On Sept. 27, 2015, the Toronto Blue Jays‘ Josh Donaldson hit his 41st home run of the season for a thrilling walk-off victory against the Tampa Bay Rays.
That was the final home game of what would be an incredible 93-win campaign that saw the Blue Jays land atop the AL East for the first time since 1993 and bring playoff baseball back to Toronto for the first time since winning it all 22 years year prior.
For former Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos, the man who built that 2015 team, it was the moment that truly set the stage for the post-season run to come.
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During an interview on Good Show on Sportsnet 590 The FAN Monday morning, Anthopoulos said Donaldson’s home run sticks with him the most when thinking back to that year and the thrilling playoff series that followed.
“The Donaldson walk-off, the last home game against the Rays with Steven Geltz on the mound,” said Anthopoulos, now GM and president of baseball operations of the Atlanta Braves. “We had a little booth off of the GM box and I remember I was in there and I think I may have been alone or with one other individual at the time … We hadn’t been that good a team that late into the year, and that moment, when he hit it — I just get the chills when I talk about it — that was when it almost was like, ‘You know what? We finally did it.’
“We’d had a huge series against New York in New York, then we had a big series against New York in Toronto where (Russell) Martin had some big home run,” he said. “But that was the moment where I felt like we were going on the road and it was like, alright we’re gonna win this thing, win the East.”
That home run was the cherry on top of an MVP season for Donaldson, who also earned the Hank Aaron Award for his hitting prowess and was named Major League player of the year.
Since Toronto’s World Series win in 1993, their AL East foes had been crowned World Series champions eight times (the New York Yankees won five and the Boston Red Sox have won three) — not exactly an easy division from which to emerge victorious.
“It was a real point of pride to win the division because you earn it when you win it in the AL East,” Anthopoulos said. “Don’t get me wrong, winning the World Series is certainly the priority but winning the division, I felt, for that organization, for where we were and what we had gone through — and beyond that, we were a real, legitimate World Series threat.”
The Blue Jays went into the 2015 season having made a splash in free agency with the signing of Martin and trades for Donaldson, Marco Estrada and Devon Travis. That year’s trade deadline brought in Troy Tulowitzki and David Price.
Anthopoulos explained that, throughout that division-winning season, he was constantly trying to find a balance between being a “win-now” club and still keeping the cupboards stocked for tomorrow. That was evident in the deadline deals he didn’t do. Anthopoulos reflected Monday that he got “really close” to completing a deadline deal for then-Athletics outfielder Ben Zobrist — he considers that one “the one that got away” — but explained that the return ask, which included a 20-year-old prospect named Rowdy Tellez, was too high. Interest in pitcher Johnny Cueto also brought requests for young prospects in return he simply wasn’t willing to part with.
“The whole thought that we were going all-in … look, we definitely could’ve, but we didn’t because we were trying to manage short-term and long-term,” he said.
One player the GM did go all-in for that year? A 16-year-old slugger named Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
“In terms of dollars and having dollars available, we paid about $6 million for Vlad Guerrero Jr. at the time,” he said. “If we were really all-in, we didn’t need to worry about some 16-year-old kid that wasn’t gonna show up for another four or five years. We could’ve said look, let’s just punt on this guy and let’s put the money towards the team at the trade deadline and so on. So we would’ve traded guys like Tellez and some of these other guys and not try to thread the needle with the short- and the long-term. So that was always the plan.”
That 2015 season was especially memorable for Anthopoulos for another reason: It would ultimately be his last with the Blue Jays organization, with the GM opting to leave Toronto.
“I never thought I wasn’t gonna be there,” he said of the decision. “The first time I did was September, the first time it ever crossed my mind. And the first time I ever thought for sure I was gonna leave was at the end of September, And then obviously I made my decision final at the end. But I’d say the Donaldson home run at the last home game of the season was definitely the moment for me that I enjoyed the most.”
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