RealGM

When the Antichrist shows up in the movies, he comes with a helpful visual cue. An alpha-numeric birthmark or a third nipple.

Saviours aren’t as easy to spot.

As with Superman when he’s working the copy desk at The Daily Planet, the first hint will be a denial.

“I’m no saviour,” Brett Lawrie said ahead of his debut in Baltimore.

The second will be sustained all-star performance that drives a team into the playoffs. That’s more of a medium- to long-term goal.

In the interim, Toronto fans are left wondering exactly what we’ve got and if it’s enough to get them what they need.

Lawrie arrives in Toronto freighted with so much expectation, he should be fitted with a Kevlar backpack to carry it around. Helpfully, he also comes armed with an untypically Canadian amount of self-confidence, which should help with the heavy lifting.

The Popeye forearms might also help. I last shook Brett Lawrie’s hand in March. My fingers are still straightening themselves out.

But Lawrie alone cannot re-make the Blue Jays into contenders. They already have the best player in baseball, and he hasn’t been able to single-handedly drive them as far as third place.

Jose Bautista still leads all of baseball in wins above replacement rankings. Eight of the top 20 hitters in baseball by WAR play for teams currently sitting in playoff spots.

Three of them (Dustin Pedroia, Jacoby Ellsbury and Adrian Gonzalez) play for the Red Sox.

The Jays have two on that list — Bautista and Yunel Escobar. Detroit, San Francisco and Atlanta — all playoff bound — feature none. They do it with pitching.

Toronto, as you may have noted this year, doesn’t do much with pitching other than push people toward the mound and fiddle with rosary beads.

One hitter more or less isn’t going to swing Toronto’s fortunes. It can’t hurt in the least, but the scales of baseball are heavily tilted. This team still needs key additions in pivotal spots — primary among them the front of the rotation (Henderson Alvarez, nice to meet you) and the sinkhole at closer.

There’s also second base and designated hitter and left field and an expected thickening of the talent in the bullpen.

Unlike Lawrie, there are no imminent arrivals from the minors that can dominate in those positions. The next kid on most projectors’ radars is catcher Travis D’Arnaud, who may some day unseat adequate incumbent J.P. Arencibia.

So what’s required here is a recalibration in the search for a saviour. Go up from third base. Up. Up. Further. Much further. Are you at the 200 Level yet? There he is, sitting in the GM’s box. The guy in the button-down and the khakis. That’s him.

If anyone is going to save the Toronto Blue Jays, it’s Alex Anthopoulos.

TORONTO — Brett Lawrie wanted to make it clear before his major league debut Friday with the Toronto Blue Jays: "I'm no savior."

That might not be the message Blue Jays fans send Tuesday when the 21-year-old Canadian plays his first game in Toronto.

"With Lawrie, we hit the mother lode," team President Paul Beeston says.

Lawrie, a third baseman who went 5-for-11 with a home run in his first three games, is not only a highly touted prospect born in the great white north. He also symbolizes a plan spearheaded by Beeston to leverage an entire nation and build the Blue Jays into a baseball superpower that can compete with the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees on the field and in contract negotiations.