In Toronto, the Maple Leafs’ failure to win the Stanley Cup since 1967 is the drought the hockey-mad community notices.
But it is the city’s baseball team, the Blue Jays, who have gone 21 seasons without a play-off appearance, the longest such streak in North American sports.
As today’s trade deadline approaches, the Jays are 50-50 and clearly need help if they want to reach the 2015 play-offs. It came last night in the form of All-Star left-handed pitcher David Price, who Toronto acquired in a trade from the Detroit Tigers.
Read more:
– As MLB trade rumours heated up, Wilmer Flores disproves notion that there’s no crying in baseball
– Orioles go to China: Xu Guiyan and the first steps of Chinese baseball
It was the second major deal the Blue Jays sealed in less than a week. The first one, however, was not the sort of trade that pundits expected.
The Jays are the highest-scoring team in Major League Baseball, by 53 runs. Their troubles are on the pitching side; only seven teams have yielded more runs. So their trade of Jose Reyes, a big-contract shortstop, for the Colorado Rockies’s Troy Tulowitzki, a shortstop with an even bigger contract, seemed like a “coals to Newcastle” sort of move.
As a rival general manager put it, the Jays seemed to be aiming to lose 10-8 rather than 10-6.
Most say the Tulowitzki-for-Reyes trade makes the Jays better. Tulowitzki hits for average and power, which the singles-hitting Reyes does not, and he is a better defensive player, too.
At 30 years old, Tulowitzki also is two years younger, though the fact he is owed US$157.7 million (Dh579.2m) on a seven-year deal is a bit daunting, as is his move to the unforgiving artificial turf of the Rogers Centre.
Alex Anthopoulos, the Blue Jays’ general manager, made no apologies for the trade.
“Getting better doesn’t have to mean a reliever or a starter,” he said, referring to pitchers.
“When you have a chance to get the best player at a respective position and a guy that also brings some intangibles as well, it’s a rare opportunity and we wanted to take advantage of it.”
Tulowitzki delivered in his Toronto debut on Thursday night, hitting a home run and two doubles, scoring three times and driving in three runs in an 8-2 win over the Philadelphia Phillies.
Nice, but he did not pitch, leaving Anthopoulos with more moves to make – or explaining to do. To his credit, it appears he was just building suspense.
The addition of Price to the pitching rotation will improve a staff with big holes in it.
Price, 29, was the AL Cy Young Award winner in 2012 and was considered to be the top remaining starting pitcher on the market after Johnny Cueto was traded from the Cincinnati Reds to the Kansas City Royals, and Cole Hamels went from Philadelphia to the Texas Rangers.
The Blue Jays sent left-handers Daniel Norris, Matt Boyd and Jairo Labourt to the Tigers in the deal. Price can become a free agent after this season.
Toronto last witnessed play-off baseball in 1993, when the Jays won the second of their back-to-back World Series titles with a team that featured Paul Molitor, Joe Carter and Roberto Alomar.
Since then, they have struggled in the American League East, usually baseball’s best division, finishing second only once in 21 years.
As of yesterday, the New York Yankees lead them by seven games but the Jays are only two games behind in the chase for a wild-card berth.
The additions of Price and Tulowitzki could bring a play-off place for Toronto this season, which would allow the Jays to shift the whole of the city’s “post-season futility” attention back on the Maple Leafs.
poberjuerge@thenational.ae
Follow us on Twitter at NatSportUAE
