TORONTO – Less than an hour after the Toronto Blue Jays’ season ended, Bo Bichette and Matt Chapman quietly compared notes in the clubhouse at the Rogers Center. Close by, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. his locker. In the coaching room, David Phelps thanked the team staff for helping his 35-year-old arm through another season.
None of them had understood what had happened on the field earlier that evening. An 8-1 lead painfully disappeared, costing the Blue Jays a chance to extend their season and secure something that has so far eluded the young core of this team: their first playoff win.
“A heartbreaking loss,” said starter Kevin Gausman. “Hard to see.”
“Right now it sucks,” interim manager John Schneider added. “And it will suck for a while.”
“That’s the feeling”, catcher Danny Jansen agrees. “It is certainly not fulfilled.”
Blame whoever you want. Schneider, pulling the strings. Tim Mayza, who gave up a three-run homerun to Carlos Santana. Anthony Bass, who couldn’t record an out.
Home plate umpire Todd Tichenor, who walked Alejandro Kirk on a missed call in the eighth inning. Blame them all. Or don’t blame anyone. It doesn’t matter now anyway.
“Baseball,” Bichette said. “We put down everything we had and were just beaten.”
“We’ve been winning as a team all year,” said an experienced player. “In the end we lost as a team.”
There’s no denying that much: The 2022 Blue Jays were a good baseball team. They had two frontline starters, one of the best lineups in baseball and the potential to accomplish much, much more than what they actually did. And yes, they screwed up on Saturday by letting Seattle complete the second-biggest comeback in history after the season (in the 1929 World Series, the Cubs overcame an eight-run deficit against the Philadelphia Athletics, as if that were any consolation. ).
All that makes Saturday painful, of course. One minute you’re thinking of Game 3, the next they’re tearing down the exterior walls for winter. But if you put the shock aside, the result is what matters. Because this was supposed to be the Blue Jays’ chance to open a new competitive window. So they’ve certainly made progress this year after missing the play-offs on the last day of the 2021 season. But this was a step-by-step step and they had an opportunity – a missed opportunity – to take two or three steps at once.
Why not, if you have Gausman and Alek Manoah on top of your rotation? When your core of young players is among the best in baseball? When Teoscar Hernandez hits multiple home runs in a do-or-die game? The potential was there.
Instead, someone else will represent the American League in the World Series. Someone else will win everything. And for the Blue Jays, another year goes by without a win from the most promising young core this franchise has seen in decades. That doesn’t mean they can’t, or won’t, deliver. Far from. Who knows. It just means they didn’t grab this opportunity – the chance to win everything in 2022.
“We are playing this whole season with the expectation of playing in the World Series,” said Gausman. “Now we know more or less what to expect if those are the same predictions next year. We are all interested in that. Unfinished business.”
But here’s the thing: Guerrero Jr. and Bichette have now played four seasons at the MLB level. That means they only have three left until they qualify for free agency. Simply put, the Blue Jays are now more than halfway through the club-controlled years of their best young duo since Carlos Delgado and Shawn Green.
So, Bo, does three more years feel like a long time or a short time?
“I honestly hadn’t even thought about it,” Bichette said. “But I think it feels pretty close because I feel like it’s only our second year. But I haven’t thought about that.”
Maybe it’s a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty moment. Naturally, the Blue Jays are disappointed that their season ends so abruptly. Still, there’s also a chance that the lessons learned in 2022 could propel this group to greater heights in 2023 and beyond.
“I think we’ve grown a lot as a unit,” Bichette said. “I think everyone should be really proud, not just of how we fought today, but how we fought all year.”
“In baseball you spend so much time together,” adds Jansen. “It’s been a long year. You build this family together and what makes this angel even more is that it ends with all these good guys here. But we look forward to doing it again.”
The core of this team can return in 2023. Aside from Phelps and Ross Stripling, the Blue Jays’ top players will all be under team control for at least another year. That means the Blue Jays front office can roll it back if they want to.
Maybe they will. After all, it’s a good team. That’s why what happened on Saturday still stings so much.