Whatever the Blue Jays are, at least they’re not the Mets

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A fifth of the way into the season, if you had to pick an MVP for the Blue Jays, it’s Bo Bichette.

Bichette was the buzzkill who abandoned the family to run off with new party friends in New York. The Jays made no real attempt to keep him. Bichette took no trouble to make it sound like he was gutted to leave. It was the rare instance of an ugly break up that never caught the imagination of fans.

Still, how he did versus how the Jays did in the early going was always going to be an important initial judgment on the year.

Toronto’s managing to stay afloat. On Wednesday, they slapped the Red Sox around, but you, me and a couple of people we met at the bus station could do that right now. That brings Toronto’s record to 14-16 and puts them fourth in the AL East.

“Baseball ebbs and it flows,” said manager John Schneider. Never a good sign when a baseball manager is quoting the Tao Te Ching.

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Now they’re into May and the grind begins.

But thanks to Bichette, the Jays look great.

Bichette has embraced the Mets like a monkey’s paw, adding to their long list of curses. Considering the size of his paycheque, Bichette is the most disappointing player on the most disappointing team in baseball.

After New York was swept by Colorado the other day, cameras caught Bichette sitting alone in the dugout looking forlorn. He was there for ages. There were a lot of little lip quivers.

Players know where the cameras are. If the game isn’t on and they are in front of one, it’s because they want to be.

A lot of things about Bichette’s performance would concern me if I were one of the Mets executives who hired him. The fact that he doesn’t seem able to sprint any more would be at the top of that list.

But the fact that he is transparently trying to get people to feel sorry for him by moping in public like a grade schooler would terrify me. It suggests that whatever’s wrong with Bichette, he doesn’t believe it’s getting better.

Having already reached the stage of amateur theatre, what’s next? A tubercular cough in interviews?

Over in Toronto, what’s the story? It’s Japanese gratitude rituals and Trey Yesavage’s return.

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On paper, there’s not much that separates the Jays and the Mets so far. Their run differential is about the same. Their records are a week from being identical. Their prospects are similar. But the story they’re telling is very different.

The Mets are now where the Jays were a couple of years ago – a bunch of losers who talk and act like they are winners. The tone-deafness of that franchise runs all the way up to ownership, to a billionaire who can’t stop staggering into the media’s frame.

The Mets seem to think that the money they throw around puts them in the same league as the Dodgers, but what it actually does is make them look like the biggest marks in sport. Nobody knows that feeling better than Toronto.

Bichette was a good player and a great servant. But is he worth more per annum than Aaron Judge or Mookie Betts? If you’re thinking of mounting that argument, let’s try this again when you’re sober.

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After years of high-spending disappointment, the Mets put Bichette in a position where he had to work out, right away. Instead, he’s barely hitting his weight.

The man the Jays got to replace him, Kazuma Okamoto, is doing better, but not by a whole lot. Some nights, the 29-year-old Japanese makes it look like they play a different version of the game in North America.

But Okamoto isn’t sitting around any dugouts miming dramatic self-pity. He is one of those players who have an ability to transmit their love of playing via their body language. He’s made a wonderful impact on his teammates (e.g. the aforementioned gratitude ritual). He exudes low-key fun.

It’s impossible to put a hard number on how many losses you can get away with if you look like you’re enjoying yourself, but it’s substantial. The Jays – not a very good baseball team right now – are leveraging that. They left the World Series-level play behind in the World Series, but brought along the World Series-level vivacity. Other local franchises should take notes.

All the injuries have helped, too. If Toronto was losing more than they’ve won with their A-team out there every night, some people would already be giving up on them. But with this MASH unit they’re throwing out there every day? People will give them months of leeway.

Nobody’s going to believe they’re out of it until it’s September and they’re nowhere close. If they fail this year, most fans will treat the season as a mulligan and put it down to bad luck. That’s already baked in. There is no pressure on the Jays to repeat what happened last year this year.

You can see that in the way the players carry themselves, even the ones who are scuffling. The hangdog look of seasons past is gone. There is a roster-wide looseness to this group.

More than any statistic, it’s that looseness that suggests that the Jays will work their way back into the AL East. It’s not like this is a division of giants right now. The Red Sox have two fewer wins than the Jays, and they’re already a basketcase. You can feel the tension coming off that club like heat.

Meanwhile, the Jays keep smiling. Well, not Jeff Hoffman, but nobody pays much attention to him any more.

The key is to keep it upbeat and make no promises. For now, that’s enough. They should enjoy their enjoyment, because it lasts exactly one season. Then no one will enjoy losing.