 wins in their next 48 games - that's .708 ball for almost two months, gaining a full 20 games over .500 in somewhat less than one-third of a season. Accordingly, by June 23, they were 12 games over at 44-32. That, alas, was the high-water mark. Soon afterwards, they lost 11 of 13, slipping to just 3 games above .500. They dropped below .500 at the beginning of August, and were three games under by the time they wrapped up their final West Coast trip on August 25. And then they got hot again, closing out the year with another burst that gained more than 10 games on .500 - this time it was a 22-9 run to close out the season.
2002 - The new general manager - J.P. Ricciardi - and the manager he inherited from the previous regime - Buck Martinez - never did seem like a match made in heaven. Everyone assumed the new GM would make a change; the real question was when he would actually pull the trigger. The 2002 Jays came out of the gate streaky as all hell. They won their first two. They lost their next five. They won their next four. They lost their next four. And soon thereafter, they dropped eight in a row, to fall to 10-18. By late May, they were stumbling along at 17-27 when they set out on a nine game road trip. They lost the first six, getting swept in Cleveland and Boston. And then, they took three in a row in Detroit - and this was the moment when Ricciardi decided to send Martinez back to the broadcast booth. Has anyone else ever wondered why that particular day? Who the hell knows, but here are three points to consider - 1) it was the end of the road trip. 2) why not turn things over to the new guy when the team has actually won a couple of games, and might be starting to feel a little more competent; 3) the three wins in Detroit did give Martinez exactly 100 career wins as a manager, which seems likely to stand as his lifetime total. Oh, that Ricciardi - such a sentimentalist! The Jays had sunk as low as 16 games under .500 (17-33) with Martinez in charge; under Carlos Tosca, they would actually fall further. They lost 8 of 9 at the beginning of July to stand 19 games below break-even, at 34-53. They were up and down over the next two months - they won 8 of 9 in mid-July, but immediately thereafter lost 12 of 15, to fall a full 20 games below .500 (53-73). And then... they actually got hot. They closed out the season with a very nice 25-11 run, and won their final seven games in a row (best streak of the season), bringing their record almost all the way back to even.
I'm going to stop there, at the dawn of the Ricciardi era. That 7 game winning streak at the end of the 2002 campaign is still the Jays longest such streak of the current millennium. I did look over the Game Logs of each season going back to the World Series years. A few notes:
Jim Fregosi's first team put together a very impressive two month run in mid-season, going 38-15 from June 13 through August 11. This was one streaky bunch. They put together an 8 game winning streak in April, but barely managed a winning record for the month. They had a stretch in August where they lost 9 of 10, and one on September where they lost 9 of 11. All of which more or less canceled out the good work done during the hot weather.
I remember Tim Johnson's 1998 team as having scuffled through a disappointing first half. And then, at the deadline, Gord Ash traded away all the Proven Veterans that Johnson had been running out there every day - Stanley, Sprague, Guzman, Phillips Myers! - giving Johnson no choice but to Play the Kids. And the kids, as the song says, were all right. However, my memory gives only a portion of the truth. The old guys managed to gain 10 games on .500 themselves in just two months, going 35-25 to take the team from seven games under .500 (10-17) to three games over (45-42). But they were two games under at the deadline, when Ash cleaned house, and they were just one game over a few weeks later when all of a sudden... en fuego! They suddenly snapped of 11 wins in a row. At 78-66, they were 23.5 games behind the Yankees, but just five games out of the Wild Card. They picked up two more games on .500 on the final weekend, finishing 14 games over. Which is the highest the franchise has been above .500 at any point in any season since the days when Duane Ward could still pitch.
The two World Series teams never put together two digit winning streaks - the 1993 team managed eight wins in a row, the 1992 team's best streak was a nine-gamer. The 1993 team also managed to lose 10 of 11 games at one point along the way. What both of these clubs were very good at was putting together those two and three week stretches of really high quality baseball that opens up space above the .500 mark. The 1993 team won 16 of 18 at one point; they also put together a 15-4 run, and two separate 13-3 stretches. In those four fragments, they went 57-12 - a full 45 games over .500 (which helped them withstand the 1-10 run they tossed in as well.)
The 1992 team also had a 15-4 run, along with a 17-7 patch, and a 19-8 patch. Those three season fragments put them 32 games over .500 (51-19).
So both world champion teams had three different parts of the season when they gained 10 games on .500. None of their followers have had more than two.
So, yeah. I think it would be helpful if the Jays could manage a winning streak longer than three games.
