Toronto Blue Jays’ Joey Votto loosens up before a spring training baseball game against the Philadelphia Phillies at BayCare Ballpark, March 17, 2024, in Clearwater,Steve Nesius/The Canadian Press
Immediately after his snap retirement from baseball on Wednesday, Joey Votto put it on himself.
He wasn’t good enough any more. He said that in the Instagram post that announced his goodbye. Then he said it again to reporters after rushing up to Toronto from Buffalo. To continue to play would be “disrespectful to the game.”
Okay, I’ll buy that. Votto has the right to go out any way he likes. But if that’s the story we’re going with, what’s everyone else’s excuse? A bunch of Jays have been disrespecting the game all year and continue to collect a paycheque.
The people who should be dreaming up excuses right now are all in management. How did the Toronto ball club let this happen?
The only point of signing 40-year-old, now-hits-worse-than-the-average-replacement-player Joey Votto was so that he could have one shining moment in the uniform of his hometown team. It wasn’t a baseball move. It was a nostalgia play.
Everything has gone wrong since, which made the decision look even smarter. The squad is terrible. The season is lost. No one is competing for a spot on this team. They are struggling toward golf season.
The situation is perfect for some counter-programming – a happy homecoming.
Votto’s been muddling around in the minors for two months. Sure, he’s not the greatest, but is he about as good as … looking down a stat sheet … everyone who isn’t Vlad Guerrero, Jr.? Sure.
So what were they waiting for? A big burst in November?
Bringing Votto up so that he could stand in the batter’s box in front of 40,000 Torontonians and take his farewell salute would have been the best moment this team has had all year. To do it while Cincinnati was in town would have been the cherry on top of the cherry.
But no, the Jays couldn’t sink this no-inch putt.
So don’t bother coming to the party, Toronto. The guest of honour cancelled it.
The 2024 season has been one long demonstration of how poor the Toronto Blue Jays are at assembling, arranging and managing a baseball team. I say this advisedly – you could have done a better job. And I don’t even know if you like baseball. Doesn’t matter.
Your freebie mistakes would have been better than their decisions via multimillion-dollar committee. The proof is in the results.
The only question left isn’t who plays first base next year – which is the sort of question the Jays want you asking. It’s why. Why is a team that should have been pretty good so bad instead?
Some teams blow up because of injury. Not the case here. Coaching doesn’t really apply in baseball, so you can’t blame that. It’s not even a return to the mean, because Toronto’s mean over the last four years has been playoff level.
Something is just off about this team, top to bottom. There is a malaise in this group that the players can’t bring themselves to talk straight about, but keep hinting at.
Starter Chris Bassitt tried to get at it this week when he explained to a U.S.-based podcast the thing that went wrong this year: Shohei Ohtani.
That quote – about the Jays “not having a pivot” after losing Ohtani to the Dodgers – got most of the attention.
But the big reveal was something else he said – “I don’t want to identify the problems because some of the problems I don’t think are fixable.”
Well, what does that mean?
We’ll never know because as soon as the podcast dropped, Bassitt had already begun his apology tour. Now that he realized that people listen to podcasts and draw inferences from the things said on them, he no longer meant to say what he said, at least, not in that way you thought he meant it. Everything is fine.
Over on the other coast, Matt Chapman was also delivering an elaborate series of winks and nudges he hopes no one ever follows up on.
As a Jay last year, Chapman was terrible. As a San Francisco Giant this year, he’s one of the best players in baseball. You will note the one thing that’s changed.
Chapman is looking for a nine-figure deal this winter, so he has to start explaining the difference. Here’s what he came up with: “I don’t think I was as comfortable maybe in Toronto the last couple years as I am here.”
What does “comfortable” mean? Is it the chairs or the company? Again, zero clarity. Chapman wants you to know something is wrong, but doesn’t want anyone calling him a snitch.
Following the Jays right now is a bit like meeting up with another couple for dinner and getting that just-had-a-fight-on-the-drive-over vibe. They’re not stabbing each other with forks at the dinner table, but they’re not happy either.
The silences last too long and no one’s making eye contact. This has nothing to do with you, there’s no way you can fix it and you most certainly cannot talk about it. You just have to sit there hoping it blows over.
The Jays are the most hope-it-blows-over team in baseball. They’re the club that makes people uncomfortable and has structural defects but everything is okay, alright. Stop asking. It’s fine. Are you satisfied now? Jeez.
This sense that the Jays will always make the wrong decision has become so baked into the team’s identity that no one is bothered by the embarrassing manner of Votto’s departure. Even Votto. What does that tell you?
So good luck this off-season. My suggestion – try hiring players who don’t know anyone else in Major League Baseball. That way, they won’t have heard the full story.
Failing that, hire guys who have nowhere else to go. It didn’t work this year, but there’s plenty of time to think up some new unfixable problems for next year.