John Schneider takes out Erik Swanson against the Minnesota Twins during the seventh inning in Game Two of the Wild Card Series at Target Field in Minneapolis on Oct. 4.Adam Bettcher/Getty Images
After the Blue Jays blew another one, manager John Schneider came out to do his post-disaster ‘That’s baseball’ shoulder shrug.
Schneider is a Blue Jays frontman par excellence because he understands the skills required. Are you able to answer a phone? Can you listen and nod along without interrupting? After it’s gone pear shaped, can you absorb the blame without conceding there is any blame to absorb?
Great. That’s baseball.
But hidden in another concession speech, there was the tiniest flicker of fightback.
When asked about Vlad Guerrero Jr.’s base-running gaffe in the fifth inning in Game 2 of the American League wild-card series against the Minnesota Twins, Schneider started with the obligatory boilerplate (“It’s tough”). But as the answer ran on, he began edging toward criticism.
Eventually, he’d worked himself up to his actual point – “[Guerrero’s error] is not for a lack of information or prep. In that moment, that can’t happen.”
In other words, don’t look at me.
It wasn’t much, but by the standards of this team, it was like banging the desk with his shoe.
People often wonder how the Jays continue to disappoint year after year, but nothing changes. How does that work in a show-me business such as pro sport?
The key is to never break ranks. The Jays management and roster have an agreement – we don’t talk ill of you, and you don’t talk ill of us. The emotional temperature of this club is below zero. What’s the major thing that changed between last year and this? Anybody inclined to get worked up got thrown overboard. Now it’s a bunch of baseball cyborgs.
If no one ever says an angry word, then nothing is ever anyone else’s fault. Everything good that happens was planned that way. Everything bad is an act of God.
Guerrero was as much to blame for Wednesday’s team loss as it possible for an individual player to be. Getting picked off with two out, trailing by a couple and your best hitter at the plate, is an unforgivable base-running sin.
On a normal sports team, he’d have to say that – ‘I screwed up.’ But he’s heard his bosses speak. They’ve yet to take responsibility for a single thing that’s gone wrong in nearly a decade.
Why should he be the one to start?
So instead of admitting the obvious, Guerrero went all metaphysical.
“Things happen in baseball, of course,” he explained through a translator. “You don’t want them to happen, but they happen.”
If that’s the case, I’m not sure why they’re paying you. Any one of us can be out there for much less allowing things to happen that we wish wouldn’t.
You listen to the Jays long enough and this pattern of whataboutism and what-iffery becomes the soundtrack of the team.
How come you didn’t score any runs?
“That’s baseball sometimes,” Schneider said.
Why does this keep happening?
“That ball by Chapman that just goes a couple of inches foul,” reliever Jordan Romano said.
What if a spaceship landed on the field in the middle of the ninth inning? They probably would’ve rescheduled the game. That’s as meaningful an argument as ‘the three-run triple that wasn’t meant to be.’
When nothing is ever anyone’s fault then changing things isn’t just precipitous, it’s pointless. Why go to the trouble of finding new guys to be victims of the ineffable mystery of baseball? The old guys are already here so …
Take this logic down the road a ways and no team need ever change anything. It’s good for job security and work/life balance. I’m not sure how good it is for performance.
This con would not work in New York (where they’ve just fired a second manager in three years, and are getting ready to fire a third) or Boston (where they clipped their top baseball-ops guys) or San Francisco (another manager gone).
Those aren’t better baseball teams than the Jays, but they are more effective sports markets. It’s not about knee jerk. It’s about having the most basic reflexes. Coincidentally, they also win championships more often than once every 30-plus years.
None of this would work if the fans didn’t fall for it every time. But they do.
Of all the advances in sports over the past quarter century, the most remarkable is how teams have convinced their customers that mediocrity is desirable.
In the past, when you lost with regularity, you fired people and changed the players.
Currently, when you lose with regularity, you stay the course. You pick at the edges. You obsess about the draft. You talk a lot about continuity and culture change. Just never about an actual change.
Most important, the consumer continues to tune in, subscribe and buy tickets. Only the last part means anything to ownership.
The continuity cult has been more successful in some markets and sports than others. Toronto is its Vatican City. Nothing ever changes here.
The players aren’t stupid. They understand that as long as they go along to get along, their lives will be much simpler.
Take the big gotcha headline after Wednesday’s loss. It came from Bo Bichette.
“There’s a lot of reflection needed,” he said. “From players, but from the organization top down. Everybody needs to reflect.”
This line was pulled out by observers and held up in the air like a fresh kill. As though it signified a turning point.
What does ‘reflection’ mean? It means doing nothing. It is the most passive possible reaction to what’s going on. You fulfill its challenge by rolling into spring training and saying, “After a lot of reflection …”
Only in Toronto does a critique this limp get people talking.
So will the Jays change anything important? Of course not. Why should they?
They had three million people in the ballpark this year. The TV numbers are good. More Rogers Centre renos are coming, which means more monetization, which means the franchise value goes up and so on and so forth.
And the baseball? Well, that’s unfortunate. But you know how baseball goes – it’s out of the baseball team’s control.