The smile never left Devon Travis’s face all weekend, even before perhaps the most telling sign yet that he is back to his old, young self: A pulled, run-scoring double in the fifth inning on Sunday that he wouldn’t have reached with a gimpy shoulder.
The defensive instincts? Just ask Matt Boyd if they’ve diminished, after that play he made Saturday on a throw to an open second base. He had a shot at another play Sunday when Rougned Odor flirted with second base on a ball hit to Ezequiel Carrera; Odor could have been nailed at first with the relay throw but Jose Reyes didn’t offer any verbal help to Travis – a simple “first, first, first,” – so Travis’s initial move was to apply a tag to a non-existent runner.
As we learned in Arden Zwelling’s piece on Travis, the Toronto Blue Jays’ 24-year-old second baseman just likes to play baseball. A lot. And Sunday’s win over the Texas Rangers must have taken him back some: Rangers starter Chi Chi Gonzalez was a catcher the first time he met Travis: In Little League, when their two Florida teams faced each other. That’s why they both tipped their caps and smiled in acknowledgement before their first at-bat.
The Blue Jays’ starter on Sunday, Drew Hutchison, was a shortstop and Travis’s double-play partner in a Florida high school all-star game, and Travis still remembers Hutchison being summoned to pitch relief in the game.
“This shortstop, throwing 93 miles per hour,” he said.
Travis is 2-for-10 since missing 36 games with left shoulder inflammation, but he looks a different cat at the plate than he did when he tried to play through the injury as his average fell from .325 to .269 in two weeks. Travis bruised his collarbone on April 30 on a bad-hop grounder, and the inflammation spread to his shoulder.
“I feel, health-wise 100 per-cent,” said Travis, the American League rookie of the month in April. “The swing … it feels like it’s getting there, still. But the double felt good.”
Travis sees a more energized clubhouse than the one he left. He also learned a little something about himself.
“Never take a day for granted,” he said. “I mean, that grounder is a ball I’ve blocked up hundreds of times in my life, and you get hit and next thing you know you’re out for five weeks.”
ROME WASN’T BUILT IN ONE DRAFT …
The early returns are in and I’m beginning to have my doubts whether the local media – never mind fans, they’re usually ahead of the curve – have the stomach for a serious rebuild by the Toronto Maple Leafs. Honestly: you people really thought that Phil Kessel, Dion Phaneuf, Tyler Bozak and Joffrey Lupul were going to be traded at the draft? Or that even one or two of them would be traded?
Here are the facts: As crappy as you might think the Flub Four are, the idea behind a rebuild is to collect assets – as many as possible. Selling low isn’t the best way to maximize return – especially when people want you to retain some of the salary – and the value of this group is at rock bottom. My guess is they’re not all here when training camp begins, but I can’t imagine some time with Mike Babcock wouldn’t jack up their value a bit, no? And if that added value means a better draft pick or prospect in return for taking on a bad contract in a deal for one of them, so much the better.
Look: We can worry whether or not this fixation with OHL guys with local knowledge is really the way to go – how’d Nazem Kadri and David Clarkson work out for you? – or whether small and skilled is a viable long-term plan. That’s fine. And it’s true: Other than Babcock, this isn’t a group with a history of NHL success at the management level. But, damn, people. Let’s let this thing breathe a bit, OK?
QUIBBLES AND BITS
• Aaron Sanchez (strained Latissimus) is expected to throw a pair of bullpen sessions this week in Dunedin – as early as Monday – and is scheduled to make rehabilitation starts in the minor leagues before rejoining the Blue Jays. Yes, the operative word is “starts,” despite the fact there is no guarantee he won’t be pitching out of the bullpen when he rejoins the Blue Jays – who one National League executive expects to “pull something spectacular,” in the next two weeks.
• There is no sport with a lower bar on what constitutes “a good guy,” than hockey, because everybody, it seems, is a “good guy” even when they’re not. So what the hell’s happening in Boston? Dougie Hamilton gets traded to the Calgary Flames and the next thing you know the Boston press is full of stories that Hamilton – to quote an anonymous assistant general manager in the Boston Herald – is “a loner … and sort of an uppity kid, and that his teammates don’t like him.”
Uppity? Geezus. Uppity. At least this time it wasn’t a partying problem like it was with Tyler Seguin. And don’t look now, but that Kessel trade’s kind of petered out for both the Leafs and Bruins, hasn’t it? Seguin’s in Dallas … Hamilton’s in Calgary … hell, even Jared Knight, the second pick in the 2010 draft sent to the Bruins, is in Minnesota.
And Kessel? He’s in purgatory.
• Toronto-born actor Stephen Amell, who portrays the DC Comics hero ‘The Green Arrow’ and is in the sequel to the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ movie, took batting practice on Sunday with Josh Donaldson after the Blue Jays wrapped up their regular session – then filmed a video urging his fans to vote Donaldson onto the American League all-star team.
Blue Jays manager John Gibbons looked on from the dugout and remarked how comfortable “that guy” looked in the cage … until somebody told him that was actually Donaldson hitting in the cage, not the actor.
THE END-GAME:
I’ll be up-front: As someone who covered the national women’s soccer team in two Olympics, I have a great deal of time for many of the players and people associated with the program, including head coach John Herdman. They did pretty much what I thought they’d do in the Women’s World Cup: Make it to the quarter-finals and then be life and death to move on, as you might expect from the eighth-ranked team in the world.
There is nothing wrong with wondering why Herdman placed so much trust in Lauren Sesselmann (an accident waiting to happen) and players such as Melissa Tancredi, who simply haven’t had enough competition since the 2012 Olympics to be ready, or why Adriana Leon, whose presence in the box against China led to Christine Sinclair’s penalty and was all around the ball when she was introduced in the quarter-finals, didn’t get more time. It says a lot about the level to which this program has risen that people care enough about it to be critical. I mean, good luck trying to get an argument going about the Canadian men’s team.
In the meantime, it’s on you in Montreal to make life a living hell for the U.S. women’s team. Seeing them lose on Canadian soil is almost like winning the title yourself …
Jeff Blair is host of the Jeff Blair Show from 9 a.m.-Noon ET and Baseball Central from Noon-1 p.m. ET on Sportsnet 590/The Fan. He also appears frequently on Prime Time Sports With Bob McCown.