Toronto’s Major League Baseball team is coming off a good 2010, but there are several looming questions that will affect their success in 2011 and beyond.
Spring training has actually been going on for over two weeks and the first regular season game is less than a month away.
The Toronto Blue Jays are starting a new era, a post-Cito Gaston era. Boston Red Sox pitching coach John Farrell is leading the Jays now, and he promises to bring a new approach to a team whose fans were often both baffled and frustrated by Gaston’s fidelity to widely rejected old-school assumptions about how to run a baseball team.
The club finds itself coming off a remarkable 2010 season. It exceeded all expectations to post 85 wins (some thought they would win as few as 65) and important pieces of their future took huge leaps forward. It’s possible that the Jays could take a step back in 2011 in terms of wins and losses, yet still make progress towards the medium-term goal of a World Series championship.
Here are three big questions that will shape not only the Jays’ 2011, but the next five years or so.
1) Can the pitching keep it up? The Jays’ young pitchers made huge strides forward last year. Brandon Morrow, Ricky Romero, and Brett Cecil all emerged as potentially elite starters. The Jays also have a plethora of less-talented but still serviceable starters, including Jesse Litsch and Marc Rzepczynski. Most importantly, two studs in the minors — Kyle Drabek and Zach Stewart — could both see Major League time this year (in fact, Drabek is highly likely to be one of the team’s starters to begin the year). But the Jays’ pitching has been almost too good to be true. Young pitchers often suffer injuries and on-field setbacks. Can the Jays’ core keep it together? All signs point to yes, but you can never have too much pitching.
2) Can Adam Lind transition to first base? Lind has always been an awkward-looking defensive player and extremely young to be a full-time Designated Hitter (a role usually reserved for older, beat-up veterans). For lack of an impact first baseman in the system, the Jays have opted to try him out full-time at first base and see what he can do. He has shown the potential to be an elite hitter (despite a dreadful 2010) but his viability as a useful asset to the Jays mostly hinges on whether or not he can play passable defence.
3) How will the club fare post-Vernon Wells? The face of the Jays franchise was traded to Anaheim to shed a tortuous contract. Finding a team to trade for Wells was nothing short of a miracle and a great move for the organization. But the hot and cold All-Star has been a fixture of the Jays clubhouse for nearly a decade, and a new generation of leaders will need to replace him. If the very young Travis Snider can have the breakout offensive year most believe he is capable of, that will go a long way to replace the solid offensive season Wells had last year that he won’t be contributing to the Jays anymore.
