TORONTO – The Toronto Blue Jays won’t improve on, or even duplicate last season’s success, according to predictions released this week.
Fangraphs.com, an online statistics smorgasbord released its projected standings for the 2016 baseball season, and it foresees the Jays winning fewer games and finishing third in the American League East.
The part that stings even more? The projected first-place finisher is the Boston Red Sox, which signed one-time Jay David Price to a monster $217-million contract in December.
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As of this writing, the 2016 Jays don’t look dramatically different, the loss of Price notwithstanding. The team just added another strong bullpen arm in Drew Storen, but the core of productive players remains in Toronto uniforms. They’ll also have Marcus Stroman and Troy Tulowitzki for a full season, and hopefully second-baseman Devon Travis as well.
The Fangraphs prediction says the Jays will regress next year simply because the 2015 season was outstanding in so many ways that it just seems impossible to do it again.
“The Blue Jays just got so many great performances from guys who can’t be reasonably be expected to have the same season again … that there was basically nowhere to go but down,” the site says.
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Statistically speaking, last season was simply bonkers. The Jays led the league in home runs, runs scored, doubles, slugging percentage and RBI, among others; actually, they accumulated over 100 more runs and RBI than the second-place team.
But with players like MVP Josh Donaldson, Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista back in action, who’s to say they can’t do it again? Don’t jump off the bandwagon just yet.
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