Attendances at Toronto's Rogers Centre have grown steadily along with the excitement as the Blue Jays have surged to the top of the American League this season.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
This time last year, everybody seemed to agree that the St. Louis Cardinals had won the trade deadline.
They were a good enough team at that point – a couple of games out of the last National League wild card. They just had a few holes to fill. Come the last day to do so, they filled them all with name-brand talent. Then they missed the playoffs by a country mile.
So it is more than possible to overestimate the importance of the final swap meet of the Major League Baseball season. Still, this year’s Jays underwhelmed.
Things haven’t been this good down at the Rogers Centre in a donkey’s age. If ever there was a time to get the locals whipped into a star frenzy, this was it.
Blue Jays take calculated risk in deadline acquisition of Shane Bieber
Other teams – notably, Toronto’s competition in Seattle, Houston and Texas – made attempts in that direction. The Jays’ big move was for a guy who hasn’t pitched a big-league game in 15 months.
Two things about that guy, Shane Bieber. If he’s even a shadow of the pitcher who won the Cy Young Award, then this was the heist of the year. Also, if that was at all likely, the team who’s been minding over him for a decade, the Cleveland Guardians, wouldn’t have traded him.
Elsewhere, the Jays nibbled around the edges. A couple of decent relievers, a depth catcher and a backup first baseman.
Shane Bieber hasn't pitched in the majors this season after undergoing Tommy John surgery last year. He won the American League Cy Young Award in 2020.Godofredo A. Vásquez/The Associated Press
The problem isn’t that the Jays aren’t good enough. If they continue to play as they have in June and July, the current crew can fill the shifts. The problem is that they have no sense of theatre.
As an entertainment concern, baseball doesn’t make much sense. Its participants are constantly reminding the customers that the result of any given performance doesn’t mean anything. To act as if it does marks you out as an unsophisticated rube.
“Then why did I just pay 400 bucks for so-so seats and a half-pound of hot corn?” would be the obvious next question, but no one asks it.
You are meant to understand that the tedium of the ritual is what sanctifies its adherents. The real ones are there in August, when it’s smoking outside and no one cares, not even the players.
Everyone’s eyes are pointed ahead to September and – fingers crossed – October. Then, time will compact, and every pitch of every at-bat will become deeply important.
But forget about that right now. Right now, just trust that future excitement is possible.
You do that by signing players.
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You think the Seattle Mariners just signed two of the best available bats on the market, Eugenio Suárez and Josh Naylor, because they think doing so is a wise, long-term plan? This cheapskate club hates taking on salary and both are pending free agents due a raise.
Seattle traded for them because everyone in that city knows what the Mariners are – a team that almost makes the playoffs. Every once in a while, they actually get there, but they don’t last. They’re in that spot right now, hanging on like grim death to the last American League wild card.
The Mariners wanted to change that story, so they made major moves for names people recognize. Or, at least, recognize that they should recognize.
If you live in Seattle and like baseball, you are measurably more excited by the team than you were 48 hours ago. Everybody agrees you just “won” the deadline. It could turn out to be pointless, but right now, it’s great theatre.
“We were able to accomplish our goals and made the team better,” Jays general manager Ross Atkins said on Thursday night.
Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins, right, seemed to be content with the additions that his team made at the MLB trade deadline.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
This assumes two things – that no one knows for certain what your goals were, and that you win the AL East. If you don’t, it will look like you either cheaped out, overestimated what you had or didn’t know what you were doing.
The trade deadline is also a drumbeat that reverberates the next summer. The Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets were making all sorts of moves because that’s what those teams do – they make moves.
All that moving and spending has yet to turn into something tangible, but both clubs are famously active. They’re not sitting around waiting for something to happen. They’re out there trying to force things. This helps explain Juan Soto’s choice. He looked at the Bronx, and then at Queens, and decided one looked like more of a party.
The Yankees used to be the moves-for-moves’-sake team, but not any more. They’re more like Toronto these days – purposeful, plodding.
Their long-time GM, Brian Cashman, was out ahead of the deadline assuring fans that he would “go to town” on changes. A lot of players moved in and out of New York, but don’t worry, you don’t know their names. I don’t believe that qualifies.
Toronto is now in more than a contest for the division with New York. It is locked in a battle of strategic indolence. Which team that doesn’t want to do anything too risky will be proved right?
If the Jays come out of the deadline swinging, no one will care about who they did or didn’t get. If Bieber turns out to be the next Jack Morris, they’ll call it the greatest deadline ever. Toronto can even make the argument that getting back a number of currently injured regulars is like making trades. And if it wins, no one will worry how it did or didn’t do it.
But this was a chance to turn a season of unexpected excitement into something even more frantic. To create a real hysteria around the team.
Failing to do so is a failure to accept that part of the fun of running a pro baseball team isn’t about trying to tilt every odd very slightly in your favour. It’s about giving people the impression that you’ve just hit a jackpot, whether you have or not.