BALTIMORE – Over the 20 baseball post-seasons since the start of the wild-card era, only 12 of the 40 participants to reach the World Series have arrived at the Fall Classic after accumulating the best regular-season record in their league.
Twelve. Out of 40. That’s 30 per cent.
On seven occasions those teams went on to win it all, most recently in 2013, when the Boston Red Sox reigned supreme. The American League’s top club has faced the National League’s best three times, the last also in 2013, when the St. Louis Cardinals couldn’t stop John Farrell’s club.
All of which is worth mulling over for those advocating that the Toronto Blue Jays go all out to ensure they finish ahead of the Kansas City Royals for the best record in the American League over the season’s final days.
Consecutive losses after clinching the American League East in a doubleheader opener Wednesday – including Thursday’s 6-4 setback to the Baltimore Orioles on a miserably cold and wet day that included a rain delay of three hours 25 minutes – have set back that endeavour, and it shouldn’t matter one bit.
Far more important than exerting one’s self in games of minimal import is ensuring that players are given time to recuperate physically and mentally from the regular season’s grind to be in peak condition for the post-season.
“We want to win home field,” said manager John Gibbons. “They’ve been going at it hard all year, they clinched in the first game, it made perfect sense not to play the second after you clinch, and then, coming back and playing an early game (Thursday), it would have been like no day off at all.
“My job is to take care of these guys, make sure they’re ready to go when it counts, not what other people think. Yeah, we’d love to win it, but I’ve got to do what’s best for these guys, not what some bozo out there in fantasy land thinks.”
Hence the long spring training road trip lineups in both Wednesday’s nightcap and Thursday’s soggy torture session, along with word that David Price won’t pitch again until the playoffs while Troy Tulowitzki could return from the crack in his left shoulder blade Saturday.
The challenge is in balancing that with enough playing time to keep players sharp – there’s no universal formula – and the pursuit of goals such as finishing with the league’s best record.
“We have a plan and I like it,” said Price. “These guys, most have them have played every single day and when you get to this point of the season and you’ve played over 150 games, if you can give those guys a day off or a couple of days off, it goes a long way.”
Aaron Sanchez, for instance, pitched the eighth inning Thursday because he needed some work – the only pitcher assured of being on the post-season roster to see action. Roberto Osuna and Liam Hendriks both warmed up in the top of the ninth just to get some throwing in.
A normal Blue Jays lineup, the manager said, will be used Friday in Tampa Bay during the series opener against the Rays.
“Nobody is shutting it down, we’ve got to keep these guys playing until the end, get them ready,” he added. “The thought was never to shut them down, I don’t know what it looks like, but that was never the intention, anyway.”
Regardless of what happens, the Blue Jays will open the division series at home next week, and the only way they won’t get the extra home game in the championship series should they get there is if the Royals overtake them in the season’s final weekend and they then meet.
Pushing the team’s regulars more than is necessary right now for that single scenario makes little sense.
The Blue Jays went 4-3 this season against the Central champion Royals, the only other American League team to have clinched so far, and lineup well against all the remaining clubs contending for post-season berths.
At 13-6, they dominated the division-rival New York Yankees, on track to host the wild-card game, went 5-2 against both the Los Angeles Angels and Minnesota Twins, 4-2 against the American League West leading Texas Rangers, and 3-4 against the Houston Astros.
As one rival executive put it, “they’re better than all those teams.”
The playoffs, of course, are a totally different animal, and the element of unpredictability underlines the importance of setting up players to succeed, rather than pursuing home-field advantage.
The Blue Jays have the luxury of time after clinching, and they’re being smart enough to use it.
