The degree to which Vernon Wells was a benign clubhouse presence has been driven home this spring. It really is almost as though he was never with the Toronto Blue Jays.
Wells’s image is used on an advertisement on the left-field wall at Florida Auto Exchange Stadium for a supplement company called BodyCustom, but no sooner had he left than they handed out his No. 10 jersey to Edwin Encarnacion. Had the once jelly-doughnut gooeyness that was Encarnacion not dropped a dozen pounds, it would have been permissible to add the tag-line: INSERT JOKE HERE.
Seriously though: the Blue Jays trade away their cleanup hitter and his untradeable contract, turn the job over to Adam Lind, who has all of 25 career plate appearances cleaning up and is coming off a season of declined power and must provide protection for Jose Bautista – and what’s the reaction?
Pfft! Nothing. Roy Halladay leaves and the pitching world collapses; suggestions that his exit has lightened the mood in the clubhouse are greeted with rolls of the eyes and snide comments about how painful it must have been to be around all those 200-inning seasons and yadda yadda – And dammit if those suggestions don’t turn out to have some validity.
It’s true that Wells is gone. It’s also true that the Blue Jays had the fifth-worst on-base percentage in the majors in 2010 (.312) and scored a staggering 53 per cent of their runs by homers – well ahead of the 41 per cent of the next closest team, the Arizona Diamondbacks. Since 1954, the next highest percentage of runs scored on homers belongs to the 2005 Texas Rangers. Yes, they have the jackrabbit stylings of Rajai Davis at the top of the order and Travis Snider’s oft-whispered hidden talents on the basepaths will be given a chance to show themselves. What remains to be seen is whether the team’s offensive DNA has changed dramatically.
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