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It's January 28th 2015 at 7:17pm and I'm reading an article about 23 non-roster players getting invites to big league spring training. It seems like eons ago now, in some sort of warped alternate universe. Thinking back to those days and the names of Maicer Izturis, Danny Valencia, Kyle Drabek, Jonathan Diaz, Louis Rivera, Ezequiel Carrera, Daniel Norris, Jeff Francis, Steve Delabar, Scott Barnes, Miguel Castro, Chad Jenkins, Todd Redmond, Gregory Infante, Scott Copeland et al.

Our opening day starter was going to be Marcus Stroman. That spot turned into Drew Hutchison. By the time the season ended Drew was almost an afterthought. Marco Estrada was in the bullpen and many were scared to see him start for us, considering he led the NL in HR's given up last season. Tonight he'll start game 1 against the Royals. Dickey looked washed up at the beginning of the season (tongue in cheek) and the 2nd half of the season he was one of the strongest starters in the league. Mark Buehrle had stretches of brilliance and in the end didn't make our playoff roster. Aaron Sanchez went from starter, to injured, to one of the key cogs in turning our bullpen around all in a matter of a few weeks. We acquire a bonafide ace in Price, and as part of the package going out, we wave goodbye to Daniel Norris, who was at the bottom end of our starting rotation at the beginning of the season.

Marten signs with us, and we go from one of the poorest teams int he league at throwing out runners to the best. Navarro requests a trade, but (thankfully) ends up staying, and becomes a key contributor to the club, including helping turn around Estrado , and in turn, becoming his personal battery-mate. Saunders gets sprinkled. Pillar's best catch of the season comes as a LF. Pompey is in CF. Why is Colabello playing RF (he just missed another ball!) ? Bautista on the disabled list. Oh no, Edwin is hobbled too! Our 2nd best player on the team is injured for the season.Who will replace Devon Travis? Reyes is one of the worst contracts in baseball. In comes a new double-play tandem of Goins and Tulu! Pillar moves to center field and will win a gold glove this year. We have a new lead-off man in Revere.

This season we've seen our opening day starting pitcher change twice. Our pitching staff , which at one point was laughable at times, becomes one of the best in the league over the course of MONTHS. Defensively up the middle we're arguably the best (or 2nd best) in all of MLB and 3 out of 4 of those positions have NEW starters than we saw on opening day. We have had so many highs and lows. The personnel has changed a ton from month to month (and 20% of it at the trade deadline). At times we've been frustrating as hell to watch, and for months we played some of the best baseball that we've ever witnessed as sports fans in Canada, let alone Toronto.

Major League Baseball, is such a long season. Even at 50-51 there was a ton of games to be played and moved to be made. It's unbelievable when you think back to this past winter, and into spring training and then those first couple of months of the season. Look at who our best performers are. Looks at our strengths and weaknesses. Our lineup has been turned over multiple times. But as it is with a winning team like ours this year and a roster the size of professional baseball, there are so many pieces that played a key role to our success (and even our failures).

Even in this very playoffs, nearly every single damn player on the playoff roster made an important play to save a run, keep an inning going, score/drive in runs, and so on. It's just been an incredible season of ups and downs, there are still story lines to be written but it's remarkable how different things are now compared to July 29th when the Blue Jays were 50-51 and Tulowitzki debuts going 3-for-5. For the record, after that win we were still 7 games behind the Yankees with 60 left to play.

Yes but the playoffs are short

I remember that too.

Reyes played well in his time here this season. Kinda unfair to mention the contract and leave it at that.

If tulo never turns it around that contract and trade look real bad. We dont need another ryan goins

Illuminati_ wrote:Reyes played well in his time here this season.

Reyes was responsible for at least 15 runs given up this season. It was getting to the point where his OK hitting wasn't making up for his fielding.

Some fans really have no idea how bad his defense was. And his arm range has declined to about 30 feet now. I can't count the number of times when he threw a grounder to first (when he actually caught the grounder that is) and the ball basically ran out of gas and hit the dirt about halfway to getting there.

People piled on Jerry Howarth for calling him out (which he almost never does) but Jerry really was right about his play (though Jerry's criticism of his personality was way uncalled for).

well said, great read.

Illuminati_ wrote:Reyes played well in his time here this season. Kinda unfair to mention the contract and leave it at that.

If tulo never turns it around that contract and trade look real bad. We dont need another ryan goins

What?!? Reyes was horrible this season. Probably the worst defensive SS in all of baseball (he shouldn't play the position ever again) and his bat gets worse as injuries mount and his speed decreases.

Tulo, despite not hitting all the great over 2 months, Is still one of the best defensive SS in baseball. Even if he isn't the same hitter he was in Colorado it's still a massive upgrade on that part alone. Hit chances are he'll bounce back just fine at the plate. He had his best season in jst 2014.

My idea for this post was just to remind ourselves just what a long season MLB is. There can be so many high's and lows. One week the team might look like crap and we don't realize but things could be on the verge of turning around . Or who see saw as a starter/positional player could be traded the next day, and the deck chairs move around and the end-game look of the team completely changes. It was nearly an impossible to get a read on this roster and what our expectation should be offensive, defensively and pitching. We've been all over the char in all those areas with tons of moving parts/players playing a role in the good and the bad.

It's been a great ride, needless to say.

James_Raptors wrote:My idea for this post was just to remind ourselves just what a long season MLB is. There can be so many high's and lows. One week the team might look like crap and we don't realize but things could be on the verge of turning around . Or who see saw as a starter/positional player could be traded the next day, and the deck chairs move around and the end-game look of the team completely changes. It was nearly an impossible to get a read on this roster and what our expectation should be offensive, defensively and pitching. We've been all over the char in all those areas with tons of moving parts/players playing a role in the good and the bad.

It's been a great ride, needless to say.

and that ride is far from over.

Honestly, everything pre-Tulowitzki feels like it was from 2013, let alone from a few months ago. The coming off-season is going to feel loooooooooooooong and I almost feel like the regular season will feel like exciting (I guess I'm just not used to the playoffs and don't know how to react:D)

This also puts things in context. If you had asked at beginning of this season would you be happy if the Jays made the ALCS ("Final 4" in MLB) in October, I bet almost all would've said yes. Though this is far from over but even if they don't come back to win this series, it's been a very successfull season. No way the Leafs or Raptors will match the success of this season's Jays for a very long time.

Yeah. Look on the bright side, we still have more ALCS wins in one season than in the entire Billy Beane Oakland era.

Anyone who refers to Tulo as bad or an albatross of a contract truly has no idea what they're talking about. Ditto if you are comparing him to Reyes.