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He wasn’t afraid to use the B-word, wasn’t afraid to express the raw emotion that lingers from a dreamy Blue Jays season that almost was.
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The emotion Mark Shapiro shares with so many Toronto baseball fans. The feeling, he said quite candidly, was bitterness.
Of a season so close and so far away. Of an opportunity lost, no matter how you add up all the circumstances.
The number 91 was impressive, the number of wins, at least one too few. Shapiro has felt this way before and you don’t get over seasons left behind, you never really do. In 2005, his Cleveland Indians won 93 games and didn’t qualify for the post-season in the American League. He thought then, like he thinks now, that his team was this close.
The next year the Indians won 78 games. The bitter feeling from those seasons juxtaposed has never quite left him. Which may explain the little bit of anger, the little bit of frustration, the not so little bit of the notion of having to play home games in three stadiums and two different countries. And inside Shapiro, different as he may be from Brian Burke, there is a shared philosophy.
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Just get into the playoffs and take your chances. Just get in, as the Atlanta Braves are seemingly showing, and who knows what might be possible.
The only way you can win a World Series begins with getting in.
It is difficult at night to turn the television on and watch the rather remarkable Boston Red Sox and watch the Braves and not believe the Blue Jays belong in the playoffs.
If OPS is the ultimate statistic for offensive players, the Jays had three of the top-11 hitters in the American League. They had two of the top-four home-run hitters. They had three of the top seven in batting average and three of the top 11 in slugging percentage.
In runs scored, they were first, second and fourth. In hits, it was Bo Bichette one, Vladimir Guerrero two. Combined, Bichette and Marcus Semien stole 40 bases, were caught twice. The only offensive statistic that didn’t work was the number of games George Springer lost to injury. He missed 84 games in all. What if he had missed 70 games instead of 84? What would have happened then?
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So much of now is about what almost happened then.
Shapiro, his general manager Ross Atkins and the rest of his front office, had the off-season of their dreams last winter. They paid big money for Springer. They paid little money for likely Cy Young Award winner Robbie Ray. They paid market value for Semien — and got way more than that from him. They traded some minor-league spare parts for Steven Matz.
Ray was spectacular, Matz delivered beyond expectations and Semien may have been the Jays’ most valuable person and very close to MVP for the team and the league, not in any way disrespecting the season for the ages Guerrero Jr. had.
Guerrero had never been the hitting giant he became in his third big league season. And while stunning the AL with his bat, he became a quality first baseman.
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Bichette had a monster year offensively and after a mediocre start to the season in the field, he played beyond solid at shortstop. A Blue Jays infield that started last season with questions at first, at short, and at third base, and no one knowing how Semien would take to playing second, ended without question at all.
The Jays began last season figuring Hyun-jin Ryu would be their top-of-the-rotation pitcher and after that a whole lot of who knows. Ryu lost that designation as the season went on. Ray became front-page news. Rookie Alek Manoah had a brilliant first season, the Jays winning 16 of his 20 starts. Jose Berrios was as solid as advertised. Matz had a better earned-run average than Ryu.
Look at half the teams very much alive in the post-season, they don’t have the Jays starting pitching, they don’t have the Jays power or versatility of offence, they didn’t have the bevy of players having monster years.
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In between, connect the dots and add up all the numbers, Shapiro’s bitterness makes sense. The Blue Jays won 48 games against winning teams. No one in the AL had more. Despite playing games in Dunedin and Buffalo, they won more games at home than the New York Yankees or the Atlanta Braves won at home. Shapiro lived through the 93-win Indians season, followed by the 78 wins. He knows the punch in the gut that can be. He knows what the punch in the gut of leaving this season too soon feels like now. And with Ray a free agent, with Semien a free agent, with Matz a free agent, and none of them yet to declare the need to return to the Blue Jays, it’s entirely possible all three will be playing somewhere else next season.
How do you replace Ray? How do you replace Semien? Maybe you can replace Matz? But it’s not just that simple.
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And that’s what’s unspoken from Shapiro, the club president: Will Guerrero’s second monster year be comparable to his first? Will Bichette get these kind of numbers again, and the same for Teoscar Hernandez and the second-half brilliance of Lourdes Gurriel Jr. You can’t replace what Semien did offensively, defensively and on a day-to-day basis in example setting, leadership and responsibility.
The bitterness of Shapiro is easy to understand. He shares that with his fan base. Getting past it after so much went right — now that’s the challenge.
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October 19, 2021 at 04:52AM
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SIMMONS: Bitter Shapiro still struggling with Blue Jays being one win short - Toronto Sun
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