The Blue Jays Week That Was: Arguably It Is Too Early For Despair But Hear Me Out

I see your problem right here: your ankle is all fucked up

When Dustin Parkes -- formerly, I guess of Drunk Jays Fans and now, I guess, mostly or perhaps indeed entirely of the Getting Blanked blog, but who can say -- tweeted a few days ago that no team had won the World Series after a 2-5 start since the 2012 San Francisco Giants, it was a moment of levity I welcomed, even if it doesn't actually mean anything. Like, it was itself a statement suggesting a 2-5 start doesn't mean anything, which of course it doesn't, but neither does it mean anything that the Giants won the World Series after starting that way, which I know he wasn't implying so why am I even mentioning it? But I do wonder what percentage of World Series-winning teams started their seasons 2-5. Probably not many but there is no way I am going to look that up. 

But now 2-5 has become 4-6, and nobody in the AL East is really playing all that well to start the year, so it is a 4-6 that puts the Blue Jays a mere game-and-a-half out of first place. Under normal circumstances I would declare this situation to be no biggity, in fact the least of all biggities. And I guess that situation, the 4-6 of it all, truly is no biggity, even if the only starter who has really looked that great is J. A. Happ for some reason. But it can only be seen as an enormous butt of the lowliest order that Jose Reyes, who is delightful as hell to watch play baseball and who is hitting like .400 so far, slid hideously into second base last night and probably exploded his ankle.

The earliest indications are that it might only be a wicked sprain, which would cost Reyes (and my enjoyment) no more than a month, probably. If there's something broken, it could be three months or more. Hey hey! 

Actually, OK, I was about to descend into despair for a moment, but things will probably actually be pretty alright, maybe: good pitchers usually end up being good pitchers, so I have faith the rotation will be way better than it has been; Jose Bautista isn't hitting yet and missed three games with some minor hassling injuries but he'll soon begin launching stuff on the reg; and there's no reason to think the rest of the lineup (minus Cabrera) can continue to hit this poorly. I bet the Blue Jays will spend almost all of the next few months at or slightly above .500 and then we'll see what's up in August. 

I would note in closing, though, that I have found myself not even really minding the Blue Jays shaky start this season, and not just because I am enlightened enough to realize that ten games at the start of the season mean no more than ten games in June, and you'd barely even noticed if your team went 4-6 over a ten-game stretch in June. Instead, the reason for my not minding seems to be that I am not all that emotionally invested in any of this yet, surprisingly uninvested, in fact. Maybe it's because I've been kind of super busy (for me, which is admittedly a pretty low bar), or maybe it is just that this is going to be one of those baseball seasons that, for whatever reason, I pay less attention to than others, and wind up outside more and also reading more books. The ways of the heart are a mystery, basically, so what can you even say.

KS