The Toronto Blue Jays Have High Expectations for 2006

For nearly a decade the AL East has been a two team race. Every year the question is raised, when is another team going to step up and challenge Boston and New York. When I say another team, let's be reasonable, I'm only talking about Toronto and Baltimore. Last year Baltimore spent like drunken sailors and started fast and faded fast. This year it's Toronto's turn to throw money around. They signed free agents A.J. Burnett and B.J. Ryan and traded for Lyle Overbay and Troy Glaus. General Manager J.P. Ricciardi clearly feels that its time for his time to take a charge at the two pillars of the AL East. Whether the moves pay off or not is a wait and see.

The Toronto Blue Jays have not played a playoff game since they won the World Series in 1993. Over the years since they seem to have tried everything. They threw money at Carlos Delgado. They tried to rebuild internally with Eric Hinske and Vernon Wells. In both cases they still found themselves looking up at Boston and New York. This offseason Ricciardi has tried to blend the two and believes that the free agent spending spree was just an effort to fill missing pieces and not an effort to buy a roster.

They arguably got the two best pitchers on the free agent market in Burnett and Ryan, but those acquisitions don't come without question marks. Burnett has a losing record for his career and could easily become a bust in the vein of Denny Neagle and Darren Driefort. Burnett has been a pitcher that has been expected to blossom for some time now and Ricciardi may have paid for expectation instead of actual substance.

B.J. Ryan is another player to be weary about. Whenever a player has their best season right before free agency it's a good idea to show some restraint. Closers are either an essential necessity that only a few men are capable of doing, or they are an overrated position where stats are inflated, based on who you ask. B.J. Ryan is not an established closer with years of experience. He's had one stellar year for a fourth place team. It's hard to say that he's really been tested yet.
The trades to get Glaus and Overbay seem to be good paper moves. Those guys are the kind of players where you know exactly what you're going to get out of them. Maybe they'll overachieve, but if they give Toronto exactly what they've given throughout their careers then they'll improve the team.

All four of these players will probably improve the Blue Jays a great deal, but their success really hinges on the health of their ace. He won the AL Cy Young Award in 2003 (in a contract year, by the way), but in the following season he was plagued with shoulder problems which left him on the DL for a good portion of the season and ineffective when he did play. Last season seemed to be his return to form, but halfway through the season Halladay broke his leg and did not return. If he can come back and stay healthy in 2006 then Toronto can be considered a threat in the AL East. They won eighty games last season with him healthy only half the year.

If Burnett can step up and be a legitimate number two pitcher they should be in good shape because the bottom three in the Toronto rotation were good enough for 36 wins last season and are all fairly young. In the lineup, Glaus will be particularly useful to centerfielder Vernon Wells who has been left unprotected in that lineup since the departure of Carlos Delgado.

Toronto fans should be optimistic. Their spending spree did have some logic to it even if it was risky. In retrospect, Baltimore's cash purge was a disaster waiting to happen given the age of all their acquisitions. Toronto got young guys who could be at the top of their game if not on their way up, which is always better than big names who are on their way down. Like I said, it's a question every year whether or not someone can knock either Boston or New York out of the top two in the AL East, but it seems like Toronto has the best chance to do it in a long time. They've positioned themselves well and now all they have to do is play the games.